Good Omens

It was another one of those days*, the ones during which a certain demon and a certain angel had nothing better to do**, and had since decided that they would enjoy a nice drink or two*** in the backroom of Aziraphale's rare book shop, which was less of a book shop and more of a giant bookshelf. It was a nice day outside really, if you found hail and wind and severe thunderstorms nice, which Crowley always had. They were nice for a low-grade evil, with a chance of higher grade evil by dusk.

Sometimes there was even the nice possibility of a lightning strike, which Crowley had nothing to do with, no sir.

But there were other matters at hand.

The topic of the day was cuisine, and for some reason, the two always seemed to fall back to seafood. It was a safe topic, they reasoned – as much as a brain such as the two present could reason- seeing as neither side knew which had invented it, and neither really cared. Sushi was a different topic all together, being heaven had no sushi restaurants. They stayed away from that topic, since that made the present angel quite angsty, and Crowley just could not deal with an angsting Aziraphale. The angst just tended to escalate to disturbing measures, at which point the rather fussy being would begin to fuss over everything, the shine of Crowley's shoes included. Besides, Crowley himself could not deal with those wooden things people called chopsticks. He was sure that his side had invented them, for Heaven could not have invented something so simple yet so frustrating. Heaven was boring. The excitement – and possibility of tongue splinters- that one got from a chopstick was definitely Hell oriented.

And the servers in those places just did not seem to like to give Crowley forks. It so happened that many of them had gone home wondering where their paycheck went****.

The invention of the little rubber bands on top of the child version of chopsticks, however, was something that Crowley enjoyed as a guilty pleasure. He quite enjoyed snapping them at unsuspecting people or unsuspecting angels.

But back to the seafood.

"Now, angel," The demon said, pointing a finger and shaking it. "I dunno 'bout you, but I always liked me some clams on the half shell."

"Clams, m'boy?" Aziraphale asked as he not-so-discreetly reached for another tiny bottle.

"Claims… clams on the half shell. No full shell, just a half. Slimy, go down quickly. Ever had 'em?"

"No, but I've had octopus."

"No, no, they're clams not octopus. Make pearls?"

"Octopus are good, had 'em at a Greek restaurant. Giant suckers, stick to your face if you're not careful. Got to be careful with octopus, my dear boy."

"Clams, not octopus! 's not an octopus, a clam. 'm not talking 'bout octopus!" Crowley said, clearly losing patience for the man-shaped creature before him who didn't seem to know what the difference between an octopus and a clam was.

"I am."

"I'm not." Crowley said. "I thought you thought I was talking about octopus."

"I was talking about oct- octo- great suckerthings, I was. Chicken of the sea." Aziraphale said, motioning dramatically with a hand.

"That's tuna." Crowley corrected, trying to be patient. "Swim upstream."

"All the way?" Aziraphale questioned.

"For centimeters… feet… many great distances."

"They fly?"

"They swim."

"But they're chicken, you said." Aziraphale shook his head, perplexed.

"Like chicken, not your actual chicken. No real wings. Finds – fins, though." Crowley assured the confused angel.

"What about the humps? Got to have humps on my tuna."

Had the poor angel been hit above the head with one of his books? "You're thinking of a tiger – camel."

"Atigercamel?"

"Just like that. Atigercamel. Got to say it one word now."

"An atigercamel?"

"For sure. Live in the tundra, they do."

"I see it with a striped hump. It have a striped hump?" Azriphale's brain was quite fuzzy, but he liked the idea of this strange creature. It made him glad that not everything in this world was simple. Wait, no, that wasn't it.

"No striped hump, but it stores something. Wate- no, no, don't think it was water. Oxygen? Don't think that was it either. Er, something or other, it stored. Humps store things, you know. Giant, furry suitcases."

"Tartan suitcases?"

"No, not plaid either. Just furry. But the humps, they store… store…"

"All kinds of things." Aziraphale mentioned, searching for what he knew the humps stored. It was difficult to go through the mess of his brain. "Crocodiles. No, that's not it."

"Crocodiles? Eat people's legs, that's what I'm talking about."

"Octopus, got to be careful of them, too."

"No, crod - crocodiles."

It was going to be a long night.

*which were becoming more and more frequent as the days went by.

**ie; they had better things to do, but stopping an apocalypse and grocery shopping just didn't seem as exciting as what they were currently doing.

*** or three, or four, or five. In fact, the underneath of Aziraphale's chair was littered with fancy little bottles of drink he'd discovered while in Italy, but Crowley didn't need to know about that.

**** it so happened that they went to Crowley's bank account, not that he had anything to do with it. How could he help it if those people just felt so bad for not allowing him to have a fork and gave him their paychecks? He was perplexed as to how they even got the number of the account in the first place.