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Beelzebub, Gabriel, Crowley and Aziraphale are smooshed onto the couch whilst Muiel has taken up the armchair and Eric sits at their feet, clutching a can of lager.
(Opening scene: The War Flashback)
Gabriel starts guffawing immediately, “nice dreads sunshine!”
Aziraphale throws a cushion at him over Crowley, “quiet, you. It just started. Wait, where is this supposed to even be happening….? What is this place? Where are everyone's wings?”
Everyone gasps in unison, before Muriel squeaks out, “Did Uriel just…. compliment you?”
“Yes.” Aziraphales answers peevishly before looking genuinely upset “apparently for my skilled rogue angel murdering strategies. I would never. I would NEVER!”
“I know,” Crowley takes his hand and looks at him tenderly. “It isn’t real though. You didn’t.”
Beelzebub interrupts, “Can we pause for a sec? What the fuck is the eternal flame?”
A chorus of “No and no ideas” is the answer.
Eric muses, “saw a thing like that once – it was at a startup launch with an open bar on a concrete patio, in Austin. They had dozens.”
Beelzebub makes a gagging noise, “tech bros.”
On screen, Aziraphale pulls out his flaming sword and Crowley giggles, “where is that these days? Back of the closet, Angel?” He’s still giggling until he appears on screen and everyone does a collective “ooooooooooh” and he’s silenced, narrowing his eyes in annoyance. “I would have at least washed my face before groping you. And why am I the only one with wings? Just so they could make them look like filthy shite? Oh wait, they're gone now, cause that makes sense.”
“Why am I a general again?” Azirahale talks over him.
“Forget that, why are we introducing ourselves here? We’d already met, I mean, kind of, but then we really met in the garden. This is superfluous and it doesn’t make narrative sense.”
“We know it was really the garden for us. When I was privileged enough to finally meet the real you.” Aziraphale looks at him fondly and kisses his cheek. “And that’s good enough for me.”
“Ew.” Gabriel throws a bit of popcorn at them. “Get a room.”
“You’re currently in our living room, on our sofa, you git.” Crowley retorts. “Go get a different room if you’ve got a problem.”
“Shhhhhh….” Muriel butts in. “You’re hurt and he’s about to -”
“WHOA!” Crowley goes high pitched in excitement, “look at them slutty knees!”
Aziraphale hides his face in his hands but then pops back up, “Smiting?! Smiting?! I’ve never smitten anyone, well, aside from that one time with the Halo, but… Now I’m, I’m, what? Out there smiting angels like some sort of murderer? Not just a strategist?”
In the middle of his exasperation, Eric gives him a cheers from the floor, lifting his beer, “Didn’t hurt a bit, really. Had a lot worse.”
“Smote me pretty hard.” Crowley snuggles him against him. “The good kind… not the…you know…other kind.”
The opening credits roll and Beelzebub kicks their feet up onto the coffee table, ignoring Aziraphale’s glare at the boots next to the charcuterie. “I’ve got a feeling this thing is going to be hot garbage.”
Muriel pleads, “Just give it a chance… it’s barely started. Maybe it will get better?”
Cue Crowley, on screen, laying in a filthy alleyway half out of a sleeping bag being observed by a CGI rat. Beelzebub starts cackling so hard they choke and begin wheezing.
“Oh come onnnn!” Crowley whines. “What the fuck.”
Now it’s Aziraphale’s turn to show up in Heaven. Gabriel sits up and leans over Crowley to poke Aziraphale in the arm. “Don’t think they like you much up there, buddy.”
Crowley smacks his hand away. “No touching.”
“Hahahaha. Michael looks so annoyed,” Beelzebub adds before Muriel makes a confused face and asks, “Why am I there? I was in the bookshop.”
“Jesus!” Eric hollers, “drink!”
They all raise their glasses (a mixture of whiskey, wine, cocktails, and tea (Muriel)) and clink them together.
“Holy shit they just exploded the Metatron!” Gabriel sits up and points at the scattering of sparkly dust. At this development, they pause the film for refills and collective laughter.
“Fifteen minutes. He didn’t even make it fifteen minutes,” Crowley is snickering. “And it’s obviously Michael.”
“Michael killed the Met-a-tron!” Eric sings out.
Over the next few minutes the group is mostly quiet – other than Crowley going on an expletive laden tirade about how losing the Bentley to that twat gangster is the most backwards dumbfuckery he’s ever heard of and a stupid waste of air time to the plot, Eric yelling “DRINK” every time Jesus appears, and Aziraphale lamenting that he too would like a grilled cheese sandwich.
“This is boring. How is this so boring?” Beelzebub finishes their drink and snaps another into place. “Who are these gangsters and why do we care?”
“Ooooh. We’re back in hell!” Muriel claps in excitement.
“Whaaaaaa… I supposedly can’t say Jesus? Jesus Jesus Jesus. Jesus. Jesus H. Christ. ” Eric snorts.
“Oh, should we have invited Dagon to this? Or Michael for that matter?” Aziraphale asks, I didn’t think to, but it might have been a nice gesture.”
“NO.” the group answers in unison.
They finally get to the part where Aziraphale comes to Earth and finds Crowley, and Aziraphale seems to be shrinking into himself on the sofa in shame. Crowley has his arm around him protectively, “I know, I know. It isn’t you.” Aziraphale has the beginning of tears in his eyes and Crowley squeezes him tighter. “It wouldn't have happened this way, never. Not in any universe. I know that, I promise.”
The next ten minutes are awkward for everyone, except Gabriel, who has fallen asleep.
Then they all start getting tipsy in earnest. “Jesus, drink! Jesus, drink!” (Jesus is on screen a lot here).
Beelzebub slurs out, “knew I should have been the one to make the drinking game rules. I’m not gonna make it unless I do a mid movie sober up.”
Muriel is asleep now too, their last words before conking out being, “Harry the fish? Will Jesus make more Harries?”
The entire next section is a bit of a blur.
“What the… there isn’t a hallway like that.” (Aziraphale)
“BYEBYE SANDY NUTSACK” (Beelzebub)
At the ice cream truck scene, Crowley just shrugs. “I’m not even mad about it, it’s too stupid.”
Aziraphale perks up at his and Crowley’s appearance back in heaven and he wiggles out a notebook from his jacket.
“What are you doing?” Crowley eyes him suspiciously.
“Taking some notes on the sartorial choices of the costume department. Those trousers are… flattering.”
Crowley raises an eyebrow at him and smirks. “I see.”
Muriel comes back awake at a nudge from Eric. “You’re on again.”
At the Book of Life appearing to just be set out on a pedestal in unguarded plain sight they all groan and have to pause again.
“It doesn’t even exist!” (Beelzebub)
“Yeah and now neither does the Metatron.” (Aziraphale)
“Why would it just be sitting out there like that?” (Eric)
“How is this getting stupider?” (Crowley)
Muriel, to everyone’s shock, slaps their palms on their thighs and exclaims. “That’s it. I need a fucking drink.”
The entire room goes dead silent and Aziraphale snaps a frozen piña colada with a fruit flag and umbrella into their hands as quickly as possible. They smile broadly and look at it gratefully. “Oh! Thank you!”
Crowley and Aziraphale exchange a raised eyebrow look and Aziraphale mouths at him accusingly, “they learned that language from you.”
Silently laughing, Crowley bites his bottom lip, trying to keep quiet, before nodding excitedly and looking far too proud of himself. Gabriel has slumped over and is heavily resting on his shoulder, snoring, so he roughly pushes him off and into Beelzebub’s lap, spilling some of their drink in the process.
“Oi! Dickhead!”
Gabriel shoots up, his hair smashed flat on one side from Crowley’s shoulder and sticking up in the back from the sofa. “WhatdidImiss?”
They resume the film, all in a state of half annoyance, half amusement, and then onscreen Aziraphale does a thing with his teeth and Crowley shifts his hips next to him before going oddly still.
The scene transitions to back in hell again and Eric gets up from his cross legged position and slides into Muriel’s lap in the armchair she’s been occupying. “Look at you,” he whispers in their ear. “So bad.”
Beelzebub scoffs and stuffs a handful of cheese and meat into their mouth, talking around it. “I don’t understand how they made show Hell look cheaper and worse than actual Hell-Hell. Is this a production made by stoned fifteen year olds?”
Muriel has had approximately half of the piña colada and is now petting Eric’s face.
“Look at you, pretty glasses and your earrings are so shiny.”
Crowley snatches Aziraphale’s notebook and he gasps and tries to take it back, “What are you - “
“No. No no no. I’m making some notes of my own, Angel,” Crowley winks at him. “Or should I call you Slorch the Vile, Master of Torments.”
Aziraphale flushes bright pink and leans over to nibble Crowley’s ear, “I think we should have this conversation later?”
“We are definitely having this conversation later.”
“How much more of this is there?” Gabriel flops his head back and sighs. “I thought it was only supposed to be ninety minutes but this feels like it’s been ninety years already.”
Crowley checks, using the remote - “halfway”
“Fucking hell,” Beelzebub grumbles.
Eric helpfully contributes, “Jesus, drink!”
The group is full-on mostly intoxicated at this point. There really weren't any other options for getting through this.
“Gangsters again? Can we seriously not? More of these gangsters?” (Beelzebub)
“Ohoho! Uhoh. Uriel is about to eat it!” (Gabriel)
“Why is tearing out a page enough to, nevermind, why am I trying to make sense of this.” (Aziraphale)
“You’re not dim, I don’t know why they keep saying that.” Crowley says, addressing Muriel.
“Because they’re aresholes.” Muriel slurs, having finished their colada, and Crowley cackles whilst Aziraphale slaps his arm. “See what you’ve done?”
“What? You gave them the drink.”
“Oops! Bye Canada!” Gabriel is giggling and takes Beelzebub’s drink and downs it. They let him, roll their eyes, and then snap themselves a new one.
“Ohhhhh. Here we go. So now we’re headed back to this flame that we’ve just invented and even though the Book of Life doesn’t exist, and I know that, or did know that; NOW I ’m suddenly some sort of expert on all its details that were just pulled out of my arse, Metatron’s dead arse. Satan’s, God’s, Someone’s stupid arse. This is excruciating to watch.”
Beelzebub crawls over Gabriel and pinches Crowley’s arm, “I’m gonna get ya, cherub.”
He pinches them back and points back at the screen, caught up in the nonsense. “She used the Book of Life to get to the center of the universe. What? Like a magic carpet ride? Is this Aladdin now? Did she sit on it like a broom?”
By this point, they are all talking over one another.
“Jesus! Drink!” (Eric)
“But, what…? They just left him there after that?” (Gabriel)
“At least he still has Harry” (Muriel)
“But you didn’t have any miracles, how are we in the Bentley flying to the flame?” (Azirarphale)
“Someone should have brought marshmallows” (Beelzebub, at Michael throwing wads of paper into the fire).
Watching Jesus hand out pizza – “Hmm. Maybe pizza instead of grilled cheese…” (Aziraphale)
“Time check?” (Gabriel)
Aziraphale takes out his watch. “We’re at one hour.”
There is another collective groan and Eric slides off Muriel's lap and back to the floor, resting his head on their thigh. “Make it stop. Please make it stop.”
Crowley snickers, “Is anyone gonna tell Jesus about his new nickname? Sup, Nail Boy.”
“I’ll do it,” Beelzebub volunteers. “I think he’d actually like it.”
“Holy shit they just turned Nail Boy into sparkle dust!” Crowley sits up off the sofa and nearly knocks over the drinks on the table.
“That kid can’t catch a break, amiright?” Gabriel elbows Crowley.
Back at the eternal flame, Michael is going page by page whilst Crowley and Azirahale stand to either side of her doing nothing.
“Do something you fucking bellends! Why are you just standing there?!” Crowley yells at the duo on screen.
“What’s an airfryer?” Eric asks.
“Doesn’t matter now, doesn’t exist, just like me, or you.” Muriel says, slow and sad and pats the top of his head.
“Why aren’t we doing anything?!” Aziraphale wails, and Gabriel slings his arm all the way over Crowley’s back to pat Aziraphale’s shoulder. “She can be a bit much sometimes.
Crowley shrugs him off and glares at him.
“Oh. Great.” Aziraphale deadpans, still focused on the screen. “I forgave her.”
“Oooooooh, see ya never Mike!” Gabriel punches the air and everyone rolls their eyes at him.
“Wait. How again if you don’t have any miracles are you taking the two of you to the bookshop? Did I miss something?” Beelzebub chips in. “I think I’ve given up trying to make any sense of this at all. Where’d the Bentley go?”
Everyone goes eerily quiet together again at the awkwardness of Aziraphale demanding forgiveness. This time, he audibly sobs at the scene unfolding and Crowley throws a piece of prosciutto at the screen where it slaps wetly and then falls to the floor. “Bullshit.”
“Look, look! They’re going to fix it, with the books!” Muriel sounds briefly cheerful again.
Crowley, Beelzebub, and Eric collectively lose their shit laughing over Satan’s appearance in the bookshop. “Why, what is even going on here?” Beelzebub slides off the couch and scoots closer to the television, joining Eric on the floor. “I can’t wait until Lucy sees this.”
Again, they’re quiet, wondering what the actual plan is here with the books, what clever way are these avatars of theirs going to get out of this and bring everyone back. Adam? Jesus? Death? Just write it back into existence with one sentence? (Or maybe the actual way it had happened…)
Instead, they summon God.
“As if God would ever bother.” Beelzebub flops dramatically onto their face on the floor and rubs their face into the rug. “This is idiocy.”
The group is silent, and all of them are squirming at the tension of God and Satan and Aziraphale and Crowley having it out, but poorly done. It’s not even close to how any of them would behave or speak and it’s patently absurd.
It’s when God and Satan start tearing Aziraphale apart and Crowley stands there doing nothing that the smell of ozone fills the living room and the lamps short out. Crowley is sizzling and Gabriel moves away from him to the far corner of the sofa.
At the continuation of the scene, where Aziraphale asks God why she ‘gave him’ Crowley and then tells Crowley he was ‘the best angel’ the foursome that aren’t Aziraphale and Crowley are afraid to look at them. Muriel can hear Crowley grinding his teeth together from across the room and there is a vibration coming from Aziraphale that reminds everyone there how dangerous he can be if he decides to be.
The two of them cling to one another on the sofa, both hands tangled together tightly in Aziraphale’s lap in a ball; trying to impart calm and draw support at the same time in a little feedback loop.
There are a scant few minutes, when Crowley and Aziraphale’s onscreen counterparts are transitioned to the garden inside the bookshop, where the group relaxes. It will still be okay.
It… was not okay.
“They… you…they had you choose eradication, over the whole world as it was, over everyone, over us, and I agreed to it because you…. We, we, we, destroyed everything and you didn’t, I didn’t, we didn’t even say how we felt in the end.” Aziraphale’s tone is flat, dissociated. “How could I not even hug you? We didn’t love one another?”
“They had me obliterate something I’ve been advocating for, protecting, since before it existed.” Crowley has silent tears running down his cheeks, “and now it never did exist. I made you kill yourself, with me. I destroyed us.”
Beelzebub sits back up and finishes another drink. “What the actual fuck. That is some bleak shit. Whoever wrote this is one fucked up individual.”
Muriel is crying and curled into a ball in the armchair, no longer watching. For once, Gabriel has the sense to keep his mouth shut, but he may just be shellshocked thinking about the implications of his and Beelzebub's pied à terre on Alpha Centauri.
“Oh. There’s more!” Eric says and then clamps his mouth shut when he gets a better view of what is on screen. Whoever that is, it isn’t Crowley.
Crowley growls at the screen. “Those shoes are not -” but is abruptly silenced when Aziraphale, or “Asa” appears and they all get an eyeful of his hair; he’s wearing some sort of cheap toupee on top of a flat mop that looks bristled and stiff.
“Oh good lord why?” Aziraphale shakes his head and pours a glass of wine, finishing it immediately and pouring another. “Who did I make angry enough to do this?”
“You? I just erased the entire universe and now we've been replaced with some sort of faded xerox copies. Did God just keep our corporations in storage and decide to loan them out to these losers 13.8 billion years later?”
They watch the remaining six minutes of “Human” Asa and Anthony bewildered and confused. Eric looks over to the sofa, “sooooo…. I guess you died. We all died, or didn’t ever exist or, whatever, but then some humans used our corporations later and then died of old age? Am I stupid or….”
“Fuck this shit.” Crowley flings the entire popcorn bowl from the table at the television, cracking the screen and sending popcorn flying everywhere. Aziraphale doesn’t even flinch, just stands up and offers Crowley his hand, pulling him to his feet.
He looks around the room, eyebrows up in question, “Pub?”
“Pub.” Everyone answers, and gets up, arranging themselves and brushing off crumbs and popcorn shrapnel.
“Well that was a thing,” Crowley mutters as he locks the door behind them and takes Aziraphale’s hand, watching the group set off down the street in front of them.
They pause together for a moment of privacy.
“Angel, I…”
“I know, dearest. I love you and that wasn’t…It wasn’t us. Let's just forget about it, shall we?”
“It wasn’t. Not even close. You know how much I love you too. You wouldn't leave me like that and I would never let anyone talk about you that way. And just to be clear, I wouldn’t ever, you know, top myself, either.”
“Yes, we settled that argument some time ago, if I remember correctly it involved something about a thermos and some holy water?” He smiles gently and cups Crowley’s face.
They kiss, Crowley pressing Aziraphale back into the doorway until Gabriel yells over his shoulder. “Come on lovebirds, these shots aren’t gonna drink themselves!”