Obviously show-inspired, but how could I watch this masterpiece and not get the urge to write, huh? :D First foray into this fandom, so I'm shaking in my boots.

Due to the premise, there's homophobic language, but of the ridiculous kind, I'm warning just in case.

This is a happy fic, promise ;)


They're Sodomites, Pass It On

His unhappy shuffling of ten million angels' complaint forms on his desk grated as much on Gabriel's nerves as it had for the last month. There was no end in sight to the stoic grumblings and perfectly legitimate petitions to start the war up again. They'd all sharpened their lances and preened their feathers, and for what? For Aziraphale, Angel of the Eastern Gate, Human and Demon Sympathizer Extraordinaire, to wreck the great plan, or the ineffable plan, or whatever. All for a bit more peace. Gabriel wanted to retch.

And then the little hedonist had to become some new form of ethereal or occult being, so they couldn't even get him back with a bit of old-fashioned roasting in the flames of hell. Why was everyone ruining Gabriel's fun these days?

Aziraphale was fraternizing with a demon and yet they couldn't harm a hair on his overly curly and constantly blabbering head. In the good old days, you could punish someone for less. Frolicking with sheep, for example.

On earth, they were still that way, screaming sin and damnation at each other for the stupidest things not even heaven cared about, he was pretty sure. (But pornography was suddenly a-okay. Humans.) He only went down every few hundred years to not taint his celestial essence with all their muck, but he could still recall that every time he'd been walking among humans, except for that strange phase where catamites had been all the rage (he'd tried to forget about that time, because not even a miracle had been able to save his tunic from that horrible olive oil stain), there had been some uproar about this or that human doing body fluid exchanges with a similar shaped human.

Gabriel bookmarked the last complaint and pulled a folder out of his desk, flipping it open to reveal Aziraphale and his demon friend's faces tucked together and whispering.

Well, they were similar shaped enough.

xXx

Creating a team of angels eager to ruin Aziraphale's little bubble of doofy happiness was the work of a blink in time. The usual quartet of Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon and himself was making its way through plastered streets and the foul smell of humanity, searching for the right mortals to pass on the message of Aziraphale's dastardly sodomite status.

It wasn't even really possible since angels and demons were sexless in nature. Funny concepts like male and female were worth a laugh and no more, sexual release a big No-No. But the humans didn't know that. And for all the angels knew about Aziraphale's new state as whatever creature he was now, which was next to nothing, he could – hypothetically – also be frolicking with sheep, so there. There was no massive lying involved, just creative interpretations of the few facts they had, with a sprinkle of humanization to appeal to the people's misguided feelings of righteousness. (They should learn to leave that to the professionals.)

Humans wouldn't be able to extinguish the traitor permanently, but they sure as heaven could make his stay on earth very uncomfortable. And if nothing else, if there was a nice lynching involved, Aziraphale could float around for eternity for all Gabriel cared, because he would eat sushi before he issued that ineffable idiot a new body.

At the centre of the city, not far from that ridiculous bookshop, Gabriel stopped. It was time to spread well placed rumors.

"Fellow humans," Gabriel tried not to gag as he boomed those words, his arms thrown out in a wide arc, "we're here to give you news of sinners living among you!"

The people on the street made a big detour around the four smartly dressed angels in their customary we-bring-the-lord's-gospel whites (which he hadn't had reason to wear since the beginning of humankind, so there was at least one perk), shying away from them. They probably felt their auras of holiness and were too much in awe to come closer.

Gabriel signaled Michael and Uriel to swarm out and herd the people to listen, yet the moment they'd cornered one man not fast enough to scramble away and were opening their mouths to herald the tidings of the sexual acts of Aziraphale the Betrayer, the human put his hands up.

"Save it. I don't want to hear about God saving my soul for the small sum of 30 pounds a month and I don't need my own starship or a bunch of virgins when I'm dead. Have a nice day," he said and hurried away.

Studying Michael and Uriel, Gabriel questioned if four archangels weren't a bit much to take for the fragile minds of mortals, since they seemed to have broken this one. That, or the two were due to the humans' limited imaginations female appearing and therefore no entities of wisdom to take seriously. Gabriel still remembered when they'd burned that armored slip of a French girl for talking about her chats with God.

Either way, it could be easily rectified.

xXx

Alone with Sandalphon, it was decidedly easier to walk among the humans without stirring suspicion, and still, their endeavor was not crowned with success.

He held the flyer up to a random man's face, ignoring his spluttering and the half-eaten sandwich falling out of his mouth. Humans were so unsanitary, polluting their bodies with food and then not even being good at it, it seemed.

"These men have coitus. They're acting against the natural order." The last part was actually true.

The pedestrian wiped his thumb over the corners of his mouth, involuntary pushing the crumbs hanging there further into his shaggy beard, and peered at the black and white photograph of Aziraphale and Crowley standing cozily together by a pond in their top hats and tailcoats.

"When, a hundred years ago? Did you get that from a movie?" He stared at Gabriel while Gabriel stared in turn at a persistent speck of crust on the man's chin.

"Loon," the man muttered, more crumbs flying from his mouth and sticking to his facial hair, and shouldered his way between Gabriel and Sandalphon.

Gabriel tapped his finger against Aziraphale's face in the newest photograph on the flyer, taken last month, dispersing all other pictures of these two through time. They had to adapt to make it at least plausible for the puny humans.

He snapped his fingers again.

Two miracles in one day, Gabriel thought as the now beardless and bald man turned the corner, and both of them were for the greater good.

xXx

He let Sandalphon thrust another surveillance shot of their targets at a young woman with an even tinier human on her hand. Gabriel was positive this was the right person to finally start the gossip chain. Mothers had instincts; protect the young from bad influences and all that.

"These men are copulating, inserting their penises into each other," Gabriel called to her, but she only cupped her hands over her son's ears and hurried on, giving him what he'd heard being called the bad smelling eye.

His luck to have stumbled upon one with underdeveloped mother instincts.

xXx

Sandalphon was still trying to coax a group of female mortals into listening to him. The way they tittered and tippled around him and his biggest studded smile didn't look promising.

Irritated by humanity's idiocy, Gabriel started his These men-spiel once again, this time stating for everyone in the vicinity to hear and amplifying his voice to carry on the wind, "These men are sodomites, executing unnatural acts by putting their genitals together."

A young male with a sack on his head and appallingly tight trousers stopped before Gabriel. He pulled his checkered earphones down and said with feeling and a slowly shaking head, "Dude," before he walked away.

xXx

Gabriel peered at the updated flyer. No pictures from bygone times, it was in color, they were both clearly to see and their poses were suggestive enough to plant ideas of them having a carnal relationship. And he himself was delivering the message and fictional details of Aziraphale's love for anal stimulation with aplomb and charisma as always.

The fault must lie with Sandalphon.

"Sir, there's another one coming!"

Turning to catch sight of a grey head rounding the corner, the first in half an hour, Gabriel indicated Sandalphon to stay put. This one was it. She might have been barely as old as his last manicure, but in human time she was ancient. They loved to gossip. The older, the better. And she had an equally decomposing male with her, perfect.

They hobbled over the cobblestones, the man leaning heavily on a walking cane, the crone's hand in his other arm's crook to guide him along.

Gabriel needlessly adjusted the perfect lapels of his coat and headed straight to them, pasting his usual smile on, wide and charming.

"Elderly citizens, I bring news," he informed them as he planted himself in front of them. The scent of musty chambers and cut flowers assaulted his sinuses. He fixed his smile more, tightening its corners.

"Oh, how nice of you," the old woman squeaked, her voice high and aggravating to Gabriel's last nerve. "What is it, dearie? The Brexit again, or are you collecting for the poor?"

Before Gabriel could swipe the annoyed expression from his face or deny her claims, she guided the old man closer to half-scream in his ear, "Harold, is your hearing aid on? This sweetheart is going to tell us about the Brexit and the poor!"

Gabriel almost stumbled, almost – mostly from being called a sweetheart.

Harold nodded and clacked his nails against the apparatus in his ear. "Go ahead, my boy, my wife loves the poor," he croaked.

This decided it, they were who he was searching for. They fancied themselves good and charitable people, so they would jump on the forsake-all-evil wagon. Metaphorically, of course. If they did try to jump anywhere, they would shatter every bone in their bodies.

Gabriel presented the flyer, his hand skimming over Aziraphale and Crowley standing way too close, to guide the old couple's gaze to them.

"These are Mister A.Z. Fell and Anthony J. Crowley. Beware of them for they prefer the company of men, consorting with each other."

The pair just blinked at him from behind their inch-thick glasses, so Gabriel put his finger directly under the picture and started to talk louder. "They are living in unnaturalness, defying God's will." She hadn't sent him a memo for a while, a few millennia to be precise, but he was pretty sure it was true.

Harold took the paper from Gabriel. "They look like my mate Marty and me during the sixties. We had a book club, only place to talk amongst men about Jane Austen novels without our women stealing the books for themselves."

What by the almighty…

The woman lightly shook Harold at the elbow, "No," giving him an imploring look.

"They're homosexuals, Harold."

Gabriel felt glee bubbling up in his Elysian body. "Yes, good madam, they're lying with men, showing off their acts against–"

"Like Thaddy?" the old geezer unwittingly interrupted Gabriel's well trained tirade, looking with imploring eyes at his wife, unhurriedly blinking as if he was asking after the weather.

"I don't know this Thaddy you're speaking of, human, but it's irrel–"

The biddy thrust her hand in the direction of the archangel to silence him, turning more to her husband, never ceasing to wave her hand while she talked. "No, not like Thaddy. Thaddy's living with that nice girlfriend of his and her husband in Brighton, remember? I'm talking about Leonard. He just married that sweet undertaker."

Gabriel imagined high blood pressure probably felt like this, trying not to snap those wagging fingers in his face into pieces.

"We were at their wedding last month. Remember, they had that lovely chocolate cake with cherries at the reception. Do you remember, Harold?"

Gabriel was ready to miracle her mouth shut, as Harold jerked more upright, his eyes big and delighted. Apparently Harold remembered.

"With the three layers, of course!"

"Yes!" Gabriel jumped between them. "Yes, two men together, fornicating! They're exactly like that," he bellowed and willfully ignored Sandalphon's attempt to tug at this coat and whisper to him, "Sir, if they're married, then…" He'd told him to stay out of this.

"They're sinners sharing the bodies of men, paving their way to–"

A purse was chucked into his face.

Gabriel felt the bag slide down his nose, its handles dragging down, and recede.

"Young man! Wash your mouth out with soap. I should have a good talk with your mother," the old hag pulled her purse back and hoisted it higher, readying herself for another whack at the angel.

"Gertrude," her husband admonished in soft tones, patting her on the arm, and then turned to fix Gabriel and an inexplicably shrinking back Sandalphon with a bespectacled glare.

"Leonard is a great fellow and his husband too. I'm sure the two gentlemen you're talking about are also very nice people. Live and let love."

Gertrude sniffed and hugged her purse tighter. "We're in the twenty-first century, educate yourself," she spat and let herself be ushered away by Harold, though she kept shooting death glares at two very flabbergasted angels for the eons it took her and her husband to limp down the street.

"Sandalphon," Gabriel ordered after a while, "we are going back to heaven. Humanity is obviously even more of a lost cause than we thought."

xXx

Aziraphale closed the bookshop with a turn of his key and hurried after Crowley, who'd slowed his strut to a sensual saunter, giving him the chance to catch up without acknowledging it. He was thoughtful like that, always had been.

"To the Ritz?" he asked as he pocketed the key in his waistcoat.

"Nah," Crowley pursed his lips in an exaggerated downturn, "I'm more in the mood to watch you gorge yourself on glutamate and extra-salty soy sauce, tempting you into ruining your digestive system."

Aziraphale patted him on the elbow, also taking it to guide him along to the next side street. "You just like to watch me open fortune cookies."

"Why in hell's blaze would I do that?" he groused, pushing his sunglasses higher without dislodging his companion's hand from his person.

Aziraphale shot him a slow smile. "Because you like to see my face when I read the fortune messages. Don't think for a second I don't know it's you, my dear. There are just so many 'Help, I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory' paper slips you can read before cottoning on."

Crowley shrugged, hiking his shoulders almost to his ears, and trapped Aziraphale's hand between his body and arm when he lowered them again. "Eh, a spot of torturing an angel by making him wonder, y'know."

Aziraphale did know; did know that Crowley was cataloguing his mouth's curve every time he affected a gasped "Oh my, what a pickle they're in!" after reading the messages. And then the corners of Crowley's mouth would twitch the slightest bit upwards, adding to the crinkles at the edge of his sunglasses. For a soft Crowley smile, Aziraphale would gasp "Oh my!" as much as he needed to.

They were so focused on each other, someone almost plowed them over. At first glance, Aziraphale thought she was trying to walk between them, then he noticed her stare, her glasses reflecting the sun.

"Watch it." "How can I help you, madam?" the two beings said concurrently, respectively growling and smiling at the little old lady smelling of flowers.

Her eyes travelled from one of them to the other and back. Then she nodded decisive to herself.

Neither of them was fast enough to escape the gnarled fingers patting them on the cheek. "You are good boys," she said and went back to an old man waiting at the corner.

The people of London were friendlier than before the Almost-Apocalypse, and stranger, Aziraphale thought.

Crowley hiked Aziraphale's hand higher up. "Don't need fortune cookies if there are cookies with nuts around," he nodded in the pair's direction.

Not two steps further, and Aziraphale laughed at a small boy rushing by and making faces at the scampering kitty to his right. Until the boy turned to them and shouted, "You are putting your boy bits together!" while his mother, red in the face, caught up and carried him away.

"That we do, lad!" Crowley hollered, almost doubled over backwards, breaking his back in a body shaking guffaw. Aziraphale pinched his arm, hard.

"What?" he just got in answer. "He's not wrong."

Yes, the good people of London were definitely getting stranger each day.