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“Merry Christmas. I’m sorry.”
Crowley throws a plate of cookies down in front of Aziraphale, then stomps a step back. The plate bounces off the wood, depositing crumbs onto the tablecloth. Aziraphale looks at it, blinking in surprise.
“Well, that’s … uh …” Aziraphale examines his demon’s sour face, but with no answers to be found there, he turns his attention to the cookies, observing them without touching them. They seem to be plain, old, regular, chocolate chip cookies: a little thin, a might bit dark and crisp around the edges, but otherwise serviceable as cookies go. He can’t imagine what Crowley could be apologizing for. “And why exactly are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry because I’m a failure.”
Aziraphale jerks upright, sits straighter, boundlessly confused by this whole ordeal. “Are you a failure because you’ve done something, dear, and then made cookies to apologize?”
“I’m a failure because I can’t do anything!” Crowley spits. “Even something simple, something humans do every day, like baking a frickin’ batch of chocolate chip cookies! Those are failure cookies, Aziraphale!” Crowley wraps his arms around his chest, hugging himself to the point of contortion. Failure cookies? That should be a clue. Aziraphale knows. However, he’s still having a difficult time understanding.
“Could I … would it be all right if I try one?” he asks. “See for myself. I’m sure they’re quite good.” Aziraphale leans low, takes a sniff, and op!
Okay.
There might be a problem.
From the outset, they smell like delicious, albeit slightly overdone, cookies. But after the aroma travels through his sinuses to the back of his throat, he can definitely sense something there. Not something bad. Just something not … right.
Sharp.
Pungent.
Off-putting.
Evil.
Not demonic evil, per se. Crowley didn’t curse the cookies. He just … may have gone a little off recipe.
“It’s your funeral.” Crowley rolls his eyes towards the window, and Aziraphale suspects guiltily that something about his expression, something he didn’t do on purpose, gave his assessment away. He immediately smiles, a bit too brightly, and Crowley adds a tut to his side-eye glare. The angel reaches for a cookie. He picks one up carefully and breaks it in half. It comes apart in two pieces with a satisfying snap. Aziraphale’s smile becomes more genuine. That’s a good sign. He looks at the fractured portion. Nice division of air bubbles, even ratio of chips to cookie.
All good things.
Excitedly, he puts the cookie half to his mouth and bites into it.
And that’s where the good things end.
The second the cookie hits his tongue, his mouth floods with saliva, his body attempting to wash away the tang of savory which overwhelms the sweet, so much so that if no one told him he was eating a cookie, he’d think he was biting into an exceptionally thin slice of burnt olive loaf, with chocolate chips in place of pimentos.
Aziraphale feels Crowley watching him so he schools his face and shuts his eyes, trying to decide on the best course of action to avoid any more hurt feelings. He breathes in through his nose to eliminate the flavor, but it doesn’t help. In fact, the circulation of air seems to accentuate it.
So he decides on a different route of analyzing this cookie - by stretching his angelic powers and trying to divine why? Why the cookies? Why has Crowley suddenly, after centuries of eating at restaurants and never once entering a kitchen for anything other than a bottle of wine from the fridge, decided he needs to learn to cook?
But it hasn’t only been the cooking.
Crowley tried his hand at sewing the other day, too - to fix one of the buttons on Aziraphale’s coat when he noticed the threads holding it to the fabric had begun to fray. He accidentally ended up sewing the coat closed, but it was a valiant first effort if Aziraphale says so himself.
And that’s another thing.
All of these little experiments at domesticity have been aimed at Aziraphale – fixing Aziraphale’s coat, trimming Aziraphale’s hair (a disaster deserving of its own sitcom), baking Aziraphale cookies. Crowley started off by tidying Aziraphale’s bookshop, which he’d been so expert at, Aziraphale couldn’t find half his belongings without magic for days.
But Crowley has his own flat to clean. And his car. Why is he so focused on Aziraphale? When had it started?
What were they doing when this began?
Well, the very first thing Crowley did for him was to clean his bookshop.
Cleaning is a nervous tick he has, something he does to calm down.
They’d been drinking before that. And talking. Reminiscing. Crowley had made a joke – a tongue-in-cheek comment about shame we didn’t invite the archangels to the wedding. To rub it in their faces sort of thing. And Aziraphale had said …
What did he say?
He doesn’t remember.
But he knows he’d made mention of Sandalphon punching him in the stomach because that’s when the atmosphere in the bookshop changed.
Crowley had gone sober.
His eyes went completely yellow.
And his claws came out.
“Wot? When did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was hardly worth mentioning after all was said and done. Considering Adam turned back time, it probably didn’t even happen.” It was a pathetic excuse for a joke.
And it didn’t land well.
But his next comment … that’s the one that should have stayed in his mouth, never made it past his tongue.
“Besides, why do you care?”
Crowley’s face had turned so bright red, it made his hair look positively pink in comparison.
“I’m your husband! It’s my job to take care of you! Christ! Even the humans get to do that for one another!”
“Well, you were hardly my husband then, so you can put it behind you!” Aziraphale had said. He wasn’t angry at Crowley. He’d simply wanted to end the argument as his own anger and humiliation over the memory had started to get the better of him. To be honest, he adored the idea that his husband wanted to take care of him. To protect him.
And that’s what these cookies are all about.
And the haircut and the sewing.
Yes, Crowley had nearly shorn off all of Aziraphale’s hair, sewn his favorite coat closed, and made these cookies, chock full of ingredients that probably have no business being together, but they were done out of a need.
A need to nourish.
A need to comfort.
A need to protect.
A need to express love.
Needs that Crowley has that’ve begun to overwhelm him. That he’s having a difficult time adjusting to.
With a regretful breath in, Aziraphale starts to understand.
Crowley is trying to take care of him.
And he feels like he’s failing.
“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale mutters around his mouthful of cookie.
“Yes?” Crowley says, and it breaks Aziraphale’s heart how skeptical he sounds.
Aziraphale opens his eyes. “These are, without a doubt, the best cookies I’ve ever eaten in my entire 6000 plus years.”
Crowley’s eyes light up. “You mean … they taste good?”
“Oh no, my dear.” Aziraphale coughs when a rogue piece of cookie breaks off from the rest and makes its way down his throat. He turns his head, tastefully spits what’s left into his napkin. “They taste atrocious. No one in their right mind should ever eat these.”
Crowley frowns, his smile dropping so fast it’s both impressive and comical in its delivery. “Gee. Thanks.”
“But …” Aziraphale stands from his chair and wraps his arms around his demon’s waist “… that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t welcome these cookies on my table every day for the remainder of my existence. They came from you, and they’re full of your love for me. Ergo, they’re my favorite.”
“Then you’re welcome … I guess,” Crowley says, hiding a smile in the corners and crevices of his pouting.
“Just don’t offer them to the children when they come ‘round.” Aziraphale rises on tiptoe and gives Crowley a kiss on the cheek.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Crowley says, grinning like the bastard he is, all but telling his husband that that’s exactly where he intends on the rest of the batch going. “Do you wanna know what my secret is?”
“What, my dear?”
“Allspice.”
Aziraphale’s face goes pale. He peeks over his shoulder at the sienna-brown cookies, his mouth watering again with what remains of their savory aftertaste. “All … spice?”
“Yeah. Allspice. I mean, why do you have to use any other spice when all the spices you’ll ever need are in one bottle? Seems ridiculous that no one else has figured it out yet, if you ask me.”
Aziraphale shakes his head. “Dear Lord …”