Into That Wild Blue Yonder

8. Buyout

Colm spent the following couple of days drinking and sulking in his barren apartment to cool off. He still didn't want to go out and risk seeing anyone. If he could just put the whole thing behind him, he would, and Abelard would never bring it up and Moira would leave him alone for a while. He knew it wasn't possible, but he tried to believe it as best he could.

On the third day, his nonstop drinking caught up to him hard, and he could barely muster a coherent thought, exactly as he usually tried to end up. The pain was a lot to deal with, but he didn't mind it as long as he could ignore his problems for a while. And this time, he had a lot to ignore.

Even he had his limits, though, and he knew he couldn't keep it up. He started his day at noon and stuck to water and juice, but couldn't muster up a desire for solid food. His stomach had grown angry with him for feeding it so much alcohol, and he wouldn't be able to keep much down. At least, that's why he thought he wasn't hungry.

Colm took a seat at his windowsill and blankly stared outside. The weather turned sour again, storm clouds overhead blocking the sun and drizzling rain onto the city. Colm had to be at least a little thankful for it; the sunlight would have made the pain on his recovery day significantly worse.

As Colm chugged down water and nonalcoholic carbohydrates in his seat, his capacity for rational and coherent thinking quickly returned, along with the usual headache of hungover mornings. He groaned his displeasure with himself, his situation, the people he dealt with every day. He knew he would have to face them eventually.

Colm moved back to his bed and sat on its edge to work out what he would do. He didn't have Purrty with him, so he couldn't just hang out anywhere. It was far too early to go to Starcloud, not that he wanted to right now anyway. The only other thing he had was work, and Jerry hadn't sent him anything.

"I'll just go," Colm croaked to himself in a gravelly voice.

Jerry only ever contacted him with urgent work, but nothing ever said Colm couldn't just go to him for something to do. Colm dressed himself properly and cleaned up his face to at least look mildly in control of himself and headed out the door. He wasn't in a mood to put in extra effort for anything today, so he took the open streets and walked to Jerry's building the quick way.

On his walk, Colm couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. He glanced back and forth across the street, checking behind himself every few steps, but couldn't find anyone. The feeling didn't shake, and it made Colm uneasy, so he sped up and took the extra pounding to his headache to get off the streets quicker.

As he entered Jerry's area of operations, the feeling persisted even with fewer people around. Figuring he wouldn't get away from it, he slowed his pace back down and continued casually onward. It was either real and he couldn't do anything about it, or he was just imagining it. Either way, nothing to deal with at the moment.

Colm reached Jerry's building and steadily made his way up the scaffolding to the window. He nearly slipped a few times on the wet surface, banging knees and elbows into metal supports with a curse thrown in here and there. He had to take several breaks on the way up to make sure he ascended safely.

He finally made it after a much longer ascent than usual. Colm took his seat outside the window and rapped his knuckles against it several times and waited. He knew Jerry would be a bit since he certainly wasn't expecting Colm to show up of his own accord. If he was lucky, though, it would change so that Colm could always just come for work without waiting.

Colm stared out over the town to the same sight as always. The same rooftops, the same streets, the same lights. It was always the same old pattern, not like it even could change. It would take a determined soul to change the layout of what lay before him.