Chapter Text
“Oi, mate. We’re closing.”
“Nngh.”
Without lifting from his boneless slump over the table, Crowley smacks his lips, rubs them together. Feels… rubbery. Dry. Parched!
Need ‘nother drink?
He flexes his fingers, finds they’re already wrapped around something promisingly heavy, glass and square. Convenient!
Need ‘nother drink.
Crowley recruits some resistance against gravity. Raises up enough to squint at the hazy bottle. Hefts it to his mouth. Upends it. Just fumes. Worst luck!
“Mate,” the man says again, less impersonal.
Pretty personal, actually. Direction: Crowley.
Piss off!
Crowley flexes the fingers of his other hand, flipping through a choice curse or six before finding that none of the phraseology will connect.
Too drunk for curses. Wow. What has he done to himself?
“Mate,” the bartender growls.
“Alright! Alright,” Crowley protests, lurching to his feet, sending the bottle spinning across the table and to the floor.
Amazingly, it doesn’t break. Maybe it’s the thickness of the glass. Still, Crowley automatically checks over his shoulder on the minuscule—but critical—off-chance it’s a certain angel’s divine intervention—before the harsh truth wallops him in the chest for the millionth time this evening. That angel is gone for good.
“f*ckin’ angel,” Crowley tells the bottle, looking as out of place and forlorn on the floor as Crowley feels. He finds, when he moves his head in a certain way, there are two bottles. Both still empty though. Just his luck.
“Mate.” This time it’s bordering on a threat.
Crowley curls his lip in an open snarl and rounds on the bartender—wait, bartenders—whoa—only to find himself being guided gently but firmly towards the door and then - bah! Ejected!
Crowley wedges his hands into his pockets and forges on, making it a good few strides before the slick soles of his shoes slide through a puddle and he has to throw his hands out again to balance.
The world zooms around him at that, soft blue shadow and golden lamplight blurring against the grey-black hulking buildings all around.
In amongst the swirling light, the air is very shiny. Crowded with needles of water, it’s making his face screw up. Dripping down his chin.
It is, Crowley clocks belatedly, pissing it down.
Rain streaks his glasses and bounces off his bare hands and soaks into his hair, adding a soggy chill to his corporation which somehow does nothing to sober him up.
Quite the opposite, he thinks, with the distinct clarity of the absolutely hammered. He needs another drink.
He needs… Nah, bes’ not finish that thought.
He needs…
Or that one. Those thoughts. Them. The slinky dark swarming thoughts, edged with a glint of hope, like demons in diamond necklaces; so seductive, so bad for him.
Crowley casts those thoughts away with a physical shake of his head, then shudders as water seeps readily down the back of his neck. He is drenched. His feet are squelching in his shoes as he hurries forward.
He needs a whisky—make it hot. Make it a barrel!
Crowley’s glasses slide down his nose as he staggers along, peering over them as if that will make the world spin any less. He ducks into an alleyway, figuring it will be more sheltered, needing a moment to get his bearings. He needs to draw on enough power to transport himself home without blasting the top of his head off or singeing his eyebrows. ‘S… tricky.
He figures it wrong, as it happens. The alley is not more sheltered, being as it does not involve a roof. Rain pelts him. He swipes a hand through his hair, eyes narrowing and then blinking hard, as his vision fills suddenly with bright light.
Oops! Might have burst something important in the old grey matter, Crowley thinks, squeezing his eyes shut and then peering out again.
The light remains, its brightness rendering everything else a faded, two-dimensional obscurity, and there in the middle is… huh.
“Wha’…”
Crowley takes his glasses off and rubs them on his jacket, a somewhat useless gesture given the sopping wetness of his entire personage, then replaces them and squints over the top, directly into the light.
“A cat?”
Between the weather, the glare, and the high ethanol content of his bloodstream, he really doesn’t trust what his eyes tell him he’s seeing.
Something very pale and fluffy launches itself in his direction. Yowling.
First there’s darkness. Then… there’s pain.
Between the pounding in his head and the clawing in his stomach, Crowley’s first bleary thought is that perhaps he’s stumbled back into Hell.
Consciousness blossoms, and with it - misery. His mouth is acrid, his heartbeat too fast and loud. He feels like he’s both sweating and shivering. He’s in bed, sure—thankfully his own, the smallest of mercies—but apparently still wearing last night’s sodden clothes, complete with knotted scarf moonlighting as a garrotte. He paws at it, tugging it loose again, fingers rasping against the stubble of his neck.
Crowley swallows, parched, a desperate thirst seizing him as his throat contracts.
“Nngh.”
Water. He needs water. Then he might be able focus clearly enough to miracle the rest of this circulating poison away.
Hauling himself up in bed proves to be a mistake, though, as the thunder in his head redoubles and his stomach roils. He buries his face in his hands, waiting for the internal agitation to subside, and groans softly.
“What a nightmare.”
What had possessed him last night?
His brain stubbornly refuses to provide answers.
Where had he been? And who with?
The answer to that last one comes easily enough: alone. Of course. Always, completely, alone.
Crowley peers out through his fingers, spies his discarded glasses on the floor near an empty whisky bottle, and groans again as acid threatens to rise in his throat.
Water! Now!
Something in his injured psyche still carries power. A full pint glass of water appears as he stretches out one hand, and he drains it greedily, a few droplets of water escaping his lips, running down his neck. That’s better. A bit, anyway, he thinks, flopping back onto the mattress, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
“Bloody miracle I even made it home last night,” he mutters, waiting for the room to stop spinning. It’s an oddly familiar sensation. Lot of rooms spinning last night, maybe?
Maybe. f*ck knows. Probably, given the state of him. He gives his memories another prod, but the amorphous fog of the previous evening refuses to lift.
“Don’t remember a thing.”
He stares at his ceiling, feeling the very air above him as a soul-crushing weight, and sighs. Here he is again. Making a habit of it. Another morning after another night before, the details obliterated. It would be embarrassing if there were anyone to observe it, but as it happens - there isn’t! Not even himself as witness. So what does it matter?
What the f*ck does any of it matter?
It takes an age to get comfortable, but when he finally does, he sleeps again. Dreamless but sweaty, agitation stirring within him like a knocked snowglobe, refusing to fully settle.
When Crowley wakes up again he’s - ah.
Ah.
Well that’s the last thing he feels like doing right now.
His body disagrees, presenting him with undeniable evidence that it could feel good if only he’d let it.
Really good.
Might even cure his hangover.
Crowley tells his body it has no sense of occasion. Can’t it tell he’s not in the mood? This is not the sort of tossing and turning that this bed has seen of late.
His body points out that might be part of the problem.
“Urgh,” Crowley mutters.
He doesn’t want to touch himself… not for any puritanical reason, obviously.
He just doesn’t want any reminder of the sorts of things he’d thought about, touching himself before.
He does wonder if it would be possible to bring himself off without thinking about any of that stuff, and feels his libido perk up a bit more. Maybe…
Crowley’s hand wanders downwards. He tells himself he could think about anyone, anything - he has the whole history of p*rnography at his behest, from the classic to the abstract to the downright surreal - but when his hand closes around himself, the only thought filling his head is—Angel.
Crowley’s hand drops away like it’s been burnt and he rolls onto his stomach, a sensation of panic descending like a swarm of buzzing insects. It’s in his throat, his chest, sheeting his skin with cold sweat, and he remembers again why he doesn’t do this anymore.
It’s significantly less appealing when the only person he wants to think about like that has upped and left forever in a bloody great lift into the sky - has literally elevated himself out of Crowley’s life.
Ever helpful, his brain smashes a nail into his libido’s coffin by providing a clear visual of the last moment he saw Aziraphale before those celestial doors sealed him inside.
His stomach lurches, any remaining sparks of arousal thoroughly doused, and Crowley opens his eyes at last, heart pounding for all the wrong reasons.
The empty flat seems to be mocking him. Not that Aziraphale ever—but now he’ll never—
Crowley groans into the pillow, then hauls himself out of bed, and goes to seek the cleansing blast of an ice cold shower.
Again.
