A/N: I heard about somebody using a concept vaguely similar to this in fandom on a youtube comment and I thought, oh, how cute. But the only fics I could find with that general idea were very shippy and slashy or else just didn't take the idea in the direction I thought would be most appealling. So I thought, oh, heck with it, I'll take a couple hours off and write my own, a little one-shot.

For The Record

A Good Omens Fanfiction

Aziraphale sat primly on a park bench in Berkeley Square, a fat white-and-grey leather rectangle was in his lap. For once, it wasn't a book but a portfolio of the sort that holds official documents with a tiny silver clasp. Usually this silver clasp was fastened in such a way that he would never be able to open it. On this day, the little pin – a slick bit of a thing, smaller than his manicured pinky-nail – stuck out, showing that it would open easily if he wished it to.

Aziraphale wasn't sure he was ready for this. After all that had happened, he didn't know what the documents inside might say.

"Hello, Aziraphale! Stopped by the bookshop, saw it was closed, thought you might be here."

"Crowley! Ah, hello." Aziraphale smiled up at his friend, but the warm, doting expression in his eyes was notably more subdued than usual.

Crowley slid down into the seat beside him. "What's that?"

Aziraphale's sleek fingers tightened around the leather spine, his nails dinging into it anxiously. "Well, it's... As it happens, my file."

"File?" Crowley echoed. "What file?"

Aziraphale pointed upwards. "My official file."

"How the Heaven did you get that?" Crowley sounded impressed, as though he thought Aziraphale had pulled some sort of celestial caper to steal it.

"I found it outside the shop this morning, unlatched." Aziraphale winced. "Gabriel or Michael or one of the other higher-ups must have left it for me. You must have put on rather a good show for them in my place; they made sure I didn't see them. Didn't want to have a run in with an angel who could survive hellfire, I expect."

Crowley shrugged carelessly. "Well, I do good work. What can I say?" He leaned closer. "Looked inside it yet?"

Aziraphale shook his head. "Oh, no, not yet. Bit nervous."

"Why?"

"Well, you know, I've never actually seen my file before – it's typically not allowed. And I can only imagine–"

"Oh, come on, Angel, open that sucker up and let's have a look."

Aziraphale smiled hesitantly. "If you think it's a good idea, I suppose a peek wouldn't hurt." As if he were opening a rare book, he slowly pulled back the leather cover and looked at the sheath of papers inside. There were rather a lot more than he'd thought; he took half for himself, then handed the other half to Crowley to give him something to do.

While he nodded at most of the standard descriptions of his job and reports over the years, a comment in the margins from Gabriel made him frown. He seemed unsure if he ought to be offended. "I say!"

Crowley looked up, interested. "What?"

"What do you make of this?" Aziraphale cleared his throat, and read aloud, "Despite his eagerness to carry out his assigned tasks, Aziraphale is rather bumbling in his efforts, as he suffers from excessive bouts of lovingness."

"What does that even mean?" Crowley mused, his voice changing pitch with rising disgust. "You're excessively loving? I thought your lot were supposed to be big on that sort of thing."

"That's just horribly unfair." Aziraphale pouted. "Not that it matters now."

Crowley went back to shuffling through the papers in his own hand. "Angel, what's this?"

"Eh?" Aziraphale peered over and his facial expression went from helpful and explanatory to downright crestfallen. "Oh. Sad business, that."

The paper in Crowley's hand listed Aziraphale as having been assigned a partner as part of a heavenly task, only the partner's name was blotted out with a marker that read Fallen.

"I don't understand, I thought you were assigned to guard the eastern gate of Eden, flaming sword and all that. What's all this here about you being listed as helping another angel with creation? Bit out of your department, isn't it?"

"I never actually got to," Aziraphale confessed. "It all went wrong."

"What happened?"

Aziraphale wrung his hands. "You may not be aware of this, Crowley, but I'm not quite as old as some of the other angels. You see, there was this archangel who was doing a lot of work among the stars and creating nebulas and spreading galaxies like gauze – nice things like that. He was doing a lot by himself, and he kept requesting for the almighty to send him some help. Lonely, I expect. For some reason he also kept sending a lot of memos complaining about the food being bad – I think that was meant to be a joke.

"Anyhow, that was when the Almighty decided to make, er, me." Aziraphale shuffled his feet under the bench, rolling a pebble under the sole of his shoe. "I was being trained up to go out there and work with him. I was sure I could do it – bit nervous about being a disappointment to the poor chap, of course, Gabriel said I was sure to just be underfoot all the time. Then one day, shortly before I was supposed to meet him, everything changed. Lucifer had that rebellion of his and I get a message from Michael saying that my archangel joined the opposing side and I was to be a foot-soldier in the war."

Crowley seemed very intent on Aziraphale's face, as if trying to read something in it. "And you never found out who he was?"

Aziraphale shook his head. "Oh, they all thought it would be better for me if I didn't know. Afraid it would be too awful for me if we met in battle. That I'd go weak or snap or something. I tried to get through to God to ask if maybe I could just talk to the misguided fellow, make him see reason, bring him back to our side, but the Metatron told me off and said to leave it be and to please stop making so many requests, didn't I know we were in the middle of a rebellion, so that was that.

"It's silly but I always get rather sad when I think of him. Even after all this time. I wanted to ask you more than once if... If there was one of your lot who'd been expecting me, all those ages ago, but I was too embarrassed. And of course I'm sure he's a very busy demon. Up to wicked wiles and never sparing me a second thought. I just wanted...it's foolish, I suppose...but I just wanted to know if he was all right. For a long time. I suppose he must be, so long as your lot hasn't offed him with Holy Water or anything. I don't suppose he's got an angel friend to swap places with. Is it very awful, down in Hell?"

Crowley shrugged.

"I know he did bad when he was told to do good, and he ought to be punished, naturally, but I hate the thought of him suffering torment forever."

"So, what, when your assigned buddy wasn't there in Heaven any more, the Almighty just handed you a flaming sword, pointed at the gate, and said 'have at it'?"

"In so many words, yes," Aziraphale admitted. "I think Gabriel was uncomfortable with the idea of an angel who'd been created as a companion for one of the fallen. He was always waiting for me to do something bad, like I had it in me from the beginning. I tried very hard to prove to him that wasn't the case. Little good it did in the end."

"Oh, well, it wouldn't have killed Gabriel to show a little 'excessive lovingness' of his own," Crowley hissed. "All that spite and judgement sounds more like my lot."

"Oh, that's nice of you to say," Aziraphale said, brightening slightly. "But I can't blame him entirely. The Lord did make me from one of the feathers of that other archangel's wing, and you have to understand, Gabriel must have known him, at least by reputation, as I never did. Perhaps I acted like him in some small way and it–" He stopped. "Oh, what's wrong, my dear?"

Crowley looked suddenly like he'd been punched in the stomach. "It's nothing." His face pale under his dark glasses, he numbly handed the papers back to Aziraphale. "I'll see you later, there's something I need to take care of back at my place."

"Come around tomorrow," Aziraphale suggested, blinking up innocently at the dazed demon as he rose from his place mechanically. "We'll go some place and have lunch."

"Yes, certainly, whatever you like," said Crowley, in a distant voice that suggested he had no idea what he'd just agreed to. "See you later. Ciao."

All the way home, which wasn't far, as he was speeding there in the Bentley, Crowley kept telling himself to calm down, that he had to be mistaken. The coincidence was just too great, too ironic even for the sense of humour of the almighty.

An archangel who had been working on nebulas at the same time as himself, giving the same memos back to head-office, and having woken up from a strange sleep – the only time as an angel he'd ever slept – to find a primary feather missing from one wing...

He'd never been given an explanation for that.

And if he wasn't wrong... If he wasn't letting himself get carried away with things he only half remembered because they were so long ago...

That meant...

Crowley strode into his flat in such a flurry all the plants trembled automatically, thinking he meant them ill, even though he wasn't so much as glancing at them.

He leaned against his chair, clutched the side, and stared up at the ceiling. "You never told me you were sending anybody! I thought I was on my own up there! Then who shows up, oh, look, Lucifer and the guys." He remembered thinking it wouldn't make much difference, going with them. Just a fun thing to do, something he wouldn't have to do alone. He'd grown bored of stars and the odd angel showing up now and again just to mark them as complete, then shuffling off without the slightest comforting word. "If I'd waited..." He stopped, covering his face with his hands and groaning. "Somebody should have told me!"

It was hours and a few drinks later that Crowley, staggering and tipsy, finally got the courage to move aside the sketch of Mona Lisa and open the safe. He had a portfolio of his own. All the demons did. They'd had their files hurled down into the burning lake of sulphur after them. They were the colour of coal and they all smelled like they'd come from a burned-down estate sale. Crowley hadn't bothered with his. It was a slim file. No one had ever written him up, he got done what he was supposed to, he'd been rather a quiet, competent angel in that way, and being one of the higher-ups did give him something of an advantage. Nothing to the mountains of paperwork Aziraphale accumulated.

"It's not going to be there," Crowley told himself. "I'm going to see how ridiculous–"

There was a line under Crowley's old name, the one he'd had before he was a snake, the one nobody properly remembered, not even in Hell.

And under that line, it said, Assigned Working Partner: Aziraphale.

"Shit." Crowley closed the portfolio.

All these years, he'd acted like it was God's fault, for letting him go, for not doing anything for him, even when he'd asked so many times.

Aziraphale had been happy enough with his ineffable plans, but it had never been enough for Crowley.

But maybe the Almighty's plan hadn't been so much ineffable as inevitable.

Aziraphale had been created to be Crowley's best friend. And, despite the odds against it, despite 6,000 years during which they were meant to be on opposite sides, it still happened. They had the arrangement. They worked together.

They saved the world – well, not on their own, Adam the former son of Satan and those rag-tag mortal friends of his helped some, of course.

And suddenly it made sense.

Sickening, beautiful, maddening, wonderful sense.

God made the earth not to be destroyed but inhabited by people, people with free will. The whole apple thing, well, Crowley was still trying to work that one out, he was still prickly and tetchy about the ramifications of that one, but the rest...

God's creation doing exactly what it was supposed to, even when it all went pear-shaped.

"Well played," laughed Crowley, because if he didn't laugh he was going to cry and hate himself for it.

After he sobered up, Crowley paced, staring at the phone. There was a call he both wanted – and didn't want – to make.

He really should tell him.

No, he really shouldn't. What was the point?

Finally, after a lot of deliberation, Crowley dialled the number and lifted the receiver.

"Aziraphale, it's me."

The voice on the other end was delighted. "Crowley! I was just about to call and see if you were feeling any better. You left in such a hurry. Wanted to be sure you were all right."

I just wanted to know if he was all right.

"Aziraphale, there's something I need to tell you. For the record."

"Yes?"

"Your angel friend – the fallen one. I did know him."

"Oh. Oh, my."

There was a long pause, then Aziraphale sort of whispered, "Did he ever, erm, mention me?"

He never knew you existed, Angel. They never told him you were coming. I'm so sorry.

But Crowley couldn't bring himself to say that. "Yes, I just didn't put it all together until today."

"Must have been rather a shock for you," Aziraphale said, apologetically.

"You have no idea. But, yes, he mentioned you, he's fine, they love him down there. Best not to worry about him any more."

"Well, I can't tell you what a load off my mind it is that he's getting by... We're not anything alike, then, him and I?"

"Complete opposites," Crowley assured him.

"Funny how things work out."

"Hilarious."

"We're still on for lunch tomorrow, aren't we, Crowley?"

"Yes. My treat."

"Everything's tickety-boo, then."

Crowley laughed, said goodbye, and hung up. His gleaming, snaky eyes rolled to the ceiling. "Stick me with a best friend who says things like 'tickety-boo'. Some inevitable plan."

A/N: Review, if so inclined, I just may take a while getting back to you - limited internet at the moment.