Snowblind

📅 Early 2017

【ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴅʀᴜɢs, ᴀʟᴄᴏʜᴏʟɪsᴍ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴜɴʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜʏ sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ʙᴇʜᴀᴠɪᴏʀs】

Honestly, Kato didn’t have high expectations for the night. The bar he’d ended up in was too close to his apartment for comfort and wasn’t queer-exclusive—two strikes against his intentions—but it’d been a last-minute decision to go out after starting his drinking at home, where he’d ended up freaking himself out by wanting to call Fawkes up just to chat, or something; to chill but actually chill. And Anarchy’d been at work so Kato’d had to make do. Not wanting to waste cash on a cab when he could spend it better on something else, he’d opted for a place he could get to on foot. While already tipsy. So. The Golden Liquid. 

The Piss Bar, he’d thought to himself walking in, loosening his choker and trying to scope out the sexuality atmosphere of the place. He figured if worst came to absolute worst, enough guys got curious when wasted for him to stand half a chance at slipping into the bathroom with a stranger at some point and being an ‘experiment,’ anyway. Or a ‘drunken mistake.’ Still, he was hoping for more than that so he let his jacket fall off his shoulders and kept his posture lazy, open. Eyeshadow tended to do well for him on desperate nights and he hoped the purple shade he had on that evening would read as both gay and fuckin’ thirsty, as intended.

It at least seemed to get the bartender’s attention; he’d shot Kato a grin and commented on it straight off, something like, “Hey, yo, I dig the color, bro!” as he’d poured Kato his first cocktail, and Kato had wondered...but the last word hadn’t exactly seemed like a come-on. The guy—his nametag said ‘Nick’—was present, though. He was good-looking; dark-skinned and handsome with a smattering of freckles and a shock of curly hair, and it wouldn’t have really been an issue if Kato felt certain that he was interested. But Kato wasn’t certain, and Nick was managing to be around enough to get in the way of Kato being otherwise approached, it felt. 

He was talkative, friendly; despite getting mostly closed answers, he asked questions as long as he could when pouring Kato his first round of shots after he’d drained his Jack and Coke, and seemed to have come up with a script for a full-scale monologue by the time he came back over from a rambling conversation with a different patron to pour Kato more vodka.
“—You said you played guitar earlier, so I was thinking, like, about live music and shit, ya know? ‘Cause we do those nights here sometimes, but the boss has this preference for country, and it’s like, dude, we’re in Brooklyn! What are you on, right? Who here wants to listen to country? Ah shit, you’re not a country singer, are you?” Nick flashed another grin up at Kato; not truly worried, ready to disarm any hypothetical upset with a smile. Kato felt vaguely irked despite not being a country musician.
“...From Montana, but fuck no,” he said. He could hear his words starting to slur and rolled his eyes before leaning forward. “Alright, Nick, man, real talk. Are you just chatty or are you gonna fuck me when your shift is up? Because like...my goal here is to black the fuck out and wake up in someone else's bed tomorrow and I'm gonna have a rough time with that if it looks like the bartender's got his eye on me.”

Nick’s eyes widened and he leaned back with a half-laugh, waving his hands. “Oh, whoops, no, sorry! Like, you’re fine—but I was just looking to talk. You seem like an interesting person! Cool, ya know?”
“...Alright, thanks,” Kato replied, his tone impassive even as frustration drove him to bruise the inside of his cheek with his teeth. He worked his jaw for a moment. “Um...Talking and all is neat-o, man, but, uh... I'm really just trying to get fucked tonight, so unless you can do that or get me an 8-ball of coke for under $200, I’m not fuckin’ interested. Try someone else.” Kato knew it was a bad move to be rude to the bartender, but felt too drunk to properly reign in his tone.
To his surprise, neither offense nor hurt rose to Nick’s expression: Instead, he raised his eyebrows as though struck by inspiration and went,
 “Oh shit though, dude...I might actually know a guy for you for that second one. Haha, uh, If you’re for real, meet me out back after the end of my shift, aight? It’ll just be an hour. No weird shit, promise.” 
“...Oh. Sure...yeah, thanks. Er. Sorry, then,” Kato stammered, caught off-guard by the turn of the conversation.
“No problem, man, I been there before. Withdrawal shit, right? Ohhh, it’s just like, fuck listening to people. I gotchu though! Tt-Ttch!” He clicked his tongue with a wink and a finger-gun, grinning as broadly as ever all over again, so Kato agreed to meet him when the night was up: His habit had taken to hurting his wallet. He decided not to tell Nick that as far as he knew, though, he wasn’t crashing that bad...he was just an abrasive fucking person in general. Or at least when he was when feeling like this... 

While Nick chattered excitedly to some other patron, Kato scanned the bar again for any potential one-night stands, nursing his liquor and wondering if he’d be allowed back in to try his luck after he’d met with Nick. Or if maybe there would be some weird shit with that. Or if he could persuade Nick to drive him to an actual fucking gay bar later where he might stand a chance of getting some action…
He chewed on his cheek. Anarchy’s shift only ended a bit later than Nick’s. Maybe he could just get home afterwards and deal with himself that way, like he’d initially wanted to. But ‘Key had his moral hang-ups about Kato not being drunk off his ass during...

As Kato waited and mulled it all over, Nick flitted up and down the bar, yammering to as many people as he could for as long as possible, stopping at Kato’s seat to chat or pour a drink each time he passed. By the time the hour was up, Kato’d graduated from drunk to plastered and was well aware of it, if not much else. He knew he’d taken a call from either Anarchy or Fawkes, but couldn’t remember which one it was or exactly what he’d said. He figured that should bother him more than it was managing to. 
A girl had started talking to him at some point and he couldn’t quite figure out why, so he interrupted her with, “You know I’m fucking wasted out of my mind, right? I don’t know what you’re saying.” 
It was honest and not necessarily intended to be rude, but she pulled a rather affronted expression anyway and walked off just in time for Nick to reappear and lean across the bar.
“I think she might’ve been shooting her shot, man. My shift’s up. You good to walk?” he asked.
“Yea, unless some fucker stole my legs,” Kato drawled back, managing to keep at least half the sentence from slurring too badly. He stood up and glanced over his shoulder, registering the slow carousel of the room. The crowd was too indistinct for him to place any faces. “Oh well. Most chicks won't domme hard enough for me anyway, yanno? See ya in a sec.”

Kato paid his tab and made his way around to the back of the building just a moment before Nick walked out the backdoor to join him, hands in his pockets. Kato leaned against the bricks and gave Nick and his blue flannel an ambivalent once-over.
"So...is this about coke, or am I gonna be giving another back-alley blowjob?” he asked, almost petulant; “‘Cause, like, dude...my jeans don't have fuckin' knees in them. This is asphalt.” His voice pitched towards a whine as he gestured between the holes in his jeans and the ground. Nick just laughed.
"It's about the coke, don't worry. I’m pickin’ up anyway, figured I’d tag you along." He motioned for Kato to walk with him across the parking lot and Kato acquiesced, though he clicked a ‘tch’ sound through his teeth and waved his hands as though surrendering to an argument.
“Cool, yeah. I'll get in your car w’ you. God. Like a kid gettin’ told I can pet a puppy, huh? Easy,” he drawled.
Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “Sure, but lucky for you I'm chill. C’mon. And tell me about your name.”
“What about my name?” Kato asked, climbing into the passenger seat of Nick’s car.
“Well, when we were chatting earlier, it was ‘Kato,’ but your ID says ‘David,’ and I overheard another customer talking to you in there and you said it was ‘Bennet.’ So what gives?”
Kato felt like he needed to sober the fuck up but his clouded head couldn’t quite allow it. “Nothing,” he muttered reproachfully instead of managing to snap. “I’m fuckin’ Cerberus, that’s all: Three fuckin’ heads.” He finally buckled his seatbelt after a couple of tries. “...It's none of your business why I don't go by David. Bennet’s the fake name I give to people I might fuck.”
“So the real one’s Kato. Cool.”

They drove a short distance to a tiny apartment on a graffiti-plastered block where every building sported window-bars and at least one car appeared to have a bullet hole in the door. Nick seemed unbothered, though, and greeted a guy smoking out front with a high-five, and introduced Kato as ‘his buddy in need of a hook up.’ 
“In multiple fuckin’ ways,” Kato grumbled, making Nick’s connection laugh. They were invited inside, much to Kato’s surprise, but he supposed that visibly drunk, heavily tattooed, and introduced as a ‘buddy’ rather than a stranger, he wasn’t looking a lot like a cop. He ended up handily endearing himself to Nick’s hook-up by buying a $160 8-ball of coke on the spot and saying, “Hell, you’re my new guy from here on out. I’ve been getting ripped the fuck out of.” Upon being told there was molly also on offer if he were so inclined, he shrugged, let out a “Fuck it,” and tossed down another $50. 
“Ya know, whatever you're looking for, I can probably get you some kind of it, some way,” the guy said, counting bills and clearly game for a new regular. 
“Psh. Whatever you’re selling, I’ll probably buy some kind of it some way,” Kato replied. “I don’t do dope, like heroin, y’know, but that’s about it.” He snorted. “Basically...put me on your fuckin listserv.”

As he climbed back into Nick’s car, Kato wordlessly handed Nick the second tab of ecstasy he’d bought, in its comically tiny plastic baggie. Nick raised an eyebrow.
“What’s this for?”
“I owe you a couple lines off my 8, too, if you wanna claim those sometime,” Kato said, clicking his seatbelt. “It’s your tip. Thanks for the hook-up. And the ride. Sorry for being a bit of a shitlord to you.” He frowned and gave Nick a look of appraisal. “Why you been puttin’ up with my sorry ass tonight? You gotta have met better bar tabs than me.”
Nick shrugged and smiled even as he kept his eyes on the road. “I dunno, man, I told you, you seemed neat. And kinda like...maybe you needed someone to have your back, a bit, or pick your mood up, with what you were doing. Didn’t seem like you were having that good a night.”
Kato snorted. “Pft. Guess I wasn’t. Now I am. Cheers, bartend.”
“Cheers, bud.”