“Angel, I’m not wearing this.”
Crowley’s eyes narrowed. He knew exactly when his husband was teasing him, knew when those deceptively innocent blue eyes were merely fronts for the endless bastardy beyond. He could sense it. “Angel. I am a demon. The Tempter of Humanity, the bringer of Original Sin--”
“Yes, and you’re very frightening,” Aziraphale interrupted, barely reigning in his amusement now.
“--I’m a demon who can turn into a great big bloody snake,” Crowley continued, refusing to be led astray from the point he was trying to make. “I am not wearing a snake costume like a--like a bloody--”
“Human?” Aziraphale suggested.
“Child,” Crowley growled.
Aziraphale let out a deep sigh and returned the cup of tea he’d been sipping from to its saucer, the delicate little clink of porcelain loud in the quiet room. Crowley felt suddenly as though he were standing on ice, sensed that some unseen shift in the conversation that had left him on unsteady ground indeed.
“It was exceedingly kind of Mrs Young to make it for you, you know,” Aziraphale said, mildly. “And Adam was quite excited about seeing you in it. Thought it’d be ‘wicked,’ I believe his exact word was.”
Crowley shifted, uncomfortable. “That’s--I mean, it was good of her, I s’pose, but--”
“And it really was quite lovely for the Youngs to invite us to Tadfield for Halloween this year. Anathema told me they were quite put out we couldn’t make it ‘round this past Christmas.”
“Well, I mean...we were busy.” But he could feel the ground crumbling away beneath his feet.
One eyebrow, raised delicately. “We were busy?”
“...I was busy,” Crowley muttered, looking down.
Aziraphale kept up his meaningful look for a few excruciating seconds. Then he sighed again, placing the tea and its saucer on a spindly little table beside his favourite armchair and stepping delicately around piles of books to where Crowley stood pouting.
“It’s one evening, my dear.” He said, reaching up to fiddle idly with the fit of Crowley’s shirt, fixing buttons and smoothing wrinkles that were always going to come apart again the moment his fingers moved on. “The antichrist, his family, all his little friends. Anathema and Newt, of course, and perhaps Tracy and Shadwell. No-one for whom your demonly dignity need be riled up.”
“’S the principle of the thing,” Crowley grumbled, but only a little. He knew when to admit he’d been defeated, and he knew it had all been over the minute Aziraphale had asked him to wear the bloody thing. “How’m I s’posed to wear it, anyway? There’s no leg holes or anything.”
Aziraphale’s smile was beatific. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure something out, dear.” He dropped a kiss onto Crowley’s bony cheek, then left him to pout on his own for a while. “You always do.”
Crowley muttered a few choice words under his breath, but obediently looked down at the costume currently encasing the lower half of his body in a pitiful mockery of the form he could actually achieve. He raised one of his hands, bringing his fingers together.
He had some adjustments to make.
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Art by @starkillersbae, snippet by Euterpein
