Truth be told, they operate like a well-oiled machine. They compliment each other perfectly, like green and purple or pain and pleasure or cigarettes and beer. Stax knows the devious glint in Hollywood's eyes and how it means he's in for a night lacking of sleep filled with violent sex; Hollywood knows the tired sigh Stax emits sometimes when he gets home from work and how it means the evening will be spent on the couch with a box of take-out watching Bad Boys II for the eleventeenth time. They're perfectly tuned to each other, every shift in every mood, every minute change in tension and atmosphere, learned from years spent together interacting on stage and practiced with even more years of spending almost every waking hour in each others' presence.

And sometimes the familiarity of it all makes Hollywood want to rip his veins open and bleed out the essence and half of his being that is undeniably Staxed.

Thus he finds himself, Wednesday night (or Thursday morning depending on who you are), exitting a bar and smelling of the vile but somehow acceptable degredation of the world and revelling in the scent. He knows that three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago Stax began to worry, and fed the cat. Two hours and thirty-three minutes ago Stax began to fret, probably tried to call his cellphone, only to discover it was still plugged into the outlet by the bed. One hour and fourty-nine minutes ago Stax started second guessing everything he thought he knew about Hollywood's behavioral patterns, checking to make sure his guitar was still in the house, looking for those signs that clearly said he was coming back. And forgot to turn on Cops. Maybe for a whole six minutes.

Hollywood inhales a deep, cleansing breath of the night air, more alive with electricity and promise for all the beer he's drank. He could go anywhere from here. Plenty of people invited him to various places where the liquor still ran free and the energy still ran high after closing time. To those inebriated and reckless enough, the night is young.

But still he feels that pull. That rip in his stomach where the guilt has gnawed away and is now trying to slowly digest his intestines until it gets to his ass and gets his ass home. In another thirteen minutes Stax might call Joey or Chris, acting pissed off to cover his panic. In fifty-seven minutes he'll be sitting on the couch, gnawing on the inside of his cheek and thinking about how the bars are closed and he should have been home by now why isn't he home. In two hours and eleven minutes he'll lay down on their bed, trying to convince himself to sleep and that when he wakes up, Hollywood will be there. In three hours and thirty-one minutes he'll give up on sleep and start a one-sided conversation with the cat about how he just can't take this shit anymore. In the morning, he'll call the morgues.

So he declines the offers of late-night/early-morning companionship and gets into his car. He turns the stereo on and lets the car warm up for a minute. Yes, he's going home, but that doesn't mean he has to go home right that second. He can take his time, drive home the long way, maybe stop for a pack of cigarettes and a tabloid along the way. He'll get home late enough for Stax to have obsessively cleaned the bathroom, but in time to save Roger's ears from the existentialist monologue.

He rolls the windows down as he drives, despite the chill in the air, to absorb the feeling of total independence while he can. It isn't so much that he hates staying in with Stax, or that he hates the nights of doing nothing (even though he's really tired of Bad Boys), it's just that sometimes he likes being unpredictable. Sometimes he likes defying expectations. It gives him pride to know that, even with as bad as he is, he's worse than he appears to be.

The parking lot near their building is full when he gets there, as it always is this late, so he's forced to park farther away than normal and walk. Killing more time, stabbing it mercilessly over and over and over again in the chest. He digs the keys from his pocket and jangles them as he reaches their door, knowing that both Stax and the cat will look up at the noise from the hallway. He pushes the key into the lock and throws the door open, not expecting a "Where were you I was so worried" so much as a deathglare from the couch that does nothing to mask the relief.

But only Roger welcomes him, prowling out of the bathroom and twining around his ankles, yowling at him plaintively. Hollywood tilts his head in confusion, looking down at the cat then around the living room. Stax isn't on the couch, isn't fretting and staring at the clock like it'll make the hands move faster. He leans down and picks up the cat, greeting him with a little kiss on top of the head, and begins to inspect the rest of the house.

Stax isn't standing in the kitchen, staring at a shot of whiskey and debating whether it will improve the situation or not. Stax isn't in the bathroom, scrubbing furiously at the off-white tiles in the shower and muttering under his breath. Stax isn't crouched on the bed with a notebook and a pen, trying to find the right words to describe his ultimate, consuming, overwhelming feelings of betraaayal. Stax...isn't home.

"Hrmph," Hollywood grunts in confusion, sinking onto the couch.

Roger noses at Hollywood's neck, emitting a little mewl of concern (or more probably, hunger) and Hollywood strokes his back distractedly as he glances at the clock. The bars are closed, Joey's stoned-ass is most likely asleep, and Chase is visiting family in another state. Hollywood's eyebrows furrow inward in concern.

"He should be home by now. Why isn't he home?," Hollywood ponders aloud.

The only response he gets is the cat pawing at his chest, so he wraps a hand around his back and stands up again, pacing into the kitchen and shovelling some food into the 'Angel' bowl on the floor. Roger immediately disregards his master for the offered vittles, and his master leans heavily against a counter, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at the fridge like if he just opens it, it will contain all the answers to the universe. Or maybe Stax will pop out.

Seventeen minutes later it occurs to Hollywood to make sure that Stax's notebooks of half-composed lyrics are still in the bedside table. They are, and even though that should assure him that Stax is coming back, the demon of doubt continues to crawl about his brain, scraping at his frontal lobe with it's sharp little claws. Twenty-three minutes after that, he starts searching the couch and cluttered coffee table for a note of explanation. He can't find one, at first, and so he decides that maybe if he cleans up a little it'll wink itself into existance. Forty-five minutes later and it turns into an no-holes-barred cleaning spree and Hollywood's wondering just how long that granola bar wrapper has been under the TV stand and who in this house eats granola bars anyway and was it left here from the last people who lived in the apartment and should he get part of the security deposit back for something like that and would he have to pay even more money to the landlord for the hole that Stax's absence has suddenly caused in the bathroom wall and was that the voice of Satan in the next apartment or were the neighbors playing Doom again?

Next thing he knows, it's six thirty-seven. He's sprawled across the floor like a strung-out bitch after a gang bang, staring at the phone through bleary eyes. Wondering if the morgue is open yet and when, exactly, is the right time to file a missing persons report. The door opens and Stax wanders in, tossing his keys onto the table and staring down at Hollywood in a way that says 'You're the most bizarre person I've ever met, with the least amount of redeeming qualities, but somehow I love you anyway.'

"The morgue doesn't close, does it? I mean...people die all the time," Hollywood murmurs, and Stax isn't sure if he's talking to him, or to the wall, or to the cat, or to the crumpled ball of orange and silver foil a few feet away. Is that a fucking granola bar wrapper? Who eats granola bars?

Stax shakes his head softly, more at the foil than at Hollywood's question, and crouches down. "I'm fairly sure it's still open. Why? Are you in one of your August Strindberg 'We-are-already-in-Hell My-soul-is-dead' moods?"

Hollywood turns his head to peer up at Stax groggily, too exhausted now to be relieved or angry. Too exhausted to answer him other than reaching up and grasping one of his hands.

Stax glances down at their clasped hands, swinging his own back and forth with a light rhythm and making Hollywood's move as well. "Remember that time, before your twenty-second birthday, when you decided that your soul was dead and we staged a funeral?"

Hollywood grins vapidly. "We buried it in a shoebox."

"Then you dug it up the next day, when you sobered up."

"I didn't sober up, I was just on acid the next day and convinced that the squeely demons under the earth were going to eat it and gain knowledge of how to overthrow the human race utilizing squirrels, Scoopy's soft-serve and a copy of the Necrinomicon," Hollywood corrects him, nodding for emphasis.

"Ah, right," Stax says acceptingly. "Important information, glad you got that back."

"Where were you?," Hollywood finally asks.

"When?," Stax queries, wrapping an arm around Hollywood's ribcage to pull him off the carpet.

"Last night," Hollywood clarifies. He leans heavily against Stax, the way he always does when he's drunk, excessively tired, or too lazy to hold himself up.

"I had to do inventory last night at the store. Told you that before you went to work in the morning."

"Oh," Hollywood murmurs, and Stax recognizes the tone. It says 'I didn't really know that, but I'm going to act like I did so you don't think I'm a complete jackass despite all the evidence to the contrary.'

Stax stands up, dragging Hollywood up along with him, the arm still wrapped around his ribs. He starts hauling him towards bed, knowing without even really recognizing that he knows that Hollywood's been up all night, that he was probably drunk until a few hours ago, and that they'll have to pay the landlords when they move out for the hole that's inevitably emerged in the bathroom wall since last night.

Hollywood ambles along next to Stax, an arm linked around his neck. He knows that Stax won't ask or say anything about the events of the previous night. He'll just accept with a sigh that all of the shelves are torn out of the refrigerator, leaving the food and beverages in a haphazard pile in the middle of the kitchen floor, probably to be mostly devoured by Roger before they can be set back right.

They both fall into bed, Hollywood on the left half and Stax on the right. Hollywood stretches and then curls up, making a small noise of content like he does everytime he lays down. Nineteen seconds later he groans, and Stax gets out of bed again to retrieve Hollywood's cigarettes and turn on the air conditioner since he inevitably forgot to do it himself and can't sleep unless it's done. Hollywood thanks him with a sleepy smile when he returns, rolling onto his back and lighting a cigarette. He'll smoke one third of it before putting it out in the ashtray, turning the light off and curling against Stax to go to sleep. In the morning, he'll smoke the remaining two thirds before even crawling out of bed.

And he does. After the last of the orange embers is extinguished along with the lamp, Hollywood rolls onto his side and drags himself closer to Stax, wrapping his right arm loosely around his waist. Stax completes the embrace by wrapping his own right arm around Hollywood's shoulders, underneath the pillow so that his arm doesn't fall asleep. Hollywood has to remind himself to stop smiling so that he can relax and fall asleep, nuzzling at his chest and revelling in the half of his being that is undeniably Staxed and the completion that comes with it.