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The ball of ice clinks against the glass, melting slowly into the whiskey, watering it down and diluting it into one exhausted like chewed up gum.
He hangs his head low, hunched over the counter as if bearing the weight of someone thrice his age, someone older than he ever should be. The amalgamation of his recurring dreams which won’t leave him weigh his body down, a burden of the world on his shoulders created by himself which pushes him down into the earth. His clothes don’t feel any different though they are missing the restraints, they look normal, natural even.
When he raises the glass up to the light it casts a shadow back to him, across his face and over his eyes, dying everything a yellow-brown, the rows of alcohol behind the counter, the lights, the music blend in with the colors to hover in the back of his head like a hangover. Despite the brown liquid the eye of the ice still seems a chilly grey.
“May I sit?” Grey-blue eyes stare kindly; Duchenne knows nothing of this man, their eyes meet and fall short. The bar seat has been empty for as long as he can remember, the only thing that changes night to night is who occupies it.
At his nod, practiced and perfected, a habit he doesn’t have to think about anymore, he sits. He isn’t loud when he drags the chair out only enough to sit and gathers his hands on the hardwood counter, gloves wrinkling around his joints when he flexes his fingers, stretching over delicate hands. His hospital ID is shoved in his front pocket, deep in it so he can’t see the writing but he can see its metal clip’s indent against the fabric. He waits patiently for the bartender only to fumble and order the same thing as him.
He tucks grey hair behind his ear, fingers tracing a line down his throat. When the glass is passed, grating against the counter, he takes a slow, tentative sip, Adam’s apple bobbing as the alcohol burns its way down, eyes pressed tight against the sensation, the bitter taste.
“Rough day at work?” Kazui prompts, picking up his glass as the other hits down.
Shidou stills like a ghost then laughs in an exhale, “Is it obvious?”
He glances at him over the rim, “A little.” There is no clock that he can see, only supportless walls so he counts the seconds in his head, the number continuously ticking upwards like a balloon before it pops. “You don’t drink much?” Asking questions he already knows the answers to has become commonplace.
“I can’t say that I do.” Shidou says softly, “One bad habit is enough for me, I’m afraid.” He swirls the glass and watches the liquid swirl like a whirlpool, “And you?”
Kazui sighs and he drags a hand through his hair to feel the knots be tugged free, “You’re more responsible than I am.”
“Just more cautious, perhaps.” He says in a comforting way, nicely and tenderly, smooth like the poison he keeps on swallowing down. But his self-inflicted poison is bitter and it stings going down, Shidou's just makes his chest clench and his throat shut.
Sometimes Shidou is here with his gloves, sometimes he isn't; before or after his ‘murder’. He'd like to say that after is better, at least Shidou knows who he is. They can make inside jokes from back during their time in the Smoker's Club, talk about how the young ones are so different from them but it only means he's closer and closer to… “Cautious, yes. You're probably right.”
Indulging only spawns regrets, that much he has already learned. His wedding ring shines under the yellow lights above the bar.
“I ought to be more cautious.”
Shidou stays silent. His eyebrows furrowed slightly, his jaw tightened further, a notch down from the one he'd worn when he was talking about Fuuta and Mahiru’s conditions. When they’d talked about protection and safety and responsibility. Shidou’s features arch and flow like a marble statue, one dug up and admired, his compassion bleeding from his eyes into the outside world so easily and blindingly.
His eyes slope down, eyelashes mingling when his eyelids fall shut.
Kazui takes another sip of his whiskey, the ice rocks against the glass. Shidou glances his way. “I smoke more than I drink,” Kazui explains though it isn’t necessary, he just wants to hear him talk, “so, by comparison, this isn’t that bad.”
Frosted glass eyes mellow, “Comparison is a fool’s predicament.” Shidou explains, “Two bad scenarios aren’t in competition.” He looks back down to his hands, fidgeting against one another and neither far from his chest. “They are coexisting,” Eyes fogged, he can’t see past his own hands. His hair falls around his face like a veil, “You can only hope to be able to get rid of them.”
To be able to do what it takes. Kazui wonders why he keeps getting these dreams. Shidou haunting him, waiting for him at night to whisper to him in an imaginary bar. He’d promised to protect them; Shidou picked up the pieces he missed. Es voted them both innocent and yet it had helped nobody.
Es surely made a mistake somewhere, coexisting, in MILGRAM, is codependent; they were too young to think it through.
Kotoko may have been right in her ideal to cut out the bad before it got worse. Nip the infection in the bud, cut off the limb to save the body. But, how could that have been right? How could all the harm be justified over a possibility? He never should have come clean.
He’ll never get clean, he knows this as he takes another sip of his watery drink not with every time he closes his eyes reminding him of the deaths on his hands. He’s always been taught that lies spiral, maybe the truth does too.
Shidou here, reminding him of that. They really are similar in many ways but Shidou wasn’t afraid to look someone in the eye, even if he held his fair share of secrets. Kazui just needs to know what he would do, he just needs his comfort. He shouldn’t, he’s older, he should handle it himself but Shidou had always been more responsible than him, more than him in every way that truly counted for something.
They were a good duo, the protectors, earning their place amongst the living.
“You should stick to smoking,” Kazui says as Shidou finishes his drink. He receives a raised eyebrow and like a dog, he takes it as a cue to continue, “Drinking kills.”
Shidou smiles and Kazui’s eyes sting, “I think you are getting the expression wrong, Mukuhara-san.”
In Shidou’s grey-blue eyes, like the eye of his melting ice, he sees his own reflection staring back.
Dreams are just like lies, he thinks, though telling them or not, they both hurt the same this time.
His ice has dissolved completely and it tastes like nothing going down.