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The three chambers of the heart of Hastur the toad were throbbing with love.
He had wooed Ligur the chameleon for the last few milenium, escorting him to the Earth for romantic lurks in the world of mortals. They had consumed human souls by firelight: Enchanting mood lighting courtesy of Hastur’s own demonic powers immolating the decimated homes of their prey. And once, even, on a hot, dark night, under the falling bombs of a human war, a chameleon and a frog had gotten their tongues stuck together in the shyest of kisses.
Now the world was nearing its end, and his window of wooing was closing. There was nowhere nearly as classy as the fetid fields of gore that Earth offered down within the pits of Hell. It wouldn’t be up the standards he’d set for their courtship. So Hastur intended to claim Ligur, make him his own in Hell’s first wedding. He knew there was procedure for it, something to do with qualifying for unholy matrimony after some number of hours spent on Earth. With all of the infernal dates they had been on, if they didn’t qualify, Hastur didn’t know anyone who would. So Hastur went to Ligur to make his appeal.
“Yeah, alright,” answered Ligur, when Hastur's ask for his clawed hand in marriage. The answer made Hastur the happiest toad in all of creation. (And there were quite a lot of toads on Earth.)
But Hastur wasn’t the only demon with a three-chambered heart pumping love through his body. The lindworm Crawly had also been courting, and he had been courting for a very long time. He had been on earth since the beginning, had scaled the wall of Eden to meet the opposition, and there, he had fallen right in love. Because he made the climb through the Earth’s crust to the surface and then made the climb up the wall of Eden, chance and destiny had united to bid him love the angel Aziraphale, who had stolen his heart with an awkward smile and a glance. Chance and destiny got their way: love him Crawly did, deeply and wishfully, through all of the sunrises and sunsets the world had ever seen.
Although Crawly and Hastur both carried an old love, they were different, too. For one thing, Crawly the lindworm was a fair bit more detail-oriented than Hastur the toad.
Crawly had focused his snake-eyes long enough to actually read the terribly dull legalese of the procedural document regarding marriages in Hell, and this is how he knew that Hell had specific rules regarding its weddings: First, only one wedding would be legally binding every hundred years. (Crawly assumed this was to keep demons focused on their work and not on chasing tail, whatever form that tail may take.) Second, should multiple marriages be scheduled at once, priority would be given whichever demon had spent the most time on Earth. (Crawly assumed this was an old holdover from the early days, when none of them wanted to be on Earth in the first place, and the offer of a breeding opportunity under formal contract was a fat rat of an incentive to put feet into boots. Or scoots into scales, in Crawly’s case. In any case, it didn’t really matter.)
That provision had nothing to do with why Crawly found himself in the Garden. The Eden assignment hadn’t been his choice at all, actually, but regardless of the intention of the law, Crawly was glad for that little paragraph. It meant that when rumors of Hastur’s impending marriage began to spread, he had some leverage to stop it.
Crawly understood what marriage meant for the creatures of Hell: It meant taking a form agreeable to their mate, a body that matched well enough to allow for breeding. It also meant staking a claim of another being before all of Hell, which was a far less palatable slice of the deal. His love for the angel was naturally a secret to all. Indeed, the secret had only been out to the angel himself for a few years. It had been a blundering confession, snarled viciously through his fangs like an accusation after an unfortunate conversation about holy water. He had thought to drive the angel away and face the inevitable rejection on his own terms. Instead, Aziraphale had accepted his feelings, hand over his heart in quiet, sweet surprise.
But Crawly knew as well as any other who laid eyes on him that he was a monster: Writhing black coils armored in layers of scales, rows of misaligned fangs snaggled every which way, a blunt spade of a head maned with strange red fur, two clawed arms that were too short to be good for anything other than aiding his slithering. He was no suitable husband to an angel, not like he was. But he knew no way to change the shape he’d fallen into other than with legal approval from Hell.
So he clawed down from Earth into the soggy room where Hastur and Beelzebub were discussing the terms of Hastur’s potential marriage contract.
“Hastur!” Crawly greeted. “Just heard the news, congratulations, truly. But there’s one tiny little detail we might all be forgetting about…”
Crawly spelled the terms out for them: That the one among them who had been on Earth the longest must marry first, and that he was the demon in question who had punched in the most hours. He even laid out a thick folder with relevant sections highlighted, spreading out pages around the room, mindful not to crush Beelzebub’s tiny housefly body under stacks of administrivia. Crawly was factual and detailed, and Hastur the toad looked more and more horrified with his every word. There could be no mistaking it: Crawly the lindworm, with more total hours on Earth, was to be married before Hastur the toad.
“Sorry, Hastur, but rules are rules, aren’t they? A bride for me before a bride for you. Wish it weren’t like that, but you know how things are. Can’t go around bending the rules or it all goes sideways.”
Hastur desperately looked to Beelzebub in case there was a way that they could bend the rules, but the fly’s face was inexpressive, as fly faces often are. Hastur’s only recourse was to waddle towards Crawly menacingly, looming as much as he could with a 25-centimeter body before Crawly’s 3-meter length.
“Then any bride will do, won’t it? Not like you got another demon you been wooing.”
Crawly knew better than to draw suspicion to himself by arguing against that point. He had never courted another demon, and never would, but there was a need for keeping up appearances. He was passive to Hastur’s bellowing for an Eric to be brought to them. He raised no complaint when he and the Eric were shut in a room together to “get to know each other,” as put by another Eric that shut them away, punctuating the ominous slam of the door with an obnoxious wink.
Crawly considered the situation for a moment: Erics looked almost human, so a marriage on paper could get Crawly the human-like body he knew his angel would want. He could dispose of the Eric afterwards, conveniently widowing himself, and find himself poised to marry again, this time to his true love. But, he reasoned, Erics were not humans: they were Erics, with plenty of Hell’s influence upon them. Aziraphale deserved the best, not a half-rate demonic imitation. So Crawly unhinged his fearsome jaws and swallowed the Eric down in one bite.
When Hastur and Beelzebub returned, they found only Crawly in the closed room.
“What happened to Eric?” Hastur demanded, near shierking.
Crawley repeated words his angel had once said to him: “I got peckish.”
Hastur ribbited a rapid frogsong of wordless rage. Crawly thought this was a bit of an overreaction.
“Listen, you don’t need to lift a finger on this one, guys,” Crawly said over furious croaking. “Or, you know, lift a finger equivalent. I can find a bride myself. Plenty of mortals up there, I’ll just pop off and marry one. It’ll be so quick you won’t even notice I’m gone.” Hastur’s croaking had devolved into a pitched, consistent “Ree,” noise, and Beelzebub had become distracted grooming zir wings with zir back legs. Crawly was no longer the center of this conversation, which suited him fine. “Right. Back soon,” he said, and slithered back to Earth.
He emerged within the series of tunnels he had burrowed beneath London, his labyrinthian home. He had dug it long ago to be close to Aziraphale when the angel had settled in his bookshop. A certain corridor, when the turns and twists were followed just so, opened into the back room of the shop itself. (Though, to Crawly’s discredit, Aziraphale had not at all been keen on idea, and it had taken many nagging attempts to get Aziraphale to toss up his hands and accept it on the condition that the exit hole be concealed in its own locked room so as not to damage any books with exposed dirt) It would have been very easy for Crawly to emerge into the bookshop and tell Aziraphale all that had happened. And yet, the lindworm hesitated. After all, he hadn’t actually asked Aziraphale to marry him yet.
Crawly slithered through his halls, anxious of what the angel would say to Crawly’s proposal of marriage. He was a demon and a creature of Hell: Aziraphale had rebuffed him on those grounds more than once. He stalked to the chamber where he kept his Bentley. It was a good imitation he had miracled up for himself after admiring cars from afar for years. It had none of the mechanical elements of an automobile: Crawly’s knowledge of cars was not so in depth to allow that level of detail. Nonetheless, he enjoyed winding his coils into the carriage, putting his claws on the steering wheel, and zooming around the tunnels at very high speeds. Aziraphale, however, was terrified by it. The angel had indulged Crawly in giving him a ride exactly once and then never again.
Crawly spun through the tunnels crammed in his car, trying to think of anything but Aziraphale. Alas, the lindworm found he could put his mind to nothing besides the task that loomed before him, so he steered the car towards the path to the bookshop to face his fate.
He left the car and pushed open the trapdoor that divided his tunnels and the bookshop with the crown of his broad head. His golden, slitted eyes peered into the dark room. There was no light beyond the door: it was past the irregular closing time of the shop, at least. But Crawly knew better than to take any risks that might force him to swallow someone being unfortunate enough to spy his beastial form. That always made himself and the angel rather upset. Instead, Crawly reached out a claw to tap the little bell Aziraphale had provided to him. It was a secret code between the two of them: Two rings of the bell, one after the other, meant Crawly had come up for a social visit. A single ring heralded emergency, and three communicated “I love you, angel, I am loving you here beneath the earth, though we are separated by our very natures.” Although secret codes generally appealed to him, Crawly hoped he would soon have no more need to ring the bell three times anymore.
Aziraphale heard the chime of the bell, and went smiling to open the door. “Hullo, Crawly,” he greeted cheerfully.
“Angel…” said Crawly, and tried to choose his next words carefully. He wished to make a romantic speech, to tell the angel how precious he was, and how happy it would make Crawly to be joined to him as his husband. “Hell is doing a marriage thing,” is what he said instead.
“Oh?” asked Aziraphale.
“Yeah. Wedding season,” said Crawly, and wished very much that he could return to his hole. The lindworm did not know how to ask for Aziraphale’s hand, whom he had loved for so long. But he needn’t have said anything more, because a look of slow realization was coming across Aziraphale’s face. The angel spun round towards his shop and began walking swiftly away. “A moment, if you please,” he called back to Crawly. And it was only a moment indeed before Aziraphale returned, a little scrap of paper in hand and a pair of reading glasses high on his nose. He took the paper in both hands and began to read aloud.
“A wyrm sharl cometh unto a shoppe of taeles from neathe the Earthe to loose its own manny skins and maketh its own selfe a groome to Heaven’s servante.” Aziraphale lowered the paper and looked at the lindworm over his spectacles. “Agnes Nutter. Humanity’s one true prophet. My dear… This couldn’t possibly mean…?”
Words stuck in Crawly’s scaled throat, so he only nodded.
“Oh…” said Aziraphale softly. He sank into a nearby chair. “I had wondered… I had hoped…” After a moment of dazed shock, the angel straightened himself, tugging the winkles from his coat and vest. There was a brightness in his eyes. “Master Crawly, if you would, please do me the kindness of putting your exact intentions into words.”
And so Crawly told him all about the laws of Hell, and what could be if they were to be married. He told Aziraphale about how his form would change, how they could be together on Earth without Crawly frightening the humans anymore. He left out no detail, babbling it all. His dreams of perhaps driving a car for real, of taking Aziraphale to the elegant restaurants the angel had spoke of, of stepping into the light of day with the angel by his side all came tumbling out of him.
“Right, then,” said Aziraphale, standing before Crawly. “Go on.”
“Go where?” asked Crawly, not keeping up.
“Ask me to marry you, demon.” Aziraphale looked the lindworm squarely in the eye. “Ask me so that I can tell you yes.”
“You- Wot?”
“Crawly…” said Aziraphale. He went to Crawly and lay his open palm against the lindworm’s broad, scaled neck. “Of course I will marry you, you silly old serpent. If your physical form were never to change, I would marry you. You needn’t be anything other than what you are.”
“Aziraphale…” was the only word that Crawly had to return. He felt incredibly lucky, even blessed, in the sweetest of ways. His tail squirmed forward and snugly wrapped around Aziraphale’s ankle, the warmest gesture of caring a lindworm could give.
“Right. How does one proceed?” Aziraphale asked. “How do I become your spouse, my love?”
“Uhh… Dunno, actually. I wasn’t sure I’d get this far.” Crawly bowed his head, a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t put more detailed thought into one of the most important events of his existence. Aziraphale pet his snout lovingly, unbothered by his partner’s blundering.
The angel took his hand away. “Oh dear…” he said, looking at it, for his open palm was coated in a smattering of black scales.
Crawly saw the scales, and his skin felt tight. “What did that prophecy say again, angel?” he asked.
“A wyrm sharl cometh unto a shoppe of taeles from neathe the Earthe to loose its own manny skins and maketh its own selfe a groome to Heaven’s servante,” Aziraphale recited.
“That’s it, then. I’ve got to loose my many skins. Looks like it’s already started.”
Crawly was no stranger to shedding. It couldn’t be avoided with the body he was confined in. The feeling was familiar, but this was different. It was the dry tension of the need to shed raising on his scales, but rapidly accelerated. Before he fully realized the rippling, mild contractions of shedding had begun, he had wriggled out of his first skin.
And yet, even once he was free of the skin, there was no relief, for he felt the tightness squeeze him again. “This might be awhile,” he hissed, and began to shed again.
“We’ll do it together, my darling,” Aziraphale suggested with an almost flirtatious note in his voice. He reached for his own bow tie and undid it with a quick and practiced hand. He laid it carefully on the chair and clasp his hands before him. “Lindworm Crawly, shed a skin,” he ordered, prim as anything.
“Nobody’s ever asked me to shed before,” Crawly reflected.
“I am asking, I’m afraid. But we’ll make it a fair exchange. Shed a skin, and I’ll shed this jacket.”
That was motivating enough for Crawly, though it didn’t need to be: He would shed whether he willed it or not. He lost layers of skin and Aziraphale lost layers clothing, until the angel was standing in his shirt sleeves, and Crawly’s body was tender and sore.
“You know,” mused Aziraphale, lifting a discarded skin. “It’s said these skins of yours grant medical knowledge, though I’m not sure how. Wearing it like a cape, perhaps? Not exactly a pleasant thought…”
“Uh, that- That might’ve been that Swedish lot. Town had a smallpox outbreak, more bodies than they could bury. I’d taught some kids knuckle bones, had them getting grown-up to wager their souls on the games as a lark. But they all got sick, skin all mottled, and I couldn’t have-“ Crawly interrupted himself with a hiss of pain. He twisted and writhed, and slid free from another skin.
“Oh, my dear,” said Aziraphale, warm with affection for the demon that would be his husband soon. Crawly’s liking for children was always ill-concealed. Though he would deny it, he cared for the tiny humans too young to be afraid of him, even if he was sure to make some other excuse for why he purged them of disease. Aziraphale hurried himself out of his shirt.
Crawly’s body changed with each consecutive shed, first blunting the length of him to the stature of a man, then losing his scales in large clumped patches. By the time Aziraphale was unhitching the garters from his socks, Crawly was mistakable for an ordinary, exhausted, panting man curled on himself, save for the sparse pattern of black scales decorating his arms and thighs.
Aziraphale, nude in his shop backroom, knelt beside Crawly and cupped his face. Crawly’s eyes flickered open. They were still the eyes of a lindworm, beautiful and golden in the face of a man. He stared into Aziraphale’s face, eyes flitting from point to point as if seeing him for the first time. And truly the world and the angel must have looked different to Crawly in those first moments in an almost-human form.
“Crawly, you are so very beautiful…” the angel told his husband with wonder in his voice.
“It’s Crowley,” the demon corrected.
“What?”
“It’s Crowley. My name. I could never say it to you properly, with my mouth all full of fangs. I did try, you know. But it’s Crowley, actually.”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale laughed, having finally learned the true name of the one he loved after six-thousand years. He gathered his tired husband into his arms and made for the loft above the bookshop.
Aziraphale laid Crowley in his bed and climbed in next to him, drawing a large quilt over both of their naked forms. He found Crowley’s hand and held it tight.
“Can I kiss you?” Crowley whispered, golden eyes wide and searching. “Please. I’ve always wondered what it would be like. Would you let me kiss you?”
Aziraphale smiled so wide that Crowley’s kiss instead landed on his teeth.
“Oh, my apologies,” Aziraphale said, modestly shielding his smile with his hand. “Let me try again.” Aziraphale cupped the back of Crowley’s head, fingers tangling in his beautiful red hair, and kissed him deeply, with the passion of a love each thought could never be fulfilled, realized at last.
Crowley moaned low in his new voice. Aziraphale thought he could feel a nip of fang against his lips, but it only made him shudder with want, for he his words were true when he told Crowley he would have him in marriage no matter what form he took. He spread his legs on instinct, wanting Crowley between them. Nevertheless, Crowley surprised him by reaching down to palm at his sex.
“No good?” Crowley asked when he felt his angel’s demeanor change.
“Oh, I have no complaints, dear, quite the opposite. Rather, I had assumed you would need some rest, after all that.”
“Don’t care about bleeding rest right now, angel. I don’t want to rest.”
His open palm slid down Aziraphale’s side, mapping the curves of him, charting his topography. His long fingers found Aziraphale’s clit, and Aziraphale leapt at the sensation, so potent and luxurious was his husband’s touch. It was a tempting thought, the notion of laying back and falling apart on Crowley’s fingers. But Crowley’s body was all but unknown to the both of them. It was uncharted territory for the two of them to explore together, and that was a far stronger lure than the promise of his own pleasure, which he knew would come in time either way.
Aziraphale slid down Crowley’s body in kind with an eagerness he did not expect even himself. His mouth watered at the thought of taking Crowley on his tongue, and when he came face-to-face with Crowley’s long, proud cock, he wasted no time in wrapping his lips around it. He felt him out with the tip of his tongue, tracing the flare of the head and delighting in the slight curve that seemed to fill his mouth just right.
Crowley, for his part, scrambled for fistfuls of quilt and gasped his breaths, overwhelmed. Being a lindworm afforded few opportunities for self-pleasure, or pleasures of the flesh of any kind. He hadn’t guessed, hadn’t hoped it would be this way, not in all the centuries of watching human obsession with carnal knowledge. His pleasure would peak quickly, that he knew, but his rushed warnings of “Angel! Angel, Aziraphale, I’ll come if you do that, angel, I’m going to come in your pretty mouth if you don’t stop, please, please, I’ll-“ all seemed to have the opposite effect. Aziraphale swirled his tongue atop the crown and bobbed his head faster, taking Crowley at his word and wanting nothing more.
It was mere minutes before Crowley hissed loudly with the pleasure that exploded with him, the divine ecstasy of his husband’s loving mouth. He came into Aziraphale’s mouth in wave after wave, just as he warned he would. Aziraphale was loath to slow himself as he lapped him clean, wanting to go on and on unceasingly but wary of the risk of over-sensitivity. Crowley, for his part, closed his eyes and sighed with an almost existential relief, blissed out in the afterglow.
Aziraphale held Crowley in his arms, who curled into him and clung to him in kind. There was a peacefulness between them, the unlikeliest of husbands, gratified in their marriage bed and gratified in their physical forms.
“Don’t tell me you’re tired out now,” Aziraphale teased after a time, fully expecting Crowley to be just that. But Crowley opened his eyes to smirk at him and rolled the angel onto his back, looming over him.
“I did just shed about six thousand years of scale growth, to be fair. But too tired for this?” Crowley rubbed firmly over Aziraphale’s cunt, promising with touch. “Nah.” He miracled his fingers wet and slid the first in gently, searching for his angel’s pleasure, working in a slow, gentle rhythm until Aziraphale huffed with impatience.
“I’ve waited for you to make love to me for hundreds of years, husband! The least you could do is get a bit of a wiggle on.”
And Crowley, though no longer possessing the coils of his lindworm form, got a wiggle on indeed, right there in Aziraphale’s bed.
And, after they rolled out of bed in the morning, sticky and drained and the very picture of giddy newlyweds, the two of them lived happily ever after for all time.
The End
(P.S. As for Hastur and Ligur, the two of them said “Bless the laws of Hell,” and eloped in the most dank, mosquito-infested swamp that they could find. The paperwork read “United in maggots,” rather than “United in matrimony,” which resolved the legal issue and suited them just fine. They lived happily ever after too, in their own way.)