Keepsake (Rated PG)
Aziraphale pats his right pants pocket quite often.
It’s a tick that’s easy to overlook considering the other ways he fidgets, worrying his hands and fingers when he doesn’t have a book or a fork in them. Besides, it’s not all that uncommon. Lots of people do it. Looking for keys, hunting down the cell phone … have I got my spectacles? Oh, yes! Have them right here!
Crowley has a similar habit of constantly keeping his hands shoved in his pockets, which is easy to overlook as well since everyone does at one point in time. It’s when Crowley wears a pair of pants so tight that keeping his fingers in his pockets looks excruciating that Aziraphale takes notice. But even then, it’s not that odd. Crowley is odd. Eccentric might be a more accurate term – a side-effect of age and familiarity, Aziraphale supposes. But his forcing his fingers into pockets no bigger than a matchbox?
Not so much.
Crowley definitely doesn’t think too hard on it when Aziraphale pats his pocket. He’s been doing it since the beginning, even before the invention of pants, when pockets were simply pouches tied about the waist or pinned to the underside of clothes. Aziraphale is also odd but in different ways. It’s not an insult. Simply a state of being. So when Crowley walks into Aziraphale’s shop and finds the angel patting his pockets and searching the floor, he thinks odd, but no more than usual.
“Whatcha doin’?” he asks, leaning against a post with his arms crossed – his go-to observational pose.
“Oh, uh, nothing.” Aziraphale glances up nervously and starts searching harder, if that’s a thing to be noted. “Nothing at all.”
“Really? ‘Cuz it seems to me like you’re looking for something.”
“I … uh … yes. I’m looking for something …” Aziraphale bends lower, examining the floor boards inch by inch and faster “… but it’s not important. Definitely nothing for you to concern yourself with. Why don’t you help yourself to a bottle of Merlot and I’ll be right with you?”
“Maybe I can help you find it.” Crowley affects a similar stance and begins searching even though he hasn’t a clue what he’s meant to look for.
“No!” Aziraphale barks suddenly. “No, I … I’ll come across it, I’m sure …” His voice dips with disappointment at the prospect of giving up the search now in favor of later “… you know … given time and …” His eyes, scanning the wood planks beneath his feet, widen on a spot behind Crowley – right beside his left heel (if Crowley is gauging the angel’s gaze correctly). He spins around on the wake of Aziraphale pleading, “No! Don’t!” and looks behind him.
Sitting on the floor, curled gently upward, he finds a single black feather.
A familiar feather.
Crowley knows this feather. He feels it in his gut … and in his shoulder.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” he asks, bending over and snatching it before Aziraphale can make it across the room.
“No,” Aziraphale lies. “But all the same, why don’t you give it here …”
Crowley takes a step back, holding the feather up out of Aziraphale’s reach. “What, pray tell, is this?”
“Corvus corax,” Aziraphale says without missing a beat. “Otherwise known as the common raven. I have one stuffed that I just put into storage. It must have shed …” He reaches for the feather but Crowley pulls it away.
“Now, you see, Aziraphale, you’re usually an A-plus liar, but today you’re falling short. Do you really think I wouldn’t know one of my own feathers?”
Aziraphale’s cheeks burn, then go pale. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
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