Purrchance To Dream - Part 8 - CONTENT WARNING IN CAPTION (Patreon)

This chapter deals with some heavier themes. For more detail, click the content warning below. It contains mild spoilers.

CONTENT WARNING 

<< Beginning | < Previous | > Next

Companion prose written by my wonderful co-writer Calico!

We're sorry.

***

He knows Aziraphale would make him sober up now, but so much of the hurt has curdled into anger—at both of them, fuck, he’s not letting himself off either, don’t worry—that he just flings a miracle into the Bentley’s gearbox and tells it to get him home. 

The Bentley purrs into life, accelerates, and it’s almost hypnotic - how good that feels. It’s a simple, exhilarating rush. Faster, faster; windows down. The night streaks past, high hedgerows making it feel like Crowley’s flying through a leaf-lined black tunnel; no streetlights out here, just the white beams of the Bentley’s headlamps making ghosts of fast-approaching trees. Crowley relaxes, letting his focus unspool into the car around him; stroking the wheel and leaning into it as they take deadly curves at speed. 

They re-enter London without shifting gear, and Crowley’s vision dazzles with sudden streetlights. As usual, the city is a beautiful shock to his senses. He feels the density of souls skyrocket; that sweet, sweet overpopulation giving the air a tangible intensity. So many heartbeats; so much hope. 

He urges the car faster, one lazy fingertip on the steering wheel, back towards the salubrious glitter of late-night Soho. They zip through streets miraculously cleared at the very last moment. He can picture Aziraphale quaking and squirming in the seat next to him, that anxious hand clutching at empty space or Crowley’s sleeve, twitching as they swerve easily around corners, run red lights, terrorise pedestrians - all in a night’s work, Angel, no need for the paroxysms of alarm.

Crowley can picture Aziraphale, and he can almost hear Aziraphale telling him off, and it’s frankly nothing he wants to be told. Aziraphale isn’t here and the Bentley isn’t going to let him get hurt and Crowley is tired, abruptly, of this angel who won’t get off his shoulder—or out of his mind—even when he’s this hammered. Especially when he’s this hammered! Crowley is fantastically drunk, and he should be able to just relax and enjoy it for once! And be disreputable and careless and flirt with miscellaneous human blonds and drive like a demon and just—

CLUNK.

Darkness and pinprick lights shudder around him as the Bentley slams on the brakes. He’s hit something. 

He’s—fucking—hit something!

Not a person, nothing that large—nothing flies off the windscreen or crunches beneath the wheels—but something has collided with the front of Bentley and the car has skidded to a halt and Crowley’s mind skips straight into staccato free-fall.

He jumps out before he can think twice, looking wildly around, scanning the street and the pavement and the gutters and—Ah, there, he realises, as he rounds the front of the curved bonnet and sees an unmoving heap close to the ground a few feet away. 

Shit. Fuck. Shit!

His heart pounds in his throat. The Bentley’s lights are still on, casting sharp shadows, and all he can make out from the pathetic little silhouette is that it’s an animal and it’s - it’s very still. 

Nothing moves except Crowley as he scrambles forwards, sinking to his knees in the middle of the road, reaching for the lifeless form and then freezing, stricken, as his eyes adjust to the light and discern the blue-grey glimmer of too-soft fur. 

Oh God. No. 

No. 

No. 

Of course it’s the cat. Of course he’s hit the fucking cat with his car, blind drunk at midnight; of course this half-witted pedigree cat wanders the streets at night, just looking to get catnapped by a criminal or eaten by a fox or—or hit by a car—of course. 

Of course it’s Crowley’s fault.