“The usual, you know what.”

There aren’t a lot of places Boothill could say that to; always on the run, never in one place, never taking the chances of an overstayed welcome. Sometimes this saloon, dark and filled with untrustworthy regulars, was his home.

If it wasn’t gunpowder and bullets, he craved a nice shot of strong alcohol. But when he asks for ‘the usual,’ that one meant one thing: his memories aren’t enough to bear sober. He might as well fight the emotion with booze before he destroys himself, right? He has a mission unfulfilled, after all.

And it was a few drinks in when a feeling settles in his gut. Not unwelcome, not something he even registers for a moment… Like singing underneath the moonlight, huddled around a campfire. Like his favorite bed time story, read by a gentle voice.

Like a lily field, summer grass and sunsets. Warmth and soothing words, those that then brought scarce peace but now only make him feel emptier than he was.

Ah.

He misses you. He misses you again. And he misses home, he misses the warm porridge he can’t even remember the taste of anymore… He misses the way alcohol used to help him forget. Now, he’s stuck under the weight of the past he can’t escape, his drinks only cementing it further.

If you saw him right now, you’d be disappointed. He can see it, the way your nose would crinkle as you chided him, but still helped him stumble to bed. Stumble home, even if home was already in your arms.

But tonight there was no ‘you’ to return to.

Eight empty shots and another receipt on his tab, Boothill decides he’s had enough.

“Fudgesticks…” He murmurs, wiping the remaining moisture off his chin as he stumbles out. He shouldn’t have let go tonight— Not when he still had to find somewhere to hitch the night in. Not when he was probably hallucinating, finding himself hunched against some building wall, you in front of him and cradling his cheek with a warm hand.

He doesn’t know what the hell you were sputtering about, but he was happy then and there. “Sugar,” He drawled, voice hoarse, with a chuckle that was only self-pitying. Boothill nuzzles into your touch, breath ragged.

You smell just as he remembers, like heaven and everything good in his life. “I don’t believe in that… Spiritual manifestation bull shirt,” a hiccup, “But seeing you here? Fudge… I could die right here and I’d thank whoever Aeon blessed me.”