Work Text:
Hyperlaser was famished.
That was all that was noted, in chicken-scratch the same way his brainwaves etched like a sore child’s writing when one was half-conscious. When he woke up, however shortly, he didn't know, he felt his senses come back like something’s pulled a rock against a slingshot and found its wrongful place at the back of his head–-a migraine. His senses were rusting too. He groaned sitting up from whatever he sat on, laid on? He slept? And–-oh God. Oh, by the Swords, he’s never seen hell but he’s just had a lick at it he’s pretty sure. Katana was there. Katana was in his damned kitchen. Looking out the window as he does, as he always does. Gazing out like a perched bird atop a branch, the tallest of branches, taking a feel of the wind before he must fly with it.
“Princess!” Hyperlaser shouted as Princess purred at her owner, un-disturbed by his surprised tone while settling along his hand–-brushing her staunch, firm head against it as her tail also slid against the furniture.
“Ah, Hyperlaser, you're awake.” Hyperlaser could hear the calculated voice aloft of mirth (a tease) spring him back to disdaining life. But it was in the most daunting, the most quaking of ways that he did not know if it was his head that spun or the room. His posture straightened as soon as he jolted up–-quite irregular he thinks, that his bones just re-assorted in the wake of the sudden lurches, and with the way his hands felt ashy, hairs-on-end. Gods, he was nervous. Why was he nervous?
“Katana. . . I’ve. . .”
Katana hummed. Hyperlaser watched his careful movements in setting out some tea on the table, knowing that if food was handed to him-–he’d probably spew it all back right up.
“Why. . .” Hyperlaser could barely speak. He held his head in trembling wake, and could almost touch it without pricking a finger at the jagged, split edges of the helmet-–it was like thistles, brambles, perhaps of the deadliest kind because his hand felt like it's been set positively alight, young in its flame.
Katana just wordlessly sat on the carpet, big as he was - his face reached up to Hyperlaser's nose even as he was sat - it still felt as if they were face-to-face. Charming. Stupidly so.
“I. . . remember. . .” Hyperlaser sheepishly whispered a 'God,' after to add onto his ailing dignity but it probably fell through the covering of his that made him rethink if he was yelling his heart out, or speaking with hushed lips. And lord, did Katana make that even worse to figure out by the way he’s cocked his head to the side.
Seconds dripped by–-doing so at a rhythmic pace. The echo may have paused at lapses, dancing to the tapwater coming from the bendy sink over at their left but who was he to know and count the seconds that ran by? That tap, the tap that never, ever stopped running, never fully closed, never will cease, always dripping. When had it been this annoying? Like static on the telly flickering in and out during tremendous rainfall. He’d held onto the thought before about contacting Subspace about it. But it was just a godforsaken, faulty tap.
“You. . . stayed the night, you must go back home, your neighbours will be–”
“Hyperlaser.”
Hyperlaser, as if Katana did not already have the cheek, looked at him–-eyes pinned on the black soles. It felt like they were speaking back to him. Expecting some sort of confession.
Hyperlaser regained his breath, “I really. . . fucked up. Didn’t I?”
–
Glass shattered, the fluid inside enraptured with the wall, claws running amok, sliding along the doors like some glossy, immensely-white pall had drawn over the bar. The table was even rocked over and the disorder on the floor breathed like some immeasurable creature–-attendants, patrons, the folk looking to not spar for once, were all climbing their way out of the wretched scene in Hyperlaser's bloodied peripheral.
Hyperlaser felt the knock-back of man, then leapt and punched a demon’s jaw tight. Solidly. Delectably. The crunch reflected onto him, darting poorly at the sound of more hexes flying in the air - departing from a mouth dipped in blood; conniving, words of utter blasphemy.
Hyperlaser and another nameless demon were at each other’s necks. It was a Tuesday, work night, rainy day. The stars did not align today, the temperature was getting colder and there was a sudden thirst for blood. Amidst the cool air, there was a slight pause; Hyperlaser could stomach the numbness of how his actions would course later, but not with the force withstanding, gliding across his hazy vision.
The queasiness was starting to trickle in, he raised a hand to wipe the blood that shed from the crackled screen of his helmet. Not his blood. But it sure felt like he was bleeding.
But then there was a silent peace, sickly and frail--for it dawned on them, the absurdity of the situation.
Hyperlaser watched as the other demon mumbled something, teeth chipped underneath those ugly words and mouth of his, before lashing out the door on his esteemed way out. The light above him flickered, signifying it’s torn state and Hyperlaser twitched at it, feeling the world’s sensations crowding on him, suffocating. Then came the black spots. They littered his vision, gaping mouths--some were of a shape he could name, others were something he'd had to look up on later. The trussed knot in his throat was unwinding slowly. . . he could feel bile lap at his trachea like Blackrock's sea at storm's end. Oh, the lines were blurring now, the colours dragged, and shifted, blended and the sound of his name. . . it sung over the red horizon.
He fell. He fell into something big but the collision was soft that it humoured him slightly; a terrible beast with a gentle touch, the grace of a horse it felt like.
He felt his eyelids flutter close, lest the blood that sank with each crease of fatigue and searing pain would cause it to drip and get in his eye.
Soon the overwhelming feeling of sinking and dying in pleasant warmth, evaded his distaste of the smell of copper wafting from down under.
–
“I was drunk. I got into a phight with some guy. He was bothering me, or maybe he wasn't. I just wanted- no, needed to beat something up, let some steam out.”
“You were angry?”
“Hmph,”
Katana was sat next to Hyperlaser, thinking it better to be closer to listen to his story. His hair was drawled all over the couch, soaking up the sun that dwindled in-between curtains in a shade too light, almost petrifying Katana as he sat stark still. Hyperlaser though, was sunken in darkness, the shadow of Katana’s encompassed him - a hug, a shield. It felt like Katana could provide all that hearty goodness with just his presence alone and strangely, Hyperlaser was inclined to agree with that meddlesome thought.
“That seems. . . unlike you, for a reason I cannot put my finger on.”
Hyperlaser remained quiet at that; the fight in the bar would be costing him a couple days off-work, so to say that Subspace would be punishing him some other way that his work couldn’t offer him otherwise, was in-fact a thought to process when he'll have gotten round to getting drunk again.
“You don’t have a few more drinks even if someone had pressured you to it, Hyperlaser.”
Hyperlaser still looked at the table, tea half-drunk. It did wonders, but to swallow the pill that was recollecting where the bruises, and plasters, and casts came from--it almost negated the sweet taste of the tea.
Hyperlaser sighed, “Well, you’re right. I was in there to get drunk out of my mind. I may have ended a little tipsy, and that’s. . . maybe what spurred on the fight.”
He shook his head and laid it in his hands for stating that out loud.
“It was a bad day, any demon would try and forget the bad things that’s happened to them. It's normal.”
Katana placed his hand on another single hand that held Hyperlaser’s head, making him look up. The expression on his mask was naught, but intention clear, he envisioned Katana’s face having a very determined look to it—bridging on angry and intense.
“Tell me. I am obliged to hear everything.”
Hyperlaser continued looking at Katana, their hands were slightly, but surely interlinking in between their gazes.
Hyperlaser then, told Katana everything. Subspace had this new colleague, dazy, electrifying, a mellow orange with a broken left horn—a bastard that subjected Hyperlaser to more and more tasks, more demons to kill, more families to break apart, all the like. He had to even bring a demon's heart for Subspace that ‘handled the business of whatever happened to them’, closing the doors to what Hyperlaser could see, or what he shouldn't see.
He was a puppet, for even longer hours, more strenuous activity and the strings were really starting to tighten on the precipice of breaking limbs. It left no room for him to breathe in this snow, this facility that spared him the white of the outside world—accursed nation with a loyalty that Hyperlaser gritted in between his teeth while the strings throttled him around like the stuff that make up dolls.
It was hard not to let the loyalty fall and slip in the midst of the work, the blood, the phights. . .
It was so hard.
A tear slipped. Hyperlaser’s helmet was still on, so he let it go. He held his arm as to not let it reach the tear and wipe it.
The forlorn tone, the shakiness of breath and all those wet things that shook in the midst of Hyperlaser’s rant, creased Katana’s face.
Katana wasn’t really thinking. So, the ripple of surprise washed over both of them. Katana was hugging him.
A flinch caused Katana to back up slightly, finding that his arms were still connected to Hyperlaser’s shoulders and the solemn touch of his helmet, briefly clashing with his own mask, was settling in slowly, sweetly.
Hyperlaser shuddered, assuming immediately—that Katana had catched on that he was crying. He let out a hitched breath in protest and leant over—words shuddering, making no intelligent sound, before coming to the realisation that he was at a loss for them. Katana was still in place, the moment running up to speed with him—thinking. Finally thinking.
“Hyperlaser. . .”
Hyperlaser sort of, braced and shrunk himself in Katana’s grasp further. Katana subconsciously lifted him up when he said:
“May I give you a hug?”
Pausing, Hyperlaser raised his hand to the left of his helmet—to the hatch, before stopping there.
“Yes, but you must allow me this.”
The sound of the helmet clicking off, the rustle of clothes and a faint release of breath from Katana’s side, all merged into some pretty symphony—Hyperlaser no longer felt the imprint of the tear it left behind in gloom. Katana saw knuckles; one that was sheathed with pesky bandages, and the other just as messy with scars, nicks—dispersed in some disarray of pattern. The two worlds met in some lopsided way, brushing one another as Katana gave leeway for Hyperlaser to adjust for the lack of space between them. Hyperlaser had yet to lift the helmet off, counting the tap's water drops for some semblance of momentum to prepare for the time where he’s shielded, and the next when there was nothing left to hide.
He looked at Katana, and he nodded succinctly in response. Then his eyes met the blur of disdaining day. The cold bloomed upon his nose, and paled against the flesh like spiders, webs of ice—Katana’s face was looking away. He snorted slightly.
“It’s alright, you can close your eyes.”
Katana looked back, head slightly down as if to suggest he’s done so. And Hyperlaser smiled.
They hugged. Hyperlaser felt the arms of Katana slither around him, his hair clouding his line of sight so he took the chance to hide his face in it. The smell of unforgettable home hit him immediately, light of the waves and the obvious scent of cedar forests, blossoms of Thieves’ Den, familiarly adjoined with the gale, the struggle of Blackrock now that the snow sweeps in his direction—Hyperlaser. Perhaps, it was also the trail of the spices, the desert lavender that buries itself in Katana's frame, burrowing deep to find sanctuary, that made it distinct. But in his hair, it was present in strands and this is what makes Hyperlaser believe:
That Katana was the embodiment of the world, and Hyperlaser has just found the light of day.