Gift for mrbluesky, Part 1!
Title: Flamingos (#1)
Recipient: mrbluesky
Author: interrobam
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Happy Holidays, mrbluesky! I took this prompt in a bit of a “serious business” direction, I hope you don't mind. I also hope, of course, that you enjoy this fic!
Summary: Las Vegas, Crowley had always maintained, was Aziraphale's fault.
Las Vegas, Crowley had always maintained, was technically Aziraphale's fault.
The angel had, after all, started the argument that had left off with Crowley stumbling out of the Ritz and into the streets, declaring that he was too right about that last point, and that he was going to drive the Bentley to America to prove it. Aziraphale had been the one who, instead of telling the inebriated demon that he was being ridiculous, shouted back that he didn't know the Bentley was a submarine. It was at the very least partly his doing that Crowley had chewed hard on his tongue, because at the time that had felt like a rather clever burn, one the demon had no hope of countering except with something about how Aziraphale should go finger a dictionary.
The argument, as all fights they had in the modern era, had started out in a more or less civil manner. It was old, though not enough to be “olde,” originating from a time when they were still having lunch at the Savoy. It was routine to them: like eating off of each other’s plates, like the indent on Aziraphale's couch that matched to Crowley's shoulder blade, like arguing over whether or not their Christmas tree, seeing as it was already dying anyway, deserved to be treated with a bit more tenderness than the other houseplants. It was a path well-traveled, a conversation with trail markers.
Humans are better than angels, and worse than demons, but which one of the two are they more so?
Aziraphale, a literal eternal optimist, felt that they shied quite a bit more on the light side. Crowley disagreed, and furthermore thought he would have won this argument long ago if Aziraphale would have just let him use the things he's found on the Internet as examples. They argued without malice, as two people who half agree with the other's point of view tend to do. Everything had been going well until the waiter told them that dessert would have to be delayed due to a mishap in the kitchen. Crowley had opened his mouth to inform the waiter that there was no such mishap, but the angel had placed his hand over his and said it might be nice to stay out a little later tonight, have another glass of wine. The demon had been so thrown by the idea of Aziraphale delaying dessert of all things that he had to take a moment to wonder if he had forgotten something, some anniversary, and by the time he was more or less sure he hadn't the waiter was gone and the angel's eyes had gone a bit dusty.
“We haven't had a chance to sit and talk like this for a while. What with the...” He had gestured vaguely at the various shady characters of various shady alignments sitting at the tables beside them, the rubble-scraped and weary looking civilians, the whole mess of 1944, his eyes trained to the ceiling as if expecting it to collapse even now. “You've been doing a lot of traveling; I've been taking care of things here. It's nice to be back together, have someone to talk to.” Crowley had heard the siren call of a smart remark, long and high and over the waters, but he had remembered making some sort of resolution to ruin fewer moments like this.
“It is nice,” he had settled on saying, and Aziraphale had looked pleased with that. They had not, unfortunately, taken into account that they were turning an hour long conversation into a two hour one, with a lot less overall sobriety involved. They had long since come to the point in the debate where they were used to receiving a check, agreeing to disagree, and going to whomever's flat was most convenient. They had paused, looking around and realizing that they hadn't been served their desserts, much less their bill, yet. So, like broken compassed explorers, they had wandered back and forth between trailmarkers before deciding to poke around the underbrush for some topics less traveled. By the time their food actually came they had reached an impasse and were bickering about deserts.
“No no, the thing that is what I'm trying to tell you is that people get down to themselfs when they're really thirsty.” Aziraphale had moved his hands in a half-strangling, half-convincing gesture. “Brass tacks and that.”
“Alright.”
“Hungry and sunburned.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“They've got sand in the undergarments, itchy. An' the wind's awful.”
“Whas' yer point?”
“You're 2 for 0 in the desert. Tempton- Temple- Temptonteration- Dicking Around With of Christ, John the Baptist.” Crowley had frowned.
“Wasn't Sodom and Gomorrah by a desert?” Aziraphale had considered this sluggishly.
“Back then, everythink was by a desert.” Crowley had tried to make a dismissive raspberry, failed, wet his lips, and gained moderate success on his second try.
“Gif' me ten years, and I'll have Sodom and Gomorrah II,” he had bragged, holding up three fingers before squinting at them and changing them to two, then four, then two again once he realized he had gotten it right that first time. Aziraphale had laughed into his glass so that it fogged over like a frosted window.
“Nope.”
“T'will.”
“Won't.”
“I've prove it!” Crowley had stood up suddenly, startling several pieces of furniture in his vicinity and pausing for a moment as the Ritz wobbled like a top in a wind tunnel. Aziraphale had wished him luck in a voice so chiding it was nearly sober, and all the business about submersible automobiles and making physical advances on dictionaries came to pass, and the next morning Crowley woke up in a mansion in California.
The demon quickly dismissed his hangover, used more than mortal means to figure out where he was (Beverly Hills, bless everything), and took a moment to be rather impressed by the room he found himself laying on the floor of. It had rather nice wallpaper and consistent furniture styling. Looking around, he realized that he was not the only person there passed out in formal attire and smelling of booze, and felt just a bit better about his situation. He removed his ankle from beneath some socialite's head, sitting up and looking around. A handsome but decidedly disheveled man with dark hair came into the room, and Crowley felt a nagging suspicion that he should know him. He recalled someone from a few decades back, when he had caught wind of prohibition and wanted to muck around in the bootlegging business for a bit to see if he could make it any worse (for his best efforts, he could not, and he would never quite find it in his heart to forgive America for that). Some relatively low level guy who had been impressed by his accent. The man started speaking, and Crowley quickly realized he was talking to him.
“You know Crowley, what you said last night made a lot of sense.” The demon nodded, eyebrows raised as if to say “What did I tell you?” He had no idea what the man was taking about.
“You know I'm trying to turn over a new leaf.” Crowley continued nodding; trying to put his finger on the guy's name, something unfortunate sounding. The man took a cigar box off of a coffee table with a familiar looking actor passed out atop it, cutting the smoke with a practiced ease. “I don't like Nevada much, but you were right about this thing with Wilkerson, he's got a sense for business. It'll get Lansky off my back anyway.” It was something like Ratty or Verminish or- ah yes that was it.
Bugsy Siegel handed Crowley a cigar, and the demon took it with a thick smile.
Aziraphale fretted, of course, when the demon showed back up at his bookstore a few days later. He had been feeling a bit guilty for having let things get out of hand (“you know how stressful it's been here, you keep expecting another Blitz to come up and it makes you touchy, but of course you have your own issues to deal with and I should have been understanding, and perhaps with time you might reflect on the situation and recognize that you also made missteps, etc., etc.”). Luckily Crowley had brought wine for this exact sort of dilemma, and the angel soon found it within him to, as the demon suggested, forget about it.
So it was Crowley who did the legwork, but it was Aziraphale who inspired him to. And really, the more one lives on Earth the more important the idea of things become as compared to their execution. Case in point, Mr. Siegel spent six million dollars of other people's money making the Flamingo casino, threw a party for the grand opening where he verbally abused his guests, and got his eyeball shot out by his superiors. But the Flamingo remained open, soon to be accompanied by the Sahara, the Sands, the New Frontier and the Riviera: pet projects for the Families that had had their borderline legitimate businesses kicked out of Cuba and came to the Las Vegas Valley to put down new roots. To what would someday become Aziraphale's further embarrassment, they aligned with Mormon elders in order to give their casinos legitimate fronts.
By 1954, ten years on the dot, there were eight million people coming to Las Vegas for the express purpose of putting a good, deep tarnishing on their souls.
Crowley had gotten a commendation for it, and he hid the accompanying certificate under the angel's couch and in between the pages of his least trafficked books, maintaining all the while that it was rightfully, perhaps even righteously, his. Aziraphale was the one with the Divine Inspiration, and the demon was eager to show him his Great Works. The angel, finding these pieces of paper, would get a twinkle in his eye that urged Crowley to drop this joke, it really isn't funny old boy, and said perhaps a little later.
Crowley was not discouraged by this. He visited his pet project every few years and brought the angel novelty cups and souvenirs. They were cheaply made, but nonetheless refused to shatter when Aziraphale bumped up against the table he had them displayed on. With a decent kick he could probably get the job done, but they were gifts, and Aziraphale could not bring himself to intentionally destroy gifts. Well, to intentionally destroy gifts in a way he could not plausibly explain away as an accident. The first present he had received, a hideously bright pink flamingo made of plastic, which Crowley reassured him was somehow legitimately popular in America, had been knocked out of place and down the stairs more times than he could count. He was beginning to suspect that Crowley had anticipated his destructive intentions and made his souvenirs miraculous as way of heading that off.
Still Crowley pestered him to visit, told him he might actually like it if he gave it a try (“you old bird, after all can’t you remember that excellent tavern in Gomorrah that you hadn't wanted to try the first time but ended up loving, we never go on trips anymore and I'm beginning to think you are fusing with your shop, etc., etc.”) Eventually, after decades of sporadic pestering, Aziraphale took stock of the sheer mass of plastic frippery in his back room and how long it had been since his last vacation, and he agreed. Besides, he thought if Crowley wants to spend time together, wasn't that something to be encouraged? Even if it was in a city that took an inordinate amount of pride in being sinful. He told Crowley that he would come there next week, gently implying that this meant he would be able to get his own souvenir now, thank you quite much.
He insisted on taking a plane in the same way he insisted on buying his own clothes and keeping his vegetables in the crisper. Crowley told him that was fine, but that he had better be there by seven or he would find two hundred nigh indestructible, lovingly gifted flamingos in his shop by nine.
As Aziraphale had felt Tadfield so, to a lesser degree, Crowley felt Vegas. It was not something intensely, altogether wonderful. It was a sensation more akin to your ears finally popping after a long flight, your joints cracking back into place, a relieving change in pressure. Crowley looked around him at the smut peddlers on the street corners and the long thin drinks that carried the illusion of a generous portion and he felt that something was right with the world. Or at least tolerable.
As he walked down the strip, the smell of car exhaust and cheap shrimp cocktail in the air, he felt an odd sense of pride for humans. He had planted the seeds, of course: at times he popped over to help negotiate territory and tinker a bit with the slots so that every thousand spins or so they would show a jackpot for a split second before turning into a bar, but he wasn’t holding anyone’s hand. He had laid the foundation, but the humans took it over as their own and made it somehow both cheaper and more opulent than he ever could have imagined.
Ble- Cur- Do something to acknowledge the mortal bastards.
“Oh Crowley dear!” The demon turned to see- oh for Manchester's sake. Aziraphale, who appeared to have forgotten that there were places significantly hotter than London, was making his way towards him through the crowd. Crowley liked the heat, he supposed it was his blood, but the angel tended to complain about getting too much sun, and he had clearly not taken that into account when planning his outfit. He had at least two scarves, a wool coat, and a sweater vest on. All of the pieces were in some awful shade of brown, but none of them quite the same awful shade. His one effort towards compromising his wardrobe for the environment came in the form of khaki shorts. Aziraphale always had the air of being someone's dotty old great uncle, but in this getup he appeared to be someone's dotty old great uncle who was also a homeless professor of archeology. He was waving frantically, as if in an effort to increase his chances of achieving the title of the oddest looking person in Las Vegas (well, by the standards of Las Vegas). Crowley spent a second or two considering the consequences of pretending they didn't know one another, but ultimately his sense of friendship and charity took over, and he instead made his way down the sidewalk and smacked Aziraphale on the side of the head.
“Ow! What was that for?” Aziraphale whined, rubbing his cheek.
“I'm not walking around with you dressed like that. It's for your own good.” Crowley put his hands on the angel's shoulders, where a white jacket was quite befuddled to find itself hung (it was a surprisingly self-aware jacket). Aziraphale glanced down to find a matching pair of pants and a blue bowtie. He glared at it until it was tartan, and then Crowley glared at it until it was blue again, if it knew what was good for it.
“I'm sorry I'm such an embarrassment,” the angel sniffed.
“You know it's not like that. I don't want someone thinking you're senile and wandering,” Crowley huffed, patting him on the sides of his arms in an attempt to be reassuring. It was an aura that fit him awkwardly, like a Christmas present with too much folding and too little tape, but Aziraphale was always the type to say it was the thought that counted, and his eyes softened.
“Ah, well, I suppose it’s good that at least one of us is keeping up with the fashions these days. What with all those low trousers and people wearing three shirts at a time.” His face turned as serious as stone. “I saw a woman on this street with a bra made of feathers, it's quite disconcerting.” Crowley laughed.
“I'm pretty sure feather bras are more of a regional than generational fashion.”
“You never know,” Aziraphale intoned with an air of awe at the ingenuity humans must have to invent new and bizarre fashions every few years, “remember when you said that about trousers?” The demon shrugged, but inwardly conceded that he had a point.
Their first stop was at a white hotel, its interior decorated with fake gold and faker marble, themed after Ancient Rome. Crowley had suggested it. He had a special sort of fondness for grand monuments to the stereotypes of different cultures. It was a loving and hating relationship that most world travelers eventually develop. Crowley, having both time and space marked somewhere in the passport he never found himself needing to get into another country, felt it more than the common cosmopolitan. When they entered the building and made their way across the lobby he gleefully pointed out the amateurish fonts on the signs, the ridiculous unpainted statues, the Gladiators that wouldn't have lasted a minute in a fight, Cleopatra in sequins. Aziraphale found it charming.
“I think it's quite nice. All different cultures of the world right here in one city.” Crowley frowned.
“Come on angel, you know this isn't anything like Rome used to be.”
“Well, perhaps not perfectly so, but it's clearly doing its best. I think it's a wonderful sentiment, all the different places that have their own hotels here. If you can't choose between going to Paris or New York, of if you'd like something more Medieval or Classical, you can come here and enjoy as many cultures as you have time for.” Crowley bobbed his head in what might pass for a nod in some reluctant circles.
“Aright, I suppose if you say it like that-”
“This place isn't too terribly sinful after all.” Crowley stopped short, shoulders raised. Aziraphale continued on prattling about for a few feet before noticing that he had been abandoned by his companion, like a rocketship by its booster, and turned back.
“Crowley? I can't find my way around without you, you know. ”
“What do you mean it's not sinful?”
“I just meant to say that it isn't exactly, what did you call it, Sodom and Gomorrah II? I suppose it just goes to show, even in the middle of a wasteland in a city born of sinful greed, humans are just a bit more good than they are bad.” The angel took his fellow traveler's hand, patting it reassuringly “It's a very nice try though.” Crowley narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he had expected: after six thousand years, plus or minus some spare change, he doubted he had a button that Aziraphale was neither aware of nor without desire to push.
“Fine then, let's go on to the slots, shall we?” Aziraphale shrugged.
“Whatever you think would make for a good time, dear.” As they came closer and closer to the center of the casino, where all bets were reverently placed, they were engulfed by a wall of cigarette smoke. When their eyes adjusted to the smog and lighting Aziraphale was able to survey a sea of tables, wheels, and one armed bandits of all types.
“Look at them.” Crowley looked like a hen that was particularly satisfied with her chicks, or perhaps like a cat who had been satisfied by them. “Sitting in front of a machine, feeding it their money, getting plastered and staring at the screen until their eyes get sore. It's a factory of slothfulness and greed, and they do it all to themselves. You set it up, give them something to do and something to drink, and they'll be content.” There was something he could say here that would be thematically complacent, something about bread and carnivals, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
“It's not just the ones on the floor either,” he continued. “The House may be reaping all the profits, but they certainly aren't taking into account the whole camel-needle arrangement when it comes to their immortal souls. Now, you can't tell me that this isn't sinful. Less chaotic, sure, but when you get everything organized like this it actually increases output at a steadier-”
“Eternal hope,” Aziraphale piped up, rather ruining Crowley's gloating.
“Pardon?”
“What is gambling but a sign of eternal hope, my dear boy? These people have come from all over the country, the world even, to try their luck. Most of them just want to have a bit of fun, say they'll be happy with a few extra pounds, but they all secretly hope for a windfall. They keep working at it because they want to feel the thrill of victory, and they aren't a bit discouraged when it doesn't come immediately.”
“Bullshit. It's a lot of greed and stupidity and it won't do them any favors with your lot.”
“The bible doesn't condemn gambling.”
“The bible doesn't condemn people who watch porn videos, or do heroin, or cut you off on the road, but we both know where that kind of behavior will get you.” Aziraphale looked across the fluorescent valley of gaming, smiling vaguely.
“An awful lot of praying gets done here.”
“You know just as well as I that that doesn't mean anything. There's an awful lot of praying that happens in Hell too.”
“And there's a chapel every few feet, and so many priests manning them.”
“You're enjoying this.”
“Am I not supposed to enjoy our vacation? I know you took all of my comfortable clothes, but I assumed that was just your personal vanity getting in the way of your compassion. I had no idea you had larger designs to make me hate it here.”
“Not hate it here, I just wanted…” Crowley trailed off, not sure exactly what he wanted. A bit of recognition, for them to have a nice time. In the very least to make Aziraphale lose faith in the essential goodness of the human soul. He didn't ask for much. “I suppose it doesn't matter much what I wanted. Do you want to play?” Aziraphale grinned and took out a crisp twenty dollar bill. He seemed very proud of himself for remembering to pay for something, much less in the right currency.
“There are so many games.” The angel was more excited by this instance of diversity than Crowley had expected. He ran to and fro between the machines, pointing to the pictures that differentiated them as if taking part in an Easter-egg hunt. “Look, this one has wolves on it!” He was entertained by this for a moment before moving on. “That one is about vampires, and there's another one on Cowboys, and the other one over there is about that television program where the women talk about shoes.” He paused in front of a bright red machine portraying a woman with horns and a tail, lounging on a pile of skulls in a bikini. It was entitled “Seven Circles of Luck.”
“Really, my dear?” Crowley bristled.
“Wasn't my idea.” Aziraphale seemed content to play an older model machine with galloping horses on it. He pulled the lever, watched the wheels with excitement, and clapped when they came to a stop. He didn't seem to notice or mind that he wasn't winning anything, being too busy pointing out all the wonderful pictures. Crowley wandered over to a table where some college students were counting cards, mucked around with the deck a bit, and enjoyed the shock on one particularity gawky cheater's face when he lost every last one of his chips. He talked someone into staying for “just a few more turns,” and advised everyone who cared to hear it to double down. He stole someone's sunscreen out of their backpack, mixed up someone else's drink order, and drained several cellphone batteries. By the time he had gotten bored and come back, Aziraphale had nearly run out of quarters.
“Fancy a bite to eat?”
“Just after this turn.” The angel put his final round of quarters in, pulled the lever, and jumped when the machine began to flash colors and make noises. “What's hap-” Suddenly, a deluge of quarters came out of the machine, spilling over his lap. He glared at Crowley. “Did you do this?”
“You know, I didn't.” The demon sounded surprised and just a bit disappointed with himself. Aziraphale turned his attention back to the machine, scooping up handfuls of quarters and trying to put them back in. “Did you?”
“Oh, you know I didn't you old serpent.” He turned to the machine; smiling at the most prominently painted horse. “No thank you!” he pleaded in his most pleasantly irritated voice. “Really, it's very nice but- Listen you, I don't have to- There are so many people who actually need this money.” The machine began to blare “Camptown Racers” as Aziraphale failed yet again to force his prize money back into it. “Crowley make it stop!” Crowley looked around, spotting an older woman watching the angel struggle with envy.
“Come over here, would you.” It wasn't really a request. The demon looked around at the waiters and waitresses, the other hotel guests, the bouncers the House had sent over to check on the validity of their recent winner.
“Crowley, help! It keeps throwing money at me!”
“I'm helping right now, get away from the machine. All of you pay attention.” He made deliberate eye contact with the crowd around him, they could feel it through his tinted glasses, then pointed at the woman “She's the one who got the jackpot, got it? You don't even remember this one,” he jerked his thumb at Aziraphale, “being here. All you know is she was playing here for hours and then suddenly she won.”
“I did?” The woman stared at Crowley with dazed eyes.
“Yup.” The demon patted her on the shoulder, sitting her down where Aziraphale had been. “Congratulations.” A faint smile began to tug at the sides of her face.
“I won! I won!” She began screaming with excitement, which jerked the rest of the bystanders out of their daze. In the commotion, the two man shaped beings slipped past them and out of the casino.
“You really shouldn't mess around with people like that.” Aziraphale said in a voice that was not even bothering to sound angry.
“You really shouldn't play slots if you don't expect to win. Now come on, I want to take you to Paris.”
The hotel they found themselves in front of, an ornate building dwarfed by a replica of the Eiffel Tower, was a bit more accurate than the one they had just left. There was a truly ridiculous concentration of art nouveau pieces, and a hilarious mix of English and French on their signs, but at least there weren't people dressed up as mimes everywhere. Aziraphale found it charming. Crowley was beginning to suspect he would feel that way about everything he was shown.
When they arrived at the restaurant the host was surprised to tell them that there was, in fact, a table open on the balcony. As Aziraphale fussed about the menu Crowley made an extra effort to point out the driving billboards that promoted strip shows, the people on the street handing out pamphlets for escort services that bordered on pornography. The angel was more interested in salads.
“Be honest, angel, they bother you,” Crowley wheedled.
“Oh, can't we just enjoy our food?” Aziraphale fussed. “Look, our waitress has it now.” To the waitress' surprise, and despite them not having ordered yet, she did. Crowley picked up his fork and gave the angel a look that implied this conversation was not yet over.
“How can you not be bothered by prostitution?” Crowley asked once he had finished most of his pasta. “It's not like gambling, you can’t pretend it's all fine and dandy. There's that whole “feet go down to death, steps lay hold of hell” bit in Proverbs.”
“No one is beyond redemption. Besides, many of these women are entertainers, not prostitutes.”
“Aright then, are strip clubs not evil then?” Aziraphale considered this.
“It's difficult to call dedicated performers working long hours to provide for their families and educations evil.”
“Why are you so struck on proving to me that this city isn't just a massive agglomeration of sin?” Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“There's a lot of wholesome entertainment here. There's that circus with the grand stage and all the people in costume. They have a show with that be-bop band.”
“The Beatles?”
“No, with the,” the angel made a motion around his head, as if trying to feel up a bowler hat, “with the hair.”
“Elvis?”
“That one.”
“You know, they have another show about sex. There's a particularly nice part with two girls kissing in a saucer of water.” Aziraphale coughed slightly, trying and failing to muffle it with a spoonful of soup.
“Well, everyone has their own tastes.” They were quiet for a while. “It has good food.”
“That depends on where you go. Trust me, Pollution would feel self-conscious about the sanitation here.”
“The people certainly seem nice.”
“Now you're just making things up.”
“Oh look, dessert!” For the rest of the meal Aziraphale steered the conversation like a toddler trying to get a cat to stick its head in a paper bag. Crowley, used to this strategy, continued to needle him. As they watched a performance of acrobats and stunt people, he asked Aziraphale to explain how a city with so many clowns in it could have something right with it. As they stopped off for some ice-cream, he gestured to the carpet of naked women's pictures covering the sidewalk, and stuck one or two card in the back of the angel's collar to emphasize his point. As they watched two men dressed up as knights run into each other with wooden sticks, he wondered aloud how glorifying this time period could do anyone good. Eventually, after purchasing some beers in cups that lip up in greens and yellows, Aziraphale told him that he'd explain everything to the demon if he could just keep his mouth shut for fifteen minutes. On decidedly hostile terms with the honking horns and calling peddlers around him, Aziraphale further suggested they spend those fifteen minutes somewhere quiet. Crowley recommended the tower of the hotel at which they had watched the almost comically tame jousting.
Aziraphale counted every second aloud.
“...eight hundred ninety eight, eight hundred ninety nine,” he took a long draw from his beer “, nine hundred.”
“Alright, why are you so bent on saying this place isn't sinful?” Aziraphale looked down, morose, at the humans on the street below.
“Honestly dear, I didn’t want you to like it here. And you know what's awful?” Aziraphale mused, his face a sickly undersea blue in the light of the tower on which they sat. “I'm starting to think I like it here.”
“What's awful about that?”
“It's just,” the angel sighed, looking over the strip, “I didn't want to get attached. Whenever you come back from here and tell me that I should visit it reminds me of that dinner.”
“I thought we were done with that fight.”
“It isn't the fight, it's just…” Aziraphale narrowed his eyes, and Crowley could see from the reflections there that he was looking miles beyond the Vegas sign, miles into the blackness of the desert. “It's just that it reminds me of the Blitz.”
“Bookshop fared a bit poorly, did it?” Crowley waited for a response in comfortable silence, the noise of cars and human beings windswept away by their altitude. He imagined briefly, fancifully, that he could put his fingers on the bits of Aziraphale's life he hadn't been there for, seal the gaps as if trying out a flute.
“You know what I thought when it first happened, my very first thought?”
“Not a bit.”
“I thought to myself: Well, there goes London. There goes another place for everyone to forget about in 300 years. Soon enough the two of us will be the only ones who know what “Soho” means, just like it was with Mohenjo Daro and Maccu Pichu until they dug them up.”
“That isn’t very optimistic of you.”
“You weren't there. All I could think was: no more Ritz, no more St. James Park, no more walking around and remembering certain conversations we've had on certain benches. All gone, all over again, no landmarks.”
“Oh stop, London's dealt with worse and come out better for it.” Crowley snapped, because he hated how Aziraphale did this, said things that he understood so perfectly, things that he had been content to let gather dust in the corner of his anxieties until the angel came in and made noises about how poorly everything had been taken care of. He hated it because he too felt an obligation to love Las Vegas from a distance, as something someone else did and someone else should worry over. It was a city barely born, and yet they already considered it in terms of rubble.
“Remember we used to walk around Guayabo, that tree we used to sit under? We could point to it and say that the Arrangement was born there. Now it's gone, and that pond is gone to. The one where you told me not to get ideas about us just because you kissed me. Remember you thought that we were going to last a decade, at absolute most?” Crowley hated Aziraphale more for this, because of course her remembered. Because who else had watched cities flourish and die, who else recalled the name of that little place in Aoudaghost where they used to have brunch, who else remembered how the angel had laughed at his airs next to a dark pond, under the shade of an Almond tree? Aziraphale was not the only being with holes in him, cracks in his individual memories, his concepts of phenomena, that no one can verify but Him Himself. Since when, Crowley mused, has Aziraphale been all of that to me?
For a very long time, you idiot, he realized begrudgingly.
“This place, though, it isn't very much like Guayabo.” Aziraphale seemed to be unaware of his companion's mood, his face shifting nostalgically, his voice picking up a bit. “It reminds me more of Cahokia. You remember visiting there when it had only just started up, when the mounds were still under construction, don't you? The marketplace was wonderful.”
“Well, at least here there's less human sacrifice, unless I haven't been keeping as close tabs as I think I’ve been.” Crowley looked briefly concerned, having long since learned not to underestimate what humans could get up to when one wasn't looking, and it distracted him from his place in their universe.
“You wanted to get one of those red stone statues, and I told you that it would be silly to collect mementos, and then,” Aziraphale waved his hands vaguely, as if trying to transfigure his beer back into into water, “gone. I don't even remember the name of the one who started the whole place.” Crowley paused to search his memory.
“Something with a K.”
“I thought it was an R?”
“It isn't as if they had an alphabet at the time.” Aziraphale's melancholy returned from its brief respite, like a cat coming in from the cold, shedding all over him and making him put his head into his hand.
“A pity, he could have written a book. Now no one remembers.” Crowley shrugged.
“It isn't like you fare much better when people remember you. Look at Cleopatra. Speak seven languages, write on philosophy, perform medicine, everyone remembers you from who you had sex with.”
“You aren't making me feel any better my dear.”
“I'm sorry, I just assumed I was invited to this conversation. Please, keep regaling me about how nice the plumbing was at Dholavira.” Aziraphale looked hurt on a multitude of levels.
“It wasn't quite plumbing though, it was reservoirs that they really had down.”
“Some water system. Listen, angel-”
“It’s just that it makes me feel alone. I don't want to come to another city just to watch it die. I don't want us to point up here and say 'there's where we got a bit drunk and fought about reservoirs' and then stop doing that because it’s gone.” Crowley felt something vulnerable coming up in him, like what he imagined being possessed by a sappy birthday card would feel like.
“We don't need all of that to remember,” he hesitated at muttering “, we have each other.”
“But the landmarks-”
“We can be each other's landmarks.”
“We move around a bit too much for that.”
“Stop ruining the moment and listen to me. You know very well I feel like a prat just saying this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I didn't kiss you at that pond in Guayabo,” the demon raised a finger, pressed it to Aziraphale's lips. “I kissed you there. We didn't make the Arrangement under that tree, we made it here.” He held the angel's hands tight, as if they would fuse with enough effort. “Does it really matter that this place might be gone soon? I won't be going anywhere soon. You won't be going anywhere soon.” For a second Aziraphale looked at him oddly, like his face had changed into someone else's, but then his smile took on that shy quality that meant he was particularly pleased.
“You're right.” He leaned in to kiss him, their teeth met awkwardly. They didn't mind.
In the morning Aziraphale had a flight to catch, so he woke early. Crowley helpfully reminded him that he would get less airsick if he flew himself and that they were missing out on invaluable morning sex because of the angel's obsession with legitimacy. Aziraphale, used to this particular brand of temptation, thinned his lips and expected Crowley to take “no” for an answer, unless he had a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses under the sheets with him. The demon eventually relented, and offered to drive him there in the Bentley, which he had forgot was still back in London and therefor wasn't.
“Aren't we getting something from the gift shop first?” Aziraphale asked as he pulled into the boulevard. Crowley was a bit surprised by this request, but nonetheless made a stop at a massive novelty store down the street. After a few minutes, Aziraphale came back out with a pink lawn flamingo cradled in his arms. It had a flowered shirt and sunglasses painted on it, and the angel looked particularly pleased with his choice of souvenir.
“I thought the other one might like a friend,” he explained sheepishly as he tried to lay the lawn ornament comfortably in the back of the Bentley. “To be honest I thought you had been making it up, about them being popular.” As they pulled out of the parking lot the angel looked up at the hotels that surrounded them, the infinite sky, the history of civilization. “I wonder why they like them so much?”
Crowley, though he did not admit it at that moment, had wondered that too when he first found out about them. As far he could gather the logic of the lawn flamingo twisted this way: There used to be wild flamingos in the mainland of America. Real, feathered, thinking things, they roamed in a small colony at the bottom of Florida that sustained them for decades. Then the colonists had come over and gotten it in their heads to hunt them all down. You still saw a flamingo there, on occasion, but more often than not they would be an escapee from a garden or a zoo, an illusion created by a spoonbill of a particular shade at a particular distance.
Years later the humans got it into their heads, as humans do, to feel sorry for this. So they made little plastic baubles, hopeless attempts at decoys, tiny monuments to the progress of humanity. So in love were they with bright colors, wilder days, the miracles of plastics, that they littered their yards with them. They were memorials and they were marks of shame, they were novelties and antiques, they were exotic and common. They sometimes bordered on false gods: pink plastic calves.
This is what Crowley had figured, and this is what had drawn his attention to them in the first place. The particular Americanism of it all, the humanity it sang to. He had picked one up in a gift shop and brought it back to Aziraphale on that first trip, but he had not thought very much about his choice. He had not thought about the comfort derived from modern mockeries of dead colonies. He had not thought about Bugsy Siegel’s hotel, his eyeball popping out of his head and onto the floor of his home. He had not thought about the buildings that still stood to this day, those that did not. He had not thought about Dholavira, Aoudaghost, Cahokia, the great minds that history had let die in the ruins of their civilizations.
He had not thought about a tree, a pond.
He had thought that humans were such sentimental creatures, and so vulnerable to nostalgia. He had thought that it would clash terribly with the musty aura of the shop, and he had made sure Aziraphale that couldn't “accidentally” knock it into pieces down the stairs.
“Humans,” he said with a tone half awed and half exhausted, and this response seemed to satisfy Aziraphale.
Recipient: mrbluesky
Author: interrobam
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Happy Holidays, mrbluesky! I took this prompt in a bit of a “serious business” direction, I hope you don't mind. I also hope, of course, that you enjoy this fic!
Summary: Las Vegas, Crowley had always maintained, was Aziraphale's fault.
Las Vegas, Crowley had always maintained, was technically Aziraphale's fault.
The angel had, after all, started the argument that had left off with Crowley stumbling out of the Ritz and into the streets, declaring that he was too right about that last point, and that he was going to drive the Bentley to America to prove it. Aziraphale had been the one who, instead of telling the inebriated demon that he was being ridiculous, shouted back that he didn't know the Bentley was a submarine. It was at the very least partly his doing that Crowley had chewed hard on his tongue, because at the time that had felt like a rather clever burn, one the demon had no hope of countering except with something about how Aziraphale should go finger a dictionary.
The argument, as all fights they had in the modern era, had started out in a more or less civil manner. It was old, though not enough to be “olde,” originating from a time when they were still having lunch at the Savoy. It was routine to them: like eating off of each other’s plates, like the indent on Aziraphale's couch that matched to Crowley's shoulder blade, like arguing over whether or not their Christmas tree, seeing as it was already dying anyway, deserved to be treated with a bit more tenderness than the other houseplants. It was a path well-traveled, a conversation with trail markers.
Humans are better than angels, and worse than demons, but which one of the two are they more so?
Aziraphale, a literal eternal optimist, felt that they shied quite a bit more on the light side. Crowley disagreed, and furthermore thought he would have won this argument long ago if Aziraphale would have just let him use the things he's found on the Internet as examples. They argued without malice, as two people who half agree with the other's point of view tend to do. Everything had been going well until the waiter told them that dessert would have to be delayed due to a mishap in the kitchen. Crowley had opened his mouth to inform the waiter that there was no such mishap, but the angel had placed his hand over his and said it might be nice to stay out a little later tonight, have another glass of wine. The demon had been so thrown by the idea of Aziraphale delaying dessert of all things that he had to take a moment to wonder if he had forgotten something, some anniversary, and by the time he was more or less sure he hadn't the waiter was gone and the angel's eyes had gone a bit dusty.
“We haven't had a chance to sit and talk like this for a while. What with the...” He had gestured vaguely at the various shady characters of various shady alignments sitting at the tables beside them, the rubble-scraped and weary looking civilians, the whole mess of 1944, his eyes trained to the ceiling as if expecting it to collapse even now. “You've been doing a lot of traveling; I've been taking care of things here. It's nice to be back together, have someone to talk to.” Crowley had heard the siren call of a smart remark, long and high and over the waters, but he had remembered making some sort of resolution to ruin fewer moments like this.
“It is nice,” he had settled on saying, and Aziraphale had looked pleased with that. They had not, unfortunately, taken into account that they were turning an hour long conversation into a two hour one, with a lot less overall sobriety involved. They had long since come to the point in the debate where they were used to receiving a check, agreeing to disagree, and going to whomever's flat was most convenient. They had paused, looking around and realizing that they hadn't been served their desserts, much less their bill, yet. So, like broken compassed explorers, they had wandered back and forth between trailmarkers before deciding to poke around the underbrush for some topics less traveled. By the time their food actually came they had reached an impasse and were bickering about deserts.
“No no, the thing that is what I'm trying to tell you is that people get down to themselfs when they're really thirsty.” Aziraphale had moved his hands in a half-strangling, half-convincing gesture. “Brass tacks and that.”
“Alright.”
“Hungry and sunburned.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“They've got sand in the undergarments, itchy. An' the wind's awful.”
“Whas' yer point?”
“You're 2 for 0 in the desert. Tempton- Temple- Temptonteration- Dicking Around With of Christ, John the Baptist.” Crowley had frowned.
“Wasn't Sodom and Gomorrah by a desert?” Aziraphale had considered this sluggishly.
“Back then, everythink was by a desert.” Crowley had tried to make a dismissive raspberry, failed, wet his lips, and gained moderate success on his second try.
“Gif' me ten years, and I'll have Sodom and Gomorrah II,” he had bragged, holding up three fingers before squinting at them and changing them to two, then four, then two again once he realized he had gotten it right that first time. Aziraphale had laughed into his glass so that it fogged over like a frosted window.
“Nope.”
“T'will.”
“Won't.”
“I've prove it!” Crowley had stood up suddenly, startling several pieces of furniture in his vicinity and pausing for a moment as the Ritz wobbled like a top in a wind tunnel. Aziraphale had wished him luck in a voice so chiding it was nearly sober, and all the business about submersible automobiles and making physical advances on dictionaries came to pass, and the next morning Crowley woke up in a mansion in California.
The demon quickly dismissed his hangover, used more than mortal means to figure out where he was (Beverly Hills, bless everything), and took a moment to be rather impressed by the room he found himself laying on the floor of. It had rather nice wallpaper and consistent furniture styling. Looking around, he realized that he was not the only person there passed out in formal attire and smelling of booze, and felt just a bit better about his situation. He removed his ankle from beneath some socialite's head, sitting up and looking around. A handsome but decidedly disheveled man with dark hair came into the room, and Crowley felt a nagging suspicion that he should know him. He recalled someone from a few decades back, when he had caught wind of prohibition and wanted to muck around in the bootlegging business for a bit to see if he could make it any worse (for his best efforts, he could not, and he would never quite find it in his heart to forgive America for that). Some relatively low level guy who had been impressed by his accent. The man started speaking, and Crowley quickly realized he was talking to him.
“You know Crowley, what you said last night made a lot of sense.” The demon nodded, eyebrows raised as if to say “What did I tell you?” He had no idea what the man was taking about.
“You know I'm trying to turn over a new leaf.” Crowley continued nodding; trying to put his finger on the guy's name, something unfortunate sounding. The man took a cigar box off of a coffee table with a familiar looking actor passed out atop it, cutting the smoke with a practiced ease. “I don't like Nevada much, but you were right about this thing with Wilkerson, he's got a sense for business. It'll get Lansky off my back anyway.” It was something like Ratty or Verminish or- ah yes that was it.
Bugsy Siegel handed Crowley a cigar, and the demon took it with a thick smile.
Aziraphale fretted, of course, when the demon showed back up at his bookstore a few days later. He had been feeling a bit guilty for having let things get out of hand (“you know how stressful it's been here, you keep expecting another Blitz to come up and it makes you touchy, but of course you have your own issues to deal with and I should have been understanding, and perhaps with time you might reflect on the situation and recognize that you also made missteps, etc., etc.”). Luckily Crowley had brought wine for this exact sort of dilemma, and the angel soon found it within him to, as the demon suggested, forget about it.
So it was Crowley who did the legwork, but it was Aziraphale who inspired him to. And really, the more one lives on Earth the more important the idea of things become as compared to their execution. Case in point, Mr. Siegel spent six million dollars of other people's money making the Flamingo casino, threw a party for the grand opening where he verbally abused his guests, and got his eyeball shot out by his superiors. But the Flamingo remained open, soon to be accompanied by the Sahara, the Sands, the New Frontier and the Riviera: pet projects for the Families that had had their borderline legitimate businesses kicked out of Cuba and came to the Las Vegas Valley to put down new roots. To what would someday become Aziraphale's further embarrassment, they aligned with Mormon elders in order to give their casinos legitimate fronts.
By 1954, ten years on the dot, there were eight million people coming to Las Vegas for the express purpose of putting a good, deep tarnishing on their souls.
Crowley had gotten a commendation for it, and he hid the accompanying certificate under the angel's couch and in between the pages of his least trafficked books, maintaining all the while that it was rightfully, perhaps even righteously, his. Aziraphale was the one with the Divine Inspiration, and the demon was eager to show him his Great Works. The angel, finding these pieces of paper, would get a twinkle in his eye that urged Crowley to drop this joke, it really isn't funny old boy, and said perhaps a little later.
Crowley was not discouraged by this. He visited his pet project every few years and brought the angel novelty cups and souvenirs. They were cheaply made, but nonetheless refused to shatter when Aziraphale bumped up against the table he had them displayed on. With a decent kick he could probably get the job done, but they were gifts, and Aziraphale could not bring himself to intentionally destroy gifts. Well, to intentionally destroy gifts in a way he could not plausibly explain away as an accident. The first present he had received, a hideously bright pink flamingo made of plastic, which Crowley reassured him was somehow legitimately popular in America, had been knocked out of place and down the stairs more times than he could count. He was beginning to suspect that Crowley had anticipated his destructive intentions and made his souvenirs miraculous as way of heading that off.
Still Crowley pestered him to visit, told him he might actually like it if he gave it a try (“you old bird, after all can’t you remember that excellent tavern in Gomorrah that you hadn't wanted to try the first time but ended up loving, we never go on trips anymore and I'm beginning to think you are fusing with your shop, etc., etc.”) Eventually, after decades of sporadic pestering, Aziraphale took stock of the sheer mass of plastic frippery in his back room and how long it had been since his last vacation, and he agreed. Besides, he thought if Crowley wants to spend time together, wasn't that something to be encouraged? Even if it was in a city that took an inordinate amount of pride in being sinful. He told Crowley that he would come there next week, gently implying that this meant he would be able to get his own souvenir now, thank you quite much.
He insisted on taking a plane in the same way he insisted on buying his own clothes and keeping his vegetables in the crisper. Crowley told him that was fine, but that he had better be there by seven or he would find two hundred nigh indestructible, lovingly gifted flamingos in his shop by nine.
As Aziraphale had felt Tadfield so, to a lesser degree, Crowley felt Vegas. It was not something intensely, altogether wonderful. It was a sensation more akin to your ears finally popping after a long flight, your joints cracking back into place, a relieving change in pressure. Crowley looked around him at the smut peddlers on the street corners and the long thin drinks that carried the illusion of a generous portion and he felt that something was right with the world. Or at least tolerable.
As he walked down the strip, the smell of car exhaust and cheap shrimp cocktail in the air, he felt an odd sense of pride for humans. He had planted the seeds, of course: at times he popped over to help negotiate territory and tinker a bit with the slots so that every thousand spins or so they would show a jackpot for a split second before turning into a bar, but he wasn’t holding anyone’s hand. He had laid the foundation, but the humans took it over as their own and made it somehow both cheaper and more opulent than he ever could have imagined.
Ble- Cur- Do something to acknowledge the mortal bastards.
“Oh Crowley dear!” The demon turned to see- oh for Manchester's sake. Aziraphale, who appeared to have forgotten that there were places significantly hotter than London, was making his way towards him through the crowd. Crowley liked the heat, he supposed it was his blood, but the angel tended to complain about getting too much sun, and he had clearly not taken that into account when planning his outfit. He had at least two scarves, a wool coat, and a sweater vest on. All of the pieces were in some awful shade of brown, but none of them quite the same awful shade. His one effort towards compromising his wardrobe for the environment came in the form of khaki shorts. Aziraphale always had the air of being someone's dotty old great uncle, but in this getup he appeared to be someone's dotty old great uncle who was also a homeless professor of archeology. He was waving frantically, as if in an effort to increase his chances of achieving the title of the oddest looking person in Las Vegas (well, by the standards of Las Vegas). Crowley spent a second or two considering the consequences of pretending they didn't know one another, but ultimately his sense of friendship and charity took over, and he instead made his way down the sidewalk and smacked Aziraphale on the side of the head.
“Ow! What was that for?” Aziraphale whined, rubbing his cheek.
“I'm not walking around with you dressed like that. It's for your own good.” Crowley put his hands on the angel's shoulders, where a white jacket was quite befuddled to find itself hung (it was a surprisingly self-aware jacket). Aziraphale glanced down to find a matching pair of pants and a blue bowtie. He glared at it until it was tartan, and then Crowley glared at it until it was blue again, if it knew what was good for it.
“I'm sorry I'm such an embarrassment,” the angel sniffed.
“You know it's not like that. I don't want someone thinking you're senile and wandering,” Crowley huffed, patting him on the sides of his arms in an attempt to be reassuring. It was an aura that fit him awkwardly, like a Christmas present with too much folding and too little tape, but Aziraphale was always the type to say it was the thought that counted, and his eyes softened.
“Ah, well, I suppose it’s good that at least one of us is keeping up with the fashions these days. What with all those low trousers and people wearing three shirts at a time.” His face turned as serious as stone. “I saw a woman on this street with a bra made of feathers, it's quite disconcerting.” Crowley laughed.
“I'm pretty sure feather bras are more of a regional than generational fashion.”
“You never know,” Aziraphale intoned with an air of awe at the ingenuity humans must have to invent new and bizarre fashions every few years, “remember when you said that about trousers?” The demon shrugged, but inwardly conceded that he had a point.
Their first stop was at a white hotel, its interior decorated with fake gold and faker marble, themed after Ancient Rome. Crowley had suggested it. He had a special sort of fondness for grand monuments to the stereotypes of different cultures. It was a loving and hating relationship that most world travelers eventually develop. Crowley, having both time and space marked somewhere in the passport he never found himself needing to get into another country, felt it more than the common cosmopolitan. When they entered the building and made their way across the lobby he gleefully pointed out the amateurish fonts on the signs, the ridiculous unpainted statues, the Gladiators that wouldn't have lasted a minute in a fight, Cleopatra in sequins. Aziraphale found it charming.
“I think it's quite nice. All different cultures of the world right here in one city.” Crowley frowned.
“Come on angel, you know this isn't anything like Rome used to be.”
“Well, perhaps not perfectly so, but it's clearly doing its best. I think it's a wonderful sentiment, all the different places that have their own hotels here. If you can't choose between going to Paris or New York, of if you'd like something more Medieval or Classical, you can come here and enjoy as many cultures as you have time for.” Crowley bobbed his head in what might pass for a nod in some reluctant circles.
“Aright, I suppose if you say it like that-”
“This place isn't too terribly sinful after all.” Crowley stopped short, shoulders raised. Aziraphale continued on prattling about for a few feet before noticing that he had been abandoned by his companion, like a rocketship by its booster, and turned back.
“Crowley? I can't find my way around without you, you know. ”
“What do you mean it's not sinful?”
“I just meant to say that it isn't exactly, what did you call it, Sodom and Gomorrah II? I suppose it just goes to show, even in the middle of a wasteland in a city born of sinful greed, humans are just a bit more good than they are bad.” The angel took his fellow traveler's hand, patting it reassuringly “It's a very nice try though.” Crowley narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he had expected: after six thousand years, plus or minus some spare change, he doubted he had a button that Aziraphale was neither aware of nor without desire to push.
“Fine then, let's go on to the slots, shall we?” Aziraphale shrugged.
“Whatever you think would make for a good time, dear.” As they came closer and closer to the center of the casino, where all bets were reverently placed, they were engulfed by a wall of cigarette smoke. When their eyes adjusted to the smog and lighting Aziraphale was able to survey a sea of tables, wheels, and one armed bandits of all types.
“Look at them.” Crowley looked like a hen that was particularly satisfied with her chicks, or perhaps like a cat who had been satisfied by them. “Sitting in front of a machine, feeding it their money, getting plastered and staring at the screen until their eyes get sore. It's a factory of slothfulness and greed, and they do it all to themselves. You set it up, give them something to do and something to drink, and they'll be content.” There was something he could say here that would be thematically complacent, something about bread and carnivals, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
“It's not just the ones on the floor either,” he continued. “The House may be reaping all the profits, but they certainly aren't taking into account the whole camel-needle arrangement when it comes to their immortal souls. Now, you can't tell me that this isn't sinful. Less chaotic, sure, but when you get everything organized like this it actually increases output at a steadier-”
“Eternal hope,” Aziraphale piped up, rather ruining Crowley's gloating.
“Pardon?”
“What is gambling but a sign of eternal hope, my dear boy? These people have come from all over the country, the world even, to try their luck. Most of them just want to have a bit of fun, say they'll be happy with a few extra pounds, but they all secretly hope for a windfall. They keep working at it because they want to feel the thrill of victory, and they aren't a bit discouraged when it doesn't come immediately.”
“Bullshit. It's a lot of greed and stupidity and it won't do them any favors with your lot.”
“The bible doesn't condemn gambling.”
“The bible doesn't condemn people who watch porn videos, or do heroin, or cut you off on the road, but we both know where that kind of behavior will get you.” Aziraphale looked across the fluorescent valley of gaming, smiling vaguely.
“An awful lot of praying gets done here.”
“You know just as well as I that that doesn't mean anything. There's an awful lot of praying that happens in Hell too.”
“And there's a chapel every few feet, and so many priests manning them.”
“You're enjoying this.”
“Am I not supposed to enjoy our vacation? I know you took all of my comfortable clothes, but I assumed that was just your personal vanity getting in the way of your compassion. I had no idea you had larger designs to make me hate it here.”
“Not hate it here, I just wanted…” Crowley trailed off, not sure exactly what he wanted. A bit of recognition, for them to have a nice time. In the very least to make Aziraphale lose faith in the essential goodness of the human soul. He didn't ask for much. “I suppose it doesn't matter much what I wanted. Do you want to play?” Aziraphale grinned and took out a crisp twenty dollar bill. He seemed very proud of himself for remembering to pay for something, much less in the right currency.
“There are so many games.” The angel was more excited by this instance of diversity than Crowley had expected. He ran to and fro between the machines, pointing to the pictures that differentiated them as if taking part in an Easter-egg hunt. “Look, this one has wolves on it!” He was entertained by this for a moment before moving on. “That one is about vampires, and there's another one on Cowboys, and the other one over there is about that television program where the women talk about shoes.” He paused in front of a bright red machine portraying a woman with horns and a tail, lounging on a pile of skulls in a bikini. It was entitled “Seven Circles of Luck.”
“Really, my dear?” Crowley bristled.
“Wasn't my idea.” Aziraphale seemed content to play an older model machine with galloping horses on it. He pulled the lever, watched the wheels with excitement, and clapped when they came to a stop. He didn't seem to notice or mind that he wasn't winning anything, being too busy pointing out all the wonderful pictures. Crowley wandered over to a table where some college students were counting cards, mucked around with the deck a bit, and enjoyed the shock on one particularity gawky cheater's face when he lost every last one of his chips. He talked someone into staying for “just a few more turns,” and advised everyone who cared to hear it to double down. He stole someone's sunscreen out of their backpack, mixed up someone else's drink order, and drained several cellphone batteries. By the time he had gotten bored and come back, Aziraphale had nearly run out of quarters.
“Fancy a bite to eat?”
“Just after this turn.” The angel put his final round of quarters in, pulled the lever, and jumped when the machine began to flash colors and make noises. “What's hap-” Suddenly, a deluge of quarters came out of the machine, spilling over his lap. He glared at Crowley. “Did you do this?”
“You know, I didn't.” The demon sounded surprised and just a bit disappointed with himself. Aziraphale turned his attention back to the machine, scooping up handfuls of quarters and trying to put them back in. “Did you?”
“Oh, you know I didn't you old serpent.” He turned to the machine; smiling at the most prominently painted horse. “No thank you!” he pleaded in his most pleasantly irritated voice. “Really, it's very nice but- Listen you, I don't have to- There are so many people who actually need this money.” The machine began to blare “Camptown Racers” as Aziraphale failed yet again to force his prize money back into it. “Crowley make it stop!” Crowley looked around, spotting an older woman watching the angel struggle with envy.
“Come over here, would you.” It wasn't really a request. The demon looked around at the waiters and waitresses, the other hotel guests, the bouncers the House had sent over to check on the validity of their recent winner.
“Crowley, help! It keeps throwing money at me!”
“I'm helping right now, get away from the machine. All of you pay attention.” He made deliberate eye contact with the crowd around him, they could feel it through his tinted glasses, then pointed at the woman “She's the one who got the jackpot, got it? You don't even remember this one,” he jerked his thumb at Aziraphale, “being here. All you know is she was playing here for hours and then suddenly she won.”
“I did?” The woman stared at Crowley with dazed eyes.
“Yup.” The demon patted her on the shoulder, sitting her down where Aziraphale had been. “Congratulations.” A faint smile began to tug at the sides of her face.
“I won! I won!” She began screaming with excitement, which jerked the rest of the bystanders out of their daze. In the commotion, the two man shaped beings slipped past them and out of the casino.
“You really shouldn't mess around with people like that.” Aziraphale said in a voice that was not even bothering to sound angry.
“You really shouldn't play slots if you don't expect to win. Now come on, I want to take you to Paris.”
The hotel they found themselves in front of, an ornate building dwarfed by a replica of the Eiffel Tower, was a bit more accurate than the one they had just left. There was a truly ridiculous concentration of art nouveau pieces, and a hilarious mix of English and French on their signs, but at least there weren't people dressed up as mimes everywhere. Aziraphale found it charming. Crowley was beginning to suspect he would feel that way about everything he was shown.
When they arrived at the restaurant the host was surprised to tell them that there was, in fact, a table open on the balcony. As Aziraphale fussed about the menu Crowley made an extra effort to point out the driving billboards that promoted strip shows, the people on the street handing out pamphlets for escort services that bordered on pornography. The angel was more interested in salads.
“Be honest, angel, they bother you,” Crowley wheedled.
“Oh, can't we just enjoy our food?” Aziraphale fussed. “Look, our waitress has it now.” To the waitress' surprise, and despite them not having ordered yet, she did. Crowley picked up his fork and gave the angel a look that implied this conversation was not yet over.
“How can you not be bothered by prostitution?” Crowley asked once he had finished most of his pasta. “It's not like gambling, you can’t pretend it's all fine and dandy. There's that whole “feet go down to death, steps lay hold of hell” bit in Proverbs.”
“No one is beyond redemption. Besides, many of these women are entertainers, not prostitutes.”
“Aright then, are strip clubs not evil then?” Aziraphale considered this.
“It's difficult to call dedicated performers working long hours to provide for their families and educations evil.”
“Why are you so struck on proving to me that this city isn't just a massive agglomeration of sin?” Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“There's a lot of wholesome entertainment here. There's that circus with the grand stage and all the people in costume. They have a show with that be-bop band.”
“The Beatles?”
“No, with the,” the angel made a motion around his head, as if trying to feel up a bowler hat, “with the hair.”
“Elvis?”
“That one.”
“You know, they have another show about sex. There's a particularly nice part with two girls kissing in a saucer of water.” Aziraphale coughed slightly, trying and failing to muffle it with a spoonful of soup.
“Well, everyone has their own tastes.” They were quiet for a while. “It has good food.”
“That depends on where you go. Trust me, Pollution would feel self-conscious about the sanitation here.”
“The people certainly seem nice.”
“Now you're just making things up.”
“Oh look, dessert!” For the rest of the meal Aziraphale steered the conversation like a toddler trying to get a cat to stick its head in a paper bag. Crowley, used to this strategy, continued to needle him. As they watched a performance of acrobats and stunt people, he asked Aziraphale to explain how a city with so many clowns in it could have something right with it. As they stopped off for some ice-cream, he gestured to the carpet of naked women's pictures covering the sidewalk, and stuck one or two card in the back of the angel's collar to emphasize his point. As they watched two men dressed up as knights run into each other with wooden sticks, he wondered aloud how glorifying this time period could do anyone good. Eventually, after purchasing some beers in cups that lip up in greens and yellows, Aziraphale told him that he'd explain everything to the demon if he could just keep his mouth shut for fifteen minutes. On decidedly hostile terms with the honking horns and calling peddlers around him, Aziraphale further suggested they spend those fifteen minutes somewhere quiet. Crowley recommended the tower of the hotel at which they had watched the almost comically tame jousting.
Aziraphale counted every second aloud.
“...eight hundred ninety eight, eight hundred ninety nine,” he took a long draw from his beer “, nine hundred.”
“Alright, why are you so bent on saying this place isn't sinful?” Aziraphale looked down, morose, at the humans on the street below.
“Honestly dear, I didn’t want you to like it here. And you know what's awful?” Aziraphale mused, his face a sickly undersea blue in the light of the tower on which they sat. “I'm starting to think I like it here.”
“What's awful about that?”
“It's just,” the angel sighed, looking over the strip, “I didn't want to get attached. Whenever you come back from here and tell me that I should visit it reminds me of that dinner.”
“I thought we were done with that fight.”
“It isn't the fight, it's just…” Aziraphale narrowed his eyes, and Crowley could see from the reflections there that he was looking miles beyond the Vegas sign, miles into the blackness of the desert. “It's just that it reminds me of the Blitz.”
“Bookshop fared a bit poorly, did it?” Crowley waited for a response in comfortable silence, the noise of cars and human beings windswept away by their altitude. He imagined briefly, fancifully, that he could put his fingers on the bits of Aziraphale's life he hadn't been there for, seal the gaps as if trying out a flute.
“You know what I thought when it first happened, my very first thought?”
“Not a bit.”
“I thought to myself: Well, there goes London. There goes another place for everyone to forget about in 300 years. Soon enough the two of us will be the only ones who know what “Soho” means, just like it was with Mohenjo Daro and Maccu Pichu until they dug them up.”
“That isn’t very optimistic of you.”
“You weren't there. All I could think was: no more Ritz, no more St. James Park, no more walking around and remembering certain conversations we've had on certain benches. All gone, all over again, no landmarks.”
“Oh stop, London's dealt with worse and come out better for it.” Crowley snapped, because he hated how Aziraphale did this, said things that he understood so perfectly, things that he had been content to let gather dust in the corner of his anxieties until the angel came in and made noises about how poorly everything had been taken care of. He hated it because he too felt an obligation to love Las Vegas from a distance, as something someone else did and someone else should worry over. It was a city barely born, and yet they already considered it in terms of rubble.
“Remember we used to walk around Guayabo, that tree we used to sit under? We could point to it and say that the Arrangement was born there. Now it's gone, and that pond is gone to. The one where you told me not to get ideas about us just because you kissed me. Remember you thought that we were going to last a decade, at absolute most?” Crowley hated Aziraphale more for this, because of course her remembered. Because who else had watched cities flourish and die, who else recalled the name of that little place in Aoudaghost where they used to have brunch, who else remembered how the angel had laughed at his airs next to a dark pond, under the shade of an Almond tree? Aziraphale was not the only being with holes in him, cracks in his individual memories, his concepts of phenomena, that no one can verify but Him Himself. Since when, Crowley mused, has Aziraphale been all of that to me?
For a very long time, you idiot, he realized begrudgingly.
“This place, though, it isn't very much like Guayabo.” Aziraphale seemed to be unaware of his companion's mood, his face shifting nostalgically, his voice picking up a bit. “It reminds me more of Cahokia. You remember visiting there when it had only just started up, when the mounds were still under construction, don't you? The marketplace was wonderful.”
“Well, at least here there's less human sacrifice, unless I haven't been keeping as close tabs as I think I’ve been.” Crowley looked briefly concerned, having long since learned not to underestimate what humans could get up to when one wasn't looking, and it distracted him from his place in their universe.
“You wanted to get one of those red stone statues, and I told you that it would be silly to collect mementos, and then,” Aziraphale waved his hands vaguely, as if trying to transfigure his beer back into into water, “gone. I don't even remember the name of the one who started the whole place.” Crowley paused to search his memory.
“Something with a K.”
“I thought it was an R?”
“It isn't as if they had an alphabet at the time.” Aziraphale's melancholy returned from its brief respite, like a cat coming in from the cold, shedding all over him and making him put his head into his hand.
“A pity, he could have written a book. Now no one remembers.” Crowley shrugged.
“It isn't like you fare much better when people remember you. Look at Cleopatra. Speak seven languages, write on philosophy, perform medicine, everyone remembers you from who you had sex with.”
“You aren't making me feel any better my dear.”
“I'm sorry, I just assumed I was invited to this conversation. Please, keep regaling me about how nice the plumbing was at Dholavira.” Aziraphale looked hurt on a multitude of levels.
“It wasn't quite plumbing though, it was reservoirs that they really had down.”
“Some water system. Listen, angel-”
“It’s just that it makes me feel alone. I don't want to come to another city just to watch it die. I don't want us to point up here and say 'there's where we got a bit drunk and fought about reservoirs' and then stop doing that because it’s gone.” Crowley felt something vulnerable coming up in him, like what he imagined being possessed by a sappy birthday card would feel like.
“We don't need all of that to remember,” he hesitated at muttering “, we have each other.”
“But the landmarks-”
“We can be each other's landmarks.”
“We move around a bit too much for that.”
“Stop ruining the moment and listen to me. You know very well I feel like a prat just saying this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I didn't kiss you at that pond in Guayabo,” the demon raised a finger, pressed it to Aziraphale's lips. “I kissed you there. We didn't make the Arrangement under that tree, we made it here.” He held the angel's hands tight, as if they would fuse with enough effort. “Does it really matter that this place might be gone soon? I won't be going anywhere soon. You won't be going anywhere soon.” For a second Aziraphale looked at him oddly, like his face had changed into someone else's, but then his smile took on that shy quality that meant he was particularly pleased.
“You're right.” He leaned in to kiss him, their teeth met awkwardly. They didn't mind.
In the morning Aziraphale had a flight to catch, so he woke early. Crowley helpfully reminded him that he would get less airsick if he flew himself and that they were missing out on invaluable morning sex because of the angel's obsession with legitimacy. Aziraphale, used to this particular brand of temptation, thinned his lips and expected Crowley to take “no” for an answer, unless he had a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses under the sheets with him. The demon eventually relented, and offered to drive him there in the Bentley, which he had forgot was still back in London and therefor wasn't.
“Aren't we getting something from the gift shop first?” Aziraphale asked as he pulled into the boulevard. Crowley was a bit surprised by this request, but nonetheless made a stop at a massive novelty store down the street. After a few minutes, Aziraphale came back out with a pink lawn flamingo cradled in his arms. It had a flowered shirt and sunglasses painted on it, and the angel looked particularly pleased with his choice of souvenir.
“I thought the other one might like a friend,” he explained sheepishly as he tried to lay the lawn ornament comfortably in the back of the Bentley. “To be honest I thought you had been making it up, about them being popular.” As they pulled out of the parking lot the angel looked up at the hotels that surrounded them, the infinite sky, the history of civilization. “I wonder why they like them so much?”
Crowley, though he did not admit it at that moment, had wondered that too when he first found out about them. As far he could gather the logic of the lawn flamingo twisted this way: There used to be wild flamingos in the mainland of America. Real, feathered, thinking things, they roamed in a small colony at the bottom of Florida that sustained them for decades. Then the colonists had come over and gotten it in their heads to hunt them all down. You still saw a flamingo there, on occasion, but more often than not they would be an escapee from a garden or a zoo, an illusion created by a spoonbill of a particular shade at a particular distance.
Years later the humans got it into their heads, as humans do, to feel sorry for this. So they made little plastic baubles, hopeless attempts at decoys, tiny monuments to the progress of humanity. So in love were they with bright colors, wilder days, the miracles of plastics, that they littered their yards with them. They were memorials and they were marks of shame, they were novelties and antiques, they were exotic and common. They sometimes bordered on false gods: pink plastic calves.
This is what Crowley had figured, and this is what had drawn his attention to them in the first place. The particular Americanism of it all, the humanity it sang to. He had picked one up in a gift shop and brought it back to Aziraphale on that first trip, but he had not thought very much about his choice. He had not thought about the comfort derived from modern mockeries of dead colonies. He had not thought about Bugsy Siegel’s hotel, his eyeball popping out of his head and onto the floor of his home. He had not thought about the buildings that still stood to this day, those that did not. He had not thought about Dholavira, Aoudaghost, Cahokia, the great minds that history had let die in the ruins of their civilizations.
He had not thought about a tree, a pond.
He had thought that humans were such sentimental creatures, and so vulnerable to nostalgia. He had thought that it would clash terribly with the musty aura of the shop, and he had made sure Aziraphale that couldn't “accidentally” knock it into pieces down the stairs.
“Humans,” he said with a tone half awed and half exhausted, and this response seemed to satisfy Aziraphale.