for Jag - valentine's day

[st_rummer]

Coby hadn't given much thought to Valentine's day other than knowing it was coming up – hard to miss when Caroline had exploded hearts and gold cherubs over every available surface – until he'd had to explain the holiday to Kash and his friend. It wasn't as though any of the people he was sleeping with would expect anything of him. As far as he knew, some of them weren't from worlds where Valentine's day was a thing, and even the ones who were knew he wasn't the exclusive type. He'd rather show them how he felt when he was with them anyway, because he felt it, not because some calendar told him too.

Valentine's day was just a day.

When that day came, though, being caught between happy couples happily coupling, unhappy singles who couldn't look forward to half-price chocolate, and fat foil babies with wings that felt creepier than the description, it all felt like a terrible way to spend the day. He'd gone down long enough to throw together things to eat, because he wasn't sad sack moping, but he didn't stick around. At least he'd been here long enough he'd learned to ignore the Valentine's pink of his hearts and romance room. It was as good a place as any to work on this song that was refusing to come together the way he knew it could. He sat at his keyboard, trying the melody over and over with slight tweaks, leaning over to make notes on a, yes pink, notepad he'd picked up at the gift shop, then sticking the pencil behind his ear to try another variation.

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[st_artandstoke]

Jag had been living in Coby's room for months, now, but he still didn't feel as if it were home. To be fair, nothing in this place felt like home, but this was Coby's place. He was just crashing in it.

That explained why he knocked, first, and then only opened the door. He found Coby behind the keyboard, and brandished the bottle of Kraken victoriously. "Wanna?"

He had no idea how terrible today might or might not be for Coby, but if he'd been in love with the angel of love, he reckoned Valentine's Day might be a tough one. So here he was, just in case, ready to take 'piss off' for an answer. It wasn't as if Em and he had ever celebrated it, so he was there all for Coby. It was the least he could do, really. And it was the very least he wanted to do, when he owed Coby so much.

[st_rummer]

Coby glanced up as the door opened and Jag came in. When he saw what Jag had brought, he grinned. "When don't I?" He didn't move from his place at the keyboard yet, but he could set aside working – not like the song was flowing right yet anyway – if it looked like Valentine's was going to be rough on Jag, or rougher than the past couple of months.

"Avoiding the bar tonight?"

[st_artandstoke]

Jag closed the door behind himself and went to grab a couple of glasses, then dragged a chair over so he could sit beside the keyboard. "I reckoned, you and I could both probably use some good alcohol tonight," he answered, even as he poured the glasses.

[st_rummer]

"Thanks, man." Coby ran a hand through his hair, twist of his wrist at the end to keep his bracelets from snagging. "If I have to look at one more gold baby butt, I can't promise what will happen."

[st_artandstoke]

"You've got all the pink, but at least you're gold-baby-butt-free," Jag remarked, and held a glass out to Coby.

[st_rummer]

Coby lifted his glass, then drunk to that. "I almost don't see the pink anymore. I think living here burned out the pink parts of my retinas or something.

"Mostly. It still makes me miss the church sometimes." Yeah. Sure. That was because of all the pink.

[st_artandstoke]

Jag couldn't help but laugh at the memory of the place. "I still can't believe you were living in a church."

[st_rummer]

"I can't believe Vaden didn't warn me I'd be living in a church." Okay, that wasn't true. He could totally believe Vaden would think that was funny. And he didn't even know about Anael, or what Coby used to be.

"But it really wasn't that bad. Other than freaking people out when they came over the first time." He'd been half convinced Jag wasn't going to come in at all. But they'd had a lot of surprises already that night.

[st_artandstoke]

"It was a bit surprising," Jag confirmed, thinking back on that night and... getting lost in the memories, for a few seconds there. What it had led to. He blinked out of it and smiled at Coby. "I liked it better than here, no question."

He did not even mean in the grand scheme of things, but simply in terms of interior design.

[st_rummer]

"I warned you. Or did I? I don't know. I usually did." But they'd both been damn drunk that night, beat to hell, and running on adrenalin. He shrugged it off as not important now.

"Way better than here, though. I'm not sure anybody wants to live full time in a Barbie's dream house/no-tell motel 'romantic' room. If I can't get this song to come together, I'm gonna blame it on the decor."

[st_artandstoke]

"Don't mind me, if you want to keep working on it," Jag told him, with a wave of his hand meant to say 'go on, then'. It wouldn't be his first time hanging out as Coby worked on something; it was its own sort of soothing.

[st_rummer]

Coby let one shoulder rise and drop, the other hand playing a sequence of chords just because. "I don't know. Trying to write a love song," almost all Coby's songs were love songs, when you listened, "on Valentine's day is either genius or masochistic, and at this point I don't know which."

[st_artandstoke]

"That means it's probably both," Jag remarked with a half-smile, and took another sip of the rum.

[st_rummer]

"Probably." It sounded about right anyway. Maybe not the genius part. Coby took another drink and played a few notes, not really working on the song but not able to put it away either. A few notes turned into a few more, and they continued that way for a little while. Hanging out and drinking while Coby played.

Played, but never felt satisfied with what he was coming up with. It wasn't too long really before he pushed away from the keyboard and turned it off. "Time to admit it's not coming tonight. I don't know where my head is, but it's not on the music."

[st_artandstoke]

"Well, I got some cakes from Pike," Jag offered, and nodded in a corner of the room, where he'd dropped the cakes he'd got yesterday. Getting stoned that way was different, and lacked the fire he loved so much, but he didn't mind doing without. He could still play with flames if he wanted, whenever he wanted, really, here. "If you'd like?"

[st_rummer]

"Sharing booze and cake? I must be more sad sack than I realize." Coby was joking. Mostly. Enough he waved off anything that might be a real answer. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear if he was.

"What kind of cake?" He'd seen the sign for Valentine's orders, and there were always good things coming out of the bakery.

[st_artandstoke]

"Space cakes, there's nothing sad-sack-like about this," Jag answered with a shake of his head. "Pike's a fucking genius at baking."

[st_rummer]

That was okay, then. More than. "It's like you know me or something," he said with a grin, rarely one to turn down an easy high. "I knew they'd changed up the menu some, but I had no idea they were cooking edibles." Probably because he got a steady supply to smoke from the grumpier cleric. "I should probably check out the rest of their stuff too."

[st_artandstoke]

"She didn't know Kash could hook her up," Jag stated. But now she did, and those cakes were the best. "But yeah, it's really good stuff." He didn't have the sweetest tooth around, but enough of one that he loved stopping by the bakery now and then.

Right then, he got out of his seat to go grab the box of cakes and bring it over.

[st_rummer]

Kind of surprising, but not everybody had Coby's gift for finding the best source of marijuana wherever he ended up, and obviously Kash had hooked Pike up when she rebranded the bakery.

Coby looked at the options, settled on a cookie-brownie mix and broke off a piece. Yeah, his tolerance was good, but with homemade goodies, it was best to start slow. "I can't remember the last time I had edibles instead of smoking."

[st_artandstoke]

"Same," Jag agreed with a nod. "I mean, before last week." He grabbed a Flame Hands himself - cinnamon and chocolate - because it was still his favourite, even now he'd tasted most of the other options.

Bonus, it would go great with rum.

[st_rummer]

Jag was right. It was good. Maybe Coby would try one of the others once this had a chance to kick in. In the meantime, they had the rum.

"You should've been here the other night," he began after a moment and another swig of rum. "I wound up giving lessons on how to do Valentine's day to Kash and one of his buddies." Come on, that was funny. Once they got past a couple of unexpected landmines Coby still wasn't sure what they were.

[st_artandstoke]

"Oh, wow," Jag allowed, and shook his head at the thought. "That sounds - interesting. Though I'd probably have been on their side of the classroom." He'd never been big on Valentine's Day.

[st_rummer]

"No way, man," Coby said, laughing under his breath. "You would've been helping me out. You're at least know what Valentine's day is, which is more than them. And it's not like I'm usually serious enough about somebody where it was a big thing they expected me to get 'right'." A few times, sure, one girlfriend or another had wanted the whole gifts and romance and stuff.

Anael was different. He never asked for anything from Coby but his love, and Coby gave that every chance he got, whenever they were together.

[st_artandstoke]

Jag could have picked on that 'usually', or even asked, straight out, about Coby's angel, or the guy who'd come before he'd dropped hints about a couple of times. But he wouldn't want anyone poking at his own wounds, so he wasn't the sort to do it to other people.

"Val was a total romantic," he remembered, scratching at his jaw. "Probably the most romantic person I've ever been with, in the - traditional sense." Emma was, as well, but in a different way. A way that worked so much better for Jag. A way that didn't involve V-Day, and he pushed the thoughts aside. "Now he'd have been brilliant at giving that class."