Katou (katoustheshit) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-11-10 14:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent washington, yue katou |
Who: Katou and Wash
What: Katou finds out that Wash has stopped drinking
When: Early October
Where: Wash's house, then a car ride to a Chinese restaurant
Warning/Rating: Talk about addiction and abusive childhoods
Status: Complete
Katou had tried to surprise Wash on his birthday, but the man hadn’t been home which had been something of a monumental disappointment. The man could tie one on on an average day, and Katou was excited to see just how drunk the two of them could get on his birthday of all things.
But a few days after his birthday was still close enough, and Katou didn’t miss it when Wash returned from wherever the fuck he had disappeared to. The weekend was technically over, but he’d never known Wash to shy away from weekday drinks. Katou knocked on his friend’s door, twelve-pack in hand.
Wash was still a bit out of sorts when he and Carolina had returned home from their week away. The harshest of the withdrawal symptoms - vomiting, ranting paranoia, flashbacks and hallucinations - were behind him, but his nerves still felt as though they had been zapped a hundred times by lightning, all frayed and crackling. Alcohol was out of his system and without the crutch to lean on, or the bottle to hide behind, Wash felt, of all things, vulnerable. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself now, which way to go, or even what the next step was.
Video games had become appealing again and were serving as a great distraction for the time being. He’d almost forgotten how easy it was to become immersed in a video game’s story. Even one that he’d played a dozen times already. Perhaps by the time he was finished with the second Assasin’s Creed, he’d feel normal enough to actually leave the apartment. That is if Wash even knew what normal was anymore.
The knock on the door didn’t make him jump, per se, but it did startle him. Few people knew he had gone away, and even fewer knew that he had returned. Maybe it was someone looking for Carolina? Wash paused his game and approached the door with caution - more caution than was necessary. Wash only realized his own anxiety when the relief of seeing Katou’s blond head on other side washed over him.
He opened the door for his friend, hoping he at least looked better than he felt. He gave Katou a kind of nervous smile. “Hey, Angel Boy…” and his eyes fell on the twelve back the younger man was carrying.
Katou’s face split into a large grin when Wash opened the door. “Happy birthday, you old fuck,” he said, stepping forward to wrap Wash in a one armed embrace. “Or belated birthday. Brought over booze since I couldn’t celebrate you on the actual day.”
The embrace caught him off guard. His body was stiff, but that wasn’t too unusual a reaction to unexpected contact. Still, it wasn’t unappreciated. He missed the “old fuck” comment and nearly missed the happy birthday wish, he was so transfixed on the twelve pack Katou had brought.
He at least had the presence of mind to acknowledge what Katou had said to him. “Thanks, man,” he answered. He didn’t know how Katou knew his birthday had come and gone. Had he seen it on the network, in his profile? Had Kanan mentioned something? It didn’t really matter. Wash was fixated on the beer and how much he wanted it, even after everything he had experienced over the past week. Ironically it was because of everything he’d experienced during his detox that made him want to drink. His hands tingled with how much he wanted to reach out and just snatch one of those bottles from the pack and chug it down. His fingers twitched, but the idea of Carolina coming home and seeing the empties, or worse, coming home and catching him drinking them. Imagining the look on her face - that frown - stayed his hand.
“Thanks,” he said again, forcing grey eyes upwards. “I appreciate it, really, don’t think that I don’t...but, I, uh...I’m not drinking anymore.”
“Why the fuc-” Katou started, but then he noticed, a little belatedly, how Wash was looking at the beer. So much so that he seemed to barely notice that Katou was there in the first place. Katou recognized the look, as much as he could recognize something that he’d never actually seen. But he was sure he’d had the same look in his eyes on a few occassions.
“Well, that’s cool,” he said, frowning. “I’ll just uh, put these back in the car.”
Katou said it was cool, but the frown on his face stated otherwise. Wash felt a pang of guilt. Katou had come all this way, lugged a 12-pack up to his apartment, wanted to celebrate his birthday with him and Wash was turning away his present. That and he really wanted a beer, and that honestly made him feel even worse. He shifted uncomfortably, guiltily. He owed Katou some kind of explanation.
“I, uh,” am a drunk, a raging alcoholic - Wash wasn’t quite ready to say those words yet, even though they had been said to him, and it was pretty fucking obvious the more you took a good look the way he’d been living the past year. Instead he said, “I’ve been drinking too much lately. Kinda...got a problem with it. So I’m, uh, gonna not do that for a while.” Awkward pause for a moment. Then he shook his head disgusted with his own awkward ridiculousness. “I’ll come down with you. We can go grab a coffee and maybe some dinner.”
“I get it,” Katou said simply as he turned back toward his car. Except when Katou’d kicked the pills and the needles to the curb, most of his friends had gone with it. He found he didn't miss Youji or the rest of his band - there wasn't a single decision he'd made with those guys that had been a good one, and the friends he'd made since were all much better. He didn't intend to leave Wash in the same lonely space though.
“Dinner sounds fucking great though. What're you in the mood for? I’d kill for some greasy Chinese.”
Dinner did sound fucking great and when Katou mentioned Chinese, Wash realized that he was actually hungry for the first time in nearly a week. Not just hungry, fucking starving.
Shoulders relaxed and hands not quite so twitchy, Wash smiled. “Perfect,” he said. “Let me grab my boots and wallet and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Cool,” Katou said. He nearly put the beer in his backseat, but on second thought he decided to stash it in the trunk instead. Out of sight, mostly out of mind, after all. He leaned against his car and lit a cigarette as he waited for Wash to come down.
It was only a few minutes later when Wash joined Katou down on the street, boots on his feet and wallet and phone in his back pocket. A note left for Carolina letting her know he was going out for Chinese with Katou. He lit up a cigarette as he approached Katou’s car, exhaling a puff of smoke. Not all vices had been kicked, Carolina had let him keep this particular one.
“Thanks for waiting,” Wash said when he reached the car. “Let’s go, I’m starving.”
Katou put the car into drive, and with a too-quick acceleration, he pulled out of his parking spot and headed down the speed, gathering speed until it would be obvious to anyone that he was speeding. He gave Wash a sideways glance. “So, is that where you were last week?” he asked, a little tentatively. “Doing the whole getting clean thing?”
The speeding didn’t seem to bother Wash. He’d been known to break the speed limit on more than one occasion. As long as Katou didn’t threaten any possibility of getting them in an accident, Wash didn’t call him on it. However, at Katou’s question, he glanced at him a little wearily. “Yeah,” he admitted, “that’s where I was. Carolina got a place up in Yosemite and took me there to detox.”
“Yeah? You get the superflu too?” Katou asked, glancing at his friend. He didn’t know much about alcohol withdrawal, except for the fact that he’d read it could kill you. With heroin, it made you wish you were dead, but at least the chances of the withdrawal killing you were slim to none. But he wanted Wash to know that he wasn’t alone in this. Maybe their poisons were different, but at the core it was nearly the same dance.
“Superflu,” Wash repeated thoughtfully. That was a pretty accurate way to describe what he’d gone through, if a flu could cause you hallucinate that all your friends and loved ones had been brutally slaughtered, or that your overbearing abusive stepfather had you pinned down in bed, or completely erased whole hours of your life from existence. There had been times Wash had wanted to die. Then again, there had been times even before then that he had wanted that very same thing, so perhaps that couldn’t be entirely attributed to the withdrawal. “Yeah,” Wash nodded a little wearily, his hand went to the back of his neck, “I got the superflu. Pretty fucking bad actually, from what I can remember.”
He glanced at the young man next to him again. He knew Katou had gone through this too. His vice was different and his experiences were different, but it was good to know that someone else understood what he was going through, what it meant to be addicted and how hard it was to give up that addiction.
“Yeah, it’s the thought of going through that again that’s been keeping me clean,” Katou said. He shoulder checked, then switched lanes so as to weave through traffic. “Whenever you’re tempted, just think about how fucking sick you’re gonna get if you start drinking again.”
Still, quitting drinking sounded like a fucking bitch. Booze was literally everywhere. At least Katou didn’t need to see billboard signs every twenty feet with pictures of the junk on it once he’d kicked heroin.
“Knowing that’s helped a little,” Wash agreed, “it’s not something I want to go through again…” he trailed off a moment. He didn’t want to go through it again, but even that didn’t quash the desire to return to old habits. Wash was a creature of habit, after all. A drink after his shift at the ranch. A drink or two in the evening...enough to get buzzed - or as it had become in the weeks leading up to his argument with Carolina, enough to get trashed. Wash frowned a little. It was more than just habit, and he knew it.
He leaned back in his seat. “The issue is I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I don’t want to go through that again, but I still do want to drink, just to shut my mind off once and awhile, or at all.” he glanced at Katou again, a little hesitant at first to bring up what the younger man may have considered ancient history, but at the same time looking for a little guidance from someone who had gone through this himself. “What made you quit?”
“Weed helps,” Katou said, grinning toothily. He probably shouldn’t still be smoking marijuana, but it wasn’t like he was addicted to a fucking leaf. That and the booze. “And chocolate, too. Can’t get enough of the stuff.” He even had some Hersey’s kisses in the center console of the car at this moment.
Katou frowned, turning his attention back to the road and his face taking on an uncharacteristically serious expression. “It’s gonna sound fucking insane, but the dreams, mostly.” Most people would probably assume that any dreams that involved dying five times would lead to more drug use, not less, which meant he probably should explain.
“I saw this version of me in them. This fucking awesome guy, who sacrificed himself for his friends and kept fighting even when shit seemed bleak.” Someone who didn’t hate himself. At least, not with the all-consuming hatred for himself that Katou felt. He hated himself sometimes, but he could still see the good in himself. “And I thought that’s someone who I wanted to be. This guy who fought for what he wanted. And I had Wendy and Jack around, who for some fucking reason I still don’t understand, who took this insane fucking chance and believed in me.”
More than he deserved at that time, at least. And while both of them were gone, he still had people who cared about him. Kanan and Caleb, Wash and Izzy. Not wanting to let them down kept him off the junk more than even the fear of withdrawal.
Wash chuckled faintly. “I think Carolina’d skin me alive if I started smoking marijuana. Even if it is legal on a federal level,” he stated, half joking. In all honesty, she’d probably flip him on the mats until he couldn’t stand up straight. She tolerated him smoking regular cigarettes for now, but Wash had a sinking feeling that was the next addiction he was going to have to tackle. At least it’d be a lot easier than quitting drinking.
Wash glanced down at the little foil wrapped chocolates in the center console and furrowed his brows. “Don’t these melt in the heat?” He asked curiously. Hell, maybe Katou liked melty chocolate kisses...which was a thought Wash promptly put out of his head.
He lapsed into silence and listened to Katou’s reasons for kicking his own habit. And he was quiet for several moments once the younger man had stopped talking. “That doesn’t sound insane,” he answered after another moment. His attention had shifted from the chocolate towards the car’s dash in front of him. “The Dreams were the reason I started drinking. Or at least a big part of the reason.” He shifted a little in his seat, hand still the back of his neck. Listening to Katou had given him at least a little courage. “The worst part of this is, when I was a teenager I swore I wouldn’t drink or at least I’d never get drunk. My stepfather was a mean son of a bitch when he was drunk, which was basically all the time. The last thing I wanted to be was like him, or turn into the things he used to call me. And I did pretty good for a while. Then the Dreams started and then there was Epsilon…” Katou had been there, he had seen what the Dreams had turned Wash into. How they had exacerbated already untreated PTSD “And neither one of them are going to stop. No matter how badly my Dream Self had wanted to die, or how relieved I’d been when I thought the Dreams were over. They keep going with no end in sight and this goddamn ghost in my head. Alcohol dulled it at first and after a while I think I started hoping it’d just kill me and get it over with…”
And then had come Carolina and Gale, neither of whom were content to let Wash go out so disgracefully. Wash chuckled a little. “You know, you and I aren’t that different. You wanted to be like the guy in your Dreams. The one who would sacrifice himself for his friends. And I...well, between you and me, the only reason I’m still here is that I want to do the same thing for mine. And I couldn’t do that a falling down drunk.”
Katou’s face darkened as Wash talked about his own experiences with his father. Katou’s father hadn’t been a drunk - he’d barely touched the stuff, except when he was doing business. But that didn’t make him any less mean. He forced his own father out of his head for the time being though. His old man had died over a year ago, and the less he thought about him, the better.
“Dying fucking sucks, dude,” Katou said, speaking from experience. “And I bet a long slow one sucks even more than getting run through a half dozen times. Especially from the booze. Your eyes turn all yellow and bloodshot, so you don’t even get to die pretty like me,” he said, flashing Wash a toothy grin.
His expression sobered slightly as he turned his attention back to the road. “But yeah, I think we got a whole lot more in common than you’d think,” he said, and turned sharply into the parking lot that he almost hadn’t realized was already upon them.
“Dying pretty wasn’t exactly a concern,” Wash answered, but he smirked slightly. His eyes moved forward again when Katou jerked the wheel and turned them a little harder than necessary into the parking lot. The corners of his mouth tugged slightly downward in thought. “Had someone in your life who liked to smack you around for shits and grins too, huh?” He asked and frowned a bit more. “It sucks, doesn’t it?” Sucks was something of an understatement. “But I guess we’re lucky, you and I. We got away, got a new family. Carolina for me and Kanan for you. Right? He’s an ok guy.”
“Yeah,” Katou said shortly, and for a moment debated with himself over whether to elaborate. But then, Wash had. “My old man too. He didn’t drink though; he just wanted me dead.” And no wonder he did, when Katou’s mom had gone off and had an affair with some other guy and had popped him out as proof of her infidelity.
He couldn’t stop the surprsied smile at the metnion of Kanan being Katou’s new family though. It was probably too much to hope for to claim anything quite like that, but Katou’d thought it once in awhile on those odd occurrences where he didn’t quite stop the thought before it formed. He’d thought the same of others before, and they’d all up and left him, all of them moving clear across the globe. Logically, Katou knew it probably had more to do with the place than with him, but it still stung. “Yeah, Kanan’s alright, I guess,” he said airily. “If you ignore the Jedi bits. Carolina’s not so bad herself.”
Wash laughed. “The Jedi bits are the best part, man. Then again, I’m a giant nerd, so…” He shrugged. He glanced at Katou sidelong for a moment. “If he does ever try to pull any sort of shit, you let me know.” As cool as it was that Kanan was a Jedi, Wash wasn’t going to tolerate anyone fucking with his friends or his family. And even though it continued to go unspoken, Katou did fall into both those categories.
Not that he believed that Kanan would suddenly turn heel on them. He seemed to be pretty good for Katou. Sometimes it was nice to know you had someone in your corner, after all. Wash knew now from recent experience.
“Oh please,” Katou snorted. “Everyone knows the Sith are way cooler.” Of course, Katou seemed to attract the do-gooder type, so he supposed if he was supposed to get someone from the Star Wars universe, it would be a Jedi. At least Kanan wasn't boring and stuffy like so many of them seemed to be.
“I don't think he’d do any of that Jedi Mind Trick shit with me, but it's good to know you'd break out the big guns for me,” he said, winking at Wash as he unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the car. “You know I’d do the same, yeah?”
“They’re light sabers always seemed cooler,” Wash agreed with a thoughtful nod of his head. “And they had the Death Star, even with it’s huge glaring design flaw.” He smirked at Katou. “Of course I’d break out the big guns for you. I’d even use the battle rifle.” The smirk turned more into a smile, “yeah, man, I know. Thanks.” He got out of the car and stretched before motioning towards the restaurant. “Ready to eat? I don’t know about you, but I am officially starving.”
“No doubt. And they can actually get laid.” Not that Kanan seemed to have many hangups in that regard. Of course, he assumed that the rigors of being a Jedi probably hadn’t carried over to this life. Katou sure wouldn’t stick to them if he had dreamed of being a Jedi. “But yeah, I’m fucking starved. Let’s go,” he said, and led the way into the restaurant.