Purrchance to dream - Part 3 (Patreon)

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Companion prose written by my wonderful co-writer Calico! Enjoy!

***

FIVE DAYS LATER… 

Another morning after another night before. Crowley sifts through his memories warily; after that total black-out episode last week, he’s tried to take it more gently. 

The trouble is, though: he’s incredibly bored. 

There have been rumblings from below – Aziraphale did do that thing with his halo, after all, in the heat of the moment, before swanning off out of reach of any immediate consequences – and so Crowley doesn’t want to go far, exactly, just in case. But he also has zero desire to get involved with whatever demonic comeuppance is being concocted. Not his circus, not his monkeys. Demons. Demonic monkeys? Whatever. He’s better off out of it. He knows that. Oh, he knows.

But that leaves… monotony. Same old lurking, same old routine. And by five p.m. on a monotonous day, the urges are strong in Crowley. Not those—not that urge. Well. Not often. But the urge to crack open a bottle of ludicrously expensive wine and pour it down his throat, to the aghast bemusement of a few onlookers? That’s a difficult one to resist. 

He’s not got a quota, any longer. Doesn’t mean he has to play nice.  If Aziraphale were still here—but he isn’t. 

Aziraphale has gone. Vamoosed. Scarpered. And Crowley is still hanging out in Soho, after all. Yes it’s a bit less independent, these days, getting steadily commercialised—one of Hastur’s ongoing projects, Crowley’s vaguely aware—but there are still diversions here, for those who look for them. 

On the days that Crowley sinks a bottle of wine by five p.m., within a couple of hours he will be looking. 

He’s careful to avoid anything too… specific. He’s here to be distracted, not waylaid. He likes old venues, angry artists; comedians who bite and dancers who dominate. He likes the current vogue for ribald-yet-talented cabaret; occasionally raises a smile for new-age burlesque; despises the soulless whittling of all the above acts into something sanitised enough for a casino crowd. 

Which brings him to last night. Total wash-out. 

The sun was out and the streets were tedious with tourists, blockading his usual thoroughfares and sending his natural impatience skyrocketing. He tried a novelty bar—not novel—a member’s club—dreary—and at last resorted to miraculously clearing a prime table near the front of a usually reliable little French cider bar, with a handwritten menu and an ill-concealed preference for locals.

Crowley chose the spot occupying the last vestiges of afternoon sunlight, filtered between the bright blue sails of the establishment’s trademark awning. He claimed his table and much of the scarce legroom on either side with a deliberate sprawl, commanding the waiter to keep the tall cloudy bottles of Cidre Breton coming, and relaxed. 

Well. Tried to. 

The usual agreeable hubbub of the place was warped, somehow, and Crowley’s attention kept snagging on irritants. Overheard conversations seemingly designed to get his goat. A whole party of flies dive-bombing his drink like a wild swimmers seeking the murky absolution of a pond on Hampstead Heath. And then there was…

The cat. 

The cat from the park.

Rationally, Crowley knew it couldn’t possibly be here. 

It couldn’t possibly be the same cat. 

And yet also, Crowley knew: it was the same cat.  

The fluffy, white – pristine, in fact – inexplicable cat.

At first Crowley thought it must just look the same. He told himself it must belong to one of the actors taking their leisure at the bar, just the sort of affectation he’d come to expect – “oh yes, my cat, she comes everywhere with me darling, I’m quite adrift without her” – but none of that lot seemed to be claiming it. 

Then he presumed it was an escapee, begging for food – and indeed, it was accepting titbits from multiple proffered hands; people were falling over themselves to offer up a morsel of braised cuttlefish or a smudge of rabbit rillettes – but over the course of the evening, Crowley couldn’t help but start to feel like this cat had it in for Crowley in particular.  

Initially it was just lingering, now and again winding around his ankle, or butting at his calf with its plush white head.

“Piss off,” Crowley said, under his breath. 

It responded with another lithe figure-of-eight around his ankle. 

When Crowley shooed it away absently, it shrank back from him with a baleful expression. 

When Crowley shooed it away less absently, with the additional application of his foot—“I said, piss off!”—it bristled and flattened its ears. Then, with a voluminous swish of its tail, it stalked off. 

Seemingly moments later, it wended its way back. 

Not directly to him, though. Crowley watched in amazement as a woman at an adjacent table welcomed the creature onto her lap and then proceeded to feed it an oyster from her own plate. By hand. Ridiculous! Crowley thought – and then could have sworn the cat gave him a sideways glance, as if indicating that this was the manner in which it preferred to be treated, thank you very much.

Crowley snorted, shaking his head, and diverted his attention to gulping down the remainder of his cider. Third, fourth? They were the big bottles, too. His teeth were starting to ache, but the taste was good and the high alcohol content was welcome. The world was softening around the edges, the edge on his thoughts less keen. 

Crowley lifted a hand to alert the waiter to the perplexing state of emptiness in which his glass had found itself, and then startled as two white paws planted themselves on his thigh and dug in—the sodding cat was rearing up from the floor and had, well, grabbed his leg; hooking its claws easily through his jeans and piercing the skin. 

“Ow! What the Hell,” Crowley snarled, batting the paws frantically away and then grinding the heel of his hand into his stinging flesh. 

“Oh no! Are you alright?” The waiter, replacement bottle in hand. 

“Nnnngh—no, I’m not all—” Crowley snapped, and then saw the bottle withdraw a little as the waiter gulped, and pivoted mid-sentence. He drew on haughty outrage like a veil. “Well yes of course I’m all right,” he said, pouring salubrious charm into his voice and brushing off his thighs with both hands. He gave the waiter a warm smirk, the one that always used to make Aziraphale’s eyes brighten. “Your little friend here just gave me a bit of a surprise.” 

The waiter looked more alarmed than ever. “Our… little…?”

“The—you know, this cat of yours,” Crowley said, waving his hand in the direction of the creature where it had gone back to lurking beneath a checked tablecloth. “Cute, a bar having a pet.” 

“We… do not have a pet,” the waiter hazarded, but he was discombobulated enough now that he let Crowley smile and relieve him of the fresh bottle without protest. 

“Really? Well you soon will, the rate everyone’s been feeding it,” Crowley told him, applying himself to refilling his glass. 

And it had all become substantially more blurry after that.