Okay, cards on the table: we all know that Aziraphale is only having his flat redone bit by bit because he wants to stay at Crowley's place, and every now and then, he slips and says something that perhaps betrays what's really going on in his head (and heart), but there's usually some hasty justification, and an uncomfortable smile. Crowley's obviously not fooled, though, and knows that he and the angel are basically on the same page when it comes to their relationship goals. But Aziraphale's façade is still up, which means there's still fear, which means Crowley can't push.

But here's where the façade starts to show real cracks, and it's not by accident on Aziraphale's part. It's almost by necessity. Just how human is he, after all?

Well, you might recall that our heroes have just been made privy to the existence of a second volume of prophecy by Agnes Nutter, and the Almighty (via Gabriel) is requesting that Aziraphale track it down. On with the show... enjoy!

KNOCKING AND… KNOCKING

"Okay," said Crowley, back behind the wheel of his Bentley, driving very rapidly west, out of Soho. "Where do we start? Tadfield? Book Girl?"

"Her name is Anathema Device," Aziraphale scolded. "And yes, I think that would be the most logical thing, don't you?"

"The most logical thing would be to tell Gabriel to go jump in a big flaming sulfur lake, but you've not given me that option, so here we are. Tadfield it is."

"What if she doesn't know where the book is? What then?"

"Dunno," Crowley said. "Apparently the Archangel Michael keeps surveillance records. You could pawn the job off on her."

"Out of the question," Aziraphale dismissed.

"Well, you asked."

After that, the two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, while they left London. And the angel noticed not long after getting on the road that he had had no desire to grip the door handle or phantom-slam his feet into the floor, testing the imaginary brake. If he wasn't mistaken, Crowley was slowing down.

He looked out the window, and found the courage to say, "It's a lovely drive," once they'd reached a bit of greenery in the English countryside.

"Yes, it is," Crowley agreed, utterly without noticing the landscape.

Crowley perfectly remembered the route to Jasmine Cottage, which was where they had dropped off Anathema when they'd first met her, and where, presumably, she resided.

There was no bell, so Aziraphale knocked on the front door. They waited. He tried again. They waited.

"Well, perhaps she's not in," Aziraphale said to his friend. "Should we leave a note?"

"You try again, I'm going to go round back, just in case," Crowley said. "Knocking a bit harder wouldn't kill you, you know. Quit being so damn polite."

Aziraphale tried a third time, attempting, as the demon had said, to knock a bit harder. He waited; still no answer. Exasperated, he tried a fourth (and what he decided would be a final) time. This was when his knuckles finally made firm enough contact with the wood, to resound in a meaningful way… if Miss Device was in, she was sure to have heard it!

But halfway through the four sharp, hard raps, Crowley came jogging back round the way he'd gone. "No, no, no, no! Stop knocking! We'll come back later! Let's go!"

"Well, all right," said Aziraphale, disappointedly. "She's clearly not in anyway."

"Yes she is, yes she is, they both are," Crowley said very quickly, then grabbed his friend by the arm, and attempted to drag him back to the Bentley.

"She's in? What do you mean they both are?" Aziraphale asked, confusedly, as he was being pulled down the front stoop.

And that was when the front door of Jasmine Cottage opened, and there stood a man. He was as tall and thin as Crowley, but with none of the demon's cool.

Although, the man had a yellow floral sheet wrapped around his waist, no shirt, his hair was in shambles, and he was breathing raggedly.

That was pretty cool.

"Oh, hello," said Aziraphale.

"Oh! It's you! And you!" said the man, pointing at each of them in sequence.

"Yes, I'm Aziraphale, and this is Crowley. And you are… sorry, I know you're the chap who broke the computers, but I don't believe I caught your name before."

"It.. it's Newt. Newton Pulsifer."

"Well, dear man, we're so sorry to have, er… got you out of the shower," Aziraphale said, looking the young man over. "But in future, you might want to try a towel, or something else made of terrycloth, as a bedsheet is not the best way to…"

"What's going on?" asked a female voice. A moment later, Anathema Device appeared behind Newt. Her hair was in a similar state, as was her breathing, and the only thing she was wearing was what Crowley realised was probably Pulsifer's shirt. Inside-out. Aziraphale, of course, realised nothing.

"Oh, hello, lovely Anathema," said the angel. "Do you remember us?"

"'Course they do, 'course they remember us," Crowley said quickly, as though speaking through a machine gun. "We're the two blokes who helped them avert the apocalypse two weeks ago – who could forget a thing like that? Now, listen, you two, we're going to be down at the village pub, if you'd like to have a chat about, oh, say, books, ancestors, celestial beings, stuff like that."

"Wait… what?" Anathema asked. "Are you serious?"

"Yes, quite so…" said Aziraphale.

"Yes, but it's not time sensitive, so, you know… don't rush. Honestly, don't rush, okay? Human life is too short to rush through these things, so… well, come on, Aziraphale. Let's let the nice people finish their shower."

"The village pub?" Aziraphale asked, incredulously.

"Yes, the village pub! Get in the bloody car!" the demon growled at him, manhandling him down the path to the little gate.

Newt and Anathema just watched them with fascination.

Once inside the car, Crowley started it up, and peeled away from Jasmine Cottage. He then said, "Sorry to have got you out of the shower? In future you might want to try terrycloth? Honestly, Aziraphale, are you messing with all of us, or are you really this... green?"

"What the dev…" he began. "What are you talking about?"

"Ugh! There was a reason I told you not to knock on the door! Once I went round back, I could hear them!"

"Hear them…?"

"Hear them! You know!"

"No! Clearly I don't!"

Crowley made a show of exhaling hard, as though the whole damned conversation were paining him. "I heard banging. Moaning. The squeaking of bedsprings coming from an upstairs room. Are you there yet, you celestial numbskull?"

"Oh!" Aziraphale said, surprised, and having suddenly got there. "Oh dear. What've we done?"

"Disrupted a mighty good shag, is what it sounded like," Crowley said. "Can't stand there on the porch and ask them about literature when they've been interrupted doing that."

"No, I suppose not."

"Well, good for them I say. And good for us. They can finish up, and we can have a drink or two. All of us will be much happier and more amiable when we finally do talk later, eh?"

"Indeed," Aziraphale said, now with his tight smile, graduating to a flat, horrified stare.

The angel and the demon sat at a table for four, waiting to see the flushed faces of Anathema Device, and probably Newton Pulsifer as well.

Crowley was well into the Scotch, but Aziraphale had not touched the glass of wine he'd ordered. He hadn't even bothered transforming it into a Châteauneuf du Pape.

"What's with you?" Crowley asked, taking a not-so-small sip from his glass. "Is this book business worrying you that much? Because frankly, I tried to warn you about this rubbish in London, but you were all 'posterity demands it!' and 'I'm Book Dude!'"

Aziraphale frowned a bit. "I never said I was Book Dude. You said that. And it was Gabriel who exploited it, frankly. I was powerless to stop it. So don't tell me I call myself Book Dude."

Crowley stared at him for a few moments, jaw somewhat agape. "Anyone ever tell you you're a bit pedantic?"

"Thanks for noticing," Aziraphale said. "It's only been six thousand years."

"And counting," Crowley said with a flirty smile, knocking his glass gently against the untouched wine, then taking another swig.

Aziraphale had something on his mind, and he wondered if he shouldn't get a little drunk before broaching the subject. But he found himself frozen. The only thing left to do was…

"Crowley?"

"Yes?"

"Have you…"

Aziraphale had begun a question, but then looked up at his friend across the table, and lost his nerve. Something in the fiery demeanour, the black clothing, the red hair and dark glasses made him back down. It was not an unpleasant thing to look at – quite the contrary – but just now, Crowley's very existence was making him nervous.

"Have I what?" Crowley asked.

"Nothing. Forget I said anything."

"Okay," Crowley conceded. But he knew his friend all too well, and knew this wasn't over.

And this was something about what they'd seen at Anathema's place. It was clear that Aziraphale had been rattled by it - he'd barely said a word since he'd learned the entertaining truth of what they'd walked into at Jasmine Cottage. Crowley had a guess about what was coming, but as usual, he was not going to push.

But he knew he didn't need to. And indeed, within a few moments, "Crowley?"

"Yes?"

"We're two celestial beings – well, supernatural, anyway."

"Yes. I should have thought that was a well-established fact."

"It is. But… we've both been issued bodies. We've both been granted corporeal form for our tenure on Earth. And even though you're a demon and have your vulnerabilities to holy water, consecrated ground and the like, and I have my vulnerabilities to fire and chaos, the bodies work in basically the same way, don't they?"

"I suppose so, on a basic level."

"We can feel hot, cold. We cry, and we bleed. We feel pain and pleasure. We both eat and sleep and take bodily enjoyment from that, even though we don't need any of it to survive. Plus, we can do magic, miracles, influence our immediate surroundings, et cetera."

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"I was just wondering if you feel the same things that I feel, and have the same corporeal experience."

"We're analogous beings, one heavenly, one… anti-heavenly. So, yes. Two sides of the same coin, if you like."

"Oh, good. That makes the question more relevant, and the answer easier for me to understand. Crowley, there's something I've been wanting to ask you."

Crowley would have liked, at this point, to scream, "Well, that's bloody obvious! Would you just come out with it already?" but he did not. Every day with Aziraphale was an exercise in restraint, for so many reasons.

He had an idea that he probably should sober up for this chat, and so he did. The Scotch made its way magically back into the bottle, and Crowley felt suddenly much more in-the-moment.

"Shoot," he said.

Aziraphale took a deep breath. "When we were at Jasmine Cottage, and you heard what you heard in the back garden, and then we saw what we saw… the half-nudity, the bedsheet, and… actually, I'm curious, is the messy hair a relevant part of that little tableau, as well?"

"Yep."

Aziraphale nodded, acknowledging this. "But in truth, I didn't understand any of it until you pointed it out. It's not part of my corporeal experience. And so, Crowley, it begs the question, have you…" Aziraphale began. "Have you, in your six thousand years of corporeal form, for whatever reason, in whatever time, with whatever subject of…"

"Yes."

Aziraphale stopped short. "You didn't let me finish my question."

"You were taking forever, angel, and for us, that's saying something. I know what you're asking, and the answer is… yes."

"Yes."

"Yes," Crowley repeated.

A few moments passed, and then Aziraphale suddenly realised he'd been holding his breath, and he exhaled hard, with an almost instinctive, "Oh dear." Then, "I'll need to catch my breath for a mo'."

"Are you surprised?"

"Actually, I'm not.

"It's all part of the temptation game, angel. It's become less and less of a thing as society has less and less of a stick up its arse about it, and truth be told, it's been since 1940…"

"No need to explain, Crowley. Honestly, if you'd said no, it wouldn't make any sense. You're a demon, after all."

"Yes, I am."

"I mean, I'd sort of been hoping you would say that your corporeal experience has been the same as mine in every way except the bit about the holy water and the consecrated ground, but…" he trailed off. Then he seemed to recover, and he cleared his throat and said, "Well, it just makes me feel as though I'm on the back foot. At a professional disadvantage, if you will."

"A professional disadvantage?" asked the demon, sardonically. "That's the explanation we're going with?"

"Yes, I mean, if you've experienced carnal pleasures, you must understand the human experience, and their motivations, better than I."

"Must I?"

"Yes," Aziraphale confirmed.

"Hm," Crowley said, sipping Scotch again, with a lazy grin, knowing full well that neither of them had a profession at which to be disadvantaged anymore.

And that was when Anathema Device and Newton Pulsifer darkened the pub's door, and this conversation was cut short.

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