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It has been one month.
Only that long and Katana already worries about forgetting his voice, about misremembering how his nose swathes in and out of rigidity, about all the subsequent stories of him breaking it over and over again and how exactly it got to being the unique shape Katana liked to trace. He lays in his bed at night without anyone to hold onto, the room impossibly cold as it shoves out air conditioning meant for two.
Only that long and Katana finds himself inside a bar. There, Hyperlaser sits, upper half lousily spread across the bar. A half-empty glass of whiskey is in his right hand, railgun in the other (and engaged, and unlocked, and he sucks in a breath, because when has Hyperlaser ever been so reckless?). His chest rises and falls, slow, harmonic motions that would normally ease Katana in any other setting.
Hyperlaser has drunk himself into a pit again, and he lacks the energy to climb out. Katana, as calm as he can muster, slides into the barstool next to him and orders a shot of sake. The bartender – he forgets their name, despite seeing him many times before when he and Hyperlaser would take trips down here after their Phights (he neglects to think about how Hyperlaser hasn’t participated in a Phight since they split) – frowns at him, a displeased and disconcerting look. Katana stares, because that is all he can do.
He reaches over to flip the safety of Hyperlaser’s railgun on and tips the chin of his mask up to reveal scarred mouth and gum, and brings the shot glass to his lips. Covering the part of his cheek that rips open and reveals his molars, he leans his head to rest on his left hand, right setting the glass down and pushing it away with two fingers. It blooms on his tongue, disgustingly bitter, and eats away at his flesh. Alcohol is not what he needs tonight.
When the glass clacks against the wood varnish, the mercenary next to him turns his head, so that it now lays on his side. Katana cannot see anything past his one-way visor, but he can almost imagine the expression. (Somewhere, also, he imagines nursing a hangover the next morning and making two cups of tea. He grunts.) Languid and unfocused, looking forward to the release of unconsciousness when he can’t handle any more.
“...Oh, Katana,” he slurs. His full name.
Katana breathes deep and full and thanks the deities he doesn’t believe in that Hyperlaser cannot see his face – for if he could, the Inpherno knows what his reaction would be. Abhorrent disgust, maybe, for such a horrible falling-out and how much he hurt him. Maybe a gaze that would make Katana fall in love all over again. Maybe one that would make him cry here.
He has never cried.
“Hyperlaser,” he responds, Thieves Den poise still lifting his shoulders despite the place and the person he speaks to. “Are you okay? You seem winded.”
“Fuck’re you doin’ here?” His words are lazy and dense, his tongue too big in his mouth to hit all the right consonants. So he stumbles, here and there, eventually settling into a rhythm where he can form coherent words. Probably not sentences, Katana muses. He seems blackout drunk.
“I came for a drink,” he replies smoothly, “and noticed you sitting here. Again, I must ask, are you alright?”
“Why do you give a shit?” Immediate and abrupt. Drunk actions are sober thoughts. Katana curses himself over and over again.
He can’t find it in himself to respond. He wants to say because I love you, because you’re drinking like this again, because it could kill you and I don’t know what I’d do , but none of it comes out. The only thing he does do is a slight nod of his head and an awkward turn back to the bar. Shelves upon shelves of rich wines and expensive bourbon stare back at him.
“How many glasses?” It is the only question he thinks of that does not make him want to wrap his arms around Hyperlaser’s waist and reassure him again.
“Seven,” Hyperlaser drawls. There’s a chuckle interlaced into his speech near the end. “I asked for my whiskey to be spiked, also, so I’m probably extra drunk. I feel real funny. Not how I normally feel when I get shit-faced. Like, I feel like I’ve ingested meth.”
He rambles. How achingly familiar it is, how it tears Katana’s skin open until he can bleed no more. How he cannot remember all the features of his face and how he desperately wants to get the helmet away from him, far away as possible, so he can kiss and caress and trace the contours of him.
“That is too much, Hyperlaser. You will be nursing a migraine tomorrow.”
Hyperlaser shrugs. “Felt like shit before I started drinking and I’m apparently gonna feel like shit afterwards. What’s it matter? Nothin’s changing.”
Nothing is changing, and everything has changed, and it all changed one month ago. Katana wishes he could go back– no, no he doesn’t. This was the right decision for both of them. Katana is a dangerous, foolish man, who has a cult trailing him, who has made enemies out of allies and graves out of loved ones. He is not anyone to be around, nor anyone to talk to, nor anyone to tug into bed sheets and cuddle until he falls asleep.
Katana can hear how Hyperlaser’s eyebrows furrow when he conjures his next sentence. “I thought you didn't care, anyway.”
No. No. Katana cares more than he has ever cared in his entire life. He cares enough to walk Hyperlaser through a dim apartment just to help him fit his helmet on, he cares enough to file Hyperlaser’s horns down to a level surface when they irritate his head too much, he cares enough to walk into a bar at the worst hour of the night and sit next to the man he hurt and the man he left and he cares so much–
He cares. He’s cared. He doesn’t think he will ever stop caring.
Hyperlaser calls for the bartender and orders one more glass. Katana is screaming at him to stop, but none of the words ever leave his mouth. He sits and watches as Hyperlaser, instead of nursing his health, cradles a glass of hard whiskey in his hands; tilts up his visor to reveal his lips and takes half of it in one swig. They are so chapped, so battered and bleeding, and Katana remembers exactly how they feel.
He is remembering a lot; he doesn’t want to. His mind cannot sit still when it comes to Hyperlaser.
It is too late to stop him, too early to speak to him, so Katana, with lead-weighted feet, stands. His heart caves in on itself when he hears the muted scoff from the mercenary. He swallows thickly when Hyperlaser goes ahead and downs the rest of the glass right after. He is hurting. Katana still thinks somewhere that he is saving him. So, maybe for himself – he doesn’t know anymore – he slides a hand across Hyperlaser’s shoulder, gives it a gentle squeeze, and steps away.
The cold air of a winter in Crossroads makes his skin rough. Only then does he realize that moisture is beading under his eyes.