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Spring in London is particularly moody this year, it seems. Some days are hot enough to bask on a sunny park bench, maybe even get a bit of a tan going. It’s the treacherous kind of warmth that makes you pack away your winter clothes for good, only for the night to bring torrential rain and a damp chill that seeps all the way into your bones. There’s not a lot of padding on Crowley’s corporation to protect him from the creeping cold. And every time the weather changes, he can feel the shifting atmospheric pressure as a pounding ache between his temple and left eye.
“Hrm,” Crowley comments eloquently on the whole situation, slumping into one of the bookshop’s oversized armchairs as he does. Socked feet tucked underneath himself, he pulls the stolen cardigan tighter around his shoulders. It’s thick, hand-knitted wool that smells like Aziraphale and old books and black tea.
“Darling?” The garment’s original owner pads up behind him, steps near inaudible in his soft slippers, almost like he knows Crowley can’t deal with loud noises right now. “You do seem rather uncomfortable. Are you sure you don’t want to take another nap until, say… June?”
“Already spent all winter asleep, haven’t I?” Crowley sighs, teeth grinding. It’s not an answer to Aziraphales question, exactly. He’d needed that long rest, not just to avoid the bite of ice and snow. Also to forgive - if not forget - everything that had happened. His angel leaving, coming back, promising to stay on Earth for good this time… I’ve got to think, Crowley had said, before shedding his human skin and curling up in a ball of black-and-red scales for the next three months. Aziraphale hadn’t uttered a word of protest, hadn’t done anything to disturb his demonic sleep. So when the days grew longer and the first rays of sunshine started tickling his reptilian nose, Crowley had woken, refreshed and renewed and filled with the fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, the two of them could make it work after all. If he can survive until summer, that is.
Aziraphale comes to stand behind the chair and, incredibly gently, rests his chin on top of Crowley’s head. “Yes, you have,” he says, his voice and body heat like warm oil on Crowley’s scalp. “And I’m not going to pretend I didn’t miss you terribly.”
“Missed you too, angel,” says Cowley, too fast and too quiet, like the words are trying to sneak out unnoticed before he can stop to think. Because despite the still-healing wounds of the past, it’s nothing if not entirely true. “‘s why I don’t wanna go back to sleep so soon. Missed being awake with you. Not that I’m not tempted, because this all feels bloody terrible.” Crowley shivers, hands tucked firmly into his armpits in an attempt to warm them, but to no avail. “It just gets so boring, y’know?”
“I’d be happy to keep you company while you rest,” says Aziraphale and sounds like he means it. “I could make you up a little basket with some blankets, carry you around the shop with me, read to you, if you’d like… I just got this lovely first edition of Jane Eyre…” He strokes the side of Crowley’s face, fingers pressing softly, right where it hurts. It takes everything in the demon not to simply melt into the touch but somehow he keeps his wits about him, shaking his head.
“‘s not the same.” Crowley sinks further into himself. “When I’m like that, it’s… not that I’m gone, exactly. Can still hear and smell and feel… but it’s all far away. Like everything humans do is happening in a sort of… fog. S’pose because it’s a whole other species, maybe?” Crowley shrugs. He’s a demon, after all, not a damn herpetologist.
“Does that count for angels, too?” Aziraphale asks, noticeably careful.
Crowley turns in his chair to look him up and down, from suede slippers over threadbare waistcoat to blue eyes shining so sincerely under his wispy mop of pale hair. “Does when you’re like this, yeah.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale’s face falls, his gaze following the same path down his own front and Crowley’s chest clenches in a panic. His cursed manners are always the first to fall prey to the cold and the pain.
“No, no, angel,” he scrambles to recover. “It’s not that I don’t like your human corporation. Big fan of it, me, personally!” The tight coil around his heart relaxes a fraction at Aziraphale’s small, blushing smile.
“If that’s so, I’d much rather you be bored than watch you freeze into an insufferably grumpy snow cone.”
“Hrm!” Crowley reiterates, just to make his point. “It’s not… Not just boring. It’s…” He steels himself, closes his eyes like that will make him invisible in his hellish vulnerability. “It’s lonely, angel.”
Aziraphale looks down at him, wordless and eyes full of pity, until his expression starts to transform… from angelic empathy over human contemplation to something nearing downright demonic mischief. He looks like he just got free dessert at the Ritz.
“Meet me up in the bedroom in ten minutes.” Then he turns silently on his heel and is gone, leaving Crowley alone with the chill and the headache and absolutely no clue what awaits him next.
He’s still just as clueless when he opens the bedroom door nine and a half minutes later. The bed looks different, all the quilts and cushions arranged in a circle to make… well, he’d call it a nest if he didn’t know any better. And right in the middle of it, curled into a perfect ball and almost camouflaged among the light-patterned fabrics, lies the most beautiful creature Crowley has ever seen.
It’s an amelanistic Burmese python at first glance only, its leopard spots a dazzling gold and its eyes unnaturally blue. There’s a warm, undeniably heaven-made glow surrounding it.
“Angel?” Crowley whispers, his teeth too pointy and his mouth too dry. The snake tilts its head and flicks its forked tongue twice, tasting the air.
Yesss. Crowley can barely hear it, straining ears currently stored on a different astral plane. And God, Satan, Anyone help him, he needs to remedy that right this moment or else discorporate from sheer impatience here and now.
He’s never shifted out of his human form faster, legs melting away as he’s still struggling to peel off the cardigan, which sends him toppling face-first onto the bed. Snake-Aziraphale looks wickedly amused. Crowley never knew serpents were even capable of that expression. He completes his change, sharp color vision replaced by other senses. Smell, vibration, heat - all in the shape of a tight coil of muscle, sending out a deep, steady wave of angelic energy. It draws him in, his own body still stiff and sluggish from the cold. He flicks his tongue against gold-and-white scales and tastes the familiar blend of books and tea and wool.
Is this better? Aziraphale hisses in a language no human has ever been able to speak. Crowley hasn’t heard it in millennia. He’s immensely glad his snake eyes are incapable of producing tears.
It’s… Crowley falters. It’s not just better. It’s perhaps the most thoughtful, selfless, caring thing anyone has ever done for a wretched demon since the dawn of time. He’s really not sure he deserves any of it. Angel, you don’t have to do this. Not for my sake, not if… The belated realization hits him like a flaming pitchfork to the ribs and he shudders with the force of it. Not if it hurts.
Why would it hurt, darling? The pale snake lifts its head and lets it rest on Crowley’s outermost loop. It’s so smooth and warm and sends a tingly feeling all along the wound-up spiral of his spine.
Dunno, Crowley mumbles - as much as a reptile can mumble, anyway. Thought it might be like me walking into a church or somethin’. Your essence being inside something so, uh… demonic and all?
Oh, my dear boy. Aziraphale nuzzles the bottom of his head against Crowley’s scales. They’re slowly warming up where their bodies are touching. I don’t think any of Her creatures are inherently good or evil. They just… are. He wiggles a bit, flexing and loosening the coils of his body. No, it feels quite nice, actually. Elegant, powerful, a bit like giving myself a hug… I can see why you like it. He makes that face again, an impossible smile with lips that can’t move.
Finally reassured he’s not causing the angel any undue harm, Crowley allows himself to relax against him. He isn’t even sure whether he likes being like this, as Aziraphale said, or if it’s just the path of least resistance, the way his body naturally wants to exist. But he absolutely does appreciate how Aziraphale looks and feels in his snakelike presentation, how well they fit next to each other, how he’s radiating heat and calm and the smell of home.
Well, in that case, Crowley catches himself still trying to sound nonchalant even while slithering all around his angel-serpent, encasing him like a human child cradling their favorite stuffed toy. I’ll be taking that nap then, if that’s alright.
Aziraphale adjusts his coils, the warm scales of his back gliding across Crowley’s belly. Of course! I’m almost tempted to join y- He makes an awkward little hissing noise, like he’s stifling a yawn. Sorry. Rather sleepy creatures, snakes, aren’t they?
Yeah. Guess we are, the demon replies with a sigh of contentment. Thanks, angel. Really. But Aziraphale has already dozed off, golden head pillowed on a patch of black scales, and Crowley follows him gladly, safe and warm at last.