Chapter Text
1900 B.C.
City of Sodom, on the Dead Sea
There was a smell of salt in the air.
This, in and of itself, was not terribly unusual. The city was on the banks of the Dead Sea, and the warm winds that blew down from the north were always redolent with brine and dust. What was unusual, today, was the particular potency of the scent—absent any breeze to carry it, despite the dark clouds roiling overhead—and the fact that underneath there lay… something else. This second scent was more difficult to name, due partially to the fact that it was completely undetectable to human senses. For the people in the city, it manifested only as a vague sense of unease—but the people of Sodom were, by this unhappy juncture, more or less inured to such things, and had failed to register this uneasiness as anything other than the day-to-day humdrum of living in the most sinful city in the world.
To the angel approaching Sodom, however, the odour was like a smothering pall, growing more oppressive with each step. He kept clearing his throat, to no avail: by the time he was at the base of the southern gate, his voice was positively froggy with it.
In front of the gate, a man sat in a chair. All Aziraphale could see of him was the bottoms of his filthy feet, which were propped on another chair, as he was leaned as far back as he could go, and was fanning himself with a palm frond.
“Ahem,” said Aziraphale.
The man said nothing.
“Excuse me.” Aziraphale cleared his throat again. “I am a visitor. I bring a message for—”
“No visitors.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, no visitors.”
“Oh, but I think you’ll want me,” Aziraphale pressed. “You see, I have been sent by—”
“Granny, I don’t give a flying fart if you were sent by Jehovah Himself. Believe you me, you don’t want to be anywhere near these parts, especially once the sun goes—oh.” The man finally deigned to stop fanning himself and had sat up. “My apologies, er, sir. I thought you were an old lady.”
“Wrong on all counts, at least as far as gender is concerned.” Aziraphale straightened his robes, tried to clear his throat one more time, and then gave up entirely. The smell really was overwhelming, especially now that he was nearly inside. “And you may want to reconsider your position on those who were sent by Jehovah.”
The man at least had the good manners to look cowed.
“Right,” he said, fidgeting with his palm frond. “Well. Look. Sir—”
“Aziraphale.”
“Bless you. But look, sir, not meaning to be rude, but, man or lady, you really don’t want to be coming into this city right now. Not to be a negative nelly about my own kin, but—”
“Yes, yes, I’m aware of… all that has occurred inside. No need to go into detail. I’m not here for the whole city, besides. I am looking for just one man, actually. Perhaps you know him? His name is, er…” Aziraphale fished in his pockets for a moment, then pulled out an embarrassingly large golden scroll, which Gabriel had described as “prodigious” when he handed it over, but which Aziraphale found just plain gaudy. He scanned until he found the name. “Lot. Mr. Lot, perhaps?”
“You forgot? I can’t help you with anything if you forgot.”
“No, Mr. Lot. Lot.”
“Oh! Mr. Lot. I’m him. I mean, that’s me!”
Aziraphale squinted at him. As far as earthly beings went, this one wasn’t exactly anything to write Heaven about. His beard was in need of a good trim, and his robes were stained with what, judging by the smell apparent even amidst the overwhelming stench of the city, was quite a lot of wine, which perhaps explained the slightly dazed look he was wearing, and his abysmal hearing. But then, Aziraphale supposed humans never looked particularly impressive—and besides, he wasn’t here to judge.
That part, at least, had already been taken care of.
Easy enough, then. He tucked the scroll away. Raised both hands.
The clouds parted. A ray of heavenly light descended upon him.
“Lot!” Aziraphale’s voice, amplified by Heavenly ardour, was nevertheless still a bit hoarse. “I am an angel sent unto thee by the Lord your God! Open the gates of this city so I might deliver a message most holy!”
Lot fell out of his chair. This was probably an attempt at genuflection, the effect of which was hampered somewhat by the fact that he landed on his face rather than his knees. Aziraphale had to bend down to try to pull him out of the dirt, and in his distraction the heavenly light retracted back into the clouds, which really dampened the whole effect of the thing.
“Oh, yes. No, it’s alright. Come on then, up you go, there’s a good chap.”
“My lord!” Lot had pitched all of his weight forward to kiss Aziraphale’s sandals, making it awfully tough to get a hold on him. “Servant of God! I am not worthy to look upon you! My lord, let me wash your feet—”
This region and its obsession with foot washing. Not that Aziraphale intended to judge anyone’s proclivities (again, that part was well taken care of—and was, in fact, already underway) but it really did make it difficult to have a good conversation with someone, face-to-face.
“Quite unnecessary.” Aziraphale finally managed to latch his hands under Lot’s elbows and heaved him bodily to his feet. “Really, my good man, there’s absolutely no need. Just—the gate, if you please. What we have to discuss is better done inside.”
He raised his eyebrows at the sky, where the clouds had begun to rapidly darken. As if on cue, a distant boom of thunder. Lot, whose beard now had quite a lot of dirt in it, scrambled to open the gate. Aziraphale followed close behind, glancing furtively about.
Just as they were about to slip inside, a voice called out from behind them.
“Oy! Hold the gate!”
Aziraphale and Lot turned. Over a dune to the south, a man in black robes with red trim appeared, puffing toward them with sandals in-hand. As he drew nearer, a swath of curly red hair became apparent, as well as a truly atrocious waist-length beard, which flapped behind him as he ran. And yet, despite this horrifying addition, Aziraphale felt a swell of happiness when he recognized the figure, and, before he could regain his better judgement, called out, “Crowley!”
“Aziraphale? Izzat you?”
“Good Lord, Crowley, did you run here?”
Crowley was level with them now. He bent over, hands on knees, panting to catch his breath.
“I’ve just come from Gomorrah. Bunch of crazy buggers, you wouldn’t believe… Then I had to zip straight here, no time for tea. D’you know how hard it is to manifest in the right spot in a bleeding desert? Downstairs doesn’t, let me tell you. Not a landmark in sight, unless you can tell one mound of sand from the next, thank you not at all.”
He straightened up, grinning, and Aziraphale realised too late that he, too, was smiling broadly. He did his best to tamp it down, though he was sure he wasn’t entirely successful.
Behind his little sunglasses, Crowley’s eyes twinkled. “It is you,” he said. “I have to say, Angel, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I could say the same to you.” Aziraphale’s face fell as the implication clunked into place. “Oh. Oh no. Is it starting already? I was told I had until morning!”
“What? Oh, no, no. I’m not on the demolition team, thank Hell. Those bloody fireballs give me calluses that don’t go away for decades. No, I’m on special duty. Been sent to, er—hold on a second.” He fished in his robes for a moment and pulled out a tiny square of paper which, when he unfolded it, was charred around the edges and filled with cramped, illegible writing. He peered over his glasses, squinting to read it. “I am to find the last righteous household in Sodom. Family of one—”
“Lot!”
Aziraphale and Crowley both startled. They had both quite forgotten that Lot was standing right next to them, still holding the gate. When they turned to face him, he was staring at Crowley with mouth agape, eyes wide.
“The Lord has sent two angels for me?” he said.
“No,” said Aziraphale, while Crowley said, at the exact same moment, “Yes.”
Aziraphale glared at him.
“Excuse us a moment,” he said to Lot, and then he grabbed Crowley by the elbow and dragged him out of Lot’s earshot. “Of all things! Pretending to be an angel, Crowley, really? I simply can’t allow it!”
“You look good, Angel. Been eating well?”
Aziraphale harrumphed. Crowley’s lopsided grin widened; Aziraphale had to look away to hide his blush.
“I am—deadly serious!” he said. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here—”
“Oh, but you do, angel. You know what your Lord has planned for this place. Typical to fob the labor off on us, but believe me, no one down there is complaining. Love a chance to whip up some mayhem without fear of reprisal.”
“But you said—”
“Oh, not me. Fire and brimstone, ugh, it’s all a bit gauche. No, like I said, I’m here to find the last righteous man in Sodom. Him, apparently.”
He jerked his head at Lot.
“And why, pray tell, have you been sent to find him?”
Crowley smiled impishly, as if to say, You really need to ask?
“No,” said Aziraphale. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“To tempt him?”
“Just so.”
“But I’ve been sent to save him!”
“Oh, good!” Crowley rubbed his hands together. “This makes it all so much better! Here I thought it was going to be too easy. Not much to look at, is he? And with the company he keeps, a whisper here, a wink wink there, next thing you know—” He mimed a fireball exploding with his hands. “But now you’re here, we can have a bit of fun with it. What’s the wager?”
“Wager?”
“I know you’ve heard of gambling, Angel. We were both there for the whole Job business, remember? What, it’s good enough for God, but not one of Their Principalities?”
“That is quite different! I wouldn’t pretend to understand—when God does it, you see—oh, Crowley, a man’s life is at stake!”
Crowley shrugged. “Just his soul, really. And what’s new about that?”
“I am not gambling,” said Aziraphale firmly. “I don’t play games with the ineffable plan” —he decided to ignore Crowley’s pointed look at that— “so if you insist on being here—”
“I do,” said Crowley.
“—then I’m afraid you are here, my dear, as my mortal enemy. I will stand between you and the righteous as a representative of Heaven, and I warn you, Heaven will emerge triumphant.”
Aziraphale punctuated this with a haughty look, then spun on his heel and headed back toward the gate, wondering if Crowley could sense how very much—though Aziraphale would never say it aloud, not even to himself—he hoped the demon would follow him.
A moment later, Crowley came jogging up behind him.
“Loser buys dinner, then?” he said.
The gate swung shut behind them.
“Not to sound sanctimonious, Hell forbid,” said Crowley, “but I think your side might have a point with this one.”
The skies were nearly black with impending rain by the time they reached the centre of the city, but this was not the darkness to which Crowley was referring. In fact, he suspected the threat of rain might be the only reason they had made it this far at all. The people of Sodom, having mostly retreated to their homes, nevertheless managed to throw an ominous aspect over the street, and the three apparent men who walked it. Faces leered from windows, and the looks they cast at the strangers were equal parts untrusting and lecherous—the latter of which Crowley was doing his best to hide from the angel. He could tell—had been able to tell since he’d manifested in the desert just outside of Aziraphale’s line of sight, and then followed him along the winding path into Sodom—that Aziraphale was struggling with the spirit of the place, which was a mix of debauchery and impending desecration so heady even Crowley felt a little dizzy from it. And he’d known Aziraphale—on and off—for close to two thousand years now, which might not seem like long between two eternal beings, but it was enough that he knew the angel could really work himself into a lather trying to see the good in everyone, to the point where, if no good was to be found, he’d be in an absolute tizzy before either of them could say ineffable. Crowley—who could, in addition to the dreadful thrum of imminent doom, also sense the less savoury thoughts pouring out of those windows—was therefore putting out a bit of an aspect of his own. Just the tiniest tinge of niceness. Really, only enough for those within arm’s length—that was to say, Aziraphale and Lot—to feel soothed by its effects. He figured if anyone Downstairs asked about it, he could chalk it up as necessary to the disguise, since he was an angel again, at least for tonight. And besides (he told himself, widening the aura just a tad when Aziraphale stepped outside its boundaries to mournfully examine a mosaic of the Garden of Eden in the square, which would not, unfortunately, be there in the morning), it wasn’t as if he was actually being nice. Aziraphale could be so exasperating when he was doing the thing where he got all concerned for the humans’ wellbeing, with his watery eyes and his righteous indignation and his admonishing finger-wags. If anything, Crowley was acting out of self-preservation—which was a perfectly demonic way to behave.
(And, if anyone Down There should ask, this was in no way changed by the fact that Crowley had not so much been assigned to Sodom as he had—upon hearing some demons gossiping around the Hellfire cooler that Heaven was sending one of its ‘dowdier’ angels to try to evacuate the last of God’s people, having a good old cackle about the kind of poor sod Up There would send to do that sort of grunt work—casually suggested that the bigger laugh would be if one of their own went in to thwart said angel, and while he was on the subject, mightn't it just as well be him?)
Still, as they reached the far end of the square, and Lot beckoned them toward an especially menacing dark alley, Crowley nevertheless found himself sidling a little closer to the angel.
“I wish I could disagree with you,” Aziraphale said, wringing his hands. “Apparently—and this is just the gossip from around the holy font, mind you—God spoke to Abraham about this place.”
“Really? Getting a bit cheeky with the humans lately, aren’t They?”
Aziraphale wasn’t listening. “Apparently, Abraham—who is a real dear, and his wife Sarah, who has a lovely sense of humour—anyway, apparently, God told Abraham that They intend to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham pleaded with the Lord for mercy, saying, ‘What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.’”
“Jolly decent of him,” said Crowley, whose experience with God’s wrath told him the Almighty wouldn’t give two figs about fifty righteous humans. He squinted after Lot as they followed him deeper into the labyrinth of homes. “Upstanding gent.”
“Yes, and God said, ‘If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’”
“Oh.” That was surprising. Where was that mercy during the Flood? Crowley paused, digging in his pocket again. “They called it off? But I swear the memo I saw said—”
“No, there’s more. Abraham replied to God, you see, and said, ‘What if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?’ And God said, ‘If I find forty-five there, I will not destroy it.’ And then Abraham said, ‘What if only forty are found there?’ to which God replied, ‘For the sake of forty, I will not do it.’ And then Abraham said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found—”
“Alright! Alright, I get it! Yech, I thought your side was supposed to be poetic or something.”
“Oh, Crowley, I don’t think you do get it!” Aziraphale stopped walking, whirling to face him so abruptly that Crowley’s momentum nearly caused him to smack into the angel, and he was saved from doing so only by a minuscule last-minute miracle. “Don’t you see? God sent envoys to search the city and couldn’t find even ten righteous people! That’s why they’ve sent me; to take Lot and his family out of here safely, and if I don’t succeed they want me to—to—oh dear.” Aziraphale wrung his hands so ferociously that Crowley almost reached out to pry them apart, and it was only probably due to another miracle—though not one of his own—that he managed to stop himself from doing so. “It’s all so unpleasant…”
“You do know unpleasant is sort of my area of expertise, right, Angel? Maybe if you told me about it I’d be able to, y’know—”
“My lords!”
Both angel and demon startled, having momentarily forgotten that they were not alone. They turned to find Lot at the threshold of one of the houses, twisting a key in the ominously large lock which hung from the handle.
“My home, my lords,” he said. “Please, come inside.”
Crowley started forward, but Aziraphale stopped him with a hand on his chest. Crowley looked down at the hand, then up at the angel, who was staring straight back, his throat working silently. Crowley raised an eyebrow over his glasses, but before he could ask, Aziraphale pulled his hand away as though burned, shook his head, and called over his shoulder to Lot, “Really, you’re too kind. But my, er, associate and I would do better to sleep in the square, thank you.”
“Oh.” Lot’s hand paused on the key. “My lord, I really don’t think—”
“We’re coming,” said Crowley, “just give us a minute.” He turned back to Aziraphale. “I thought the whole point was ingratiation, Angel.”
“That may be the point for you,” said Aziraphale, who was rubbing his palm on his robes, seemingly unconsciously. “I am ingratiated by nature. Inherently trustworthy. Which I’m afraid means that my point, for the night, is keeping you away from that family.”
“You wound me,” said Crowley, turning the words into a bored drawl to cover the small truth behind them. Wiping his hand off, really. “But I do have to wonder how you’re planning to accomplish such a feat?”
“Might I remind you that I’m an angel? And you, whatever you claim to be—”
“Aren’t. But I’m also guessing your bosses sent you here, alone, the night before all the fun, because they are, for once, attempting to keep a low profile. Yes? So alerting the whole city with a great big clash of heavenly swords might get you in a spot of trouble with the big boys.”
“Just as I suspect your people won’t be too happy if the sound of demonic, er…? Not trumpets, surely?”
“Kazoos. They haven’t got them up here yet. I’m working on it.”
“Yes, fine. Your people won’t be happy if a chorus of demonic kazoos causes a premature evacuation.”
Aziraphale cleared his throat. Crowley noticed belatedly that their little tiff had caused his miraculous niceness to slip, and he heaved it back into place with only a tiny bit more effort than it had cost to conjure it in the first place.
“Then what are you proposing, Angel? Because I for one am still determined to win our little bet.”
“There is no—”
“My lords!”
Crowley slid around Aziraphale, holding his hands out wide as he backed toward the house.
“Ball’s in your court,” he said. “Going to smite me? The option is always open to you. As you’re so keen to remind me, you are an angel.”
Aziraphale’s cheeks went delightfully pink.
“Oh, bother,” he muttered, and he followed Crowley into the house.