Content Warning: This chapter includes some unsanitary elements (bordering on less-than-classy bathroom humor), of the kind you'd expect on a boat full of animals going about their, ahem, business. If such things make you uncomfortable, I recommend skipping over this chapter - it won't throw you off the plot too much.
"What did you do?"
Crawly, sprawling across the bed (if he were one of those devils that represented the Vices, he would be sloth for sure, Aziraphale thought), cracked open one golden eye to observe the angel standing disheveled and half crazed in the doorway.
"You're going to have to be more specific. As you can see" — here he gestured to the mattress beneath him — "I do so much these days."
"The elephants."
Crawly looked dramatically around the small space from where he lay. "That's funny, I don't see any elephants," he drawled, smooth as olive oil; "and if they're not in here, I can't have done anything to them, right? You have me on lockdown, if you recall."
Aziraphale was getting more and more fed up with the demon's mouth as the days stretched by. "Don't make me spell it out for you," he said through gritted teeth.
In one lithe movement, the demon sat up and settled himself into a more dignified position, his back straight and one long leg crossed elegantly over the other. He placed one dark, slender-fingered hand under his sharp chin, offering Aziraphale the full impact of his hypnotic, golden gaze.
"Well, if the horrendous stench you've brought back with you is any indicator," he remarked, "I take it some of the larger animals on this ark are experiencing gastrointestinal troubles."
Aziraphale choked back a scream, coupled with the urge to reach out and throttle a certain neck. "Yes," he said at last, speaking in the strained way of one on the edge of losing all control, "they are. The elephants, Crawly. And you caused it. I don't know what you fed them, or why — whether it was to spread disease, or promote bad feeling among the humans, or simply to drive me slowly mad — but I know it was you. You can't," here he shook a finger at the demon, who remained infuriatingly serene, "fool me, you nasty serpent." A note of hysteria crept into Aziraphale's voice. "Do you know how unpleasant shoveling mountains of pachyderm diarrheais?"
"I have no idea," Crawly said politely. He looked thoughtful a moment. "What do you do with all the shit, anyway? There's got to be a lot of it on this floating menagerie."
"We use the smaller patties as fuel for fire, and there's one hatch on the ark that we open to toss the rest out of," Aziraphale said, sinking down into his chair and putting his face in his hands. "There's just…so much of it."
"Well, I'd help but, you know, lockdown," Crawly replied.
"Thank you so much," Aziraphale snapped. Wait… Slowly, he raised his head to look at the demon. "You know what? You are going to help. Tonight. When the humans are asleep."
"What?" Crawly gasped, a look of horror crossing his face. "Er, no, I mean, I really think I should stay in here — "
"Oh, you are helping," the angel insisted. "You caused this mess to get even messier, and you are going to clean it up." He could just see the demon shoveling through tons of elephant dung now; a smile widened his lips. He was going to enjoy this.
"Again, I have to protest," Crawly spoke up immediately when Aziraphale returned to the room that night. "I gave you my word that I wouldn't step foot out of this room, and I intend to keep — "
"Stop the nonsense," Aziraphale said briskly, approaching the demon, "I know you've already been out, to put something in the elephants' feed."
He grabbed the demon's wrist and pulled. The vexing creature sat like a stone, however, refusing to budge from the bed.
"Come — along — now," Aziraphale grunted, putting his back — and his angelic will — into it.
At last the demon's will gave out against the angel's. As Aziraphale gripped both of Crawly's arms and tugged with all his might, the demon's body suddenly flung forward from the mattress — and right into Aziraphale.
They collapsed in a heap on the floor.
"Grr-off!" the angel commanded, struggling under the weight of the demon on top of him. Crawly obliged, stepping lithely away from the tangle of limbs.
"All right, I'll come with you," he sighed, brushing himself off, "if the alternative is another tug-of-war."
They made their way from the upper level of the ark into its bowels, Crawly complaining loudly every step of the way. Aziraphale was glad he'd had the foresight to cast a deep sleep on Noah's family. He would not have the demon meddling in human affairs, not on his ship.
"So," said demon was asking, "you got any plants on this thing? Sprouts? Saplings? Seeds?"
"Hmm? No, no, just animals."
"Great. I'm so glad your people's 'ineffable plan' accounted for a world full of smelly animals and no surviving flora."
"Oh!" Aziraphale said, getting the demon's point. He thought about this a long minute. "I'm…I'm sure that the plants will be fine," he said at last. "Just a little…wet."
Crawly stopped short. "Angel, you amaze me," he said flatly.
They continued on their way in silence. A hint of a nostril-singeing stench gradually invaded the air around them.
"Well," the demon spoke again, "at least the plants should have plenty of fertilizer while they're drowning, what with all the manure you're tossing overboard for them."
"I would appreciate it," Aziraphale snapped, "if you would stop mocking the Ineffable. The plants will be fine."
The increasingly unbearable fumes alerted them that they were nearing their destination. The one good outcome of this fact was that Crawly shut up at last — an ethereal, or in the demon's case occult, being need only breathe to speak, and neither of them wanted to risk inhaling this stink.
They arrived at the elephants' pen, a stable-like construction that, admittedly, would do little to keep the gargantuan creatures penned in if not for divine intervention — every animal on board was unnaturally docile, so that the cages and dividers were more a precaution for the humans' peace of mind than a necessity.
The elephants were restless, tossing their mighty heads and tossing their trunks about. Aziraphale did not blame them: they were as much victim to the stench rising from the fuming piles of shit beside them as the other animals in their vicinity.
Aziraphale had grown accustomed to the human need to breathe, and remembering to hold his breath was a struggle. Afraid to tarry long, he pushed a shovel into Crawly's hands, pointed to the hatch that opened out into the flood — luckily they had placed the elephants right beside this opening, alongside other large creatures whose feces were too heavy to shovel very far — and made to leave. He had been looking forward to watching the demon struggle with the mountain of crap, but it was hardly worth it in these conditions.
As he turned to go, however, Crawly grabbed his arm, a pleading look bidding him not to go. He pointed to the other nearby shovel. Don't be ridiculous, like I'm going to help.
Aziraphale braced himself and took in a strained breath, just enough to get a quick sentence out. Even the one breath was enough to nearly knock him out — if smells could kill, he'd have been discorporated on the spot.
"Get-to-work-I'll-be-back-later" he managed to get out, then fled from the space to go find some fresh air — well, relatively fresh: the entire ark, closed in as it was, was beginning to acquire a stale atmosphere.
Aziraphale stayed far away for a good four hours, taking inventory of several of the ark's large storage chambers in his efforts to calculate how long the supplies would last — Heaven hadn't seen fit to share an exact timeframe with him, just a Get that ark good and full, the humans will be on there quite a while. At last, though, he had to go back to see how the demon was faring.
He approached the elephant pen to find Crawly not shoveling, but leaning into the elephant's hay, humming softly to himself, a self-satisfied smile on his lips. The pen was spotless, the smell miraculously (diabolically, he corrected himself) gone.
"You willed it all away, didn't you."
Crawly looked up at the angel. "It pains me to be accused of such a thing," he said; "I nearly broke my back shoveling all of that glop."
"Then why is the shovel clean?" Aziraphale pointed out.
Crawly glanced at the tool he'd left lying near the hatch. "Well, you've got me there," he said, grinning wickedly. "I plead guilty."
Aziraphale sighed. Perhaps it wasn't particularly angelic of him, but he'd enjoyed imagining the demon struggling to haul every shovelful of excrement up and out of the ark. "At least it's all cleaned up," he said.
"I don't see why you didn't just miracle it all away yourself," Crawly remarked as he stood up.
"It sets a poor example for the humans," Aziraphale explained; "I must lead them towards hard work, not sloth. I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"Angel, I truly don't," Crowley said sincerely. "Now, are you here to drag me back to my cell immediately, or can I look around a bit?"
"I'm sure you've already looked around while I was away."
"Doesn't mean I couldn't stand to explore some more," the demon grinned. "Come on, just till the humans wake up. Tell me what some of these weird animals are. Like, what the devil — pardon my language — is that?"
"A komodo dragon. You've not been that far east yet?"
"I thought I'd been as east as you can get, but you know how difficult it is, scoping out every nook and cranny of the world. You always miss something."
"Indeed," Aziraphale agreed. "Come this way, I bet you haven't seen a capybara yet."