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Betty Hale didn’t consider herself an alcoholic, no matter how often her therapist attempted to convince her of that inescapable truth. She preferred the title “regular”, as dubbed to her by her favourite pub’s barman. His name was Tommy, and he’d been working there ever since she’d started coming following the death of her late wife. Thus, with Tommy working there, and the other regulars at her side, the pub had become something of a safe space.
Sometimes she came just to be there, without drinking– although those visits, usually, also shifted into “just a quick one then”.
Most of the regulars knew each other by name.
The person Betty saw most often was John, whose son had gone missing a few years back. One time his ex-wife had come along to the pub with him, but they hadn’t been all that amicable the entire night, and she had never returned since. Betty hadn’t felt the need to ask why.
Latasha was twenty-three, and had only started coming after finishing university, to celebrate her long-awaited freedom.
No one knew Noel’s story, although that was mainly for a lack of interest. He wasn’t particularly liked by any of them, though they wouldn’t admit it.
So Betty knew a lot of people, and a lot of stories, yet the only one that escaped her was the mysterious man whom everyone seemed to sort of stray away from. He was there almost all the times Betty came, but they’d never spoken. Whenever he entered the pub, brows already furrowed behind dark tinted glasses, everyone tended to swarm away from him.
He had his own seat at the corner of the bar, and whenever anyone looked at him, they’d find their eyes wanting to drift away. Watching him brought a strange sense of discomfort with it, usually.
But today, Betty was fed up. Her day had been long, and she ached to drown herself in other people’s sorrows.
And so, when the man entered the pub, Betty bumped John with her shoulder, nodding towards the tall, red-haired man at the corner of the bar.
John met her eyes and shook his head, but she was already standing from their usual booth, and John gave a reluctant groan as he, too, got to his feet.
* * *
Crowley wouldn’t visit the pub today. He’d firmly reminded himself– and the Bentley– of that fact when he’d sat down behind the wheel. He’d just been going for a quick drive.
He knew constant drinking wasn’t a good thing, even for demons. Something about losing his wits and making bad decisions, the barman had told him once when he’d ordered his fifth whiskey of the night.
Plus, Crowley didn’t particularly enjoy the pub. Sure, he loved drinking, but he preferred to do it in the privacy of his own home. He only visited the pub when he was in desperate need of humans around him. Their easy minds, their narrow view of the world, their stupid drunken behaviours. It made him feel…
Alright, it made him feel superior. Egotistical, when he put it like that, but– well, everyone copes differently, he’d argue.
But he didn’t like the way people watched him, no matter how much he tried to shrink in on himself, or their attempts to engage him in their boring small talk.
So he’d gripped the wheel of the Bentley and pulled it onto the road, a little more aggressively than he’d intended. He hadn’t meant to take it out on the car, but he’d had a rough night, and his frustration needed to go somewhere.
And maybe another car would’ve let that slide.
But the Bentley was as close to sentient as cars could get, and seemingly becoming increasingly frustrated with the way Crowley’s boot stomped down on the gas pedal, or the way his hands yanked on the wheel.
So perhaps Crowley shouldn’t have been so surprised when the wheel ripped itself out of his hands and turned down the way Crowley had told it not to go, just disobeying in any way it knew how to.
And that brought him to now. Right now, he wasn’t far off matching the drunkards swarming around him. Usually, they ignored him, but tonight they’d sat down and ordered the same drink as him in an attempt at making casual conversation about it. Crowley had hissed at them to mind their own business, and they had stubbornly not conceded. They had chatted at him until his tongue loosened from the alcohol, and soon he’d found himself confiding in them, too. He had to get it out of his system, after all, and if the Bentley wasn’t going to put up with him anymore…
They nodded along with sympathetic– and slightly regretful– smiles as he ranted.
“I confessed to him, right? And… and he just left! I mean, who does that sort of thing? ‘I forgive you’, psh. I won’t be forgiven. Not ever! I said that to him, by the way. Not– not then, but I said it to him… don’t remember when. Said it to him at some point. I told him! I told him, I’m unforgivable. ‘Cause I am, I’m a demon. That’s what– that’s what demons are. Unforgivable. And he just… he started talking ‘bout– ‘bout how I was an angel once, and–”
Crowley frowned then, licking his lips as he attempted to remember something that had flashed only momentarily in his brain, but had now abandoned him again. It didn’t last long before he gave up, shaking his head. “Anyway, that’s beside the point. ‘Cause– ‘cause point is, right. Point is, he left! He just up and left. I– ugh. Hm. He just left. After all that.”
He trailed off there, staring gloomily into his glass of– whatever it was. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was drinking anymore, only that he’d asked for several refills over the course of the hour, and it was steadily doing its job.
He swirled the liquid around as one of the young folks beside him– the blond man who looked like he’d thrown a bucket of grease on his head and called it a day– piped up, his tone sympathetic and full of pity.
“He sounds like a right twat,” he said, trying to be consoling, though he’d lost his touch a bit after the third time Crowley had retold the story. He had come here to be drunk and emotional too, for God’s sake, he didn’t want to be hearing this.
“Yeah, well. That’s the thing, innit? He wasn’t a twat. He was a real angel. He was great, but it’s stupid, ‘cause I still can’t decide whether I should’ve taken his offer. I mean, I could’ve just gone with him to Heaven. We would’ve– could’ve been– well, anyway. I let my personal… uh, wotsits get in between it. Didn’t wanna go to Heaven ‘cause of my own past, and now– now he’s–”
The man looked a little doubtful, his eyes darting towards the other people surrounding them for help. When it didn’t come, he made another attempt. “Well, like I’ve said, you really shouldn’t, like, kill yourselves together. It’s a bit dramatic I think. I mean, if he was that depressed–”
Crowley looked up from his drink with a frown, his eyes struggling to focus on the man’s face. “What’re you talkin’ about now?” he asked, his mind too hazy with alcohol to fully comprehend the way he must sound to humans.
“Well, it’s– like I said…” the man repeated, his tone a little confused, “I– depression and suicidal… ness… I mean, they’re serious things, but– well. Becoming ‘angels’ together is rather…”
Crowley blinked. He was still not entirely certain what the man was trying to say to him, but he didn’t have enough care to insist upon his inquiries. “Yeah, that’s what I mean! I think. I don’t wanna be an angel again. ‘T was bad enough the first time ‘round. Being a demon is much more freeing. Ish. Sort of.”
The taller man on the blond man’s other side chortled now, swaying slightly as he leaned over his friend to clink his glass against Crowley’s. “I’ll drink to that!” he said gleefully, before downing his drink and immediately gesturing for the barkeep.
“Shut up, John, you’d drink to anything,” the woman beside him grumbled.
Crowley hummed non-committally as if he was completely on board with what was being said. Truthfully, he’d zoned out again, and was only half-listening until the taller guy leaned over again, placing a hand on his shoulder and nearly knocking his blond friend onto the floor in the process.
“Listen, pal. You needa let go. You’re allowed to mourn, but sittin’ by his grave mopin’ ain’t gonna bring him back,” he said, slurring as though his tongue was too heavy for his mouth to carry. “Live a little. You ain’t defined by ‘im. Stop revisiting the old times and find somethin’ else to stick your energy into. Hook up. Get on some apps, maybe.”
Crowley frowned down at his drink, feeling more than a little disgusted by the idea. Mourn, he said. Mourn what? There was nothing to ‘mourn’. Aziraphale had made that very clear. They weren’t anything. He had to be forgiven for even suggesting that they were. The only thing he had to mourn was a friendship. An infuriating friendship which would’ve never lasted, and curse him for ever thinking otherwise.
Angels and demons couldn’t be friends. They couldn’t just hang out in old bookshops together and banter about humans. They couldn’t do any of that, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. It was written; angels and demons were polar opposites, on opposite sides. They weren’t to fraternise, and certainly not to befriend.
And yet Crowley could still feel the ghost of warm hands removing his glasses, hear soft laughter carried through the backroom of the bookshop, see six thousand years of impossible little moments stitched together so tightly that trying to pull them apart now felt like tearing skin from bone.
His grip tightened around the glass and he thought, briefly, that it might crack in his hand.
Beside him, the humans had fallen silent. Their earlier drunken enthusiasm had curdled into awkward discomfort, each of them suddenly very interested in their own drinks. Betty glanced toward John as if silently asking whether they ought to leave the poor bastard alone after all.
Crowley barely noticed them anymore.
He stared into the amber blur of his drink until the surface steadied enough for him to catch a warped reflection of his own face. The lenses of his glasses hid most of it, but not the miserable exhaustion dragging at the corners of his mouth.
Crowley tipped back the rest of the whiskey in one sharp swallow. It burned all the way down his throat.
“There y’go,” John said gently, as though Crowley was a child who had just accomplished something admirable. “That’s the spirit.”
Crowley let out a rough laugh at that.
Before anyone could launch into another disastrous attempt at comforting him, he shoved himself shakily off the barstool. Someone reached out to steady him, but Crowley jerked away at once, shoulders drawing tight.
For a second he only stood there, swaying faintly, breathing hard through his nose while the room tilted around him.
“Calling it a night,” he muttered, before he stumbled toward the door, one hand dragging against the backs of chairs to keep himself upright. The group fell into silence behind him, broken only by the heavy slam of the door once he disappeared out into the night.
Betty watched him go in silence, fingers curled tightly around her barely-touched drink.
No one spoke for several long seconds after the door slammed shut, until John exhaled slowly into the quiet.
“Well,” he said, rubbing a hand down his face, “that was bloody depressing.”
A few people chuckled weakly.
Betty huffed a laugh of her own and lifted her drink at him in a half-hearted toast. “Aren’t we all?”