Notes: Written for the Ineffable Holiday 2020 prompts days 3 and 4 candy cane and snowglobe.
"Tea?" Aziraphale asks, presenting Madame Tracy with his pink Wedgewood teapot, her absolute favorite of his collection, as if it's a bottle of his finest pinot noir.
"Yes, please." She slides her teacup forward, giggling to herself as Aziraphale bites his lower lip, restraining his own laughter. It's the waiting that's doing them in. Waiting for the wave to hit.
The storm to erupt.
The shoe to drop.
Waiting for Crowley to get home from his errand down the street, picking up Aziraphale's order of biscuits and scones for tea. An order Aziraphale purposefully placed late at a bakery close enough for his demon to walk to so he could put his plan into action.
"Sugar?" Aziraphale offers, his cool slipping when he hears the celestial sounds of another supernatural creature entering the vicinity, and he knows Crowley is just outside. A softly gasped, "Wot the-?" clinches it, and Aziraphale's hands start to shake. Which reminds him ...
I do hope he doesn't drop the biscuits. That's the only real setback to all of this.
"Absolutely," Madame Tracy manages through a titter.
One of the best things, he's discovered, about having Madame Tracy for a friend are the pranks the two of them have been able to pull off together. After they're done here, they're heading over to her house to pull a whopper on Mr. Shadwell.
"Aziraphale!"
Aziraphale jumps when he hears his husband bellow for him, which makes him and Tracy finally laugh out loud.
"Aziraphale! Where the Devil are you!?"
"That's my cue." Aziraphale puts down the sugar bowl and heads for the door.
"Not so fast!" Tracy calls behind him, grabbing her coat and tossing it on. "I don't want to miss this!"
"Aziraphale!"
"Yes, my dear?" Aziraphale affects an air of calm as he walks out of his shop and confronts his agitated demon. "What is it? I'm right here. You needn't shout."
"What have you … what have you done!?" Crowley motions to his car parked in its usual spot out front, the bakery bag of treats swinging from his closed fist.
Aziraphale tuts, approaching his husband carefully the way one might approach a wild animal, and relieves him of the bag. "You're going to need to be a bit more specific."
"Thisss!" Crowley hisses, motioning more emphatically. "What. is. this!?"
"What does it look like?"
"It looks like you put reindeer antlers and a giant red nose on my baby! And …" Crowley leaps bodily across the hood to point out an object inside "… what's that hanging off the rearview?"
"That's a candy cane air freshener!" Aziraphale takes a deep breath in and sighs. "So you can have a whiff of Christmas everywhere you go."
Crowley's eyes go snowglobe wide. "A whiff … of Christmas? A whiff of Christmas!?"
"Yes!" Aziraphale clasps his hands beneath his chin and gushes, "Isn't it darling? I saw them in the shops the other day and I'm sorry. I couldn't resist!"
"Darling? It's tacky as shite, that's what it is!"
"It's festive! Besides, it's not hurting anything!"
"Yes, it is! It's bruising my soul as we speak!"
Aziraphale crosses his arms over his chest and rolls his eyes. "Must you be so dramatic?"
"And that's not even the worst part!"
"What's the worst part?"
"This!" Crowley grabs an antler and tugs hard, but the thing doesn't budge, which makes Aziraphale bite his lips together for fear that he'll start laughing and bust a button on his waistcoat. "My damned fool vehicle won't let me take it off!"
"Oh …" Aziraphale clears his throat when his voice cracks. "I see. That's an issue, is it?"
"It makes my car stick out like a sore thumb!"
"Oh, darling. It already does!"
"Yes, but for good reasons! Sleek, sophisticated, mysterious, sexy reasons! Aziraphale!" Crowley's ranting slows. He leans, defeated, against his car and drops his head in his hands. "You've made me a laughing stock!"
And even though Aziraphale thinks his demon is blowing things wildly out of proportion, he's beginning to feel guilty about how this turned out. Aziraphale knows what Crowley's car means to him. Crowley has had the thing since new. It means more to him than his flat. If Aziraphale had hosed down Crowley's flat with mistletoe and garland, it wouldn't have garnered half this reaction.
In fact, Crowley is at his flat so rarely, Aziraphale isn't sure whether or not he'd notice.
"I am sorry," Aziraphale says, handing off the throttled bag of sweets to a concerned Madame Tracy and putting an arm around Crowley's shoulders. "Would you like me to try and convince your Bentley to let me remove it for you?"
Crowley heaves a gigantic sigh and shakes his head. "There's no use going back. What's done is done. Leave it."
"Are you certain?"
Another sigh, this one shuddering. "It's Christmas, innit? And Christmas is about making the ones you love happy. If this …" He gestures over his shoulder with a nod of his head, unwilling to turn and visually acknowledge the monstrosity behind him "… makes you happy, I'm willing to keep it."
"I'm glad about that," Aziraphale says, his grin returning by millimeters as he tries to remain sympathetic "… but not because it makes me happy. Because it makes your Bentley happy."
And it does, ridiculously. Aziraphale has come to accept that Crowley's car maintains a certain amount of sentience. It makes sense when he gives the matter a long, hard think. It's a car owned by a demon, after all. For decades even. After a while, Crowley's demonic influence would have seeped in. Aziraphale puts a gentle hand on the car's hood, and he swears he feels the thing purring, contented by its cheery and fancy dress.
"Yeah, I guess it does, doesn't it?" Crowley admits, peeking at the car with the bright red nose, and antlers covered in jingle bells, its windshield reflecting a faint, rosy hue, like it might be blushing under all the attention.
Crowley growls.
"Traitor."
