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A Novel Assignation	By : kenaz Category: G through L > Good Omens Views: 2384 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Good Omens, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-A Novel Assignation
- 1
Slouching petulantly below the enormous vaulted ceiling, Crowley glanced up to the balustrade encircling the gallery and was convinced that the bronze statues of Plato and Bacon were glaring at him. He turned slightly and saw the truculent gaze of Beethoven. This was a slight improvement, but overall, he couldn't help feeling a bit brought-down. A porcine man with an American flag necktie sprawling limp as a dead haddock over his prodigious belly wheezed by him carrying a stack of law journals and tromped on one of Crowley's snakeskin shoes. He made a subtle gesture with his hand and consoled himself with the knowledge that in about fifteen minutes, the man would have an attack of flatulence so raunchy it could strangulate small animals.
"When you said Library of Congress, this wasn’t exactly the congresssss I had in mind."
Aziraphale looked at him, confounded. "What sort of congress did you think it was?"
Crowley commenced a very specific hand gesture. "I had rather hoped it would be this sort of congress. I mean, they're Americans, yeah? I would think that sort of library would be right up their alley!"
The angel sighed heavily. It was a sigh that said how could anyone as ancient as you are possibly be so absurd, but not in so many words. "The Library of Congress has a world-class collection, and it just so happens that they have a particular volume I was unable to find anywhere else. You mustn't underestimate the Americans. They've got two Gutenberg bibles!"
Crowley gasped. "Sssssteve Guttenberg has a bible?" While not terribly familiar with Americans on the whole, he did like their movies, and he had seen the entire Police Academy canon at least four times. The fact that there were not one, or two, or three, but six sequels, made it irrefutably clear that his people had infiltrated Hollywood, but even an inveterate demon had to ask himself if Police Academy 6: City Under Siege was crossing the line.
"Not Steve Guttenberg. Johannes Gutenberg."
"Ah. Right. His brother, then."
Aziraphale rolled his eyes in his insufferable 'Heaven-help-me' way. "Cousin. A very, very distant cousin."
*************************************************************************************
Once at the reference desk, it became disappointingly clear that the librarians of Congress would not simply hand over a 19th-century reprint of Apollinaris of Laodicea's treatise on premillennialism to just anyone, even if that anyone happened to be an angel with an artlessly candid expression of scholarly desperation and tartan trousers on. Even if that anyone said pretty, pretty please.
Bloodied but unbowed, Aziraphale gestured with his head toward the small, dark door bearing the placard 'Stacks Entrance. Employees Only.' Crowley raised his eyebrows and the angel diffidently shrugged. "Desperate times, and all that."
"I've got just the trick," Crowley told him, feeling smug. Just then, a man was coming through the door carrying a load of books on modern philosophy. Crowley stopped dead in front of him, shot his cuffs, and with a debonair sweep of his hand, murmured: "These are not the droids you're looking for."
The man looked at him like he was absolutely daft.
"This area is for employees only." He said flatly and shouldered past. Crowley glared after him, certain the man had intentionally poked him with a corner of Ecce Homo as he went by.
Aziraphale cleared his throat softly. "The Jedi Mind Trick only works if you're a Jedi. Or an angel."
"How'd your people pull that off?" Crowley barked indignantly. A chorus of Shhhhhhhhh rose up around him like an ill-smelling fog.
Aziraphale waited for the door to open again. When this librarian stepped out, he laid his hand gently on the man's shoulder and said in a soft voice, politely but firmly, "We need to go into the stacks." His eyes glowed seraphically.
Dazed and suddenly feverish looking, the man nodded slowly and repeated his words.
"Into the stacks..."
He stepped aside and allowed them to pass while Crowley grumbled something uncharitably beneath his breath that began with an unprintable, ended with 'angel' and had 'Jedi' somewhere in between.
************************************************************************************
"What is it we're looking for again?"
The stacks of the Library of Congress looked much like the stacks at Oxford or Cambridge or any other large, dimly lit, climate controlled repository for books the world has forgotten about. Aziraphale, with the practiced expertise of one who has spent far too many hours navigating just such labyrinthine corridors, deftly wended past bank after bank of buckram and leather, fondling the bindings with a fondness that stopped just shy of obscene. Crowley skulked along behind, poking their spines in accusation, occasionally pulling one off the shelf and replacing it upside down out and backward of spite. He was missing the Manchester Derby for this, he silently glowered. He hadn't much use for libraries. You couldn't smoke in them, or eat in them, or drink in them. Wanking in them was Very Strongly Discouraged, and talking got you shushed by some bun-headed biddy with a disdainful, puckered mouth like a poodle's bum (which, he thought sourly, clearly explained why the angel felt so damnably at home in them). And to add insult to injury, if you didn't bring things back when you were supposed to (and really, when you're as old as the entire sodding world, sometimes a week or three slipped by without you noticing) it cost you 10p a day! All for the privilege of borrowing a dog-eared copy of Peyton Place with unidentifiable stains on the cover and pages 127 through 130 torn out. And Peyton Place was about as good as it got, since one couldn't very well just sidle up to the counter and ask Miss Poodle-bum-mouth where she kept the back issues of Naughty Neighbours and Unzipped.¹
"First, we need to find the B's."
"Bees? Is this the Apiary of Congress, too?" Crowley inquired snidely. "And more importantly, are the bees getting any congress? Because I, for one, am not."
Aziraphale ignored him entirely. "In the Library of Congress classification scheme, books on philosophy, psychology and religion are given call numbers beginning with the letter B. We are looking for the BT's: Doctrinal theology. Specifically numbers 819 through 891: Eschatology and last things."
"I don't suppose they've got a call number for porno," Crowley grumbled.
"HQ450 through 472."
"I'm not sure if I should be impressed or appalled that you know that."
The angel looked far too pleased with himself. "You're out of luck, however; the H's aren't in this wing. Perhaps you'd like to explore the PR's."
"Er...the whats?"
"The PR's. In the LC classification, PR stands for Language and literature: English."
"Of course it does," Crowley grumbled lowly. "So in other wordsssss, 'get thee behind me, bugger off and find some way to amuse yourself.'"
"Yes." The angel nodded blithely. "Precisely."
***********************************************************************************
Following the little signs tacked up on the ends of the shelves, Crowley stalked grudgingly through the stacks in search of the elusive PR's. How 'P' and 'R' had come to be librarian shorthand for Language and literature: English was truly beyond him, but then, it had taken him the last 500 or so years just to suss out physical location of the various libraries in London on the rare occasion he was forced to consult actual books.² As far as Crowley was concerned, all library cataloguing systems smacked of ineffability and, therefore, of angelic interference. Passing the PN's (Literature: General, ostensibly) he resisted the urge to make a copy of Arnold Bennet's Literary Taste and How to Form It (charmingly bound in pea green and orange naugahyde) spontaneously combust.
Scanning the shelves, a title on a dusty spine caught his eye: Fanny Hill.
He sniggered like a schoolboy, chastised himself for acting like a prepubescent twit, then sniggered some more as he tugged the book from the shelf and examined the fly leaf.
Fanny Hill or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.
His perfectly groomed eyebrows rose with a rakish arch. He nodded approvingly, sank down to the floor, and began to read.
* * *
For his part, Crowley had recalled the eighteenth century as being rather dull. Oh, there had been lots of jaunty little revolutions and whatnot to spice things up, but on the whole, it had seemed rather like a tedious party with an endless array of vapid parlor games. And the wigs had been itchy. Though, in its defense, the eighteenth century, while still leaving a bit desired in the hygiene department, had been a marked improvement over the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Having now read Fanny Hill, Letter One, parts one through three, he came to the belated realization that he had clearly been hanging around all the wrong people. After all, despite an in-depth scan of his memory, he could not recall ever meeting a single woman (or man, for that matter) in the inclusive reign of Georges I through IV who had done anything like this:
I, smiling in his face, took the letter, and immediately catching gently hold of his shirt sleeve, drew him towards me, blushing, and almost trembling; for surely his extreme bashfulness, and utter inexperience, call'd for, at least, all the advances to encourage him: his body was now conveniently inclin'd towards me, and just softly chucking his smooth beardless chin, I asked him if he was afraid of a lady? . . ., and, with that took, and carrying his hand to my breasts, I prest it tenderly to them. They were now finely furnish'd, and rais'd in flesh, so that, panting with desire, they rose and fell, in quick heaves, under his touch: at this, the boy's eyes began to lighten with all the fires of inflam'd nature, and his cheeks flush'd with a deep scarlet: tongue-tied with joy, rapture, and bashfulness, he could not speak, but then his looks, his emotion, sufficiently satisfy'd me that my train had taken, and that I had no disappointment to fear.
Actually, there had been that Abbess in Montmorency just before the Revolution... Aziraphale had given him the cold shoulder for nearly forty years for that, and even Crowley's attempt to placate him ("For what it's worth, she was screaming your peoples' names when she came.") hadn't softened him a whit. In the interest of the Arrangement, Crowley had agreed to lay off the clergy for a bit.
And now, glancing my eyes towards that part of his dress which cover'd the essential object of enjoyment, I plainly discover'd the swell and commotion there; and as I was now too far advanc'd to stop in so fair a way, and was indeed no longer able to contain myself, or wait the slower progress of his maiden bashfulness (for such it seem'd, and really was), I stole my hand upon his thighs, down one of which I could both see and feel a stiff hard body, confin'd by his breeches, that my fingers could discover no end to.
At the mention of 'maiden bashfulness,' a rather familiar face came to mind. A familiar face which was right now, at this very moment, bent in rapt and beatific ecstasy over some obscure tome on eschatology or scatology or whatever obscure –ology he was fixating on today. It occurred to him that he quite liked that expression of rapt and beatific ecstasy. Rather wished, in fact, that he was seeing it right now, though preferably from the book's perspective.
Curious then, and eager to unfold so alarming a mystery, playing, as it were, with his buttons, which were bursting ripe from the active force within, those of his waistband and fore-flap flew open at a touch, when out IT started; and now, disengag'd from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ'd, it must have belong'd to a young giant.
Crowley sighed nostalgically. It wasn't the angel's face he was picturing now. The words 'flaming sword' popped into his mind unbidden. He reached down and sorted out the uncomfortable constriction of his worsted Armani slacks. He had opted, as per usual, to "go commando," and the imported Italian wool was starting to feel more like medieval torture than luxury couture. And if anyone knew medieval torture from luxury couture, it was Crowley.
Its prodigious size made me shrink again; yet I could not, without pleasure, behold, and even ventur'd to feel, such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory! perfectly well turn'd and fashion'd, the proud stiffness of which distended its skin, whose smooth polish and velvet softness might vie with that of the most delicate of our sex, and whose exquisite whiteness was not a little set off by a sprout of black curling hair round the root, through the jetty sprigs of which the fair skin shew'd as in a fine evening you may have remark'd the clear light ether throught the branchwork of distant trees over-topping the summit of a hill: then the broad and blueish-casted incarnate of the head, and blue serpentines of its veins, altogether compos'd the most striking assemblage of figure and colours in nature. In short, it stood an object of terror and delight.
A demon can be expected to have only so much forbearance. After all, they were biologically, psychologically, and philosophically inclined toward giving in to sin rather than abstaining from it. Indulegence was practically his middle name.³ Crowley slammed the book shut and limped swiftly back from whence he came, with frequent pauses to adjust his trousers, until he saw the tall, lithe form of the Angel happily arched over an open book somewhere in the 'B' section. B, which in the inscrutable language of the Library of Congress meant Philosphy, Psychology and Religion, but to his fevered reptilian brain meant Bare Bottoms, Bollocks, and Buggery.
The angel, for his part, didn't even look up at Crowley's approach, happily ensconced as he was in the arcane delights of academic woolgathering and bibliophilia, so Crowley cut straight to the chase. He pried one of Aziraphale's long, delicately tapered hands off the tome and held it firmly, and with a great deal of explicit demand, against the raging cockstand that was utterly ruining the line of his Armani slacks. In case there was still any misunderstanding, he dipped his head, quirked an eyebrow and stared up at Aziraphale over his sunglasses, reptilian eyes dilated to a ovoid field of black barely ringed with yellow, in a fashion he was pretty confident would be construed as "smoldering."
"I take it you found something to read," Aziraphale quipped as the demon shoved him roughly against the stacks, ejecting all four copies of Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World out the other side of the shelf, whereupon they made a less-than-apocalyptic clatter against the floor. Crowley's response was a sharp nip to that delightful little spot on his neck just behind Aziraphale's jaw and below his ear. The angel squeaked like a rubber dog toy. This noise only confirmed Crowley's desire to ensure Aziraphale's mouth would be engaged in further squeaky noises for the next, oh, fourteen hours or so.
When his tartan trousers slid down to the floor in an indecorous pile, revealing white boxer shorts with little ducks on, Aziraphale blushed fiercely and took an anxious look over each shoulder. "You do realize that fornicating in the stacks might be considered a 'wile'."
Crowley raked his fingers down the angel's warm, bare sides and felt him squirm delectably.
"So thwart me," he hissed.
****************************************************************************************
"Well," sighed the angel as he extinguished the fifth match Crowley had conjured and decidedly ignoring the way the demon glowered over the unlit fag dangling from his lip, "I suppose it is the Library of Congress, after all."
Crowley might have considered another round (he distinctly remembered a couple of passages from Letter One, Part Five, that were remarkably inspiring), but he could hear the low rumble of casters down the hallway. Aziraphale, ever one for decorum, frantically reached for his boxer shorts, which had been kicked under the shelves. Crowley took his time. Momentarily, a squat, red-headed woman turned down the aisle, pushing a well-stocked book truck. She stopped dead when she saw them, and shook her head as if to dislodge the hallucination of two scantily-clad entities in the stacks, lounging against the BT's.⁴
It didn't work.
Crowley sprang up and waved his hand meaningfully in front of her face.
"These are not the droids you're looking for!" he commanded.
The librarian opened her mouth to scream.
"What did I tell you about that?" Aziraphale snipped. He smiled benignly at the woman, who was now wielding her truck like a weapon, though seemingly unsure whether to employ it as a battering ram or a shield. Aziraphale passed a manicured hand before her face and said to her mildly, almost apologetically, "These are not the droids you're looking for."
Her mouth froze in mid-scream and her eyebrows buckled. Her face took on an expression of supreme confusion. "These are not the droids I'm looking for?" she asked uncertainly, and then pushed her way past them as if they were invisile, the book truck making its echoey trundling noise in the droidless emptiness of the corridor.
Crowley looked on with envious awe. "I do wish you'd tell me how you do that."
Aziraphale grinned enigmatically. "We'd best be going, I think." He picked Apollinaris of Laodicea up off the floor and gingerly mopped the spine with his sleeve before placing it reverently back and pausing three times to readjust its perfect parallel alignment to the shelf.
"I don't suppose you'd fancy going back to the hotel and engaging in a discussion of the use of metaphor in eighteenth century pornography, would you? Strictly academic."
"Oh, my people think all literary endeavors should be wholeheartedly encouraged."
"Well then," Crowley beamed, tucking his shirttails back into his trousers. "Far be it from me to disappoint them."
Aziraphale winked at him, and pretended not to notice the purloined copy of Fanny Hill protruding from the demon's back pocket.
* * * * * * * *
¹_{Well, actually, one could, but Crowley, having done so once already-- unsuccessfully, it should be noted-- knew that doing so again would be Markedly Ill Advised.}
²_{Not to be confused with metaphorical books, which are essentially non-existent, nor, for that matter, with Reader's Digest Condensed Books, which are only really books in the most general sense, just as condensed milk is really only milk by the broadest possible definition.}
³_{Actually, his middle name was a complex, wiggly sigil that he alternately translated as Forneus, Oriax , or Dave.}
⁴_{That would be Doctrinal Theology: Eschatology and last things, if you weren't paying attention.}

A/N, redux: Italicized excerpts come from Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland. First published in 1748, it is in the public domain and can be found in its hilariously bawdy entirety here: http://eserver.org/fiction/fanny-hill. It is worth reading if only for the endless and fascinating parade of obscure and antiquated euphemisms for genitalia!
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A Novel Assignation