Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Good Omens belongs to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Supernatural belongs to Erik Kripke.

Chapters are beta'd by Craic agus Ceol, any mistakes are of my accord or advice ignored.

Aziraphale was well into the third hour of waiting. The stereotype was that all angels were the patient and loving type. Like many stereotypes, this was not true.

He didn't have the patience for the occasional human that wandered into his book store, especially those with the audacity to even attempt to purchase a book. Even worse were those that crinkled the pages or created dog ears just to mark their place. Aziraphale just calmly reminded the loiterers that his establishment was a book shop, not a library, and if they were looking for a library they should go visit one run by a nice orange monkey.

Luckily he was able to miracle the books back into proper condition, but still he would always know.

Unfortunately the thought of his friend of six millennia brought a sharp stab of pain through his vessel's heart, and it sure wasn't the excess of buttery jam-covered scones he had that morning.

So maybe Aziraphale was a little plump, but one of the forms of exercise he had was taking long strolls along St. James Park with Crowley. Sometimes they were just feeding the ducks or had meaningful or simply random conversations about ineffability, life or the weather.

Speaking of meaningful conversations, Aziraphale couldn't remember the time he'd had one with Crowley. It could have been a week or mere days or the last time they got drunk and blabbed on about everything until they purged the alcohol out of their systems and opted not to remember anything.

Suddenly Aziraphale was very angry and upset.

This wasn't right.

Crowley wasn't supposed to be late. They were supposed to meet at the park as usual. They were supposed to feed the ducks. They were supposed to talk about ineffability and they were supposed to have a meaningful conversation, bugger it all!

Instead Aziraphale found himself alone, seated upon a worn old park bench, halfheartedly throwing bread at any creature daring to come near him. It seemed even they sensed he needed comfort and they drew close anyway. Until they all fled in a frenzy of activity as a sudden presence appeared near the angel, that is.

"Hello, Aziraphale."

What Aziraphale thought was 'Bugger!' but in an attempt to resume his streak of not swearing what came out was, "Dung beetle!"

Hadn't he already sent that other Tax Office investigator away? Unfortunately he had done his accounts so scrupulously exact that the Tax Office was convinced that he must be getting away with murder somewhere and as a result had sent investigators after him multiple times.

'How long had this one been trying to track me down?' Aziraphale wondered, staring at the dark brown haired man dressed in a beige trench coat. But then it occurred to him that the man had called him Aziraphale, not Mr. Fell.

"My name," The man paused. "Surely you remember?"

Aziraphale glared at the mysterious man's dark blue eyes, which contrasted with his own pale blue ones.

"Your name is Shirley, my dear boy? I certainly don't know any Shirleys," Aziraphale admitted. "But I do know a Crowley." He muttered to himself in a quieter voice, despondently.

"My name is not Shirley, it is Castiel."

"The angel of Thursday?"

"Yes."

"Oh, thank the Above. I feared you were a tax accountant sent by the Tax Office to investigate… again."

Castiel frowned. "I believe my occupation is that of a warrior of God."

"Er. Yes, I do believe so. Pardon me, but… why are you here?"

"You are to do other work, seeing as how your current contract is nullified. There can be no Arrangement without the 'other'."

Aziraphale turned as pale as his light blond hair. He wondered if it was possible to choke on oxygen.

"P-Pardon?"

"This Crowley, whose name you said earlier, he is simply going to be punished for the murder of one of his own. His own people have decided it. "

"But-"

Castiel grimaced, "It is not safe to speak here. We would have to go elsewhere so I can explain to you your next assignment and your partner's… predicament."

'Predicament?' Aziraphale thought. 'More like Perdition…' The guilt started to kick in and Aziraphale felt bad about being angry at Crowley for not showing up. Of course he had to have a reason for being late, and burning in the depths of Hell was a perfectly good reason.

Nevertheless he followed Castiel for a safer place to talk.

Hastur watched with interest. He actually had no idea what Dean was going to do next to outdo himself. The last scenario had involved half a dozen extension cords, two microwaves, one toaster, eight magnets and three V.35 connector cables. Even then Dean had still not run out of imagination.

Hastur even vaguely wished for a better imagination, and this was coming from a guy who's most vibrant use of imagination involved mixing yellow and blue and claiming it made an entirely new color called blellow. He couldn't even imagine what infrablack looked like, so he tried to once and he ended up having to find and fill out the proper documents for a new vessel.

He had to do go the Demonic Vessel Licensing Agency and it wasn't pretty. The place was always packed. It was filled with demons, particularly young imps who had demolished their vessels in some asinine way. A very popular 'hip' thing among the imps recently was to spontaneously combust in front of humans. They mostly made sure the humans were a few or isolated anyway so no one would believe their story. One moment there is a relatively normal looking person (unless you saw their pitch black eyes) the next there's a pile of ashes and a lone uncharred foot or hand.

To Hastur, the Demonic Vessel Licensing Agency was the most hellish part of Hell. It was even worse that Crowley had though up the idea and even received a commendation for it.

It was a perfect plot. Long lines, bad service, incompetence and general snarkiness (mostly from the female demons who were sadly underpaid and often bothered by male demons) made the place unbearable. The long waiting and incorrect filing out of documents that resulted in more waiting resulted in ill will from everyone and it spread as fine as strawberry jam on a piece of crispy toast. Feigning sickness was in fact a semi effective way to get away from the place.

Hastur broke out of his trance of bad memories at the sound of Crowley's unintelligible jabbering.

"Is that all you have, Winchester?" he sneered. Crowley continued his façade but in reality he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. Still he allowed his mind to wander off from the pain. He simply thought about the meaningful conversations he's had with Aziraphale or even any times they mindlessly bantered about the weather.

"Looks like it's going to rain."

"Just like it did for the first time all those years ago. I still remember, you sly serpent. Went down like a lead balloon?"

"We did. But do you ever wonder why it rains, Aziraphale?"

"Maybe God is just sad. Sad about the world, ineffability, everything."

"Or maybe someone Upstairs just wanted to piss."

"Crowley!"

"I'm just kidding."

"Hey, can you think of anything worse?" Dean challenged glowering at Crowley.

"Listening to nothing but Elgar for all eternity?"

"Whoa. That'd be horrificable," commented Hastur, trying to demonstrate his brilliant imagination by creating combinations of words for no apparent reason. Just earlier he had commented that Dean was 'awesomelicious' and 'talentable' after the Winchester had voluntarily carved Crowley's entrails out. Although Crowley tried to refrain from screaming, swearing, or spitting he did a combination of all three sometimes. This happened when Dean had covered a pair of pliers in salt and then proceeded to pluck out the scales at Crowley's feet, exposing the tender skin underneath. Dean made a few jokes about 'soles' and 'souls', which Crowley suspected was a means of cheering himself up despite the obviously immoral things he was doing. But Crowley was a demon and in Dean's eyes he deserved it.

Eyes.

Dean had seen Crowley's eyes after Hastur suggested that Dean took them off.

"Aw. He dunt need sunglasses anyway," The Duke of Hell declared.

Dean had taken the sunglasses off and in sudden shock he dropped them uselessly to the floor.

Crowley's reaction was not helping in anyway to lessen Dean's fear or anger. He had hissed furiously, his tongue lashing out and his eyes dilating in the process. His tongue was partially destroyed and Crowley was already angry enough about the fact that he was sure he wouldn't have the taste buds to be able to enjoy wine or dine with Aziraphale at the Ritz, but now the human had taken off his sunglasses? No one messed with his sunglasses, except Aziraphale, but Aziraphale messed with him a lot so that was different.

Dean backed away. Yellow eyes. Sure, they weren't the same with the slitted pupils, but they were still yellow. 'A yellow eyed demon.' Dean snorted in disbelief, took a deep breath, then charged forward fist first and then successfully gave Crowley a black eye.

"Yellow eyed demon," the older Winchester said, and then this was followed by a string of curses nearly as terrible as the torture.

Hastur really did have to admit Dean had imagination after that.

A/N: TBC