Chapter Text
Aziraphale had known for centuries, if not millennia, that the ultimate goal of his eternal life was Peace and Quiet; at least, it had remained the ultimate goal for as long as Crowley in and of herself was not an acceptable or permitted treasure for him to covet. His objectives on Earth, Heavenly demands aside, had been as follows: Peace and Quiet, then Crowley, then Peace and Quiet with Crowley.
Crowley's aims, on the other hand, had started quite differently. She had endeavoured to: Cause Trouble, Cause Trouble for Aziraphale, then, for a limited time only, Cause Trouble with Aziraphale, and finally, after the Armageddon that wasn't, she had settled into her current objective, which aligned perfectly with Aziraphale's one.
Crowley was a new woman - she now had the Peace and Quiet that she had realised she wanted. In abundance. What's more, she could not be more certain that the former angel who joined her in maintaining it was, as the humans put it, 'in it for the long haul'. He was with her, whichever form she took, from the first crow of Aziraphale's whimsical (read: unbearable) cuckoo clock, that roused the two habitants of the bookshop just after sunrise, to the final kiss they shared at the end of each day, when the night sky was black with dormant evil and the stars were obscured by light pollution (light pollution had been one of Crowley's, and she had always regretted it).
For the first time since she had moved into the bookshop seven months prior, her haven of tranquility had been interrupted. Not by Heaven, not by Hell, not by Adam Young or Anathema Device or Mr. Brown and his World of Carpets, or even the Woman Upstairs, so to speak...
For the first time, a Christmas market had come to Whickber Street.
While she and Aziraphale had grown used to the thousands of passersby which would traverse the street they lived on - Aziraphale had, after all, chosen to set up shop in the once-seedy underbelly of Victorian London, whose new and improved reputation as a district in the present day failed to deter droves of drunken scoundrels from populating its pavements after darkness fell each evening - this was something else entirely. Scoundrels, Crowley could handle; in fact, she rather enjoyed scaring them off. This ongoing event, however, had brought to Whickber Street something far, far worse: the kind of cramped, thoughtless conditions which made Hell's most recent office party look like a ballroom dancing class (specifically, one which was undoubtedly held in a church hall and predictably attended only by individuals over the age of seventy).
People, Crowley had learned fairly early on in her career on Earth, would do almost anything if it meant they could convince those around them that they were having a good time at Christmas. Whether they were actually enjoying themselves or not was irrelevant to the fact - it was all about being seen drinking the right drink, laughing a hearty yet pleasant laugh at the right joke and spending just the right amount of money on a present that would inevitably clutter its recipient's home until they finally grew frustrated with it and "accidentally" knocked it off the mantelpiece.
These human foibles were, in one way or another, eternal, and Crowley had largely learned to ignore them. They became impossible to disregard, however, when the only route home from her daily walk (or more accurately, her daily lope) involved weaving her way through dozens of dilly-dallying mulled-wine drinkers, whose main activity for the afternoon involved making it abundantly clear how much fun they were having via Instagram (a social media site that Crowley now wished she hadn't spent valuable time "refining" in the years preceding her retirement).
The trouble was, it would have all been worth it if Aziraphale had been his usual self that year. Crowley could have learned to tolerate it if Aziraphale had appreciated the market's presence... And if it had been any other December, he would have; Aziraphale had adored Christmastime ever since it had become a widespread tradition. By this point in December, he would usually be humming and "ta-tum"-ing carols and standards under his breath, adorning the few remaining Christmas-free surfaces in the bookshop with strings of fairy lights, and commenting occasionally to anyone who would listen that Jesus Christ really had been a decent fellow, even if he regrettably hadn't quite seen what all the hullabaloo was about at the time. This winter, he had done none of these things; he hadn't even taken up his customary reread of A Christmas Carol , in time to sit through its Muppets film adaptation as a recurrent favour to Crowley on Boxing Day. One frosty morning as they opened up shop, Crowley had even thought she caught Aziraphale muttering "Bah, Humbug!" under his breath, but decided to put it down to her dodgy snake hearing.
"Christmas just isn't the same anymore," Aziraphale had admitted, when pressed as to why he had spent the last three weeks stomping and huffing round the shop instead of Spreading Christmas Cheer. "Now I'm no longer officially an angel, I can't seem to capture that Christmas Spirit which always came so naturally to me before."
In response, Crowley had wanted to point out that the keystone of this so-called Christmas Spirit, both for an angel and a human, was allegedly an increased, proven sense of generosity towards others, which Aziraphale had never once demonstrated to his Whickber Street neighbours in all the years he had lived in Soho (except, of course, with Maggie, and more notably on one unforgettable, demon-tinged occasion, which had actually been more about feeling like a Jane Austen character and playing matchmaker than giving for giving's sake). She presumed that this would not be a helpful comment to make, however, partly because Aziraphale had inadvertently mastered the intensely human art of pretending to be generous, so he probably wouldn't notice the difference.
Instead, she chose to rub his lower back leisurely and kiss him on the cheek, mumbling that she, too, found Christmas difficult now that her official occupation was no longer to foment evil in the Greater London area. She missed employing her usual anti-Christmas methods at this time of year - spreading fake news about The Krampus and suchlike - especially because Aziraphale himself had always found her annual hoaxes rather entertaining (though he had always gone to great lengths to conceal his enjoyment in the whole thing). In a moment of desperation, she had even considered making herself up as The Krampus and appearing ominously in the bookshop one night to cheer Aziraphale up, but the risk of frightening him out of his wits was too great. He no longer trotted about perkily with his usual overdeveloped sense of alertness; he had become lethargic in his self-disappointment.
Crowley turned the corner onto Whickber Street just as the sun was setting, and, it being a Monday, the market wasn't quite as busy as it had been the days prior. She felt her hunched shoulders fall and spread, a sigh of relief escaping her lips at the thought that, since tomorrow was Christmas Eve, the market vendors would finally be packing up and leaving in just over twenty-four hours' time. Still, Crowley acknowledged as she swerved this way and that repeatedly in an effort to weave her way through the crowd, that didn't solve the problem of Aziraphale's unnerving lack of Christmas Spirit. She didn't have much time to remedy this, so she would have to come up with something quickly. All her life, Crowley had specialised in Capers and Shenanigans, and this involved the forming of a very different plan to the kind she was accustomed to; she was The New Crowley now, however, the kind of Crowley that planned things with a little more-
"Hey! You there!"
Halting abruptly, Crowley turned on her heel to find the source of the voice calling her name, her train of thought racing away from her in the process. Her eyes settled upon a tall, young-ish woman waving enthusiastically from behind the table of a market stall.
She definitely knew this woman... but how? Crowley had never been particularly competent when it came to putting names to faces. She also struggled to remember which demons she had battled with and which angels she had battled against before The Fall, not to mention which poor soul or souls upon which she had unleashed each particular terror of her since-terminated Earthly career.
She sensed that this being, with tumbling Stygian locks and the most carefully assembled outfit she had witnessed in weeks, fell into neither category. This market vendor was clearly human, Crowley surmised as she drew closer to the stall, and the manner with which she pushed her disc-shaped glasses further up her nose and smiled an excessively heartfelt smile indicated that she was certainly no threat to a former demon like herself, or indeed her precious angel.
"It's me - Anathema. You know - from Armageddon?" Anathema's pitch rose at the end of her second sentence, not due to any sense of uncertainty about the validity of what she had said, but rather in an evident attempt to jog Crowley's memory.
"Right, yeah." Raking a hand through her silken shoulder-length hair, Crowley bowed her head ever so slightly to indicate recognition. "Hi."
The vendor - Anathema - cocked her head to one side. "Crowley, right? What are you doing here?"
Although it was an innocent enough question, Crowley bristled. "What concern is it of yours?"
Anathema's fingers looped round each other as she wrung her hands. "Well, I just- I'm running this stall for my friend Amy today and I'm... struggling to make sales. I thought you might be able to help."
"I'm, er..." Lazily, Crowley arched her over-active eyebrow. The very last thing she felt like doing at that moment was spending any more time in the hustle and bustle of last-minute Christmas shoppers for a single second longer than necessary. What she did feel like doing was getting home to her Aziraphale, heating up some mulled wine on the stove, and putting on the sort of black-and-white Christmas film whose story she could still follow throughout if she dozed off for a few minutes during the watching of it. "... in a bit of a hurry, actually."
"If you perform a quick miracle to get the products I'm selling on these people's minds, I'll..." As Anathema trailed off, her pupils flitted this way and that, as if she were deep in thought. "I'll let you take something home from the stall, gratis. Anything you want."
Money was no object for Crowley, a fact which weakened the appeal of this offer, but she glanced down at the table before her to assess her potential options anyway. Demons, when it came down to it, liked free stuff, under almost any circumstances.
Symmetrically arranged all over the table were a variety of brews and potions, crimson or fuchsia or coal-black, contained in an assortment of jars and vials and steaming mugs. Their respective purposes were identified by slips of paper taped to the tablecloth. Some glimmered gaudily, some glinted subtly in the warm light of the Soho street lamps, and others didn't seem to want to be noticed at all. On an elevated box at the table's centre sat a silver flask, bearing a label whose cursive had been written in far larger handwriting than all the others. The label's first line read: 'SECRET RECIPE - ANTI-SCROOGE POTION.' And then, in smaller lettering: 'CHRISTMAS SPIRIT GUARANTEED, OR YOUR MONEY BACK."
"How do you enforce that?" Crowley gestured vaguely to the label she had just read.
"I'm sorry?"
"Ya know - 'Christmas Spirit guaranteed, or your money back.'"
"Oh, I don't know all of Amy's methods intimately, but... she sort of senses things. If someone used one of her potions and it didn't work, I think she'd just know." Anathema corrected the position of the silver flask as she spoke. "Not that she has many complaints."
It was ridiculous to believe in witchcraft, being that the public perception of witchcraft in the UK since the dawn of time had been owed in no small part to the sorts of rumours Crowley's Hellish superiors had relentlessly encouraged her to wantonly spread, knowing all the while that they weren't really true. Women like Agnes Nutter just sort of happened occasionally, and Hell certainly hadn't figured out how yet. Despite this, Crowley wanted to believe, because she was very nearly out of options to save Aziraphale's Christmas. She had employed all the known methods to get someone feeling Christmassy - taking them ice-skating on a frozen lake, gifting them tickets to a carol concert, even forcing them to attend a work Christmas party against their will (held by none other than Mr. Brown for the businesspeople of Whickber Street, of course). Nothing had worked, so this had to, or... Aziraphale would always remember his first Christmas with Crowley as a cosmic failure.
Crowley knew Aziraphale loved her; she saw it every day, and heard it too. She felt it more than she could ever admit. Still, she possessed the nagging need to prove that Aziraphale had made the right decision in taking up with her permanently after that fateful spring day he had gifted her the snake plant, and this month felt like the perfect opportunity to do so. A couple's first ever Christmas... well, that was always a big deal, even if one half of the couple in question had been morally and professionally opposed to the tradition for thousands of years.
With a wave of Crowley's hand, approximately thirty young women within a hundred-yard radius suddenly decided to circle back to Anathema's stall, and the milling crowd began to close in around it as they approached. "I'll take some of this one," Crowley blurted hurriedly, and before she could say what Aziraphale would have said in this situation - "Actually, this is preposterous" - Anathema was decanting a generous helping of the Anti-Scrooge Potion from the flask into a small, curved bottle, grabbing a cork and sealing it with a pop before shooing her miraculous helper away immediately afterwards. After all, she had no choice but to make room for all the clamouring customers, suddenly desperate to purchase any manner of witch's brew they could get their recently-manicured, Instagram-obsessed hands on.
Turning away from the stall, Crowley cast her eyes towards the bookshop. The sign on the door was turned to 'closed' - soon, Aziraphale would be sitting down for his early evening pot of tea.
Crowley wasn't one for tea at the best of times, but today, she would be joining him.
When Crowley finally swaggered past the front windows and towards the door of the bookshop, Aziraphale was leaning back in his armchair by the bureau, reading a slim volume of Robert Frost poems. Faintly, Crowley registered that she was a few minutes later than usual in returning from her daily walk, and yet the thought passed her by as quickly as it had come; Aziraphale's unwavering dedication to timekeeping had relaxed since they had stopped meeting so formally and entered a committed partnership together.
The charming little bell on the door tinkled with his partner's arrival, and Aziraphale glanced up through the lenses of his spectacles, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile which didn't quite reach his eyes. "Good evening, dearest. Did you have a nice walk?"
Once she had sauntered over to Aziraphale, Crowley leaned over and pressed a light kiss to the angel's forehead, framed by a smattering of platinum curls. "Good, yeah. I, er... brought you something, actually. Have you put the tea on yet?"
As he spoke, Aziraphale set his book aside, and, much to Crowley's surprise, didn't bother to mark his place in it while he did so. "I actually rather fancied a cup of cocoa instead," he admitted, sliding his hands over the arms of his chair and lifting himself to his feet. "I shall have some tea before bed... But only if you have a mug too. I shan't be able to drink a whole pot without help so late in the evening."
"I'm sure I can force a few sips down," Crowley promised. She had resolved that she should drink some of the potion she had acquired, also. Maybe she would consume a smaller dosage than her angelic counterpart, but still - it couldn't do any harm. This was her first time ever 'doing Christmas', and she wanted to enjoy it with Aziraphale without her old biases and judgements lingering at the back of her mind. She would much rather have a cup of decaf from the fancy Hell-subsidised coffee machine she had brought with her from her old Mayfair flat before bed, but the scent and tang of the potion would be much better concealed in a herbal tea - preferably one made with berries, or other fruits, being that they bore such a strong flavour even after a single minute of brewing.
Christ , she exclaimed internally as she followed Aziraphale into the kitchen, her gaze floating towards the pert cheeks of his arse in his brown chinos. An earlier version of Crowley would have been horrified at the quiet domesticity of any thoughts she might have about tea-brewing. I'm boring now, aren't I?
Funny thing was, The New Crowley didn't seem to mind one bit.
It was all going off without a hitch.
Well, so far. Aziraphale had stated a preference for rooibos tea when their bedtime came, and Crowley had brewed it for three minutes longer than she knew she was supposed to, strengthening its flavour such that it was almost steeped. Without fear, she had dunked over half of the potion bottle's contents into Aziraphale's ceramic winged white mug, and emptied the rest into her coordinating matte black one. Then, she had poured the tea inside their respective receptacles, and found that it tasted and smelled similar to its usual flavour profile, but for a slightly elevated sense of vaguely Christmassy aroma; a hint of cinnamon, a touch of orange zest...
"I don't think I've tried this one before," Aziraphale commented after taking his second sip of the tea, his neck and back propped up against the headboard of their bed. His words twinkled with a distant cousin of sprouting suspicion: idle curiosity.
"I did tell you I got you something when I was out today, didn't I?" Crowley replied from her cross-legged position beside him, taking care to appear as good-natured as is natural for a former demon. She herself had finished her tea already, having downed it in three gulps when it was still piping hot - a residual habit from presentation days at her old boss's headquarters.
So far, she hadn't felt the wholesome heat of freshly-roasted chestnuts flare within her, or heard the jingling of sleigh bells ringing in her ears. Maybe this was a slow-acting potion, and a long night's sleep was needed in order for it to take effect.
"Silly me! Is this it, then?" At this question, Crowley hummed in confirmation. "In any case, it's lovely. We shall have to have Maggie over to try it on Boxing Day."
Crowley had supposed that, since tea always tasted a bit weird, Aziraphale did not consider the somewhat complex flavour of this brew to be any cause for concern. "Shit, I only bought a tiny little sachet of the stuff. Used it all for this pot." She paused, then. "Such a shame the Christmas market closes down tomorrow night."
"Well, we can go during the day tomorrow, can't we? I suppose we can take a break from our preparations, so long as it's only a brief one."
"Preparations?" Crowley had resigned herself to the fact that the two of them were keeping Christmas dinner lowkey that year - so lowkey, in fact, that it was liable to consist of none other than a Chinese takeaway. She had hesitated to arrange any of the presents she had obtained beneath the understated Christmas tree, too, for fear that Aziraphale would think she were disregarding his general humbuggery of the past few weeks.
"I've got a few ideas for the big day. Well, they've just come to me now." Aziraphale took another small sip from his mug, then set it aside and produced a notepad from the top drawer of his bedside table. "I can't believe I've been dragging my feet so much. We've got a lot of catching up to do."
Had the potion already worked, then? It must have done. Aziraphale hadn't even drunk half of his tea yet... but if that was all it took, then its work here was done.
As subtly as she could manage, Crowley flicked her wrist under the heated blanket she tended to drape over herself in bed at this time of year, and steam immediately ceased to rise from Aziraphale’s mug. "Would you look at that - it's so bloody freezing in here your tea's going cold already." Grabbing her own mug, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and made to stand up. "I'll just put these back in the kitchen."
Initially, Aziraphale gave no response, since he was scrawling furiously on his notepad with a slightly blunt pencil. When she had made her way round to his side of the king-sized bed, she leaned over to close her fingers around the body of his mug. Before she could do so, he cried out a rather dramatic "Wait!". Crowley watched, unblinking, as Aziraphale practically snatched the mug from her pale hand, tipped it above his head and gulped down the rest of the tea in under five seconds.
Crowley's amber eyes widened below the black silk sleep mask she had pushed onto her forehead. Aziraphale had just failed to suppress a hearty burp, and then flushed about as crimson as the baubles on the Covent Garden Christmas tree.
"Golly." Aziraphale blinked and cast his eyes down towards his notepad. "That wasn't very sexy, was it?"
Crowley snorted. "Shut up, angel." Sexy , though Aziraphale didn't know it, certainly wasn't the goal here. And besides, he had never needed any help in that department. "Be right back."
While Crowley strolled slowly towards the kitchen, she thought she made out Aziraphale singing in a low whisper. She couldn't believe her ears; he hadn't so much as hummed a Christmas song once this year, and now he was latching onto the most catchy and arguably annoying tune connected with the festive season.
"You'd better not shout, you'd better not cry, you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why..."
At the doorframe of their bedroom, Crowley turned her head to cast a glance in Aziraphale's direction. He was totally engrossed in annotating the list he had just committed to his notepad.
"Santa Claus is coming to town..."
When Crowley awoke the next morning, she was facing the outer wall of the bedroom. The floor-length gossamery curtains had been flung haphazardly open and the sun was pouring its golden rays through the panes of the sash window, unabashed and unseasonal.
How had she missed the crow of the cuckoo clock? Leaning her neck back and turning to the opposite wall, she discovered that the clock was barely visible; it had been bedecked with a generous swathe of tinsel.
Ah. That'll be it then.
Casting her gaze quickly about the rest of the room, Crowley perceived that the rest of the furniture - the wardrobe, the chest of drawers, and the standing mirror, along with Aziraphale's bedside table - also had tinsel draped over them, wrapped around them, or lining their top surfaces. How had Aziraphale's early-bird antics completely failed to awaken her? Aziraphale was many things, but he was not, by any means, light on his feet - especially when traversing th e perpetually creaky floorboards of the bookshop and its upstairs apartment.
She must have slept even more heavily than usual the previous night. Hopefully, she hadn't missed too much of the day.
Fortunately, snakes weren't prone to waking up with sleep in their eyes, or likely to suffer dramatic fits of yawning, so Crowley rolled upright, stretched her arms above her head and rose to her feet with immediate energy. She slithered off towards the bookshop's tiny upstairs bathroom, filled the sink with water and grabbed a needlessly expensive black face towel off a nearby hook on the wall. After splashing water over her face, she ran her fingers over her skin, to find that it felt far warmer than usual. Without even looking at them, she knew her cheeks were rosy with heat, which was an odd, though not unwelcome, sensation for a cold-blooded snake like her in December.
Perhaps it was a side effect of the potion. Either way, probably nothing to worry about.
After dragging the towel gently over her face with both hands, Crowley glanced up at her reflection in the mirror... and screamed.
Without even returning the face towel to its serpent-shaped hook, Crowley burst out of the bathroom and flew down the spiral staircase. What the fuck was happening to her? Had this been the work of the witch's brew, or some cruel trick played on her by an old enemy whose existence she had had the good fortune to forget about? Had sinister forces hidden in the Christmas market and unleashed their wrath on her without her knowledge?
Maybe Aziraphale would know. Maybe it would make total sense to him that she had woken up with the pointed ears, enlarged eyes, tinted cheeks and delicate hands of a Christmas elf.
"Aziraphale? You home?" Crowley called as she stepped cautiously forth onto the bookshop's main floor. All the panic and anxiety from her voice seemed to dissolve before she spoke, so her words emerged brightly and sweetly. She scowled silently at her own involuntary cheeriness.
"Through here, darling!" A voice replied, rumbling and resplendent. The voice still contained Aziraphale's distinct enunciation and animated, posh air, but it was deeper, more resonant. Its presence in the room almost felt formidable, and as Crowley discerned the source of the voice and drew towards the back room, she wondered whether its bearer had noticed her own change in tone and pitch. Could Aziraphale have been replaced by a trickster in the night, come to exact revenge on her for a wrong she had committed long ago?
A figure stood with his back to Crowley, behind the round table where they liked to drink a glass of wine together at the end of a long day. He was well over six feet tall, mouth-wateringly broad-shouldered, and crowned with tresses of shimmering white wavy hair. The half-moon arch of his back flowed as serenely as a stream of running water into the ample curves of his arse, which in turn led to a sizeable, sturdy pair of thighs and subtly muscular shins. He donned a bright red velvet suit, bordered with white faux-fur on the cuffs of his sleeves and trouser legs, along with the hem of his jacket.
Crowley swallowed so hard it must have been audible, skidding to a halt with all the gracelessness of a Looney Tune, and the figure turned round once he registered her presence. His front was equally as pleasing on the eye as the back of him; his sensible black loafers were shined to perfection, his trousers were tight enough to reveal a girthy length resting along his inner left thigh, and his stomach was round and proud and easy, nestled beneath a tight chest which could well have been sculpted by some sort of Ancient Greek artist.
After absorbing these facts at her leisure, Crowley finally dared to work her gaze up towards the figure's face, whose bottom half was surrounded by a thick, curly beard, recently combed and well-oiled. His lips were the most familiar lips in the world to Crowley, his eyes the duck-blue ponds Crowley had fallen in love with millennia ago, and his elegantly embowed nose eternally beautiful to behold.
Stepping backwards once, Crowley took stock of the figure, whose voice had responded to her seconds earlier, in its entirety.
It was one thing to wake up and realise that you had been transformed into a vixenish elf, and another thing entirely to acknowledge that your life partner was currently, for all intents and purposes, a sexy Santa.
"Oh, dear. Has someone woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?"
Crowley did something she almost never did, and blinked. She remained frozen to the spot while Aziraphale strode round the circular table and placed an arm around her. Right, so it's definitely him. I'd know a mile off if it was someone pretending to be him. But why is he like this, and why am I ...?
"I've been up since dawn, you know, just sorting the place out. Of course, I spared a moment to lay out some clothes for you, however." With his free hand, Aziraphale gestured across the room. "They're on the chair."
Turning her head slightly, Crowley inspected with her eyes the outfit she was apparently to wear on this day of all days, Christmas Eve. Aziraphale had miracled into existence a sheer emerald-green dress, about knee-length if Crowley could estimate correctly, along with a crimson set of translucent stockings and a faux-leather belt to match. He had also taken the trouble to lay out a pair of black kitten heels, and a pair of earrings fashioned into the shapes of snowflakes.
So, she was supposed to dress like a Christmas elf as well as just look like one. Well, that was utterly delightful.
It could, however, have been pure coincidence. Surely, Aziraphale hadn't known about all this. Was he even aware of the transformation he himself had undergone?
"I just think a seasonally-appropriate outfit for each of us might get us both into the Christmas Spirit a bit more, don't you?" Aziraphale boomed, his words sugary and coated with self-satisfaction.
"Did you have anything to do with... this?" Crowley asked, ignoring his previous statement and gesturing vaguely up and down each of their bodies one by one.
"Not at all, my dear, but I think it's rather delightful. You see, until last night, I'd spent the past few weeks being an awful Scrooge." Crowley winced at the final word of Aziraphale's sentence as it was spoken. "I've got a lot of gifting to do today, and yet more preparations to make tonight. These... changes can't exactly hinder our endeavours, can they?"
"A 'little more Christmassy'? I'm a fucking sexy elf, and you're- you're what Saint Nick would look like if he was on the cover of a pulp fiction novel!"
Aziraphale's eyebrows shot up. "I thought you liked what you saw when you laid eyes on me just now."
It was absurd, of course, but there was something about Aziraphale's current appearance that was ridiculously attractive. There was no point in denying it - Aziraphale knew her too well for that. Therefore, in response, Crowley playfully slapped his chest with the flat of her hand, settling it there afterwards. "I s'pose I won't look too bad either, once I'm in that outfit?"
While she definitely hadn't philosophically accepted this turn of events just yet - she wouldn't until she discovered their cause, which she suspected might be the contents of the flask which had caught her eye in the market the day previous - she reckoned it was alright to play along if it was making Aziraphale happy. After all, she had wanted nothing more than for him to enjoy Christmas, and it seemed as if her wish had finally come true.
Silently, Aziraphale allowed his eyes to rove over Crowley's neat, perky set of tits, along with the gentle rise of her stomach and then her slender, slightly wobbly legs. "I think you'll look absolutely scrumptious, dear." With that, he landed his palms on Crowley's shoulders and swivelled her around, urging her back in the direction of the spiral staircase. "Now, go upstairs and change, and we can begin the festivities."
Apprehensively, Crowley turned back to face Aziraphale as she walked. "'Course... and remind me what's first on the agenda?" On any other day, this question would be dripping with dread and disdain, but today, her words fluttered forth with a quick enthusiasm she hadn't consented to conveying.
"Why, handing out presents, of course. To every business owner on Whickber Street."
Trudging up the staircase, Crowley narrowly suppressed a groan. Shit. She had been foolish to think that she could attempt to give Aziraphale the spirit of generosity without inextricably involving herself in the matter while doing so.
Once she reached the landing, Crowley glanced out of the nearest window to find that Anathema was still running her friend's stall on her behalf. Meanwhile, the market as a whole was busier than ever.
Well, Merry fucking Christmas.