Disclaimer: I own none of the characters. I don't own the setting either, but as far as I'm aware the Lake District is yet to be copywrited.
A/N: Very silly fic inspired by the numerous times me and several close friends have become lost in the English countryside. Any and all feedback is very much appreciated.
Crowley woke with a start. It wasn't that he was particularly averse to waking up to the sight of the angel looking at him. It was just that there was something mildly worrying about the fact that Aziraphale was standing at the side of his bed in 1950's style tartan rambling gear telling him to rise and shine.
"Ugh. It's 7:30 in the blessed morning," he said, glancing at the bedside clock. The churning in his stomach as he tried to sit up suggested that he must have passed out before he'd had a chance to wish the alcohol out of his body. Great, now he'd have to eliminate each toxic byproduct from his system one at a time.
"Really Crowley. You can't stay in bed all day."
"I can't?" queried Crowley, genuinely nonplussed. "Why not?"
"Well for one thing we're going to the Lake District."
"We are?" said Crowley, a note of panic entering his voice.
"Yes. I suggested a nice hike in the countryside last night and you said that you thought it was a wonderful idea."
"I did?" Crowley scowled. It was bloody typical; you spend all night plying an angel with drink in an attempt to incite sloth, wrath, greed, gluttony, envy, vanity or lust - or if you were feeling really ambitious all seven at once - and the blessed creature uses it as an opportunity to get you to agree to acting as a glorified taxi service.
"Yes. Now come along dear boy. We can't have you moping about in bed all morning."
"Just two more hours," pleaded Crowley.
"Look, are you going to get dressed, or do I have to do it for you?"
Crowley yelped. The sudden fear of having an outfit featuring largely on the argyle and tweed side projected onto his person was enough to spur him out of bed and into a newly materialised designer suit.
"Crowley don't you think you should put something a little warmer on?" said Aziraphale, looking doubtfully at his attire. "We are going mountaineering you know."
"W... what. Nobody said anything to me about mountaineering."
"Yes I did. Though for some odd reason you were trying to lick my neck at the time, so you might have misheard. Anyway I thought we could get five or six of them done before dinner."
"I was what?" said Crowley, looking mildly shocked, and beginning to suspect that the angel had been clandestinely sobering up at regular intervals during the previous nights drinking.
Aziraphale merely smiled serenely and headed for the door. Crowley finished wishing the last traces of formaldehyde from his liver, silently cursed angelic deviousness and followed Aziraphale out of the flat.
Ten minutes later and they were heading out of London at speeds in excess of 220 miles per hour. Several police officers on route had found their hand help speed cameras inexplicably metamorphasising into baby cobras the very instant they were about to clock a large black vintage car for speeding.
"Crowley... look out for that lorry... how could you?" admonished Aziraphale. "Leaving them clutching highly poisonous snakes like that."
"Relax," said Crowley, smirking ever so slightly at the angel's horrified expression. "They're from a laboratory somewhere. Had the venom milked... Get off the road you useless tosser."
"It was still a mean trick."
"I'm a demon."
"Utterly childish and totally unnecessary."
—
Thanks to the recent addition of a satellite navigation system to the Bentley's interior Crowley managed to drive to the Lakeland National Park in record time without any embarrassing detours via Oxford, Durham, or Aberdeen.
"We seemed to have picked a nice day for it," said Aziraphale, handing Crowley a browning around the edges Ordinance survey map.
"Aziraphale it says 1946 on the cover."
"Well, it's hardly as if the mountains could have switched positions."
Crowley shrugged. At least it was better than the Elizabethan effort they'd once tried to use to navigate the Norfolk Broads. He hadn't spoken to the angel for six months after that episode. Still, he did have to admit, albeit grudgingly, that the place was very beautiful.
"My dear are you planning to just sit there all day?"
Crowley rolled his eyes and got out of the car.
Things were going quite well for the first five hours. They were swapping anecdotes about Oscar Wilde and Aziraphale was tsking loudly at Crowley's insider knowledge of Hollywood gossip (whilst privately being completely enthralled). Crowley did find himself having to control the urge to spread sin and discord amongst the various parties they passed on the ascent, which was especially difficult when they encountered a Christian youth group from Tennessee. Only the liberal application of Aziraphale's foot to his shin prevented the phenomena of 'talking in tongues' from acquiring some interesting new connotations. The problems however started sometime after the fourth peak.
"Which way now Crowley?" said Aziraphale, increasingly aware that it was almost dinner time.
"Err, according to the map we should now be approximately 800 feet below sea level."
"Crowley we're halfway up a mountain." It suddenly occurred to Aziraphale that he wasn't actually sure which mountain they were currently halfway up, or even which part of national park they were in. "Here let me see the map."
Crowley handed over the ancient piece of paper. "Something wrong?" he asked, noticing Aziraphale's concerned expression.
"Crowley, you've been reading it the wrong way up... Crowley are you all right?"
Crowley's face turned a rather worrying colour of red and his fists clenched and unclenched. There was what sounded like a large explosion. It was the sound of several tonnes worth of millennia old geology turning suddenly into very small particles of dust.
"Erm, I'm sure if we walk back the way we came we'll get back in no time."
"It'll take us five hours angel."
"Do you have any better suggestions?"
"We could always, you know, fly."
"Crowley we're near an RAF base. Do I have to remind you what happened last time?"
"That was a one off, you'll know how to avoid them this time."
"Crowley being inconveniently discorporated by a smart bomb whilst in mid flight is not something that one can easily forget."
"Fine we'll walk back then," said Crowley, sounding more than a little pissed off.
And they tried walking back the way they came. Unfortunately neither of them had been paying that much attention to where they were going in the first place, and they were pretty soon even more lost than they were before.
It was dark, it was cold, and they had twice been reduced to playing eye spy. Sitting on a rock in front of a small camp fire they pondered their next move.
"I could phone someone up on the mobile, and we could come out of the receiver when they answer," suggested Crowley.
"And if they don't pick the phone up?"
"Ah."
There was a prolonged silence. The only sounds were the wind, the sheep, and the sound of Crowley's teeth chattering. It was, Aziraphale decided, a very bad situation indeed. Crowley was even too dispirited to make suggestive comments about sharing body heat. Not that he actually wanted Crowley to make suggestive comments of course. Well, maybe just a little bit. Just so he knew that the demon was back to being his usual self as it were.
"Aziraphale," said Crowley eventually. "Aziraphale I can see something."
"What is it?" asked Aziraphale, fearing that the cold was causing Crowley to start to hallucinate like he had that time in Lapland (after all everyone over the age of ten knew that fat men in colourful costumes didn't actually fly around in reindeer-driven sleigh).
"It's a light. I can see a light" said Crowley, his voice filled with wonderment.
"What you mean like the divine light?" said Aziraphale hopefully.
"Even better angel. It's coming from a pub."
—
It took them less than ten minutes to reach the rather unoriginally named Kings Arms. It was not generally the most service oriented of places, but as most of the clientele tended to wander in after hours of being lost in the wilds this didn't tend to matter much. The bored looking bar staff gawped at the two newcomers. They were used too dishevelled and muddy looking customers, but they didn't generally tend to be wearing Gucci shoes or look like they belonged to a fifties recreationist society. They didn't generally tend to ask for anything with a vintage either.
As they sat down at one of the window tables Crowley willed away the mud on his clothing and wished his expensive suite back to its' original state. "Aziraphale," he said. "Next time I'm choosing where we're going."
"Next time?"
"Yeah, you didn't think that I'd let you drag me half way across a blessed mountain range without payback did you?"
"You mean you're not going to refuse to speak to me for weeks."
"Nah. That would be too easy." He smirked.
Aziraphale beamed.
"A toast," said Crowley raising his glass in an exaggerated fashion. "To bloody awful days out in the countryside."
"Oh, surely it wasn't that bad."
"Well it was better than that trip to the folk dance festival. Mind you there were forms of Elizabethan torture better than the folk dance festival."
"Crowley."
"Yes."
"What do you think you're doing with your hand?"
"Proposing a toast to bloody awful days out."
"I was referring to the hand, which for some reason appears to be creeping its' way up my thigh."
"Ah."
It took several more bottles of cheap red wine transformed into finest burgundy before the subject of getting a room was broached. For some miraculous reason, when Crowley went to ask for a key, the barmaid had become friendly and helpful to a degree usually only seen amongst the staff in supermarket adverts and the evangelically religious. She was of course very sorry that all of the rooms apart from the one with a big double bed had been taken, even though there didn't actually appear to have previously been more than three other patrons staying for the night, and incidentally what time would they like their breakfast in the morning, oh yes of course they did poached salmon and caviar crackers.
The room itself was, by Crowley's standards at least, slightly poky and extremely three decades ago.
"You'd think they'd dust in here more than once a month," he said, rolling his eyes at the lack of upkeep. "I mean it wouldn't be difficult to..." He was suddenly aware of a hand being placed firmly on his lower abdomen.
"My dear," said a strangely husky voice next to his ear. "Are you going to get undressed, or do I have to do it for you?"
Crowley didn't move. There was no contest really.