Disclaimer: Aziraphale, Crowley, and Good Omens are created and copyrighted by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This is a fanfic, intended only in the spirit of fun. Tons of love and thanks is owed to the amazing and wonderful Daegaer, who provided tons of feedback for the first half of the fic, and then ended upsomehow volunteering herself as a beta-reader and a proofreader, and who helped me correct many of my Americanisms with proper British English. And thanks to y'all for reading!
Also: find the Stephen King reference in this chapter, and get a cookie!
Ordinary Miracles
by Nenena
Chapter 02
Villatoro, Marcos McPeek. 1996. Walking to La Milpa: Living in Guatemala with Armies, Demons, Abrazos, and Death. Publishers Group West, Emoryville, California. F1464.3.V55
Humans were finding the weather unbearably hot and humid, but it suited Crowley just fine. He never sweat, he never sunburned, he had a great tan, and he relished the opportunity to take a reprieve from bland London cuisine, for once. Every day was a different hole-in-the-wall bar with deliciously spicy food and strong, crude drink; every day brought new opportunities to make the locale more miserable and pathetic than, in Crowley's opinion, they already were.
Crowley spent most of each day in a bar. But every day in different bar - he was on the run, after all. And he avoided any touristy spots. They were probably looking for him around the touristy spots.
His Spanish was also flawless. Nobody ever mistook him for a foreigner. Or if they did, he was able to push that suspicion out of their heads real quick.
Today, it wasn't yet noon when Crowley was already into his sixth margarita in a row. He was sitting on a stool beneath a shady overhang in an open-air bar in the middle of some podunk nowhere village in the mountains. The sun beat on his back in a pleasant way that reminded him of days long past, spent curling his long, shimmering snake's body around a convenient rock in some sun-splashed spot and letting his cold blood bake in the heat. Inside the bar, inside the shade, was a television. There was a soccer game on, but Crowley was barely following it. Back in the kitchen, where he couldn't see (but could hear perfectly well), the only cook was arguing with the only bartender, again. They were shouting. They were also, Crowley noted, married. He grinned. Well, not for much longer. And the best part was, Crowley wasn't even doing anything. Just sipping his margarita and grinning, listening to a pair of humans damn themselves.
Good times, good times.
And then, all of the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
Although he had heard no footsteps approaching from behind, Crowley slowly registered that there was someone sitting down on the stool next to him. Not a human - a demon. Crowley sniffed, and smelled brimstone and tequila.
"Hola," said the interloper.
Crowley turned his head and actually lifted his sunglasses off his nose, squinting his eyes. He said a name that would have made any human's skin crawl. The other one shook his head. "Nah, I go by Tajo up here."
Crowley sighed. There was no point in running now. The game was over. "So. Tajo. Long time no see."
"You sound glum to see me."
"No offense."
"None taken." Tajo settled back on his creaking stool. He was wearing a straw hat and a polo shirt and chinos. A human would have been sweltering in that outfit, dripping with sweat, but Tajo was dry and cool. His skin was darkly tanned, there were speckled black moles dotting both his arms, and his eyes were a boring, muddy shade of brown.
Ah, noted Crowley with some admiration. Tajo was one of the rare demons who had had enough experience wearing a human body to wear it with style; he had probably, like Crowley, been doing fieldwork for quite some time. That was, Crowley flattered himself, the only way to explain how Tajo had been smart enough to know where to look for him.
Tajo confirmed this a moment later when he said, "I was doing work in Buenos Aires when I heard the news that there was a bounty on your head. Thought I'd give myself a crack at it, just for kicks. Have you ever been to Buenos Aires? It's hard for a demon to find things to do down there. I mean, those humans," he waved his hand in a vague way, "it's like they don't even need me around to make themselves miserable. You know?"
"You're preaching to the choir." Crowley grinned. "Candy latch, and all that."
"Can de lach," Tajo corrected automatically. He squinted. "Are you drunk? Why aren't you running?"
"I dunno. What's the worst that could happen this time? I already went through this twice before. The Big Red Guy gets pissed, the Big Red Guy orders me back, I run, they send demons after me, down I go, there's some torture or other involved, time passes, then I'm sent back up again."
"What makes you think that this time they're going to let you come back up? I mean - really. You lost his son, man. That's a big deal. And, and, Armageddon didn't happen. A lot of demons are upset about that one."
"Are you upset about it?"
"Hmm." Tajo drummed his fingers on the greasy wood of the bar counter. His nails were long; they clacked and clicked as he did so. "I should get in trouble for saying this, but, you know, His ears aren't everywhere." Tajo grinned, and his teeth were very sharp. "I don't know what I'd do, if I had to spend an eternity without--"
--There was a scream, the sound of glass breaking, and more shouting from back in the kitchen—
"--stuff like that," Tajo finished. "Humans, you know, going at each other's throats. Oh, sure, in Hell the human souls are supposed to be miserable all the time, I know that," Tajo rolled his eyes, "but it's not the same as it is up here. Down There it's up to us demons to make them suffer. But up here, you can just sit back and watch them do it to each other. Up here you know they still have a choice, that they can go either way - and then they still choose the same path. It gets me every time. I've been doing this job for a millennium and it still gets me every time."
"Hmm." Crowley sipped his drink. "That seems like a narrow perception of it all, if you ask me."
"How so?"
"Because they don't always choose the same path. Because we lose sometimes - because some souls still do manage to make it up to Heaven."
Tajo threw back his head and laughed. It was a loud, almost thundering roar that temporarily frightened the buzzing insects all around them into terrified silence. "Yeah, yeah! Have to let some slip through sometimes, right? Or else it would seem like guys like us weren't needed at all - we'd all be out of a job."
"So you do like this job."
"Yeah. And the other way I'd be out of a job would be if the world ended, too. Then I'd definitely be out of a job. So no, I'm not too upset about the whole Armageddon thing."
Crowley stared at his drink.
"But, you know," Tajo continued, "just because I don't hold anything against you doesn't mean that there aren't higher-ranking demons that do. And a bounty is a bounty. And I could use the favor I'd get if I brought you in."
"Try anything stupid, and I'll fight you," Crowley threatened. That was a lie, though; he'd really prefer to just run. But he wasn't sure if Tajo knew that.
Tajo didn't. Crowley could sense Tajo gauging him cautiously, squinting his eyes, trying to calculate his chances. "I'll bite," Crowley added matter-of-factly, and immediately noted with satisfaction that now Tajo was definitely hesitating. Crowley's fangs were still venomous, even to another demon.
"A moment ago you gave up," Tajo finally said. "You said that you didn't mind going down - that you weren't going to run."
"Yeah, well, I changed my mind. Actually, you changed my mind. You just had to go and remind me of who I've pissed off, and about what. I'm not ready to take the chance that they might not let me back up this time."
"Aw, nuts," Tajo grunted. Crowley sensed that Tajo was a lot like him; he didn't want to dirty his hands in an actual fight with another demon. He was far too lazy for that.
Crowley finished off his drink and said, "I'll tell you what. You look thirsty, so I'll buy you a drink. How's that sound?"
Tajo narrowed his eyes. "You're trying to trick me."
"No. It just seems that we've both reached a dead end, and, well, I want another drink, and you should, too. We'll figure something out, right?"
Tajo kept staring at him, flames burning behind his previously innocuous brown eyes. "Don't mess with me, man," he warned.
"I wouldn't dream of."
"I don't trust you."
"Of course. I don't trust you either. But even so, you seem like an okay guy."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Come on, it's just one drink. I'll make it a margarita. What could be the harm?"
Crowley's original plan had, at that moment, been to keep buying Tajo drinks and to get him drunk enough to pass out, or at least drunk enough to forget about why he was drinking with Crowley in the first place, or at least drunk enough to become considerably confused about the purpose of his mission altogether. Such a similar technique had gotten Crowley out of many scrapes with many other demons (and a few humans) before as well.
What Crowley forgot about, however, was that at the start of the whole thing, he'd already been six margaritas ahead of Tajo. The fact that he already had six margaritas in his system explained a lot about how he could have forgotten that he already had six margaritas in his system.
The other flaw in the plan was that Crowley had to keep ordering himself drinks in order to keep up the pretense that he wasn't just trying to get Tajo drunk. But then again, with six margaritas already in his system, Crowley didn't exactly understand that this fact constituted some sort of flaw at all.
So they drank. And drank. And drank some more.
When Crowley finally returned to his senses sometime much later after that fateful afternoon, Tajo had already dragged him by his hair halfway Down to the Five Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Circle.
"Sorry, man," Tajo said when he noticed that Crowley was returning to a state of semi-awareness. "But if we ever run into each other again, I owe you for all those drinks, okay?"
"Aw," said Crowley, "fuck."
Continued.