Embrace the Fall – HF Creative

If Archer could have spent all his time teaching martial arts, playing Triad with Jay and hanging out with Regan and company in her cushy Chell apartment, he would have been the happiest motherfucker in the Tri-System. But reality was a bitch and he had a Spire territory and a gym to manage.

A meeting had been set between himself, Bailey and Tansho. There was talk of trying to host it on neutral ground, but places where they could do so were in short supply and Archer had pointed out that he owned an entire building where he could guarantee they wouldn’t be disturbed or surprised by uninvited guests.

So that solved that.

Besides, the reconnaissance that he’d done himself the day following the fire at Levi’s had proven that the concept of neutral ground was quietly disappearing in the undercity. The real kicker was that it was the least of their problems.

The more Archer thought about it, the more he realized that the meeting was going to end up doubling as a family dinner. He hadn’t had one of those in a long time. Too long. So he told his entire crew to be there and made sure there would be enough food to go around. And he bought a large amount of genuine, Bower-grade chocolate from a specialist boutique in Skyview, because great ideas were nothing without followthrough. He also told the other turf leaders to bring along anyone else they thought should be at the meeting as well. It was going to be a goddamned shindig at this rate. He ought to have hired a fucking DJ and servers.

The day of the meeting Archer decided to extend an invitation to Jay too, although he stressed the fact that he didn’t need to come if it made him uncomfortable. He must have reiterated this ten times before Jay quelled him with a look that managed to say ‘thank you’ and ‘for the love of fuck, please stop talking’ at the same time.

“I’d rather not relive those memories.”

“It’s okay, I get it,” Archer replied. “I’m not sure there’s much you would have seen that I didn’t, but I thought I’d ask just in case. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jay.”

Every time Archer said his friend’s new name he felt a tiny thrill of accomplishment. Like he had won something, somehow, even though he was the one who had done the bestowing.

Get your head out of the fucking clouds and into the fight, Archer.

Soon, his largest meeting room would be full of dangerous people, all of whom had their own agendas as well as a similar disregard for rules and social niceties. He needed to keep a tight lid on things, or this night was going to go South so fast, it would give him vertigo. And if he didn’t get moving, he was going to be late for a meeting happening in his own fucking building.

Archer wasn’t usually one for grand entrances, but he had to admit to himself that there was something that delighted his dramatic ass about barging into the crowded boardroom five minutes after everyone had assembled with a plate of obscenely expensive candy in one hand, and a sleek, black Siegfried bomb in the other.

“What the fuck?” Syd Bailey bellowed, shooting to his feet as Archer placed the tiny incendiary in the centre of the table that dominated the room. Bailey wasn’t the only one who stood and backed away. “What the actual fuck, Lee? Why would you bring that in here?”

“Well, I thought you guys might get hungry,” Archer explained, sliding the platter of chocolate beside the rest of the food that sat, buffet-like, at one end of the table. He was being glib and he was well aware of it. Bailey wasn’t looking at the food. Nobody was. They were all staring at the Siegfried, which looked like an innocuous tube of chapstick where it sat.

“I’m sorry boss, but I gotta second that question,” Carina said from across the table. “Didn’t one of those cause enough damage already?”

“Relax, assholes. It’s been disarmed.”

“How?”

“I took it to Dixie,” Archer said, referencing a well-known illegal tech fence who operated out of Spire 9. The Calzarian elder was an ornery old curmudgeon and dealing with her was like sucking on vinegar, but she was the most brilliant weapons engineer that Archer had ever met.

“No, I mean how did you get it?” Bailey replied impatiently.

“With a scary amount of ease. Some jerk in a mask was selling them out of a fucking suitcase in the club district. I asked around and that’s not the only CORE weapon you can get your hands on down there either.”

“Somebody needs to buy the rest of those before some psychopathic cunt from the Sixes gets their hands on them,” one of Bailey’s boys muttered.

“Already one step ahead of you,” Archer said.

He’d taken Dixie the entire case of Siegfrieds and told her he wanted them neutered. She’d been rude and unaccommodating, but agreed because Archer hadn’t balked at her overinflated price and because he hadn’t said anything about wanting the flammable substrate back. He hoped she would end up selling the CORE back their own weapons parts. Circle of life and all that fuckery. The important thing was that the bombs weren’t moving around the undercity anymore.

“I don’t get it,” Bailey said, sitting down and rubbing his hands through his silver-shocked hair. “What does it mean?”

“It means that someone is trying to destabilize the undercity.”

It was Tansho who spoke and it was the first thing she’d said since the meeting started. Archer nodded at her in acknowledgement and appreciation.

Tansho was young, but she possessed a shrewdness that made Archer think that she would be a formidable ally once she took over the spire 3 turf. Flanked on either side by her associates—two Eylerian bodyguards with massive, gilt horns—she looked like some kind of child empress. She carried it well, too. An austere PA wearing a suit that had probably cost more than a first-class StellarLine ticket to Terraneuve also hovered a little ways behind her.

“Brains and looks—that’s my kind of sexy,” Carina said, turning a smouldering smile on Tansho, who smiled back. Archer glared at Carina. She blew an impertinent kiss at him but heeded his warning, leaning back in her seat and moving her attention away from their Spire 3 guests.

“I was thinking the same thing as Tansho,” he said, steering the meeting back on course. “And I also think we all know who that someone is. Every single weapon that’s been flooded into our streets is Elite-issue.”

“Okay, but why? What would the CORE stand to gain from turning the undercity into a fucking war zone?” Yancy asked around a mouthful of sandwich. He was sitting between Harlan and Carina in the small huddle of Archer’s people.

Archer leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. “I think,” he said, aware that he had the rapt attention of the entire room, “I might know what this is all about.”

He told them about the visit from the CORE officer, the strange talisman-like object in the hologram and the ultimatum he’d been given.

“So, you think they’re trying to flush someone or something out of the undercity?” Tansho asked.

“Or they want a reason to send more Elite squads down here so they can find it,” Archer replied. “And if we start blowing each other up, that’s all the excuse they’ll need.”

“Well, you seem to have all the answers, don’t you Lee?” Bailey said from the middle of the table. He sounded bitter. “That’s a bit convenient, isn’t it?”

“It’s a theory, not an answer,” Archer spat back, anger rising in him. “I don’t know why you’re being so salty about it. This isn’t a fucking competition. If we can’t get past our petty rivalries and start acting like goddamned adults, we’re all going to be equally fucked by this situation. There is no winning here without solidarity. I’ve been saying this about the undercity for ages.”

His speech had a sobering effect on the room. Silence hung, heavy and awkward until Yancy, ever the mediator, started pushing the various containers of food across the table.

“Food’s here to be eaten, people. Help yourselves,” he said.

The meeting continued and the food disappeared as tempers and egos were assuaged by nourishment and banter. It was agreed that their priority should be getting the influx of weapons off the streets and keeping a close watch on the the Spire 10 and 6 gangs, who were prone to violent overtake attempts and batshit anarchy, respectively.

As far as the object that the CORE was looking for, Harlan suggested that they set up a private Nexus server for sharing any information they might find amongst themselves. It was a prudent idea. Prudent and very illegal. Tansho promised she’d have people on it the second she returned to Spire 3.

As the meeting closed and everybody who didn’t belong on Spire 12 filed out of the room, Archer approached his inner circle and pulled his Sergeant at Arms away from the group by her elbow.

“Carina, darling,” Archer said, speaking through the smile that had become pasted on his face. “I love you, but if you jeopardize this alliance with Spire 3 before it’s begun by seducing Orla Segura’s eighteen year old daughter, that recording of you singing Candypop in the kitchen is gonna find its way onto the Nexus top 50. Understand?”

Carina had the presence to look appropriately horrified; it was not a flattering piece of audio.

“You told me you deleted that,” she growled.

“No, I told you that you didn’t need to worry about it. And I would really hate to have to change my mind, so why don’t we avoid that whole situation? Hands off Tansho. At least until she’s running the joint, then you two can do whatever the fuck you want. Are we clear?”

Carina nodded, still fuming at him. Archer wasn’t phased. His head was already too full of other, more concerning thoughts.

Nothing had been said during the meeting about what would happen if someone did find the mystery item. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement among the three leaders that they would deal with that situation if and when it actually happened.

In a rare turn of patience, Archer was okay with this. Just so long as nobody started dealing with the CORE under the radar. He hoped the other leaders would follow the honour-among-thieves creed that drove their tenuous alliance, but he also knew it was naive to expect total transparency from them. Even he hadn’t shared all the details of his encounter with the CORE officer.

Details like the length of time the pompous fuckhead had said they’d been tracking the person carrying the alleged dangerous object. And the nagging voice in his head that kept reminding him that he did know someone who had arrived in the undercity around the same time.

A sad-eyed, quiet someone. Someone who already had too much on his plate without Archer prying into matters that were none of his fucking business. Someone who he’d gathered up and placed into his world of protected people without pausing to consider the consequences.

Well… that wasn’t entirely fair. He had considered them. And he’d convinced himself he could weather any potential shitstorm they might bring. Was that hubris catching up with him now?

Archer knew that Jay had secrets.

And he also knew that the days where he had the luxury of being able to let Jay keep them were dwindling.

Life on Spire 12 went on, as it always seems to in defiance of disasters and life-altering events. Archer’s days at Foundation returned to business as usual and everything was so… normal. It felt wrong in the wake of what had happened. Wrong, that things should go back to status quo while the nebulous threat of impending doom dug into the back of his mind like a splinter.

The silent, internal stress was nothing new to him. He was happy to carry it so that others didn’t have to, but it did make his temper fuse shorter. He found himself spending a lot of his spare time in the sparring ring and in the beds of beautiful strangers; sex and violence were always good for a quick vacation from reality. He couldn’t pretend they weren’t preoccupations, but they sure as fuck beat the ways he used to escape from himself in the past.

Some of the mundane return to normalcy was great, like the vid-watching nights in Regan’s apartment that were becoming a regular occurrence. When Jay joined them it was even better. Archer loved watching the way that Regan and Paska brought him out of his shell.

Other aspects of ‘normal’ were not so welcome, like the sector-wide blackout that hit the Catacombs the same day as some fancy upper-city gala.

Foundation had been slow all day. In hindsight, this was a major stroke of luck, but Archer didn’t know it at the time. All he knew was that he was bored as fuck. The gym was almost devoid of people and Jay was somewhere up in the rafters above the sparring ring looking at a short in one of the ceiling lights, so he couldn’t even pester him to play Triad. When Carina showed up at her usual time, he cornered her and all-but begged her to spot him in the free weight section.

As the lights flickered and died, the only reason Archer knew what was going on was because Regan had been excitedly talking about the Skyview gala for days: the son of some Stellar Lines freight magnate was taking her to it. The past three days had seen more messages on his com feed about dress and accessory options than Archer knew how to handle. At this point, he was almost afraid to ask her what the difference between jungle green and emerald green was.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he groaned into the darkness. Feeling his way over to a nearby bench, he set his weights down. “Why does this shit always have to start hours before the event does?”

Carina made an ambiguous noise to Archer’s left. “Sound checks? Who knows.”

Archer’s eyes were starting to adjust to the murkiness when he heard a faint scuffling sound from above. He cursed under his breath and picked his way through the equipment towards the ring. He knew the layout of his gym so well he could navigate it with his eyes closed.

“Jay?” he called out. “You okay, buddy?”

“Can’t see a thing and it’s a long way down. What the hell do you think?”

Archer squinted up at the warehouse ceiling.

“Alright, just hang on,” he said. “I’ve got a some torch cylinders somewhere in the kitchen. In the meantime… don’t fall.”

“Outstanding advice. You should write a column,” came Jay’s reply, varnished with predictable sarcasm. Archer supposed that if it had been him stuck in the rafters in the dark, he wouldn’t be in a charitable mood either.

The glow-torches in the kitchen storage unit were large, heavy industrial things and it took Archer longer than he thought it would to lug one back to the training floor. Once he had it situated in the middle of the room, he depressed the top of the canister, activating it; the chemical reaction created a blue-tinged light that could last for hours. It was bright enough to illuminate all the way up to the ceiling, revealing one very irate Hybrid clinging to a suspension platform that ran the length of the room.

Earlier that day, Jay had pointed out the platform to Archer. It had always been there, but Archer didn’t know that it could move across the ceiling on rails. A shudder ran through him, looking at it now. He wasn’t a fan of heights. That bliss edge between falling and not falling, between dying and feeling more alive than he ever had before, was almost too seductive for his animal brain to handle. Too close to other kinds of euphoria.

With enough light now for Jay to get down from his lofty roost, Archer started off towards the locker room with grim resignation. Not much was going to happen at Foundation during the blackout and there was no telling how long it would last. He was signalling to Carina to start putting her weights away when a loud, metallic groan reverberated above them.

Archer looked up to see Jay edging towards the control box, and then the entire armature shuddered and lurched forward unexpectedly. A heart-stopping moment followed as Jay scrambled to regain his footing, but it was too late.

Archer watched him go over the edge and felt all of the warmth in his body leave him. In the split second that his feet left the platform, a blinding arc of electricity flashed between Jay and the metal railing, momentarily lighting the entire warehouse floor into oblivion.

The deafening bang that followed startled Archer into motion. Ears ringing, he dashed back towards the commotion, his thoughts frantic.

Land in the ring. Please please please. Let him land in the ring.

Archer got his wish, but he didn’t get the chance to appreciate it as another flash dazed him, the sudden light overwhelming his senses after so much darkness.

Through spotty vision, Archer saw the state-of-the-art system stutter to life as Jay crashed into it. He hit the mats, rolled and came to a stop as fractured fans of hologram lasers flickered across the floor and over his still form.

A lifetime passed.

Jay groaned and rolled over. Archer would have felt relieved if he hadn’t been for the sparks and ominous humming that were now coming from the VR system. Worry warred against the shock of what he had just witnessed, and the implication it carried: his friend was a Breaker. It was the only explanation.

“Makers, no,” Jay moaned, groping his way to his knees like a wounded animal. “No no no no no.” His keening became drowned out by the growing thrum, and several of the hologram boxes exploded, sending a rain of sparks down towards the mats.

When the din grew louder and Jay showed no further signs of motion, Archer decided that caution could go fuck itself and ran the last few steps to the raised platform. Up on the mats, the Hybrid’s whole body was bowed and tensed. One arm cradled into his stomach, the other braced against the ground, fingers clawing. His head snapped up as Archer approached him.

“Stay away from me,” he snarled.

Archer stood his ground. “This is you.” he yelled over the humming and crackling. “Can’t you make it stop?”

Jay shook his head, tears streaming. “Please go,”he cried.

Archer didn’t move. He watched Jay, recognized the consuming distress of a losing internal battle in his posture, and didn’t like the thought of where defeat might lead. For any of them.

So he did the only thing he could think of.

He ducked around his friend, feeling heat and static-shock lance into him. Ignoring the warning signs, he moved closer and in a single fluid and practiced motion, Archer wound his arm around Jay’s neck while bracing his other hand behind his head. Gentle at first. Like he was cradling a lover.

Then he squeezed.

In the stunned aftermath, Carina emerged from behind a heavy bag, wide-eyed and livid. She smacked Archer, which he took as his due, and cussed him out for his reckless self-endangerment before helping him carry Jay up to the couch in Foundation’s loft.

It didn’t take long for the unconscious Hybrid to come around. Archer could tell he was awake long before he spoke.

“Why does my arm hurt?” he groaned.

“Because you broke it when you fell,” Archer replied. “I put a flexi-cast on it, but you should get it checked out by Yancy tomorrow.”

Jay sat up, wincing. The flexi-cast was designed to provide stabilization and healing without hindering range of motion, but it didn’t do much for pain. “You… you choked me out,” he stuttered, blinking as his strange eyes focused on Archer.

“I did. You were lighting the place up like a fucking laser show and it didn’t look like you could stop on your own.”

As far as justifications as to why he’d used deadly force to render someone unconscious went, Archer thought this one was pretty rational. Hell, it had practically been humanitarian.

Jay’s body slumped and he pressed his face into his good hand as the events of the blackout caught up with him. “Oh Makers.Oh bleeding Makers… I could have killed you,” he moaned as his shoulders hunched further. Torchlight bathed the loft in a thousand shades of green and blue. Jay looked like he was trying to fold himself into the deepest ones and disappear.

If Archer was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure how he had managed to crawl away from the scene downstairs without irreparable heart damage. But he had, and he was happy to not think too hard about it.

He sat down and placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Hey. Look at me. I’m okay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay,” he said.

“Nothing about what just happened is okay!” Jay shouted, bucking Archer’s hand off his back with a violent shudder. He closed his eyes and clutched his broken arm and hissed several things in Eyleri—Archer had known him long enough to recognize curses in the language. The seconds dragged as he waited for Jay to gather his composure.

“Did I… Was anyone else hurt by the surge?” His voice was smaller this time, as if he was afraid to know the answer.

Carina was fine—shaken and sworn to secrecy for the rest of her fucking life, but otherwise unscathed. Archer knew that he and Carina were incredibly lucky they hadn’t been sparring before the blackout, and that Jay was incredibly lucky to have landed in the ring, with its sprung floor and kinetic displacement field. Too lucky for comfort, considering the height he’d fallen from. The metal rafters and his solo-spar VR system had taken the brunt of the electric overload. The system was dead now, but its gallant sacrifice had saved the rest of them from any serious damage.

“The only person who got hurt was you. You ask me, it’s a miracle you only fractured your arm.”

“No, it’s a miracle that your heart is still beating,” Jay retorted. He sounded angry, but Archer couldn’t tell who it was directed at.

“I’m a difficult fucker to get rid of,” he said, then decided to change the subject for both their sake. “That’s a really badass-looking mark.” He gestured towards the red fractal line-work that peeked out from the collar of Jay’s shirt. The marks looked like little lightning bolts spreading their way up his neck and down the length of his arm.

Jay ran his palm over his neck as if doing so might wipe the marks off his skin. He blinked at Archer a few more times, hugging his injured arm into his chest.

“You are being way too calm considering what just happened. It’s freaking me out,” he blurted.

“Would you prefer it if I clutched my pearls and cried ‘Breaker!’ at the top of my lungs?” Archer asked in a flat voice.

“No,” Jay mumbled.

Something about Archer saying the word ‘Breaker’ out loud made the reality of the moment solidify between them into something heavy and real.

“You’re really not bothered by this, are you?” Jay said, disbelief etched in his eyes.

“What is there to be bothered about? You’re still the same person aren’t you?”

Archer watched as Jay exhaled and pressed his thumb in the space between his eyes, like he was trying to stave off a migraine. Archer sympathized. Secrets—big ones—were exhausting to carry. Sometimes the only way to let go of them was to have life unceremoniously rip them away. And it sucked. That kind of sudden, involuntary liberation was fucking painful… but in Archer’s experience, it was necessary.

Pain is clarity if you can stop if from consuming you.

If you can transform it into experience.

If you embrace the fall.

Joss could feel himself starting to shake: an uncontrollable, whole body tremor that had less to do with anxiety and more to do with the physical duress that his abilities put him through. The letdown was never pleasant but it was a beast he was familiar with—itchy skin, overwhelming thirst and a headache threatening behind his eyes that experience told him would be keeping him company for days.

All of these things were normal. In truth, they barely registered.

No. What he felt as he sat in Foundation’s loft, after his biggest secret had been blown wide open, was a grim kind of acceptance. Nothing was okay, but nothing was on fire either, which was an improvement all things considered. Now that Archer knew about him—about what he was and what he could do—it seemed like this moment between them had always been inevitable.

“I’ll be honest, I’ve had my suspicions about you for a while,” Archer said, nudging his shoulder again. This time the contact didn’t make Joss want to crawl out of his skin.

His responding laugh was humourless. “Of course you have.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You’re like a backwards gauge. Every time I think I know how you’ll react to something, you go and do the opposite thing.”

Archer scoffed. “If you think I’m not completely fucking levelled by what I just saw, you have me wrong. You produced electricity out of thin air. I’m still wrapping my head around it.”

Joss felt a ruffle of irritation. “It’s technically not the same thing as electricity,” he began, and then shut his mouth when Archer aimed a look at him that said that this wasn’t the time to argue semantics.

“You have an incredible power. That doesn’t scare me,” he declared. “CORE doctrine would call you a danger to society, but that’s complete bullshit. I’ve watched you for weeks and the only thing I’ve seen is an honest, hard working person who deserves better than what the system handed him. I mean, sure, you’ve got issues, but show me someone who doesn’t.”

Joss felt a fresh wave of guilt crash over him. He appreciated what Archer was trying to do, but the man had no idea what he was dealing with. “I’m not an honest person. I’ve lied my way through most of my life and… I’ve hurt people,” he whispered, choking on the words.

“So have I,” Archer replied, his expression grave. “Are you afraid of me?”

“A little.”

Archer let out a short bark of laughter. “That’s honest, at least. I suppose a healthy amount of paranoia goes with the territory of being who you are. For the record, you don’t need to be scared of me. I’m on your side.”

“I didn’t ask you to be.”

“You didn’t have to. I’m no friend of the CORE,” Archer spat, like the word tasted bad in his mouth. He shook himself and then dug around in his pocket for something. “I want you to have this,” he said, pulling out a personal credit chip. “Four thousand credits, interest-free. Think of it as a gift.”

“You’re not being serious.”

“As a hull breach,” Archer said without a hint of affectation. He pressed the chip into the hand on Joss’s unbroken arm and folded his long, callused fingers over it.

Joss opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He swallowed and tried again. “No. You can’t. I can’t—”

“Yes you can. And so can I,” Archer insisted overtop of his stammering. “I know what it’s like to feel trapped because you don’t have the financial means to escape. I don’t wish that feeling on anyone.”

Joss squeezed the chip in his fist. If it was true that there were four thousand credits on it, he was holding more money than he had ever had at one time in his entire life. A barrage of possibilities flooded his head, but each one made him feel like he was cheating himself out of something much more valuable.

Don’t be such a sentimental moron.

“You’re a real magnanimous asshole, you know that?” he sighed, sliding the chip into his pocket.

“I do.”

“Are you independently wealthy or something?”

“That should be obvious by now,” Archer shot back, a little impatiently. “And after that little display of yours, I’m not interested in talking about my secrets tonight. I’d rather focus on you.”

Joss grimaced, thinking that he would rather chew a mouthful of sand than talk about himself or his abilities and the wreck they’d made of his life. He’d been working so hard to get to a better place. The thought of slipping back into the darkness of doubt and self-loathing terrified him.

But there were parts of him—the reckless, lonely parts—that wanted to come clean about everything. He knew that there was catharsis to be found in ripping himself open and leaving nothing unsaid. He was already on a bloody roll, why stop now? Joss wanted to believe that Archer was as honourable as he claimed to be—if only because it would be nice to live in a world where people like that existed.

Archer seemed to follow his internal conflict. “I know you’re running away from something that happened to you, and I know you think you’re alone in the universe. But that doesn’t need to be true. You can talk to me.”

“You might not like what you hear,” Joss said.

“I promised you zero judgment or agenda,” Archer replied, “and I meant it. I worked for the biggest, most cutthroat drug cartel on Terraneuve before I came to Juno. There isn’t a lot you can tell me that will shock me.”

“…You’re doing a terrible job of not talking about your own secrets, you know,” Joss remarked with a quizzical raise of his eyebrows.

Archer shrugged, but Joss got the sense that he knew exactly what he was doing. Brilliant, manipulative bastard.

This is what happens when you let yourself get close to people. They get under your skin and make you do things you shouldn’t.

But then again, Archer wasn’t making him do anything. He was simply offering himself up as a safe sounding board for Joss to throw his pent up shit at. And Makers knew, he had a lot of it to unload.

The air in the loft suddenly felt close and stifling—or perhaps it was just him post-Breaker discharge. He needed oxygen. He needed to see the stars. To know the comforting sensation of being small in an endless universe. Insignificant was what he really longed to be, but the lattice would never let him have it. Small was a compromise he could reach for.

Joss tugged at the hem of his sweatshirt as the pain from his broken arm, the prickly sensation from his fresh Breaker marks and another nagging, familiar craving within him started to become uncomfortable to the point of distraction.

“Can we go somewhere above ground?” The words left him in a breathless rush.

“Hell yeah. Let’s get the fuck out of here and get you some coffee,” Archer said, reading him like a nexus article.

Joss nodded and stood, full of the unexpected certainty that he could not exist for one second longer without pursuing the need to caffeinate himself. He wanted coffee like Saint Orelieth wanted to meet the Makers. He wanted to sit on a deserted walkway somewhere where the air was cool and fresh and tell his story to Archer. He wanted to start talking and not stop until it had all come tumbling out of him. He knew that if he didn’t do it tonight, it was never going to happen. And if it never happened, his spirit was going to wither and die a slow, invisible death for the rest of his days.

But first he wanted coffee. Familiarity. Comfort.

Because the next part was going to be an absolute bitch.