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Oxford Street is packed full of people, seemingly half of London plus several dozen busloads of tourists having decided today is the day to go shopping for Christmas gifts; and Crowley hates it.
Of course, Aziraphale had insisted they should go shopping for Christmas gifts on Oxford Street today, too — something about the beautiful lights making everything more festive, and the throngs of people encouraging peace and goodwill towards one another — and Crowley can never deny him anything.
But Crowley hates it, can barely walk a block before he starts wanting to throttle people; and besides, some of the gifts he wanted to buy are for Aziraphale. So he’d decided — unilaterally, trying to ignore how disappointed Aziraphale looked — that they’d be shopping separately, and meeting up again at the Hyde Park end of Oxford Street, where he’d parked the Bentley.
He’s gotten his shopping done in record time — it is, after all, a perfectly valid use of demonic miracles to skip the checkout queue in every single shop, inconveniencing countless people in the process — and now he’s lounging against the Bentley, waiting for Aziraphale to arrive.
Except when Aziraphale arrives, he’s not cheerful as he usually is after doing a round of shopping for gifts; he is so morose one might expect a miniature thundercloud to materialise over his head at any moment.
(A miniature thundercloud does, in fact, do precisely that for a split second; and then Crowley gets a hold of himself and his expectations, and the cloud vanishes.)
“Everything alright, angel?” Crowley asks, cautiously.
“Absolutely,” Aziraphale says. “Everything is perfectly tip-top.”
And that would be perfectly believable, if it weren’t for the fact that Aziraphale’s voice is entirely flat and he’s scowling.
“Um. Anything I can help with?”
Aziraphale sighs gustily. “It’s lovely of you to offer, my dear, but there is no need for you to worry.”
“If you say so,” Crowley says, slowly, trying to think. If an explanation is not forthcoming, the only thing he can do to cheer up his angel, really, is to distract him. “Got all your shopping done, then?”
Aziraphale outright grunts in response. This is, clearly, more serious than Crowley had thought.
“Here, give me those,” he says, pulling the various parcels and bags from Aziraphale’s hands and stowing them on the back seat of the Bentley, where they absolutely shouldn’t fit but, of course, easily do. And then he spots a brown paper bag poking out of Aziraphale’s coat pocket. “Oh — you had roasted chestnuts! Was there a vendor selling them? I didn’t see him.”
“Lucky you,” Aziraphale says, morosely.
Oh. Oh no. “Er.”
“They were terrible,” Aziraphale continues, working himself up into a lather. “Half of them were burnt, charred entirely beyond edibility, and most of the rest were, if you can believe it, entirely undercooked! You wouldn’t think it would be possible to make a mess of roasted chestnuts, and yet. I have half a mind to go back to the vendor and have a few words with him.”
Aziraphale looks the very picture of the wrathful, avenging angel, and Crowley shivers. He needs to fix this. “Uh. I’m sorry to hear that. Actually, er. I just realised I forgot to buy a thing. Do you mind if I…?”
Aziraphale waves a hand, very clearly attempting to look relaxed and just as clearly failing. “Not at all, dear boy. I’ll be here.”
Crowley’s already running. He will fix this.
* * *
He’s never bought raw chestnuts before, but he knows them to be available in grocery shops. Unfortunately, he also expects them to be a bit hard to find, since most people would be looking to buy them, so it takes him checking two Tescos, a Waitrose and a Sainsbury’s before he finally finds some.
He grabs two nets of them, and then pilfers a couple of paper bags from the store, too. They’re meant for bread, of course, but it occurs to them almost immediately that they ought to be entirely plain brown paper, rather than emblazoned with the Sainsbury’s logo with a little plastic window in the front, so that’s alright.
He pays for the chestnuts, of course. He wouldn’t give his angel stolen chestnuts.
His next stop is a camping shop, where he buys a fancy pocket knife — the instructions on the chestnuts, which he’s thankfully thought to read, say he needs to make a cut into each chestnut, otherwise they’ll explode when roasted.
Finally, for lack of a better, more private place to do this, he ducks into a coffee shop and locks himself in the loo. He slices into four of the chestnuts before giving up and miracling the rest of them; then, he holds the lot in his cupped hands. Normally, roasting chestnuts requires a fire or an oven, but — well, he’s a demon.
Before long, the chestnuts are well on the way to roasting — properly, of course, they wouldn’t dare do otherwise. The smoke detector above his head gives an aborted chirp, then thinks better of it.
When the chestnuts are ready, he drops them into the paper bags, dusts off his hands to clean them from the soot, pockets the knife and throws away the now-empty nets.
Then he miracles himself back to the Bentley. As he expected, Aziraphale is already sitting in the passenger seat, still sulking.
“Here, angel.” He hands over both paper bags, smiling.
“What…?” Aziraphale blinks, opens one of the bags, and smiles, slowly, like the sun breaking through the clouds. “Oh, Crowley. You shouldn’t have.”
Crowley shrugs, doing his best to look casual. “Eh. No big deal. Was looking for the thing I needed to buy, spotted a vendor. Checked them first, of course. Made sure they’re good.”
Aziraphale peels a chestnut, pops it into his mouth, and chews. “Oh, these are perfect,” he says, closing his eyes briefly in bliss. “Thank you, dear boy.”
“No trouble at all.” Crowley might be preening, a little.
“What was it that you needed to buy, anyway?” Aziraphale asks, peeling another chestnut.
“Oh. Um.” Bugger. Of course he’d forgotten about making sure his excuse held up. He scrambles for an answer, but comes up empty. “Just. Thought I might buy a gift for Dog, also, you know how Adam loves him. But everything seemed — you know. Too posh. I’ll find something online.”
Aziraphale raises his eyebrows, looking utterly unconvinced. “Right.”
Crowley desperately tries not to blush. “What? Not a good idea, you reckon? Probably not, actually.”
“Probably not,” Aziraphale agrees, entirely too knowingly for Crowley’s liking. “Crowley?”
Crowley gives up his utterly failed attempt not to blush and starts the Bentley, pulling out of what definitely hadn’t been a parking spot before he’d parked there earlier that day. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.” Aziraphale puts a warm hand over Crowley’s, and squeezes; then he leans over, and kisses his cheek. “I love you.”
Crowley is perfectly aware of the soft, goofy smile on his face, but does not care one bit. “Love you too.”