"Oh, that's rubbish," Crowley said, spitting his wine back into his glass.

"I'm a bit out of practice," Yeshua said. "Let me give it another try." He reached for another water pitcher.

"This isn't so bad," Aziraphale said, sipping at his own glass of water come wine. "It would have been quite passable a couple of millennia ago. I'm not sure that it's so much that you're out of practice, as out of experience. Viticulture has come a long way in the last two thousand years."

They had finished off a couple of bottles that Aziraphale had lying around, and with Crowley draped over him on the couch in the backroom of the bookshop, dinner from the Ritz still making him comfortably full, and a nice hazy warmth from the wine, Aziraphale was feeling a lot friendlier toward Yeshua than he had when the messiah had first arrived.

"Show me what you mean," Yeshua asked. Aziraphale waved a hand at the decanter of water and it turned a mellow yellow color.

Crowley dumped Yeshua's red back into the other pitcher and poured them each a new glass. He tasted his and smiled lazily. "This is the apricot stuff that we had a few years back, in…. Where was it again?"

"Napa, dear," Aziraphale answered.

"Ah yes," Crowley agreed. "That weekend in that nice villa."

Aziraphale hummed. "He tried surfing on that trip," he told Yeshua. "Most ridiculous thing I've ever seen."

"You should see him try to ride a camel," Yeshua countered.

"Camels," Crowley scoffed with pure venom. "You think horses are bad, angel. I tell you. No creature on Earth has ever been created that's as loathsome as the camel. This Bactrian number that I had back then," Crowley let out a hiss. "That was the most evil beast of burden that ever trod upon God's green… well, barren and inhospitable desert. No punishment designed by demon or man is bad enough for what that camel deserves. I mean. Your Bactrian camel has two humps right. So I think," Crowley hiccuped. "I think cor' that'll be loads more comfortable to ride. Practically built for riding. Just nestle your saddle right there between the humps and settle in. No. Every time the damn thing takes a step, those humps go wobbling around, jostling you about. It's impossible to look cool, galumphing about on a camel. They're all knees, and hair, and stink, and gelatinous protuberances. Talk about intelligent design. I rather think that God was having an off-day when He thought up that one."

He took another gulp of wine. "And this camel, this camel, was the stinkiest, hairiest, most protuberant of the lot. The bloody-minded thing bit me whenever it got the chance. You'd think it was safely away, doing whatever camels do when they aren't defecating massive piles of toxic sludge all over the place. You'd turn your back for an instant, and WHAM, right in the arse! I had bruises for months, and then I'd have to sit on the blasted thing again and be jostled around for hours in the cloud of stink emanating from the scratchy, bedraggled, fucking wool. And, it lingers, for days. You can't get the smell out."

Crowley paused long enough for a breath and another drink of wine. "Bloody camels. We should have Adam make a special circle of Hell and just fill it to the brim with camels. Make all the homophobic whankers run about for eternity, hip deep in camel dung, having their arses mutilated by dirty, gelatinous, wool-bags… with big teeth."

Crowley refilled his now empty glass. "Blasted thing loved Yeshua, of course."

"I quite liked that camel," Yeshua agreed. "It's very boring just plodding through the desert. Watching you go into fits of paroxysm every time it bit you or didn't do what you told it was very entertaining."

Crowley glared at him.

Aziraphale, quite accustomed by now to Crowley's drunken expounding on all God's creatures great and small, filed camels under animals not to mention in casual conversation, and was about to ask Yeshua what he thought of the wine, when Crowley went off again.

"That whole, sheep go to Heaven, goats go to Hell, thing is just because they haven't devised a place terrible enough to send the camels yet. If there was one animal that Noah should have kicked off that bloody great boat of his, it was the camels."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to try again, but Crowley just bowled on. "They spit, you know, and it isn't just normal spit. It's great gobs of nasty, green, half-digested, putrescence."

Aziraphale scrunched his face. "Are you quite finished now?" he asked.

"Yeah, s'pose," Crowley grumbled. "Just really hate camels."

"Yes," Aziraphale agreed. "You've made that quite abundantly clear. Would you like to expound further on the relative merits of, oh, I don't know… hammerhead sharks, or can me move onto another topic?"

Crowley waved a hand dismissively through the air, telling Aziraphale to get on with it then.

"How is the wine?" Aziraphale asked Yeshua.

Yeshua tried it and nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right. We never had anything like this the last time I was here." He took another sip. "Can I ask you two a personal question?"

"Hmm?" Crowley asked.

"Were you two together,... like this, I mean," he gestured between the two of them, "the last time that I was on Earth."

"Oh, no," Aziraphale said, sounding scandalized. "Not like this. I was an angel."

Yeshua nodded, appearing somewhat relieved.

Crowley scoffed, "Yeah, an oblivious angel. He stretched back against Aziraphale and gave a lazy smirk. "Back then, we had an Arrangement."

"We most certainly did not," Aziraphale protested. "We barely even ran into each other back then. And, anyway, you needn't make it sound so tawdry."

Crowley rolled his eyes and looked to Yeshua. "There I am, four thousand and whatever before you came around. Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. And there's this angel there. S'posed to be keeping an eye on things. S'posed to be on apple tree duty. Instead he's poncing about, sampling the fruit, th' non-forbidden kind anyway, and picking out baby names."

"I was not poncing," Aziraphale protested.

"Angel, you couldn't not-ponce if the world depended on it," Crowley said. "Anyway, here's this angel. Most angelic angel you ever saw- all blissfully devoted to his purpose, completely in love with God's creation, and at the same time, total rubbish at his job. So, I slither my way in, take care of business. Eve eats the apple, shares the knowledge of good and evil with lover boy, and BOOM, they're out of the garden."

Aziraphale tisked, and opened his mouth to protest Crowley's telling of events again, but Crowley put a hand over his face to keep him from talking.

"So there I am, just slithering about, wondering what I'm s'posed to do next, and I see Angelic McAngelface of the Eastern Gate up on the wall, looking like someone kicked his puppy."

"Washnt," Aziraphale said behind Crowley's hand. "Wash jush fshleenith penshivth."

"So, I decide to pop up and say hello. Maybe rub it in a bit. Tell him that if he'd been doing his job instead of flouncing around tasting all the grapes and olives, none of this would have happened."

"A donth flounth."

"Only, when I get up there, he just looks so sad. So instead, I strike up a conversation. Just on the off chance, you know, and instead of telling me to bigger off back to Hell, this beautiful idiot actually starts talking to me. Tells me he gave his holy blade to the humans. And, I think, oh boy, this one will be downstairs soon as God can say, 'I cast you out,' and he wouldn't look good in black, but having him around downstairs might make things more interesting. Then it's thundering and I'm thinking, here we go. Here comes the divine waterworks. Bit of holy water to scour my demonic hide. And this angel just throws up a wing like he's sharing his umbrella at the bus stop. And," Crowley looks with loving amazement into Aziraphale's eyes, "I just figured, I already fell once, how much worse could it get?"

Crowley removed his hand and stretched up to replace it with a soft kiss.

"Course," he continued. "Took him six thousand years to realize it. Hardest temptation I've ever managed. Talk about playing the long-game."

"It didn't take me as long as all that to realize what you were up to," Aziraphale said. "I just… I was an angel. There was a lot at stake. I guess it took thwarting Armageddon for me to see that what I was giving up wasn't all that great to begin with, and that there was more for me on Earth than was dreamt of in Heaven and Hell."

Yeshua smiled at them. "So, it all worked out in the end. I always thought that humanity deserved its own champions. It's kind of incredible, all the things that had to happen for that to come about. It's almost as though that was the plan all along."

"Ineffable," Aziraphale agreed.

"Don't either of you start on that," Crowley warned, lurching upward to scoop up two large tomes from the table and wave them at Yeshua and Aziraphale threateningly.

"Oh, no, not the books, Crowley," Aziraphale begged, jumping up to rescue them.

oOoOoOo

A couple hours and a few bottles later, Aziraphale and Crowley were completely sober, and Yeshua was having a hard time making it up the stairs. It seemed that, with all his miracles, he had never learned the knack of simply willing the alcohol out of his bloodstream, and he was far too drunk now for Crowley or Aziraphale to try to explain it to him.

Yeshua clung to Crowley as he stumbled his way upward, Aziraphale bringing up the rear in case the messiah lost his balance and brought Crowley down with him for the ride.

He said something in Aramaic.

"What was that?" Aziraphale asked.

"He said that the Kingdom of God is like a staircase, if you're too drunk to walk, it's a nice place to lay your head."

"What does that mean?"

"Means if we don't get him upstairs soon, we're going to be carrying him," Crowley said. "Come on Yeshua, almost there now."

Yeshua gurgled.

"I don't suppose he vomits roses?" Aziraphale asked.

"It's more like camel spit."

"Ah," Aziraphale said. "Perhaps you should just carry him then."

"You carry him, if it's so easy. He weighs a ton."

"There's no need for either of us to," Aziraphale said, and snapped his fingers.

Jesus disappeared, and Crowley stumbled down a step into Aziraphale, at the sudden loss of his burden. Aziraphale caught him and held him steady until he found his feet.

"You'd better not have accidentally sent him to Alabama," Crowley said, hurrying up the stairs, and Aziraphale followed.

They found Yeshua in the bathroom, vomiting, what was definitely not roses, into the bathtub. He let out a moan between bouts, and Crowley smoothed the hair that had fallen loose out of his bun away from his face, and rubbed his back, while Aziraphale banished the mess.

"Do you think we should bring him to hospital," Aziraphale asked. "What if he has alcohol poisoning or something?"

"Can't we just heal him? You have plenty of practice with that. It's one of your better miracles."

Aziraphale shook his head. "We can't. He's the Son. We don't have any power over him. Do you really think that I didn't try to take away his pain when the Romans were busy mutilating him? Didn't you?"

"Of course I bloody well did. I just assumed that it didn't work because I was a demon. You know that I wasn't any great shakes with the bigger miracles."

Yeshua vomited again.

"He'll be fine," Crowley said. "We just need to let him get it out of his system the human way."

oOoOoOo

Azazel hovered over the bookshop. He'd been lurking around the place for hours, hoping for an opportunity to get the Christ alone for some demonic temptation, but no one had left since they had all arrived together shortly after nightfall.

He picked at one of his glistening, black nails. He didn't understand why Lucifer had sent him. Surely Hastur or Dagon had more experience on Earth than he did. Of course, they also had an equally high rate of failure. Crowley had been the only one to ever have any true success in understanding these humans, and look where that had gotten him.

It certainly didn't look as though he would be getting anywhere with his temptation of Christ tonight, and the evening could have been spent so much more enjoyably. Azazel ran a hand through his hair to scratch around one curved horn, and rose up to land on the roof.

He should find Adam and see if the Antichrist had a better handle on what Heaven was planning, but the boy had been unpredictable so far. It was clear that he wasn't on Hell's side, but Azazel got the impression that he wasn't on the side of the angels either. It was possible that he could be persuaded that having a heavenly presence on Earth wasn't in his best interests.

At the very least, it would kill the hours until dawn when Azazel might have a chance of getting up close and personal with Jesus.

oOoOoOo

Crowley had sent Aziraphale to bed hours ago, and had been sitting on the bathroom floor, listening to Yeshua mumble nonsensical similes and parables in Aramaic between bouts of vomiting, for what seemed an eternity.

Finally, the messiah had fallen quiet, and stopped expelling unpleasant bodily fluids, and Crowley crawled over to where he was sprawled across the lip of the tub, sleeping the sleep of the thoroughly regretful.

Crowley rubbed his back. "Hey, Yeshua. Come on, and wake up. Let's get you to the couch, and you can sleep it off."

Yeshua started awake, clinging onto Crowley, begging him in Aramaic not to forsake him, and mumbling about centurions and God's forgiveness.

"Hey, hey," Crowley said, hugging him close. His throat went harsh, and he felt as though his guts had turned to stone. "It's all right. You're okay now. You're safe. I haven't forsaken you. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

Yeshua just held onto him and sobbed, begging him not to go.

"Hey, okay, it's okay. You come sleep with us tonight, all right? It's okay."

Crowley whispered soothing words in a litany, as he hauled Yeshua to his feet and helped him down the hall to the bedroom.

As he eased the door open, Aziraphale turned in the bed to look at him, blearily. "Crowley? What's going on?"

"Move over, angel. Make room for Jesus."