Actions

Work Header

nangn!

Work Text:

It was an accident, the first time.

Warlock was still mastering the art of muscle control and fine motor skills. He was fascinated by Crowley's glasses, probably because they were shiny, and easy for his baby eyes to focus on against the backdrop of Crowley's pale skin and ginger hair. Crowley was tired, and distracted by the snaps on Warlock's onsie which were refusing to line up correctly when Warlock's little fingers shot out and snatched the glasses right off Crowley's nose.

"Oi!" Crowley said, turning to snatch them back, only to find himself eye to eye with the grave blue and green of Warlock's heterochromatic gaze. He was already chewing gummily on one of the earpieces. "Give those back to Nan."

"Ngah!" Warlock said, and smiled bewitchingly up at Crowley.


The thing was. The thing was, Aziraphale was the only being in six thousand years who had both seen Crowley's unprotected eyes and found them a reason to smile. Warlock laughed when he pulled off Crowley's glasses (in the privacy of the nursery) (in the quiet sitting room of the gardener's cottage) (reaching up from the baby carrier when they were out walking the hills). His face held no sign of the fear or revulsion -- the recognition of something wrong with a human face -- that Crowley had always seen in the countenance of the other humans who've looked him in the eye over the centuries.

"Is it because you're the antichrist?" Crowley demanded, one morning on the nursery room floor, poking an accusing finger at Warlock's belly. Warlock giggled, then flung the glasses he was holding across the room when his arm unexpectedly jerked to the left. Crowley went to retrieve them, grumbling, but stopped halfway through the act of sliding them back up his nose because Warlock was studying him, quietly, from his blanket on the floor, forehead wrinkled and fist in his mouth. Crowley swallowed, wondering if this was the moment he'd been waiting for -- the moment when Warlock's infant brain realized that something about Crowley's face was wrong. They regarded one another in stillness for a moment or two, then Warlock kicked a foot in the air and gurgled happily as Crowley lowered the glasses and folded them away.

Well, Crowley told himself. Don't get used to this. Tiny bugger's only five months old.


"Nangn!" Warlock shrieks gleefully, lurching forward on the picnic blanket and dropping a damp, half-eaten teething biscuit in favor of Crowley's latest pair of shades.

"N'erg!" Crowley growls in reply, batting -- extremely half-heartedly -- at Warlock's raiding hands as the child lurches back in the other direction and drags the frames with him. Crowley blinks in the newly-harsh sunlight and attempts a thoroughly unsuccessful glare at his charge who claps his hands together -- awkwardly, one hand still fisted around the left lens of Crowley's glasses, now smeared with biscuit -- and grins toothly.

"Nangn!" It's one of a handful of Warlock's word-sounds so far, seemingly an all-purpose pay attention to me, you big lump although a command only directed at Crowley. Possibly because nine times out of ten Crowley is the only lump paying attention to Warlock at all. Case in point: they've just finished an educational mid-day tramp through the wood (more for Crowley's sanity than because nine month old Warlock has any hope of learning the difference between a titmouse and a warbler) and apart from the two of them it's only the ewes with their spring lambs on this muddy South Downs hillside. The rest of the afternoon stretches out before them with little chance of running into another person until they stop at Aziraphale's cottage for afternoon tea.

Ah, what's the harm, Crowley thinks, closing his human eyelids over snakey eyes. Let the wee antichrist have his fun.