Hovering on the threshold of waking, you're already annoyed at yourself. Typical: you can't even dream about being wounded in the heat of battle, no, you just get your knee blown out by a roadkill bomb. A fucking dead fucking exploding goat. Dumbest blood dream ever. That'll teach you to sleep in a pile of fabric like a human, it makes you dream up halfassed bullshit tiptoe wars with no conquest and no glory.
That's probably the way humans do it, though. They're so terrible at everything...
The sound that woke you comes again. You identify it automatically: garbage truck backing up in the cul-de-sac. The dipshit driver would rather wake up the entire neighborhood at six on a Saturday morning than bump over the curb for two feet. One of these days you're going to go out there and
kick his ass in your peejays
garbage truck
Saturday
garbage truck and Saturday are human things
yes of course they're fucking human things what else would
... oh.
You drag the blanket off your face and blink at the wall of your bedroom, where an orange line of dawnlight slants across your framed poster of a '69 GTO. Like a no-smoking sign. No muscle cars. Thank you for not Pontiac.
You rub your eyes. What were you even dreaming about? Were you dreaming that your life was a dream? That crazy guy at the bar must've gotten to you more than you thought. He acted so normal while talking his extraordinary bullshit. He was probably just trolling you.
And okay, what's wrong with that phrase, why does it stick out in your head like a neon sign flashing HEY FUCKASS at you?
Ugh. Hangovers.
After a long shower, breakfast, physical therapy exercises, and another quick shower, you finally feel properly awake and functional. You've forgotten what was bothering you when you woke up. You barely even remember you were bothered. By the cold light of day all that stuff seems vague and pointless.
You do some yardwork, help your other-half-of-the-duplex neighbor clean his gutters (the guy is completely goddamn hopeless at typical man stuff, he should just hire someone, but his bitch wife keeps pushing him because gender roles are like her religion) and get told off for swearing in front of their kids. You watch a movie (you don't care what the critics say, 'Hancock' is a pretty decent film, although mostly because Will Smith never sucks), then go to bed early.
You don't have any dreams that you remember.
Sunday, you do laundry.
By Friday, you barely remember what the weird guy said to get under your skin like that, and you're kind of hoping he'll be there so you can try and get more of it out of him. You can record it on your phone this time. The guys at work will laugh their asses off.
He's not there, though. You shrug and let it go.
If you have an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach, like you've let something terribly important slip past you, it's subtle enough that you can ignore it. You're a pro at ignoring uneasy feelings.
"I've heard about you," she says. "You're that misogynistic asshole who gets off on making girls cry."
This one's got sharp eyes, is black and still has her natural curls - no bleach-blonde spray-tan crap here - and is wearing a band t-shirt; normally she might be a prospect. But not when she starts out like that, not tonight. You're not in the mood for this tonight.
"I'm not the misogynist, you are," you snap. You're already on beer number five; tact is a distant memory.
"You don't know what that word means, do you?" she laughs.
"You have so little faith in your sex that you think I should accept the stupid ones out of pity. Listen, sister, I've been with women who were tested by war. Women who could fly a helicopter, field-strip an M-16, and match me in hand-to-hand combat. You. Don't. Rate. Fuck off."
Her eyes widen in understanding, and she leans back slowly. "Oh. Huh. You know what? Okay. I get it. I'm sorry for assuming."
You sigh. "Yeah. Sorry for exploding. I just seriously don't want to talk to strangers right now."
She cracks an inexplicable smile and punches you on the shoulder before turning around and striding off. Weird. Attractive, actually. Maybe some other time.
There's a male throat-clearing behind you. You whirl around and nearly fall off your stool. Your black mood lifts so suddenly it's like you got a lungful of nitrous oxide. "Oh shit, it's you," you laugh. You beckon the bartender. "Hey Andi, it's Space Bro! Space Bro is back!"
Sollux Captor raises an eyebrow elegantly. He's wearing a yellow and black nylon parka like a goddamn mountain climber, it's ridiculous. As he sits next to you, he says, "Bit early to be drunk, isn't it?"
"Naw, I'm just a little buzzed. Buzzed like a bee!" You prod the front of his parka with a stiff finger to illustrate the point. "Silly Space Bro. There's no bees in mountain climbing!"
His other eyebrow goes up too. "Buzzed nothing, KK, you're fucking cargoed. What's the occasion?"
"I got a promotion."
"Congratulations?" He's rightfully suspicious.
"I got promoted to 'independent contractor'!"
"You got fired," he realizes.
"I got fired!" You raise your glass in a toast to the world. "Let me buy you a drink, Space Bro. Let me buy you several. Take advantage of my gallows euphoria. Drink fast, catch up with me, and then tell me tales of the bromance that spanned universes. This is the closest you will ever get to my wallet."
"Jesus Christ," he says, half pity and half grudging respect. "All right, but I'm buying. Let's move to a booth before you fall off that stool."
"I'm not impaired, Mulder. Tell me about the spaceships. I want to fucking believe."
"I never said spaceships. Come on, there's one open booth and that pack of hipster chicks is eyeing it."
"Fuck those bitches, that table's ours." You make a break for it. In a totally straight line, dammit. A beeline, in fact. The thought makes you grin as you plunk down on the oversprung vinyl seat.
Space Bro mysteriously fails to join you. You don't particularly care. Tonight, you decide, is the night of not caring. You'll care too much later, so for tonight you are Mister Fuckit. It was a shitty job anyway. You can do better. That new manager they hired is going to run the business into the ground. He's the kind of idiot who, upon finding out that the forklift driver has anger issues and PTSD, goes out of his way to goad the asshole into blowing up. It's probably some kind of discrimination.
Captor appears across from you and gently sets down a pitcher of something the color of iced tea. Porter? Brown ale? You don't give a shit at this point. "Is 'asshole' a protected demographic, Captor?" you demand. "Is anti-asshole discrimination actionable?" Then you realize what that sounded like, and wait gleefully for him to gross out.
His mouth doesn't even twitch, though. "Sorry, no. I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you. You're doomed to a life of slurs and slander. Your letter-writing campaign to have the word 'jerkass' stricken from the English language as a hurtful assholephobic epithet is condemned to failure."
And then, before you've quite recovered from that, he gives you the most sincerely empathetic smile that has ever been directed at you. Just a small thing, nothing compared to the smarmy oozing mugs of assorted preschool teachers, babysitters, wife-of-a-friend-of-dad's-es, etcetera. But the first one that ever really felt like it... really... counted?
Maybe there is something to this universe-spanning bro-ship thing.
He says, "Let me guess. Being your usual charming self at work suddenly became not-okay, and you were holding a pink slip before you quite knew what happened."
"They hired a new manager. Little bowling-pin-shaped cuntsuck right out of business school. Knows nothing about auto parts."
"Thinks he doesn't need to know because business is business?" His smile is growing into a toothy grin, and that only makes it better.
"First thing this shitwipe did was make a rule warehouse workers have to tuck their shirts in. Second thing, he banned swearing. Third thing, he attached himself to my ass like a feral fucking schnauser and devoted his every spare moment to driving me out of my goddamn mind. Thank you," you add as he refills your glass.
"And the last straw was...?"
"I called him a motard. He started lecturing me on the 'chain of command'. I told him if he wants to play chain of command he should buy a uniform on ebay, and I guess he can call me Corporal if he really wants to and is he a Sergeant in his little fantasy world or do the spankings go the other way." You jerk a thumb over your shoulder and make a rocket noise. "Pchooo! Shitcanned."
Captor's grin has taken over his face. He has appealingly sharp canines; not like vampire fangs or anything, they're well within the normal range, just... pointy and cool. "You are a work of art. What does 'motard' mean?"
"Oh, you know, that..." you wave a hand vaguely. "Motivation this motivated that, you know, the rah-rah dicksauce who's always trying to make the most boring daily bullshit sound exciting by rubbing buzzwords all over it."
"My God, I hate those people. And now I have a word for them. I thank you from the bottom of my shriveled black heart."
"You're welcome," you nod graciously.
Who'd a thunk it. Space Bro is all right.