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"Angel?"
"Yes, my sweetpea?"
"What the everloving fuck are you reading?"
Aziraphale looked up from his copy of 'Snake Care and Handling'. "I spotted this book in the veterinary section of the library! I thought it would be just the ticket for me to learn how to look after you better," he beamed.
"For Satan's sake, I spend a few months in snake form at the beginning of the world and it's all anyone can talk about for the rest of time! Serpent this, serpent that, I've been in human form a million times as long but no one goes on about how human I am, do they?"
"Well, you do rather lean in to it, my dear. What with the snake tattoo and snake belt and snakeskin shoes and-"
"Aziraphrale! I can't believe I'm hearing this! This is blatant snexism!" Crowley hissed. He turned and stalked out of the bookshop with what Aziraphrale couldn't help thinking was a particularly serpentine wiggle.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER
"Crowley?"
"Yessss... my sweetpea?" Never before had so innocent an endearment sounded so menacing.
"What the... what the heck are you doing?"
Crowley gave him a stern look. "I'm afraid I'm going to need to ask you to leave, Aziraphale. This is a snake-only space."
"No it's not! It's the store room for our bookshop! & I came in to retrieve one of my Welsh-language Bibles from that stack over there and there's a cobra sitting on it!"
The striped snake swivelled its head lazily towards the angel.
"Nagajothi is an oriental rat snake, ACtually."
One of the other serpents - there were about 20 of various sizes, colours and species assembled in a circle on the floor, presumably prevented by some form of demonic enchantment from simply slithering away or attacking each other- glided over to Crowley and hissed at him.
"My snibling Asclepius says you need to stop oppressing us with your snexist attitude and respect our need to commune as snakes," Crowley translated, waving his hand languidly to shoo the angel away.
"If you care to remember, Crowley," Aziraphale retorted wearily, "I am in fact an angel, fluent in all the tongues of the world, yea, and of all the men and beasts thereof. So I know damned well that snake said nothing of the sort, and I do believe the little fellow was hissing because he finds you threatening and rather annoying. I regret that he and I are somewhat on the same page on this."
The demon scowled, and Aziraphale decided to press his advantage while his adversary/lover struggled to respond. "And if this is a snake-only space, what are they doing here? They're not a snake either!" He pointed dramatically at Muriel, who beamed back.
"I know! Mr Crowley said that as a non-binary angel I could attend Serpent Consciouness Raising as a one-off to discuss solidarity between the LGBTQ & snake community! I'm feeling more empowered already!"
A rather fetching little black and red garter snake made a sudden dash for freedom towards a dark corner, and both angels felt the tang of a demonic miracle as Crowley re-hypnotised it into slithering back into the circle and staring gormlessly ahead like the others.
"Oh, fine. This is animal cruelty in my opinion, but if you want to play your silly little game then yes, let's make this room a 'snake-only space'."
Crowley smirked. "You'd better be going then, snexist."
Aziraphale smiled. To an innocent observer he had a lovely smile, all shining aquamarine eyes and laughter lines.
Crowley knew better. "What are you-" he managed before the angel snapped his fingers.
Where he had stood, a monstrously large snake with a pearly-white sheen and an improbable tartan-patterned underside was now coiled.
"Ssssso," it said, "What'ssssss firsssst on the agenda?"