A/N: Following on tradition (seeing as how two of the greatest writers ever got together to write GO) this story was written by two fanfiction authors who loved said book. SilverWolf7 and DragonEyeZ.
Disclaimer - Miss Wolf and Miss Dragon do not own any of these characters. They all belong to the two geniuses we are not, Mr Pratchett and Mr Gaiman.
Switching Roles
Chapter 1: Crowley
"Are you sure you can manage it, Crowley?" Aziraphale asked once more, even as the demon pushed him towards the plane.
"Of course I am!" the demon hissed exasperated. "You need this holiday for Go-Someone's sake! Just leave it all to me – I'll handle it, while you just relax!"
"You sure?" the angel asked in concern, grabbing onto the railing of the stairs up and held tight, resisting the push from behind.
"Yes, yes, YES!" The demon pushed harder, and managed to dislodge the angel's grip, pushing him into the small, privately rented jet, before pushing the suitcase into his associate's hands. "Now, you get your behind down to that island, and if I as much as HEAR about any miracles down there, there'll be He… Well, you get the point."
After much fussing, he watched from the doorway of the small plane as Aziraphale got into a seat and put his suitcase in the compartment above his head after, of course, taking out a book. He'd be even more damned than he already was if he ever saw the angel go anywhere without something to read. At least he had ensured that the angel's suitcase had an interior three times the size of its exterior, meaning that he had been able to pack Aziraphale with enough books to keep him happy and occupied for at least two weeks.
Crowley stepped down from the plane and ran over the landing site before turning, and happily watched as the door to the plane was closed, the engines started, and the entire machine began rolling over the asphalt. Minutes later, he grinned like a maniac as he saw it soar through the air towards the sunny south – and Aziraphale's vacation. Go... Sata… Somebody knew that the angel had managed to get stress over the last month, and Crowley was willing to do just about anything to get Aziraphale down to a level where he could drink himself senseless once more without constantly checking his watch and murmuring about things that needed to be done.
As could have been expected, he had been charged by Aziraphale to do the angel's job as well as his own for the two weeks, and he was intending to do more of his own. Of course, Aziraphale had left him a nice and neatly written list of all the jobs that needed to be done on the 'good' side. Most of them were doable for him, but...surely he was just not cracked up to dealing out the divine ecstasy the angel had ordered for next Thursday. He was still trying to figure out how to go about that one as he entered the Bentley and headed for his apartment.
The first thing to do was easy. 'Spread overall happiness'. That was solved by letting a couple of the cats with kittens go to the schools and allow the children as well as adults there to pet and stroke the kittens. Then, for good measure, and because he had his own job to do, he cut the phone lines of the school for the remainder of the day.
The second, 'Help poor Agnes next door out of her crisis of faith' was also easy. After he had found out that this Agnes was the wife of the owner of the adult bookstore next to the angel, he had gone about making sure that there was a divorce going to happen, and that she would inherit the shop. The woman thanked god everyday once her husband soon-not-to-be-anymore walked out on her. The man had been abusive after all. To make it all balance out, he had gone and made Agnes a bit too provocative in the matters of sex and she was now happy, had her faith back and was using the back of her shop for some of the acts that one would find in only the most absurd of her merchandise.
The third one, 'smite general evil' was one he decided to interpret in his own fashion. Finding a nice, big book, he whacked himself over the head with it, shouting "bad demon!" to himself, before turning to read the next point on the list. The fourth involved a church and him stepping on said grounds. He crossed it off the list and frowned. He would have to have a long talk with the angel when he got back.
The fifth point happened to be 'inspire divine ecstasy'. He decided that he needed to think about that, and promptly went to rummage through the cupboard containing his various collection of alcohol. He had managed to complete a good deal of the list anyway, so he decided that he needed to celebrate it a little himself. Three bottles of vodka, six glasses of martini and some two-and-a-half bottle of tequila later, he was still thinking over the matter, although he had by now started to wonder if he could use flying pigs for the purpose. About four hours after he had started, he decided that he needed to sleep on it, and wobbled into bed, not bothering with sobering up.
The Inspiring of Divine Ecstasy wasn't going anywhere. He had woken late the next day, the Thursday he was supposed to pull it off, and was too busy with nursing his throbbing head and cursing himself for not sobering up (there had been a need to rush for the toilet to be horribly, messily sick once which just pushed the point home to never drink so much without sobering himself up before sleep). At the moment, he sat with a stiff glass of water, an ice bag to the head and glared at the list, noticing that it was mostly the same things over and over. He figured that if he did not do any evil things, it would make up for the good things he was supposed to do again today.
He spent the rest of the time Aziraphale had on his stress free holiday watching Cheers reruns. It did take that long for his hangover to clear – although he had to admit that he did not particularly help it when drinking himself senseless time and time again in order to make it go away, and each time forgetting to sober up. That was the result of when he was not drinking with the angel – he did not have anyone to tell him to sober up before he got too drunk to do so, nor did he at the moment have anyone else but the houseplants to talk to while drunk. The advantage, however, was that the plants became even more frightened of him, as he gained a tendency to smash those he thought looked even the least withered.
Aziraphale found him, after a few days of total inebriation crashed on his couch unable to get up, drunk so far that one more sip of liquor would accidentally discorporate his body. The angel had tried to get him to bed without jostling him too much. He had thanked him by throwing up all over his tweedy clothing. He didn't blame the drink really, he blamed it on the tartan.
"Looks to me like you could use a vacation yourself, dear," he recalled having heard the angel sigh before the demon had curled up and promptly gone to sleep.
When Crowley had sobered up, he decided that Aziraphale was right, he could do with a vacation. Thankfully, the angel was more than willing to fill in for him, and, soon, the demon found himself in the very same plane as he had placed the angel on, heading towards the same deserted island.
