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On the whole, Crowley had never considered himself an irritable person. He certainly wouldn't have said he was grumpy, or miserly, or Grinchy. But it was cold outside, and cold inside, and snowing heavily, and he couldn't turn on the radio or the television or look out the window without choking on Christmas.
He didn’t have anything against Christmas, not really; the season was responsible for at least as much low-grade evil as good, and he had to appreciate the finesse. It was craftsmanship, truly – everyone was spending all of their money, forced into tight spaces with family and friends and coworkers, driving each other crazy, eating ridiculous amounts of food and then feeling horribly guilty for it, and they had themselves convinced that it was all in the name of cheer and goodwill towards men. Crowley admired it, but he didn’t much prefer being mired in it.
Currently, his plan of action was to curl up under a thick pile of blankets with a bottle of wine and stay there until it was all over. It was going well, until a knock at his door pulled him out of his thoughts and out of his bed, grumbling all the way. He swung the door open without checking the peephole, prepared to tell off whatever carolers or salespeople were unlucky enough to grace his doorstep, only to be pulled up short by an angel beaming at him.
“Aziraphale,” he said, sounding as tired as he felt. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought food,” said the angel in lieu of an answer. He didn’t wait for an invitation, stepping over the threshold and strolling on into Crowley’s kitchen to pull out plates and utensils, as if he lived there. “I was afraid you might not be feeding yourself properly.”
Crowley watched as he piled a plate high with a variety of spongy dough balls pulled from a bag much too small to contain them all. When he was sure there couldn’t possibly be any more, Aziraphale added a few more and then set the plate down on the table with a gesture indicating that Crowley should sit. And, well. He was tired and a bit grouchy and he didn’t particularly feel like eating, but Aziraphale was smiling at him so brightly, and he didn’t have a good reason not to, so he sat.
“Tell me you’re not going to try to force me to celebrate Christmas with you,” he said, staring at his plate, injecting his tone with ire that he wasn’t truly feeling.
Aziraphale took the seat across from him, holding his own plate with a more reasonable amount of food, and shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that,” he placated the demon. “It’s just that I know you tend to hide away at this time of year, and I worry about you. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
The faintest of blushes crept up to Crowley’s cheeks and he blessed internally, hoping the angel couldn’t see. “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “I can take care of myself.”
“Perhaps you can,” said the angel, “but why should you have to?”
“Well, why should you have to worry about me?”
“I don’t have to. I just do.”
Crowley pursed his lips and prodded at one of the items on his plate, deciding to change the subject before he got into territory too dangerous. “What’s this, then?”
That was apparently the right move, because Aziraphale lit up like an excited child, eager to talk about the food. “That’s a raspberry sufganiyah,” he explained, and then pointed at another thing, “and these ones are chocolate. Sufganiyot are a traditional Chanukah food, fried in oil –”
“Let me stop you right there,” Crowley interrupted, holding up a finger and trying to suppress a smile that had the potential to be either amused or patronizing. “I know traditional Chanukah foods, angel. I may not be Gordon Ramsay, but I’ve been around for a long time, and I know sufganiyot when I see them, and that is not a sufganiyah.”
The angel stopped, the thread of his conversation snipped, and frowned at Crowley. “What do you mean?” he asked, a heavy crease between his eyebrows, looking back and forth between the demon and the doughnut. “It is so. I made them.”
“Oh!” Crowley stared slack-jawed and stammered through a few stray syllables before he was able to gather himself enough to say anything. “Sorry, angel. My bad. It all looks fantastic.”
“No, no,” Aziraphale protested, “is there something wrong?”
It was almost certainly a trap, Crowley thought. No matter how good the angel’s humor seemed, he would not take kindly to Crowley criticizing his cooking. The food didn’t look too bad, really, just a bit burnt and deflated and soggy. He could tell that Aziraphale had tried, and he didn’t want to ruin the angel’s evening, not when he was so excited about it.
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” he lied, rather convincingly in his opinion. “It’s fine. I was looking at it in bad lighting, before.”
“Crowley, if you don’t want it, I won’t force you to eat it,” said Aziraphale, looking sadly at his own plate. “I just thought it would be nice.”
“It is nice, angel.” Crowley picked up one of the sufganiyot, holding it gingerly between two fingers, and popped it into his mouth. It was not terrible, but it wasn’t good, either. “I appreciate it, really,” he added through a mouthful of dough.
Aziraphale narrowed his eyes skeptically at the demon, watching as he chewed and swallowed the doughnut. Curious, he reached for one of his own, lifted it to his mouth and took a cautious bite as if it might be poisoned.
“Eugh.” The angel spit his bite out into a napkin and took a healthy gulp of wine to wash the taste out of his mouth. “Guh. My apologies, Crowley, truly. That tasted like toilet cake.”
Crowley giggled at that, delighted by Aziraphale’s creative descriptive skills. “It’s not that bad,” he reassured the angel gently. “I won’t be eating any more of it, if it’s all the same to you.”
Laughing along with him, Aziraphale nodded his head and banished the offending food to another plane of existence. “That’s what I get for trying to cook without any miracles,” he said, downing the rest of his glass of wine.
“No miracles?” Crowley balked at the idea.
“None at all,” Aziraphale replied defiantly. “I wanted it to be authentic.”
“Well, that changes things.” Crowley cocked his head to the side, looking curiously at the angel. “It was a great first effort, angel. Things like that take practice, and – you know I didn’t mean to make fun of you, right? I do appreciate the thought.”
Aziraphale smiled and averted his eyes, his face heating up from some combination of the wine and the laughter and the small amount of humility he possessed. “I know,” he murmured. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“It’s no bother at all,” Crowley rushed to assure him. “Although I’m still not sure why it matters to you whether I’m eating or not.”
“To tell the truth, it doesn’t,” Aziraphale admitted sheepishly. “I, erm. Wanted to see you. I mean, it’s the first night of Chanukah, and I didn’t want to be alone. And… I didn’t want you to be alone.”
The words hung heavy in the air for a long, silent moment, carrying more gravity than they had any right to. Aziraphale refused to look up at the demon’s face, afraid that he’d made a fool of himself, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it didn’t.
It got to be too much eventually, and he continued talking to fill the silence. “I know it’s silly,” he mumbled, voice thick with shame, “but it’s just – the season, you know, it gets to me sometimes. But I know you don’t enjoy it, and I really shouldn’t have imposed, I’m sorry.”
“You haven’t imposed,” said the demon, a tad exasperated by Aziraphale’s repeated unnecessary apologies, “and it’s not silly. It’s nice. You’re right, I don’t usually enjoy the season, but I don’t – I don’t want to not enjoy it. It’s not like I was just sitting around having a grand old time hating everything. I’m glad you’re here.”
“You mean it?”
“Yeah, angel, I mean it.” Crowley huffed out a breath, trying his blessedest not to be endeared by the angel’s small voice or his rosy cheeks or his tireless kindness or his shitty cooking. “Only, we’ve got a problem now.”
Aziraphale jerked his head up, alarmed. “We do?”
Giving the angel a solemn nod, Crowley pressed his lips together in a tight line. “Afraid so,” he said, voice as grave as his expression. “You see, it’s a pretty nasty snowstorm out there right now, which means we can’t get any decent food delivered.”
There was a brief flash of annoyance at Crowley for making him think something was wrong, and then Aziraphale’s guilt returned in full force. “Oh, crumb, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t make it snow, did you?”
“No, but I’m sure you don’t want me here, taking up all your – brumation time.”
“I don’t need to brumate,” Crowley snorted. “And it’s not your fault that the weather is so difficult to manipulate. Acts of God, and all that. We’ll be fine.”
He offered Aziraphale a sincere smile, which widened as the angel responded in kind, and then he stood from his seat and circled the table to take Aziraphale’s hand. “Come on, angel,” he said, dragging the surprised but willing angel behind him back into the kitchen.
While Crowley began searching cupboards and drawers like a demon on a mission, Aziraphale could do nothing but watch in confusion. He was sure Crowley hadn’t owned half of the things he pulled out, but when Crowley wanted something, Crowley found it. Although the demon seemed rather focused on his task, Aziraphale’s curiosity eventually got the better of him.
“What are you doing?”
“What we are doing,” Crowley corrected the angel, grabbing him by the shoulders and steering him toward the counter, “is learning how to cook.”
Aziraphale scoffed, looking at the demon as if he’d lost his mind. “What? Right now?”
“Yeah, why not?” Crowley shrugged. “We’ve got all the time in the world, angel, and it’s frankly criminal that we don’t have this basic skill set by now.”
“I suppose that’s true,” the angel agreed, still hesitant. “What are we making?”
“Latkes,” Crowley answered with a wave toward the counter, where a cookbook opened to a latke recipe that had not been in the book until Crowley wanted it to. “The internet says they’re a lot easier than sufganiyot. You know, cooking is an art, baking is a science.”
Aziraphale smiled, his eyes getting a bit misty for reasons he didn’t want to address. He turned away from the demon and toward the counter, picked up a potato and a grater, glanced at Crowley for a nod of approval, and got to work.
Four hours later, not to mention dozens of potatoes and onions and eggs, three stove fires, six minor flesh wounds, two small arguments, and one break to light the chanukiah, Aziraphale and Crowley looked over the fruit of their labor with pride.
“We did it,” the angel said, his voice tender and shaky and fragile, staring at a single perfect latke with tears in his eyes.
“Yeah, angel,” Crowley breathed, reverent and awestruck, “we did it.”