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017. Brown

Aziraphale wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, closing his eyes briefly. The sun was bright today, like it had been every day since he wandered to this part of the Earth. It was hot, too, and his clothing was by now quite light, only consisting of a loincloth -- which he didn't really need but wore anyway -- and a cape he used to guard himself from the burning rays of the sun. Feeling the sunburn on his arm stinging, he hissed softly through his teeth. He did not mind warmth in general, but this was getting rather excessive.

"Dark skin doesn't get burned, you know," a voice said conversationally from somewhere nearby. His eyes snapped open as he recognized the voice -- he would have recognized it anywhere. And he was right. There stood the demon, only about ten feet from him, looking absolutely annoying. And dark, Aziraphale noticed.

For dark Crawly's skin was, not quite black but very dark brown, a colour the angel had only seen in people's eyes until then. His hair was black as always, thin braids trailing down his back, and while Aziraphale himself was lightly clad, the demon was barely clothed at all. Really, only Crawly could make a perfectly good loincloth seem almost... obscene. Although he wasn't bare, far from it; both his ankles and wrists were circled with gleaming jewellery, mostly golden bands with a few precious gems here and there. Aziraphale tried hard not to think about it, but he couldn't help but admit that the demon looked... desirable.

"Step aside, vile creature," he growled, trying to distract himself from the other's perfectly toned body with the usual wrath that almost automatically filled him whenever he saw Crawly. "I do not need your company."

"Aww, come on, angel," Crawly said, smirking mischievously. "I need somebody with something resembling intelligence to talk with. I'm bored out of my mind. If you really want to, we can always fight, but I warn you: I'm cold-blooded, and such hot weather makes me very quick and energetic." As if to prove this he suddenly leapt to Aziraphale's side. With a startle the angel realized that he could barely match the speed under normal circumstances and definitely not when he was exhausted by the heat.

Thus noticing that any battle would be already lost, the angel just sighed. "So you didn't drown after all," Aziraphale then said, glaring at the demon. "What a pity."

The demon, however, just kept smirking. "Oh, but angel, surely you didn't think the whole world was covered in water?" he asked, a very self-satisfied expression on his face. "Oh, no, most of the world was actually left untouched. Just 'His land', like you probably would call it, was left under the flood. I've been living quite comfortably -- and warm and dry, mind you! -- here while you got your feet wet."

Aziraphale frowned. He had indeed thought that the whole of surviving humanity had been inside the ark. But then again... "Any humans you have here are all pagans," he said, disgusted. "I will not worry my mind about them. The only ones that matter to me are His chosen people, and the only ones of them who survived were inside the ark. I guarded them, and thus fulfilled my task during the flood."

"Yeah, sure. And what about when Noah's sons have children? And those children need spouses? They'll find the 'pagans' rather interesting then, I'm sure." The demon stretched himself, trim muscles moving definitely sinfully under the dark skin.

The thing that bothered Aziraphale most about this was that Crawly was most probably right.

Pagans they were, definitely. He had to wonder just what Crawly was doing with them; surely they didn't need any more temptation, being already about as far from God as they could get. For some reason, however, the demon seemed to enjoy the company of the humans -- and especially seducing them. Whenever Aziraphale saw yet another young woman -- and, occasionally, young man -- falling to the demon's traps, he itched to simply attack and at least try to get rid of the tempter, but he never did anything.

The demon never seemed to sleep; most probably the heat was giving him energy, as Aziraphale knew he'd had quite a habit of sleeping in the past. He was fast, he never tired, and Aziraphale knew with a certainty that, for about the first time since the Fall, he would almost certainly lose should they fight. However, the demon never attacked, and Aziraphale definitely wasn't stupid enough to do so. Sooner or later the demon would attack, that he knew, but until then he would just enjoy the relative peace.

He had turned his skin darker -- although he never admitted, even to himself, that he was doing so because of the demon's advice -- and noticed that this indeed lessened the sunburns, even making them cease to show up at all. Seeing the definite upside of this, he kept his skin the darkish brown colour, although he never let it become even nearly as dark as the demon's. And he still kept his cape, too -- the last thing he wanted was to resemble the demon in any way.

As he watched, the humanity -- the part of it he concerned himself with, anyway -- grew. New children were born, and they grew up and, eventually, needed spouses. It happened like Crawly had said. It shouldn't have been such a surprise for him; after all, they needed wives and husbands, and it had happened even before the Flood. Still he couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed as once again God's sons saw that men's daughters were beautiful, and took them for themselves as wives.

The humanity grew anyway, and it spread, and to Aziraphale's delight there were again many who believed. As they started wandering towards the North, he followed them, eager to get to even slightly less heated surroundings. It was quite relaxing to be able to simply talk with the demon every once in a while, not constantly feeling the pressure to start a battle. However, he also felt quite vulnerable in his knowledge that if and when a battle was started, he would be sure to lose. The heat gave Crawly an unfair advantage, slowing him down while it strengthened the demon, and the last thing he wanted was to give the Enemy any power over himself.

Thus he went to North, leaving behind the more sunny lands and, hopefully, Crawly.

However, he couldn't help but feel a strange twinge of disappointment as he realized that the next time they met, it would be in a battle.

Next Prompt: Black