rainjoyswriting (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rainjoyswriting) wrote2019-08-17 01:23 pm
rainjoyswriting) wrote2019-08-17 01:23 pm
Good Omens Short: The Soho Herpetological Society
The Soho Herpetological Society, a Good Omens short scribbled fast on a Saturday morning, Crowley/Aziraphale bless them <3
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I'm just grateful when my mind offers me some fluff for them <3
Rating: Uh G? I managed a G.
Warnings and spoilers: Set post-series, watch that first. No warnings as it's as fluffy as an angel's hair. Also COVERED IN SNAKES.
Summary: Crowley says, "Why do you have a room full of snakes?"
Note: I asked my brain after all the exhaustion and stress of the last two fics if I could please *now* have some fluff and it said yes but it's covered in snakes. And it's like, I'll take it, take whatever I can get right now . . .
Aziraphale's bookshop, like all good second-hand bookshops, quickly descends into a labyrinth once the unsuspecting customer leaves the safety of its main room. Steps lead up and down, corridors have uncomfortably low ceilings for no discernible reason, it's possible to pass the same side room to 'true crime' on a near-endless repeat until panic peaks and somehow the customer is spat out from the warren they've entered and find that they now face the exit again like a warning. Crowley goes back and forth on whether this is an Aziraphalean device to sell fewer books or just what bookshops are like.
He can't spot Aziraphale that day when he walks in whistling I Want to Break Free, though there are a couple of browsing customers so he must be here somewhere. He sticks his head into the office, which is quiet, and tries all of Aziraphale's favourite sections (novels and poetry, largely, though he's very attached to his scripts, and he reads history books as if they're fictionalised anyway, the two of them having a rather different perspective on historical matters to humans). No angel. Crowley sighs in an exaggerated way, eyeing a narrow corridor off into the bowels of the shop, he's not a reader and not quite trusting of books the way Aziraphale is and the thought of getting lost in there for however many hours does not appeal. But they have a reservation this evening they probably shouldn't put off indefinitely, it confuses the humans, so he rolls his eyes and strolls off into the maze.
He checks the side rooms - he knows Aziraphale has been here at some point recently, they've been dusted. The corridor ends in a room which leads onto a further couple of corridors, oh good. There's a step up for no reason. At the end of the corridor, there's a step down, for no reason.
"Aziraphale," he calls, not very optimistically, he thinks he's made a mistake. The books seem to loom. How does Aziraphale even have so many of them? Why does he want so many of them? The angel's a hoarder, he needs an intervention, not all of these can possibly spark joy even in him. Another room, another room -
This looks more promising; a short flight of steps up to a door with a little rope across it, and a sign pinned to it in Aziraphale's neat writing reading 'Private.' Crowley assumes that 'private' always refers to other people and unhooks the rope, lets himself in - the lock opens automatically under his hand, as locks tend to. Inside it's dark but for - strange little lit windows in cabinets, and there's an odd scent - an odd, familiar scent - and a . . . a thin dry sound, that he knows . . .
His hand finds the light switch, and he stares at the tanks. More than one of them is hissing.
At his back he hears the distant pom-pom-poming of an approaching angel in a good mood, and he still just stands there, staring, as behind him Aziraphale pauses and then says, "Pardon me, the sign said pr- good Lord - Crowley, ah, Crowley . . ."
Crowley looks around at Aziraphale, holding a plate covered with a napkin with his face entirely pink, and blinking a lot more than is necessary. "I wasn't - I didn't - how did you - get here?"
Crowley says, "Why do you have a room full of snakes?"
Aziraphale mouths nothing at him for a moment, then says, "- it's not entirely - full of snakes . . ."
"The room full of snakes, angel," Crowley says. "Why do you have it?"
Aziraphale squirms his shoulders, and walks past him to put his plate on a sideboard. "I - well - I - acquired one, some time back, you see, and I got terribly fond of him, and then I joined a little club of snake fanciers and it turns out that sometimes people just abandon them, or they get ill or die and can't care for them anymore and their families seem strangely averse to keeping them so I've been, you know, taking them in for um, a while, and they live for quite some time, some of them, and it's quite hard to turn them down when they need a home so I, ah, now I have - now I have a room full of snakes, I suppose." He looks around the room, and then his eye catches one glass door where a snake's head is directed right at him and his gaze falls fond, looking into its eyes. "They're really no bother," he says. "All they want is shelter and care."
Crowley is still mostly trying to process 'snake fanciers'. He stares around at them - a fair few corn snakes, that's a - that's an actually rather large python, he doesn't know what that thing is but nothing coloured that livid has ever not been venomous as all fuck. "Why did you 'acquire' one?"
Aziraphale flits him an embarrassed look and folds his hands behind his back, which is something he does so he can't visibly fret with them. He says, shoulders tucked a little too high to his ears and cheeks high pink, "I've always liked them."
"Have you," with a flit of a smirk, now becoming a bit more . . . he does remember, a long time ago, the angel who technically was on apple tree duty that day tickling him under his chin and telling him how beautiful he was before he walked away humming, and Crawly had not known what to do for about five minutes before he mercifully spotted the human woman. Aziraphale likes all of God's creatures regardless of whether they crawl or scuttle or slither, and as he's currently looking in a fervent way away from Crowley at a large, plump, pure black snake and blushing hard, Crowley thinks that he's remembering exactly what he remembers, and Crowley smiles.
Crowley walks to peer in one tank, where from an arched bit of wood a tongue shimmers at him and vanishes. "You rescue snakes," he says, he's still feeling a bit baffled though the concept is excessively pleasing to him.
"Technically someone else does the rescuing," Aziraphale says. "I foster them. Except I never do end up giving them to anyone else so I suppose that I adopt them, really."
"You adopt snakes. Of course you do," in a murmur, mouth pursing pleased.
"They're lovely and shiny, when they're healthy," Aziraphale says, trying to squirm his spine straighter in his stance. "And some of them are ever so affectionate. - that's Daphne, don't tap at her or anything, she's a bit anxious, I think she came from a hoarder."
"Daphne."
"She came to me called Noodle, I really couldn't . . . that's Basil, he's a darling, he likes having his throat rubbed."
"What's the big black one called?" Crowley says, because that one naturally reminds him of someone else, and Aziraphale still looks very pink and flustered, turning to his covered plate and whipping the napkin from it; little stiff mice, pink paws curled.
"He's called Mr Darcy," the angel says, clipped as if he is not having a conversation about this. "He's a bit standoffish at first but he's a sweetheart underneath it. You can give him a mouse if you like."
"Mr Darcy," Crowley says.
Aziraphale glares at the mice hot in the face as if the teasing has gone too far and he's about to shoot Crowley that look that admittedly does make him wish he was on his stomach and slithering under something to hide, then something in his eyes softens, and he looks at Crowley with the old openness, the smile touching the corner of his mouth. "I think he's terribly handsome," he says, and the smile flexes deeper. "Well. For a snake."
Crowley looks at him and then looks around the room, the climate-controlled tanks of long coiled bodies, lolling over their branches, half-hidden between their rocks. And this isn't new, this amount of snakes, it can't be, this isn't post- well, post the apocalypse not happening, even though technically the apocalypse has always been not happening, but . . . this isn't new. Aziraphale has been tending to these creatures, liking and loving these creatures, since, since . . .
Well. Since the Garden, when he thought another large black snake was really terribly handsome, even if it took him a few thousand years to admit it.
Crowley walks over, slips his arms around him, squeezes him in. Aziraphale is hesitant at first - he never flinches, just sometimes doesn't seem to understand what's happening - then wraps his arms around Crowley's waist, hugging him happily. Crowley breathes in the scent of his hair, today's carefully chosen cologne, and feels the lovely softness of him in his arms, he seems to have no sharp edges to him at all and everything Crowley wanted for all those years, everything he wanted until his stomach and heart were raw with it, he didn't know that he was getting even more than that. He could almost forgive Her, for the impossible unimaginable bounty of the reality of getting his angel, everything he didn't even know he was being offered . . .
He runs his knuckles down the side of Aziraphale's neck, feels the way Aziraphale's inhaled breath presses his chest closer to his. Inexplicably he wants to say 'thank you', but it's too much to say; so he raises Aziraphale's face with his palm at his jaw to kiss, in a very meant way, the softness of the skin underneath his ear. The angel stays still, eyes closed, but Crowley can hear his breath shudder in, and feel the flicker of his invisible wings shivering.
Crowley lifts his head, murmurs, "Let me take you to dinner."
Aziraphale blinks his eyes open, all squirming and pleased, and says, "I would be delighted, darling, but they eat first. Look, you can feed Sylvia, she's soppy as anything, wouldn't bite for the world -"
"- the others bite?"
The angel says seriously, "Some of them come from very troubled homes, Crowley. We mustn't judge."
"They bite you? Who bites you?"
"They hardly ever do if you're sensible with them."
Crowley glares suspicion around the room and he knows it's ridiculous, what is a snake bite to an angel who could heal it with a mere tut, but he still lowers his sunglasses to glare and hisses, low, Alright you lot, the next one to bite him, the next one is shoes.
They're not as easy as plants, snakes. That one in the corner is definitely flicking its tongue at him with a sneering, You don't own me, copper.
Snakes, like cats, will do as they please, something Crowley knows well. But it doesn't mean they don't feel the gentle wash of affection's waters, smoothing them slowly down, turning their sharp edges to the undulation of a curve.
Aziraphale offers him a dead mouse by the tail, smiling like it's a love token; in its way, between them, it is.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I'm just grateful when my mind offers me some fluff for them <3
Rating: Uh G? I managed a G.
Warnings and spoilers: Set post-series, watch that first. No warnings as it's as fluffy as an angel's hair. Also COVERED IN SNAKES.
Summary: Crowley says, "Why do you have a room full of snakes?"
Note: I asked my brain after all the exhaustion and stress of the last two fics if I could please *now* have some fluff and it said yes but it's covered in snakes. And it's like, I'll take it, take whatever I can get right now . . .
Aziraphale's bookshop, like all good second-hand bookshops, quickly descends into a labyrinth once the unsuspecting customer leaves the safety of its main room. Steps lead up and down, corridors have uncomfortably low ceilings for no discernible reason, it's possible to pass the same side room to 'true crime' on a near-endless repeat until panic peaks and somehow the customer is spat out from the warren they've entered and find that they now face the exit again like a warning. Crowley goes back and forth on whether this is an Aziraphalean device to sell fewer books or just what bookshops are like.
He can't spot Aziraphale that day when he walks in whistling I Want to Break Free, though there are a couple of browsing customers so he must be here somewhere. He sticks his head into the office, which is quiet, and tries all of Aziraphale's favourite sections (novels and poetry, largely, though he's very attached to his scripts, and he reads history books as if they're fictionalised anyway, the two of them having a rather different perspective on historical matters to humans). No angel. Crowley sighs in an exaggerated way, eyeing a narrow corridor off into the bowels of the shop, he's not a reader and not quite trusting of books the way Aziraphale is and the thought of getting lost in there for however many hours does not appeal. But they have a reservation this evening they probably shouldn't put off indefinitely, it confuses the humans, so he rolls his eyes and strolls off into the maze.
He checks the side rooms - he knows Aziraphale has been here at some point recently, they've been dusted. The corridor ends in a room which leads onto a further couple of corridors, oh good. There's a step up for no reason. At the end of the corridor, there's a step down, for no reason.
"Aziraphale," he calls, not very optimistically, he thinks he's made a mistake. The books seem to loom. How does Aziraphale even have so many of them? Why does he want so many of them? The angel's a hoarder, he needs an intervention, not all of these can possibly spark joy even in him. Another room, another room -
This looks more promising; a short flight of steps up to a door with a little rope across it, and a sign pinned to it in Aziraphale's neat writing reading 'Private.' Crowley assumes that 'private' always refers to other people and unhooks the rope, lets himself in - the lock opens automatically under his hand, as locks tend to. Inside it's dark but for - strange little lit windows in cabinets, and there's an odd scent - an odd, familiar scent - and a . . . a thin dry sound, that he knows . . .
His hand finds the light switch, and he stares at the tanks. More than one of them is hissing.
At his back he hears the distant pom-pom-poming of an approaching angel in a good mood, and he still just stands there, staring, as behind him Aziraphale pauses and then says, "Pardon me, the sign said pr- good Lord - Crowley, ah, Crowley . . ."
Crowley looks around at Aziraphale, holding a plate covered with a napkin with his face entirely pink, and blinking a lot more than is necessary. "I wasn't - I didn't - how did you - get here?"
Crowley says, "Why do you have a room full of snakes?"
Aziraphale mouths nothing at him for a moment, then says, "- it's not entirely - full of snakes . . ."
"The room full of snakes, angel," Crowley says. "Why do you have it?"
Aziraphale squirms his shoulders, and walks past him to put his plate on a sideboard. "I - well - I - acquired one, some time back, you see, and I got terribly fond of him, and then I joined a little club of snake fanciers and it turns out that sometimes people just abandon them, or they get ill or die and can't care for them anymore and their families seem strangely averse to keeping them so I've been, you know, taking them in for um, a while, and they live for quite some time, some of them, and it's quite hard to turn them down when they need a home so I, ah, now I have - now I have a room full of snakes, I suppose." He looks around the room, and then his eye catches one glass door where a snake's head is directed right at him and his gaze falls fond, looking into its eyes. "They're really no bother," he says. "All they want is shelter and care."
Crowley is still mostly trying to process 'snake fanciers'. He stares around at them - a fair few corn snakes, that's a - that's an actually rather large python, he doesn't know what that thing is but nothing coloured that livid has ever not been venomous as all fuck. "Why did you 'acquire' one?"
Aziraphale flits him an embarrassed look and folds his hands behind his back, which is something he does so he can't visibly fret with them. He says, shoulders tucked a little too high to his ears and cheeks high pink, "I've always liked them."
"Have you," with a flit of a smirk, now becoming a bit more . . . he does remember, a long time ago, the angel who technically was on apple tree duty that day tickling him under his chin and telling him how beautiful he was before he walked away humming, and Crawly had not known what to do for about five minutes before he mercifully spotted the human woman. Aziraphale likes all of God's creatures regardless of whether they crawl or scuttle or slither, and as he's currently looking in a fervent way away from Crowley at a large, plump, pure black snake and blushing hard, Crowley thinks that he's remembering exactly what he remembers, and Crowley smiles.
Crowley walks to peer in one tank, where from an arched bit of wood a tongue shimmers at him and vanishes. "You rescue snakes," he says, he's still feeling a bit baffled though the concept is excessively pleasing to him.
"Technically someone else does the rescuing," Aziraphale says. "I foster them. Except I never do end up giving them to anyone else so I suppose that I adopt them, really."
"You adopt snakes. Of course you do," in a murmur, mouth pursing pleased.
"They're lovely and shiny, when they're healthy," Aziraphale says, trying to squirm his spine straighter in his stance. "And some of them are ever so affectionate. - that's Daphne, don't tap at her or anything, she's a bit anxious, I think she came from a hoarder."
"Daphne."
"She came to me called Noodle, I really couldn't . . . that's Basil, he's a darling, he likes having his throat rubbed."
"What's the big black one called?" Crowley says, because that one naturally reminds him of someone else, and Aziraphale still looks very pink and flustered, turning to his covered plate and whipping the napkin from it; little stiff mice, pink paws curled.
"He's called Mr Darcy," the angel says, clipped as if he is not having a conversation about this. "He's a bit standoffish at first but he's a sweetheart underneath it. You can give him a mouse if you like."
"Mr Darcy," Crowley says.
Aziraphale glares at the mice hot in the face as if the teasing has gone too far and he's about to shoot Crowley that look that admittedly does make him wish he was on his stomach and slithering under something to hide, then something in his eyes softens, and he looks at Crowley with the old openness, the smile touching the corner of his mouth. "I think he's terribly handsome," he says, and the smile flexes deeper. "Well. For a snake."
Crowley looks at him and then looks around the room, the climate-controlled tanks of long coiled bodies, lolling over their branches, half-hidden between their rocks. And this isn't new, this amount of snakes, it can't be, this isn't post- well, post the apocalypse not happening, even though technically the apocalypse has always been not happening, but . . . this isn't new. Aziraphale has been tending to these creatures, liking and loving these creatures, since, since . . .
Well. Since the Garden, when he thought another large black snake was really terribly handsome, even if it took him a few thousand years to admit it.
Crowley walks over, slips his arms around him, squeezes him in. Aziraphale is hesitant at first - he never flinches, just sometimes doesn't seem to understand what's happening - then wraps his arms around Crowley's waist, hugging him happily. Crowley breathes in the scent of his hair, today's carefully chosen cologne, and feels the lovely softness of him in his arms, he seems to have no sharp edges to him at all and everything Crowley wanted for all those years, everything he wanted until his stomach and heart were raw with it, he didn't know that he was getting even more than that. He could almost forgive Her, for the impossible unimaginable bounty of the reality of getting his angel, everything he didn't even know he was being offered . . .
He runs his knuckles down the side of Aziraphale's neck, feels the way Aziraphale's inhaled breath presses his chest closer to his. Inexplicably he wants to say 'thank you', but it's too much to say; so he raises Aziraphale's face with his palm at his jaw to kiss, in a very meant way, the softness of the skin underneath his ear. The angel stays still, eyes closed, but Crowley can hear his breath shudder in, and feel the flicker of his invisible wings shivering.
Crowley lifts his head, murmurs, "Let me take you to dinner."
Aziraphale blinks his eyes open, all squirming and pleased, and says, "I would be delighted, darling, but they eat first. Look, you can feed Sylvia, she's soppy as anything, wouldn't bite for the world -"
"- the others bite?"
The angel says seriously, "Some of them come from very troubled homes, Crowley. We mustn't judge."
"They bite you? Who bites you?"
"They hardly ever do if you're sensible with them."
Crowley glares suspicion around the room and he knows it's ridiculous, what is a snake bite to an angel who could heal it with a mere tut, but he still lowers his sunglasses to glare and hisses, low, Alright you lot, the next one to bite him, the next one is shoes.
They're not as easy as plants, snakes. That one in the corner is definitely flicking its tongue at him with a sneering, You don't own me, copper.
Snakes, like cats, will do as they please, something Crowley knows well. But it doesn't mean they don't feel the gentle wash of affection's waters, smoothing them slowly down, turning their sharp edges to the undulation of a curve.
Aziraphale offers him a dead mouse by the tail, smiling like it's a love token; in its way, between them, it is.