Chapter Text
Villahermosa, Yucatán peninsula, Mexico, 1952
Aziraphale considered himself quite a sharp tack, as far as tacks went. He possessed not one, not two, but three advanced degrees, a distinguished military history, a promising scholarly career, and an antiquarian bookshop of generous size.
He had devoted much of the last four years to researching the ancient people of the Yucatán and, to a lesser extent, their modern descendants, meticulously combing through piles of books, treatises, monographs, and lithographs until he felt as well-informed as the leading scholars of the age. So well-informed, in fact, that he’d decided to mount this little expedition to visit one of the ancient sites in person.
And yet, despite the years of diligent and committed study, one tiny, seemingly insignificant detail had somehow managed to evade Aziraphale: just how damned hot it was.
Aziraphale desperately fanned his Panama hat in front of his face, but the faint stirrings of air it produced didn’t provide much relief. Admittedly, it probably didn’t help much that he was wearing a three-piece suit, but it was what had seemed appropriate when he’d packed back in London.
He looked longingly down at the battered, modestly-sized cabin trunk he’d briefly set down next to himself on the cracked pavement, wondering bleakly if he should have allotted less room to books and more room to climate-appropriate clothing.
After a moment’s thought, Aziraphale decided that, no, he really did need all those books if he was to get his work done here, and what was a little heat, really? Or, perhaps more accurately, a lot of humidity?
Aziraphale drew a steadying breath and continued to fan himself ineffectually with his hat as he looked up at the bar on the other side of the street, eyeing the faded lettering above the door dubiously.
It was midmorning, so there was plenty of traffic—cars rumbling past and pedestrians strolling by in the shade of the buildings opposite—but he had a clear enough view, and this was definitely the bar he was looking for. Not that it looked any different from any of the other drinking establishments he’d passed on his way here: all of them low buildings with red tile roofs, grilled windows, and colorful plaster walls that had already begun to crack and peel, giving their structures a distinctly unsafe appearance. In addition, this particular establishment had a good deal of cigar smoke coiling out of one window, despite the fact that it was still at least two hours to lunchtime.
It wasn’t the sort of establishment that a person of Aziraphale’s repute would happily find themself considering entering, and yet here he was.
Aziraphale sighed, glanced around the crowded street as though to make sure that no socialites had suddenly appeared to witness his actions, picked up his trunk by its worn leather handle, and crossed to the bar.
The smell of cheap cigar smoke was stronger here, and when Aziraphale cautiously pushed the door open he caught the sharp smell of distilled alcohol. He wrinkled his nose in distaste but stepped inside nonetheless, nervously adjusting his grip on his Panama hat.
Despite its exterior appearance, the bar was actually only about a third full, with most of the cigar smoke and raucous laughter coming from a group of young men seated near the window. The chatter in the air was primarily in Spanish, which Aziraphale had a good working knowledge of, but he picked up a few words in German from a pair of stony-faced men sitting to one side of the doorway. One of them broke off mid-sentence to eye Aziraphale suspiciously as he paused beside their table, and Aziraphale quickly moved away, towards the bar and the friendly-looking man rubbing down glasses behind it.
“Hola,” Aziraphale greeted nervously, setting his trunk down on one of the barstools. As soon as he did so, he felt it stick slightly on the lacquered surface, and he wished suddenly that he’d set it on the floor instead. Then he decided that that was probably worse.
The barman looked him up and down, and Aziraphale was again reminded of how overdressed he was. “English?” he asked in a strong accent, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Yes,” Aziraphale admitted, rolling up his Panama hat and nervously stuffing it in his jacket pocket. “I’m looking for a—” The group of young men by the window broke out into a loud round of laughter, and Aziraphale leaned closer and raised his voice. “—looking for a guide. To take me into the jungle. I heard there were guides here.” Then, in case the man didn’t actually speak English, he repeated himself in Spanish, stumbling several times as he did so. Most of his experience with Spanish, Aziraphale had to admit, was with reading it. Pronunciation and sentence composition were another thing entirely.
Luckily, the barman seemed to understand what he meant, because he smiled and pointed to a table not far away, where a group of six or so elderly men were sitting. “That one is guide. Very good.”
Aziraphale leaned back and lifted his trunk from the barstool, trying not to visibly grimace at the ominous unsticking noise it made as it came free. “Thank you. Ah, gracias, señor.”
Aziraphale turned his attention to the table the barman had indicated, weaving around several unoccupied tables until he’d drawn close enough to hear what was being said. At the same time, he realized that the group wasn’t entirely old men: five of them were, and they sat smoking and drinking as they listened with rapt attention to their youngest member.
He was clearly in the middle of a tale, his fingers weaving a story as he looked around at his audience with bright, unusual golden eyes. He looked about Aziraphale’s age, and, despite the fluent Spanish that left his lips and a healthy tan, he was white. Perhaps an estranged European like himself?
Aziraphale’s shaky grasp of spoken Spanish wasn’t sufficient to reveal the details of the man’s story, but he caught something about a boulder, lots of running, and an object made of gold.
Aziraphale blinked in surprise. If this fellow was retelling one of his previous mishaps in the jungle, he was certainly qualified as a guide.
The old men surrounding him seemed to agree, nodding along and gasping a little as the man’s tale continued. He had noticed Aziraphale watching from just outside of their circle, though, and after a few more lines he finished and sat back with a wide grin, the old men groaning in disappointment. One of them tossed a cigarette butt at him.
Aziraphale saw his opening and moved a bit closer, keeping his trunk in front of him and away from any potentially hazardous furniture. “Guía?” he asked hopefully. “I’m looking for a guide?”
“That’s me,” the golden-eyed man said, and as he switched to English Aziraphale was surprised to detect a British accent. Not as upper-class as Aziraphale’s own, of course, but still very welcome in this strange land. The man glanced back at his grumbling audience as he stood, preparing to depart the table. “Adiós, señores.”
Several of the old men bid him farewell, and then the golden-eyed man wound his way around the table and extended his hand. “A. J. Crowley, at your service.”
“Aziraphale Godson,” Aziraphale supplied, taking in the other man’s lithe frame and calloused but firm grip. “It’s a terrible name, I know, but it’s what I have.”
Crowley actually snorted a bit at that. “Barely worse than mine.”
“Oh? What’s yours?”
Crowley sniffed a little, the movement crinkling his nose. He really was terribly uncouth, this chap. “Not important. You can call me Crowley. Everyone does.”
“Ah. Of course,” Aziraphale said, reflecting that at least his potential guide didn’t smell too strongly. Or perhaps the smell of cigar smoke and alcohol hanging in the air was masking it. “I’m in need of a guide for a trip out into the jungle. I was meant to be met by a colleague but I just learned he’s come down with malaria.”
Crowley grunted and started towards the bar, beckoning Aziraphale to follow him. It was a bit quieter over there, the pair of German-speaking men now playing a game of dice. Crowley rapped on the surface of the bar to get the barman’s attention.
“Xtabentún,” he said, flipping a coin onto the bar. He hopped up onto one of the barstools and turned his attention back to Aziraphale, keeping one foot casually perched on the bottom rung of the stool. “So whereabouts in the jungle are you headed?”
“Palenque,” Aziraphale supplied, eyeing the nearest barstool warily and deciding not to risk it.
“That little town?” Crowley asked, looking surprised.
“Not the town, the ruins,” Aziraphale explained, shifting his heavy trunk to his other hand. “The ancient city.”
“Oh, yeah. I know the place. About three days out.”
Aziraphale nodded.
“So what’s there for you, if I can ask? You want me to bring you back, too?”
“Ah,” Aziraphale said, brightening at this opportunity to speak about his work, “well, it’s an ancient Maya city, and I’m a—well, I suppose you could say I’m an anthropologist. I’ve been doing some research, and I found something really quite interesting that I think may have been overlooked by other scholars and I need to…well, I need to check it out in person. I have a theory, you see, and if I’m right it’ll be really quite…” —Aziraphale fished around for the right word— “…rewarding.”
“Hm,” Crowley said, but instead of wearing the expression of bored politeness that usually accompanied Aziraphale’s explanations, he looked very interested. “The Maya, they made a lot of things out of gold, didn’t they? And jade, like that double-headed snake they’ve got at the British Museum, yeah?”
Aziraphale blinked, more than a little surprised that someone who voluntarily frequented an establishment such as this was familiar with such an artifact. “That’s Aztec, but yes, it’s similar. And it’s made of turquoise, if I’m not mistaken. The Maya preferred working in jade.”
“Hmm,” Crowley said again, and there was an excited gleam in his golden eyes.
“This one—he is snake speaker,” the barman volunteered as he pushed Crowley’s drink over to him, and Aziraphale realized that he must have been listening in on their conversation, and likely understood more English than Aziraphale had suspected.
“Snake whisperer, it’s whisperer, Fernando,” Crowley corrected in exasperation before taking a sip of his drink.
“Whisperer,” the barman corrected, and moved further away down the bar, repeating “snake whisperer” under his breath in his heavy Spanish accent.
“Anyway,” Crowley said, turning his attention back to Aziraphale and tapping a finger on the side of his glass. “One-way trip? Two-way? How long’s it going to take to find this treasure of yours?”
“Oh, it’s hard to say,” Aziraphale replied, suddenly quite taken by the idea of himself as a treasure hunter. “Not more than a couple of days. I have to be back in Veracruz in a fortnight, but I don’t think it’ll take nearly that long. And if you’re available, I’d like the trip back too. I’ll pay you extra to wait.”
“Works for me,” Crowley said, taking a long drink. “When do you want to leave?”
“Today, if possible.” Aziraphale shifted his trunk back to his other hand. “I haven’t secured any rooms here, you see.”
Crowley’s glass, halfway to his mouth again, paused, its bearer panning his gaze up and down Aziraphale. “You want to leave dressed like that?”
Though Aziraphale himself had been questioning his wardrobe choices just minutes before, he drew himself up to his full height, insulted by the tone of voice in which this advice had been delivered. “And what’s wrong with how I’m dressed?”
Crowley looked like he was suppressing a smile as he took another quick swig of his drink. “Oh, nothing.”
“Hmph,” Aziraphale said shortly, and in a rather superior tone.
“We can leave in an hour,” Crowley said after taking another long drink, nearly emptying the glass. “I’ll need to get my things. You all right meeting back here?”
Aziraphale nodded. “I’ll just wait here. Haven’t anywhere else to go.”
Crowley grunted understanding and took another moment to eye Aziraphale’s elegant but already very sweaty waistcoat. Then he hopped down from the barstool, drained his glass, and waved to the barman. “All right, then. Adiós.” He headed for the door, the pair of Germans looking up from their game of dice as he passed them.
Once Crowley had gone, Aziraphale turned his gaze back to the barstools, his arms already sore from carrying his heavy trunk. After a moment’s deliberation, he decided he really didn’t want to stand there for a full hour, so he set his trunk on the floor and gingerly seated himself on the nearest barstool. As he’d suspected, he felt himself stick a little.
“Crowley is good guide,” the barman Fernando said conversationally, moving over and collecting Crowley’s empty glass. “He is snake whisperer, protect you from jungle snake.”
“Oh?” Aziraphale said, uneasily recognizing this as another area his scholarly texts hadn’t prepared him for. He knew many of the Maya legends about serpents, of course, but somehow he hadn’t considered the fact that those native snakes might still be living in the Yucatán. He recalled a book he had back at his bookshop about snake venoms and antivenoms, and wished suddenly that he’d thought to bring it along.
“Good guide,” Fernando reiterated, patting Aziraphale’s hand with altogether too much familiarity. “Drink?”
When Crowley returned a little under an hour later, Aziraphale was all too happy to see him. Fernando had seemed personally insulted by the fact that Aziraphale hadn’t been interested in getting drunk right before heading into a snake-infested jungle, and had evidently decided to exact his revenge for this slight by attempting to help Aziraphale with his Spanish.
Needless to say, this quickly became a frustrating activity, and Aziraphale was in the middle of trying to correctly pronounce ahorrar when Crowley arrived, his guide smirking at Aziraphale’s botched pronunciation.
“Fresh off the boat, I see.”
Aziraphale scowled at him. “I have read a great deal of Spanish books, I will have you know,” he snapped. “The accent here is not what I expected.”
“Sure, sure,” Crowley said easily, adjusting the strap of a rucksack slung across his back. “You ready to go? We can cover a lot of ground today if we get moving.”
Aziraphale nodded stiffly, turned back to Fernando and forced himself to thank the barman in as kind of a voice as he could muster, and followed Crowley outside.
If anything, the streets of Villahermosa had grown even hotter, and Aziraphale resisted the urge to start fanning himself with his hat again.
“How do you stand the heat?” Aziraphale asked his guide, honestly hoping for a few tips. “And the humidity?”
“Oh, you get used to it,” Crowley replied easily, glancing back to make sure Aziraphale was following before leading the way down the pavement. While he’d been gone, he’d changed into an open-collared white shirt and long, loose-fitting khaki trousers, and he looked so comfortable in them that Aziraphale felt a pang of irrational jealousy. “It was even hotter last week. You’ve come during a nice cool spell.”
Aziraphale could have spluttered with indignation, but he forced down the impulse, telling himself that it was the heat making him irritable, and it wasn’t wise to get on the wrong side of his guide. It’d probably be all too easy for Crowley-the-snake-whisperer to lure one of his venomous pals over, make it look like an accident, rob Aziraphale blind, and leave him to die in the jungle.
With that cheery thought, Aziraphale fell into step behind Crowley as he led them through the city.