Purrchance To Dream - Part 7 (Patreon)

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

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A sprawling Tudor-style country pub with red herringbone brickwork beckons on his drive back to London, attached to a local brewery. It’s a warm warren inside, with dark beams set in low ceilings and uneven steps between rooms, not a right-angle in sight. Curved, dimpled pint glasses hang above the bar, surrounded by artful bunches of dried hops. The bartender is a middle-aged man with white-blond hair and an old-fashioned striped apron. 

The whole place is refreshingly cat-free. 

Crowley accepts a pint of golden brown ale and whiles away an amusing couple of hours in an overstuffed armchair by a fireplace, putting different weight curses on various darts being used for a local tournament. He enjoys the ensuing tensions as they escalate. Old habits and all that. 

The first pint slips down easily, the second barely touching the sides. By the dregs of the forth pint, the bartender’s features have developed an attractive quality to them - if Crowley squints. He pours himself back into the armchair, slumping down, and contemplates the man over the rim of his glass. 

He imagines talking to him. Telling him - what? That he wants to touch his hair? That he reminds him of an old friend? Classy. 

He imagines getting close to him, close enough to smell his skin; imagines the crushing disappointment when he doesn’t smell like Aziraphale. 

No one else ever could.

Crowley gets up to secure his fifth pint, finds the uneven floor is swelling beneath him as if the pub has somehow drifted out to sea. He wends his way back to the bar and props himself against it, his elbows seeming to be at all the wrong angles. 

Crowley’s face feels like a sculpture made of rubber and twigs. He arranges a smile across it. “Hullo.”

“Just a moment,” the bartender says, without even glancing in his direction. “Be right with you.” 

Crowley watches the man’s hands as they mix a pair of G&Ts for a couple in their sixties; deftly pouring measures by sight, slicing lemons and arranging ice cubes, finishing with a sprig of rosemary for one of the women, a twist of cucumber for the other. 

They’re… just hands. 

Crowley has watched Aziraphale’s hands doing far less interesting things - picking at a loose stitch on a sleeve, uncrumpling a bookmark, lifting a teacup - with an eternal, furtive fascination. But these… these are just hands. 

“Right, sorry. Can I help you?” the bartender says eventually, and here up close he looks nothing, nothing like Crowley wants him to look. Damn it! “Same again?” 

“Miiiiiight be too much of a good thing.” 

The bartender glances at his face at that, skepticism filtering into his expression. He raises his eyebrows. “So… water?” 

“Uh, no - thanks and all but I’d rather die,” Crowley says, with a wink. “I’ll switch to the red. Got anything obscenely old and grand for me?” 

The bartender barks a laugh, and for a moment Crowley thinks - could he? Could he? - but he already knows in his gut that he can’t. 

He can’t work through these feelings with anyone else. He didn’t even have these urges until the damned angel ignited them inside him, and nothing short of that same damned angel has a chance of fanning those flames - or extinguishing them. 

Whatever. Booze it is. 

Crowley nurses a bittersweet glass of a rather opulent red, followed in due course by the rest of the bottle, and then overhears some locals discussing an upcoming cheese-rolling competition and is struck by a sudden and palpable need to be back inside the M25.

He’s already settled his bill, but just for a bit of nostalgic fun he slaps an additional crumpled fistful of twenties on the bar with the empty bottle as a paperweight, before weaving his way doggedly back towards the door. 

When he gets there, something close to whimsy makes him pause. 

Crowley braces one arm on the doorframe and looks back in time to watch the bartender encounter the cash. The man frowns, then blinks, pale eyebrows hiking up again before he looks around as if he suspects a hidden camera. 

His eyes find Crowley at the door and Crowley tips his imaginary hat. The man’s confusion brims and overflows into a bewildered grin. Crowley grins back and takes his leave, staggering back to the Bentley in the deserted carpark, weirdly warm all over. 

This must be how Aziraphale feels all the bloody time. 

No wonder he buggered off. People to please, places to be…

Crowley sits in his seat for a few minutes, staring out at the dark hush of rural nighttime, as the warmth of that random act of benevolence slowly transmutes into something hollow and pointless. 

In the silent empty car, he misses Aziraphale so much it’s like a fist inside his chest, choking him from the inside. 

Ugh, he thinks, a few long shivery breaths later, and scrubs at his face with the back of his hand. A break-down in a carpark in Kent - ten points for originality. 

Time to get out of here.