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Crawly’s eyes snap open and he coughs, spitting water out of his mouth. He doesn’t need to breathe, technically, but great lungfuls of water are not good things for a mostly human body. He retches again.
He is not, obviously, outside, which is the last place he remembers being. Instead, he’s lying on a wooden floor in what looks like a small storage area. By the smell of things, he’s back on the ark.
“Oh, thank heaven,” a relieved voice says above him.
Crawly rolls onto his back with a groan. “Pretty sure they didn’t have anything to do with it.”
It’s then that he realizes it’s the angel standing over him, wringing his hands, white-blond curls plastered to his forehead.
“Aziraphale?” Crawly asks incredulously. “What the—”
He breaks off into coughing again and a shiver wracks his body. He’s freezing.
Aziraphale kneels beside him. “I was beginning to worry you’d drowned. Although I’m not sure we can drown, given that we don’t need to breathe in the first place, but—”
“What happened?” Crawly finally manages to bite out, although it’s hard when his teeth are starting to chatter. “Last I remember is…”
“Flying out into the storm with the intention to save more children?” Aziraphale says sternly. “Into the storm that’s been raging for literal days?”
Crawly shivers again. “I was fine.”
“You fell out of the sky!” Aziraphale cries. “I thought you were—”
He claps his mouth shut and looks away, and Crawly may be cold and half-drowned but he can see the angel’s back to wringing his hands, his brow furrowed deeply.
“Aw.” Crawly smiles. “Were you worried about me?”
Aziraphale straightens and sniffs haughtily. “Of course not. There’s paperwork involved with discorporation, you know. And I shouldn’t like to think who they’d send up here to do your job. Better the demon I know, as it were.”
Crawly laughs, which turns very quickly into a cough, which turns equally quickly into a full-body shudder. He curls in on himself, trying desperately to warm up, but there’s no warmth to be had.
“Crawly?” Aziraphale turns back to him. “Crawly, are you all right?”
Crawly somehow manages to shake his head. “C-c-c—”
Aziraphale’s eyes widen. “Oh no, of course, I don’t know why—”
There’s a snap, and Crawly is dry again. Before he can utter his thanks, the angel pulls him into his arms, cradling Crawly to his chest. His wings snap out and sweep around them both, cocooning Crawly behind a wall of white feathers.
Aziraphale is warm, so warm, radiating heat like a rock in the middle of the desert, and it leaves Crawly gasping. He buries his hands in Aziraphale’s robe and nuzzles into his chest, something he probably shouldn’t be doing with an angel, of all the creatures in existence, but Crawly is freezing and Aziraphale’s the one who dragged him into this embrace in the first place. He’s allowed to nuzzle a bit, he thinks.
“Your hands are like ice,” Aziraphale says.
“Sssnake.” Crawly wonders if he can snuggle closer without being too forward. “Cold-blooded.”
“Hmph.” Aziraphale doesn’t sound very sympathetic to his plight. “Why on Earth did you fly back out in that weather? It’s a miracle you didn’t drown the first three times.”
Crawly looks up at him, specifically at the line of Aziraphale’s jaw and the way the angel is very studiously Not Looking At Him. “Course it was a miracle. Bit of a demonic miracle, really. Just thought I’d have longer to get more thwarting in.”
“Thwarting?”
“Thwarting the Divine Plan. If all those kids were s’posed to die, probably puts a real wrench in things for ‘em to all be on the ark.” Crawly’s feeling warmer now, but he’s still comfortably settled against Aziraphale and there’s really not a reason to move just yet. “You were watching me?”
Aziraphale’s cheeks turn faintly pink. “Of course I wasn’t. If I had been watching you, I’d have been obliged to stop you. I was simply taking a walk on the main deck when I saw something dark and human-shaped fall into the water. I felt compelled to make sure it wasn’t someone from the ark.”
Crawly’s eyebrows shoot up; there’s no way he could’ve been mistaken for someone from the ark, considering he’d been flying. “And when it turned out to be a demon?”
The shade of pink gets darker. “A being of good gives aid wherever it’s needed. Something I doubt a demon would understand.”
Crawly doesn’t point out that he’s spent the past few days flying out to rescue kids from the rising floodwaters. He’s reasonably sure that counts as aid. “Y’know, your lot is the one drowning everybody right now.”
A flicker of concern crosses Aziraphale’s face, the same one Crawly saw days ago, before the rain had started in earnest. “I’ve told you, God’s plan is—”
Crawly groans. “If you say ineffable, I’m going right up to the top deck and jumping off again.”
Aziraphale scoffs. “I wasn’t going to say ineffable.”
“Then what were you going to say?”
The angel is noticeably silent and he seems to find something fascinating to study on the opposite wall.
Crawly rolls his eyes.
After another moment of awkward silence, Aziraphale clears his throat. “Well, you seem to be much warmer now.” He whisks his wings away. “So, I shall leave you to it.”
Crawly stands reluctantly. It’s cold without the angel’s arms and wings around him, but not unbearably so anymore.
The polite thing to do would be to say thank you, but he’s not sure he should be thanking an angel, even if said angel did save his life. Or at least saved him from very inconvenient discorporation.
Instead, he says, “Three times.”
Aziraphale frowns. “I beg your pardon?”
“You said I flew out three times,” Crawly reminds him. “Only way you could’ve known that is if you were watching.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Aziraphale looks away from him and huffs. “And do try to stay out of trouble while we’re on the ark. I don’t like the thought of having to drag you out of the water a dozen times in this mess.”
“Could always just let me drown,” Crawly says.
The angel doesn’t say Don’t be absurd again, but the dismissive noise he makes conveys the same sentiment. Surprising, coming from an angel.
Then again, this angel is the same one who lifted a wing over him during the first rainstorm, sheltering him when they’d known each other for all of five minutes, so maybe it’s not such a surprise after all.
You aren’t like them, Crawly thinks. You really aren’t like any of them.
“It’s merely professional courtesy,” Aziraphale says. “As I said, better the demon I know. You understand.”
“Of course,” Crawly says, although he’s still hung up on the implication that Aziraphale wouldn’t hesitate to pluck him out of the water if he fell out of the sky again. “Clear as day. Well, not today, but you know what I mean.”
“Good.” Aziraphale moves to the door of the little storage room where they’re ensconced. “Good night, Crawly.”
“Good night, Aziraphale.”
Crawly watches the angel leave with a strange feeling in his chest, hollow and somehow full at the same time. His whole body feels like it bears the imprint of Aziraphale’s in every place they touched.
He shivers again, but this time, he doesn’t think it has anything to do with being cold.