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Obviously it wasn’t Aria’s fault, and Mako wasn’t blaming her. He’d done way worse stuff while drunk. Or like, he probably had. Really, it was hard to tell what he’d done, in the cobbled together haze of his youth. Which was, of course, part of the point, and all the fresh data overlaying it really wasn’t helping matters. Still, he wished Aria had landed on literally any other point to tease him about.
If Mako was going to blame anyone, it was going to be Orth. Orth had, in a rare moment of being a semi-cool dude (a title which, incidentally, Mako was now violently rescinding) offered up a bottle of space rum he’d unearthed in one of his fiendish bouts of cleaning. In a minor miracle, Mako had not been conscripted to assist, which meant that he was just as pleasantly surprised when Orth unveiled the bottle as the rest of the Chime. Now they were all gathered in the common area, getting solidly and efficiently trashed in the name of team bonding, except for Orth, who apparently regarded his having procured the rum for them as enough of a gesture, and had subsequently tapped out early out of cowardness.
They weren’t even being rowdy really, was the thing. They were just kind of hanging out. Aria’s cheeks were flushed a rosy color, which complemented her hair and her jacket and also Jacqui’s leggings, which Aria was currently resting her head on, while Jacqui played with her hair. They probably color coordinated their outfits on purpose, Mako thought idly. It seemed the kind of thing Aria would do, and the kind of thing Jacqui would lovingly tolerate.
He was about to make some vaguely antagonistic comment to that letter, when Aria was suddenly seized by a fit of giggles. This was typical of Aria. Mako had learned not to ask what she was laughing about. Drunk Aria’s grasp of good jokes was tenuous at best, particularly after you’d spent ten minutes trying to extract what she was saying out of all the laughing, and there was usually better pay off just watching her laugh herself to death.
“What?” said Cass, who was an idiot.
Ah, well. Mako was pretty drunk. He could indulge Aria if she wanted to pretend to be the team's comic relief for a little bit. It wasn’t like she was any real competition anyways. He shifted his position on the floor where he was lying next to Cass, so he could watch whatever horrible conversation they and Aria were about to have unfold.
“I was just thinking,” Aria said, and then her laughter overtook her and she had to pause for a good five minutes while Jacqui patted her on the back like she might be choking. But at last she managed, “About that poster of Cass in your dorm room, Mako. Did you actually have that or was that like, the bullshit fake memory thing?”
The pleasant warm feeling, bolstered by alcohol, which Mako had been nursing, was suddenly and violently gone, sucked up like light in a black hole. He felt, all at once, sickeningly sober. Dimly, he registered that Cass was making that face they made when Mako was concerning them, and they were trying to figure out how best to address it. Their eyebrows got all scrunched up, like they were thinking hard. It took Mako about four seconds to decide which of the two things Aria had touched upon that he would gladly have literally never voiced aloud ever, he would rather have Cass overanalyzing.
To which end he said, “I mean, but aren't all of my memories bullshit and fake?” which, even as he said it, he knew had been kind of pretty mean actually, and maybe a little bit over the top, and then Cass winced, and Aria gave a soft gasp of distress. Mako was starting to have trouble figuring out what, exactly, he was feeling sick over.
The problem was, of course, that he could remember the poster Aria was talking about. It had been one of those tear out magazine ones, and Cass had been standing in front of sun speckled ocean waves, with their skin impossibly air washed so that they had no pores. Possibly, the blurb on the magazine cover had said something like “Meet the heartthrob royals of Apostolos!” but Aria hadn’t seen that part, so Mako didn’t have to acknowledge it. The point was that, in his head, making everyone feel bad for him and his mostly fabricated memories had been infinitely preferable to having Cass ask him literally a single follow up question about that poster, or what it had been doing hanging in his room. If he’d actually had a room. Or whatever.
It was his stupid strategy of always taking the first way out of a problem, without considering if that solution was actually just the first step into creating a larger, and much bigger problem for himself. Maybe it should have been the signing a contract for a million giant robots that brought him to this realization, and not the trying to avoid talking about his feelings with his friends, but that was just Mako’s life wasn’t it? At least now everyone was too busy feeling too tremendously guilty about his fucked up brain programming to remember that they were supposed to be teasing him about Cass. Mako tried this out for a moment. It did not succeed in making him feel any better.
Plus now he could think of like, eight ways at least of brushing off Aria’s comment. I used it as a dart board and threw pencils at it. I pinned different weird facial hair to it and posed with it to send to Lazer Ted. Aria I didn’t have a poster of Cass. Are you sure that wasn’t you? (Here he would pause for a suggestive eyebrow waggle) Better watch out, Jacqui. Looks like you’ve got some competition.
Instead he stood up, stretching his arms high over his head and said, through an exaggerated yawn, “Welp, sorry guys but I’m beat. Think I’m gonna hit the hay. Night everybody.”
He could feel them all staring at him as he made his retreat. Briefly, he considered writing the whole thing off tomorrow, saying he’d been too drunk to remember anything, but he wanted ownership over the memories he knew were true. Besides, they’d never buy it.
.:*・°☆.。
It was some twenty minutes later, and Mako was sprawled across his bed, mindlessly flipping texture packs across his ceiling, when there was a knock at his door. Mako set his ceiling to a map of the Counterweight constellations, an old one, where you could still see Weight, and closed the program.
“Come in,” he called, in his best chipper Mako Trig voice.
The door slid open to Cass, because who else would it have really been. They hovered at the threshold of Mako’s door, looking torn. “Hey,” they said, “I uh, I couldn’t decide if I should come check on you or not?”
Mako rolled onto his side so he was facing them. “Nah,” he said. “It’s chill. ‘Sup?”
Cass, if possible, managed to look more anxious and confused than ever. They took a tentative half-step into Mako’s room, and then slipped it back towards them beyond the doorframe and said, “Can I uh, come in?”
“Like yeah,” said Mako. “I invited you.”
“Right,” said Cass. They stepped fully into the room, and then cast about somewhat hopelessly for a place to sit, or even to stand like a normal person. This was a lost cause. Mako’s room was filled up almost entirely by bed. There wasn’t that much of it to fill.
“Sorry,” said Mako, relenting somewhat. He sat up and scooted to the side of his bed so that Cass could sit down next to him. “I’m still being kind of an asshole, huh?”
Cass, sat in the seat offered to them, and shrugged. “I mean, you’re certainly entitled to it,” they said.
“Not you guys though. You didn’t do anything to me.” It took Mako a moment to realize that he was starting to do the exact thing he had sabotaged their entire night to avoid, namely, talk about his issues with any sort of honesty. It was less difficult, he realized, when it was only Cass, and when they were, the both of them, hemmed in by the comforting closeness of his closet walls, and sitting side by side, so that Mako could look ahead, and not have to catch any pitying glances which might be cast in his direction.
“I’ve been way worse about things that are way less of a big deal,” Cass said. “We’re your friends. We get it.”
“Yeah, but you’re like. You know-” Mako waved a hand vaguely.
“Mako,” said Cass. A hand brushed against his shoulder, but Mako was too busy staring at the thin strip of floor his room had to offer to really process it, and then it was gone again, like Cass had lost their nerve. “You’re allowed to be upset about things,” they said. “And we’re not gonna be upset with you or judge you or-” a pause and then Cass steeled themself and continued firmly, “like you less.”
“But that’s not-” Mako dug his fingers into his knees. “That’s not what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to like, crack jokes. Be team morale. You know.”
“Mako,” said Cass, sounding frustrated. “What you are supposed to do is hack things, which you do a great job at. What I am supposed to do is be the team doctor, and you and Aria-” A pause, where Cass took a sharp intake of breath. “Have literally both died. What Aria is supposed to do is be a pop star and I think we can all agree that that’s not going great for her right now.”
“I dunno,” said Mako. “Her soundcloud has been really blowing up recently.”
“Mako.”
“I’m just saying it has ,” Mako insisted. “And anyways, we both got better.”
“That’s not the point ,” Cass said. “You know that, right? You understood the point?”
“Sure,” said Mako. “Sure, I understood the point.” He felt dizzy with adrenaline and crushingly exhausted all at once. He kicked his feet against the edge of his bed, but the bed was metal, and actually really hurt to kick, so instead he tried to keep himself as still as possible, because that was sort of fidgeting in a way, if you really thought about it.
Beside him, Cass sighed. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
Cass didn’t bother responding to that one, only waited, expectant, which was fair enough Mako supposed.
He said, “There’s nothing to talk about. My life’s a lie and my memories are all fake and there are a million clones of me here on this ship somewhere being babysat by Lazer Ted but it’s whatever, you know? Grow and move on.”
“See,” said Cass. “To me, that seems like a lot to talk about.”
And maybe it was, but Mako didn’t really see what crying about it was going to do. The way he saw it, the sooner he could forget the whole thing, the better. And granted, that was a little harder to do with a bunch of copied reminders running around but it wasn’t anything Mako couldn't handle in the end. He opened his mouth to tell Cass this but instead what came out was, “What if I wasn’t really the first one?”
Cass stayed silent. They were, Mako could tell, waiting for him to finish. Mako couldn’t decide if he found this terrible or not, but it seemed to be working, because now that he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop. All the nebulous anxiety and fear and betrayal overflowing, a river after too much rain.
“What if I was never the first, and I’m just some random copy of some poor guy who probably died down there? And they just let me go because they were bored one day, or they wanted to see what would happen? I’m okay with my whole life on September being some fucked up experiment or whatever. Well I mean- I’m not, but I can deal with it. But I wanted everything after to be my own thing. With you guys.” The last part came out softer, more plaintive, than he had been aiming for. And Mako didn’t want to sound pathetic except he very much did and now he was crying damn it.
“Hey, uh,” said Cass and then they went quiet again, for a moment. Mako scrubbed a hand over his face, and was just starting to come out with something flippant when Cass continued. “I know it’s not really what you mean,” they said, carefully, “but uh, you are your own thing. To us I mean. And you’re the Mako that made the choice to be here with us, who had our backs, who made sure we didn’t start taking ourselves too seriously.” They cast Mako a sidelong glance and added, “who rearranges all of those figurines Aria has of herself so that they’re battling each other.”
“Battle of the bands,” said Mako and then, reflexively, “Audy could have done that.”
A low thrum of laughter from Cass, and then the two of them lapsed once more into silence. Mako swallowed, hard. It wasn’t that it was exactly the right thing of course, because nothing would have been, but it was...good. To hear them say it. Besides, Cass had a way of making you feel better even if they were saying all the wrong things. Or maybe it was just Mako they made feel better.
“Thanks,” he said, after a while. “For um. Yeah, thanks.”
Cass shrugged. “Hey, no problem,” they said, their tone awkwardly nonchalant. “Anytime.”
The moment settled again, heavy and thickly tangible. Something else was expected, Mako felt, but he had no idea what he was supposed to say, and even if he’d had, certainly it wouldn’t have been something he wanted to voice. So he gave Cass a friendly nudge with his arm, kind of hard actually. It might have been more of an elbow than a nudge, but it was effective in bulldozing through whatever weird tension had been building up.
“Hey!” said Cass, rubbing their side. “Come on, I’m being supportive!”
“No problem,” Mako echoed, cutting the syllables hard.
“Yeah, alright,” said Cass. “Okay.” But they were smiling in that soft, unaffected way that meant they were too busy being fondly amused with Mako to be self conscious about what sort of faces they were making, so Mako thought they probably understood.
And understanding deserved some sort of reward, Mako felt. He said, “Nah, it was good though. I just don’t really wanna talk about it anymore.”
“Sure,” said Cass. Mako could feel them thinking, and had to fight his natural urge to fill other people’s uncomfortable silences with inane babbling. Besides, he didn’t feel like he was quite up to it at the moment, which was kind of alarming, which was possibly proving Cass’ whole point.
Cass cut off the beginnings of a spiral's second wind by saying, “We did actually have to do those posters you know.”
“What?” said Mako, a little desperately.
“Like, the one in your room? I was just telling you, those were real posters. We all had to pose for them and everything. It was terrible. Euanthe kept saying Sokrates' hair looked all disheveled and Sokrates kept saying that that was the look and the photographer kept standing there and trying to figure out how much they were allowed to yell at scions.”
Oh, Mako realized. They’re trying to distract me. They think it’s funny. And honestly it was funny, just also a little too close to things Mako still didn’t want to talk about. He could only be expected to handle so much emotional vulnerability in one slightly drunken night after all. Still, this had the potential to garner embarrassing Cass information that he would kick himself for not capitalizing on later. So he put on his best delighted Mako voice and said, “Really? Did you have to do like, little info sheets with like, your favorite color and stuff?”
Cass snorted, “God,” they said. “Yes. And I-“ They paused and shot a glance over at Mako, carefully appraising. “I said it was black, and they decided that was too macabe for royalty so then we compromised on- '' Another glance at Mako but this one was pure embarrassment and wry humor. “We compromised on sea-green.”
Mako no longer had to pretend his delight. “Cass!” he said. “Cass, that’s a fish pun!”
Cass put their face in their hands. “I know,” they said.
“Cass you hate fish puns!”
“I know, ” Cass said, sounding legitimately despairing now.
It occurred to Mako that Cass was really cheering him up at the cost of their dignity. “You’re really cheering me up here at the cost of your dignity, huh,” he said, ignoring the way his stomach dropped at the thought. Cass put a lot of value on their dignity.
“For all the thanks it gets me,” Cass said, knocking their knee against Mako’s, their mouth angled in a half scowl but they kept looking at Mako and no matter how their expression shifted their eyes kept that steady expression of earnest concern.
“Shit, I gotta get ahold of this magazine thing for real,” Mako said, because he wanted Cass to know that he was okay now, that they’d helped him feel better, and antagonizing them was the best way Mako knew to demonstrate this. “I bet I could learn your favorite food,” he continued. “And like-” he wrinkled his nose for a minute, trying to come up with factoids a trashy teen magazine might list about a hot celebrity. Since he wasn’t Aria, it was extremely difficult. “Your height,” he finally settled on.
“You know both those things,” Cass protested. They were back to looking equal parts exasperated and horrified. Excellent.
“Untrue,” said Mako. “I have literally no idea how tall you are. And maybe squid ink pasta isn’t your favorite food. Maybe it’s just the only thing you know how to cook.”
“Ha ha,” said Cass, looking a little too embarrassed to be convincing.
“Wait a minute. Is that actually the only thing you know how to make?”
“I can cook other things!” Cass insisted ineffectually and then, possibly to cut off Mako’s triumphant crowing they hurriedly followed it up with,“Why did you have that thing anyways. I mean, since you weren’t reading it.” Their voice had gone awkwardly stilted suddenly. Confused, and something else that Mako couldn’t place, but had an aftertaste that was distinctly melancholy. It was so direct a question, that Mako should have been uncomfortable, should have been already coming up with ways to slide around it. But something about the absurdity of Cass not understanding made it alright somehow. Their ignorance was so appalling that it was impossible to feel like he didn’t have the upper hand. So instead of making another dodging comment about how September had made it all up, so what did it matter anyways, he rolled his eyes.
“Dude, seriously,” he said. “Aren’t you like, our chief strategist?”
“Yes?” Cass ventured.
“Okay, well it’s like, super obvious.” He waited in silence, for Cass to parse this information.
Then, “Oh,” they said, and their eyes went very wide, then darted slightly down to linger on Mako’s lips, before flicking back up to his face and they said, “Oh,” again.
Mako would have been pretty fucking annoyed with them actually, still was a little bit, were it not for that brief lingering, a movement Mako had only caught because of all that time he had invested, subconscious or otherwise, in picking up the nuances of Cass’ movements. Still, he wished Cass would have had any kind of follow through.
But they were just sitting there, kind of staring at Mako with a look of faint bafflement on their face, like he was a puzzle they were trying to work out. Except, Mako realized with a jolt, he was pretty sure that they were actually getting closer. Mako leaned forward, just a little bit. Just enough to close the teniusly small gap between them.
And Cass jerked backwards so violently that they almost sent themself tumbling off the side of the bed. The ceiling went blank, and the room plunged into darkness.
“Um,” said Cass. They were using their carefully concerned voice again. The one they’d had on when they’d first come in.
Mako scurried backwards, to the far head of his bed, and pulled his knees up to his chest, turtilish, before turning the lights back on. He didn’t want to have to look at Cass’ face, and he didn’t have any more dignity to protect anyways, so he stayed there, with his face half hidden in his hands, and said nothing.
“Uh- Mako?” he heard Cass say, and when Mako ignored this too they said, “Sorry, it’s just-”
Whatever gentle apology Cass was about to offer would be the last straw, and Mako knew that. “Don’t be,” he said quickly. “Really, it’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. You can go.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Cass said. Their voice suddenly had that same level authority it had when they were laying out a plan of attack. “I didn’t mean to act so-” Here they faltered. There was a brief wince and then they seemed to steel themself and said “Strongly. It was just, I’d just been thinking about how much I shouldn’t kiss you, even if I wanted to. So-”
Mako’s head jolted up out of his hands. “Wait what .” he said. “Why not?”
“Well you’re,” said Cass. They stopped again, shot Mako an apologetic look then said, “You know. Emotionally vulnerable. Or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Mako echoed flatly.
Cass did a kind of half grimace, and tugged lightly on one of their fingers. It was one of the few tells they allowed themself to show. “And possibly still drunk?” they added. It came out a suggestion.
“That’s so stupid,” said Mako, electing to ignore the second comment. He uncurled himself and scooched slightly back towards his original spot on the bed. “Aren’t you always telling us you’re not a psychologist? Why start now?”
“‘Cause it’s true?” Cass’ voice had lost that awful eggshell tone entirely. Now they were getting defensive, one of Mako’s favorite tones to elicit from them, like when they’d first met and Mako had kept asking them questions about their doctor bag.
“Whatever,” said Mako. He scooted even closer, so that he was right up next to Cass, and noted the slight hitch to Cass’ breath when their bodies made contact. “But you do want to kiss me though?” he said. He wasn’t sure why he was acting so blithe. Certainly, Cass would not be buying it. But he’d only just started to even the ground between them again.
Cass tracked his movements, looking faintly wary and more than a little embarrassed. Their cheeks had flushed, faintly lavender. “Sure,” they said, and then winced and amended hurriedly. “I mean yeah. Yes.”
All the air left Mako’s lungs in a rush. He registered dimly a mild surprise that he apparently still hadn’t expected this. “Really?” he said, jerking his eyes to meet Cass’ sounding maybe a little more plaintive than he would have liked.
Cass, because they were a good person, and Mako loved them, did not comment on it, but this time when they said yes it was with firm conviction.
“Oh,” said Mako. He allowed himself to slump tentatively sideways until he was half sprawled against Cass’ side. Cass put an arm around his shoulder and began carding a hand through his hair, automatic and Mako found himself suddenly close to tears.
“Alright, maybe I am just marginally emotional,” he said.
“It’s okay,” said Cass. “I’ll still be here when you’re, you know, feeling more up to it.”
“When’s that?” Mako mumbled, against Cass’ side.
“What,” said Cass.
Mako de-nestled himself, with great reluctance. “Like, when in your professional opinion, do you think I will be chill and non-emotionally compromised,” he said. “Like in hours.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” said Cass. “I think a good night's sleep more than anything might be a good start,” they added meaningfully.
Mako ignored the blatant hint. “But like if you had to ballpark it,” he persisted. “Like maybe two hours?”
“Sure, Mako,” said Cass, their tone resigned. “Two hours.”
All at once the weight of Mako’s tiredness and maybe also his relief, came crashing down on him. He yawned, expansive. “You wanna sleep here?” he asked, letting the words get half swallowed up in the yawn.
“You know,” Cass observed. “I have a room that’s not a literal closet. With a real bed in it. That’s like, normal sized.
“Mmpf,” said Mako, already slouching sideways again, pulling Cass down with him. “No.”
He could feel Cass’ whole body rise and fall with their sigh. “Fine,” they said.
.:*・°☆.。
Mako was jostled awake sometime later by the persistent chiming of his alarm. His head was resting on Cass’ chest and they had their legs tangled together, as much to keep them both on the bed as for anything else. He could feel Cass, shifting disgruntledly. They rolled sideways, draped an arm around Mako and buried their face in his shoulder.
“Mako,” they said, their voice heavy with sleep. “Why is it doing that. Make it stop.”
Mako, only vaguely awake and distracted by the presence of Cass against his shoulder, wracked his brain for what sort of bizarre whim might have compelled him to set an alarm for three in the morning. “I don’t-” he started. Then, a sharp rush of remembrance. “Oh!” he said, brightly. “Hey, Cass?”
“Mhm,” said Cass.
“Cass, it’s been two hours.”
Another inarticulate grumble from Cass. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” they said, but they were already untucking their head from Mako’s shoulder, and turning their face up to meet Mako’s own.