lt_safe_house | (no subject)

Current Location: the bar

Entry tags:

(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 opened his mouth, then shut it, tapping the edge of the counter. The impulse to tease was there, bright and alluring as a red button labelled "Do not press." He really did want to.

You know, the careful little voice said, the same one in the back of his head that kept an eye out for exit routes and that still didn't think this manor lark was a good idea, you've only gotten reacquainted with the angel after how many thousand years? Do you think he'd thank you for needling him like an older brother when you're nearly perfect strangers? One nice morning conversation does not a solidarity make.

Instead, Barnaby fingered a couple of stray shotglasses on the counter, saying, "Don't see why you're embarrassed. It's just music, after all."

Aziraphale gaped.

Truth be told, he wasn't sure how to react to that.

"Er," he ventured finally, "well, it's not exactly... an appropriate pastime. For me. Or, more precisely, the type of human I'm trying to be. And I'm certain I'm not any good at it, so the less people who know..." He looked at Baraq pleadingly.

"I can keep secrets," he said with a shrug. There was a tiny conflicted squirm in his gut at this. Don't trust me, you idiot.

Aziraphale smiled at him brightly. "All right then, I'll trust you. And, well, since Crowley refuses to come near the bar thanks to a certain Crown who technically operates it although really I think that might be in name only, the lazy git... Care to get utterly smashed and sing karaoke with me?"

"Well, I don't seem to have any other plans," Barnaby said. Er. Are we actually going through with it?

I don't know, but you'll do whatever you want, I'm sure.

"So, um." He gave the machine another look-over. "...How do you work this thing?"

Aziraphale smiled. He really needed to forget everything - Beelzebub wanting him dead, Crowley being so distant, his superiors being so overbearing...

He decided to ignore the alcohol for a minute and walked over to the machine. "Well, you push this doohicky and turn this thing, and... ah ha!" He gestured to the screen. "We pick a song and sing. No harm in it. ... Though a bit of shame..."

Barnaby, in the meantime, had moved to the wine racks and selected a dry white at random. He wasn't really intending to get liquored up, but it was better than neat whiskey (or whatever engine fuel it was that Aziraphale had been drinking).

He peered around at the screen as he poured a couple of glasses. "I don't think I recognize most of these songs," he said, then frowned. "Like a Prayer? Concrete Angel? I don't think you can really sing along to Johnny Cash's 'God's Going to Cut You Down.'"

Aziraphale winced. "I don't know why it does that," he confessed. "I seem to have a nasty effect on machinery, so maybe it's me, or maybe it's being smarmy, or maybe it's coincidence? I don't know. I simply don't know. Did you, er, have a particular song you liked?"

Aziraphale certainly had quite a few of them that he had grown fond of as Karaoke Songs Only, to the point where he would deny he had ever heard them any other time. He miracled his drink - hard grain alcohol, maybe? - into a nice red wine and continued drinking.

He needed to get drunk. He wanted to rock out.

Barnaby sipped his drink to hide a smile. "It may just be programmed to have a certain theme," he offered. "It's not as if it's an uncommon one."

He shrugged noncommittally at the question, flicking through the song list until he came upon the first one he recognized and had a simple tune. Barnaby could not actually remember the last time he had sung in public, even if public here was "one very old acquaintance and nobody else."

There was enough time to give Aziraphale a faintly sheepish look before the music started. No turning back now!

Oh, get me away from here, I'm dying,
Play me a song to set me free.
Nobody writes them like they used to
So they might as well be me...

His voice was deeper and rougher about the edges than the original singer, but it carried the tune fine.

Aziraphale almost corrected him by saying that at least its theme wasn't lewd, like his laptop's, but let the argument rest. There was no way anyone would believe him about the laptop.

He smiled at Barnaby encouragingly and looked at the machine thoughtfully as the demon sang. What an interesting choice.

Aziraphale took over the second verse:

Here on my own now after hours,
here on my own now on a bus;
think of it this way,
you could either be successful or be us...

His voice faltered as the song continued. Barnaby was not a little self-conscious about his taste in music; for some reason, he was expected to listen to power metal or bombastic operatic strains, not mellow indie pop. Oh, well.

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story
About a boy who's just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You're so nai—

And that was when some flotsam or jetsam of dust caught in his throat, and Barnaby found himself doubled over, coughing half-fit to die.

"Sorry—" kaff, KAFF "—don't know what came over—" HACK "—frog in my throat, sorry. ...Ow."

Aziraphale started in surprise before reaching over and hitting Barnaby on the back, trying to dislodge whatever had gotten stuck in his throat. "Oh, are you all right there?" he asked, surprised to notice that it was hard to be coordinated enough to both hit Barnaby and stay standing. "Just try to breathe a bit, that's a dear. Pesky frogs."

He shook his head, still coughing but getting control over himself. Aziraphale's clapping him on the back worked, a little. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm... fine." One last shake of the head to get the cobwebs out.

"I don't know what that was," he said, sitting down hard in the closest chair and taking a sip of wine to clear his throat. With a half-smile, he added, "Besides, we don't need to breathe. Maybe you should pick a song next."

Aziraphale patted the sitting Barnaby on the head. "That's a good dear," he said fondly, "you just rest a spell because breathing or not breathing frogs are not meant to be in throats."

As he kept drinking, he stumbled back to the machine and started poking around on it, trying to find the perfect song. All he knew was that he really wanted to play air guitar.

Oh, just lovely.

"She's got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky ..."

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."