“I think I’m statistically good.”

Aziraphale looked up from an exceptionally interesting paragraph in his latest find. It must have been exceptionally interesting, since he’d been reading it for the past half hour. Not watching as his increasingly frustrated guest butchered a large sheet of paper with no more weapon than an ordinary ballpoint pen.

“Pardon?” he asked, pushing his reading glasses back into position on the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” Crowley spat disgustedly, pushing the violently blotted page towards his companion.

Aziraphale looked. Aziraphale turned the paper right-side up and looked a bit more. Aziraphale took off his glasses, polished them, put them back on, pushed the page so that it lay at a forty-five degree angle from himself. And gave up. “Really, My Dear, your handwriting would try the patience of a Saint.”

“Don’t be anachronistic. And anyway, you know as well as I that most of them couldn’t read even when they were alive.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you have terrible penmanship.”

“Fine,” Crowley snapped, pulling the insulted sheet back towards him. “I was only trying to give you a little concrete evidence.”

“And I still don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Crowley sighed. “Here. What did I do on Sunday?”

“Well I don’t-“

“I’ll tell you what I did. I spent the whole bloody day running errands for you! Stopped that kid from getting bullied in the park so he wouldn’t grow up to be some sort of heartless corporate bastard. Put out a fire. In a church. Got some ruddy cat out of a tree.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“ I saved a kitten, Angel. It was fluffy and it mewed at me until I was done.” Crowley’s fingers twitched with palpable disgust.

“In God’s eyes all creatures, great and small-“

“Yeah, I know. And that’s the problem. All these stupid little things you ask me to do when I’m on my way out, because you can’t be bothered to stir one step from your precious collection-“

Aziraphale opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again at the look on Crowley’s face.

“-all these things that we should neither of us really be bothering about at all-“

“God is in the details-“

“Whatever. The point is that they’re mounting up. Do you see? Every day I’m doing a little good for your side, and nothing for my side. And I can’t just take credit for a natural human disaster, because there haven’t been any. So what am I going to do if I ever have to present another report” (shudder.) “to anyone down there?”

Aziraphale put his book down. There was an angelic smile on his face, but there usually was. Sometimes, very occasionally, it traded places for an angelic frown, or even an angelic smirk, but only under great duress. “Perhaps if you point out to them that it’s all done by the ineffable will-“

"Can't you just for today tell the ineffable to bloody well piss off?"

He clearly didn’t understand the severity of the situation.

Crowley stood, and began searching for his jacket. “I,” he announces “Am going out to get smashed. And you’re not invited.”

He had almost made it to the door when Aziraphale’s voice, pitched to the same librarian-soft timbre as ever, stopped him. “Crowley? What do you pave the road to Hell with, these days?”

Crowley stopped and swung around. “Well, mostly Jehovah’s witnesses, since you ask, but-“

The angel took off his glasses, the better to give Crowley a significant look. “No, My Dear. Think a little less literally.”

Crowley’s brow furrowed. He hated that. It made his body get lines in its skin. “I suppose there’s probably some toothpaste down there too.” Toothpaste could fill in almost any crack, in his experience.

“I think you’ll find that you’ve actually been doing Your Place a great service, maintenance-wise.” Said Aziraphale. “If you just think about it for a bit.”

***End
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