st_rummer | for Jag - valentine's day

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for Jag - valentine's day

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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"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."

"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.

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."

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

"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."

"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?"

"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.

"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."

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."

"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.

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."

"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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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."

Coby had never met the Valentine Collinwood of the Collinwoods, and he still had a hard time picturing Jag with someone who was the anything. He knew Jag really loved him and had tried to make it work. And that it had ended badly. Before Em. If you asked Coby, Jag had been happier and more at ease when dating her, but it wasn't on him to judge.

"I'll take your word on that, since I never met him. I'd say Anael would be another good one to give it, except I don't know, traditional Valentine's expectations seem kind of limited for him."

It was always good to hear Coby talk about his angel, mostly because it didn't seem to break him the way talking about Emma broke Jag. It gave him hope, really. And he was glad that he could talk about him today, too, despite Jag's misgivings that the day might be a tough one on Coby.

"Was he all that tied to Western traditions?" he asked curiously, and took another drink of rum. Christianity had always seemed like a very Western thing to him, but then again, it wasn't like he'd ever left Britain.

"Anael is Anael. Organized religion doesn't really come into it, and what he is, really," Coby shook his head. "It's more than any of us can really wrap our heads around. But a day where people are focused on love, whatever the reason, he'd be all about that. Pride's another good one."

"What about - the shitty days? How does he deal with those?" Not that they had special days set aside for hate and fear, but it had been feeling like there was more and more of that in the world with every passing day, when you listened to the bloody news.

"It probably sounds sappy, but the same way he deals with everything. With love." Sappy maybe, to hear Coby talk about it like that, but it was true, and just one of the things Coby loved and was in awe over about Anael. "Giving it, and celebrating it when he finds it. There's a lot of shit in the world, and he hurts with it more than most, but he loves."

"He really does sound fucking corny," Jag remarked, but there was no criticism in the words, just a memory with Em, and, possibly, a hint of envy. "It's good that he had you." Anyone would be lucky to be loved by Coby, but it sounded like the angel would have known what he had, too.

"Nah, man. It's the other way around. I'm lucky to have him." Blessed was probably the right word, but there was only so much cheese Coby could handle when he'd only been drinking however long they had tonight.

"I'd be a lot more fucked up still, if we hadn't found each other in London."

"You fit together, you were both lucky," Jag answered with a one-shouldered shrug. Especially since Coby had just explained how Anael dealt with all the negative emotions out there, and Jag couldn't imagine anyone more suited to give him that than Coby. But beyond that, this was something he'd learned with Emma, in time. That he was giving her things, even if he felt like it was just the other way around.

He needed to stop thinking about her so bloody much, and he reached for the bottle to top up their glasses. "You keep saying you're fucked up, but you don't seem like it at all," he added, redirecting his own thoughts on Coby.

"I've been... good, lately." He started to think back to how long, but counting was probably a bad idea. "Almost as long as you've known me, I think." Coby credited Anael with that. "But I have... Sometimes I–" how did he describe this? "I lose myself. Get confused. Go dark."

He ran a hand through his hair, and took a long drink. "Shrinks. Hospitals. Disappearing for weeks and finding myself in another part of the country. Voices in my head. Hallucinations. You name it. Been there, done that."

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