lt_safe_house | (no subject)

Current Location: the bar

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(no subject)

Date: April 7, 2003, night
Status: ~~Private~~ Public ;) Aziraphale and Baraq --- complete
Setting: The bar's karaoke machine
Summary: Aziraphale once again partakes of his secret karaoke love, but is he really alone...?

Aziraphale was feeling rather drained again, and a tad peevish on top of it. The best solution to these problems was to avoid contact of any sort, and do something he enjoyed. Like reading.

Or...

Although he argued with himself that it had been too soon his his last indulgence, his feet had other things in mind. He was standing outside of the bar. He said a few choice words about this predicament, but opened up the door sl-ow-ly, glancing around.

No one was in there.

He gave a soft sigh of relief, sliding in and closing the door before crossing the bar to the gleaming karaoke machine.

"Hello there," he said sweetly - Crowley often talked to his machinery, so why couldn't he? - as he patted the device on the top. "What am I going to be singing tonight?" He pressed a few buttons and the contraption came to life.

The angel frowned as the first song was "Arms of the Angel," a song that tended to make Aziraphale tear up, so he quickly changed it. The second song was "Heaven Knows," which made Aziraphale rather wary when he thought about it too hard, so again he changed it.

Oh, this one wasn't bad. He closed his eyes and listened to the music.

"I can't stop this feelin'
Deep inside of me.
Girl you just don't realize
What you do to me!" he sang, subliminaly moving his hips - no need to be improper.

"When you hold me in your arms so tight,
You let me know everything's all right!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII - I'm hooked on a feelin',
High on believin'
That you're in love with meeeeeee!"

He threw one arm in the air dramatically as he held the last note.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Barnaby considered pointing out that there were no literal frogs in the premises, unless he had spontaneously transformed into a fairy tale character cursed by a witch to have amphibians tumbling from his lips*, but decided against it. Instead, he sat back sipping at his drink, and trying not to laugh outright at the air guitar.

* Given the kind of clientele the manor attracted, this was hardly unlikely.

Barnaby could have pointed out that fact, but it wouldn't have gotten very far considering the steady rate at which Aziraphale was drinking, even while he continued sloppy air guitar and what had to be considered wailing, although the latter was more the fault of the song in question as opposed to Aziraphale's singing capabilities.

"Sho," Aziraphale said to Barnaby after the song was over, "Can' help b' notice that you, my good man, are decidedly snickering. That is what I would consider to be improper karaoke behaviour. Tsk. Tsk." He pointed to the machine. "As such, it is now your turn, and you are shin - singing by yourself."

"If I'm snickering at anything," he grinned, "it's at the way you're weaving and doddering, old man." Even so, he downed the rest of his glass and obligingly went to fiddle with the buttons. In retaliation for having to sing alone, he picked a short track, one that had lyrics that hit a little close to home but for some reason Barnaby wasn't bothered about that.

You part the waters,
The same ones that I'm drowning in
You lead your casual slaughters,
And I'm the one who helps you win.
You've got your grand piano...

Once upon a time, Aziraphale had gotten infuriated at something Crowley had said and smote him. At the time both of them had been quite drunk. Many snide comments and humble apologies later, Aziraphale had taken great pains to assure that he would never again be an angry drunk.

As a result, he was two kinds of drunk: either quite flippantly happy, or distressingly angst-ridden.

He had been the former up until Barnaby had called him old.

He had tried so hard to shed the extra weight, and get rid of those wrinkles, and although it made mocking him based on being effeminant much easier at least it was better than being called old or fat anymore, and why hadn't it worked, and why was everyone so mean to him, and why wasn't this wine bottle refilling - oh, there it was. But still, the other things still applied!

Aziraphale's eyes filled up with drunk tears. To keep himself from wibbling, he drank some more.

The guitars and trumpets effectively drowned out any indications that might have told Barnaby that something was off.

"...You don't even play piano,
Oh, but you part the waters."

The silly grin on his face -- it was really impossible to listen to Cake and not have one -- when he turned to hand the microphone back to Aziraphale faltered.

As a rule, Barnaby felt the same way about emotional displays as he did about muggings: They probably happened all the time and were very distressing, and he preferred to avoid them whenever possible and considered them a dreadful imposition. But there was really only one thing that could be done.

"Er," he said, reaching out to pat Aziraphale's shoulder (though he might as well have been about to poke a landmine with a stick, from the look on his face), "There, there...?"

"You called me old!" Aziraphale drunk-wailed, wine spilling down the front of his face. It was quite telling that the dark drink actually made it to stain Aziraphale's vest.

He let out his wings and wrapped himself in them.

Barnaby sprang back like a startled cat when the wings unfurled.

"I did n--" he started to protest, then remembered. Oh. Hmm. Right.

"I didn't mean it that way," he revised, putting his glass down next to the bottle (which, now that he noticed, was a good deal less full than before. He was probably going to regret that). "It was. You know, a turn of phrase. Metaphor. Thing." He paused. It was very hard to hold a conversation when the other party had cocooned himself. "Are you okay in there?"

"I'm just fine," he sniffed back, actually feeling better now that he was behind his makeshift barrier. "Except old. And you're a, you're a - a - a - rather rude young man."

He hiccuped.

"I'm practically the same age as you are!" he said, a little wildly. "If anything, I look older than you. You look about eighteen!"

Aziraphale's wings parted just enough so he could see Barnaby again.

"Eighteen?" he asked, eyes wide with a timid, drunken hope. "Really?" He blushed.

"Yes," he said firmly, because he was not a complete fool. "Look, forget I said anything, okay? Don't know why I bother opening my mouth some days. It's all." Barnaby stopped and sat back down. "Quit looking at me like that."

"Aww," said Aziraphale, reverting from depressed-drunk to happy-drunk. He walked over, sat on Barnaby's lap, hugged him, gushed "thank you!" while doing so, then instantly hopped back up to find another song to sing.

It was a miracle - literally - that he was still able to stand.

"What to shing, what to shiiiing," Aziraphale sang softly to himself as he sifted through the songs.

Even if there hadn't been liquor there to dull the reflexes (rather like a vindictive doctor filing down a needle until it was as sharp as a ballpoint pen), the hug ended too quickly for Barnaby to flinch and reel away from it.

Still, flinch he did, and that, in conjunction with being off-balance from being sat on how did that happen and said liquor, resulted in what those in comedic circles refer to as a pratfall.

There was a crash and a clatter as the stool upturned, and Barnaby found himself looking up at the ceiling with a bump on his head and a feeling of deja vu.

"Ow."

"What about looove!" Aziraphale crooned, wavering on his feet. Oh goodness, he hadn't gotten this drunk in years.

He pointed at Barnaby. "Oh bloody bo - b - blood," he slurred, "are you quite all right, old bean?"

"Peachy," he said from the floor. "It's okay, this comes naturally. I didn't know this room had ceiling fans."

He grabbed the edge of a seat, used it to lever himself into a sitting position, and promptly thudded his head on the counter. "Ow, again."

Aziraphale bit his lower lip to stop from laughing at him. "Oh you poor thing!" he cooed, "First I shot you in the face with a pai - pa - bloody ball, then you're all sprawled about on the floor like a, a right drunkard, or a, a duck that's... er..." He rubbed the back of his head. He was sure he had a point. "Drunk. Are you... all right then?"

He tried his best to make it over to Barnaby to heal his head, but only made it about halfway before he dropped to his knees to assure he didn't 'pull a Barnaby.'

"Oh, shut up," he mumbled. Trying to get back up was a bad idea, given the circumstances and the wiggly feeling in his head, so he just sat leaning on the counter. "'m fine. S'your fault, you know. I don't get this plastered on my own." A pause, remembering the bad dream (that was just a dream) from the other night. "Usually," he amended.

"Neither d' I," Aziraphale agreed gamely, reaching out and trying to drag Barnaby to his feet before giving up, sitting in front of him. "Ush'ly I'm with Crowley." He paused. "Alwaysh with Cr'ly." He patted Barnaby on the thigh. "Don' worry, I won't go callin' you Crowley Two or anything. That would be rude. And you're nicer than he ish, even if you're both demonsh."

Pat pat, pat pat. "Good boy," said Aziraphale tiredly, not entirely sure what he was doing.

"I'm so glad to know 'm not a pale repl... copy," Barnaby said lightly. He thought he'd had this conversation before somewhere, but for the life of him he couldn't think of when. Oh, well, it wasn't important.

He blinked slowly at the hand. "Az," he said, "I'm not a dog."

Aziraphale's eyes were mostly closed now as he kept patting. "No, no. Doggiesh're scary," he said, quite knowledgeable on the subject. "They come outta nowhere an' eat angelsh, 'n' since I'm an anshel, I get eaten, and that's... that's..."

He searched for a word as he sipped his wine. "Bad," he said at length. "That's bad. An' you, you are not scary. Therefore, you are not a doggie, and that is good."

He kept patting him throughout this drunken speech. Really he was awfully thin.

"You're sk - sk - tiny," he slurred out, "like you haven't eaten in years. I ought to take you out to a place where you eat lots of food."

With the extreme delicacy reserved for people who know if they break their concentration for a moment they'll make a hash of things and fall over again, he inched out of reach from the angel. "No dogs here," he said, firmly. "Only piles'f cats. And birds and scuttley beetly things. Won't eat angels."

There was a pause when another part of Aziraphale's speech sank in, and a stab of professional annoyance. "I am too scary. Just because I don't have great big goat horns and... jump out at corners going oogly boogly." He gave a sniff, which would have been much more haughty looking if his hair wasn't all disheveled and flopping over his face. "And I've looked like this for years and years and years. S'perfectly healthy and not... tiny."

"Oh, good," said Aziraphale with a sigh of relief. "Don' like doggies."

Then Barnaby reminded him of being Baraq and demonic pride et al, and so Aziraphale, feeling chastised, covered his face. "Ooo, scary," he said, trying to act scared, "terrifying demon! Please don' eat me, demon, 'm scared!"

"Sides, they don't all eat people," Barnaby said vaguely. "There's little tiny ones, and miniature schnauzers and things."

He stared at the angel, wondering briefly if he had gone crazy. The paranoid part of his mind had no comment, for once.

He kicked Aziraphale lightly. "Stop that," he said, trying to sound affronted and failing. "I just said I'm not a dog, so I'm not going to eat you. QED."

Aziraphale stared in shock. "They come in, in little? I thought all hell dogs were, were like, like," he tried to think of a large dog breed and failed, taking another drink in the interim. "Bloody big," he said at length, shivering.

Then Baraq kicked him. "But y' said you were scary," Aziraphale reminded him, "s' I was jus' tryin' to be scared. Like, like if you were really scary, which you said you were. You did, you said it."

"What? No! I meant dogs in general. Without brimstone and fiery eyes and." Barnaby waved a hand in the air. "Things."

He scowled, unaccountably grumpy. "You don't have to patr... humour me," Baraq muttered. "If I'm that pathetic, you don't have to pretend."

He was hunched over as he said this, looking, frankly, for all the world like a canine with its hackles raised.