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The sun was shining upon a cozy cottage in the South Downs. Two fourteen year-old children were lazing on a hammock, lying in a way that their bare feet were by the other’s head. The child with the dirty blonde hair was reading an old issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction that was found in the cottage library, while his half-sibling, dressed in all black and wearing a Misfits hoodie despite the hot weather, was playing with an app on their phone.
“This is a cool one, Adam,” they said, holding their phone up to the sky. “Even in the sunlight, I can see all the stars with it.”
“Think it’s accurate, though, with the stars’ positions and that?” Adam asked.
“Gotta be. Phones have GPS and satellite pings, or whatever.”
Adam just shrugged and went back to reading his magazine.
The sound of clinking ice brought them out of their respective reveries, and they saw Aziraphale carrying a tray with four tall glasses.
“Here you are, dears,” he said as they sat up and took a glass of pink lemonade. “Don’t stay out here too long; you’ll burn up.”
“That’s the goal, Francis,” Warlock quipped.
“I’m serious. Your human skin isn’t the same as ours.”
Warlock shot out of the hammock, making it swing. Adam slurped his lemonade to save it from spilling out of his glass.
“Francis, check out this app. Turn it on, hold it up to the sky, and you can see all the stars that are above us right now!”
Aziraphale smiled. “That’s clever! You should show Anthony; he’d be very interested in that.”
Warlock huffed. “I’m not going near Nanny right now.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“He’s being intense,” Adam said. “He’s stewing over the cabbages.”
Warlock laughed. “Hey, that’s a pun, man." They then proceeded to crunch on an ice cube.
Aziraphale interrupted. “Why is Anthony stewing?”
Warlock sighed and got back into the hammock, sitting up so they could guzzle half of their lemonade. “Who knows. Maybe the cabbages are growing well and he’s mad he can’t yell at them.”
Aziraphale smirked and left them to their lazing about, reminding them once more to not stay in the sun long.
He turned the corner of the cottage and spied his husband standing at the end of the small cabbage patch.
Crowley was wearing the dark Dungarees he always wore when gardening, and underneath he wore a solid black vest. He had his hip cocked to one side with both gloved hands behind his back and was glaring at something.
Aziraphale approached him and kissed a patch of freckles on his bare shoulder.
“Ngk?” came his reply.
“Lemonade, darling?”
“Mm.” Crowley grunted as he took the glass, but held his gaze on his cabbages.
Aziraphale took the last glass off the tray, and set the tray on a small bench by the patch.
“Anything wrong with the cabbages, dear?”
“Nah, s’fine.” Crowley took a big gulp of lemonade. He trapped a piece of ice with his tongue and set the cube between his molars.
The jarring crunch of the ice made Aziraphale grimace.
“What’s going on, then?” he asked. “The children are hesitant to come back to the garden.”
“Good,” Crowley growled. “They’re of no help right now anyway.”
“Dear, that’s harsh. They love the garden.”
“Not what I mean, angel.” He sucked on his ice cube for a moment. “I’ve got a mole.”
Aziraphale frowned. “A mole? Oh, darling, don’t worry about that. Just think of it as a beauty mark.”
Crowley finally looked at him, and he pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.
“No, angel. A mole! As in a rodent!”
“Oh! Well...that’s different.”
“You think?”
“How can you tell there’s a mole, though?”
Crowley pointed at the maze of tunnels between the cabbages.
“Oh, my,” said Aziraphale. “Is there more than one?”
“Course there is!” He spit his ice cube pieces back into his glass and handed it to his husband. He walked to the edge of one row and sneered down at the tracks. “Little buggers will eat all my cabbages by morning.”
“Shall I ring for pest control? Well, no, they would kill them, wouldn’t they?”
“We could call them...or I could do it the natural way,” Crowley said.
Aziraphale frowned again. “The natural way? You mean, trap them and put them somewhere else?”
“Nah, that’s too much effort. Be easier if I just...you know…”
Crowley looked at Aziraphale who was, as he suspected, confused. The angel was never good at taking hints. 6000 years of courting him proved that.
“If you...what, dear?” he asked.
Crowley crossed his arms. “Well, love. I am a snake.”
Another beat passed as Aziraphale thought about it, then suddenly gasped.
“Crowley!” he exclaimed. “Absolutely not! I forbid it, do you hear? Absolutely forbid it!”
“Would you rather they be gassed by an exterminator and die a slow death by painful suffocation?”
“As if that's any better than suffocating in your coils as you crush them!”
“Come on, angel! It’s nature! Predator and prey? Can’t get more natural than that!”
“I forbid you to make a meal out of these poor creatures! What if the children saw?”
Crowley grinned and walked to the front yard where his god-children were peacefully swinging in the hammock.
Adam had laid the magazine on his face for a quick nap while Warlock scrolled through their Tumblr.
Crowley cleared his throat and they looked up at him, squinting in the sunlight.
“Want to see me eat a mole?” he asked them.
Adam immediately sat upright. “Are you serious?”
Warlock was already on their feet, another ice cube in their mouth.
Crowley turned back to Aziraphale with a broad smile, but all he received was a disapproving look.
Aziraphale had seen Crowley eat while he was in snake-form, but it was purely by accident. He looked out the window one afternoon to find him swallowing a whole grey rabbit and he nearly dropped his hot cocoa. Aziraphale knew that a snake’s jaw could unhinge like that, but somehow seeing his husband do it (even if it was while he was a snake) made his skin crawl.
“Darling, please!” he shouted to him, but he was coming back to the garden with the intrigued children in tow.
“Where is it?” Adam asked as he squatted in front of the patch to scan the cabbages.
“He’s in there somewhere, lad,” Crowley replied as he got onto his knees, preparing to transform.
“Crowley, for goodness sake,” Aziraphale sighed. “Could you at least do it later tonight?”
“Why tonight?” Warlock asked.
“So he can be asleep and not know about it,” Crowley explained.
Aziraphale pursed his lips at him, making him hang his head.
He groaned and got back on his feet. “Babe, we watch stuff like this on Netflix all the time. Snakes catching prey and all that. What would Sir David Attenborough say if he knew you were depriving a snake of a meal? A snake that was also your spouse!”
Aziraphale’s mouth dropped. “Don’t you dare bring Sir David into this! He does not live here; I do, however, and I refuse to be a part of this!”
“You don't have to be, angel! I’m the one having an early dinner!”
They glared at one another as Adam continued to scan the cabbages. Warlock was once again distracted by their phone.
“Hey, Nanny,” they said. “Did you know that some people believe that the Tree of Knowledge was a banana tree?”
They both gave them a baffled look.
“Excuse me?” Crowley growled.
Warlock grinned. “Yeah. The tree in the Garden. Some people believe it grew bananas, not apples.”
He marched over to them and peered over their shoulder to read their phone.
“Well, that’s insulting!” Crowley sneered. “Why the hell would it be bananas? Can you imagine me slithering up and telling Eve to peel this yellow thing to gain all of God’s knowledge? And why the fuck would God put all of Her wisdom in a bloody banana? For Someone’s Sake!”
Warlock glanced at Aziraphale and they shared a smile. He nodded in gratitude for the distraction.
“Was it that Piers Morgan bastard?” Crowley asked, moving his finger along Warlock’s screen. “Bloody Daily Mirror? Wouldn’t put it past them…”
Adam paid attention to the commotion for a moment before he noticed a pulsing mound of soil. He sat still as he waited, and he saw the tiniest pink nose peek through the mound for a bit of a sniff.
The mole looked at him, and Adam squinted back as he concentrated. The mole sniffed again and suddenly darted back under the dirt. Adam rose to his feet and smiled as the tunnel trail moved out of the cabbage patch and under the wooden fence that closed off the yard from the forest.
He turned back to Crowley’s protests about the Tree of Knowledge, but not before exchanging a smile with the angel.
“This is the dumbest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard! And I should know because I started lots of them,” Crowley continued. He had taken Warlock’s phone and was scrolling furiously.
Aziraphale suddenly remembered. “Darling, you should see the new app that Warlock’s been playing with. I think you would like it.”
------------------------
Later that night, Aziraphale sat up in bed reading as the faint snoring of two teenagers came from down the hallway. He sighed as he closed his book and got out of bed, putting on his dressing gown. He peered into the guest room that Warlock and Adam shared. A huge bunk bed was against one wall while a collage of posters and magazine clippings of UFOs, cryptids, and horror movie monsters lined the others.
He quietly climbed the ladder of the bunk bed to find Warlock fast asleep, their face sinking into the pillow. Aziraphale gently pulled the blanket up to their shoulder and climbed down the ladder to check on Adam. The boy's book light, which was clamped to the side of the bunk, was still on, so the angel turned it off and lifted Adam's head to remove the science fiction magazine from under it. Adam wasn't under the duvet, so Aziraphale unfolded the extra blanket that was in the closet and covered him with it. He closed the bedroom door behind him and went onto the back patio that led to the garden.
“Crowley?” he whispered. “Are you still out here?”
"Here, angel," came his voice behind him.
He turned and saw that Crowley was sitting on the bench next to the French doors. He was out of his Dungarees and was wearing a loose pair of dark denim jeans and one of the angel's thin jumpers.
Aziraphale sat next to him. “Well...did you…you know?” he asked.
Crowley sniffed and put his arm around his husband's waist, pulling him closer. “Nah. I think it’s gone. I went through every inch of those tunnels, too. I could still smell the little bastard, but it's too far gone now.”
Aziraphale hummed as he rested his head on his shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t like cabbages."
“Maybe.” He kissed his forehead. “I didn’t mean to upset you earlier, angel.”
Aziraphale nuzzled him as he smiled. “It’s all right, my darling.”
“No, it's not. I’m hungry.”
“Come inside, then," Aziraphale said as they stood. "I’ll make a sandwich for you.”
“What kind?”
“I’m afraid all we have is ham.”
“Hm. Fresh out of mice, then?”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but grinned. “Sorry, love. But we do have bananas. I picked them off our tree this morning.”
"All right, you cheeky bastard," Crowley mumbled as he playfully swatted his husband's backside.