Postlapsarian

The first night watch of humanity’s separation from the Divine was shaping up to be more or less the same as the previous six night watches. The only difference was that Aziraphale was facing East, out towards the vast and barren sands, instead of inwards peering down West from the great wall, into the Garden. Also, for the first time in the Earth’s history, it was just leaving off pissing rain in that desultory post-thunderstorm way that makes you feel clammy and sloshes around in your shoes. Aziraphale had not been issued shoes for this assignment, so he sat on the edge of the wall, swinging his legs in the air.

He was getting the same show as before. Adam and Eve, having realized that lion meat might in fact be quite tasty if roasted over the glow of a flaming sword, had made something of a campfire. They had then set about the same task as all of the other nights, the one that Aziraphale diligently made sure to focus his eyes just to the left of, just in case he wasn’t supposed to--

“Oh, so thisssss is what you get up to up here all night.”

Crawly didn’t actually require a voice box to shape words. The snake coiled all the way around Aziraphale’s body before flicking his tail over the angel’s head and manifesting back into the bipedal, vaguely rakish form he’d assumed earlier that day. He sat on the wall beside Aziraphale.

The sound of skin slapping on skin should not have been audible from where they sat. it was anyway.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Aziraphale suggested. “Hell, perhaps?” He winced. It hadn’t come out sounding particularly polite, and he hadn’t meant to insult him. He’d merely assumed that the snake would be called back Downstairs as a reward for a job well done.

Crawly shrugged. “Apparently I was so cracking on the first temptation that they sent me back for more,” he said. “Think I’ll wait until there are more humans to tempt, though. Wouldn’t exactly be sporting to keep doing those two.”

He fell silent for a moment, beating glossy black wings to lift himself up a little and settle more comfortably on the wall. In this case, “more comfortably” meant getting rid of the legs, because a sinuous length of shiny scales extended down from Crawly’s pelvis to wave gently against the bricks.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, leaning down. “That’s a very nice tail.” Then he nodded nervously towards the copulating humans out in the dunes. “Well, you’ll have more to tempt soon enough.”

“Mmm. Yes.” The snake flicked the tip of his tail upwards, brushing against the sole of Aziraphale’s foot, making him jump.

“I wonder if they know they don’t need to keep--erm-- doing that, now that she’s-- well-- do you think perhaps someone should tell them?”

Crawly turned the part of his body that still had an identifiable front and back to look at Aziraphale. “They know, angel,” he said, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “They’re doing it recreationally.”

The tip of Crawly’s tail gently wound up, up around Aziraphale’s ankle, holding it and caressing his calf ever so gently.

“I don’t see why they would do that for fun,” Aziraphale said. “But then, I suppose there aren’t all that many entertainment options out there-- perhaps I should have sent them along with a deck of cards--”

“Want me to show you?”

“I--” Aziraphale’s gaze skittered frantically between the demon’s glowing yellow eyes, the snake tail wrapped around his leg, and the humans, now lying side-by-side with intertwined fingers. “No! Of course not!”

The tail unwound and dropped away. Crawly shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “It’s just that, once there are enough humans for the temptations to really get going, you’re going to need to understand this stuff if you want any hope of thwarting my wiles.” He leaned back on his hands, unconcerned. “Really, it’s a tactical advantage I shouldn’t be offering you in the first place.” He held his breath-- not that he really needed to breathe anyway-- hoping that came out at least somewhat suavely.

“Oh.” The feathers of Aziraphale’s winds rustled slightly as he thought that out. “Well, alright then. It’s just that, I don’t think we’re really supposed to.”

“Don’t worry, angel, it doesn’t count. I’ll just put them between your legs.” He said that with the authority of someone who’d just thought of something rather clever, and planned on passing on the wisdom to future generations.

Aziraphale frowned, then nodded. “Yes,” he said, “Yes, I’m sure that’s just fine, then.” He sat slightly stiffly, waiting. “Er-- them?”

Crawly was suddenly sitting much closer, without having moved at any definable moment. His tail was back, too, wrapping a figure-eight pattern around both of Aziraphale’s ankles and up his legs. The scales were softer than they looked, velvety, and Aziraphale allowed it to happen with something like a small sigh. The lack of shoes had been quite an oversight on the hot brick, and the cool scales felt so very nice on his feet, tired from the first real bad day at work so far.

Crawly had Aziraphale’s legs bound from the ankle to just above the knee, the fabric of his sparkling white robes bunched up around his thighs. Then he pulled up with the tail and reached an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders, bringing his legs up and head down to lie on the flat surface of the wall. They were close to the edge, but fortunately neither would suffer anything besides embarrassment if they fell off.

Crawly braced himself on his elbows over Aziraphale’s torso, glancing down at his own garment. With the blink of an eye-- his first blink ever, actually-- the fabric was draped on top of him rather than being around him. Angels, and this one in particular, tended towards a rather charming diffidence. Best to keep a facsimile of decency.

He took Aziraphale’s hand, which itched slightly with holiness, and brought it to his own skin: from just under his arm, down the sides of his ribs, and then farther down to where the protrusion of the iliac crest should be, replaced instead by glossy scales. “Yes, them,” Crawly breathed, watching the fascination in Aziraphale’s face as he hesitantly slid his fingers over the edges of his scales. “Unless you’d prefer if I put on one of what he’s got?” He nodded towards the sleeping Adam, down outside the Garden.

“No, no, that’s… alright… I wouldn’t want to, erm, impose.” Aziraphale wriggled slightly, getting used to the feeling of weight and pressure on top of him, and just the slightest hint of firmness under his robes pressed into the spot where skin met scales of Crawly’s midriff.

“Oh,” Crawly hissed, taking that as his cue to start sinuously grinding down into the angel’s body. “Oh, but of course you impose. You’re very imposing, standing up here watching over Creation. Even without the sword. You really do a fabuloussss job.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale shivered as Crawly’s tongue darted out of his mouth, licking from his collarbone up to his chin. “I-- do you really think so? That’s ever so-- I was a little worried that I wasn’t very good at… I’m supposed to…” He trailed off entirely. Crawly’s tongue was exploring down underneath the collar of his robes now, reaching further down his chest than it really ought to be able to go.

“You’re ssspine-chilling,” he promised. “And I’d know. I’m all ssspine.”

“Thank you,” said Aziraphale, and then “Oh!” as Crawly’s thin, agile tongue wrapped around a nipple.

Angels do not get erections in Heaven for the simple reason that, especially after the banishment of the rebel angels, there is really nothing worth getting an erection about up there. Thus the length that Crawly felt pushing up into his body was not the first angelic erection, but only because Aziraphale had had a (thoroughly ignored) one four days prior.

Reports of Satyrically endowed demons running amok around Hell have been greatly exaggerated. It is, however, probably safe to say that Crawly was familiar with the effect.

“There,” he murmured. “You’re getting the idea. Hold your nice legs together for me and I’ll just ssslip them in.” Aziraphale didn’t have much choice given the tail wrapped around them, but he gamely tightened his muscles anyway and gave as polite a smile as he could muster.

Crawly lined up his hemipenes vertically-- not the most comfortable, but more convenient when you’re not trying to grab onto any female you can get close to in a mating ball-- and slowly, tenderly pushed them in between the angel’s thighs. He stared at Aziraphale’s face, which was a strange combination of aroused, curious, and confused.

“Don’t worry, angel,” he said. “That part was for me. Here.” With that, he started to thrust with an entirely inhuman motion: ventral scales pushing very slightly off of the bits of Aziraphale’s clothing that were still covering him, undulating in patterns not quite resolvable into movements consistent with newly invented Earthly physics.

Aziraphale cried out. He couldn’t help it; the intersection of Crawly’s tail and his firm belly was alternatively pushing firmly into his pelvis and pulling teasingly away, and it was both exactly what he wanted and not nearly close enough. He almost allowed the word harder to slip out of his mouth, and caught it at the last second. This was merely a demonstration-- nothing that should affect him personally. Just an explanation of what exactly he was tasked with Thwarting.

Aziraphale forced his mind away from the very human organ straining between his legs. Which turned out to be a mistake, because it left his entire consciousness available to focus on the fact that he was on his back on the East wall of the Garden of Eden, robes rucked up nearly to his waist now, his legs immobile and his entire Earthly form held down by the firm weight of the Enemy. Aziraphale was helpless, and it felt entirely too much like being a part of the Heavenly Host: the self subsumed, everything he was existing for the purpose of another.

Except for that Aziraphale secretly, guiltily suspected that he had never been all that good at being part of the Host. He never could stop himself from glancing around sometimes, wondering if he was the only one not lost in rapture at the Lord’s word, not caught up with passion at the idea of casting out the rebels from Heaven. He’d gotten pitying glances when he’d been sent down to Eden, the garden being seen as really just a pale suburb of Heaven. But if he was honest with himself, Aziraphale would have to admit that a nice quiet post at the gates of an idyllic garden, where he could be alone every so often, was just about right for him.

This, though. This was the feeling that he had always seen, and envied, on the faces of his brothers-in-arms. Powerlessness, subservience, exaltation. Except instead of the Word of God, it was the body of a serpent doing that to him.

Crawly was thrusting harder now, his movements fierce but no less lissome. The scales had invaded up his torso, so that he was black and scaly to just under his arms. His face was still the pale angular human one, but his eyes seemed wider and more yellow, and his tongue was moving along Aziraphale’s jaw and collarbone without Crawly’s mouth opening in the slightest.

He stared down into Aziraphale’s face; this strange, uncertain divine being, the only angel he’d met so far who almost made him think Heaven might not have been so bad after all. He’d wanted to corrupt the poor thing, of course. That was certainly sporting, under the circumstances. But Aziraphale didn’t look corrupted. He looked rapturous.

Crawly would his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders, grateful to still have arms considering the extent to which he was losing control of the rest of his form, and buried his head in his neck. The holiness burned on his skin like the pleasant aftershock of a slap, and with one more thrust he spent twice into the crevasse of Aziraphale’s legs.

“Oh!” said Aziraphale, wincing away from the sensation of wetness between his thighs. He had never actually witnessed ejaculation up close, of course, so had been somewhat fuzzy on the details. Crawly sighed, quickly collecting himself and looking down at the mess.

“Sorry,” he murmured despite himself, even as the scales retreated back down his torso. He freed Aziraphale’s legs reared up slightly on his tail, gently pushing his knees apart.

He could see, among the folds of formerly-white fabric, the angel’s hard cock nestled in a tuft of soft blonde hair. Aziraphale was motionless, eyes wide, as the demon looked at him.

“Heavenly,” said Crawly, and leaned down to plant a chaste kiss on the inside of Aziraphale’s ankle. Aziraphale twitched desperately.

Crawly grabbed his robes, which had ended up discarded beside the pair, and used them to wipe away the small amount of snake semen from between Aziraphale’s legs. The rasp of fabric so close to Aziraphale’s erection made him moan and arch, and Crawly grinned.

He threw the robes off the edge of the wall. Littering. Littering was a good use of his time, until there were more humans to tempt. In the meantime, he’d have to occupy himself with this very strange angel.

“Nnggh,” Aziraphale whined, involuntarily arching up in a gesture of obvious supplication.

“Oh, angel,” said Crawly softly. He let the scales start sneaking back up, unfurling his tail to its full length. “That’s why it’s called temptation. I’m just supposed to make you want it. It’s up to you to follow through.”

The scales overtook him entirely, and he nuzzled the tip of his nose into Aziraphale’s neck, reaching out to tongue at him one more time. “Where-- are you leaving?” said Aziraphale. “You-- you can’t, I don’t know what this is, I’m not--”

“Until next time,” Crawly hissed, and slipped away down the wall.

Aziraphale lay on his back until the inconvenient flesh wilted back down to size. Finally, he picked himself up and smoothed down his robes, rustling the dirt out of his wings. “Well,” he said into the empty night, “Thank you very much for the demonstration. I think it will be very helpful. I’ve got a lot of thwarting to do.”