A little slice of heaven and hell

5. A demon and an angel?

Aziraphale was slight annoyed by the interruption, but he sighed. "That is roughly what happened."

Samantha listened amazed. "Wow... so.... Wait how fucking old does that make you two?"
"We are over 6000 yearsss old by now." Hissed Crowley.
Samantha's mouth opened half in amazement. She quickly realised it though and closed it again, swallowing. "Well then I guess you two have quite some history together."
Aziraphale nodded. "We do, but sometimes there were hundreds of years between our meetings. First we met mainly on chance though. But as the world progressed, we noticed we had quite a lot in common. For example the people upstairs and below didn't really check up on us, at all. And we began to enjoy the earth quite a lot. We grew fond of it. But no other soul but the two of us experienced the world like we did. So obviously we started hanging out occasionally. We had to take care not to be spotted together though. We were still sworn enemies."
"Of courssse we had feelingsss for each other." continued Crowley. "But we alwaysss pushed them away. Ignoring them, not underssstanding them sssometimes, too."
Aziraphale sighed and nodded. "It was out of the question for a demon and an angel to be fraternizing with each other. So we never did. Because we pushed away our feelings, we eventually forgot to recognise them. It was only when the Antichrist was put on earth things started to shift again."
"The Antichrist?" Samantha asked. "But, if he is on earth, doesn't that mean that Armageddon...."

"We averted it.", explained Aziraphale proudly. "And it is the reason we are now being left alone. Please allow us to explain."
Samantha nodded. Go ahead.
"Well then", the angel went on. "We both realised we didn't want the world to end. Of course we knew we had been working towards it, but we didn't actually wish for the whole planet to die."
"Ssso we made a compromissse." hissed the demon. "We would work together to try and avert it."
Aziraphale nodded. "Eventually it didn't work out the way we had intentionally hoped it would and there were a lot of inconveniences, but we did manage to get it done. Earth was saved. There wouldn't be a war between heaven and hell. And of course, they were furious about it. They wished to see us dead."
"Becaussse thanks to usss, they couldn't go on with their childisssh fight to sssee what ssside would be better." Added Crowley.

There was a pause and Samantha hummed. "Then how did you manage to flee your trial? How did you make them so scared they leave you alone now?"
Aziraphale smiled slight excited. "We came up with a simple but daring plan. We knew we would be killed by a trail of holy water and hellfire, because that is the only way to effectively kill a demon and an angel, so we did the most daring exchange trick of the world. We changed bodies. Mind you we didn't know if it was going to work. If a normal demon and angel would do that, their bodies would just discorporate on the spot, because they wouldn't be able to handle the switch of energy. But we took the gamble that we had been close to each other long enough for the trick to work. And it did. It worked beautifully. We were able to copy our behaviour well enough to fool both parties." said Aziraphale with a proud shimmer in his eyes.
"We managed to make them think we had gone native. That we had become immune becaussse we had become neither of the two. They became ssscared and have left usss alone sssince."

Samantha was impressed. "What a trick. But I understand why you did it. You had nothing to lose anymore anyway."
"Indeed", said Aziraphale. "But they are still out for our death and I am sure they are still trying to figure out a way to kill us. So we still don't show our affection in public. And that is why we need you to stay silent."
Samantha nodded seriously. "I see the importance. I swear I won't speak about this with a soul. This is way too important. I wouldn't want the death of an angel and a demon blamed on me."

"Thank you dear." Aziraphale smiled relieved at her. "It is good to hear you understand it."

"There is.... Still just one more thing. How did you two break through your barrier of blocked emotions?"
Aziraphale sighed. "That was and still is a hard process. It involved a night in which we really realised how far our newfound freedom stretched."
"It alssso involved an ssshitload of alcohol." Added Crowley.