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."
Crowley peers at the feather, its barbs and roots unbroken, unseparated, in pristine condition – difficult to maintain after the feather separates from the wing. This one appears to be perfectly preserved – a remarkable feat if Aziraphale has been carrying it in his pocket. "How long have you had this?"
"A … a while."
"And a while would be …?"
"A few thousand years … give or take?"
Crowley tries to remember the times he's spread his wings in Aziraphale's presence. Minus Armageddon, there's only been one other he can recall.
It makes his eyes pop.
"You've had this since Eden?"
"Well … I … maybe?"
"And you carry this around with you?"
Aziraphale sighs. He's not going to win. There's no way to sidestep the truth. He may be an A-plus liar, as Crowley puts it, but he's never been able to lie to Crowley.
Time to fess up.
"Always."
"Do you even realize the risk you put yourself at keeping this on your person!?" Crowley growls. He drags the feather beneath his nose and inhales, his lips curling when he proves himself right. "I can smell the Evil on it! Every angel and demon between here and creation probably can, too!"
Aziraphale recalls Gabriel and Sandalphon in his shop, claiming that something smelled Evil. Aziraphale had blamed it on the Jeffrey Archer books. But even though Crowley had been there, his scent lingering in the air, what they'd actually smelled was more than likely that feather in Aziraphale's pocket.
He suspects they always did, the way their faces scrunched with disgust whenever they approached him.
"I don't care."
"Well, I do! Why are you constantly trying to get yourself into trouble? Stubborn angel …" Crowley mutters, pulling open his coat to slide the feather inside.
Aziraphale steps up, arm extended, hand palm up. "I would thank you to give that back to me, please!"
"What?" Crowley peers at Aziraphale over his lenses, his yellow eyes dangerous. But those eyes of Crowley's don't intimidate Aziraphale. At this point, they're an overplayed card. A defunct strategy.
"I said … give. it. back."
"It's my feather."
"I beg your pardon, but it is not. You left it behind and I picked it up."
Crowley makes a face. "Are you really pulling a finders-keepers on me?"
"It's mine," Aziraphale says firmly. "It's my talisman. My lucky rabbit's foot. It's kept me company when you haven't. When I thought you were gone for good …" Aziraphale's voice cracks. Crowley doesn't seem too sympathetic, and yet he's hanging on Aziraphale's every word. "It's the only part of you I get to have. I will not let you take it from my shop."
Crowley steps forward, twirling the feather tauntingly between his fingers. "Are you telling me you're prepared to fight me for it?"
"I'd rather not." Aziraphale straightens his vest and squares his shoulders, but uncomfortably. "But if I have to, yes. I will."
Crowley fixes his coat with a stunned look on his face, the feather still pinched between his fingers. "That's not true."
"It isn't?" A red flush creeps up Aziraphale's neck, the angel seething over the fact that Crowley would dare disbelieve him.
"No, it isn't."
"Which part?"
The hard lines on Crowley's face soften, the venomous glow in his eyes extinguishes. "You have me, Aziraphale. All of me. You've had all of me since long before this feather shed."
Aziraphale tuts. He rolls his head away. "Now who's the bad liar?"
"Don't believe me, huh?"
"Forgive me if I don't."
"You're not the only sentimental old fool here, and I can prove it."
"How?"
"Your feather?" Crowley takes Aziraphale's hand by the wrist and places the black feather in his palm. Then he closes his fingers around it.
"Yes?" Aziraphale's shoulders sag a hair, much more relaxed with his favorite keepsake back in his possession.
Crowley worms his fingertips into his front left pocket and carefully fishes out a brilliant white feather. Aziraphale's jaw drops. He recognizes it immediately. He would know it anywhere.
Crowley knows he does, and he grins.
"It's a match for this one."