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"So."
Crowley looked around. Hastur pushed off from the wall with one hand and leered, a good proper kind of leer that promised dark, terrible things later.
Beelzebub sat before him, Lord of the Flies, flesh writhing slightly, with the same dull eyes as always.
"So." Beelzebub said again, and Crowley's eyebrows raised.
"So," he replied.
For a moment, an awkward silence reigned in Beelzebub's office. Pipes dripped. Little clouds of flies performed complicated aerial manoeuvres that meant they were always on the corners of your vision, but never the forefront.
Crowley had been getting along just fine after the Apocalypsisn't without any communication from down below, and he was sure they'd been doing fine without him. He'd assumed that for at least a few centuries he'd be able to live out a peaceful existence without too much interference, on the implicit assumption that nobody wanted any trouble.
(On the contrary, Hell tended to want rather a lot of trouble - wasn't that what he'd always been told to do? Go up there and foment it? - but this time it very clearly wasn't worth it.)
"What was it you wanted?"
Before, he wouldn't have dared be quite so rude to old Beelzy, but then again, he hadn't gone swimming in holy water and survived before. He had a certain level of infamy now that afforded him some swagger in the board room.
Beelzebub threw down some photos that Crowley couldn't quite see from his remarkably uncomfortable seat.
"Seduction."
He coughed, his mind boggling. "What?"
"I must say, you always manage to impress me in the end," Beelzebub continued as he choked on nothing, "but this was truly a ballsy fucking move, Crowley."
Crowley leaned forward and examined the photos. They were candid shots of him and Aziraphale in the park. The cameraman had managed to take a photo just as Crowley was sneezing and Aziraphale was taking an unflatteringly large bite of his ice cream.
They could have waited for a better moment, honestly.
"Ah?" said Crowley, in lieu of a proper answer.
Beelzebub tapped the photos. "How could an angel tolerate your presence? You're a filthy demon. You writhe and slither and lie. And yet we've got evidence that not only does he tolerate you, but you do... activities together."
Crowley froze. "Mm?"
" Illicit activities." Beelzebub looked scandalised, or maybe constipated. "Going on walks. Sofa shopping. You went into a charity shop with him, for badness' sakes. A charity shop ." They said it the same way a human might say adult store.
"Yeah," Crowley said vaguely, "well, I had some stuff to clear out."
"Then flytip it ," Beelzebub snapped.
"Hang on, hang on," Crowley said, snapping a finger, "why are you keeping tabs on me? We had an understanding. I do my thing, you do yours, I don't cause a ruckus down here, you don't interfere with my private life." He tried to avoid mentioning the fact he could cause a pretty sizeable revolt, since it seemed redundant: Hell's demons were revolting no matter how you looked at them.
Beelzebub shifted in their chair. "It's a procedural matter, Crowley, we have to tie up loose ends somehow. And we needed to get some definitions. For the paperwork."
"Definitions of what?"
Beelzebub looked down at the photos and then back up at Crowley. Crowley did the same. They both did this several times.
Oh , Crowley thought. Seduction. They think I tempted Aziraphale. Well, I suppose I did - it was more of a mutual thing really -
"Con of the millenium," Hastur said, in tones somewhere between awe and disgust. "Bugger an angel. We're just trying to work out why he hasn't fallen yet."
"I'm special," Crowley said faintly, trying to calm the tumult of emotions that rose when he heard Hastur say bugger an angel.
"Why didn't you mention it in the reports?" Beelzebub said sharply, and Crowley wagged a finger.
"Trade secrets. Listen, can I go now?"
"As much as we'd love to turf you out, and trust me, we would love to leave you to whatever weird perversions you do nowadays, I want those reports and I want them now."
Well, asking questions could only do so much harm now. "Why?"
Beelzebub stared at him. "What do you mean why."
"Why do you want these reports? What will you do with them?"
"It's tack-ticks, ain't it," Hastur interjected, still leering. "You're too clever by 'alf, Crowley, and now we want some royalties."
Crowley shot him a bemused glance, before turning back to Beelzebub, Lord of Flies, Grand Tormentor and Patron Saint of all who Perpetually Bump Into Glass Windows. He raised an eyebrow.
"You need my seduction tactics? Who the hell are you trying to seduce?"
There was a moment of silence. The miserable little crabapple of Crowley's heart stopped.
"No," he said, "not-"
"Not your angel, you insufferable git, he's quite corrupt enough already." Beelzebub reached under a drawer and pulled out a new manila file with a grimace. "Him."
Crowley, who had been about to shift into defense mode, slowly, cautiously opened the file, and gasped.
"What?" he said. "Him?" he said. "But he's a wanker!" he said.
Beelzebub almost looked sheepish.
"We spent some time together after the... incident, sorting out the mess you made. And it seemed to me he was the perfect candidate for a temptation. I mean, who better for a moment of weakness than..."
"Ah, Gabriel."
Aziraphale's voice was cool, far removed from the warm flutter it had been not too long ago. It was still perfectly polite and cordial. It had just gone a little cold in the middle.
Gabriel, for his credit, only appeared slightly unnerved.
"Aziraphale."
The shoppers of Debenhams milled around them, blissfully unaware, as two holy beings circled each other like territorial cats around a display of fancy chocolate boxes.
A normal human might have assumed Aziraphale was buying them for his husband (most people automatically assumed husband) in a display of tender affection: both Aziraphale and the chocolates knew better. Crowley wouldn't take fussy things like chocolates anyway, even if he was a husband.
"What a nice surprise, seeing you here," Aziraphale said, looking around for any other beige clad beings looking threatening. "Doing some early Christmas shopping?"
"What? No." Gabriel picked up a box of chocolates and examined it with a skeptical expression, taking in the pink teddy bear on the front with the sheer confusion of someone who's never hugged a pink teddy bear in his life. "Is this really supposed to convey affection?"
Aziraphale, who had been basking in the particularly warm glow of a future with some fancy chocolates in it, pretended to know anything about the emotional resonance behind it. "Oh, yes," he said, "choc full of affection and - oh, accidental pun."
Gabriel looked at him like he'd grown a second head. Strangely though, Aziraphale wasn't intimidated nor was he offended - after all, he had spit holy fire at them, hadn't he? He felt like there was nothing Gabriel could do to keep a hold on him.
"Well, I'll be seeing you." Aziraphale started walking away, but Gabriel followed, almost frantically trying to grab his shoulder.
"Wait," he said, "I came here for a reason."
"Oh?"
"It's about your... demon."
Aziraphale stiffened and shot Gabriel a worried glare. "What about him?" There was steel under the soft blue, and Gabriel hurriedly held his hands up.
"That's the thing. He's fine. He's not dead."
"I should think not," Aziraphale said, leaning towards Gabriel. "After all these years. If you lot went and did something as stupid as hurting him-"
"What are you implying? We don't hurt demons. We just vanquish them. It's different- no, we didn't hurt him, nothing like that." A bead of sweat would have appeared on Gabriel's brow, if he had deigned to do anything as mortal as sweat. "No, in fact, we were hoping we could ask you for one last task."
Aziraphale's glare deepened. "A task?"
"Some help," Gabriel clarified. "It's just that you seem to have him under your thumb, and imagine what a feather in our cap it would be to win over a demon to give us some... tactical advantage over down below ."
"You're not going anywhere near Crowley-"
"It's not him. It's... well, it's..."
Crowley stood in front of a large whiteboard, upon which was a complicated mess of red lines, post-it notes and photos. It could have been called a spider diagram, except that kind of imagery was frowned upon given the whole Lord of the Flies thing.
The branches of the vaguely many legged thing each had words like "Food" "Dates" "Favours" and even "Being Nice" on them (Nice was underlined twice).
Beelzebub looked utterly disgusted.
"What do you mean be nice ," they growled. "Be nice. I'm a demon ."
"Well that's sort of the point," Crowley replied, underlining it again for good measure. "It'll be an unusual little act of kindness that he'll end up thinking about for days. Miracle him up an umbrella when it rains. Pay his bill. Sure, your skin will crawl for a few hours from the awful niceness of it, but trust me, he'll shoot you googoo eyes and fall over himself to thank you. Long term goals ," he hit the board three times to emphasise each word, "long term results."
Beelzebub shook their head. "Disgusting. As if I would ever allow myself to be caught doing something nice."
"Let's try something easier." Crowley whacked a picture of a macaron. "Food. Easy. Treat him to a nice meal. Every flavour under the sun. Angels love food. Probably."
"What?" The Lord of Flies leaned forward and squinted. "But it's just a bunch of sugar and carbs. Why would they enjoy that? Why would that seduce them?"
"Very sensual creature, your average angel. If you can tempt them into smaller pleasures of the flesh - a biscuit, perhaps - then the bigger temptations get easier too. Long term-"
"- goals, long term results, yeah, I get you." Beelzebub wrote a note down on the mildewing notebook in front of them, and waved a hand. "Why did you write alcohol three times?"
"Because there's a fucking difference," Crowley said, pinching his nose, "between beer, wine, and spirits. Don't just call them all alcohol. Find one you and your angel like, and treat him to the finest there is."
"He's not my angel."
"Not yet. Pay attention."
"No, you cannot just mind control Beelzebub into liking you. For the last time-"
Aziraphale was reaching the end of his tether. Gabriel was simply not grasping the concept of free will.
"- they'll be able to tell, they're not like angels, and besides, resisting control and making dangerous decisions is exactly their forte-"
Gabriel looked utterly bored. He was pacing the floor of the bookshop, pulling out romance novels at random and grimacing at every sentence he saw, while Aziraphale sat with two cups of tea - one half drank, the other full and cold - and tried not to actively bristle .
"It would save so much time. I always thought that was what you did with - you know, your fellow."
"No. Absolutely not. I simply showed him the merciful love that an angel should and let him slowly realise he truly did want it. You must be as a lamp during a dark night, constant and unwavering, a reminder of home during a long and terrible journey-"
"These books don't say anything about lamps," Gabriel interrupted. "What, am I supposed to glow or something?" He did literally start glowing, making Aziraphale yelp with alarm and cover his rather light sensitive screenprint books from the 17th century. "Am I doing it right?"
"It's a metaphor! Or a simile, I don't remember, they're basically the same. It's- oh, I suppose you won't know what that is. It's when you say one thing but mean another."
Gabriel scoffed. "A lie?"
"A beautiful lie!" Aziraphale said, with a grin. "A lovely lie. Utterly harmless but extremely powerful. Humans love them. It allows them to conceptualise things they have no frame of reference for."
Gabriel nodded, looked down at a book, and then back at Aziraphale. "Your eyes are an ocean. Your-" he glanced at a different page- "breasts are- also an ocean."
He beamed at Aziraphale. Aziraphale summoned a polite smile. "Yes, lovely," he said, and wondered when Crowley would come and save him with an invitation for some pho.
"Give me the plan one more time."
"I call Gabriel and tell him I need to talk about you, and suggest we go to the Ritz," Beelzebub said, face screwed up with concentration. "I buy dinner while we're there, get the waiter to spill wine on his clothes, and then miracle it away when he looks sad." Crowley nodded like a proud parent. "At the end of the night, I suggest we go get a drink and listen to music."
"There's no way this won't work."
"Is that really what you do? Your angel really falls for that mush?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, who's the expert here on seducing angels?" Crowley was getting rather into the role of Angel Seducer, and had already imagined a single rose to wave around and point at important bits of the Plan. "I don't see anyone else here with a servant of the Lord hanging off their elbow."
Beelzebub grumbled, but didn't argue back. They picked up the phone. "Fine. I'm calling him."
"Woah woah woah," Crowley said, slamming the phone back in the receiver, "looking like that?"
Beelzebub looked down at their illfitted suit, stained with blood, sweat and tears (none their own), their clunky but effective shoes for stomping on the worms beneath their feet, their mouldy hands and unkempt black hair, and failed to see a problem. "Yeah?"
"No!" Several fashion magazines got thrown onto the table. "Take a gander and pick a look. No scabs, no rotting flesh, no flies-"
Beelzebub started buzzing softly and threateningly. Crowley shrugged. "Alright, maybe a few flies. Just... try and look suave."
Beelzebub rifled through Vogue, disinterested in any of the arbitrary cloth arrangements within. "They're just clothes."
"They're not just clothes. For fuck sake, we're supposed to have invented vanity - look, if you want to dress like a boy mayor at a funeral, go right ahead, but in my experience it's always deeply rewarding to dress like you're going to cause a scene."
"Hmm." They jabbed a finger at a model who looked remarkably similar to them. It was probably at random to get Crowley to shut up. "Is this scene worthy?"
Crowley took a look. He took another look for good measure.
"Oh yes," he said, "oh, that will do nicely."
"Music!"
With a clap of his hands, the old gramophone started playing some Tchaikovsky - No 14 Pas de Deux, a classic, Aziraphale had so enjoyed it the first time he saw the Nutcracker live - and by some miracle, the old record didn't skip.
"If music be the food of love, play on..."
Gabriel winced. "It's a little..."
"Passionate?" Aziraphale waved his hands vaguely in time with the melody. "Emotional? Elegant?"
"Twee," Gabriel responded, obviously unaffected by the emotional rise and fall of the strings. "What's this got to do with getting a demon to like me?"
"Well, as angels, we love, don't we? That's our job." Aziraphale stepped in time now, twirling round the shop. "Love for all things great and small, pretty and ugly, a sort of generic love heatlamp that slithering things come to bask under. Well, that's fine, but some demons prefer a more localised form of love. It's - listen, it's like another type of metaphor. Humans can't feel love like we can, directly and purely, so they do all sorts of things to convey it. Oh, don't you hear it? All the love he put into this piece? It's sublime."
Gabriel begrudgingly listened, awkwardly, the way people listen when a hardcore music fan puts on a track they don't particularly like and refuses to turn it off. "Yes, I feel it. I feel the love alright."
"But do you?" Aziraphale stopped and paused as the music swelled, overwhelmed. "Like the humans do? Tumbling into it headfirst so bravely and unstoppably? Like spring rivers rolling down a mountain, unhindered by-"
"Mountains," Gabriel said suddenly, interrupting him. "Now that's what I call music. Do you have the-"
"- the Sound of Music soundtrack, yes, I have it," Aziraphale said flatly. "Really now."
"It's good. It's romantic. And most importantly, it's nice."
"Yes, nice," he replied, sighing as the record switched over to Julie Andrews singing about how somewhere in her wicked miserable past, there must have been a moment of truth.
"So why Gabriel, anyway?" Crowley said conversationally as Beelzebub examined their appearance in a mirror. "Why not try and seduce an easier target like - say - I don't know, they're all knobs, but Uriel seemed like they'd crack under a bit of pressure."
Beelzebub grumbled something unintelligible.
"What?"
"I said, I got to know Gabriel while we were patching up your mess. He's got a firm hand and a good attitude. If we were going to gain any ally from the opposite side-"
"Hang on, good attitude? He tried to kill Aziraphale!"
"Yeah," said Beelzebub, and their tone went a little soft around the edges. "Straight to the point. What a truly incomprehensible level of efficiency. No faffing around with juries and courts."
Crowley looked closely at the Lord of Flies, and looked again. "Are your flies making heart patterns?"
The flies buzzed in all directions. "What are you implying?"
"Well, nothing, except you sound like a schoolgirl with her first crush. It's almost like you want to impress him."
"Impress-" Beelzebub spluttered and buzzed. "I want to ruin him. I want to paint his white wings black with sin. I want to crush his soul between my hands and wring it dry of every lick of goodness, and flavour my coffee with it, and drink it every morning with my croissant and my morning newspaper."
Crowley, wisely, remained silent.
" Impress him . Listen to yourself, you inconsequential stain of a demon."
As Aziraphale watched Gabriel practice asking Beelzebub to dinner in the mirror, a little lightbulb sparked at the back of his brain.
"It's like watching a young gentleman prepare for his first date!" he exclaimed, and Gabriel froze.
"Pardon me?"
"A first date! All this fussing over food and gifts and music. Oh, it's quite festive."
"I do not see how this applies," Gabriel said icily. "Dates are humans indicating romantic and or sexual attraction to each other. Angels do not suffer from the same sort of impulses and emotions as humans - well, most don't," he added nastily. Aziraphale, who knew full well it was supposed to be an insult, smiled smugly and wiggled his head. Gabriel continued: "I certainly do not. Especially not for a demon. This is a purely strategic move. If I can influence them to accept a deal with me, I can gain valuable insight for the next war."
Aziraphale ignored the words "next war" and the sick feeling it brought, and focused on the problem at hand. "Is it?" he asked, guilelessly. "Pure strategy?"
Gabriel glared at him. "Stop being childish. Love? Oh yes, I want to love Beelzebub. I want to show them the all knowing, all powerful love of a real angel, the white heat blast of faith and glory everlasting, until they have no choice but to submit and accept it, to curl under my hands like a wingless bird. They will know Love, and it will be Merciful."
Aziraphale sipped on his tea. "Well then," he said after a moment. "Better make that call."
The phone on Beelzebub's desk rang, interrupting them mid sentence, and they flew to answer it, hands hovering nervously.
"It's him. Why's he calling me?"
"Answer it then," Crowley said. He couldn't decide if he cared enough about this disaster to stick around and watch the fallout, and he was missing Love Island with Aziraphale.
Beelzebub answered the phone.
"Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, you have my attention."
At the other end, Gabriel imperceptibly cleared his throat. Aziraphale nudged him.
"Hello, hellscum, fallen child, irredeemable arch nemesis from the lower circles, etc, etc," he reeled off, "it's Gabriel."
"I know. I have caller ID."
"Oh. That's rather modern for Hell."
"Stole it from yours."
"Right. Of course."
The conversation stalled. Crowley and Aziraphale, completely unknowingly and in totally different locations, wore the exact same expressions.
"We have to-"
"There's been-"
"You go first."
"No, you."
"Right-"
"Well-"
Crowley almost wrenched the phone away, but held back. Like a car crash, it was impossible to look away.
"Listen," Gabriel finally said, rather desperately, "we have to arrange a meeting. It's about those two idiots."
Beelzebub sighed in relief. "Yes, I was about to call and say the same thing. We have to talk about-"
They blanked, staring at Crowley with sudden panic. Crowley blinked and said "ngk" and "hrm" and gestured vaguely.
"- charity shops. They've been going to lots of charity shops."
Gabriel nodded at the other end of the line. "Yes, I see." He did not see. "Well, we've been worried too. Our agent's been doing..."
He looked around.
"Pornography. Lots and lots of pornography."
Aziraphale glared at him. At the other end, something that sounded suspiciously Crowley-esque snorted.
"Right," said Beelzebub, who was weirdly intrigued by how an angel would do pornography, exactly, and decided it wasn't worth thinking about. "We should meet in... let's say twenty minutes. Somewhere neutral."
"Ah, a restaurant perhaps?" Gabriel smoothly suggested. "It wouldn't look very suspicious to the humans. Two people having lunch."
"Eep," said Beelzebub, "I mean, perfect. The Ritz. That's a restaurant."
"That certainly is a restaurant." Aziraphale was nodding with extreme approval in the background, so Gabriel ploughed on. "I'll see you there."
They hung up.
"What do I do," they said, and Crowley shrugged.
"Eat? Drink? Make merry?"
"I've never gone to a restaurant before."
"What? Never?"
"Why would I?"
"Look, just." Crowley slapped his own forehead and nearly yelled: "Go up there and make some trouble!"
In front of the Ritz, something quite monumental was happening.
It didn't seem like anything groundbreaking at first: after all, many pairs of people met at the front doors in fancy outfits. It wasn't even all that unusual for the pair to be formed of a demon and an angel, given a certain local odd couple's penchant for Ritzing away the evening: but this was the first ever meeting of Beelzebub, famed demon, and Gabriel, Bearer of Big News, outside of work under a rather flimsy pretence.
Gabriel was dressed as usual. A nice suit, sure, but neutral, beige, as corporate as he ever was. It was his decor that attracted attention, because under one arm he held a bouquet of flowers, and under the other he held a box of chocolates with a teddy bear on the front.
Beelzebub appeared as they had never appeared before. They had copied the model from the magazine almost exactly, with a few twists: they kept their hair short and unkempt, writhing at the roots with untold filth, but the dress...
It was backless, of course, and long, so long it pooled on the floor and trailed through the dust, collecting grime and litter like a train. It clung to their form and gathered in all the right places, and some of the wrong ones too. Gabriel was not tempted by Earthly pleasures, but in that moment, any being would be utterly astounded by the view.
"Gabriel," they said sharply with a businesslike nod. Because this was just business.
"Beelzebub," Gabriel responded just as archly, before holding out the flowers and chocolates.
Beelzebub examined the flowers, said "they're very aesthetically pleasing," and then immediately threw them away. Both parties approved of this move.
They spent a little more time examining the chocolates, especially the bear on the front.
"We keep bears in Hell," they said, sounding almost pleased. "Usually they have one mouth, but sometimes two. I quite like how they deal with sinners."
"Oh, appropriately torturously, I imagine," Gabriel said. "How amusing that they use it to represent affection."
"Yes. Thank you for this joke." Beelzebub gave the bear another amused glance, before handing it back.
"Oh," said Gabriel, and vanished it in a panic. "Oops. Well, anyway, our table is waiting."
"Yes. Let us discuss... the business," Beelzebub responded, and they both walked in together.
Soft piano music played. The lighting was dim, but not too dim, giving a soft glow to the diners and glinting off the glassware.
Gabriel stared at his plate of exquisitely cooked food and poked at the tender meat.
"So we put this in our mouths and - what - savour it? Can I just spit it out again after? I didn't bother getting a digestive system fitted for this corporation - too much bother."
Beelzebub drank directly from the gravy boat and pulled a face. "Last time I saw human food, it had more lumps in it. Where did the lumps go? They added texture."
"I mean, it sullies the body," Gabriel continued. "Yoga and meditation, now that's real soul food. A roast potato? That's not soul food. That's barely even gluttony. That's just carbs ."
"The wine was bad. The meat was bad. Everything was bad." Beelzebub glared at their wine, and it went rancid. "Everyone had stomach upsets all the time and nobody had a full set of teeth. And now look. Less cavities in London than there are dentists."
They pushed their meals away simultaneously, both utterly disgusted.
"And this music, it's-" Gabriel said, clicking his fingers and trying to find the words, "it's annoying, it's incessant. I don't understand the point of it. It has no lyrics."
"It's brainless and it's gooey," Beelzebub said, "and the decor. It's so fussy. Why do humans like fussy?"
"Exactly." Gabriel hit the table. "Exactly. If I could redesign this place, it would have some straight lines, lots of windows. Lots of lights. Fluorescent."
The demon winced and privately thanked whoever was listening that Gabriel didn't design everything. "You can't dance to this music," they tried, and Gabriel shrugged.
"I don't dance."
"Oh. Right. Angels. You lot don't."
"Well, yes, but also it's ungainly. It's frivolous. Why dance when you can sing?"
"Oh, yes, not frivolous at all, that, chanting the praises of the big man incessantly for ages and ages."
Gabriel shot them a withering look, but didn't bite. Patience of a saint, he reminded himself.
Across from them, a quiet drama was unfolding. A man was about to sit down with a charming young lady: his wife was on the other side of the room, unseen by both of them. She would assume it was an affair and burn all of his suits later that night. He was making a charitable donation to a private school's fund raiser for the school play.
It was all very complicated and emotional.
"Don't you just hate humans sometimes?" Beelzebub asked, watching with baleful eyes. "So stupid."
"Hate is a four letter word," Gabriel said, gesturing upwards, "but sometimes I really, really, really don't like them. I love them, sure, but..."
"But they're so noisy and banal. They make so much ruckus and bang into things and then die. What's the point."
"Like flies," Gabriel pointed out, before recoiling at Beelzebub's glare. "Worse than flies. No offence. If flies were big and meaty and made complicated paperwork."
Beelzebub tried not to take offence.
"They like them," Gabriel said in disbelief. "Those two rebels actually like them, the humans. Aziraphale especially. He won't shut up about them whenever I see him. Oh, no, don't blow up all the humans, Gabriel, that's wrong . Oh try this food, it's lovely, taste all the lipids and the proteins. Music is good. Look at me using all my hormones to simulate gross little chemical imbalances like humans do, and how smug I am about it."
"Tell me about it," Beelzebub said after downing their wine. "Crowley's always trying to complicate a good scheme because of humans. A good simple temptation isn't enough for him, he has to go and make everyone's day a little bit worse just a bit at a time - look at me, flash bastard, getting rid of the free cocoa sachets in hotel rooms. Oh, look, I just inspired some senator's uncle's dog to maybe defund Planned Parenthood some day. Oh, whoopee, here's Brexit. Like fuck off! Just kill some humans and be done with it!"
"Those two and their humans," Gabriel said darkly. "I... I really..."
"Really really really don't like them?" Beelzebub snorted. "Why wouldn't you? After the Monumental Apoca-cock Up."
They both grimaced. It was a sore spot.
"The biggest disaster since that business with the apple, really, and the same sodding culprits," Gabriel said. "That snake, that angel, and those bloody humans."
"The War would all have gone according to plan," Beelzebub moaned, "if only the humans hadn't interfered."
"If only there were no humans," Gabriel added, and Beelzebub sent him a surprised look. "Things would be far simpler."
"Of course, we're talking uh... what's the bastard. Metaphorically. We're talking metaphorically."
Gabriel's mouth split into a nasty grin. "Yes. Metaphorically. A beautiful lie."
They stared at each other for a moment. Overhead in the vast wheeling heavens, two stars aligned. Below ground, a river of lava broke its banks and decimated a neighbourhood full of sinners.
(They just so happened to be People Who Have Sexual Kinks Involving Lava, so in an odd twist of fate, Hell was, for a moment, their idea of Heaven.)
The flimsy pretence for the meeting dangled in front of them, ready for either of them to take. Fate hung. Fate came swinging.
They both launched forward at the same time and collided into the world's worst kiss, top contender of all time.
Two tables back, the aforementioned flimsy pretences stared in abject horror.
"That went-" attempted Aziraphale, who was disguised as an old man writing a food review.
Crowley, who was disguised as Catherine Tate for no good reason, nodded. "Yeah. It did."
They watched as the figures writhed.
"I don't know what we created tonight," Aziraphale said slowly, "but I feel a little like Frankenstein must when that first bolt of lightning really stuck ."
"I feel like I need a drink," Catherine Tate replied, before swigging from a bottle of Riesling. "I'm not getting in trouble for this.They can sort their own mess."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
There were no thunderclaps, no peals of lightning, no earth shattering explosions. Nobody fell and nobody rose, and everybody felt a great deal less safe.
Out in Berkeley Square, a nightingale started shredding the sickest riff known to man, before suddenly dying of a heart attack.