Chapter Text
[[low battery]]
Dex breathed in just enough to let out a shallow sigh. A long, quiet moment passed.
[[warning]]
He was so tired. The fatigue made his bones ache. This was worse than after he unplugged, before Charlie found that pocket reactor. Worse than it was when he was unmodded. He didn't even have low-power jitters.
[low battery]]
Acknowledging the notification with a sharp mental swipe, he gathered all his strength and swung his legs off the couch, leveraging them weakly to just barely sit up, then opened his eyes.
He was back on the balcony. He'd have to go inside, cross the entire bar, and plug in. Somehow.
[[critically lo—]]
Dex swiped the warning away again, scowling. He'd never gone critical. How had he gotten so low? When had he gotten so low? His gaze turned sluggishly to where he'd been laying.
Had he been… asleep?
It'd been a while, he mused. A long while.
Beneath the fatigue, he did feel a little more fresh. Alive. Able to think.
[[5 minutes of power remaining. Shut down? Y/n]]
Fuck.
> n
[[shutdown aborted]]
Dex rubbed his face, the motion almost more than he could manage, then braced his hands against the couch cushion and, using all his strength… jerked forward, and fell back again.
Fuck.
[[4 minutes of power remaining. Shut down? Y/n]]
> n
[[shutdown aborted]]
Dex glared at his traitorous legs. What the fuck was he supposed to do?
"There you are." Charlie's voice was warmer than it had any right to be, addressing him.
Dex frowned and muttered, "here I am."
Charlie made his way over, strides slow and sure. "Get much sleep?"
"Too much. Can't get up."
"That's not good."
Dex summoned the energy to roll his eyes through sheer force of will.
[[3 minutes of pow—]]
> n
[[shutd—]]
The drummer held out his hand. "Need some help?"
Sighing, Dex raised his eyes to look Charlie in the face. At least it wasn't Hemlock, or the AI.
"More than that. Can barely move."
With a short "ah", Charlie turned and bent to pull Dex's arm around his shoulders and wrap his own around Dex's waist.
"Alright, on three." The drummer braced himself.
Dex was too tired to scowl. "Just get it over with."
"Your call, man."
Charlie lifted, but barely managed to move them an inch.
"Oh, shit. No wonder you cant move, you weigh as much as a fucking car." He paused, but not long enough for Dex to conjure up the energy to speak. "Okay, I got this. Hup."
This time, he managed to get them standing, and Dex managed not to immediately collapse.
"Good to go?" Charlie asked.
All Dex could give was a nod.
[[2 minutes of power remaining. Shut down? Y/n]]
> n
[[shutdown aborted]]
Somehow, he managed to drag his feet forward. Charlie set a painfully slow pace, slow enough that Dex could just keep up. It was agonizing. At least the bar was empty. Not even Stix was around.
Wait, no, there was Hemlock, laid out haphazardly on a sofa, legs dangling far off the end. Dex was pretty sure he was asleep. Hard to tell with no face to speak of.
[[1 minute—]]
> fuck off
[[invalid entry. try again.]]
> n
[[shutdown aborted]]
They were almost there. Dex's vision was tearing and a dark vignette was creeping up around the edges.
Charlie's arm was so warm.
He kept his feet moving as long as he could, but just as they rounded the corner and the generator was in sight, Dex felt his limbs failing. His knee twitched the wrong direction and he tripped.
[[systems powering down.]]
Charlie bore his weight, amazingly.
"I gotcha. C'mon, m—"
Dex gasped for air as a rush of electricity washed over his circuits and his body restarted. His eyes rolled back and he exhaled sharply. Holy shit, it felt good.
His senses flickered to life and he found Charlie leaning over him, one hand holding the side of his neck and the other behind his head.
The drummer wore that familiar, infuriating grin. Dex glared up at him.
"Close one, huh? Good thing I went looking for you."
"I almost died!" He snarled, realizing it even as the words passed his lips.
Charlie winced. "Yeah, I noticed. You modded up so much, you're on life support?"
"Get your hands off me," Dex snapped.
The drummer raised his arms, palms forward. "You got it."
"Of course I did. How else could I play 24/7?"
"I dunno, I figured you'd at least leave your organs alone."
Dex scoffed and took stock. He was on the floor, laid on his back. His knees hurt.
> run .//diagnostic.hmy
[[patella_l integrity 89%. patella_r integrity 93%. all other systems healthy. battery 1%]]
Just his kneecaps, at least. But this charge would take a while.
Charlie must have dragged him down the hall - all 282 pounds of metal, plastic, and silicone - and then figured out which of his dozens of visible and hidden ports to plug the cord into. On his own. With Dex visibly dying on the floor.
He grimaced and sat up. Charlie backed off a little and sat on his heels.
"…thanks," Dex allowed.
Charlie shot him another irritating, careless smile. "Hey, what are friends for, right?"
"We're not friends," he said flatly.
"Sure we are," Charlie laughed. "I don't help randoms walk thirty feet to their reactors when they're half dead. Not quite that good a guy."
Dex didn't bother responding beyond a disgusted grunt. Leave it to Charlie Disco to force a friendship. Annoying.
"You good, now?" The drummer asked. "Gotta make sure Hemlock didn't drown in his skull goo, or whatever it is."
He moved to wave the idiot off, but paused as something occurred to him. It was…
> run .//tools/clock.hmy
[[13:07:46]]
Well, not "morning", but still. Definitely not night, anymore.
"How are you still… alive? Wasn't your deal 'one night only'?"
It was Charlie's turn to grimace. He shrugged. "Beats me. I'm taking it a minute at a time, here. Let me know if you come up with anything."
"Right," Dex said.
He grabbed the reactor's extra cord and plugged it into the other side of his neck as Charlie stood up and left. Not safe, exactly, but he'd taken a much higher voltage than this for almost a decade. He didn't really care about safety, he just wanted a faster charge.
The rush was immediate, as were the little jolts of overcharge. But the sooner his battery was full, the sooner he could get back to practicing. It wasn't like he had much else to do.
"Oh, hey, uh," Charlie rounded the corner, Ragnarock in hand. "Dunno if you've got games or anything on your… body? Figured you'd get bored, so here."
Dex's default glare softened. Fine. Maybe the idiot wasn't all bad. But he was still an idiot.
"Games… on my body," he repeated flatly, accepting his guitar with care. Charlie didn't let go until Dex had a solid grip.
The drummer laughed and shrugged. "You know, like, however you interface with it. Can it run DOOM?"
Ragnarock safely in his lap, Dex sighed.
"Can my mods run DOOM?" It pissed him off a little, but they probably could. "Can your drumsticks work as a doorstop?"
"Uh—"
"Rhetorical question, genius." He paused to roll his eyes. "Technically. I guess. But that's not what they're for."
"Sick. Let me play sometime?" Charlie shot him yet another aggravating grin.
"No," Dex said with finality. He wasn't even sure how that would work.
His thumb unconsciously stroked the strings of his guitar and drew out a whisper of a strum. It calmed his nerves, soothed his annoyance. The urge to practice pulled at him, but he hated doing so with an audience who wasn't practicing alongside him.
"Well, maybe we play together, later," Charlie offered, then paused with his lips pursed. "Our instruments. Not—"
"I get it, Disco," Dex droned. "Fine by me. Go check on your pet skull."
"Oh, right. Later."
He hummed shortly in response, lowering his gaze to his beloved guitar as Charlie strode off. It had always seen him through everything, good and bad. He hadn't been apart from it for longer than it took to get a tune-up for years, and he took a moment to appreciate having it back in his hands. Nothing and no one stayed as true as Ragnarock. Not that it had much of a choice, being an inanimate object. He wasn't really one to personify his belongings.
Still, he had an attachment to it, and it brought him comfort and focus.
Dex sighed as he pulled a more solid strum from the strings, then methodically plucked a few notes with his fingers. Just a hair out of tune. Probably Disco's fault, but easy to fix.
He could hear Hemlock's grating voice from all the way back here, now, though he couldn't quite catch what he was saying. Charlie's laugh rang out, and the skull joined him. It was almost like the old days; Dex tucked away somewhere picking at his strings while the others had their noisy social time.
He relaxed against the pocket reactor, tilting his head back, letting his arms go lax and his hands do all the work. Proper posture was something he worried about before the mods, but not anymore. No delicate tendons to strain, now.
Ragnarock couldn't make its signature sounds without its speaker system, but Dex had long since learned to fill them in mentally in the name of practicing relatively quietly. He was halfway through his fifth rendition of Echolokators when Charlie slipped backstage again with Hemlock and the AI in tow.
"We're gonna grab some breakfast, you in?" The drummer asked earnestly.
The idea of sitting around without his guitar, watching Charlie and Hemlock eat while the doll nattered about whatever she was programmed to say… sounded like a special kind of purgatory. At least before, he'd been able to distract himself with food. Now…
"I don't have a stomach, Charlie," Dex said with only a little irritation seeping through. "I'll be here."
Disco had the grace to look disappointed and he could never tell what Hemlock was thinking — not that he really cared — but the bot seemed completely unaffected.
"Neither does Rori," Charlie pointed out, striking every last synthetic and biological nerve in Dex's body. "C'mon, please?"
He scowled, barely keeping himself in check for the sake of Ragnarock's tuning. "Fuck off. I said no."
Hemlock spoke up next. "D'you still smoke? You got lungs and a brain, right?"
Dex's eyes narrowed. He did like the sound of that. Playing constantly meant no smoke breaks, so it'd been years. Fucking skull.
"Why?" He asked.
Charlie perked up. Infuriatingly endearing. Why was he so dead set on Dex tagging along, anyway?
"I'll nab a pack for ya. Call it even for draggin' my ass to a couch last night."
Charlie had been worried and Dex had been the only one left at the Encore who could lift the giant, ugly bastard. He hadn't considered getting paid back for it, just did it to get the drummer to stop whining, but this was fine by him.
"Alright."