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Two weeks before Christmas
Aziraphale was disillusioned with Christmas. This would not be a problem per se if not for one thing: Aziraphale was the Santa.
Not Santa Claus, of course; Mr. Claus had retired from the post of Santa over a century ago. Aziraphale was the current Santa, and had been Santa for a good two decades now. His post came with a few perks, the lack of aging among them, so Aziraphale’s appearance had not changed much over the years: his short beard soft and fluffy as ever, his hair curly and white, the crow’s feet around his eyes wrought by smiles, not old age.
The changes that did happen were invisible, or, rather, hard to notice for a stranger. A friend, or, say, an old colleague would be able to tell something was amiss: Aziraphale laughed less and sighed more, smiles were replaced with frowns, and he made the overall impression of someone questioning his whole life. This impression would be correct: he was questioning Christmas, and for the past decades Christmas had been his whole life.
“Just look at the Book of Wishes, Murielf!” Aziraphale complained to his elf assistant, uncharacteristically dour. “All children wish for are presents, one more expensive than the other. I don’t know what half of the toys are here. As if Christmas letters were a shopping list! Where is the spirit of Christmas? The joy and wonder? The fantastical adventures with their friends?”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Murielf offered gamely. “But I’m only a junior elf, and the children’s letters are handled by the senior elves. You could ask them?”
Aziraphale shook his head mutely; he really would rather not. The senior elves, Gabrielf, Michaelf, Urielf, and Sandelfon, were an unpleasant bunch. North Pole elves were older than the current Santa, having sprung into existence with the first Santa two centuries ago, and the more senior of them held his relative youth and inexperience against him. Sometimes Aziraphale wondered how creatures so disapproving of all things festive or merry could be in charge of the jolliest holiday of all. Why, Gabrielf had even banned Christmas desserts from the North Pole, claiming that the inhabitants of the area should not sully their bodies with gross matter! Aziraphale kept those thoughts to himself, though, and tried to smuggle enough cookies left out for him on Christmas night back to last him the rest of the year.
“I know!” Murielf exclaimed, excited about her new idea. “You could go to the human world! This way you can learn how they feel about Christmas directly.”
Aziraphale perked up. This was quite clever, actually. He hadn’t been to the human world outside of Christmas nights since he started his job as the Santa, and he had so many presents to deliver on that one night, he never had time for anything else.
“But you’ll need to hurry!” she added quickly. “Christmas is just around the corner, and we can’t do it without you!”
“That’s quite alright, my dear,” Aziraphale said, already anticipating all the things he wanted to do. “I’m sure I can learn plenty even in one day.”
“And you’ll need to go under cover,” Murielf continued. “The humans cannot know that Santa walks among them!”
Aziraphale grinned. “I have just the disguise in mind…”
Aziraphale walked the morning London streets wearing an elf outfit in yellow and green. He thought it made perfect sense back home when he was getting ready to leave: North Pole had lots of elves but only one Santa, and nobody would look twice at an elf there. Here, though, he hadn’t seen anybody dressed as an elf yet, but he had seen more than one person dressed as Santa, and even more in Santa hats. Maybe wearing his normal clothes would’ve been a better camouflage…
Aziraphale was passing a huge seven-storey toy store when something caught his eye. A poster at the entrance advertised Santa’s Grotto experience starting in less than an hour, with a tagline “Santa Claus is comin' to town!” splashed across the image. He frowned, puzzled; how did humans know he would be here when he had only decided to go the previous day? Curious, he pushed the doors open—the shop was not open to the public yet, but getting into locked up places was something of his specialty—and stepped inside.
Aziraphale walked the floors, observing the abundance of toys around him with professional curiosity. The whole ground floor was full of soft toys, from teddy bears to plush snakes hanging off a rack like stockings off a fireplace mantel. He skipped the first floor with barely a glance; Santa didn’t usually deal with toys for babies too young to appreciate the concept of Santa, let alone write a letter to him. The second floor, though, with its dolls, doll houses, and a myriad of accessories for both, was familiar grounds again.
Finally, Aziraphale reached the third floor, with its promise of Santa's Grotto among a hoard of puzzles, board games, and science kits. The entire toy shop was decorated for Christmas, but here the avalanche of decor was tipping past “lavish” and right into “overwhelming”, even for Santa's trained eye. The middle of the floor was occupied by a tall Christmas tree, its lights off for the moment, and an elf on a stepladder was placing the last few ornaments on the branches.
Not an elf, of course, Santa corrected himself hastily; a human man in an elf costume. An attractive man, he couldn’t help but notice as he drifted around the tree involuntarily, his attention fixed on the man. A very attractive man, Aziraphale added to the mental list; the short tunic and tight leggings did little to hide his lean form, and the stepladder brought his long legs, narrow waist, and the shapely parts in between to eye level.
“Enjoying the view?” the man asked flatly, turning to give Santa a withering look. His short hair was the vibrant shade of auburn that by all rights should clash horribly with the red and green of the costume, but somehow it worked. Aziraphale wondered briefly what the man would look wearing a smile instead of a scowl etched into his features, but even he was socially adept enough to keep that thought to himself.
“Oh, just thinking,” he cast around for something nice to offer. “You are very good at decorating that tree!”
This seemed to be the exact wrong thing to say. The man narrowed his eyes, his scowl deepening.
“Why are you messing with me?” he demanded. “Did Bee put you up to this?”
“I’m not messing with you,” Aziraphale shrugged helplessly. “It's just nice to meet another human who shares my affinity for Christmas.”
“Please. I’m just trying to get through the hell that is the holiday season here.” The man put up the last ornament with more force than necessary.
“Get through? Hell? Christmas is the greatest day in the whole wide world!” Aziraphale rushed to defend the holiday habitually, momentarily forgetting the doubts that brought him to the human world in the first place.
“Please stop talking to me.” The man rolled his eyes and started to descend. He missed a step, though, and faltered, tumbling off the ladder and right into Aziraphale’s arms. Santa might’ve used a touch of his magic to catch him in time—one had to move very fast to visit so many homes in a single night, after all—but the man didn’t notice anything suspicious. He blinked at Aziraphale, confused by the unplanned manner of his rapid descent, and Santa marveled at the deep honey colour of the man’s eyes as he set him down carefully with a small apologetic smile.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. Sorry to break up an intimate moment, but Crowley, your shift at the Grotto starts in a minute. The kids are already lining up to meet Santa.” The appearance of a no-nonsense woman with dark hair in a sleek bob shattered the moment between the two. The man stepped away from Aziraphale, shook his head, as if clearing his mind, and muttered “Yeah, um… I guess I’ll see you around…” He trailed off, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
“Aziraphale,” Santa supplied, relishing the novelty of having to introduce himself.
“Crowley,” the man offered in return, waved awkwardly, and headed off. The woman, having observed the exchange with a glower not unlike Crowley’s, sized Santa up.
“Aziraphale… Don’t remember that name. You new? Temping at the Grotto?”
“If that is where the children are gathered to meet Santa, then this is where I shall make my way posthaste, my dear lady,” Aziraphale replied courteously. He was in an excellent mood.
Aziraphale’s good mood didn’t last. Minutes after meeting Crowley, he was glaring at the white-bearded man in a fur-trimmed red coat seated on a gaudy throne, a boy in his lap. The “Santa” the kids were meeting was a fraud, an impostor, a human masquerading as Santa Claus while the real Santa was standing bare metres away! Crowley was standing next to the throne, a basket of candy canes in his hand, looking bored with the proceedings already.
“So, what’s your name, son?” the impostor was asking the boy.
“Warlock Dowling,” the boy replied, looking somewhat sceptical.
“And what do you want for Christmas?”
“Warlock, don’t tell him what you want!” Aziraphale burst out. The Grotto fell into stunned silence. Feeling all eyes on him, he had no choice but to push on. “He’s a liar! A real Santa would know what you wanted without having to ask! Did you write a letter to Santa this year?”
Warlock nodded slowly.
“Who the heck are you?” the fake Santa growled. Aziraphale ignored him and fished out the Book of Wishes from his satchel. Prompted by his magic, it opened on just the right page.
“LEGO Marvel Infinity Gauntlet, and FanttikRide C9 Pro, and Helidirect System X Community SAB IlGoblin PRO Triami Kit, and Hyperx Cloud Alpha S…” Aziraphale’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher on his forehead as he read—he had no idea what any of these items were, and the list went on and on—but so did Warlock’s as the boy nodded along, brightening fractionally as each new item was called out. He could see Crowley out of the corner of his eye; the man was unhealthily invested in the confrontation, looking amused for the first time since Aziraphale met him.
“You’re a fake,” Aziraphale stared down the pretend Santa confidently, closing the Book and hiding it again. “You sit on a throne of lies! You…” He cast about for a good insult. “You smell like wet reindeer!” And, feeling bold, he bent down and grabbed the impostor’s beard, ripping it clean off. Even his beard was fake!
One spectacular brawl later, Aziraphale found himself ejected from the toy store. He thought it was quite rude; they should’ve been grateful to him for exposing the faux Santa, even if the subsequent clash had destroyed a large portion of Santa’s Grotto! In fact, only the bit of Santa’s magic that always kept him from being mistaken for a burglar had prevented the store management from calling the police. Just as well; he didn’t really want to spend the rest of his day off in jail.
Aziraphale was standing on the sidewalk, contemplating his next steps, when somebody cleared their throat next to him.
“That was the most fun I’ve had at this job in forever,” Crowley remarked cheerfully. He had changed out of his elf outfit into street clothes: an all-black ensemble of tight jeans, a thick turtleneck, and a long overcoat. Dark glasses shielded his honey eyes from the weak light of December morning but did nothing to disguise his impish glee.
“Well, somebody had to expose the impostor,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Could as well be me. I did not mean for it to get quite so… out of hand. Shouldn’t you be back there?” He asked, gesturing in the general direction of the store and the huge mess they left behind. Crowley giggled and shook his head.
“Injured in the line of duty, off work for the rest of the day.” He lifted a hand and wiggled his fingers (long and elegantly shaped, Aziraphale’s mind noted unhelpfully) to demonstrate a Bandaid on one of them. Aziraphale gasped.
“Oh no, have I injured you inadvertently? You have my most sincere apologies.”
“Just a bite,” Crowley waved his concern away. “The boy Warlock was not happy that I kept him from joining the fray. I don’t think he’s rabid, not really, but Maggie—that’s our first aid gal, she’s alright—sent me home for the day anyway.”
“Still, it is my fault the fray even happened,” Aziraphale said firmly and took Crowley’s hand in both of his. He brought the injured finger to his lips and blew softly on it, looking the man in the eye—or at least in the general direction of his eyes behind the sunglasses—in the process. When he was done, Crowley snatched his hand back and tore off the Bandaid to reveal unblemished skin, just a spot of red serving as a reminder of the healed damage.
“You…” Crowley inspected his fingers in disbelief for a few moments, then raised his eyes at Aziraphale. He looked like a man who had connected the dots, expecting a rude picture, and discovered they formed a Mona Lisa instead. “You’re the real thing, aren’t you? The actual honest-to-Someone Santa Claus?”
“Santa Aziraphale, technically,” Aziraphale corrected. “Santa is the title, but we keep the first name we had when we were, ah, recruited.”
“And you just know what every kid wants for Christmas?”
“Well, it’s all written down in the Book of Wishes. Allow me to demonstrate!” Aziraphale’s eyes lit up with anticipation as his gaze fell upon two girls passing by. “Young ladies! May I inquire whether you wrote a letter to Santa this year? And if that is the case, how did you sign it?”
“It’s alright,” Crowley hurried to add. “We’re with the marketing department, gearing up for Christmas promotion.”
The older girl looked at them shrewdly, clearly doubtful, but the younger girl nearly bounced with excitement. “I’m Jemimah Jobs!” she offered. “And we all wrote a letter to Santa in school!”
Aziraphale made a show of fetching the Book of Wishes from the satchel and opening it.
“And you’ve written that you wanted… a gecko!”
“Yes!” Jemimah exclaimed, eyes huge with surprise. “Can I have a blue one?”
“You’ll have to ask your parents about getting a real gecko,” Aziraphale advised solemnly. “But in the meantime…” He fished a light-blue plush gecko out of his bag and presented it to the girl with a flourish, then chuckled fondly as she squealed and grabbed the toy, hugging it to her chest.
“You know, I’ve never seen a reindeer,” Crowley said after a pause as they watched the girls walk away. “Not close enough to know what they smell like.”
“Oh, well, let me tempt you!” Aziraphale perked up. “Surely there must be a place in the city where we can see a reindeer.”
Crowley grinned, sharp and victorious, and Aziraphale realised that it was he who had been tempted. He didn’t mind in the slightest.
It was a nice day. Aziraphale suspected all days would be nice if he spent them in Crowley’s company, even doing something the man professed to loathe, like decorating the store or cleaning up. It didn’t hurt, of course, that they spent the day actually having fun.
Crowley indeed found a holiday market in one of the boroughs that promised a reindeer encounter, so they decided to head in that general direction. However, the market was scheduled for later in the afternoon. They had time to spare, idly wandering the streets of London taking in the sights.
There was the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree, a magnificent Norway spruce bigger than the tree at the North Pole, though not as lavishly decorated. There were ice sculptures at Hyde Park, and an ice skating rink that neither of them was willing to brave but both enjoyed watching, and holiday lights everywhere.
There were plenty of baked goods for sale as well. Aziraphale, still traumatised by Gabrielf’s dessert ban, didn’t deny himself the pleasure of sampling every pastry that caught his eye, from traditional cinnamon rolls and mince pies to Czech chimney cakes and wheelcakes stuffed with custard and candied orange. Crowley didn’t seem interested; he tried a piece of pastry now and then when Aziraphale insisted, but otherwise was content to watch him enjoy the treats. A faint blush on the man’s cheeks was probably due to the chill in the air, Aziraphale observed, and led them on a hunt for hot cocoa. Here Aziraphale finally discovered Crowley’s sweet tooth; the man denied it vehemently at first, but ultimately couldn’t resist the allure of the marshmallow snowflakes Aziraphale produced from his seemingly bottomless satchel to add to their drinks.
The reindeer at the holiday market, once they reached their destination, were just as charming as the ones that pulled Aziraphale’s sleigh, though not quite as lively. Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to watch as Crowley petted the animals and fed them raisins provided by their handlers, giggling unselfconsciously at the sensation of the soft velvet snouts nosing in his palms looking for more.
“That was brilliant. What now?” Crowley asked after they left the reindeer enclosure and got a glass of mulled wine each. Aziraphale had been pondering the same question for some time now. Technically they’ve accomplished the stated purpose of their outing, but he hated to bring it up and possibly bring to an end what felt like a lovely date.
Thankfully, just then a small commotion broke out nearby. An older woman with hair of the orange tint that could only come from a box was arguing with someone on the phone loudly enough for half of the market to hear.
“What do you mean 'our Santa has a witchfinding emergency'? Where am I supposed to find another Santa on such short notice? The kids will be waiting! Yes, I know their parents are not paying through the nose for the experience like those at the fancy stores! Does it mean these kids don’t matter?”
Aziraphale exchanged glances with Crowley.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked tentatively. The man smiled—a proper warm smile, not his usual smirk.
“Yep. Sounds like we have an appointment for the next few hours.”
It took Tracy, the orange-haired woman in charge of the market, about thirty seconds to accept their offer of help. Fetching a full Santa outfit from his bag and changing into it kept Aziraphale busy slightly longer, but only just. And now, he was seated on a log in the middle of a rustic Santa’s workshop, holding the Book of Wishes ready, waiting for the kids to arrive. Crowley was at his side, still in his all-black clothes, an elf’s hat the only concession to his role of a Santa’s helper. Oh, Aziraphale hoped his disillusion with Christmas would not prevent him from playing his role convincingly!
The first few kids were easy. They told Aziraphale their names, he looked them up in the Book and told them what they had wished for (to their delight, always correctly), and handed them a small gift from his bag. He was just starting to relax when a group of four kids broke the pattern. No, they didn’t just break it; they threw the pieces on the ground, stomped on them until they were dust, and set the remains on fire for good measure.
The girl went first.
“Pepper,” she said curtly and looked at Aziraphale expectantly. There was nobody called Pepper in the Book, and he told her as much. She rolled her eyes so hard, he wondered for a moment whether she was a relative of Crowley. “Pippin Galadriel Moonchild,” she amended grumpily (a close relative; a niece possibly?) There was nobody under that name in the Book either.
“Did you write a letter to Santa this year? What did you ask for?” Aziraphale asked cautiously, starting to sweat. Had he overused his magic today? Had it been strained enough by his thinning belief in Christmas that a few extra trinkets used it up completely? If the Book of Wishes broke… No, that didn’t bear thinking about!
“Yes,” she grumbled. “I asked for peace. World peace. Oh, and the end to everyday sexism.”
Aziraphale glanced up at Crowley in panic; the man was just as astonished as Santa himself. “I’ve never heard a wish like that in the store,” he whispered in Aziraphale’s ear.
“Well, ah, this is a remarkable wish,” Aziraphale said weakly, rummaging in his bag with increasing desperation. “It might be slightly outside Santa’s purview… But,” he rallied as the bag shoved something into his hand, “I hope you’ll enjoy this instead!”
Pepper accepted her present—a voucher for a year’s worth of martial arts lessons—happily and ran back to her group to show it off. Aziraphale heaved a breath of relief, writing off the Book’s malfunction as a glitch… Only for it to repeat itself with the next kid, and the next one, and the one after them.
Jeremy Wensleydale was not in the Book either; he had asked Santa to end world hunger, but seemed quietly satisfied with a year of cooking lessons. Brian had wished for a clean world; the bag struggled with that a bit but produced an outdoor ecologist science lab kit that rendered the boy speechless. Finally, Adam Young had asked for humanity to find a way to defeat death. The bag, in something akin to a fit of pique, offered him a voucher for first aid classes and a book titled Scythe. Aziraphale braced himself for a tantrum, but Adam only smiled at him, the understanding expression too old for his face.
“It’s alright, Mr. Santa,” he said seriously. “We know you can’t just hand us everything we wish for. We’re ready to work for it ourselves. It wouldn’t be any fun otherwise.” He looked at the book and grinned. “Do you know if this one has robots in it?”
“You haven’t said a word since the last kid had left. Penny for your thoughts?” Crowley asked half-teasingly after they finished their shift at Santa’s workshop, received warm hugs and paper cups of hot chocolate from Tracy, and left the market.
Aziraphale hesitated for a moment—the subject he was about to broach felt irreverent, practically a sacrilege—but then Crowley, with his quick wit and lack of intrinsic reverence towards Christmas, was a perfect sounding board for it, wasn’t he?
“I suspect that the Book of Wishes has been tampered with.”
Crowley said nothing, just raised an eyebrow, prompting Aziraphale to continue.
“It is supposed to list all letters we get at the North Pole, from everybody, no matter what they’re asking for. Even the wishes we can’t grant! And here we have four kids whose names are just… not there. And all four of them wished for something… not simply expensive, like that boy Warlock, or prohibited, like a gecko for Jemimah, but immaterial. Abstract. Impossible!”
“So you reckon somebody’s been what, culling the letters? Throwing away the ones that ask for, I dunno, for the kid’s parents to get back together, or to quit drinking, or to find a job again? Only keeping the letters with simple wishes?”
Aziraphale nodded reluctantly. He remembered getting those kinds of letters back when he just started his tenure as Santa; he had felt heartbroken over each of them. But over the years their deluge first dried out to a trickle and then just stopped.
“Makes sense.” Crowley shrugged. “When I temped at tech support, nobody wanted to get assigned complicated tickets, lest they look bad at their job. Who’s in charge of kids’ letters? Do you have a little postal office right there at the North Pole?”
“The elves sort and transcribe them,” Aziraphale replied automatically and then brightened up. “The elves! Of course! Gabrielf is always going on and on about objectives and key results. Michaelf is a bit of a stickler for success rates. I need to go back immediately and investigate… Oh, but I would need proof to confront them!”
Crowley hummed, thinking. “Did you just say the Book is supposed to include all letters, not just the kids’ ones?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale confirmed, puzzled. “It’s just that the adults don’t usually write letters to Santa. Why?”
“I know exactly how to get you your proof.” Crowley’s rakish wink made Aziraphale’s heart skip a beat. Only because he was looking forward to exposing the conspiracy, of course!
Christmas Eve
Crowley paced his living room. It was past midnight, but sleep was the furthest thing from his mind. He would stay up all night, if he had to, just for a chance to see Aziraphale again.
He didn’t know what had transpired at the North Pole in the past weeks. How did the confrontation with the elves go? Did Santa receive his letter in the end? Crowley had felt a bit silly going shopping for fancy stationery just for it, but it was not like he could’ve just shot off an email to [email protected], was it? And even if Aziraphale had not only received the letter but read it, was he even interested in seeing Crowley again? Santa was in such a rush to get back to his domain that day, they had not made any plans beyond the conspiracy-related ones…
Well, Crowley had done everything he could think of to make his home inviting for Santa. He bought several kinds of cookies and a few other pastries, just in case, and arranged them prettily on his best plates. He drew the line at milk, but he had a choice of tea, cocoa, and wine on offer. He even borrowed a sparkly gift stocking from work to hang it over the stove—the closest thing to a mantelpiece in his flat. Now, Crowley would just have to wait and see, no matter how maddening the uncertainty was…
He didn’t have to wait long, though. On his next loop of the room there was a slight thud of something heavy landing on the floor, and as Crowley whirled back to face the kitchen, Aziraphale was standing there, his Santa clothes slightly disheveled.
“Traveling through the kitchen hood never feels quite right. Nothing beats a good old chimney,” he muttered apologetically, straightening his coat and running his hand through his unruly curls with little effect. Then his eyes fell on the plates on the kitchen table. “Oh, nibbles!”
“You’re here,” Crowley breathed out, not daring to believe his eyes. “You came!”
“Of course I did, my dear,” Aziraphale beamed. “I would not leave you in the dark regarding the outcomes of our investigation, would I?”
Crowley’s heart clenched in disappointment. Learning the fate of the missing letters had been far from his main reason for longing to see Aziraphale again, but he would take it.
“And?” he prompted, pushing the sadness to the furthest corner of his mind. “What did you find out?”
The shine of Aziraphale’s eyes dimmed a bit. “It was as I suspected,” he admitted. “Those… bad elves were indeed hiding the unsuitable letters, only filing the ones with simple material wishes. It was quite a conversation, I say! And it will take a while to bring everything back to order.” He sighed, weary of the work done and more yet to come.
“And, um, did you read my letter too?” Crowley asked tentatively after a pause.
“I did!” Aziraphale lightened up. “It was very clever of you to say that you don’t want any presents, I thought, it definitely ticked all Gabrielf’s boxes. Though I was not quite certain what to make of All I want for Christmas is you…” He gave Crowley a coy look that suggested that he was, in fact, quite certain what exactly to make of it.
Crowley laughed, delighted that Santa seemed to be amenable to his epistolary flirting and also just a bit of a bastard. The tension drained out of him, leaving behind a bubbly sort of lightness.
“Take it as said? Well, as written,” he suggested jokingly, then took on a more serious tone. “We haven’t known each other a long time, less than a day, actually. But I would like to spend, uh, more time together, just the two of us, to get to know you better. See if we could be… an us?”
Aziraphale’s whole face lit up but then fell.
“I would love nothing more, my dear,” he rushed to promise. “But I’m afraid I’m going to be too busy at the North Pole for the next few years—training the junior elves I promote to replace the conspirators and filling their roles in turn, seeing if we can do anything for the kids whose letters have been ignored—to spend any significant amount of time in the human world.”
“Who said anything about the human world?” Crowley winked, relieved not to be dismissed outright. “There’s nothing holding me in London, and I’m sure you could use an experienced retail employee with an extremely relevant background while setting things right in your operation.” Aziraphale snorted at his faux-businesslike tone, and Crowley played his ace. “I’ll even wear the elf costume if I have to.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, my dear,” Aziraphale reassured him with a sparkle in his eye. “They say you’re supposed to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, after all. And the custom is for Mrs. Claus to wear Santa reds and whites—or for Mr. Aziraphale in our case, I suppose!”
“Oi, Aziraphale. Is there any mistletoe at the North Pole, or do I need to bring my own?”