Notes: I love this series and I am incapable of writing anything angst-free. Let me know what you think! (But no spoilers for the Suffering Game, please.)
Warnings: depression, alcohol
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The morning after Refuge, you stay in bed. The blankets are heavy and comforting, the blinds are drawn, and doing nothing seems so much easier than . . . anything. You could say you've earned this, but really you just can't muster up the energy to do anything else.
You don't cry. It's been a long time since you've cried. You don't even feel any particular grief, beyond the everyday ache in the back of your mind. You're just . . . sad. This isn't some dramatic tearing open of old wounds. It's just a bad day. You remind yourself that you're allowed to have bad days. You let yourself drift.
You are jolted back to yourself by someone opening your blinds.
". . . Taako?" you deduce, squinting in the sudden light.
"The one and only," he replies, and drops down on the foot of your bed without so much as a word of warning.
"Those are my feet," you protest, extracting them from under him.
Taako doesn't reply. He's holding a tube of Pringles under his arm and a half-empty bottle of rosé in his hand. You glance reflexively at the pocket watch you left open on your bedside table. It's ten-fifteen in the morning. You look back at him. Though he is dressed, which is more than you can say for yourself, his hair is a mess, and even more tellingly, his ears are drooping.
"Want some?" he asks, and offers you the bottle.
"No, thanks."
"Good." He takes another swig.
". . . what are you doing here?" you try.
"Merle is off somewhere being a well-adjusted being, and I get looooonely," he says, batting his eyelashes at you. His tone, as it often does, teeters on the knife-edge between sincerity and satire.
You think, I'm too tired for this, but to your own surprise, you're lying. Taako is a weird, unreliable, dishonest asshole but he's your friend, and you're glad he's here, getting Pringle crumbs all over your bed.
"You okay?" you ask, because you know the answer but you think maybe it's been a while since someone asked him that.
"I never developed healthy coping mechanisms as an adolescent and now any bad stuff that happens in my life just kinda hangs out and has a dysfunction party in my brain twenty-four/seven," he says. "But other than that, I'm cool. You?"
"Uhm. Same here, I guess."
"Nah, it's not," says Taako, and takes another swallow. "If I know anything, I know fuck-ups, and you and me, we're two entirely different flavors. But what're you gonna do?"
He's not wrong. If you were going to be dramatic (which you are, just a little; which you always are, when this kind of sadness takes hold), you would say that this, right here, illustrates the difference between the two of you: that your bad day is lying in bed past ten, not thinking about anything at all, knowing it will pass, accepting it's allowed. That his bad day is drinking a bottle of wine before noon, thinking of flippant ways to explain how bad he feels, knowing it's not healthy, accepting it won't change.
Sometimes, you kind of wish you were more like him. You think that sometimes, he probably wishes he were more like you. But what are you going to do?
You push yourself up.
"Pass the Pringles," you say, and you smile, just a little, and his ears perk up, just a touch.
What are you going to do?
"What've you been up to with Angus?" you ask, and he rolls his eyes and starts in on a rant which promises to be five minutes long, at least.
What are you going to do?
You're going to get Merle back here, it what you're going to do. You're going to call Killian and Carey and No. 3113 and see what they're up to. You'll maybe even invite Angus in. If you're going to stay in bed everyone else is going to come to you, and if Taako is going to drink straight out of the bottle at least he's going to share it.
You're going to live and you're going to love and you're going to repeat, repeat, repeat.
Ad infinitum.