ᴅʀɪᴘ

   ᴅʀɪᴘ

                 ᴅʀɪᴘ

ᴠꜱꜱꜱʜʜʜʜ

It started to rain. Mindlessly, he moved his brush. The patter of the rain mingled with the faint scritching of paint spreading across the canvas. The sounds filled his empty head. It felt like his insides were melting, in the heat of the dark desire he had just harvested.

But before that feeling faded away entirely... he needed to get it out of his system. He needed to capture it on the canvas.

There's a loud knock on the door.

Again.

...

Again.

...the door is opened.

"Oi."

"Oi! Wake up!"

...?

"I swear, you sleep too much."

The voice is... familiar... but it takes him a moment to summon the memory of its owner from the recesses of his hungover mind.

Towa doesn't know what time it is, and the constant low volume drone of the TV couldn't be relied on anymore because it seems like the owner of the voice turned it off. He slept like the dead, after going to bed at fuck-you AM, and his perception of time is shot.

He lifts his head from the sofa where he lays face down and tries to force his eye open despite the sleep gluing it shut.

"It's already noon, buddy. Your shift started hours ago."

He sluggishly pulls himself up to a sitting position and looks up at Taku.

The older man peers at him, a look of faint disgruntlement on his face. "Y'know, I keep wondering. Do you even give a damn about this job?"

He peers at Taku right back, but his eye is not on Taku's face. Rather, he's inspecting the softly swaying aura surrounding Taku, looking like orange smoke and belying the other man's outward displeasure—it looks too calm for Taku's emotions to be anything but a front he's putting on.

"...yeah," he lies.

Towa's always been able to see these auras on other people, as long as he can remember. Everyone has a distinct default colour, though it can change depending on their mood, as can the way it sways. He used to think everyone could see them when he was younger, but when it turned out that he was the only one and that furthermore people found it weird, he stopped mentioning it. He doesn't think it's a superpower or anything, though; just further proof that he's not totally sane.

Not that he needs it.

"Oi! Look me in the eye when you speak to me."

He does, but he doesn't take the furrowed eyebrows seriously. "I said yes," he repeats.

Deeming that enough eye contact, he lowers his gaze to the coffee table to look for his pack of cigarettes. He pulls one out, places it between his lips, and lights it.

"...look here, buddy. You don't have time to kick back with a cigarette. Get your ass up and get dressed," he says with a sigh, reaching over to ruffle Towa's hair.

He shakes his head slightly to knock Taku's hand away.

...he sighs again, then looks around the apartment, his expression shifting to mild disgust.

His apartment is a small studio with a kitchenette on the third floor of a building owned by Taku, and it is, as usual, a mess.

A good third of the room is dedicated to Towa's painting hobby. An easel, currently empty, sits in the center of that area. Buckets of oil paint are set haphazardly against a wall, accompanied by stacks of blank canvases, old paintings, and brushes. The smell of paint and paint remover is everpresent, and the floor is covered with the splatters of paint that have resisted cleaning.

If it were just that, though, Taku would probably not care so much.

There are bottles, most of them empty, littering the floor everywhere else. His clothes are strewn about, and dirty dishes from the rare occasions when he decides to eat in his room have piled up in his kitchen sink.

It would be so much worse, though, if Taku didn't periodically come to clean and do Towa's laundry. According to him, this place would turn into a pigsty otherwise, and he's not wrong.

"I'll just leave these here," he says, setting the clean laundry he'd apparently been carrying on the bed, then turns to the door. He pauses for a moment and says, "I gotta say, this room really reeks."

"Since when do you care?" Towa replies.

He smiles. "I don't, really," he says, then turns around again to leave.

...and stops again. "But by the way, you keep leaving the TV on. You need to turn that crap off before going to bed."

"I'll try," he lies again.

"Anyway, I'll be downstairs. Hurry down, alright?"

With that, he finally leaves.

He leans back against the sofa, taking a deep drag of his cigarette and trying to force his brain to remember what happened yesterday. His body feels like lead, and even blinking feels like too much effort.

...ah, right, he remembers. He went drinking at one of his usual haunts and some rando started talking to him. He was totally blitzed, so when the guy invited him to leave, Towa jumped at the chance without even looking at him. He was led to a narrow alley and, for some reason, both of them were so horny they started screwing right there. Towa couldn't tell why he'd been so worked up, and now his back aches from being slammed up against a brick wall. The guy wasn't even a good lay. Twenties? Early thirties?

Regardless, he probably took too many sleep pills when he got home, because he slept like a log. Taku prescribed them to him, since he's always been kind of an insomniac: on nights he doesn't take them, he either has terrifying nightmares, or he drifts in and out of sleep all night long, sometimes until noon. He's not supposed to take them with alcohol in his system, and as a result he always feels like shit, but he has no plans to stop.

Towa pinches his cig between his fingers and lifts his wrist to his nose. He reeks of booze, smoke, and sweat; he knows Taku wants him downstairs ASAP, but he really needs a shower. Last time he went to work in this state, the elderly patients all gave him dirty looks.

He rises to his feet, and notices that his stomach is empty. His gaze slides over the table and floor, looking for the half-empty bottle he's sure he must've left somewhere—alcohol is calories, right? But he can't find it. Maybe Taku moved it, and if so, it'd be in the fridge, which is far too much effort.

He takes one last drag of his cigarette, crushes it in the ashtray, and goes to the bathroom to take a shower.