Summary: What Emmett misses when he's with Betty is kissing. It's one of the few things about humans he actually likes.
AN: It's Wednesday, and I ashamedly proudly present: Boa vs. Python Naga!Emmett/Betty het kinda-incestuous bestiality. With the bonus of a very lame title. And I'll admit that my snake research consisted of half an hour of reading.
Well.
Sliding Scales
What Emmett misses when he's with Betty is kissing. It's one of the few things about humans he actually likes. But then she will slither up next to him, their long, scaled bodies intertwining, and the slide of his scales over hers when he caresses her will make him forget all about soft, meaty tongues. Who could possibly want naked, rosy flesh, if there are granular plates of the most beautiful scarlet and black, hard and scratchy against his cheek when he leans against her?
Emmett is Naga, one of the few that still have the ability to pass as human, and he uses that advantage as best he can. He's a herpetologist, like most of the other 'human' snakes he knows, trying to convince the stupid half of his ancestry that just because it doesn't come on legs you don't automatically have to kill it. When people ask him why he's so obsessed with finding a universal antivenom, he usually feeds them some sad little story about how his kid sister died when she was bitten by a snake, leaving them all teary-eyed and "sure, Dr. Emmett, have another hundred thousand dollars", which isn't all that much, but it keeps them fed. But the reason, the actual reason he fills his little brethren with poison before he feeds them to Betty, is so his kind doesn't get slaughtered by idiots who just won't understand. They're few enough as it is; they don't need farmers shooting at their offspring, mistaking them with normal snakes.
Betty, as he had named her when she had hatched in his hands, is also Naga, but of a different family. Her story is a tragic one, the only of her mother's eggs to hatch, the last of her kind, no longer able to take on the human form, but too large to be ignored by their soft-skinned relatives. Scarlet Queen Boa he calls her, and a queen she is, but even an idiot should be able to see she's nothing like a member of the boidae – she's got teeth, for god's sake. But the so-called ophiologists never even got that one, so Emmett merrily goes on about 'the only boa to lay eggs' and 'largest specimen on the planet' and 'yes, corpuscular', and no one tells him off.
It's a bit sad, actually. You can read on any website that constrictors are nocturnal.
Still, he's getting away with it, and that's what counts. He has raised Betty, protected her, and he willingly goes whenever she calls for him with scent and the languorous slide of her body. He joins with her, covering her sleek body with his own and pushing his tail underneath her. That's usually when he misses the kissing: when they coil up together, both of them aroused, aligning their vents so he can push one of his hemipenes inside her, and then staying like that for hours. It's hot and humid inside her terrarium, and sometimes he's glad that he can't sweat when they're twitching and coiling, their bodies connected through the whole night. There is no orgasm when he finally ejaculates, and that's the second thing Emmett misses. He will not go looking for a human partner, though. After all, those are the ones he could accidentally get pregnant.
For Betty, he's the only one she has. And snakes don't like socializing all that much, anyway. So what if he feels a bit lonely every once in a while?
Sometimes, though, he wonders how aware she really is. Does she recognise him as anything other than the one who comes to feed her? Does she know it's him who spends the night when the air is humid and her hormones make her restless?
Does she know his name?
It's not important, not really. It is his self-appointed duty to look out for her, just like he looks out for all the other Naga who have found their way to the Longreen Snake Institue in Elkins, West Virginia, spending their days in the cramped safety of terrariums and feeding on mice. Emmett has a responsibility, and there's no time to dwell on pointless thoughts.
But sometimes, he wonders.
~~~
Yeah, you might have seen where this is going. But I really wondered where the eggs in Boa vs. Python suddenly came from. Growth hormones, my ass.