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Crowley doesn't remember exactly how , but as soon as he gets out of the burning bookshop, he ends up at the bar he frequents.
He drinks like it's the end of the world because it is. The Antichrist is starting it all in a few hours and Aziraphale is gone. He doesn't know how, if it was just discorporation or somehow true elimination, but—
A sob bubbles up his throat and he downs it with the whiskey. He's dead; his best friend, the love of his life is dead. He can't do anything about it. He should run off to Alpha Centauri like he so planned, watch the war from afar. No one will find him there.
But he'll be alone.
He miracles the cup so more whiskey fills it up. He keeps drinking until he can barely know what's going on, and it doesn't take more until he's considering the Armageddon. Oh, he knows he can't do anything— they could never do anything about it. It was always a lost cause. They raised the wrong kid to feel better about themselves.
When Aziraphale appears in front of him, nearly a ghost with how translucent he is, he falls into the most obvious explanation. He's drank enough to be hallucinating, and he's seeing the man-shaped angel, the dead angel he's mourning by drinking. Of course, of course. It makes perfect sense for his stupid mind to do this to him.
"Crowley," the hallucination hisses, and his heart pangs. This isn't a hallucination— maybe it is, he knows Aziraphale well enough for it to be too real.
He doesn't try and sober up, just for the mere possibility of Aziraphale disappearing into thin air as soon as he does so.
"Aziraphale," he breathes out, finishing his whiskey and listening to him.