Title: in the rain
Character/Pairing: Crawly, Aziraphale
Genre: Gen, alternate universe
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 565
Author's Notes: Inspired by an aside on tumblr, speculating 'what if' the angels in Supernatural had guns instead of blades. My mind slipped sideways to Good Omens.
The two of them had been talking more or less amicably about morals and whether an action was right or wrong as the previously nice day turned progressively darker. They had stopped their conversation for the moment, Crawly trying to shelter in the lee of the wall from the wind that was picking up and Aziraphale trying to prevent the serpent from getting too close to the Garden. The snake had already caused enough trouble with his previous incursion and he was determined to keep him from finding another gap to slither through.
Crawly seems to give up after another nudge with a sandalled foot and settles instead for coiling around Aziraphale's ankle.
There's a pause after the serpent does so, the extreme proximity causing them both to be a little embarrassed, before Crawley asks, "Didn't you have a weapon to defend the gate with?"
"Um," Aziraphale hedges, guilt settling in and causing him to shift from foot to foot and making Crawly tighten closer to his ankle as thunder cracks in the distance.
"You did, I'm sure of it. All fiery with Grace."
"Well yes, angels have–"
"Very impressive looking. Quite a bit longer than I seem to recall the standard model being."
"Not really, but you see–"
"So it can't really be hiding somewhere in your robes, waiting for you to be happy to see someone. Did you misplace it somewhere?"
"Not as such," Aziraphale admits, buckling under the serpent's questioning, hands twisting together anxiously, "not unless you call placing it into the hands of Adam misplacing."
"You gave a flaming gun to the humans?" Crawly hisses at Aziraphale as he slithers up his leg, seeking refuge from the rain now starting to fall, "What were you thinking?"
"Well, they did look awfully cold with nothing but fig leaves. None of the creatures outside of the Garden are exactly friendly and they'll be needing extra food soon enough. Don't give me that look," Aziraphale says as Crawly slithers across his shoulders to stare at him with those slit snake eyes, "my grace will fade from it quickly enough and they'll be left with a very fancy club to hit things over the head with."
"And what will you say when Himself questions you as to where your weapon is?" the Serpent asks, coiling himself closer to the angel's warmth.
"Well, I quite fancy I saw a serpent in the grass over there," Aziraphale waves his hand towards a patch of grass that, by most definitions, was not under the purview of the Guardian of the Eastern gate, "And as I was chasing it away, I must have tripped and lost it in the grass."
At the lazy glare the snake around his neck gives him he amends, "The rain put out the flames you see. Angelic weapons are mighty hard to find when they're not on fire."
"Whatever you say angel. I'm sure you wouldn't speak a falsehood to your Lord." Crawly's tongue flickers over the skin at Aziraphale's collar as he replies before they both lapse into silence, Crawly dozing in the angel's warmth while the Guardian of the East gate gazes over Earth and the two small figures in the distance as the first peal of thunder booms in the distance.
The snake doesn't offer any more moral advice or questioning and Aziraphale figures, hopes desperately, that he's done the right thing.