@unmachine said: Sorry for crashing at your place again. Sorry for filling your ashtray up twice as fast. Sorry for drinking your booze and giggling like an idiot on the floor next to you. Sorry for making every excuse for you to stick around, to make more time, to be deserving. Apologies apologies. Shame, guilt, desperation- it all starts to drain away. Just needed a little help from the aforementioned booze. Not even that much. His back would hurt tomorrow but that's fine. He's not about to hog Kazutora's bed too. He's got a hard enough head and a deep enough sleeper to make it through.
Not much changes when Eve drinks. It takes way more to get him even remotely buzzed. But he seems looser and speaks more freely (as if that's really much different from his sober state.) He rolls onto his side then his stomach, adjusting himself so he could see Kazutora face right side up. "This is crazy but I used to have long hair when I was younger. There are old pictures of me where I look dumb as hell!" he snickered. A hand outreaches, twirling a lock of his friend's hair on his finger. He glances down at it contemplatively. "Cause I was copying my brother. Long hair doesn't suit me though and I'm glad I chopped it all off... Brother... i'm pretty sure he hates me. I never figured out why or when it started, not that it matters. There's probably something wrong with me but I can't bring myself to not love him." An exhale through the nose and he drops his head back to the ground, releasing the other's long locks and rolling back over on his back to stare at the ceiling.
"I think it's because I'm better at loving things than I am at hating them. I gotta play at my strengths you know? It's hard being treated like shit sometimes but whatever... You treat me nice though...
It’s more for Eve that Kazutora has the drinks on hand. He’d been avoidant of drinking before Takemichi had shown up, whispering about Bonten and Mikey. Afraid. Afraid because it isn’t that the drinks make demons, it’s that it lets them out. And his have already claimed two lives as it was. Where others could say I’ll kill you as typical gang bluffs or just friends teasing each other, Kazutora can’t. But then he’d chosen to chase the dark shadow of Bonten, to surge back into darkness, and it’s easy. Easy to drink at a bar while pulling information from people, to break a face. It was even expected like many things. But drinking here is different than the bar. It’s more relaxed. Something that makes him think of summer nights that were still too hot with cold beers and an abandoned arcade filled with smoke. It’s nice. And it seems to help Eve a little bit.
“ Yeah? " Kazutora tries to picture it, but it seems at odds with the Eve that he knows. “ I used to have a really cringe hairstyle when I was real young. Same time I got my tattoo. “ Anything to piss off his father, to be cooler, to be stronger. “ I think one or two pictures exist. Around fifteen is when I started the stripes. Never went back. “ Outside of another ten years in a cell. He watches Eve reach out to toy with one of the loose strands, but he doesn’t stop him. Only observes as he seems to be lost in thought, in memories. He understands that well.
He wonders what it must be like for Eve. To love in spite of that? Truth is that even now Kazutora can’t imagine that. Can’t imagine choosing to love when something seems to hate you. He’s always turned to hatred. To destroying anything that hurts him. Even... He watches as Eve sinks back down and rolls over, yet Kazutora doesn’t move. Doesn’t pull away as well, but lingers, close and watchful.
“ Nah. Believe me, I’m way more fucked up than you are. So hell even if there is something wrong, you’re doing better than me. “ He offers in his own strange way of comfort. A solidarity perhaps in the face of being fuck ups. “ I can’t relate to that. But that seems better. I’ve always hated easier. Hated anything that hurt me. I wanted to destroy what hurt me, wanted things to suffer like I had. I hated this fucking world. “ He admits, turning his head to glance out the window for a moment. “ I did destroy some of it. “ That was Kazutora. Destroying the few good things that came into his life along with the bad.
He turns back to Eve at the thanks, thanks that he doesn’t feel he deserves. But it is offered to him. He still doesn’t know how to handle it. He’s not used to being thanked. “ You don’t deserve to be treated like that. “ He answers quietly, Kazutora did. But not Eve. And then an old thought surfaces. “ If someone does treat you like that, I can beat the shit out of them if you want. Make sure that they don’t. “ He murmurs, because even now he knows the language of violence. “ But uh. You’re welcome. “ He adds, before adding “ ...Thanks for keeping me company. “ Especially now when there was no one else.