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“Crowley?”
“Yeah?”
“Remind me — who is that for, again?”
Crowley looks down at the gift he’s currently wrapping. It’s a pocket knife — handle engraved with a snake curling around it, blade engraved with flames. “Pepper.”
“You’re not giving an eleven-year-old girl a pocket knife,” Aziraphale says, eyes wide.
“Whyever not?”
“Well —”
“She did alright with your sword,” Crowley points out. “And she wants one. Well, a better one. The one she has right now is terrible — one of those Swiss knives with a whole bunch of tools. Heavy, barely fits in her pocket. She never uses the tools, and the blade’s rusted where it attaches to the handle, and it’s chipped where it isn’t outright dull, because it wasn’t a good quality blade to start with.”
Aziraphale blinks, looking startled. “But —”
“This one, however,” Crowley continues, raising his eyebrows and offering it to Aziraphale for inspection, “is excellent quality. It’s light, it’s sturdy, it’s still small enough that she can carry it everywhere —”
“And you’ve thoroughly miracled it so she won’t hurt herself, or anyone else, with it,” Aziraphale says, running a finger over the length of it.
Crowley smiles. “You’re welcome to add your own, but I don’t think I’ve missed any.”
“You haven’t.” But Aziraphale takes the knife and frowns in concentration; and Crowley can feel a small series of angelic miracles sinking into it, reinforcing the protections he’s already laid.
“She’ll be fine, angel,” Crowley says, gently. “She’s a bright girl. Very responsible. Bit bloodthirsty, but then all children are.”
Aziraphale sighs, handing the knife back. “I just worry, you know? Not about Adam and his friends, not just. The adults, too. Our influence on their lives. The fact that they still remember us. I thought they would forget, after the reset. Everyone else certainly did.”
“Yeah, I know. I thought that too. Guess they were too close, too tied up in all of it. I’m not going to pretend I understand it, so —” Crowley shrugs. “Ineffable. They seem to be doing fine. All we can do is keep an eye out, and do our best.”
“Quite right.”
They return to wrapping gifts in silence, for a while; and then Crowley speaks up again. “You know, this reminds me — I always meant to ask, but never quite had the chance — how the heaven did I end up getting a commendation for wrapping paper? I know I had absolutely nothing to do with that.”
“Ah.” Aziraphale laughs a little. “That’s a bit of a long story.”
Crowley brandishes a roll of wrapping paper at him, then waves it around, indicating the numerous gifts they have yet to wrap. “Got nothing but time, don’t we? Come on.”
“Right. Well, you were asleep back then, you wouldn’t remember — hang on, I think I have them still, somewhere.” Aziraphale stands, and disappears behind a bookshelf. There are a few loud thuds, a muffled “oh, dear,” and a smothered sneeze; and then Aziraphale reemerges, carrying a battered cardboard box, which he sets on the table in front of Crowley.
Crowley removes the lid, finds the box full of cards, and pulls one out at random.
It has an artfully-done drawing of four frogs printed on the front. The frogs are all wearing boots, standing on their back legs, and holding red umbrellas, and “Every good wish for your Christmas” is printed above them.
“What the fuck,” Crowley says.
“That one’s from 1886, if I remember right,” Aziraphale says, a fond, nostalgic look on his face. “We used to exchange Christmas cards each year, at the gentlemen’s club I was a member of.”
“Right,” Crowley says, not seeing at all what frogs might have to do with Christmas, or what Christmas cards with frogs on them might have to do with the rest of it.
“And gifts, of course, wrapped in the most beautifully patterned papers and bags you can imagine. And I thought — well. It is such great fun to unwrap a gift, you know? To have the joy of the surprise as well as the joy of the gift. Back then, it was only the well-to-do who could afford such wrapping paper, of course. It was expensive. And I thought, wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone could have the same experience?”
“Ah,” Crowley says, beginning to see.
“At first, it was plain tissue paper, in bright colours. I thought that was gay enough —”
Crowley can’t help but snort out a laugh.
“— Crowley, really, you know what I meant.” Aziraphale gives him a reproachful look.
“Alright, alright, sorry. Carry on.”
“Then, a few years later, Gabriel dropped by the bookshop to take a report, and it was Christmas time, and he had rather a lot to say about it all.”
“Did he,” Crowley says, eyebrows raised.
“Quite. He was rather into the concept of ‘virtue in moderation’, in those days. It was perfectly fine for him to wear his fancy suits, but humans, he was firmly convinced, ought not to celebrate festivities by being wasteful. There ought to be no decorations, no cards, only gifts that would be actually useful, and absolutely no gift wrapping. I agreed with him, of course, and said I’d do my best to steer humans in the right direction.” Aziraphale smiles — that innocent smile of his that Crowley knows perfectly well means everything but actual innocence.
“Of course. And so…”
“And so, the following year, some fellows in America who ran a stationery shop sold so much tissue paper for wrapping gifts they ran out of it. They had this patterned paper they’d originally intended to make envelope liners out of, and they had the idea to sell it for gift wrapping, instead. Must’ve been due to demonic inspiration, of course, especially given how popular it turned out to be. Alas, I was stationed in London. By the time I realised what had happened, several years later, the use of it was so widespread I couldn’t possibly thwart it. Gabriel was quite put out.”
Crowley bursts out laughing. “Oh, you complete and utter bastard. And you actually wrote a report on that and sent it to Hell in my name?”
“I might have.” Aziraphale’s eyes gleam with mischief. “It described the lengths people would go to in order to acquire the fanciest, most popular wrapping paper. How wrath-inducing it is when the sheet is just a little too small to wrap fully around the gift, or when it rips over a sharp corner. Or when you have to wrap an oddly-shaped item. Or when you don’t buy enough paper and have to go back to the shop. And, of course, it also mentioned that you knew for a fact it was going to run completely counter to Heaven’s wishes.”
“And they call me wicked,” Crowley says, with great admiration. “Oh, I love you.”
“Well.” Aziraphale’s smile is bright as he finishes tying a ribbon around a wrapped gift and adjusts the bow just so. “I learned from the best.”