AN: Yes, I'm back! And rather than getting on with any of the stuff I should have been updating, I give you, a brief oneshot from a crack-fic prompt - well, OK, it was just my firnd saying "you should write this" and my imagination spawning the rest - which absolutely nobody was waiting for!

I did write this before Novemeber, but I'm posting it now to make it look like I'm doing stuff.

Disclaimer: Do I look like Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett?

Bonum Apetitus

ROME • 24BC • THE FORUM

The forum was thronged with people- buying, selling, orating and cheering indiscriminately for whoever was talking at the time. It was noisy and busy and thronged with life.

Rome was not yet at the peak of its power, but the city and the Empire were in the grip of an unprecedented peace that had lasted three years and was set to last another forty or so more. To many of the people thronging the streets, that was a lifetime. The Pax Augusta was in place, the people were happy and well fed and whilst they were technically under the thumb of a dictator, he was a relatively kindly one and rarely laughed evilly [1].

Through the press of humanity, two men- or men shaped beings- were strolling across the forum with no regard for the tide of people flowing around them.

'All I'm saying is, that you ought to be careful who you hang around with,' said one. He was typically Roman, with an aquiline nose and straight dark hair. 'I don't think that those poets are really trustworthy.'

'Nonsense,' said his companion. [2] 'Firstly, they are quite harmless and really very talented; and secondly, of course I wouldn't listen to you even if they weren't, you do understand that?'

'Well, yes,' began the first speaker. 'but-'

'I won't hear a word said against those gentlemen. They are highly literate and civilized men, quite unlike that dreadful woman you've been hanging around with.'

'Civilized they may be, but then this entire Empire is civilized and look at the way it treats people-'

'That's not the point. Now, that Livia woman you've been talking to-'

The conversation was, by this point, familiar to both of them. They had, after all, been having it- or something like it- for centuries.

The two Roman gentlemen- patrician class, well spoken, educated- were, in fact, no such thing. As the astute reader will no doubt have guessed, they were known to each other- if not the rest of the world- as Aziraphale and Crowley, and they were not human in the slightest.

[1] Unlike most of Rome's subsequent emperors, Augustus was not clinically insane or homicidal, and nor was he a dribbling idiot.

[2] Actually, he said ineptiae, since they were speaking Latin.

The angel and the demon walked out of the forum and down the main street, still gossiping.

'-and I managed to get him to sign it for me,' Aziraphale said with a glimmer of pride. 'It really is a masterpiece, you know.'

'I'm very happy for you and your Arachnid-'

'-Aeneid-'

'-but to be honest, angel, I really don't care.'

'We are in the heart of civilisation, my dear. You could at least try to take an interest.'

Technically, of course, they were enemies. At each other's throats.

'I do take an interest. In interesting things.'

Diametrically opposed. Unchangeably antagonistic.

'Well, I don't quite know what you would term interesting…'

Adversaries in the eternal conflict.

'Well, there's that,' Crowley said with a grin as they passed the Circus Maximus. People were flocking around it, and they could hear distant screams.

'Disgusting,' said Aziraphale primly.

Of course they hated each other.

'And they did it all by themselves,' Crowley said proudly.

They just… called a truce occasionally. That was all.

'I don't believe you,' said the angel. 'Of course you had something to do with that.'

'Nothing at all, I swear. All their own work.'

Aziraphale frowned and several people who had been queuing for entry turned away with shamefaced looks. 'I refuse to believe that humans could be so barbaric.'

'You were the one arguing for civilisation a moment ago,' Crowley pointed out. The people who had turned away darted back into line with renewed enthusiasm.

That had been two days ago. Two days which, Aziraphale had to consider, had been two of the worst days he'd had to experience on this planet. [1] And all because of what happened next.

'You were the one arguing for civilisation a moment ago,' Crowley pointed out.

Aziraphale opened his mouth to argue. A moment later, his eyes widened and he shoved his friend – enemy- out to one side in a bid to avoid a cart which was driving dangerously fast, the horses out of control, eyes rolling madly and mouths foaming with blood as they strained against their frantic driver.

It was unfortunate, Aziraphale reflected, that the bureaucracy in Hell- still in its fledgling stages, true, but better at tangling people up in red tape than any clerk in some minor office in Rome- had instituted some kind of ruling that made it temporarily impossible for anybody to get a new body. Normally, Aziraphale would have welcomed the opportunity to get the demon out of the way for some time, but it really didn't seem fair to attack him while they were talking so nicely.

When Aziraphale pushed at Crowley with all his strength- which was quite considerable by human standards, even though for an angel he was shamefully weak and puny- the demon automatically, through several centuries of conditioning, assumed that- somehow- he was taking this chance to attack. Instinctively, and against what would have been his better judgement had he had time to judge, Crowley grabbed at Aziraphale and used his momentum to swing them around, so that Aziraphale was the one flying backwards.

Thrown clear of the cart's path, Aziraphale could only watch as Crowley's corporation was crushed under the hooves of the horses.

And it was just unlucky, the angel recalled with a wince, that almost the only living things nearby had been people. Well. And horses. But they were too crazed to be of any use, and possessing people was not nearly as easy as humans seemed to think. All the emotions and rages and passions of the body were only linked in the most basic sense to the conscious brain, and possession was much like putting the brain to sleep. You ended up at the mercies of a body not your own, which you didn't understand and couldn't control.

No, it was much easier, all things considered, to possess an animal if you had to possess anything. They thought with their bodies, true, but only at one level. Once you'd taken over that, you'd taken over everything.

But once you'd taken over, it became incredibly difficult to extract yourself. To gain even the most rudimentary control, you had to wrap yourself around the brain, immerse yourself in the senses, clothe your entire essence in the wet, thick solidity of flesh. It was a last resort, as to remove yourself from the body was a highly hazardous procedure that could prove fatal for the host.

Crowley's essence, which had been thrown clear of the body as it died, was in a state of panic. Normally, he would have returned directly to Hell to wait it out, but at that moment the only thing that he could think was that he couldn't go back Down. Instinctively, therefore, he sought out the first living being that he could possess.

Aziraphale, with angelic eyes, saw Crowley's spirit rise and flee across the street. He was surprised to see that it did not go downwards, to return to Hell, but instead flew towards a market stall on the other side of the Via.

Aziraphale hurried after it, ignoring the crowd gathering around the corporation that was lying prone on the ground.

The stall was crowded with baskets, cages and boxes. The vendor, a Greek freedman in a toga virilis, was craning his head to see the accident.

Aziraphale inspected the merchandise, and he didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. The entire cart was given over to selling snakes.

[1] Not the worst two days. That honour went to the day that the Humans had been expelled from Eden, and the day when somebody had set fire to the Library of Alexandria. [2]

[2] It had been Crowley. Even now the demon couldn't quite work up the courage to confess that to Aziraphale, and the day that he eventually did tell him, it nearly caused the end of the world. Indirectly, of course. [*]

[*] See my story A Study In Magic because I really am that desperate for reviews.

'Stop complaining,' Aziraphale muttered under his breath.

The snake hissed. 'You wouldn't be happy if you got stuck like this!'

'No, but I am not the Serpent of Eden, am I?'

Crowley flicked his tongue sullenly at the angel. He couldn't deny that.

It was just lucky, Crowley considered, that he'd been able to communicate with the angel. Left to his own devices, the bumbling fool would probably have taken home some stupid grass snake and spent a week talking to it before he'd realized it wasn't Crowley.

'Oh, dear,' the angel muttered as he hurriedly glanced over the stall. 'Crowley, are you in here?'

Crowley-the-snake had hissed. Crowley-the-demon was still trying not to get himself too embedded in the snake's consciousness and wound himself a little tighter around its mind, making his new body- one he hadn't used in a while- rear up.

'Which one are you?' the angel said helplessly. 'You know that all these serpents look alike to me…'

Crowley-the-demon snorted. Idiot angel. He was going to have to try and talk.

-im here- he sent out. The angel started, looked up and stared in his general direction. Crowley risked binding himself a little further in order to wave his tail at Aziraphale.

Not having vocal cords was awkward. Crowley made a mental note to get some as soon as possible.

'Crowley?' Aziraphale asked. Crowley gave a silent groan. The angel was looking at the cage next to him, one which contained a rather fat and somnolent grass snake. As if he'd ever possess something like that.

Nothing for it, then. Crowley-the-demon focussed his essence, bore down on the body of the snake, and… became.

It's a sensation that's impossible to describe to anybody who has never, ever, done it which makes any description more or less redundant.

Suffice it to say, however, that Crowley was suddenly… locked in to the body. He was the body.

He'd always rather hated possession. But now that he had a body, he could communicate properly.

'You know, dear, you could have made it easier,' Aziraphale said reproachfully. 'There's not very much difference between you and those other snakes at all.'

Crowley hissed. 'If I sssaid that there was no difference between you and Gabriel, would you be offended?'

He took Aziraphale's silence as an affirmative.

Aziraphale looked wretchedly at the cages of snakes. The vendor was beginning to lose interest in the carriage accident and the dead pedestrian, and he didn't want to be caught talking to the snakes.

'Which one are you? Quickly!'

The snake he'd been looking at didn't respond. The one next to it- big, smooth, powerful and vaguely evil looking- blinked at him and pushed its head against the bars.

'Crowley?' he asked, tentatively poking at it. It looked at the finger as though it would like to bite it, and Aziraphale could have sworn that it rolled its eyes.

Any remaining suspicions were removed when the snake raised its head and nodded.

'Oh, thank goodness,' Aziraphale said in relief. A thought arrived in his mind.

-about time too you idiot-

'If you don't behave, I'll leave you here,' the angel threatened. The snake drew back its head, appeared to consider the too-small cage it was crammed in, and then dropped its gaze in what might have been an apology or an attempt to convey the sentiment normally expressed through two raised fingers. Aziraphale chose to take it as an apology.

Aziraphale hurried through the streets, clutching the cage containing the snake.

-don't drop me you idiot- Crowley snapped as the cage lurched.

'You're heavy!' Aziraphale replied indignantly. 'Look, how about I let you out of this cage and you slither?'

He set down the cage on the cobbles of an empty alleyway and unlatched the front section. The snake eagerly flowed out of the confining space and slithered around in circles for a while.

Aziraphale stifled a laugh at the oversized snake chasing its own tail.

-you should try being cramped up in a cage about half the size of yourself for three weeks- Crowley snapped.

'I'm sorry, my dear, but really. You do look silly just going around in circles.'

-im venomous you know-

Aziraphale frowned. 'The trader said that you were an Aesculapian snake. They're non-venomous.'

-i thought you said we all looked the same- Crowley hissed angrily.

'Look, yes. But there's this wonderful Greek gentleman who wrote a book on natural history-'

-dont take this the wrong way but I really dont care-

'Of course you don't,' Aziraphale said resignedly.

It turned out that a large snake winding through the streets was apt to cause some alarm, and also to get trodden on.

After three blocks, Crowley was thoroughly fed up of the street urchins pulling his tail and turned to hiss loudly at them.

The children jumped back in sudden fear as the huge snake darted at their ankles, yelling and laughing in half- play, half sudden terror.

Aziraphale turned back at the sound, tutted and strode towards the incapacitated demon.

'Really, dear,' he sighed as he picked up the snake with an effort. 'They were just playing.'

-oh yes it was such great fun- Crowley snapped as he wound himself around the angel's arms. –you just try having those little imbeciles pull your tail-

'There was no need to snap at them,' Aziraphale said firmly. Crowley slithered defensively to his shoulders, where he could lie safely out of reach of any curious passers by. 'You know you aren't venomous anyway.'

-yes but i could damn well try to be-

As an afterthought, he added –and anyway, they didnt know that-

Aziraphale finally managed to get Crowley back to his residence and out of sight of the curious crowds who had followed them, thinking them to be from the theatre or some such. A small amount of magic may or may not have been involved in this.

-no way- Crowley protested as Aziraphale unbolted a side-door. –no way do you live here-

'Whyever not?' Aziraphale queried as he strode across the atrium, throwing a scrap of meat to the large dog that had come running up to greet him. Crowley shrank back and pulled his coils a little tighter. He could have sworn that that dog was some kind of hybrid between a hellhound and a mongoose and it had a knife-makers shop sticking out of its mouth. And it was giving him a look which suggested that it would very much like snake for dessert.

'Oh, don't mind Atalanta there, she's just a big puppy really,' Aziraphale said absently.

-a puppy? it looks like cerberus' mutant offspring by a mongoose and it looks hungry-

'Really, such an imagination,' Aziraphale murmured.

-and back to my original point you cannot possibly live here because this house is nicer than mine and thats just not right-

Crowley felt, in his heart of hearts, that the day when Aziraphale owned something nicer and more luxurious than whatever he had, the Apocalypse had truly begun.

-its not yours is it-

'Not as such,' Aziraphale responded. 'I am a guest here- a cliente, if you will, of Rome's most famous patronus.'

Crowley could tell that the angel was enjoying being all mysterious for once. Rome looked very different through snake eyes and he'd come in from a different direction, but suddenly the huge atrium and that big shield above the door and those laurel trees dotted around every where, they all added up to-

-no way- he said flatly. –apart from anything else thats my job-

'You were so occupied with Livia, I thought that you wouldn't mind,' Aziraphale said absently. He pushed the curtain of a cubiculum aside and entered. 'It's my job as well, you know. Technically.'

-i cant believe you managed to make yourself a houseguest of the imperator augustus. you know, the most powerful man in rome? princeps senate, pontifex maximus, consular imperium?-

'Well, needs must, you know [1],' Aziraphale said cheerily. 'And he's actually rather a nice gentleman.'

-if you dont count the persecution of the jews-

'Well, that's why I'm here, isn't it?'

Crowley couldn't argue with that. He didn't actually want to. It was, after all, his job to make sure that the Imperator was as unpleasant as possible. But he'd always had more of an eye for long term planning and he had great hopes for young Tiberius.

He looked around the cubiculum, just for something to do. It was fairly sparsely furnished, with a simple bed and a thin blanket, and the high window was closed. The light streaming in around the edges gave enough illumination and kept the room cool in Rome's hot summers. Typically, there was a desk over in the corner that was absolutely covered in scrolls and tablets. There was a set of shelves, too, which were filled with even more.

'So, what are we going to do with you?' Aziraphale asked genially. He took a seat on the bed and lifted the snake off his shoulders.

Crowley raised his head a little whilst he recoiled himself in a patch of sunlight.

-im stuck like this unless this body dies-

'Now, I'm sure that's not true,' Aziraphale began.

-when was the last time you possessed something angel? sumer, wasnt it?'

'Well, yes, but-' Aziraphale began, hastily steering the conversation away from Sumer and that whole fiasco with the sheep and that jar of wine [2]. He didn't want reminding.

-you know how this goes- Crowley irritably wound his coils a little tighter. –im stuck in this body now. my psyches too close-

'Well. That's not…' Aziraphale paused slightly. 'Not quite…'

-not quite what- Crowley demanded.

[1] He did. In fact, the angel had spawned the saying, because Crowley's driving, in the days before gear-shifts and brake pedals, had been truly terrifying.

[2] You really don't want to know.

'Not exactly, well, totally, or not utterly the exact…'

-spit it out-

'It's not quite the way it works.' Aziraphale looked awkward. 'I have a scroll here somewhere-'

-just tell me or well be here all day while you try and find some book-

'Yes, well, in theory it's possibly to detach the, ah, parasitic consciousness from the host,' Aziraphale said delicately. 'But it's really very difficult. You need an… outside eye, as it were. A secondary consciousness to direct.'

-so you mean someone has to help me-

'Well, yes. I mean… yes. You'd need another angel- or, in your case, a demon, I suppose.'

-great. its not like theres anyone else around- Crowley snapped.

Aziraphale smiled gently. 'There's always me.'

Crowley recoiled. –oh he- g- jupiter no.i remember how this goes. im not letting you anywhere near my psyche or youll smite me into the next millennium-

'Really now. As if I would,' Aziraphale said disapprovingly. 'That would be simply… well, not fair.'

The snake stared at him in disbelief. In reaction to its new owner, the eyes had changed from their usual dull red to the demon's usual gold. –im not sure sometimes if your actually an angel-

'Well. Mercy and so forth. You know.'

And so began a very, very awkward truce. Crowley couldn't quite believe that Aziraphale wasn't building up to some very cunning means of smiting him for good, and therefore treated him with the utmost suspicion.

Of course, Crowley could simply have left the snake. But then he'd have just been drifting around as pure spirit, with nowhere to go but down, and the bureaucracy of Hell didn't make that an attractive option for at least another month, when he could get himself a new corporation without a problem.

So Crowley was stuck as a snake for now. And whilst it could have been much worse- he was, after all, the Serpent and actually preferred this form at times as he could sleep for a week and nobody would complain- it put him totally at the mercy of the angel. And that, for a demon, is never, ever a good place to be.

Over the course of the first week, he experimented with his powers as much as he could. In theory, he could still conjure miracles- or whatever the demonic equivalent was- and thus, wield his own magic quite happily. But the snake wasn't the best kind of host for that kind of thing and as a vessel rather than a corporation it had a very limited reserve of power. He could move very small objects, he discovered, such as latches on that damn cage the angel had tried to leave him in after he'd accidentally knocked over a box of scrolls when racing himself around the floor to stave off boredom. But any serious magic or miracle was way beyond him.

Added to which, this body needed to eat. Crowley, although he would happily cause death and destruction to humanity and selected other species on a whim [1], had a soft spot for snakes and in any case, as previously iterated, was aiming to stay in this form for at least another three weeks. Which meant eating.

Although Crowley had spent many years as a snake, and assumed the form wherever convenient, he had never stayed in it to eat. This was because he was fully acquainted with Gluttony, and vastly preferred human cuisine over the diet of a snake, which typically consisted of small mammals. He had no objections whatsoever to small mammals, just as long as they were cooked first, and snakes have never been known for their culinary abilities.

[1] These included mongooses [2], eagles, racoons, foxes, coyotes and for some reason, slow worms.

[2] A word Crowley had invented to cause irritation to anyone attempting to pluralise.

Aziraphale had left Crowley in his room, curled up on his bed in the sunlight, and gone out to the market to obtain food suitable for a very large snake. He did wish Crowley could have chosen something a little less ostentatious. This snake was a meter and a half long and, as experience could attest, ridiculously heavy. It could probably do with losing a few pounds, Aziraphale thought uncharitably. Could snakes get overweight?

Eventually, after some hasty excuses and a fair amount of searching, Aziraphale purchased a cage full of enough dormice to feed a snake for a fortnight. Thank goodness they didn't need to eat every day.

Awkwardly, he made his way back, very much aware that he was still not supposed to keep a pet in his quarters and that he was carrying a cage full of very much alive dormice, which were going to be considerably harder to hide than a snake. He wondered vaguely why he hadn't simply smote the demon as soon as he'd had the opportunity. They were, after all, bitter enemies, and he'd practically been handed to him on a platter. It didn't seem very sporting, though, to kick a demon when he was down.

Occupied as he was, Aziraphale didn't notice, as he pushed open the door to the villa, that the atrium was not empty.

Crowley, lazily sunning himself, didn't take much notice when he heard voices in the atrium beyond the curtain. When the familiar voice of the angel joined them, however, his curiosity was piqued enough to have him slither down to the floor and across to the curtain. He poked his head out just in time to see Aziraphale scurrying towards the cubiculum clutching a cage. The angel's eyes widened and he made a motion with his free hand to the snake to hide.

When Aziraphale entered, Crowley stared at him as only a snake can. That is, unblinkingly and vaguely threateningly.

'Don't look at me like that,' the angel hissed.

-like what-

'Like you're accusing me of something.'

-this is my normal face-

'Exactly. Look, can you just… slither somewhere else?'

Crowley blinked slowly. –i'm hungry-

'Fine. Have a dormouse.'

Crowley slithered over to the cage and swallowed the fattest mouse he could find, not without some distaste.

-so what was that about-

'Oh, you're causing trouble, as usual,' Aziraphale said absently.

Crowley perked up. –good-

'Well, really, I do think you could be a little-' The bell rang for dinner and Aziraphale leapt up.

-yes, fine, don't mind me,- Crowley sulked as he left.

Later, when the waiting period had elapsed and Crowley was able to get himself a new body, having levered himself out of the old one with the help of Aziraphale [1], he returned in a brand new corporation (with a rather improved digestive system that meant he never had to eat dormice again) and was thoroughly horrified at the effect his brief serpentine form had had.

In a fit of panic, when being asked to explain the cage of dormice, Aziraphale had garbled some hasty explanation about them being "food for a friend". The Emperor, overcome with curiosity, ordered some prepared by his cooks, and found them palatable. Because what the Emperor likes, everyone likes (or everyone with a self preservation instinct, at least) it had soon caught on, and upon his return to Rome Crowley found himself presented, to his unreasoning horror, with a dish of stuffed dormice.

[1] Leaving a thoroughly shellshocked snake behind, which never quite got over its use as a vessel for such great demonic power, and later spawned an entire subspecies with somewhat unusual capabilities (residual power being capable of echoing back across the generations), one of which, in a thoroughly unexpected and ironic turn of events, later caused Crowley and Aziraphale a great deal of trouble, attempted to end the world and also bore responsibility for the destruction of a priceless collection of antique pencils assembled by a former Soviet agent.

A brief note: The reference to Study in Magic is, ironically, to a chapter that hasn't yet been written. Go read SiM anyway. And treat that snippet as a teaser of a forthcoming plot that I will write some time.