Day 263 - Wednesday, September 10th

[papalobo]

[By morning, Max's texts are mostly jibberish but the article he delivers to Peter at 3:30 AM is well polished, especially given in the e-mail and subject body the entire line was off by one or more--- 'yjr stiv;r er ys;lrff snnpiy' for 'The article we talked about' and the body was similarly incoherent.

Everything hurts. He knows Ash would tell him to take a damn sleeping pill already. He knows a lot of things. He knows Ash is tired of his pity party. He knows even if Ash were to tell him something comforting, he wouldn't believe it. But being in this brain-rotted state of sleepless delirium is actually further from consciousness. In sleep, he dreams, and there he is. Right now, there's a state as far from himself, as if his self has decayed, like inebriation, and that's nice enough he decides it calls for some actual inebriation. They've got hard liquor and his publication calls for some, so he's going to toast to himself at sunrise, and let the cats hear him tell them in loud, slurring detail about the time Eiji saved Ash in the sewers, that their Ash is all sewer stinky now again, and that Ash won't come home because he's fantasizing about better times with a better useless sidekick, and also he's probably blowing Blanca to get magical answers, or maybe just because he likes men who can react. At any rate, they should come outside with him he decides, and he will also pour alcohol into shot glasses that he'll set on the ground level for them.

By 8:00, he's Shawn's problem. His texting skills have deteriorated enough to switch to voice.

Shawn puts up with it for about fifteen minutes, but he's got things to do, like wait in the bar for Ash to wake up and see how things have been going.

He is then Jenkins's and Charlie's and even Kent's problem. All of them are surely grateful to Ash for having encouraged him to build and reach out to a friend group a little more.]

Comments

[papalobo]

I mean the bottle's clear. You can't see it. Where is it? I 'unno.

[Sip.]

[jadedlynx]

Let me have it. I brought breakfast, that deserves a drink.

[papalobo]

Why're you here?

[He hands the bottle over. Ash is going to take it away. But it's over anyway. He'll have to take his pills and dream, and then, after dreaming, wake up more awake, more present than ever. Like this, he's less here. His mind's further gone, and the longer it lasts, the more a part of him can almost believe he won't quite fully come back, not even drug through dreams to get there.]

[jadedlynx]

[ At least it's not a total lie. Ash needs a drink. ]

I didn't know I had to justify coming back to my own house. Why don't you want me here?

[papalobo]

[For his trouble Ash gets a vague, noncommittal grunt. Ash doesn't want to be here. He hasn't been in three days. But Ash will just get annoyed at his pity whoring, or have to lie and fake it, or pretend he's useful, try to play Eiji.

Not of Max plays Eiji first.]

Tie Dye Mom.

[jadedlynx]

[ He doesn't know what to do. Blanca trained him to fight, and it's looking like he can't do fuckall if he wasn't trained because he can see that Max is getting worse instead of better. He thought he was getting better.

Maybe this is why he usually fell for the people good at this. He could offer something to Eiji. He could... Kind of protect him. What was he doing for Max?

Ash eats his own omelet without comment. Max gets bacon and eggs on toast. They both know he's getting drugged after this. ]

[papalobo]

[He tries to also give Ash toast, deciding his meal doesn't have enough carbs. In his mind, Ash hasn't eaten since he left, because he hasn't seen it. Another part of his mind knows it's not true. But he tries to stay quiet. Anything he says is conditioned to be hung up on or... He doesn't know.

He doesn't want to go to sleep. He doesn't want to see Ash fucking other people anymore.]

[jadedlynx]

Max.

[ He pushes the toast back. If he wanted toast, he'd have gotten toast. ]

[papalobo]

[Fine. He'll eat that too.

Having lived now in this haze, which he's pretty sure is reality, the dreams are going to feel more real too.

Ash really did ask if he could maybe have Eiji too. Offered to see if Eiji might work his magic on Max, something more mutual than Ash's exclusive side piece. That much is real.

Maybe he's already started dreaming.

Ash finally comes home after so many days, worried about.... Max can't remember, and he has to take care of him.

God, he is dead weight.]

[jadedlynx]

I need you more than this.

[ It's not going to work. Like spending an entire day crawling in the sewer, he knows this isn't going to work, but Max is going to hate himself anyway. ]

I need you sober and well rested. Right now, I'm seeing Sing getting the Dino treatment and I'm sending Shawn in to be another Shorter so I need you. I get you need something for me too, but I'm not Eiji so I just need you to tell me already.

[papalobo]

M'fine. You're a kid....good. A good kid. The article I sent out's gonna work. I'll get some sleep and get part 2 out in time. I got drafts ready for beers. For... Not beers, for the other papers. I get y'need me to be more but m'not Blanca. Even sober, this's all I got. And I know your time'd'a been better spent doing it yourself but names and... Mh, you need me... as a ghost writer name not... who's not you. So I'll, I can do that.

[jadedlynx]

You're as fine as I am.

[ He really isn't hungry. Half the omelet is all he can do. ]

[papalobo]

I'm not that fucked up.

[jadedlynx]

I hope Sing isn't either.

[ Standing, he leaves the omelet to look for the cats. He has to leave again today. ]

[papalobo]

[And Max is like this, instead of just stuffing it down, playing Eiji (badly) and letting Ash deal with things only he can. Max's answer to feeling useless is to become even more dead weight.

Ash is suffering. That much is real and clear. As usual, his capacity to do anything about it is less existent than the fuzzy humanoid shadows and lights that sometimes form in his vision. Max goes to look for another bottle; it's hard not to hope the meds he knows he's going to have to take react with whatever alcohol he can get down. If he doesn't wake up, as much as he hates to see while he's asleep, it's better.

Of course he doesn't drink enough to think that's likely. It'd be really inconvenient to Ash who needs him to be a Potemkin right now.

Why the hell isn't Blanca helping him and just making this all better?

Because Ash is busy humoring Max. Blanca, too, likely resents Max cutting into his Ash time, his Ash exclusivity.

The kid's being forced to make an unfair choice between someone he already signed on with in a contract, and someone who could actually help him. But fuck Blanca for not helping him, for some petty reason like that. Not that Max himself is much better, breaking down like this to avoid seeing dreams of the two of them.

Eiji is Ash's only salvation.

The cats are now in the corner of the office. That's where Max spent most of the last few days, so that's their 'space' now. There's a stack of handwritten papers that make up the start of Ash's biography, and many scattered notebooks and an out-of-charge tablet around the presently locked computer.]

[jadedlynx]

[ He doesn't snoop. Not that he's against it, but he has to get the cats and the pills, and he has to meet Shawn again. Ash keeps wires, as odd a think as it may be to keep. When he emerges, he has the cats in one hand in the pill bottles in another.

He'd prefer not to think of the biography. ]

I have to meet with Shawn for lunch. He's going to talk to Ling.

[papalobo]

Tellin' me all the balls in the air on this one won't juggle m--won't. I won't... be no help looking for... the things. I know.

[jadedlynx]

You've not been clued in because every time I text to clue you in, you've been pissy. I could've used your help with Jenkins. I wanted to bounce the Shawn idea off of you, but when I start to bring it up, you tell me how useless you are.

You were too busy telling me you're useless to be my partner in it.

The article is coming out at a good time.

[papalobo]

[What the hell else can be do, even bouncing the idea off of him? It's not like he had any alternatives, nor is he going to ever actually think of a damn thing Ash doesn't.
He's not Blanca. He can't be on an even playing field. He'll always just be dead weight, no meaningfully different from Eiji. That's the one through train of thought that keeps making sense, no matter how much he wants to drift mentally away into nonsense.

But Ash only sees it as self pity holding himself back, rather than an inherent uselessness.

He gets it. He wants Max to try. Eiji, despite being, well, Eiji, tried.

He eyes the pill bottle. Even if any overdose was purely accidental, if he dies, Ash blames himself and feels worse, somehow.

The most he can do is try to roleplay Eiji for him. It doesn't matter if it's all fake. Ash wants him to try, the same way he wants to keep cute but useless cats around.

What's the most Eiji like thing to do in this situation, then?]

Sorry.

[jadedlynx]

[ Ash knows Shorter is effecting his decision. Max might have been more practical about it. No one else knows about what happened.

Idly, he opens the bottle and slides the pills, the right number, toward Max. ]

Sleep. Today. I'll argue with you when your brain can argue back.

[papalobo]

I hate sleeping.

[It's a complaint to himself as he scoops them up and swallows them, talking as if Ash isn't really able to hear things not meant for him.]

[jadedlynx]

[ Unfortunately, he can. ]

What are the nightmares about?

[ He's too familiar with them to not know the implications of that statement. ]

[papalobo]

[Like he's going to let Ash take any more problems on right now.]

The waking up part feels like a hangover, that's all.

[He reaches out clumsily, musing Ash's hair with his bloody-eyed attempt at a smirk. As if touching him doesn't make him think of a whiter hand touching him with more finesse.]

[jadedlynx]

Liar.

[ He feels worse when not sleeping than he would from waking up. ]

Is that why you decided to act like a mad teenage girl the day after we had sex three times? A nightmare?

[papalobo]

A mad teenage girl, huh.