It had been a thousand years and one thousand miles, but Crawly had still not forgotten about the Moses debacle. Even remembering it made him cringe in embarrassment. It was bad enough that Moses ended up doing exactly what Aziraphale told him he would, but that Crawly actually aided Moses in making this decision? It was all too much for a demon to handle.

Crawly reached for the wine at hand. He changed his mind about the Egyptian wine; Greek was much better. After all, they had Dionysus on their side.

Aziraphale, instead of holding out his glass, stared out into the streets, looking vaguely disconcerted.

"Come on, have some wine angel! What's the fun in this if you're not going to drink yourself into oblivion as well?"

He didn't appear to hear, continuing to stare with his plump hands laying his toga-clad lap. Eventually, he gave a small cough. "You know, I… I think they're starting to get suspicious."

"Who?"

"Oh, you know." He gave an effusive wave of his hand. "Them."

"I'm still lost here."

"Above. Or Below for you, I suppose." Aziraphale suddenly reached out and downed a glassful of the wine, and after a few moments of sitting back in absolute blank-staring silence, immediately grasped for another.

"Well." Crowley sat, letting Aziraphale finish off the bottle. Poor guy deserved it. "I dunno. So far I've just been telling my people that I was keeping an eye out for you. You know. Preventing you from doing good deeds and all of that stuff."

"I believe my 'people' have a slightly different view. I don't think I've done any thwarting for about three hundred years…"

"Not true!" Crawly slapped the table with his uncoordinated hand. "Remember… remember when you did that thing?"

"If you mean when I stopped you from mauling that poor old man, he actually ended up burning down the local synagogue."

"Oh."

"Yes."

Apparently, the angel was still not quite drunk enough to deal with this and gestured for the servant to bring another. "This isn't good, Crawly," he said with all seriousness, and for once, Crawly couldn't disagree.

Shrugging, he pushed his glasses up his nose and sighed. "Well, we'll figure something out. I'm sure you can do something super-wonderful and anything about your whereabouts in concern with mine will be wiped off their map, okay?"

He didn't respond, but instead kept looking out to the bright blue sky, tendrils of clouds gently painted across the expanse. "I think I should probably go somewhere else," he said quietly.

Crowley almost dropped his glass. "What?"

"Well, it shouldn't matter so much to you anyway." Without fail, Aziraphale had already sobered himself up and was now fixing his already impeccable hair. "What did you say to me yesterday? Something like—"

"Yeah, that was stupid, I was a little—"

"'I don't really need your prissy company, you obsessive perfectionist?' I don't know, it was something like that."

"Uh."

"Well, I think I'll be on my way. Thank for you the wonderful one thousand four hundred years, but now I suppose I should be off. You know. Doing things for the betterment of mankind."

"Oh, come on!" This was hardly fair. Really. The angel was the one doing all of the annoying stuff anyway, and he's the one walking out on him? Ridiculous. So absolutely ridiculous. "Are you still mad about that thing yesterday? You were acting stuck-up."

His back suddenly stiffened and his chin raised a few notches. "Was not."

"Ohhoho, yes you were! Seriously, is this what you're in a tiff over?"

"Not at all." Aziraphale's voice became quite cold, and out of nowhere, a bag and a fresh pair of sandals appeared on his white feet. "Heaven honestly is getting quite wary. And, more importantly…" He pushed his nose up to the air, his eyelids lowering in a strange affection of pomposity and hurt. "…I just realized that my place was perhaps somewhere else entirely."

He was. He really, really was. He was walking right down the road, not even looking back. And if Crawly didn't do anything, he was actually a little frightened that the angel might not be back. This whole situation should not be happening. He didn't even start this mess. The begging should be from Aziraphale, not him. But Aziraphale continued to walk on. Crawly looked around quickly, noticing only a few passerby on the street. Aww, why not?

"Hey! Blond boy!"

The angel pretended not to hear, but his steady tread slowed considerably.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you!"

As fast as he's ever seen Aziraphale move, the man's face was suddenly facing him and his finger pointed out accusatorily.

"Why on earth do you care so much about whether I stay, mm? You're the one who always gives me those snide comments! Why do you care if I stay or go?" The once pale, marble-like complexion of the angel had turned a light shade of pink, an anger that Crawly had never seen before shaking his cheeks like rain rippling through a lake. Did he really, honestly do that? The angel seriously took those crap things to heart? And for once, the demon was speechless.

"Well?" Aziraphale said after a while, as Crawly continued in his silence. Finally, he coughed.

"Um. I didn't really mean that, you know." He thought for a moment, trying to collect what exactly he was trying to say. In his head, it sounded much too soft, so he tried to twist it to sound as nasty as possible. "Yes, you're annoying sometimes. But you're… well, you're nice to have around. Sometimes. So."

Aziraphale stared. "That's it?" he asked incredulously.

Were his ears deceiving him? Did the angel really just say that? After he practically bared his soul, the little pudge-ball wants more? "Yeah. What else did you expect?"

"An apology, for starter's! And if you really want me around, why do you say all these horrible things in the first place?"

"Hey, you can ask and you can ask but you're never going to get an answer from me, all right? Just laying that one down to start. I don't even know why myself."

More and more passerby were crowding the streets, and one man with a white beard in particular was so intrigued by their conversation that he had begun climbing up Crawly's wall in order to hear his responses better.

He was getting desperate now. He wasn't even sure why he exactly wanted this affected, vain being still around, but at the moment, he honestly did. Despite all of his better judgment, he called down, "I'm sorry. Okay?"

Maybe his eyes went bad for a few moments, but he could have sworn he saw Aziraphale give a hint of a smile. "What?" the angel shouted.

Crawly glanced around. Besides the old man who was now hovering disconcertingly over his shoulder, there were about thirty people all engrossed fully in their argument. Dignity or a glorious life without that fat do-gooder…?

"I'm sorry!" he shouted back, and in spite of all the small titters of laughter hidden among the crowd, he felt as if he made the right choice. Or, as he preferred to call it, the wrong choice— after all, the right choice was only for the morally justified. All the rest just liked doing whatever the hell they wanted. With his official position in mind, Crawly preferred to call anything he did as wrong. It worked out better for him in the end.

"That's what I wanted to hear." Aziraphale primly strode back, brushing lint from his bag that could not have possibly accumulated in the last two minutes.

A harsh, wheezing sound filled Crawly's left ear, and he slowly faced the positively exuberant man behind him.

"You did not find the answer, but you learned about each other!" The man breathed in awe, and Crawly quickly wiped his bottom lip with his tongue.

"Um. Sure." He made a move for the stairs, but the old man caught him.

"This is revolutionary! You learn, but you do not have the answer! It is the process of getting to the answer that is the learning! Ah!" He started to clap his hands, but in the middle of his second clap, suddenly changed his mind and shot his hand through his thinning hair, gaping at his discovery. Crawly just stared.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Oh! Socrates. Socrates." He shook his hand with vigor, pumping the demon's thin arm with energy that the old man barely seemed able to possess. "Thank you, thank you! This is wonderful! So, so wonderful! You have saved my life!" Crawly stepped back when the man flopped to the ground, groveling at his feet. He wasn't entirely sure if this was real, or whether Aziraphale had planned this to punish him in some way.

And then, he had an idea.

"Actually, it's not me you should be talking to. It's this guy's idea." As Aziraphale slowly emerged, breathing heavily as he daintily made his way up the staircase, Crawly gestured towards the blond man, and Socrates went scuttling.

"Wha…?"

"You saved me! You have saved my work, my philosophy!" This time, the arms fully encircled his legs, and Aziraphale looked up at Crawly with a mixed expression of confusion, resentment, and gratefulness.

The demon leaned back in his chair, a smug smile spreading its way across his serpentine features. "Your people can't be too upset about this, can they?" he said, and Aziraphale looked as though he was going to leap over and kiss him.

In fact, he was well on his way over when Crawly was forced to put his hands in self-defense. "Hey, I said I still wanted you around, not that I want you sucking on my neck or anything," he muttered, but even Socrates could tell he wasn't too horrendously upset.

"Yes. Quite right. But still, thank you." Aziraphale restrained himself, and instead focused his efforts on unlatching Socrates from his legs. "And just so you know, you're not so bad to be around either."

"Hey." Crawly put out his finger as a warning. "You're the problem in this partnership, all right?"

"Partnership?"

"Um. Yeah. Or whatever you want to call it. I meant something less familiar. I don't think the Greeks have the word for it."

"Ah."

"Yeah. So… want to finish up this wine?"

"Yes, I think I could manage that."