“How much longer do you think it’ll last?” Crowley asked suddenly, looking up from his unnecessary meal.

Aziraphale paused mid-bite to give Crowley a strange look, but didn’t reply until he’d swallowed the entire chunk of turkey breast. “How much longer do I think what will last, my dear?” he asked in the patient tone of someone who was used to such vague questions.

“You know. It. Everything. The world. Being.” Aziraphale imagined that the eyes behind the sunglasses were quite wide.

The angel didn’t quite know what he thought about that, so he shrugged and said, “I haven’t the faintest idea, dear. I suppose it’s up to Adam. He started the whole mess last time, didn’t he?”

“Sort of, I guess. They started it, really,” he said, furtively pointing towards the sky, and then quickly to the ground. He then threaded his fingers in front of him on the table, hoping neither of Them noticed his references. They had contacted Aziraphale and Crowley no more than three times in the last fifteen years, and had not mentioned the Apocalypse, failed or future plans, in all that time, so our heroes were hopeful. It was possible that They wanted to keep the renegades out of all plans, but perhaps They weren’t going to try again to destroy the world…One could only hope…

“But Adam—he’s the catalyst, isn’t he? It’s his decision, isn’t it?”

Crowley shrugged just a little sullenly.

“I do hope it is. Adam seems like such a good boy, and he doesn’t seem to keen on ending the world, either. I daresay he likes it as much as we do.” He paused to take a small sip of his wine, and a little wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. “I wonder what will happen, if the world doesn’t end. Will it last forever? Because, you know teachers are saying nowadays—they’re thinking that the sun is going to expand and eat up the four inner planets.”

“I wouldn’t fret about that,” Crowley replied, fiddling absently with a maddening loose string on the cuff of his sleeve. “I doubt They’d let anything destroy the world besides Themselves.” He paused. “And even then, the sun wouldn’t touch Earth for another several billion years, if not more.”

“Ah, right. I forgot about that part.”

“Who told you that paranoid bit of drivel, anyway?”

“Oh. Er, Anathema and Newt’s girl. Lucy.”

Crowley snorted. “Lucy Lucifer?”

“Pulsifer, dear. After so long you’d think a joke would run dry.”

Crowley said nothing, and they both laughed, because the nickname suited the girl more than her parents would like to admit.

“I still can’t believe you’re tutoring the little terror, though. I mean, I could understand you helping out when she was little, but she’s teenaged now. She’s only going to get scarier.”

They shared a shudder at memories at a teenaged The Them (quite a different group than Them, but you understand). “I think it’s just her mother’s psychic powers manifesting themselves in her in an imbalanced way…after all, half her genes are Newt’s…” A second shudder. “It’s ineffable. The girl is moody, has been since she was born. But don’t try telling me you know anyone better than me to give her extra history lessons.”

Crowley just smiled his wicked smile. “Oh, no, you’re right. After all, you’ve seen everything from the Beginning to the Not-Quite-End to the…er…Indefinite-Stage-in-which-We-Now-Find-Ourselves.” His smile weakened.

The angel frowned. “Oh, Crowley.”

“Sorry, I forgot we were trying to Not Talk about it.”

Aziraphale sighed. “It’s just as well. One can only avoid a topic for so long…”

Crowley emptied his glass of wine in one long gulp—it refilled itself by the time he set it back down on the table. “I rather hope it does take several billion years for things to end, though, if it has to end at all. Six thousand hardly seems enough.”

“Six thousand is a perfectly large number,” Aziraphale replied reasonably.

“But not enough,” Crowley insisted, hoping that he was simply feeling Greedy and Covetous and Not Sentimental.

“True,” the angel murmured and nibbled on his food, not really tasting it but appreciating the fact that body didn’t like to chew and talk at the same time. He rather felt like just listening to Crowley.

The demon sensed the readiness to listen and felt in himself a readiness to ramble. “I mean, there are just a lot of things I would miss, I think, if things ended now or soon. Like my Bentley and my houseplants. And coffee. And Armani. And the Ritz.” As if to illustrate his point, he sipped more wine. “And music.”

“They don’t have music in Hell?”

“Not unless you count screams of agony and terror to be music to your ears.”

The angel’s celestial eyes narrowed. “I do not.”

“Then, nope. No music. What else? Ah, yes. I’d miss booze.”

“There’s no alcohol in Hell?”

“So many people go to Hell for things they’ve done while drunk. Do you really think we’d reward them with more booze?”

Aziraphale coughed guiltily and furtively sipped at his glass of newly-manifested water. “Ah. Quite right. And that’s it?”

“Pttf. Not even. Angel, I could fill a bloody book with things I’d miss.” He paused, and his sunglasses appeared to grow darker as his gaze lost some of its intensity. “I doubt it would sell very well, though.”

“Why not?”

Crowley shrugged. The angel probably didn’t want to hear that it would include things like causing traffic jams and dropped calls. “It’d be long,” he said truthfully.

Aziraphale’s lips curved into a small, infinitely kind smile. “Perhaps it would be easier to write a book about things you wouldn’t miss.”

Crowley grinned crookedly. “That still wouldn’t sell, because anyone religious would just burn it.”

Aziraphale deflated. He understood why his friend wouldn’t miss things like crucifixes or Bibles, but it was still a little disappointing to hear out loud. “I see. It makes sense, I suppose, that wouldn’t miss anything Holy…”

The demon flinched and took another swig of wine. He really wasn’t drunk enough for this conversation. He should have waited until they were safely plastered in the backroom of the angels’ bookshop. Ah, well. There was no stopping it now. He took another drink of liquid courage.

“That’s not entirely what I meant. I mean, I would miss you, of course.” He was thankful for his sunglasses and their ability to allow him to not meet the angel’s gaze.

“Me?” said Aziraphale, blushing just a little and smiling.

“Well, yeah. I mean, we live on Earth. If Earth suddenly didn’t exist anymore, we’d have to go back to Hell and Heaven. Not only that, but there’s the whole ‘one-of-us-has-to-win’ thing. Y’know, with the War.” He scowled. “Which means, not only would we be separated, but one of us would have to die. Neither one of us can survive in the other’s realm, after all.”

Aziraphale felt very human—yet somehow ageless—tears pricking at the corners of his eyes at the thought. He said nothing.

Something they had not discussed but both felt during the original Not-Quite-End was the fact that they dearly did not want to be separated. Material things would always pass, but neither could imagine the other passing, as well. That would be too painful. An excess. A reason to Question Ineffability.

“So, really, there’s only three ways we could possibly stay together, if the end comes.” Crowley suddenly removed his sunglasses and looked his ageless friend right in his blessed sparkling eyes. “I would have to be Redeemed, you would have to Fall, or the World would have to Not End.” What he did not say but thought quite loudly was, I don’t know how possible the first one is, I’d rather discorporate the both of us before letting the second happen, so I think the third is the only source of hope we have.

They shared a long, sober silence.

“Well,” Aziraphale finally said. “Well. Let’s just hope that Adam’s fondness of the world is as strong as ours, shall we?”

And then he spoke in an ancient, private, dead language that only he and the demon could speak anymore. “I would miss you as well, my dear one. I would miss you more than anything else.” The language was like water and like wind and never failed in making Crowley shudder.

The demon replied in the same secret tongue, his eyes glowing a deep, metallic gold. “I suppose you already know how I feel about you.”

“Yes, I do, and I’m so glad for it. You should know that it is the same for me.”

They both smiled, and Crowley reverted back to English. “Let’s get out of here. This isn’t the place to get as drunk as I would like, let alone do all the weird things with my tongue as I’m imagining I would like to do.”

The angel blushed. “I quite agree.”

They left then. Crowley paid, but Aziraphale left a tip large enough to make up for the fact that Crowley always got away with not quite paying enough. Their fingers brushed as they walked back to the Bentley, and the sun set on another Not-the-Last-Day-of-the-World.

And somewhere in Lower Tadfield, a 26-year-old Adam Young finally got over a strange bout of sneezing.

(A/N)

Alternate Title: In which the Fanauthor utilizes Capital Letters to their Highest Potential and really Takes Advantage of the Genre of Subtle Slash.

XD

Much love.
Miyazaki-A2