Short Stacks and Sleuthing
At first, consciousness crept back upon him slowly; a sort of general awareness splattering across his brain space. Then suddenly it returned all at once as the pain hit him. His head throbbed in time with the usually gentle ticking of the clock tower. Now it instead felt like it was stabbing him with every single sound.
It was at moments like this that Bacchae wondered why the fuck he’d decided to live in a clock tower in the first place.
God his head hurt. His head hurt and his stomach was churning and his tongue felt like sandpaper. He’d really overdone it last night. But that thought annoyed him. Bacchae had never even gotten close to “overdoing it” before he’d had to vanish. At first he’d just assumed that he was out of practice; fifty years spent drifting in and out of coherency could do that to a person. But as the months went on and he still found himself unable to bounce back quite so effortlessly from his typical escapades as he had before, he was slowly wrapping his head around the horrifying thought that this state might be permanent.
And if that was the case, he was pretty sure he knew exactly who the culprit was.
If he had been in full control of his faculties at that very moment, Bacchae would have easily shaken off a thought like that. Yet as it stood, in pain and pseudo-delirium, it started circling. Like a tweety bird in a stupid cartoon, and he was the dumb fucking cat who couldn’t catch it. This did not help the feeling of something not being right under his skin.
It wasn’t a constant feeling. A lot of the time he felt entirely normal. But every once in a while he’d catch himself saying something out-of-character, or he’d see something that would suddenly trigger this feeling of… anti-deja vu.
Like that! Just like that! Hadn’t somebody else had that thought before him?
Bacchae hated that feeling, like someone was watching him from inside his own head. He hated it and he didn’t know how to make it stop.
The sudden bout of irritation nearly brought him to his feet. But before he got a chance to properly lose his shit, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. He couldn’t even sit up, as two arms were clamped firmly around one of his own.
He didn’t even have to look over to know it was Kei. This very position she had him in was a move that he’d dubbed the “Kei Special.” Obviously, he’d experienced it more than once.
Even the first time it had seemed familiar. Stupidly, stupidly familiar.
Alright, he had to stop going down this train of thought. Bacchae glanced over at her. Her face was different. That helped. It was more defined, more adult. Much more his type than the last one. He didn’t know whether her hair was natural or not, but it was definitely more convincing than the bottle-bleach she’d had going before. It suited her a lot better.
This body in general felt a lot more her. There was always an incongruity in the way daemons moved in skin that wasn’t their own. The more foreign the skin, the easier it was to spot. There was almost none of that with this body of her’s.
Plus she was hot as fuck in it.
So at least she was no longer a reminder of that thought he shouldn’t be thinking about right now. She was his Kei, though she would definitely shoot him one of her infamous glares if she heard him say that.
Ugh, god, now he was thinking dumb thoughts again. He was too sober for this shit. Also, he was busting for a piss.
Slowly, gingerly, he unraveled himself from her grasp. Maybe not as gingerly as he’d thought, because just as he pulled the comforter back she stirred.
“Where’re you goin’?” she mumbled, still half-asleep.
“Nowhere special,” he slipped away and stood.
Kei grunted in displeasure, but wasn’t conscious enough to argue. “Don’t go far,” she rolled a little closer to his side of the bed, “...Doug…”
His whole body grew very cold for a moment. Genuine anger was a rare emotion for him, but here he was, grinding his teeth together and seething. He wanted to slap that name out of her mouth. Yet the feeling passed just as quickly as it came. She was out cold. It sucked, but the mistake was unfortunately easy to make. And in reality, it might not have been much of a mistake at all.
He sighed, and ruffled her hair gently. “He never is,” he muttered, and stumbled out of the room.
~~ o ~~
“Can I ask you something?” Kei flopped down on a cracked leather couch, one of several on the second floor of the clock tower.
Across from her, Jack was sprawled out, yawning. “’Pends on what it is…” he grunted.
It had been a long night for all of them. Kei had been awake for a good hour, long enough to put herself together and at least attempt to shake her hangover. By the looks of it, Jack had been conscious for maybe twenty minutes tops, but it wasn’t as if Kei had anything better to do than annoy him.
She’d woken up alone this morning… again. It was one thing if it was her own room, but to be abandoned in someone else’s bed was just… weird. It had happened a couple of times too. Even more odd was that, inevitably, about a half-hour from now, he would stroll back in as if nothing had happened.
“When Bacchae just… leaves in the middle of the night, do you know where he… goes?”
Jack paused, and sniffed once, thoughtfully. “Can’t say I do. Guess I never really considered it.”
“In all the time you’ve know him, not even once?”
“I’ve learned not to think too hard about anything he does,” he shook his head. “Just gonna give yourself a bloody headache.”
“Hey kids, how’s tricks?” Well, there was that thing they said about devils and the speaking thereof. Bacchae’s head popped up from the stairway, and there he was, morning cigarette in one hand and bloody mary in the other.
He and Jack immediately started going on about something or other, but Kei stayed quiet. Jack probably had the right idea. Thinking about Bacchae’s motivations for doing anything would most likely be a dead fucking end. But still, it bugged her.
It mostly just seemed… out of character for him. Not that he left, mostly just that he was so… quiet about it. Bacchae, in her experience at least, was never quiet about anything. It was just… strange. It didn’t make sense, and Kei didn’t like it when things didn’t make sense.
She’d simply have to do something about it.
~~ o ~~
It was a very simple process to get him drunk a few nights later and convince him to fuck her. To be fair, very little convincing was actually involved. It was more a matter of getting him to stay at the clock tower with her instead of going out on the town and bringing somebody else back. But again, that wasn’t very hard.
Usually they ended up in bed together when they were both fucked up and Kei for some reason thought it sounded like a good idea. She still tried to convince herself that she had learned from past mistakes. She was keeping him at arm’s length this time, and she was definitely succeeding, shut up. All this little scheme was was research. She was determining his potential weaknesses. Absolutely.
Yet even sober, she couldn’t deny that the man was very good in bed.
And then she lay there, sober and bored as he passed out from a combination of rum and a mysterious liquid he dubbed “Daddy’s Party Juice”, and hoped that this would be one of those nights when he decided to wander off. And so it was, right around six in the morning, that he finally did.
Kei gave him a minute head start, then followed after him.
~~ o ~~
Discord was chock full of little, out of the way places that you would never find out about unless you happened to wander into one. And whenever you found such a place, you kept that fucking shit to yourself. Because as soon as word spread, it’d become popular and then it would be ruined.
Nearly everyone in Discord had a place like that, and Bacchae was no exception.
Katie Lou’s Grease Pit was located in an alley off another alley, and yet somehow still remained its own separate, squat little building. On the inside, it looked like it hadn’t been touched since the 1950s and was always blissfully empty. Well, almost empty.
“Jesus, kid, you look like shit,” the portly woman behind the counter crossed her arms as Bacchae stumbled inside.
He skidded across the cracked tile floor and plopped onto a stool across from her. “A good fucking morning to you too, Katie Lou.” After a second spent defying the perceived brightness of the florescent lights, he gave up and his face flopped down into his arms. “And I’m not a kid, you know,” his voice came out muffled by his coat sleeve. “I’m older than you, remember. By a lot.”
“Then how come all I see is a washed-out twink with a bad haircut?”
“Because not all of us are sad little mortals who shrivel up like prunes by sixty.”
“You think I look sixty?” She blushed girlishly, patting her light pink updo with satisfaction.
He glanced up blearily. “Oh, that right. I forgot you’re actually decrepit on the inside.”
“I’ll have you know I’m not a day over ninety. And I’ve still got another good two decades in me at least. Now are you gonna order or did you just waltz in here to bitch at me?”
Bacchae couldn’t help the small, wry grin that spread over his face. “And what would you say if I told you it was the latter?”
But she’d set him up for that one. “We’ve got a sign for that. Put it up just for you.” She pointed off to the far wall, where a small, metal plate had been hung. In bold, capital letters were written the words: “Fuckwads don’t get flapjacks.”
“Well, I guess you leave me with no choice then.” He leaned back, hitching his shoes under the bar below the counter. “Get me some eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, uh… hashbrowns, don’t forget the fucking hashbrowns… biscuits, and fuck it, smother the whole thing in gravy.”
“You don’t want like… some fruit? Or maybe oatmeal?”
“Oatmeal ain’t gonna cure my damn hangover. Grease, woman, grease!” he banged his fists on the counter. “That’s the name of the joint, ain’t it?”
She shook her head, pursing her rouge-red lips together. “One of these days, you’re gonna give yourself a fucking heart attack.”
“Sometimes I wish I could, so I wouldn’t have to listen to your nagging!”
He continued to mumble to himself as Katie Lou turned back towards the kitchen. There was nobody in there, but she made a few vague hand gestures and the sound of sizzling bacon filled the room.
Satisfied, she turned back to Bacchae, but frowned as she happened to glance over at the door behind him. He followed her gaze, only to sigh when he saw who was standing on the threshold.
She opened the door tentatively, an eyebrow raised. Maybe she was wondering if she had the right place, as she seemed to relax once she spotted the white hair and horns on the man at the counter. Still, she seemed a little caught off guard.
“Ya lookin’ for some breakfast, hun?” Katie Lou asked.
“Nope,” Kei smiled, a bit mischievously. “I’m actually looking for him.”
Bacchae sighed again, even heavier this time. “So you followed me, huh?”
“I’ve gotta say, I was not expecting to find you at a place like this.”
“And just where were you expecting?”
“My bets were on an opium den or maybe laying on top of Outlook Rock, staring wistfully off into the void.”
Katie Lou snorted, and Kei turned back to her. “I’m sorry, I’ve been rude. I guess I should’ve assumed he wasn’t going to introduce me. Hi, I’m Kei.” She stuck out her hand, which Katie Lou only stared at skeptically. “Okay…” attempting in vain to disguise the gesture, Kei withdrew the offending appendage. “Well, my curiosity has been sated, if somewhat anticlimactically, so I’m going to finally go to bed. Don’t expect me ‘in’ today.”
“Not gonna stay for pancakes?” Bacchae asked, somewhat condescendingly. “I’m sure if you asked nicely Katie Lou would put sprinkles on em for you, princess.”
“Thanks, but I think it would take me days to wash the grease off my clothes.” After grimacing slightly at the general atmosphere of the place, Kei smirked one final time, and vacated the establishment.
Katie Lou rolled her eyes a little, and Bacchae seemed to agree with her. “Good fucking riddance, huh?” But she couldn’t help noticing that he stared at her retreating back slightly longer than was strictly necessary.
When he turned back, he found her with her face in her hands, blinking girlishly at him. “So… is that her?” she asked, when he just looked puzzled.
“‘Her’ who?”
Katie Lou huffed. “Ya know, her.” She made an obviously obscene gesture in demonstration.
“Oh! You mean the chick I’ve had sex with more that once?” A stupid little grin worked its way into his expression. “Yeah, that’s her.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Katie Lou let slip a small, exasperated noise. “Well yes, but no!”
“What… are you talking about?”
“Well, ya know, she’s… the girl.”
“I am honestly so confused right now.”
“Oh never mind,” she narrowed her eyes, as if he was purposefully fucking with her. “I thought she looked like a handful, but now I just feel sorry for her.”
Bacchae was about to yell at her to spit it out, when quite of their own accord, several plates of fresh, steaming breakfast landed on the back counter.
Katie Lou placed them in front of him, and sighed. “Now eat your fucking pancakes.”
He frowned. “I didn’t order pancakes.”
“No, but you would’ve in about ten minutes, so I just made ‘em now.”
“You know me too well.” He grinned. After slathering the pancakes in syrup, he took a bite of those, and then another of his hash… thing, and nearly moaned a little, leaning back. “Oh, Katie Lou, what would I do without you, you beautiful bitch.”
“Probably drink more.”
“You are… not wrong there.”
She smiled, shaking her head a little. “I missed ya, kid.”
“Still not a kid! But I’m glad you’re still around anyway, despite the blatant disrespect.”
He finished up his meal, and seemed a little steadier on his feet as he stood. After slapping a fair number of bones on the counter, he turned towards the door.
“Wait, Bacchae!” she called to him as she counted. “This is way too much! You know I don’t take handouts!”
“It’s not one,” he waved and swung out of the door before she could stop him. “I’m just really bad at math.”
“That stupid sonuva…” she muttered, but smiled a little. The kid may have been a wreck and a half, but he was good deep down. At least she thought so. Maybe it was just age talking, but he’d seemed a little… different since he’d been back. Well, this morning had assuaged her fears, at least for the most part.
Scrubbing the counter, she hummed to herself, waiting for it to reach the time when a few sane customers might stumble upon her little diner. As she did, she decided that she’d go buy herself some new nail polish with his tip, you know, as a little treat.
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