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Out of all the things Rex has cursed him with, it certainly wasn’t the new ability to feel.
And he meant that, in the sense that perhaps it’s one of the only things he’s grateful for. To feel is to understand. To understand is to immerse. It was feelings that were based off of all that he’s been through, in life, and in not-death. Perhaps it was a blessing— not that Rex was known to bless people without a single bit of consequence— perhaps it was a curse— because that was the ill-fitting skin on the drum that was Rex Deus’s motif, but…
Whether it’d be honest or not, Rex would know anyway. But they both knew that it wasn’t going to be because of him that A’dhabake exists. No. Sheer luck. Probability— the thing Rex rambles about on and on, had allowed for A’dhabake to exist without the direct touch of Rex Deus’s hands. And that was supposed to be a good thing. His own existence was supposed to be a good thing; to exist at all was to be a good thing, correct?
Just as he was born in that egg would A’dhabake learn that there is no such thing as a good thing.
Rex created a bar. Infinite alcohol stocked the shelves, neon lights framed the columns and rows. The aesthetics weren’t cheap, some kind of modern yet fantastical elements on them were here: glass tables that changed colors if you touched on it, floating seats that only stayed still if you sat on it. The shelves were wooden branches and roots from a tree that gave out its infinite resources, most like to act as a source for the drinks that they were to consume in less than a moment.
“Like the look?” Rex asked, “I’m practicing my interior design skills.”
“You do not have any interior design skills,” A’dhabake says, and Rex rolls his eyes.
“That’s why I said I’m practicing.” Then pulls out a bottle from the tree.
“What is this?”
“An attempt to get you drunk.”
“Be serious.” A’dhabake deadpans. Rex looks at the bottle.
“It’s blank. But it’s gonna be strong,” the liquid sloshes inside, responding to Rex’s description, “it’s gonna be sweet. I like sweet, strong drinks. This one in particular should be,” Rex hums, “strawberry cream.”
The liquid turned thick like cream— but the rest of it striped itself with pink. Rex gave the bottle to A’dhabake. “Why don’t you give it a name?”
A’dhabake hummed, looked at it from the neck down. “Pink Whip.”
The name of the bottle came to view. Pink Whip, it read.
“Any other drink you’d like to make?” Rex says, the branch of the tree hovering close to them. A’dhabake raised his hand in pausing.
“We will drink this first.” He said.
Rex took out the shot glasses. “To god-friendly alcohol.”
He poured the drink into both of them. “When you drink this, you have to take them down in an instant.”
“Is this drink to not be enjoyed slowly?”
“You enjoy it while you down it.” Rex said with a shrug. He raised his glass, downing it instantly. A’dhabake only looked for a moment before he’d ended up drinking the rest too.
“An attempt to get me drunk,” A’dhabake muttered, “is that your latest scheme for me?”
“No,” Rex said, noticing A’dhabake’s scrunched expression, “honest. This used to be fun for me.”
“And you wish for me to have fun?”
“I always wish for you to have fun.” Rex sighed, “Or would you rather I not?”
A’dhabake stayed quiet. He poured the Pink Whip down into his glass and didn’t wait for Rex as he downed it.
“How am I supposed to enjoy this?” A’dhabake asked.
“I said for this drink to be strong. Do you feel anything yet?” Rex downed his own shot.
“The aftertaste.” A’dhabake commented. “The… ‘buzz’, I would suppose. Warmth.”
“Good.” Rex said, “Well. We don’t have brains, but we do have… well. Magic, with us, right? These drinks are full of ‘em. God-friendly alcohol is a slow-going potion that’s going to make us feel good. To stave off that feeling of self-control. Any illusion of cognition. Control.”
“How does that serve as ‘feeling good’?” A’dhabake asked.
“Well, you’re going for another drink, aren’t you?” Rex said, resting his chin against his palm. Rex’s eyes are low-lidded, eyebrows down-turned. It’s not as if it’s the first time A’dhabake’s caught him looking at him like this, but it is the first time A’dhabake takes in this sight and doesn’t look away. In return, A’dhabake glares at him. Glares it away. Rex doesn’t care about that, but at least he leaves it alone. Pink Whip is poured into their shot glasses and it just keeps going.
“How did you ever find this fun?”
“You’ll see.”
The fourth shots come and their eyes meet. A’dhabake’s breath shuddered, the spell causing him to feel warm all over. He feels that pressure between his eyes— dizzying, but not quite there.
“Stroooong. Drink.” Rex says, taking up the bottle and sloshing it. “How’s this for your first drink ever, huh?”
“Not bad,” A’dhabake says, “even if it would not have been my first choice.”
“Good.” Rex says, “What would have been your first choice, though?”
“Something light. Difficult to intoxicate. The magic must still be effective.”
“Hm,” Rex thinks, “would you mix them with Pink Whip?”
“I emphasize on difficult to intoxicate.”
“Right.”
The branch gives them a small bottle to work with. Rex tosses it to him, A’dhabake catches it.
He swears he’s looking at him, “I do not—“
But Rex’s hands clasp on his shoulders from behind, making him jump out of his own skin, and as he looks up Rex kisses his forehead and blesses him with one of his abilities. Then A’dhabake looks back to the seat in front of him, right where Rex is sitting.
“Now you do,” Rex says, holding up a twin bottle. “Now, what do you want?”
“I want something sour.” A’dhabake says, looking down at the bottle. “Bright, neon green. Perhaps like an apple. It fizzles like soda.”
The liquid sloshes green.
“Ew.” Rex comments. “Are you sure?”
“I know what I want.” A’dhabake says, taking the bottle cap off and drinking it. He cringes at the taste, regrets the sourness immediately, but he doesn’t back down in front of Rex despite how he’d know what he’s regretting— it’s better to show than for him to know.
“Ew.” Rex says again, sipping some of it. He taps his tongue between his lips, shakes his head and the bottle disappears in his disapproval. He goes back to the shots. “Not gonna come back to the shots?”
“Later.” A’dhabake says.
“I’ll be so lonely.” Rex sighs.
“I hope so.” A’dhabake bites.
Rex takes a shot. A’dhabake drinks his bottle, slowly and gently.
“Why are we doing this?” A’dhabake says between sips, leaning back against his seat.
“For you to have—“
“Sure.” A’dhabake cuts off, “Go on now, tell the truth.”
Rex looks at him, up and down. Then he looks to the side, crossing his legs in a vain attempt at dignity, but A’dhabake can reclaim the shamelessness. He keeps his eyes on Rex, not wanting to break the contact, then Rex looks back at him.
“I miss having a life.”
“You took that away from yourself.” A’dhabake drinks from the bottle.
“I had to.” Rex said, “You know, we had drinking games for these. People danced. Sung, laughed.”
“Well, you’re not getting that out of me.”
“Not yet.” Rex’s throat dipped and made an unfamiliar noise as he looked down at the shot glass. “Or maybe this is going to turn very interesting, who knows.”
A’dhabake looked away and shook his head.
“Would you like it better if we had people to mingle with?”
“We would cause a scene.” A’dhabake said. “Save yourself the trouble. They will not be real anyway.”
“Or we could go back to the other worlds.”
A’dhabake scoffed, “Oh, fuck off.”
“What?” Rex spread his arms out. “I’m not playing, I’m serious about the whole worlds thing.”
“You will cost me another marriage?”
“Hey, not every world can give you a new wife in an instant.”
“It is what you are counting on.”
Rex tilted his head, “you seriously want that to be true?”
He stayed quiet. Rex waved his hand.
“Oh, so now you don’t talk. I thought we were getting somewhere interesting here. Always talking in these paces where you go up and up and up but you always stop before we get somewhere—“
He slammed his bottle on the table. The table shook. Rex looked at him, mouth agape.
“Maybe I should change the table to—“
“You are lucky,” A’dhabake hissed, holding the bottle by the neck and pointing the end at Rex’s direction, “that you are too far for me to hit.”
Rex’s fingers touched the bottle, pushing it down. Their eyes were still on each other. Rex was never going to be afraid of him, and that’s what made A’dhabake’s efforts so futile.
And consistent.
“Drink.” He said, tilting his head forward.
A’dhabake gladly did.
Rex took the next shot.
“Define ‘life’.” A’dhabake said.
“What?”
“You said you had a life you missed having. What did that entail?”
“When I wasn’t suffering from mother-related agony?” Rex tilted his head, “A lot, actually.” He held the Pink Whip bottle by the neck, “If I wasn’t fighting, I was drinking. Staying with my friends. Running away from the church that wrung me by the neck by, say, doing everything they didn’t want me to do. I used to create.”
A’dhabake stared at him.
“Write, paint, sing, play instruments… voice was different because this was before the deal, but I still did what I did. Sometimes I think I lost myself because I couldn’t do any of those anymore.” Rex said.
It was hard to find what it was that Rex had really been back in his earlier days. A’dhabake thinks so, mostly because that couldn’t have been all there was to it. Or does he speak of truth without his own bias? Would that ever be possible?
“Stop narrating in my head.” A’dhabake bit out.
“Ah, forgot. You’re a lot less drunk than I am, right?” Rex asked. “Let’s change that.”
“What will you do?”
“Getting you to make another drink, if you’d so like.” Rex tilted his head back. The tree branch gave them a new bottle and a pair of short, wide glasses. “Come on, while we still can.”
“Something medium.” A’dhabake said. Rex’s face scrunched in impatience. “I would like to drink something the color of a stone.”
“Like what?”
“Opal.”
The bottle swished in Rex’s hand. It was thick white, glittery in purples, blues and pinks.
“… Interesting. What’s the taste?”
“Alcoholic.”
Rex shut his eyes and huffed, “Dude, that’s just the general consensus.”
“It tastes of whipped cream.”
Rex opened his eyes.
“Cool. What will you name it?”
“Milky Way.”
“Alright.” Rex said, pouring it down the wider glasses. “Cheers, love.”
A’dhabake drank it down. It disappeared down Rex’s throat much faster.
“If you are so interested in having a life, why do you desire one with me?”
Rex’s head lolled, “because you also… desire one anyway.”
“Not with you.”
“If life had been boring, you would have it with anybody you wanted.” Rex said, leaning against the table. “Just like if it was with me, they would, well, get themselves killed.”
“You admit to being a monster.”
“I admit to being a god. And besides, that’s not news and you know it.” Rex folded his arms on the table. “Every creation I have that’s created for the simple thing of being finds its way to play existentialist with me. And I give them their freedom. Their fair game. But it’s not enough. They know what they are, they know what they’ve been. In the end it’s not within my control whether they die or not, but, between you and me,” Rex leaned in, “they die anyway. Like you.”
“Will I die, Rex?” A’dhabake said, “Will I die again? This time by your hand?”
“I’m drunk.”
“Fuck you.” A’dhabake leans into his space.
“We could have something, A’dhabake.” Rex says, placing his hands on A’dhabake’s.
“Why not create someone who wants that with you?”
Rex gripped his fingers. “Because I want someone who’s earned it.”
“I have not earned anything.”
“Yes, you have.” Rex’s voice shakes as he brings their hands up. “You’ve spent your whole life yearning for something you could never have. The closest thing to a life you’ve had was wasted. And it’s no longer yours. But now— we could create something. We could have something. A life, together!”
A’dhabake stared back at him. He pulled away from Rex’s grip and drank down the Milky Way in his glass.
“Perhaps being intoxicated is going to be within my favor.”
“Shot?” Rex’s mouth was crooked as he filled the shot glasses once more. A’dhabake took to it immediately. Then silence took over. A’dhabake felt the dizzying spell work now. He rubbed his temples, shutting his eyes, only to peer back into Rex’s.
“I am not feeling the rest of these effects that you are going through.”
“You literally skipped the rest of the strong drinks for the weaker ones. Catch up or fall back.”
A’dhabake groaned. He took another shot, then poured in Milky Way for good measure onto the Pink Whip.
“Are we perchance drink mixing?” Rex tilted his head, reaching out to touch the glass, only for A’dhabake to smack his hand away as he drank the sweet stuff down. A’dhabake groaned as he placed the glass down.
“Too much sweetness?”
“Too much creaminess.”
They should have made ice cream instead.
“I do not need a narration for this to be said.”
“Oh, but—“
“Speak properly.” A’dhabake said.
“Fine.” Rex shrugged. “We should make ice cream sometime, yeah?”
“By make, you mean manifest?”
“We could manifest the ingredients. The making’s the fun part.”
“For ice cream we won’t even need to eat.”
“For alcohol, we don’t even need to drink, but here we are, aren’t we? Now what flavors do you wanna try out for that ice cream?”
“Anything. If it means that perhaps it shall taste better than our alcohol.”
“I dunno about that, dude.”
“What do you mean?”
Rex gestured between them, then the alcohol, “It can be as good or as bad as you want it to be. But the aftertaste can’t be helped.”
“Is this what will happen if we make something together?”
“It’s what happens when anybody makes anything.” Rex sat back, placating. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”
“No.” A’dhabake lied.
“You’re afraid of turning out like me.” Rex huffed, “If that’s really your only qualm to not wanting to make anything, I think that’s a very boring way to live.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Your reasons aren’t good.” Rex frowned. “You have to trust me.”
“How?” A’dhabake snapped. “There is nothing for me to do that will make a real choice in the matter.”
Rex reached out for the bottle of Pink Whip. He poured into the shot glasses for him. “You do. But the other choice just isn’t better most of the time. It’s not my fault, this time.”
A’dhabake opened his mouth, then shut it. Rex knew that. Rex knew that there could’ve been other choices for A’dhabake to have. That there could’ve been something that Rex would have made for A’dhabake to have a choice for.
But A’dhabake always knew that when it came to Rex, he’ll only have things his way.
So he took the glass of Pink Whip, and for the first time he raised his glass, waiting for Rex to clink it, and when he did, they drank it down together.
He was right. The aftertaste couldn’t be helped.