Chapter Text
It was a Saturday afternoon in December and Crowley was in the hall, shouting up the stairs.
‘If you two aren’t down here on the count of three, I’ll—’
He paused. Synchronised giggling broke out behind the open door to Adam’s room.
‘You’ll what?’ Pepper called down.
Aziraphale bit his lip, holding back his own laughter.
‘I’ll—’ Crowley began, frowning. ‘I’ll think of something really nasty.’
His mouth twitched treacherously. Aziraphale decided to take pity.
‘If we’re late, Michael senior is going to be absolutely horrid to us and probably set Sandra loose with her hand lotions, and by the time we get rid of her, the buffet will be empty.’
‘Fine.’
Adam bolted down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Pepper followed. She was already wearing her new scarlet faux-leather jacket, which Crowley had gifted her as a well-done-for-placing-in-the-poetry-contest present.
‘Relax, it’s only from Next,’ he’d said with an eye-roll at Aziraphale’s outrage to first seeing it. But Crowley was well on his way to spoiling her as much as his own son. Now he’d threatened to take her shopping in Oxford for a proper evening gown to wear to the gala in London. Aziraphale could only imagine the price tag on that.
‘Have you got my sword?’ Pepper asked while putting her shoes on.
‘It’s a letter opener, my dear.’
‘Yeah, but have you got it?’
He patted the pocket of his coat, where the letter opener was tucked away securely in its silver scabbard.
‘Everyone ready? We need to go now.’
Crowley glanced at his phone. He was too precious when he was nervous like that.
The Christmas Showcase was their first school function as, well, he supposed they could call themselves a family now. Not in the way that Michael or Sandra would define it, certainly. They didn’t live together. Too early for that. But they spent an awful lot of time as a foursome, and Pepper and Adam had jokingly started referring to each other as siblings. More to rile Aziraphale up than anything else. Crowley seemed to find it charming.
They set off on foot towards Eastgate Secondary. It was already dark in Tadfield, the days as short as they were going to get. Yesterday’s snow had turned into grey sludge, illuminated by the extravagant Christmas lights with which Crowley’s neighbours had adorned their homes. The children skipped ahead, getting more agitated the closer they got to the school. Aziraphale held Crowley’s hand, felt it tremble in his.
‘They’ll be great,’ he said. ‘Adam doesn’t even have to perform.’
The children had been offered the choice between giving a stage performance of some sort in the assembly hall, or contributing to the gallery exhibition in the foyer. Adam had handed in an A2 sheet of paper containing a comic with Dog Dog’s latest adventure. It wasn’t particularly Christmassy, being themed on the apocalypse as described in the biblical Book of Revelation.
‘Your bad influence,’ Crowley had said when Adam’s new obsession became apparent.
‘Oh, don't worry. He's not going to join the clergy anytime soon. He's only interested in the gruesome bits.’
They’d been at the dining room table, Adam asking question after question that made Aziraphale pull every little detail out of his memory that had been drilled into him years ago.
‘So there are four horsemen…’
‘That’s right. War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.’
‘What’s Pestilence?’
‘Disease. Sickness.’
Adam had pondered that over a bite of risotto.
‘So three of them are, like, reasons why people die, and the fourth one is just… Death? Doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Aziraphale had replied. ‘I didn’t come up with it.’
And so Adam’s showcase comic had become a really quite imaginative tale about an alternate version of the apocalypse, starring Dog Dog as the fifth horseman. He rode a horse made of sausages in the illustrations.
Pepper, on the other hand, was ready to recite her award-winning poem in front of an audience for the first time. Anathema had tried in vain to invite her to the regular poetry open mic she attended. Pepper had always declined, been too shy. But today, she would get on that stage and perform. And even though Aziraphale had heard the poem recited to him every night for weeks, he couldn’t wait to hear it again.
The school was already bustling with parents when they arrived. The pupils’ dads had been dragged along to this one. They stood around their wives with their hands in their pockets as they were greeted by teachers they barely recognised.
Pepper and Adam disappeared as soon as they entered the building. Off to find their friends from swimming, presumably. A small group of teachers and parents were standing by the Dog Dog comic that had been framed and hung up on the wall alongside paintings, drawings, and collages. Aziraphale pulled Crowley closer to it. Mr Pulsifer was there, wearing his ill-fitting suit, a tie half-loose around his neck. And next to him, with an arm around his waist was—
‘Anathema!’
She turned around and beamed at him.
‘Oh, hi you two! We were just admiring Adam’s work here. I didn’t realise him and Pepper went to the same school that Newt teaches at. I guess you guys already know each other then?’
Mr Pulsifer greeted them with a placid smile, and Aziraphale tried desperately to think of something to say that wasn’t I’ve seen your penis in 16 megapixels.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ Crowley said to Anathema with a grin, blissfully unaware of the contents of the SD card in her camera. Aziraphale stammered something that he hoped was close enough to a hello and began intently studying a pencil drawing of a park bench that hung next to the Dog Dog comic.
‘Mr Fell! Anthony!’
Michael slithered up behind them. Aziraphale had never been so glad to see her.
‘How lovely to see you both,’ she said with an ice-cold smile, her grey eyes flitting back and forth between them. Questioning. Crowley threw his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders in what was quickly becoming his favourite move.
‘What’s up, Mike?’
She blinked, the only concession that her curiosity had been satisfied.
‘Oh, I was just wondering whether you’ve had the chance to look at our little Christmas market stall yet.’ She pointed to the opposite wall, where Uriel stood with her arms crossed behind a table covered in knick-knacks. ‘The proceeds are going to the Tadfield Wildlife Fund.’
‘How noble,’ Crowley commented and walked Aziraphale to the stall. They left Anathema and Mr Pulsifer — Newt, the fuck buddy, apparently — to admire the rest of the gallery wall.
‘What are these?’ Crowley asked Uriel, pointing at a pile of heavily crayon-ed paper.
‘Christmas cards,’ she said. ‘Kids from the primary school next door made them. One quid each, or seven for a fiver.’
Aziraphale rifled through them. Wonky Christmas trees, anaemic-looking elves and reindeer with the wrong number of legs made up the motifs on most of them.
‘Who’re you gonna write a card to?’ Crowley asked gruffly. ‘You don’t need to get me one.’
‘Of course not, my dear, but I was thinking of sending a couple to our new friends in Wales.’
He held up a card decorated with what he assumed was a robin, but looked rather more like a pigeon slowly bleeding out from a neck wound.
‘Hm, not sure Matt and Ffion would like that one.’
He put it back on the pile. He spotted another one that would be just lovely for Mrs Potts. It showed the nativity scene in surprisingly good detail, but with an added space rocket rising into the night sky behind the stable. He put that one aside and dug through the rest of the cards, while Uriel looked on with impatience.
‘Oh, but this one’s perfect for Agnes.’
Aziraphale held up another card in triumph. The drawing on it wasn’t exactly seasonal. In various shades of crayon, it depicted a basket filled with all types of fruit, only some of which was identifiable. A bunch of grapes, a banana, and— a neon-green pear. Perhaps a seven-year old had seen a Caravaggio and decided to have a go at it.
‘I like pears,’ he sighed and looked fondly at Crowley, who seemed somewhat confused about what he’d done to earn this besotted gaze.
Aziraphale paid for the cards, imagining the look on Agnes Nutter’s face when she’d find hers in the post. Then he and Crowley made their way to the assembly hall, where the children’s performances were about to start.
‘I was wondering,’ Crowley whispered into his ear when they’d taken theirs seats on wooden chairs, ‘if you’ve got any plans for Christmas or, er, if you’d like to spend it with us.’
‘Oh.’
The truth was, he’d simply assumed that he and Pepper would spend Christmas at the Crowleys’ house.
‘No, we don’t have any other plans.’
‘Excellent. You’re gonna love my Christmas dinner, angel. And I’ll look up how to make a nut roast for Pepper. But there’s another thing I wanted to ask.’
He paused and looked down at his lap, where his hands lay in a trembling knot of fingers.
‘On Boxing Day, we usually go to my parents. They’re not far from here, just down in Hampshire. And they’ve been asking about you. Want to meet you and stuff. So, er, would you and Pepper be okay to come along this Boxing Day?’
Aziraphale held his breath for a moment. Crowley’s parents. They wanted to meet him. This was entirely new terrain.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If Pepper’s happy with that. I’ll ask her later. But Crowley, I’d love to meet your family.’
The lights went off before he could show Crowley just how much this invitation meant to him. He ran his hand over a denim-clad knee and mentally added Presents for Crowley’s parents and Ask about dress code to his to-do list. The idea of spending Christmas with family made him a little nervous. But then, Crowley’s parents were unlikely to be anything like his own.
The head teacher stepped onto the stage, her heels clicking on the wooden floorboards. She opened her arms in a welcoming gesture and began to greet the assembled audience.
‘Here we go,’ Crowley muttered. ‘Just try not to snore.’
‘Really now, I’m sure these performances will be riveting.’
They weren’t. Child after child walked up to the stage to sing a song, or perform a skit, or do an awkward dance. Half an hour into the showcase, the highlight so far had been a ninth-year who juggled five bottles of malt vinegar at once. Then it was Pepper’s turn. The head teacher came up on stage with her cheat sheet in hand.
‘Next up, we have a poem written and recited by Pippin Fell from Year Seven. The title is The Universal Question of How to Do the Right Thing and it just won second place at the Oxfordshire Children’s Poetry Prize. Please give it up for Pippin!’
Pepper walked on, scarlet jacket unzipped, letter opener in hand. She drew the blade out of the scabbard, pointed it straight at the audience, and began to recite. She was wonderful, of course. With her head held high and her voice firm and clear, she made her poem come to life. The letter opener swished through the air, punctuating the words, drawing the audience’s attention. By the time she finished, Aziraphale wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t wait to finally have this piece in print when the anthology came out. Pepper sheathed the letter opener before taking a deep bow. That was when Crowley embarrassed everyone by whistling, whooping, and shouting ‘That’s my girl!’ over the other parents’ polite applause. Aziraphale sank lower into his seat. He couldn’t believe he’d once thought of this ridiculous man as Cool Dad.
After the performances, the crowds flooded back out into the foyer. A buffet table had been set up, laden with sausage rolls, mince pies, and sandwiches. Aziraphale was getting rather peckish, but unfortunately he and Crowley had been surrounded by mothers.
‘So, Mr Fell, rumours are you’re a business owner, too, now. That makes two of us.’
Sandra leaned in with a wink that made Aziraphale shudder.
‘Quite,’ he said and pulled a business card out of his pocket. A.Z. Fell & Co was written on it in a clean, classy sort of font, alongside a stylised drawing of a book. ‘There you go, if you’re interested in antique bibles.’
Sandra looked at the card as if it was a particularly difficult crossword puzzle.
‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ Aziraphale beamed at Crowley. ‘I have an excellent graphic designer.’
‘So, when are you handing in your notice?’ Crowley asked over Aziraphale’s shoulder. Anathema was approaching, mercifully without Mr Pulsifer in tow. She grinned at them and shrugged.
‘If everything goes as projected and Aziraphale takes me on for the same hours and pay as Gabriel, I should be able to quit in May.’
Aziraphale tutted.
‘I hope I’ll be able to pay you more than— oh, this really isn’t the time to discuss work.’
But Sandra had already shuffled away with his business card in hand.
‘Where’s the little poet, anyway?’ said Anathema, looking around. ‘I want to congratulate her on her piece. Truly outstanding. She really should come to the open mic. The regulars will adore her.’
Aziraphale glowed at the praise as if he’d written the poem himself. Really, his influence had been negligible. It was all Tabitha, her art living on in her daughter. An inheritance more precious than any material object.
Just then, Pepper appeared out of nowhere, tugging on his sleeve.
‘Can you hold my sword while I get food?’
‘It's a letter opener, my dear.’
He took it anyway and stuffed it inside his coat pocket.
‘Whatever. Thanks, Dad.’
She ran off to join Adam at the buffet. Aziraphale froze, her last word echoing in his head, loud and distorted. He turned to Crowley, who broke into a smile that lit up his face. He took hold of his hand, and the world fell into place.