Adam had three empty beer bottles sitting on the tea table, a half-finished essay before him, and his wicked step-mother sitting on the other side of the couch with a new mobile- either watching bestiality porn, or more cute goat videos. He was trying his best to focus on his essay and ignore the bleating, either way, when his phone rang.

"Hell," he started, but before he could get to the, "o," Crowley was raving on the other line.

"I need you to get over here NOW! There's sawdust everywhere, and the bookshelves are in pieces, and Aziraphale has barricaded himself in the backroom with his first editions, and he won't come out. Yeshua just keeps babbling about Homes Under the Hammer, and lumber deliveries."

Adam closed his eyes. "I don't know what any of that means. It's late. I'm in the middle of a paper that's due tomorrow. You'll just have to figure it out yourself." He hit 'end call' on his mobile and set it back down on the arm of the couch.

"What was that about?" Azazel asked, not looking up from his video.

"Jesus is having wood delivered, so Aziraphale locked himself in the backroom. Not my circus; not my monkeys."

"Delivered?" Azazel asked, looking up now. "Who's delivering it?"

"How should I know? Workmen, I guess."

Azazel frowned. "How do you order them in? Is there a catalogue? Do they have a website? Do you pick the workmen out, or do they just send someone over?"

"What? " Adam started, but Azazel was already typing hurriedly on his phone. "No. That isn't what I meant. Does everything have to be sexual innuendo with you? He's just," but his phone was ringing again, and Adam figured that it was a lost cause anyway.

Adam didn't know why he even bothered to look at the screen—a picture of Crowley raising an eyebrow at him over the rims of those obnoxious sunglasses. "I'm not driving to Soho at midnight," he said into the phone.

"Of course not; why should you? You just left," Yeshua said.

Adam wasn't sure if he should expect Yeshua to be the voice of reason in this particular situation, or if he should just turn his phone off and finish his paper. "What's going on?" He asked anyway.

"I don't know. Crowley just handed me the phone. Aziraphale had some kind of fit, because I was using his bookshop to do some carpentry. He swore a whole bunch, then he started moving a bunch of books to the back, and now he won't come out. I don't see what he's so upset about. I'll clean up when I'm finished and he hasn't opened the shop since I've been here anyway."

"He's really particular about his books- like Crowley with the Bentley, but multiplied by a hundred. You should probably put everything back exactly how it was."

"Well, I've already started cutting the shelves down for a different project. My lumber delivery doesn't come until tomorrow, and I figured I'd get them out of the way now to make room for the new ones. I'm putting in slide-along double-shelves. I saw it in a home improvement show. He'll be able to organize everything better and widen the aisles a little. His customers will have a much easier time finding what they want."

"Yeah…" Adam sighed. "Maybe do the opposite of that instead. Can you put false fronts on the shelves that make it look like all the books are something boring that no one would ever want to read? I mean, more so than usual: A Detailed History of Kitchen Utensils, or, European Vegetable Production 1432-1683, or How to Make Butter in 37 Easy Steps."

"You don't need that many steps to make butter," Yeshua said. "First you milk the goat, and then-"

"Yeah, yeah, you're missing the point." Adam didn't want to think about goats. "Aziraphale doesn't want to sell books. He wants a big, climate controlled, room to store all of his books in. He opens that shop for about six hours out of the week, and spends the whole time fussing over anything that anyone touches, while subtly trying to shoo them out the door. Just… it matters to him, okay? I get that you were trying to do something nice, but you overstepped. Put everything back the way it was, and he'll get over it… eventually."

"But, I can't just… I've started already. This will be better. I promise."

Adam sighed. Not my circus; not my monkeys, he reminded himself. It was becoming a mantra. The only problem was that they were his monkeys, or, more accurately, his mish-mash, pseudo family of mortifyingly embarrassing, supernatural morons. "Just put it back. I don't have time for this. I have a paper to write on bivalve arthropods, and I'd like to get some sleep before class tomorrow. I have a life beyond cleaning up after you lot. Figure it out." Adam ended the call before Yeshua could argue again.

He hit the enter key on the laptop to wake his sleeping word processor and glanced over his papers while he waited for it to rouse.

The kind of music that only ever plays at the beginning of really bad, soft-core, pornography listed through the room, and he glanced at Azazel, intently staring at his mobile.

"I have an order here for some wood," a masculine voice said, with genre typical, cheesy, over-acting.

"I know just where you can put it," a feminine voice responded in a sultry purr.

"I'm going to the library," Adam announced, slamming his laptop shut and gathering up his papers.

"They're closed," Azazel said, "and the internet doesn't work."

Adam growled.

oOoOoOo

"Come on, angel," Crowley said. "I brought you some cocoa. Why don't you come out? We'll go back upstairs and we can clean-up this mess in the morning. Yeshua said he was sorry."

"I'm fine right here," Aziraphale said from the other side of his barricade.

"I put marshmallows in it," Crowley said.

There was a pregnant silence, and then the boxes moved aside, and stacked themselves along the wall.

Aziraphale sat in his armchair with his arms wrapped tightly around half a dozen books in his lap. The Wilde first editions, naturally, Crowley noted, but didn't comment.

"He's ruined my bookshop."

"It isn't that bad. It's just a couple shelves, and some dust. He wants to make you new ones."

"I don't want new ones."

"I know." Crowley pried Aziraphale's arms away from the books and carefully set them aside and handed him the cocoa."Don't you think you're being the slightest, tiniest bit, irrational?"

"Oh, I am, am I? And how is the Bentley? Still an automatic, playing Baby You Can Drive My Car?"

Crowley winced.

"Precisely." Aziraphale sipped his cocoa, brushing one manicured finger along the angel wing handle. "It's strange how attached one can become to material things. I never had anything before coming to Earth, not really. And now," Aziraphale looked around the room, "after having lost it all once, I find the idea of even one book being damaged… devastating."

"Don't act like that's a new development. Remember that I was the one that had to scoop you out of the ashes of the Library of Alexandria," Crowley said, and immediately wished that he hadn't at the look of sadness in his angel's eyes. Too soon, he reminded himself. It's always going to be too soon to bring that up.

"Yes, well," Aziraphale sipped his cocoa. "It's the loss of history. Books are the embodiment of humankind's immortality. If they can be preserved, then it's a way to remember that little slice of time that those people lived in. The world as it was for them. Their triumphs. Their defeats. What was most important, for those people, in that instant—important enough to set down forever. Even the fiction, especially the fiction, can tell you things about people who've been dead and gone for centuries. The loss of that, it's more than just the loss of paper, and ink, and binding. It's like the loss of someone's soul. It's being forgotten."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you about the internet. Digital copies. That way it doesn't get lost to time, or fire, or messiahs with power tools."

"I thought you said that the internet is just a depository of pornography and videos of cats knocking things off tables," Aziraphale said, wryly.

"Well, that too. It's good for lots of things."

"Here, hold this," Aziraphale said, handing Crowley his mug as he stood and went over to one of the shelves. He pulled down a leather-bound book and reverently opened it to his desired page. He carried it over and showed it to Crowley. It was a handwritten, illuminated manuscript—one side of the fold completely dominated by an angel with spread wings and face held up to a beam of light from overhead, expression the very picture of devoted reverence.

Crowley raised a brow at the image. The expression and white-blonde curls bore a definite resemblance to a certain former angel of his intimate acquaintance. He smirked. "I think I had you making that face a couple of hours ago."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. "This codex was copied by a Franciscan monk in the 12th Century. Every letter of the text was painstakingly drawn over months, maybe even years. The illuminations and illustrations are a work of love."

"Well, it's a work of love when I get you to make that face, too," Crowley defended.

"My point," Aziraphale continued, "is that this, right here, these pages, this ink, this," he jiggled the codex a little. "This is a man's legacy- his mark on the world. He touched these pages; he wrote these wrote these words; he drew these pictures, nine hundred years ago. Through luck, and chance, and some careful preservation by yours truly, this little piece of him still exists here and now in a future that that humble monk, working diligently in his scriptorium, never could have even dreamed of. You don't get that from a digital copy on a computer screen." He brought the book to his face and inhaled deeply, looking more like the illustration of the angel on the page than he ever had while communing with The Almighty, and probably more, though Crowley hated to admit it, than he did while in the grip of carnal passion as well.

"Yeah, okay," Crowley said, "when you put it that way."

Aziraphale carefully closed the book, and returned it to its place on the shelf.

"I'll make sure that Yeshua understands," Crowley said, handing Aziraphale his cocoa back.

Aziraphale took it and returned to his chair.

"Now, drink your cocoa, and let's go back to bed. As lovely as you look in that blanket, togas went out of fashion a couple of millennia ago, and even if it is tartan, that isn't how you wear a kilt."

oOoOoOo

Adam had gone to bed a few hours ago, but the sun hadn't quite risen yet. Azazel lay on the couch, practically upside down, with one leg thrown over the back, and the other folded beneath him, head resting on one crooked arm, half on and half off the couch cushion, while he held his mobile above his face, and watched a leather-clad dominatrix apply a complicated device to a bound man's sensitive parts, with professional curiosity.

The woman abruptly stood and turned toward the camera, shaking out her blonde bob into a mop of raven curls, and suddenly she had a male aspect—her rounded face now all sharp cheekbones and dark eyes.

"Hello, darling," Lucifer said. He still wore the leather pinny and thigh-high leather boots, and he looked down at himself and then back up to meet Azazel's eyes with a raised brow and a sardonic quirk of his lips. "And what are we up to here?"

Azazel smiled, flipping around to right himself into a seated position on the sofa. "Research."

"I see," Lucifer said, and started pacing around the dungeon idly. He waved a hand at the very confused sub tied to the table, and the man disappeared. He made a curious humming sound as he lifted a riding crop off a peg on the wall to slap it into his hand. "And, how goes your Temptation of Christ?"

"Slowly," Azazel said, "but I've made contact. How is Hell?"

"Hellish without you," Lucifer said, pouting his lips out in a mockery of petulant dejection. He took a few steps further into frame, hiding his lower body beneath the edge of the screen as he peered out at Azazel. "What are you wearing?"

"It's called a furry. Some new sex thing the humans have cooked up. I don't completely understand it, but it's a lot more comfortable not having to hide my horns."

Lucifer gave a deep chuckle, warm with amusement, and Azazel felt a twitch of arousal that a dozen hours of watching humans fornicate hadn't managed to elicit from him. "And what else have you learned from your research?"

"The world's oldest profession is still going strong, but they seem to need a lot more props than in the old days. There are stores just full of sex aids and lingerie, and businessmen in suits looking shifty. It's wonderful."

"It sounds lovely. You do know that you're meant to be working though, not shopping for toys?"

"I am working. He hardly leaves the company of the fairies though, and I don't want to draw attention just yet."

"I wouldn't call what you're wearing discreet." Lucifer looked down at the leather pinny he was wearing again, running his hands down the sides of the cinched corset. "Though, perhaps I've missed something."

"I don't know about discreet, but I think I'm going to have to get you one of those for at home." Azazel let his eyes fix on the jut of Lucifer's clavicle where it met a leather strap.

"Perhaps," Lucifer allowed, "if you can successfully finish your work." He twisted the riding crop between his hands, and gave it another smack into his palm. "I wouldn't mind one of these either." He sighed. "Do hurry up and get it over with, so I can have you back. This place is utterly wretched without you. How's our son?"

Azazel shrugged. "In a snit as always."

"What is it this time?"

"Something about snails, I think. Honestly, I quit listening after the third time he said fossil record. He's sleeping now."

Lucifer huffed. "Sometimes I wish he'd gotten a bit more of your personality instead of mine. He does it just to be obstinate."

"He'll come around," Azazel said. "He's letting me stay with him."

"He is?"

"Of course. He's always got on just fine with me. You're the one that insists on pushing him on everything. If you just lay off him a bit more, you might actually get along."

"I'm trying," Lucifer said through gritted teeth. "But, every time he's here, he sulks around, and acts like it's a huge imposition that his family might like to get to know him, and it isn't as though I can go up to Earth whenever I like."

"He has abandonment issues," Azazel said. "He doesn't think of us as his family, not really. He has his adopted parents, and it's going to take time for him to feel that way about us. The way you argue with him doesn't help."

"If that bastard Crowley had given him to the right family, we wouldn't be in this situation."

Azazel sighed. "Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if we'd just kept him, and raised him ourselves. We didn't get our war anyway, and he's the only child we'll ever be able to have, unless God decides to try again. Maybe He'd get a smarter one this time. I swear, that Yeshua is the most oblivious man I've ever encountered. I might have to forget the temptation and just hand him a sex manual instead."

"If you think it will help," Lucifer said. "Just don't get too distracted with the boy. I know how you get when your maternal instincts kick in. You coddle him."

"Oh, I do not," Azazel said. "I just try to talk him down when he's ready to punch you in the face. Someone has to play Devil's Advocate."

"That isn't what I keep you around to play. Focus on your work, so we can get back to our pleasure. The school year will be over soon, and we can kidnap Adam for a couple weeks without him going into a rage over it. You can advocate for me all you want then."

"You know, you could just say that you miss me," Azazel said, smiling fondly.

Lucifer sneered. "Shut up, and distract me for a while with what you've been learning from the humans."

Azazel was more than happy to oblige. He just hoped that Adam was soundly asleep. Afterward, he did wonder, a bit guiltily, if that counted as wanking on the couch.