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The life of the common rat is nasty, brutish, and short. In order to avoid a brush with the reaper, it has to beware of a plethora of dangers, such as cars, poison, or the Pest Control blokes from Fenchurch Street.
On top of that, the rat also has to deal with its fair share of natural predators. There’s Graham, employee of the month. There’s owls, foxes,snakes,...
Now that there are very many snakes slithering around London these days.
But how should that particular hungry rat have known what was waiting for it in the old bookshop? It was cold outside and the bookshop was cozy, there were a lot of nooks and crannies to hide in, and the owner had a tendency to absentmindedly leave half-eaten biscuits around the place. It would just go in, have a bite of abandoned custard cream and a bit of a nap behind the Proust. The owner had never noticed so far.
Only that the owner wasn’t in right now.
—
Crowley himself fervently denied having a strain of Golden Retriever in him. It wasn’t that he was clingy, it was just that he felt the most at home in the shop when Aziraphale was around. Then he’d have someone to talk to, someone to annoy and cuddle up against and drink wine with while watching B-List Sci-Fi films. (He hadn’t spent a single day at his own place since the apocalypse, and no night either).
Everything he did just seemed much better when he did it with Aziraphale.
But then, if he had lived through centuries without him, he could probably stomach an afternoon at a book fair. He was six thousand and a few, after all.
Presently, Crowley was sitting in a corner, mildly impressed with the size of Aziraphale’s vintage erotica collection. He’d leafed through ‘At the Crossroads’ and ‘A Lover like Brimstone’ before picking up ‘Faust, Uncensored’ and ‘Corrupted’, which contained a lot of graphic sex scenes between a repressed young priest and a rakish incubus with very sharp teeth.
He ought to ask Aziraphale about his weird porn stash at some point.
But then, just when he was getting to a very interesting bit involving a rosary, Crowley heard a strange rustling noise. To his surprise, a scruffy grey rat came running from under a bookshelf. It looked at him for a brief moment before deciding that he wasn’t worth it and running away again.
Or it tried to.
Sometimes, and Crowley couldn’t help it, his snake instincts got the better of him.
The rat suddenly found itself helpless, lifted up by its tail and face to face with the strange man. There was something decidedly uncanny about him. He smelled like...something bad...like—
“Probably thought you’d just shimmy your way in here and gnaw on some of my angel’s first editions?“
Squeak
”Well, too bad.” The man removed his sunglasses to reveal yellow eyes with slit pupils, staring directly at the rodent.
His voice was low and menacing as he spoke, dragging the ‘s’ just a sliver too long.
“Do you have any idea what snakes do to little rats like you?”
It didn’t answer, probably because it was paralyzed from fear.
“I think you know what I’m talking about.”
The rat gave a panicked squeak as he wet his lips and flaunted a hint of forked tongue. Something about the man’s face was shifting. It was subtle, a few scales here, a glint of sulphur there, but he looked more terrifying than ever before.
The rat prepared itself for what was about to happen. It didn’t struggle, that would make it even worse. If rats had religions, this one prayed. It sent a hasty prayer to whomever would hear it and tried to face its fate without theatrics, though thinking about what it would feel like, what would happen to it after and if...oh — shock! terror!—
Nothing happened.
“Although—,” the man said, “Aziraphale did say he wanted to surprise me tonight, so maybe I shouldn’t go around spoiling my appetite like that.”
The rat opened its eyes to look at him. It was fully prepared to beg for its life with all the methods at its disposition.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
It kept looking.
Suddenly the man went a particular shade of pink and moved the rat in his grip to a less menacing distance. He pointed a finger at the rodent.
“I said don’t look at me like that or I’ll— I’ll—“
Squeak?
“Thrice-blessed insolent bastard, I swear to someone I’ll—“
It kept looking.
“You— you don’t look very delicious anyway. All skin and bones. And you’ve got a limp, wretched thing.”
—About two hours later—
“I’m back, my dear,” Aziraphale said as he opened the bookshop door , loaded with two shopping bags. He had two good bottles of red and all he needed for a delicious pasta dinner and a cozy night in. Perhaps they’d watch Pride and Prejudice, although he didn’t want to make Crowley jealous if he looked at Mr.Darcy for too long. Shaun of the Dead then.
He had not at all expected the sight that greeted him inside, of all things. It was some sort of monstrosity resembling a cage, with brightly-coloured tubes and a hamster wheel in it. Crowley stood beside, talking to a rat in his palm. When Aziraphale approached he realized it was wearing a tiny bow around its neck.
“Hello, angel.”
“What in God’s name—“
“Yeah, quick— do you have any books on rats? I want to care for Dorothy properly after all—”