A/N: Make sure you've got your prime trousers of time over your orgy pants, grab your favorite unsubtle knife, and try to keep vertigo at bay as we trip the light fantastic through the back of the bookshop - with plenty of streaming shows inspired by Gneil-collaborations to binge, it's bound to get a bit wibbly-wobbly in here. All I've got are the banana peels. Not entirely sure if the footnote format is going to work out well, but in honor of Sir Pterry, I wanted to include them. I have standards.
"You aaarrreeee siiiiiiiixteeeeen… goin' on... sheheventeeeeen…" Aziraphale crooned drunkenly along with the radio. Well, not entirely on beat, and certainly not in tune, but there was some approximation of singing that did an injustice to The Sound of Music. And Queen. And music in general. And possibly was even a bridge too far for the concept of the Hitlerjugend. Crowley had thought that "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" to the tune of "Don't Stop Me Now" had been abysmal, but this was a fresh low. The angel had nearly figured out how to scan the lyrics to "Somebody to Love" and it was bad enough when the Bentley got the usual Best of mix stuck in his head.
Aziraphale didn't even like that musical, and he'd never been much for "bebop." He was clearly blasting the cassette just to annoy Crowley. Pity for the angel's plans that he was just too adorable in his drunken enthusiasm for "traditional music" for this time of year. If Crowley weren't buzzed himself (on a glass and a half of wine and six unexpected years with his angel) he might have made some cutting quote vis-a-vis the nature of evil plots and the seeds of their own destruction.
The prodigal demon had made a few upgrades after regaining his car, (the voice command suite misunderstood simple words like "eleven," the Bluetooth could never connect to his own cellular phone on the USB port but could receive a crank call to the bookshop from as far away as Paris, and there was one little warning light that never went away,) but he kept the tape deck, curse of Queen and all. Aziraphale could accuse him of being sentimental, but it had worked for him before, and Crowley wasn't about to throw out a useful trick just because some other demon had already seen it.
Still, it was a relief when Aziraphale's ill-fitting backing melody was interrupted by the ring of an unknown caller. It was an American number, and Crowley hadn't been across the pond in nearly three hundred years, but it wasn't work and it wasn't an abuse of Mercury. He accepted with alacrity.
"Hello, Crawly. Keeping the competition busy, I take it? Or am I interrupting your self-tourture?" Oh. It was work. The most dangerous part of work.
Dealing with the Boss used to be easy. All one had to do was keep Old Scratch supplied with his itches - drugs, sex, sinners to punish - and he'd never ask how one had gone about procuring his desires. Middle management was there to put a good spin on it, to turn temptations into targets without ever implying that innocents were involved to Satan, and how could the world be innocent when they had such yearnings, after all? Mazikeen was a good scary bodyguard and kept the devil and his pure white wings safely away from the dirty bits of corruption, letting the truth filter in only through convicted liars. The Boss had gotten so used to hearing about the worst of humanity that he was ready to believe most of the party line, as of seventeen to six years ago. It made it very easy for him to plot his Father's overthrow, and there you had another of his deepest desires…
A desire which Crowley had ruined, however inadvertently. Lucifer S. Morningstar did not take well to having his desires thwarted.
"Yep, keeping the Principality out of your hair, boss," Crowley sped through a brittle smile, his foot pressing down further on the accelerator as if he could drive away from the conversation. Either that or the elbow thrown to his left cut off the angel's exhortations to be wary, cautious, and canny. Now was not the time.
"Oh! Ish that Shatan? We haven't heard from him in nearly- nearly five years! Head officish is inna tizzy tryin' to keep the rest o' your lot from followin' you up from Hell. Amenanadiel dudn't report in nearly often enough f'r Uriel's liking. Hard to follow th' pattern when you can't - can't - do slow down please, dear - follow it." Aziraphale was rapidly sobering up with the speedometer. Served him right, sloppily jumping in and saving Crowley's fat from the fire like that.
"Not that much has changed since my retirement, then," the Boss laughed. "My brothers still argue about nothing important, the demons still go where they please, and the help upstairs is still worthless." Aziraphale scoffed in wordless consternation, but there was a difference between the full-blooded angels, the children of God and His (estranged) wife, and those created to serve them as they served their parents.
When a full angel fell, there were flames, swords, flaming swords, and a Goddess of All Creation imposing a wall of burning light between Her murderously furious spouse and their insensate rebellious son. The fallen angel awoke as king in hell.
When a mere Principality fell, he waited until God had retreated to the garage and the angry muttering had died down a bit before sidling up to the Goddess and asking, "Begging your pardon, Ma'am, I know it's not my place, but isn't anyone going to look after him?" and shortly thereafter learning his place. It was among Lilith's children, and while they might not have souls, per se, they were entirely too tough to let a little thing like discorporation get them down, in Crowley's experience.
"It's not just the usual field agents, sir," Crowley said, hoping that being helpful now would smooth over any memory of him being distinctly unhelpful. Or of tire irons. He'd been there since the Garden of Eden, giving Eve her first apple as a signal for where to find the first banana, picking the actual fruit back up as a distraction for Adam, and keeping his mouth firmly shut on the ratio of time said apple and banana had lasted.* Surely one little lapse would be forgivable, if the Boss had not inherited his Father's temper and his Mother's propensity for overkill. "Some of these demons have no idea how to blend in with humanity. It could besmirch your name, sir."
*(Everything had seemed timeless then, the first man had been conflicted over whether he could trust the serpent until he heard Eve's enthusiastic assent, and the banana had done its job, even if it hadn't lasted as long as later bananas would imply. Her second pregnancy had been more difficult, despite a well-meaning and quite careless Principality.)
"Are they encouraging that nonsense about goats again?" Crowley made a wheezing noise that might have been an affirmative to Lucifer's question. The lords of hell tended to focus more on nonsense about reptiles nowadays, since a certain snake had reaffirmed his nature, but no one in the lower offices had yet managed to track down the one who had started the goat prank. Half of Crowley expected that it was something humanity was insane enough to come up with on its own, and a quarter of him suspected that it was based on something he and his angel had done while drunk. "Never mind that, Crawly. Unless they've discovered novel ways of damaging angels, what they do in their time off is no concern of mine."
"I do hope you're not planning on trying to restart the Apocalypse," Aziraphale sniffed. Crowley ran a hand over his eyes, taking long enough about it for Aziraphale to grab for the steering column. Of course the angel - the weaker sort of angel who couldn't shrug off an atom bomb with a slight brace of a stubbled jaw - would step right into it. "Because - because I shall have to report such tomfoolery to the head office," he squeaked as the Bentley narrowly dodged an unfortunate late-night pedestrian.
"Tomfoolery?" Crowley hissed.
Aziraphale sat up straight in his seat, mantling around the remainder of the wine from dinner. "You need to stand up for yourself. Until then, I'll have to do it for you."
"No need, Principality," the Boss cut into their argument. "What's been happening around here lately makes me wonder if your side hasn't decided to break their part of the bargain, though. I am a devil of my word, but I have also recently become a devil prone to bleeding at the most inopportune times…"
"Amenadiel has been knocking some sense into you, then," Aziraphale concluded smugly. "Oh, don't gawp, my dear Crowley; you know that someone has to do it. Might as well be heaven's best."
"The only reason I say anything at all to either of you sotty rejects is because you know that I can do far worse than kill you, you've been rendered persona non grata in heaven and hell alike, and you're the closest celestial beings to my- Adam." Satan himself had to recover from the poison in that threat, pulling away from the taboo s-word. "Is he doing all right? His birthday's coming up soon."
In a week. "He's fine. Still has Dog; he's been taking him walks around the park where the girls' football club meets every Thursday," Crowley offered a morsel of comfort when the teen's name made his Boss soften. He honestly wasn't sure it would.
"Not that it's not commendable of Master Young to get active, but if he's looking at girls, I distinctly remember one spitting in the face of my sister RaeRae at her worst. You don't let that go. Pippin Galadriel Moonchild, wasn't it?"
"Maybe…" Aziraphale hemmed unwillingly. And she might or might not have footy practice on Thursdays.
"The Them get together every weekend and most afternoons on school nights, but he's not trying to date Pepper. Far be it from me to understand the heart of a mortal boy, Boss, but I think he's afraid of risking their friendship." Housewives, teenagers, and homeowner associations had nothing on demons (or usually, angels) when it came to gossip*, once someone got them going on a beloved subject. Crowley and Aziraphale might have followed the wrong Antichrist for the first eleven years, but they still kept tabs on Adam Young and Warlock Dowling. By this point, it was just reflex, even in the face of the unspeakable, so to speak.
*("Imagine!" Aziraphale huffed, the first time Crowley had brought up this theory. "Being afraid to court someone you love, just because you're friends!" He sounded put out with humanity in general and a certain Antichrist in particular and Crowley couldn't help but smile, even if he understood.
"Not hearing from your best friend after a failed proposition is a serious threat, angel." One Aziraphale hadn't been above throwing at him, if only under dire circumstances for very harebrained schemes.
"Oh, come now, even when we have an argument, the longest we've ever gone without speaking to each other has been a mere hundred years or so." It wasn't worth pointing out that this could be more than a human's lifespan. To Aziraphale, it was the principle of the matter, and Crowley was glad that his angel was a Principality of principles when it came to practicing what he preached.
"Fourteenth century was the worst. Dead dull without you around."
"I had a perfectly lovely vacation in Morocco," Aziraphale proclaimed archly before admitting, "except that I left behind a full first edition set of the Travels, a signed copy of Jabir al Haayan's notes in the original coding, and three collections of poetry all unread because I was so worried about what you were doing, asking me for that-" Crowley cut him off mid-rant in one of their favorite ways of not speaking but still communicating. The angel would always get it sooner or later, and he'd already had the chance to chew Crowley out over the holy water incident.)
The Boss hummed reflexively through the Bentley's speakers. "Cosmic restraining orders are a bitch." Lucifer would know. "Best not incur one when he doesn't need to. But Crowley, the reason I contacted you - and might as well include your adversary -" the Boss threw in all the snide sarcasm the term deserved "- is that mortal weapons have been affecting me. Irregularly. Amenadiel knows nothing, and if it's not heaven's doing, you two are the closest thing my Mother has to free agents. There's no way She's been able to act outside of hell, has She?"
This was a supreme show of trust. The Boss was doing this over the car phone, meaning he couldn't even do that thing with his eyes. His voice could be hypnotic on its own, but he couldn't force them to follow with anything more than the threat of what would happen if they didn't. This wasn't just lighting up a sword for the keeper of the east gate or giving Crowley the nod to start blathering on about too-obvious temptations that surely were intended to be taken. This was handing them back the sword and the tire iron and telling them that it'd work. Maybe.
Crowley looked at Aziraphale. Aziraphale made a frantic wave at the road in front of them. Crowley shrugged, and Aziraphale took a deep draught of the wine bottle. "She's one of the prisoners that Upper Management worries the most about since you left," the angel said. "But no, we haven't had any contact with Her."
"Well, there goes that theory," the Boss grumbled, but it sounded like he had an alternate hypothesis. One he wasn't too fond of, but one that was looking more and more accurate. "How did you get so drunk, Principality? I could use a proper blotto, for a change."
"Just have to be open to it, I suppose." Aziraphale's prim answer was rather ruined when the demon slammed on the brakes. He only spilled a little on that tacky tartan bowtie.
"Principalities," the Boss groaned in frustration. And one really had to hand it to him, no matter what bowel-rending terrors Satan had induced, at least he did it with style and an indulgently blind eye to certain lesser demons doing up the hems of his long-limbed castoffs from the back of his closet. Not tartan bowties. "What is it that you desire, when you remain just weak and ignorant enough to try my patience?"
Crowley turned down a lane that was in completely the wrong direction for the bookshop and his flat, and therefore just the route he needed while telecommuting with the Boss. "Just to speed along in my car, my angel by my side, discussing plans for lunch, and a pile of rare books in the backseat where he's been trying to turn my flat into his backup library."
"Much like we did today?" Aziraphale looked touched. "Same."
"How digustingly domestic. Send Adam my regards." Lucifer hung up, and Crowley let out the breath he'd forgotten to take. Aziraphale attempted to miracle the wine off before the stain set in, and had to prevent another great slosh of the open bottle when the demon took another hairpin turn, this one at speed.
"Crowley!"
"Though more pressingly, I want to get somewhere safe and high up where we can see anyone coming for miles."
"Upper shelf in the shop?" Really, Aziraphale needed to get outside more. This was for his own good.
"I was thinking the car park by the cliff." And if the view there happened to be romantic, the important part was that he had his angel with him. It would generally be a bit less flammable out there, if less secluded than the shop. Which was all right. They had wings.