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Current Location: the bar

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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.

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"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.

"You're not pathetic, silly," said Aziraphale, reaching over and patting him on the head this time. "You're Barnaby. Big difference. I was scared. Terrified, like, like a, a duck out of water. You're like a, a dog demon."

He retracted his hand and gasped. "Maybe you are. You look like a doggie right now, all hunched over and, and spiky."

He made a grousing, grrmph noise at the pat. "Woof," he muttered.

"Bad doggie," Aziraphale said sternly. "Be nice, or no treats f' you." To drive the point home, he waggled his finger. "Very bad doggie. Dogs were w'rshipped in Egypt 'n' China 'n' other places,you know, so you should be good, like they were."

Edited 2010-03-25 21:34 (UTC)

He flicked away the waggled finger and missed. "But we're not in Egypt or China," Barnaby said, not changing his posture. "And furthermore I'm not supposed to be nice. Could get into trouble for that and then I'd be recalled and I wouldn't be able to hang around a bar squawking into a microphone and flopping around on the floor like a fish."

"Like a doggie," Aziraphale corrected, not entirely sure anymore what he was correcting, but knowing it was wrong and thus needed correction.

Corr - ec - shun. Shun. Ecshun. Wow.

"Fish," he repeated. "Otherwise, you're a dog for sitting on the floor too, and you would have to eat yourself."

Aziraphale stared at his arm, pondering what it would taste like. He raised it up and licked it. "But I don't think angelsh are tasty at all," he commented, noting he did not taste like a pastry or some other white concoction that would match what his skin tone hinted he ought to taste like. "So I can't be a doggie, I just can't be. In that case, maybe we're both fishes. Fishes with wishes. Or maybe you're a doggie and I'm a fishie." He winced with a sudden head pain and drank some more in reponse to it. "Thish is getting comp - compl - com-pli-ca-ted."

"I don't like wishes," he mumbled. "It always goes wrong in the end."

An image of both of them as mermaids floated into his head, complete with trailing kelp, wrecked ships on the coastline, and imprudent placement of seashells. He shut his eyes and shook his head to get rid of it. This night just got more and more unlikely by the moment.

"I think," he said, "that we are just a little bit snockered."

Aziraphale shook his head. "There are certain things I refuse to be, and a candy bar is one of them. I'm simply not tasty enough. As I just said, and am saying again."

"See?" he said, not opening his eyes. "Just proves my point." There was a pause, only broken by the tinny sound of the karaoke's screen selection music. "Wait, are you saying there are certain things you would be, then?"

Aziraphale's eyes went wide. "Well, I never thought of it, I really haven't." He started chewing on his lower lip as he pondered this. Something else he would be besides an angel, something else he would be...

"I suppose a house cat has a very nice life," he suggested, voice slurring as he grew tired in his philisophical thoughts.

"Mmm, s'does," he said vaguely. A ridge in the table was digging into his back, but he didn't feel like moving. "Can't fly, though. Flying's good. When I'm not being shot at."

"Well, if you could be anything, why not be a cat with wings?" Aziraphale countered, speaking slow and slurred, growing tired.

It was entirely possible that Barnaby did answer, but the only sound he made in response was a mmrf and the steady, even breathing of either deep sleep or intoxication, or both.

This was going to be difficult to explain in the morning.

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