Archive of Our Own

Of course it doesn’t make any sense logically, but then self-hatred often doesn’t. Part of it is just reflex: when people around Alston stop being around him, people who aren’t addictive messes like him, it’s always his fault somehow. Part of it is the way things had been a little tense before Cedric went Elsewhere - nothing overt, just little glances when Alston poured one of his last drinks for the night, like, do you really need that one? Or how when Alston woke up grumbling about his daily headache, Cedric still laughed and said “I love you, you idiot,” but somehow the words felt more rote than before. The usual signs that someone’s about to get sick of his bullshit.

And then the immateria rose, and Cedric went with it when it subsided, and Alston thought, I don’t blame him. I’d want a chance to get away from me, too.

He’s been gone about a week. Alston’s spent it in a thicker haze than usual, walking around the apartment crying at the sight of a guitar pick on an end table or a colored pencil accidentally placed in the toothbrush holder. He picks up a stray red scarf from underneath Cedric’s pillow and holds it to his nose and then cries into it. The others pat him on the back and say nice consoling things about how everyone else has come back fine, he might take a few days to adjust but he’ll still be Cedric. Alston doesn’t say, and I’ll still be me, and now he’ll know how good it is to be without me.

Everyone is a little different when they come back from Elsewhere. Ziwa came back spluttering like they’d been drowning and brought back to life; York wandered back shyly, waving hesitantly, like it was his first day in Halifax again. CV came back literally dizzy, incapable of standing up straight for a couple days. Cedric comes back... dulled. Glassy-eyed and uninterested. Alston thinks it’s him at first, that the perfunctory hug Cedric gives him is a dismissal of him personally, but then he sees how Cedric greets everyone exactly the same way. Even Beasley just gets a token scratch behind the ears, despite his soft whine of concern.

That night at home, Alston offers to make anything Cedric wants for dinner. Usually that would mean requests that would put even Lachlan a bit at a loss; today, Cedric just shrugs and says, “I dunno, whatever you want.”

“I... okay. We can order something? You haven’t smoked in like, over a week, right? How about you roll a blunt and we’ll get some greasy-ass burgers?”

Another shrug. “That’s fine. Don’t really feel like smoking.” Cedric is sitting on the couch, his tray of smoking supplies still laid out exactly how it was when he left; he considers it for awhile, then picks up a pipe with a half-smoked bowl and hits it, though it seems more out of habit than anything else.

“That’s fine.” It’s definitely not fine, but Alston tries to tell himself, a few days to adjust. “I’ll just get us a pizza. You wanna draw something while we wait for it? Or - wait, you moved onto fucking around with watercolors, right?”

“Oh. Did I?”

Alston gets up to make himself another drink, tears stinging at his eyes again. Fucking get it together, Cerveza. He’s adding a twist of lemon peel - the extra step makes him feel more like he’s being decadent when he drinks, less like a bum who will chug anything - when Cedric says, with an actual hint of interest, “Hey, Alston?”

“Yeah?”

“You got any beer in the fridge right now?”

It’s a strange question by all metrics. Cedric has never been a drinker, and anyway Alston always has beer in the fridge. It’s not his preferred drink, despite his name, but sometimes guests want it, and if guests want to help him not drink alone, then Alston is gonna make that happen. It’s also a bit of a safety blanket: even if the liquor runs out, I still got this.

He opens some sort of IPA, the remnant of a microbrewery six-pack one of the Garages brought last time they were in town, but when he approaches the couch with their drinks in hand, Cedric shakes his head a bit. “Nah, you got anything... shittier?” Even a bit of a chuckle with that comment - okay, he’s coming back, this is good. “Like, Lablatt. If you got one of those I want that.”

Alston trots back to the kitchen happily, willing to fetch anything in the world Cedric might ask for right now. Sure enough - a couple cans of Lablatt Blue tucked in the back of the fridge, behind a week-old takeout container he’s been meaning to bring Eugenia. As he sits down on the couch and hands the can over, close to Cedric but not touching, Cedric says, “Cool. Perfect. Thanks.” A beat as he takes a deep swig, and then - “This is all they had, there.”

Alston can’t help his surprise. “They had beer Elsewhere?”

“Mine did, anyway.” Cedric’s voice is still relatively monotone. He holds the can with both large, dark hands, looking down into it like there’s something just barely visible at the bottom. “It was a bar. Actually. But this is all they served. Kind of a shitty bar, if you ask me.”

Alston just nods silently, not wanting to disrupt whatever’s going through Cedric’s head right now.

“I didn’t drink anything the first couple days. Figured it was, like, whatever that old myth was. About if you eat or drink something there you’re stuck there...” Cedric shakes his head, dreads bouncing lightly against his cheeks, as if he’s trying to clear a fog from his mind. “Wherever ‘there’ is. In the myth. I don’t really remember right now.”

A little pang of worry jabs into Alston’s heart. Cedric went on a mythologies-of-the-world kick awhile back, telling him stories about the Dreamtime or Babalú Ayé or Izanagi and Izanami. When Cedric moves on from an interest, he might forget it consciously in the excitement of whatever’s replaced it, but the knowledge he’s gained always sticks with him.

“But after awhile it was kinda like... fuck it, right? What else am I gonna do here?” Alston nods understandingly - he’s never understood the sober people of the world, but especially not the ones who go to bars and order sodas or seltzer water. The bar is for drinking booze, and that’s that. He wouldn’t go to a teahouse for coffee, or try to play blaseball on a tennis court.

“And then once I’d started, it was... there wasn’t any particularly good reason to stop.” Cedric is still staring into his drink between sips, turning the can around and around in his hands. “Just kinda kept going. Didn’t get like, really messed up or anything, just... comfortable. You know?” Alston doesn’t have to say, I know. Cedric’s voice grows softer, more thoughtful. “I probably could have stayed there forever. If the waves didn’t bring me back.”

That last line is too much for Alston to restrain himself anymore. He flings his arms around Cedric, jostling him into spilling a bit of beer over his hands and the carpet, but Alston doesn’t care. He buries his face in Cedric’s neck. It’s strangely scentless without the earthy smoke smell that clings to him normally. “I’m so glad you came back,” Alston whispers.

Cedric doesn’t say, me too.

“Y’know, a lot of people get really out of it when they smoke, but it’s never been like that for me. It just makes me more interested in stuff. More... excited about the world, I guess.” He stares at the pipe sitting on the table before them, still spinning the beer can in his hands. “This was kinda what I think it’s like for other people when they smoke. Nothing was particularly bad. Not good, either, but... definitely not bad. Just... chill. Like being in water the exact temperature of your body.”

Alston has finished his drink; he stands up and says, “I’m just making another, I’m still listening, babe.”

Cedric’s voice rises in volume so that it carries into the kitchen, but doesn’t change intonation. “What’s it like for you when you drink?”

Alston stares down at his empty glass, the bottle of bourbon in one hand. Isn’t that a fucking question. He pours three fingers’ worth, then takes a nip off the bottle for the hell of it before adding simple syrup, water, and a couple dashes of bitters. He doesn’t fuck around with the garnish this time.

On the couch, Cedric is still sitting in the exact same position, elbows on his knees, looking at nothing. Alston sits back down, still thinking about how to answer the question. Finally he just starts to talk without knowing what he’s going to say. “Sometimes it’s like that, yeah. I mean, it makes me more emotional sometimes, too. You know that.” Cedric has seen his crying fits, his terrible overenthusiastic karaoke and the joy that goes with it, his irrational rages at himself when he drops something or stubs his toe. “But even then it doesn’t feel... I mean, it feels bad sometimes, sure, but it’s... a bearable kind of bad. The feelings happen fast enough that I don’t really get stuck in them. I don’t know. That doesn’t make sense.”

Cedric shakes his head lightly. “No. I think it does.”

“But yeah. Sometimes it does feel like you were saying, about Elsewhere. Like whatever’s going on in the outside world is really muted and far-away and it can’t hurt me.”

“Yeah,” Cedric whispers, a tiny bit of some sort of emotion showing through a crack in his voice. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Alston has the sense that they’re standing on some precipice, without any notion of what’s below. He waits a long time before nudging them forward, and maybe over. His voice has lowered to a whisper as well. “What... hurts you?”

Cedric looks up at his face, finally, though his eyes are still dim and barely focused. “It hurts to think that you feel like that so much of the time.”

The drink in Alston’s hands is half-empty. He wants to finish it in one deep gulp, but instead he puts it down on the table next to Cedric’s weed tray. He leans sideways into his boyfriend’s shoulder, and Cedric does the same, his body softening and sagging with exhaustion. They let the sides of their skulls rest against each other, as if they’re conjoined twins, sharing each other’s pain. They hold each other up like that for a long time.