Chapter Text
On the seventh day after the almost-Apocalypse, Aziraphale walks into his study with a book in one hand, fresh cup of tea in the other, and finds a giant black snake coiled up in the middle of the floor. For most people, finding an unexpected snake in your study would be cause for considerable alarm. Aziraphale, however, is only mildly confused. And even if we concede that there might be a limited number of people in the world who would share this reaction, it would most certainly be because they keep a giant black snake for a pet and would be wondering how it got out of its safe enclosure. The source of Aziraphale's confusion, though, is the bright sunbeam the snake is basking in. He can't remember the last time his windows were clean enough to permit such an aggressive amount of sunlight. For one, too much natural light might promote the kind of welcoming environment that would attract customers; for another, it could damage the more fragile items in his collection. He narrows his eyes at the snake and then looks up to the windows. The pane just above his desk is immaculately clean and positively glowing.
"Crowley," Aziraphale says with a tiny lift at the end that makes it almost but not quite a question. When the snake doesn't so much as twitch, he asks more bluntly, "Crowley, what are you doing?"
The snake, whose red accents are a bit too flash for it to be anyone other than Crowley, is resting coiled with his head tucked up so the sun warms the back of his skull. A forked tongue briefly tastes the air. Aziraphale imagines if Crowley were instead a cat he might have the squint-eyed look of satisfaction the beasts get when completely ignoring someone trying to get their attention. Crowley doesn't have eyelids to squint with in this form, but something that feels similarly smug is practically radiating off him.
Aziraphale rolls his eyes upward seeking patience and then determinedly decides Not to Bother About It and proceeds to his desk with book and tea to get on with his plan for a nice, long morning read. When Crowley's a snake, he sometimes likes to pretend he can't talk or even understand human speech—patently ridiculous considering his most infamous interaction in serpent form—so Aziraphale believes it unlikely he'll get anything out of the demon until he decides to shift back.
After a moment's consideration, he judges the path of the sunbeam will only cross over the desk, and it's the work of but a few moments to relocate some of the more delicate pieces residing there to duskier locations. He casts one last look over his shoulder at his scaley friend to shoot him a reproving glare, but then puts on his reading glasses and settles in to his chair to read.
After about a chapter, he hears a soft susurration behind him. He looks back at Crowley in time to see the snake finish recoiling himself slightly closer to the chair, recentered in the drifting patch of sunlight. When Aziraphale turns back after the interruption, his gaze snags on his neglected tea, which he is pleased to discover is still warm. Potential damage to business reputation and book collection aside, perhaps a snake-shaped alarm clock is more useful than not.
The pattern repeats twice, until the snake is curled up right next to the chair, sharing the sunbeam with the angel. Some time after that, Aziraphale feels a touch at his ankle and looks down into relative gloom to see the end of the snake's tail has looped twice around his ankle. He looks back up toward the window and realizes the sun has climbed high enough that there is no more sunbeam to bask in.
"Are you going to be warm enough down there, my dear?" Aziraphale asks solicitously. "Only, the sun's gone. You might want to change back and have a kip on the couch instead."
Crowley's head stays motionless, facing away from the angel, but his tail makes one more slow loop around Aziraphale's leg.
"Well," Aziraphale huffs, irritated by the relative cold shoulder he's being given even as he's obviously meant to serve as an alternative sunning rock. He mutters about ungrateful serpents, but as he turns back to his book he fiddles with his corporation's internal thermostat to raise his temperature by a degree or so.[1] The aura of smug rising from the floor palpably increases.
Without the sound of Crowley's regular movements to lightly break his concentration, Aziraphale is soon completely absorbed in his book and feels the passing of time only as a faint ticking in the back of his consciousness. When his internal clock tips from early afternoon to Tea Time, he rouses with the idea of fetching a bite of something from his kitchen. As he does so, he becomes aware of two things simultaneously:
One: At some point, Crowley had transferred the bulk of his coils from the floor into Aziraphale's lap, with several loops still winding down around one leg from knee to floor.
Two: At some presumably later point, Aziraphale's distracted body moved the hand not busy turning pages onto the mass of snake in his lap and started leisurely petting the sleek scales.
He's reminded of the times he's sat reading in establishments that keep cats and the creatures' uncanny ability to manifest in a lap. And hot on the heels of this second cat-related comparison of the morning is the realization that by all rights he should be crushed under this amount of snake, which feels not so much like five or so yards of scaley muscle but the grounding weight of a generously sized lapcat. Since his own drawing of attention to the matter doesn't suddenly cause the snake to gain four stone, he assumes Crowley is exerting some influence to make his presence less conspicuous—likely in aid to his miraculous transfer from floor to lap, which Aziraphale still can't dredge up any sense memory of.
"You wiley thing, you," he murmurs and purses his mouth at the way Crowley's head is still pointedly facing away from him. He can't even properly give the serpent a reprimanding look. Still, he's loath to move his friend, who is clearly quite comfortable and taking at least some pains not to be a nuisance.
With a sigh, he plucks a fresh cup of tea from the air and resigns himself to waiting to eat, as he doesn't care to miracle himself food, which never has the same verve as the real thing. Though, it would serve Crowley right if he were to call up the crumbliest scones in existence. He'll get his payback by insisting Crowley accompany him to the delicious new Indian restaurant on the corner whose particular decor makes Crowley's eyes water.
By the time his internal clock tells him it's nearing evening, he resurfaces to find Crowley has further invaded. A heavy coil drapes across his shoulders and loops loosely around his neck like a scaley scarf. Something smooth is pressing down the back of his neck, and after a moment he realizes it must be the snake's snout tucked just down the back of his collar, which is unaccountably loose with the ends of his bow tie dangling.
In fact, now that he's not so distracted by his book, he metaphorically sits back (not literally, of course, lest he squash his friend's head against the high back of the chair) and acknowledges how unprecedented and, frankly, bizarre the whole thing is. While Crowley doesn't often take his snake form, it's happened often enough over the millennia for Aziraphale not to mistake him for a particularly stylish python. But he's never, to the angel's recollection... lounged, for lack of a better term, quite so thoroughly on him.[2]
He allows himself to savor the weight settled upon him and the perception that, perhaps a bit fancifully on his part, he's being held or perhaps even clutched tight. A besotted smile tugs at his lips even as his brow furrows. He raises a hand to lightly pet the shiny black scales draped around his neck and ponders the potential instigators of such a dramatic shift in attention—a not unwelcome one, of course. If Crowley had straightforwardly asked him "Hey, mind if I take a nap in your lap while you read?" he would have—no. In no world can Aziraphale imagine Crowley asking something so unabashedly tender of him straight out. Faced with that, he supposes this roundabout approach is much more in line with the demon's typical style. But the question he can't quite answer for himself is why.
"Crowley..." he says, fully prepared to ask after his friend's feelings, and then lapses into pensive silence. 6,000 years of evidence suggests his planned line of questioning will lead, at best, to a lot of sniping or, at worst, several decades of radio silence. Perhaps Crowley is feeling a bit wobbly after the events of the Almost Apocalypse. Or perhaps he really was just feeling a bit cold; Aziraphale had indulged him by raising his body temperature, after all. Or, maybe, it was a bit of demonic mischief to see how much the snake could get away with while Aziraphale was lost in his book.[3] Well, if he can't ask, he can just keep a weather eye out for other odd behavior and observe if some sort of pattern emerges that he can discern.
Course decided, he says, finally, "I'm getting hungry, and you've made me miss tea. Change back, please. I've decided you owe me samosas."
It takes a moment, but Crowley draws his head out of Aziraphale's collar. As he unwinds from around Aziraphale's neck, he bumps the angel in the face not once but twice, and then takes, in Aziraphale's opinion, an unnecessarily complicated path in getting all of his self back onto the floor.
"Is this really necessary?" Aziraphale huffs as he tugs his hand out from where it had been temporarily pinned to his chest to adjust his askew glasses. There's no answer, of course, except for the snake to, somehow, also pin Aziraphale's tail-free leg to the chair as Crowley slithers to the floor.
Aziraphale lightly bats at him and fusses, but presently his corporation is snake-free, and he's able to stand for the first time in far too many hours. Of course, being an angel, he's only as conscious of the stiffness and pain that comes from not moving for a long period as it is convenient to him. In this case, he finds it exceptionally convenient to notice, and agonizes vocally with prejudice. He hobbles out of the study after the snake and finds Crowley already back in his human form, hands in pockets and rolling his entire head around to convey his exasperation.
"Oh, quit your whinging," he says, but waits until Aziraphale draws abreast of him to start heading to the door. "I've seen you sat still long enough to collect actual, literal dust."
As Aziraphale doesn't have the grounds to dispute him, he settles for a mild glare and hurrying to beat the demon to the door.
Most certainly a prank, Aziraphale concludes with a huff.
1 He, of course, ignores any symptoms that one might expect from effectively giving oneself a fever, as acknowledging them would impede his ability to concentrate comfortably on his book. [return to text]
2 Aziraphale can in fact only recall one other time his friend has touched him in snake form: During the insufferably dull stowaway on Noah's ark, Crowley had spent the better part of his time as a snake to "blend in," as he claimed, and definitely not to mildly terrorize various animals and the limited human population on board. However, one day he'd riled the mongooses sufficiently that they'd worried open the gate of their enclosure and given chase. This led to Aziraphale unexpectedly staggering under the entire weight of his friend when Crowley used him as an escape tree. Trying to shoo the chattering mongooses away while clutching at the slithering coils of his friend had been quite a chore. Crowley hissing invectives at the pair from over the top of his head the whole time hadn't helped. When Aziraphale peevishly demanded to know why Crowley didn't just change back to his human form to dissuade them, the demon had sauntered off and spent most of the rest of the trip sunning himself on the roof of the ark. [return to text]
3 In Aziraphale's defense, there was that one time shortly after the Arrangement was established but before they'd worked out all their communication kinks that they both ended up stationed in the same cloister of monks, and Crowley had made a game of seeing how many goose feather quills he could sneak into the angel's hair while he was distracted before anyone commented. [return to text]