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The pub is the same as ever, virtually unchanged from the last time Crowley was here. The same murky lighting, the same mediocre alcohol, the same impassive bartender walking to and fro between tables and bar. Some of the miscellaneous other customers scattered around the room, in ones and twos and parties, are probably the same people who were there before, too, if Crowley had bothered to notice any of them at the time.
The pub looks the same as it did that other time, when all hope was lost and the world was about to end and his own world had already, to all intents and purposes, gone up in flames with a bookshop… and Crowley finds, quite unexpectedly, that his hands are shaking slightly, endangering the contents of the glass in his hand.
He’d think it a sign that he must have had too much to drink, except that he hasn’t had a drop yet.
Shit. He wasn’t prepared for this. It’s just a pub. This is stupid. This…
Fingers touch his own, warm and fleshy, gently extricating the cup from his grasp to set it safely aside on the table. Then the fingers are back, folding around Crowley’s own: a steady pulse fluttering against Crowley’s skin, reassuringly real and living.
The feeling of Aziraphale’s heartbeat reminds Crowley that it’s probably a good idea to breathe. He does so. In, out. In, out.
“Are you all right?” Aziraphale’s voice in his ear is low, carefully calm but undeniably worried.
Crowley swallows, searching for the answer to the angel’s question. He’s certainly more all right now, Aziraphale’s touch and voice together grounding him to the all-rightness of the present, than he was a second ago.
“I didn’t… I should have thought of this.” Aziraphale’s thumb moves along the back of Crowley’s hand, soothingly real. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“It’s fine,” Crowley manages at that.
He thinks it’s true. He’s not sure yet, though.
“We can leave, you know,” Aziraphale reminds him. “If you want. There are plenty of other bars we could go to. Or we could just go home. I wouldn’t mind…”
“I know that.” Crowley takes another breath. “I don’t know. I need a minute. Hang on.”
Aziraphale hangs on, metaphorically as well as through their interlaced fingers, waiting patiently as Crowley breathes, and steadies, and tries his best to make the pub shift back from the place where the world is ending to simply a pub.
A dingy old pub, conveniently located but with nothing in particular to set it apart otherwise. Just a pub. Any old pub. Nothing remarkable about it. Nothing…
But, no. Crowley’s brain rebels against that argument, irrefutably objective though it is. It’s not true. Or rather, it’s true in every way except the one that matters. For anyone else it would be true… but not for him. The reality is, this is not just any old pub, at least not today.
Perhaps, someday, it can be just a pub again. Or perhaps it will never be again. It’s hard to say. Not now, though.
Yet now, with Aziraphale’s hand in his, something else occurs to Crowley.
This is the pub where he thought his best friend lost… but it’s also the pub where his best friend came back to find him. A pub where the world was ending… but, also, a pub where the ending began to reverse course.
It’s a pub where hope was lost. Yet, it’s also a pub where hope was found.
“I think,” Crowley says slowly, “we can stay.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Crowley says, honestly. “But I’ll let you know if I’m wrong.”
Aziraphale accepts that answer, though he doesn’t yet let go of Crowley’s hand. Crowley has no intention of complaining about that. It does make it a bit challenging to drink, admittedly. But there’s no real rush to get to the alcohol, after all. Not this time.
The pub is the same as last time, on the surface… except, it isn’t quite. Something, something very important, has changed.
Because this time, Crowley doesn’t need to ask a translucent image floating inside the lenses of his sunglasses if it’s really there or is a figment of a drunken hallucination.
Because the image is right here in the flesh, sitting beside him, its existence and reality beyond any question: as present and physical as anything, nothing translucent about it all.
Aziraphale says it anyway, though, out loud, in case there is any doubt lingering in Crowley’s mind. I’m here.
And it’s true: Aziraphale is here. Better, they are here. Both of them, together, in the pub, holding hands, and the world is neither ended nor on the verge of ending.
Yes, Crowley decides, after a few more minutes of consideration. It is, in fact, all right.