Hellfire and Holy Water (A Good Omens Fanfiction)

Chapter Ten

The following day was much like any other, weirdly enough. Aziraphale could almost pretend that nothing at all was out of the ordinary in his own personalized slice of heaven on earth, where the biggest stressor in his life was trying to scare off potential customers before they tried to buy any of his precious books. Yes, it all seemed rather normal as he managed to convince a rather insistent young woman that the book in her hands was most definitely far outside her price range. He spent several hours merely agonizing over prospective buyers that he just wished would go away, and yet he welcomed this normalcy as a distraction from other, more troubling matters.

He knew this fragile peace would be ruined eventually, but that did nothing to ease his anxiety when he inevitably felt a change in the air that he recognized as being some form of supernatural being. Of course, he also knew that it wouldn't be Crowley, since he had only just left the shop late the night before. On another note, it was rather absurd how disappointed he was to know that it wasn't the demon, but he could chalk that up to just being afraid of speaking with Gabriel again in light of recent events.

He tried to act pleased to see them when he recognized Gabriel walking into the shop, followed by an angel he didn't recognize but who looked very vaguely familiar. No doubt this was something important, sure to ruin this otherwise perfectly normal day with more thoughts of Armageddon and the world being turned into one of the bloodiest battlegrounds in celestial memory.

But he couldn't risk letting Gabriel know about his traitorous thoughts.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely, hoping it sounded sufficiently unassuming to the surrounding humans.

"I would like to purchase one of your material objects," Gabriel explained as he picked out a book at random and held it out.

"Books," the other angel corrected.

"Books!" Gabriel amended, smiling far too much for the given circumstances to pass as normal. "Let us discuss my purchase in a private place, because I am buying...uh..."

"Pornography?" the other angel suggested.

"Pornography!" Archangel Gabriel agreed. Now they both had ridiculously large, proud smiles on their faces, as if they had come up with the most ingenious deception in human history. Maybe they had, to their limited knowledge of human history.

Aziraphale did his absolute best to act natural as he gestured further into the bookshop and said, "Gabriel, come into my back room."

They began to follow him but the unfamiliar angel continued addressing the other customers, to Aziraphale's horror, "We humans are extremely easily embarrassed. We must buy our pornography secretively."

At the very least their comments might serve to frighten off potential customers, Aziraphale thought to himself, trying to put a positive spin on it as he eagerly herded them into the back room.

"Human beings are so simple!" Gabriel proclaimed with a light chuckle as he set down Mrs. Beeten's Book of Household Management on the table. "And so easily fooled."

"Yes," Aziraphale agreed with a forced laugh of his own. "Er. Good job. You-you fooled them all."

"You remember Sandalphon?" Gabriel asked, gesturing towards the other angel.

Yes, that name did ring a bell now that he mentioned it. "Uh...Sodom and Gomorrah. You were doing a lot of smiting...and turning people into salt. Hard to forget."

It had been a rather mortifying experience for Aziraphale, from what he recalled. Obviously they were fairly terrible cities and all but...well, there were some fairly impressive restaurants for the time period that Aziraphale had grown rather fond of. It had also been a time when he had run into Crowley on a few memorable occasions and he seemed to recall learning quite a bit about the demon at that time. He vaguely wondered if he remembered one of them bringing it up during their drinking last night, as a matter of fact.