Work Text:
Warriors let out a deep sigh, running his hands down his face and wishing it were possible for him to just disappear off the face of the earth. He hadn’t slept well last night, the single bedroom in his shitty little apartment didn’t really get any of the cool air from the air conditioner so he’d spent the entire night sweating to death, unable to get comfortable. He’d sent his little brother to go sleep on their small couch so the kid wouldn’t melt, but there wasn’t any room for HIM in the living room unless he’d slept on the floor and his back had been killing him lately so he’d chosen extreme heat over worse back pain.
He wasn’t going to have gotten restful sleep either way. Not that it would’ve made his tolerance for bullshit any higher.
“War, you really have to get on this, stop living in the past!” His incredibly loud coworker told him as the guy poured ice into a cup for whatever order he was working on. “Chat GPT just makes life so much easier!”
“No thanks, Volga,” he grumbled for the billionth time that week, trying to keep himself calm so he didn’t scream at or strangle his coworker. He needed to keep his job. “I have brain cells, my brain works, I don’t need to use fucking AI to do basic fucking math.”
Nailed it. So calm.
“You’re like my grandpa,” Volga laughed at him, and Warriors clenched his fist around the blender handle so tight he swore he heard something in his hand pop. “You’re so stubborn with your refusal to participate in the progression of technology!”
Warriors probably shouldn’t yell at his boss’s kid, or punch the guy, because as much as he hated making people’s weird coffee drinks all day he really did need this job. He’d been fired from his last one, an equally shitty job at a department store, because he’d been five minutes late to work a few times since he had to take his little brother to school. The bus didn’t come by their new apartment, something Warriors hadn’t realized until after he’d signed the lease, and even though Mask was twelve he worried about the kid going to a friend’s after school and then trying to walk home from there.
It’d been nice for a month when his ex-boyfriend had been willing to help him pick up and drop off Mask, but now that they’d broken up Warriors couldn’t ask him to do that, so Warriors was all Mask had. They’d been raised by a single mother who’d done her best to give them a good life, but she’d gotten sick and passed when Warriors was finishing up high school so he’d withdrawn his acceptance from the university he’d gotten into in order to take care of his brother. Mask being nine years younger than him had made things a bit hard, he’d been so young Warriors couldn’t really leave him home alone for extended periods of time which made working long hours to make enough money impossible. Things were slightly better now that Mask was almost a teenager, but Warriors did feel bad knowing the kid was sitting home alone, even if he did have the cat for company.
“Are you even listening to me, War?” Volga scoffed, drawing him out of his thoughts. “I’m trying to show you something, dude.”
He knew he’d regret it, but he found himself looking down to see what was on his coworkers phone, and immediately felt any hope or will to carry on drain from his body when he was met with an AI generated image of him and Volga with their arms around each other, grinning, and some fucked up ugly mansion in the back behind them.
“Isn’t it so awesome?!”
Warriors felt tears well up in his eyes.
“I have another one!” His coworker giggled with glee, turning his phone around so he could scroll through his camera roll and Warriors took the opportunity to finish making the drink he’d been working on. He gave the drink a generous helping of whipped cream as an apology to the customer for taking so long before sliding it across the counter with a heavy sigh.
“Order for Sky?”
A young man around his age stepped forward to grab it, thanking him politely and giving him a big smile before walking off.
“Found it! It’s us as football players!” Volga called behind him, trying to shove his phone in Warriors’s face and he would’ve lost it if he hadn’t been rendered speechless by the sight of his AI self as a tall, buff, sports player.
“Get this shit out of my fucking face, dude,” he sighed once he had words, slapping the phone away.
Volga, of course, was offended by this. “What the fuck, War, I’m just trying to share something funny with you! Why do you have a stick up your ass?”
Warriors forced himself to take a deep breath and just walk away. He wasn’t going to convince his coworker to stop using AI, and he wasn’t going to get him to stop putting his face into AI, so it was just best to keep his mouth shut and not start a fight.
Getting through the rest of his shift was tough, especially with Volga being pissed at him which caused the overall atmosphere behind the counter at the coffee shop to suck, but once he was free he was free. He didn’t have work the next day, he was going to spend time with his brother, and no one was going to mention AI to him for at least twenty four hours. Life was beautiful.
His car was hot as hell, he’d been stuck parking in the sun, and he let out a groan when he turned it on and remembered he had a crumb of gas in the tank. The gas station wasn’t too far out of his way, at least, but he hadn’t wanted to spend money after work and he was so exhausted he just wanted to go home. But unfortunately he knew he’d only hate himself if he had to get gas tomorrow morning instead, so with a sigh, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed to the gas station.
Warriors drove in complete silence, anxious to learn his fate and find out how much gas was going to be today, and when he pulled next to the pump and saw the number started with a six, something in him died.
“Fuck,” he groaned, resting his forehead on the steering wheel as tears filled his eyes once again. “Fuck.”
Mask jumped up off the couch in excitement the second he heard the familiar sound of his brother pulling out his keys on the other side of the door. He knew Warriors didn’t like him walking home after school, but he’d found a nice shortcut through the woods between Saria’s house and their apartment, and he’d wanted to come home before his brother would’ve been able to get him so he’d texted Warriors to let his brother know where he was.
“War’s back, Navi!” He told his cat with a big smile, petting her on her soft head when she just stared at him, unamused. She was usually very sweet and cuddly, but Mask couldn’t blame her for the look she’d just given him, considering he’d woken her up from her nap.
Rushing to put a few dishes away before his brother walked into the apartment, Mask ended up getting caught standing in the kitchen awkwardly. War raised an eyebrow at him when he saw him there.
“...Whatcha doin’, kiddo?”
“Walking…?” He blinked at him, feeling the corner of his mouth twist up in a smile when his brother laughed at him.
“Sure, sure, definitely not just putting away what I asked you to this morning.” Even though Warriors’s tone was light and teasing, Mask felt a stab of guilt seeing just how exhausted his brother looked. He knew he’d been taking more shifts at the coffee shop and trying to find a second job to pay for Mask’s therapy and new medication, and he felt bad because his brother was working so hard to do everything for him and it’d taken him twelve hours to put the dishes away.
Slowly, he moved closer to his brother until he could wrap his arms around him in an apologetic hug. Warriors held him back, and Mask could hear the frown in his voice. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just missed you,” he half lied, tilting his head to look up at his brother.
“Well, we’ve got all day tomorrow to do whatever you want, yeah?” Warriors grinned at him. “We could play Minecraft, or go to the park, watch a movie. Whatever you want, okay?”
“Okay,” he said quietly, trying to ignore the crushing sadness he could see in his brother’s eyes.
“You get dinner?”
“I did,” Mask nodded, stepping away.
“Good! I’m going to take a nap real quick,” Warriors told him, reaching towards the couch to snatch the cat, who let out a confused ‘meow’ until she realized who’d grabbed her, and then she started purring. “I’ll be back in like, an hour, and then we can watch something. And I wanna hear about how your science project is going.”
And with that, his brother headed off to their shared bedroom.
Mask gave him a few minutes to fall asleep before quietly heading back into the kitchen to grab two glasses and fill them with orange juice, leaving one glass in the kitchen before taking the other to Warriors. It was something his brother did for him, bringing him juice whenever he wasn’t feeling good, and Mask had come to associate finding glasses of orange juice by his bed in the mornings after a rough night as a quiet ‘I love you’ from his brother.
He found Warriors on his bed on his side of their shared room, dead asleep, with the cat curled up by his head. Setting the glass of juice down, he also grabbed his brother’s phone and quickly typed in the password so he could turn off the alarm his brother had set to wake himself from his nap. Warriors needed the sleep, and they’d have all day tomorrow to hang out and talk.