Our ineffable pair are parked in the bookshop for the day, and some issues arise that Aziraphale just isn't ready for! But they sort of amuse Crowley... No smut, and no particular creature comfort for now. Just some humor, some talking, some teasing... leading into the next creature comfort and a potential conflict!

On a different note: You'd think that being confined to my home 24/7 would allow me to write more often, but in fact, my lifestyle is such that being home actually gives me ZERO time to write. If I want the time, I have to fight for it... so here I am. 90% of my writing is done in coffee shops so... I'm suffering here. I feel like I'm holding in a cough by not writing what's on my mind! (No topical humor intended.)

Anyway, your patience is appreciated! Enjoy!

PATCHES OF EARTH

Crowley sat on the sofa in the bookshop, with the laptop open on the antique coffee table in front of him.

"So, what d'you reckon?" he asked his partner, who wandered back over to the seating area after helping a customer. "St. Tropez? Cannes? Nice? Monte Carlo? All four?"

"Excuse me?" Aziraphale asked, sitting back down at his desk with a printed copy of Agnes Nutter's second volume of prophecy.

"We said we'd do a holiday in the South of France, remember? The morning after waking up human?"

"Oh, yes, quite right," Aziraphale said, remembering. "We said we'd do that, and then set about finding a job for you, and expanding my book stock… and have you met again with that estate agent?"

"No," Crowley said. "But we could do that, too – move house, if you like."

"Wait a moment," Aziraphale said, with a bit of appalled surprise. "Is that what you've been looking at? Photos, or what-have-you, of the French Riviera?"

"Well… yeah. Actually, a travel booking site. Sorry, angel, but not everyone finds prophecy as bloody interesting as you."

"Oh, Crowley."

"I did put in a solid hour of geekery."

"Oh, you did, did you? Is that how you see it? Geekery?"

"Yes, and yet, I'm still willing to do it. For you. And for posterity. And possibly to save the planet."

"Thanks ever so, my love," Aziraphale muttered, sarcastically.

"Later, I'll tell you what I found in dear Agnes' great book."

"Fine, fine."

"Wait, no, I'll tell you now. It said, 'An erstwhile Daemon has nary a Place nor a Will to live, with his Nostrils entrenched in the papery Spines, most especially when sunny Coast beckons. Drop mine Volume, No-Longer-Reptilian-One, and plot a filthy, bawdy Holiday with your Cocoa-loving Angel." His voice grew wispy, and his cadence changed to an affected rhythm, to mock the language he'd been poring over for part of the morning.

Aziraphale blinked twice and said, "Very clever."

"Thank you."

"You know, if you put half as much brain power into actual useful endeavours, like trying to work out what the Almighty has planned next for humankind, as you do into crafting sarcastic responses…"

"Oh, shut up," Crowley whined. "You know very well you and I are going to be left out of all of it until the Almighty decides to reveal something to humanity. And even then, we might not perceive it. We might've had a fighting chance when we were, you know… but now? Look, angel, I'll help you translate or whatever, from time to time, but I'm not doing it at the expense of living our now very short lives."

"I suppose that's a good point."

"Yes, it is. And you're going to let me love you, damn it. So… you know… come along for the ride. What'll it be? St. Tropez, Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo, or all four?"

"Well," Aziraphale breathed haughtily. "I don't know. I've been to all of those places."

"Me too," Crowley sighed. After a pause, he began, "But, I will say…"

"Yes?" Aziraphale asked, after his companion trailed off and said nothing else.

"Never mind."

"No, tell me. If you've got a preference, let's hear it."

"It's not a preference, per se," Crowley muttered. "It's just, it occurs to me, I've never had a shag in Nice, so we might choose it… because… well..."

"Ah."

"You asked."

"Yes, I did. Must quit doing that," Aziraphale murmured to himself. "So… but you have had… erm, some… form of, well…"

He continued to gesticulate with his hands, unable to quite finish the sentence, in spite of recent events.

"Sex?" Crowley asked.

"Mm," Aziraphale grunted, putting his hands in his lap neatly. "In all of the other places you mentioned?"

"Yeah. And also in Antibes, and Menton, and Cap-Ferrat. And way back when, in Marseille, Nîmes, a little town called St.-Marcel-d'Ardèche…"

"All right, all right," said Aziraphale, with the 'hush, you!' tone of an old auntie.

"Sorry. Romans settling Provence – so much excitement, so much testosterone, angel… hard to even put it into words. The place was absolutely ripe for a temptation spree! And, summer of 1939 was a big one, too. Beelzebub wanted me to get the wife of a French aristocrat - Claire Chevilles was her name - to embezzle two million Francs through a charity linked to the prison system in Toulon."

"Why?"

"Er... you know, it was a Beelzebub thing."

"What the Hell does that mean?"

"Well, if you must know, it was revenge for Claire's parents who had resisted all attempts at gaining their immortal souls for our Infernal Master," Crowley said, the last part with mock-gravity. "One of the other demons tried to get them to turncoat during the Great War and invest in the enemy war machine, with a guaranteed huge payout. No-go."

"So, naturally, you shagged your way across the Riviera in 1939."

"Yeah. Because I watched her for a while, and the only people she ever listened to were her gigolos," he shrugged. "So I swooped in and did the British playboy thing. We did a three-month-long drinking-gambling-sex bender down the coast from Italy to Spain. And we would've kept going, except Hitler invaded Poland."

"And you took credit for it," Aziraphale said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Before I understood how much I did not want to take credit for anything Hitler did."

"Well, live and learn."

"And she never did embezzle the money," Crowley mused, remembering, changing the subject back to the aristocrat's wife. "Turned out she was an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac, yet quite scrupulous with finances, much like her parents."

"Hell couldn't get her roped in on the drinking and gambling and nymphomania?"

"Her marriage was one of convenience – her husband had mistresses all over the free world, and expressly did not care what or who she did. She gambled with her own money, and not particularly to excess. Her alcoholism was a hereditary disease, and overall, she wasn't hurting anyone," Crowley shrugged.

"I suppose that all makes sense."

"Oh, you know what? Come to think of it, I've been banned from Monte Carlo – sorry. Counting cards. Well, not so much counting them, as miracling royal flushes into my hands time after time…"

"Crowley!"

"But we skipped Nice."

Aziraphale sighed. "Let's choose somewhere else, shall we? Sounds like you've been there and done it all, when it comes to the South of France."

"Okay, somewhere else," Crowley said, with some finality. "Just leave it to me. I'll do all the work – flight, hotel, a few geeky Aziraphalian museum tours, the works. A two-week holiday someplace where I've never… you know."

"Thank you."

The afternoon in the bookshop was busier than usual, and Aziraphale actually sold a volume or two, to people whom he felt would be worthy, and would take care of the item in question. He also answered quite a few queries about his rare Bible stock.

In addition, he turned down a very handsome monetary offer for the looted chest he had acquired from the Middle East, as well as a very handsome man who had no interest in his books.

Crowley watched the entire transaction with some amusement.

Aziraphale came back to the alcove and sat down at his desk, with an uneasy expression.

"Oh, he's had his eye on you for a while, angel," Crowley said, looking up from his travel booking, with a smirk.

"How could you possibly know that?"

"I've seen him before. He works at that cheese shop a block and a half away. One of the few hoity-toity places around here where we've only ever gone in separately."

"Oh, right. I suppose I did feel he was familiar."

"I bet he's tried to chat you up before, and you didn't notice. He didn't even pretend to glance at that book he was carrying around in his hand. He just waited for you to finish talking with that university lady."

"I'll admit I did think it was odd that the book in his hand was in Aramaic."

"He didn't just wander in here looking for a Gutenberg original, and happen to see you, angel."

"Oh."

"He was dressed to the nines and…"

"…he smelled nice," Aziraphale said, meekly.

"Mm-hm, and his hair was freshly cut. There was some effort put into that little overture, Aziraphale."

"He asked me to dinner." It came out almost like a confession.

"I heard," Crowley said, leaning back on the sofa.

"And to a jazz club, and 'who knows what else'."

"Heard that, too."

Aziraphale's fretful expression deepened. "Does that mean what I think it does?"

"The 'who knows what else' bit? Yes, as long as you think it means 'possible blow job in the loo of the jazz club.'"

The fretful expression turned to an aghast sort of frown. "In that case, it's an appalling thing to say to a total stranger! And also oddly specific."

"It means 'possibly sex,' angel. And it's well-established, late twentieth-century-and-after dating code language. It's fine. It's not appalling, it's just how people get laid, okay?"

"Have you ever said that to anyone?"

"Far too pedestrian for the likes of me."

"I see."

"Anyway, I wasn't doing any canoodling in the late twentieth century – swore off it in 1941 until surprisingly recently."

"Right. I recall."

Aziraphale then exhaled hard, with a vexed expression.

Crowley laughed. "What's with the face? It's flattering."

"No."

"Yes! Being chatted-up is flattering, especially if the chatter-upper is non-sleazy. Like him."

"I don't like it."

"Don't like what? Having to turn it down?" Crowley asked, chuckling again. "You could still catch him – invite him on holiday with us. Might be a laugh."

"You're not serious!"

"Of course not," Crowley said, rolling his eyes, but thoroughly enjoying ribbing the still easily-scandalised former angel. "Well, the bit about it being a laugh could be true. I did used to enjoy a good trio."

Aziraphale continued to frown at him and asked, "What have you booked for the TWO of us?"

Crowley turned his attention to the laptop screen in front of him. "Well, after taking stock of all the places on Earth where I've played pug-a-nug, the only thing that's left is a trek to the summit of Mount Everest."

"What?" Aziraphale shouted, sitting up straight in his chair, panicked.

"Just kidding, angel. Wow, you're easy to rile today."

"That's because you're being a prat. Just tell me where we're going."

"Mallorca."

"Mallorca? Really?"

"Yep," said Crowley. "I was there in about 1715 helping the Spanish Empire spread out and wreak havoc. No sex, no temptations, just some good, solid, demonic work. Following orders, of course."

"Lovely."

"Now I think of it, I've not had it off on any of the Balearic Islands," Crowley said. "Nor in the Northern bit of Tuscany. Nor Tibet. Nor the Vatican. Nor modern-day Argentina, nor Alaska. Shall I go on?"

"No, that's quite all right. All of Argentina? Really?"

"Really. But Chile and Brazil are another story."

"I had to ask."

"Anyway, the point is, Aziraphale, don't get it in your head that Mallorca is the only patch of Earth where I've not spoiled, or been spoiled."

Aziraphale smiled. "Okay. Thank you, Crowley."

"And actually, I've had surprisingly few shags in Spain itself. Just never vibed there. Especially after the Inquisition. Even my lot were disturbed by that. Didn't see anything the likes of that again until the Nazis came along… did a lot of drinking there, though."

Crowley talked a bit longer, but Aziraphale drifted.

Aziraphale had always suspected that temptations and corruptions and the demon's general hedonism would have necessitated a lively and interesting six-thousand-year sex life of which he had simply never spoken to Aziraphale, for obvious reasons. But a couple of months ago, the angel had actually bothered, at last, to ask outright, and had been granted with the stark reality of it.

And when one thought about it, it was clear that Crowley had not been assigned to Earth to perform temptations for no reason. Hell had presumably taken one look at his corporeal form and sent him to bring humanity (sometimes literally) to its knees. It had not escaped Aziraphale's notice that the tall, lithe, aloof demon (and now the man) attracted glances, sometimes leering and lustful ones, from people of all sexes, everywhere he went – he always had. His personality could be sarcastic and cutting, but ultimately it was more impish, and ridiculously magnetic when he wanted it to be. The whole package translated to a being practically built for temptation.

Aziraphale understood with perfect clarity, even before the specific revelation about having a colourful sexual past, who and what Crowley was. A debauchee. A fallen angel. A demon. He'd been a literal minion of Hell for sixty centuries, and with all of human nature, pleasures, indulgence, coaxing, compulsion wrapped up in his job, of course he'd had a million shags, in a million different places, in a million different ways. Sometimes they were an aid in urging the subject toward temptation, sometimes the sex itself was the temptation, the endgame. Sometimes, it was a means to an end, of another form, in the convoluted plot of a demon charged with corrupting humanity in small, artful ways.

Clear though he was about Crowley's history and nature, Aziraphale loved him, loved their newfound life together, loved the overwhelming sensations he felt in being touched by Crowley. He loved it all so much that when he thought about it too hard, like now, it hurt. And so, it could be hard to hear about Crowley's erotic adventures, hard to think about, hard to swallow as flippant comments about the French Riviera.

But he also knew with every fibre of his being that those millions of temptation shags hadn't truly meant much, ever, but that what had transpired between the two of them in the last couple of months meant everything. And this was the chief reason why he could hear about it, and generally not freak completely out.

Aziraphale fully realised that he would likely never know the entire breadth and depth of the former demon's experiences in the ways of the flesh. At times, he felt this was a shame – he'd like to know everything there was to know about his lover – especially the lascivious bits. Other times, like today, he not only was glad not to know the details, but he actually wished there was nothing to know.

"So, when do we leave?" he asked, wishing to focus on the future. On their future together.

"Saturday the sixteenth."

"All right," Aziraphale said. "So, we've got a bit less than a month. What do we pack?"

Crowley's face fell. "I have no idea."

"When are we seeing Anathema again?"

"Next Friday."

"Maybe she'll agree to come and help, when the time comes," Aziraphale wondered.

"Yeah, that won't be weird at all," Crowley muttered. "And that boyfriend of hers is going to leave the country if we keep this up."

Crowley's phone made an irritating, tinkly noise just then. He pulled it from his back pocket, and looked at the display.

"Oh yeah," he said, clearly reminded of something. "I have an appointment with my barber in an hour."

"You do?"

Crowley nodded. "Been needing a trim in the back." He turned his head, and tugged at the hair on the back of his head, to illustrate its need for a cropping.

"I suppose you do need a trim. I suppose I do, as well."

"Well, just come with me."

"Would they mind?"

"I wouldn't think so. They take walk-ins all the time."

Crowley had spent his entire existence paying meticulous attention to his hair. Much like his clothing, it always reflected up-to-the-minute cool, and/or desirable, before 'cool' was a thing. In 1860, he'd tried the first para-phenylenediamine dye, and had attempted to change his flaming red locks to a much less-conspicuous and well-ordered dark-brown numerous times since then. Annoyingly, though, his lovely (but demonic) tresses had never held a dye for longer than a few minutes, and it seemed to be magic-proof. Fortunately, the hair did grow rather quickly, so changing its style, if not its colour, had always been rather easy.

Aziraphale's physiology had worked similarly, in that his hair grew as a human's might, but he had always kept it closely-cropped, no matter the time, no matter the place. And it had never occurred to him to change the colour.

Aziraphale got a delighted, faraway look in his eye.

Both men had always relished their trips to the barber for different reasons. Their eyes met, and for a moment, they just stared at each other blankly. Then, slowly, smiles began to spread across each of their faces as they wondered, "Could it be that we have a creature comfort in common?"

All right, I know for a fact you've got nowhere to go (probably). So hey, why not pass the time by leaving a review?

I joke around, but seriously... if you want to make quarantine less painful for someone, drop me a line! And of course, thank you for reading. :-)