"It's my writing, yes. But I don't recall it." Aziraphale stared at the scrap of paper. "Hearts? That doesn't seem very like me." He pushed his reading glasses up his nose. "Crowley."

Crowley laughed giddily. "Not the wise, worldly image you like to think you project. But I know you. There's an inner blushing princess that emerges at every opportunity."

"That's quite insulting," Aziraphale said absently. He didn't seem inclined to return the bookmark. His well cared for fingers were stroking it, his brow creased.

"It's a compliment. Don't be sensitive about it. Of all beings, we don't have to insist on our masculinity."

"Well, no," Aziraphale conceded, tracing the snake bewilderedly. "But I am a soldier."

"Only technically. You have no taste for violence. I'm willing to bet you skived off actual action at least as much as I did."

"That's a very odd thing for a seraph to admit to having done," said Aziraphale, neatly dodging the implication.

"Well. About that." Crowley took off his own glasses, and peered at Aziraphale with still unfamiliar feeling eyes. "Look, doesn't this note convey anything to you at all? Prod any memories?"

"It's a reference to the Serpent in the Garden. Asmodeus," Aziraphale said, at the exact same time that Crowley said, "Crawly." And then added, "Or Anthony J. Crowley. Me."

Aziraphale looked blankly at him, as if at a loss for coherent thought. "What does the J stand for?"

"Is that really all you have to say?"

"I don't know what you expect me to say. I think Asmodeus is right and you're possibly insane. Certainly overwrought."

"Overwrought and highly strung, that's me," Crowley said a bit manically. "Goes with being a serpent. Snakes are notorious for being a bit temperamental, at least when we're not asleep. Why are we still sober? I feel like we shouldn't be sober for this conversation." He headed for Aziraphale's liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle.

"Oh, that's a really nice gin. Got dead ants bottled in it, which is a bit cruel, but your selfless love for all creatures great and small fades a bit when it comes to your earthly pleasures, doesn't it?" He splashed generous triple measures into a glass. "Better than the rotgut we used to drink back in the day, anyway. Do you remember that? You thought going to the States was a terrible mistake, your tender morals wouldn't let you go to speakeasies, and you had to sip dry toddies and pretend you liked them. Good thing you had me handy so you could drop in and let yourself be tempted. Practically wept with relief on my shoulder at the prospect of getting plastered. If I'd had any sense I would have confessed my love then and there, while you were all sentimental at the prospect of booze, but it's not easy when you're a demon. There are rules."

"I did like dry toddies, but they would have been better with brandy, true. And you're babbling." Aziraphale frowned. "That was Asmodeus. You're not a demon, Anthony."

"Crowley. It was me. I was a demon until two days ago. And he was your supervisor, the Archangel Gabriel. Drink up your gin. And think, Aziraphale. Think hard. I was so drunk in Chicago I turned into a snake and fell asleep curled up on your lap, and you stroked me when you thought I was too out of it to notice. Is that really something you can imagine Asmodeus doing, making himself that vulnerable in your presence? Aziraphale, he despises you."

Hurt flashed into Aziraphale's eyes. Crowley felt a flash of remorse, but pushed on. "It only hurts because your memories are all mixed up," he said, very gently. "Because you are hurt at the thought of me despising you." He wanted to reach out a hand and didn't dare. "Aziraphale, angel, you must be scared and in pain. I'm going to make those bastards pay for doing this to you. I don't know how many of your memories are left, and I can't imagine how it feels trying to superimpose a slimy bastard like Asmodeus onto them. I mean, I'm a nightmare, but at least I'm a different kind of nightmare." He gulped down his gin and tried to smile. "A clingy, snappy, needy nightmare you can't get rid of. But you know, no matter how many times you denied me, I knew you really didn't want to get rid of me at all, you just thought you should. That's what made everything bearable. I—oh, Heaven."

He twisted back into shape, the giant Serpent he had been in Eden, and flowed onto Aziraphale's lap, winding his top coils around his chest. Aziraphale didn't flinch, showed no fear, even when Crowley rested his massive head on his shoulder.

"Do you know what the next words of the Zorah are?" Aziraphale asked quietly, pressing the scrap of paper out flat in his hand and staring at the red and black serpent in the name. "Then the serpent was drawn after Adam and his wife. It cleaved onto them with its filth." Crowley shuddered. Filth. He was, after all, a demon, contaminated with the filth of Hell. Or had been. Clean wings again. But Aziraphale had never treated him as if he was filthy, as if Falling had been an abomination rather than a regrettable faux pas. "Why didn't I copy out that part?"

Crowley stayed very still and quiet, not daring to interrupt. "I think it was because it didn't have anything to do with the Serpent I knew. So I wrote the Serpent's name instead, to refute it. With love. I can feel my own love when I touch it. I don't feel like that about Asmodeus. He is charming and fascinating, but—love him?"

"Azziriphale," he hissed. Difficult to sound tender with a snake tongue, but he tried.

"I still don't remember. But it does seem," Aziraphale said with sudden crispness, "ridiculous that a Serpent should have insect eyes."

"Silly misstake." Oh, Aziraphale was so lovely and warm against his coils. He could stay there forever. Aziraphale didn't seem inclined to cast him off, letting him remain there as if the serpentine embrace was familiar and comforting. Maybe it was, even though it had been centuries since Aziraphale had worn him like this. There had been times and places before the formal Arrangement in which it was safer to be an unattached man with even a truly alarming pet snake than one who seemed to be too close to another man or unmarried woman. The world had changed and people accepted snakes, even ones who tried to remember not to talk, less readily than in the dawn of the world. Still, Crowley remembered, and he hoped that subconsciously the angel did too. "Azziraphale. Trusst me. At leasst a little."

"I trust you," Aziraphale said, making Crowley's heart leap, "enough to do some work."

"Work?" His heart sank again.

"I mean reading. Cross-referencing. Calculations. I'm afraid I won't be opening the shop this morning," said Aziraphale, with the touch of vindictive pleasure he always showed at the thought of thwarting potential customers.

"Not at home to Asmodeus?"

"No, best not have any representatives of Hell around. Unless you, as you claim, count." He hesitated. "You can stay, if you like. In case I have any questions you can answer. Not that I will trust you without checking, obviously."

"Obvioussly."

"This calls for cocoa."

"Can I have more gin instead?"

"Help yourself. It's not like you didn't, anyway. But for goodness's sake don't get drunk in serpent form, I can't cope with venom dripping on my books."

Crowley reluctantly unwound himself and shimmered back into bipedal form.

He drank silently for some time. The door rattled every now and then, and the phone rang often, but the pile of books and notes in front of Aziraphale was growing, and Crowley hoped Asmodeus was discovering, as he had after some quarrels, that an annoyed angel on his own ground was impossible for a demon to reach until he chose it. Every now and then Aziraphale asked him what seemed an irrelevant or incredibly minor question, then nodded and made a note when he answered.

Crowley was, as he had admitted, overwrought, and stressed, and filled with hope, and drunk, and, eventually, bored. So he did what he did best, and sprawled over a couch and went to sleep.

When he woke up, there was music playing, beautiful and wistful, but with the volume turned down so, he suspected, as not to wake him. There were piles of books around Aziraphale, but only one on the desk. A large, singed and incredibly familiar book.

"How did you get that?"

Aziraphale blushed. "Well, the young lady who owned it had no real need of it after all, and she had all her notes, and she and her young man need to get set up in a new home..."

"Angel, you really have no scruples at all, do you?" Crowley grinned admiringly. "Wait—you remember the book?"

Aziraphale blinked. "Of course, dear boy. The Nice and Accurate Prophecies are famous among Prophecy collectors. I mean, dealers. I'm surprised you've heard of it, though, it's quite obscure."

"Wait. You don't remember the Antichrists, either of them—"

"Either of them?"

Crowley waved dismissively. "Adam and our boy."

"Our—what? Are you seriously telling me we had a child together?" Aziraphale stared at the notes in front of him as if they were about to catch fire.

"Godson. Whatever. Warlock. Anyway, you don't remember the Bentley, you don't remember the Archangel Gabriel, you don't remember Heaven and Hell trying to execute us." Aziraphale made a strangled sound. Oh, yeah, he'd forgotten to explain that bit. He rushed on. "You don't remember our kid." Aziraphale made another strangled sound. "You don't remember me, but you remember a bloody book? Wait, what am I saying? Of course you remember every single book in this shop. Heaven and Hell have their limits, after all. And Gabriel wouldn't even know to hide this particular one."

"You're being absurd."

"Really? Then, tell me how you knew how to acquire the book. Wasn't it your Holy Grail? How do you know the mad American and her 'young man', do you even remember?"

Aziraphale gave him a long, blank look, then clicked his tongue, nodded sharply as if confirming something, and went back to work.

Crowley sleepily placed the music. Act III of Swan Lake. "You know, angel, either you're coming around, or I think your gramophone really likes me. Even though it's casting me against type."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, dear." The tips of Aziraphale's ears were pink.

"Hngh." Suddenly extremely happy, Crowley went back to sleep.

When he next woke, he was a snake again, either from some subconscious attempt to prompt Aziraphale's memory or because he couldn't get properly comfortable in the chair with a human-presenting spine.

Aziraphale was sitting, staring into space. Crowley slid over and reared up, checking the notes. Most were in languages he didn't understand, with a lot of numbers. "Ssatisfied?"

"There are major discrepancies between my memories and what seems to be reality. So, I suppose I am." Aziraphale's voice was very calm and measured.

"Enough to come to Heaven, and ask what to do? I'll even face Michael for you. Can't ask for more proof of sincerity than that."

"You're scared, aren't you?" Aziraphale lightly scratched Crowley's muzzle, as unselfconsciously as he had four thousand years ago.

"Terrified. I haven't been back for six thousand years. And when I left it was—not a good memory." He pressed his head against the comforting touch.

"Most snakes don't like to be petted," Aziraphale said absently. "I—"

"Read it, yeah. But you also remember that I'm not most snakes, at least when it comes to you."

"I suppose I must do." The same thoughtful calm. "Besides." There was a clang of steel in the melodious voice that reminded Crowley that Aziraphale was, indeed, a soldier. "It can't hurt to ask."

Crowley realised what was behind the measured voice. Fury. Absolute bloody raging angelic fury and grief, barely repressed. The repressed furious sorrow of the Ark, of the dying Indus River, of the slave and her son driven out into the desert, of Egypt, of the carpenter. If Aziraphale had been holding a sword, it would have been blazing.

"I think I deserve to ask. Six thousand years of loyal service. Six thousand years, and so many, many missing and changed memories, and ones that don't make sense. I can't even make the movements of the stars line up with my memories, let alone human history. Or my history. Just how much did they take from me, when they took you?"

Oh, too many emotions to express, too much joy and relief and pain. Crowley tried to put them into words. "No one fucks with my angel like that and gets away with it."

"I have no idea what you're implying. I'm just," Aziraphale said, and the clang of steel had become an army beating on its shields, "going to ask my supervisor some polite questions."

They had been to the front entrance before, but they had always taken separate doors. Crowley couldn't help a stab of panic. The left escalator, the sinister side, he knew what was down there, and while it wasn't pleasant, it was familiar. Upwards, though... He had been back for the first time in millennia, and they had looked at him with small smug smiles in the dazzling light, and had tried to murder him.

Had tried to murder Aziraphale. Loyal, loving Aziraphale, whose worst sins were a bit of overindulgence in Earthly pleasures, too much compassion and a tendency to tell fibs.

Why was he frightened? Uriel and Sandalphon had better hope they were nowhere near Michael, or they'd find out what a revenge-bent seraph who had spent thousands of years serving Hell could do. At least Michael had only tried to kill him, which was far more understandable.

A firm hand closed around his, and he looked down into round, kind eyes.

"It's all right. I'm with you, Crowley."

Right. He had defied Hell for Aziraphale. He could face Heaven as well, with his hand in his. All he had to do was hold on tight.

They stepped on the escalator, side by side, hand in hand, and began to ascend.

Notes:

1) I meant to make it to Heaven, but they had some stuff to work out first.

2) I absolutely recommend Green Ant gin, although the squeamish sometimes get upset when insects end up in their glass.

3) Yeah, Crowley is casting himself as Odette, despite being more Odile fashion-wise. Or Aziraphale is casting him as Odette. Or the gramophone is. Or the Almighty is. Someone or something in that bookshop is being a drama queen, anyway.