Chapter Text
Nobody does flustered quite like an angel.
Nobody does an angel quite like Aziraphale.
The table at the very center of his bookshop, the one Aziraphale normally reserves for displaying his very rarest, choicest antiquities — the first edition of In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway, a book by little-known author Joanne Rowling, a mint condition Casino Royale with dust jacket — is empty of books today. Diagonally on the table lies a single feather of the deepest shade of black, four feet long.
Aziraphale keeps glancing at the feather as he crisscrosses the shop between his clothes closet and the full-length mirror.
Sometimes the glance is nervous.
Sometimes the glance is giddy.
Sometimes the glance is unbelieving.
Sometimes he simply looks as if he’s going to burst into tears.
Once he stops in front of the table, stares at the feather, and then flails his arms like an infant who has just seen their first cat.
Because it’s his feather. Crowley’s.
Wonderful, mysterious, infuriating, devastatingly sexy Crowley has sent Aziraphale his feather. His courtship token. Along with a request that Aziraphale accompany him to the Ritz for tea.
The part that amazes Aziraphale more than any of it is the formality. Because he knows Crowley did it that way for him.
Crowley’s really more of a modern, laid-back sort of demon. His idea of a date is probably more along the lines of standing with you in a park, looking off into the distance with a cigarette dangling from his mouth (filthy things!), and casually dropping that he’s going to check out Dr Feelgood at Dingwall’s later and do you wanna come with?
Yet Crowley reached into the rich tradition of the celestial realm. For him.
How will he ever measure up?
Aziraphale really does burst into sobs this time.
He rushes back to his clothes closet, and flings outfit after outfit on the floor.
Why has he never given a thought to outfits that suit his winged form? Everything he has is for his human form. But if the date goes well, and things begin to happen, well, the wings will come out. It is part of angel courtship that the wings come out. Not that he’s ever done much courtship himself — truth be told, Aziraphale is just too shy for such things. But he’s heard stories.
True, Crowley is a demon, and perhaps the customs are different…but he used to be an angel, didn’t he? That is still his species. Demon vs angel is more of a cultural difference than a biological one. And as for biology, there is a certain…imperative for the wings to come out when things get, well, when they go past kissing, and come to…
W H O O S H
Aziraphale’s wings burst forth magnificently, in the shade of white that really contains all colors, and is so dazzling that a human can scarcely look upon them without going insane with joy.
Each wing is six feet long. But even though Aziraphale is standing in his clothes closet they don’t knock anything off the shelves.
They already did that the several previous times they popped out today.