The Difference Between You and Him

📅 Late December, 2015

[ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ᴀʙᴀɴᴅᴏɴᴍᴇɴᴛ, ʟɢʙᴛᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ + ʜᴏᴍɪᴄɪᴅᴇ]

Aetos was a weird fucking experience. An experience, yeah, that was about how Kato would class it. Their first interaction had been surreal as all shit, and had registered as something similar to oil meeting water. Kato would have thought that Aetos getting his neck saved by a crew that ran with him—with Kato, him, himself, essentially an aspiring anti-christ—would break the delusional “God Sent You” mindset that Aetos arrived with. Sure, maybe it would take some time, deprogramming usually did, didn’t it? But holy shit, if the kid hadn’t gotten face-slapped by rationality. 

Aetos did seem vaguely hand-shy with him at first, but actually less stand-offish than expected. After moving in with Seth, Aetos had easily taken to just coming downstairs to hang out and treating the two apartments as if it were a single two-story home, which Athena encouraged (“he needs a family”) and Kato felt pretty ambivalent about, provided he wasn’t going to be preached at and no one was going to be actively snooping through his room...an opinion which Anarchy seemed to share, especially since Aetos’s visits thus far had happened while he was at work.

Less than two weeks after his bizarre “rescue,” Aetos emerged from Kato’s bedroom, having taken the fire escape down, and silently walked out into the living area, blinking like an inquisitive deer. Or maybe a fox; he wasn’t quite nervous enough behind his glasses to register as fawn-like. Athena had given him a haircut recently, an echo of when Anarchy had first joined them almost-but-not-quite-exactly four years back. Aetos, like ‘Key had done, looked far less meek without a veil of dark hair.

“Not lingering on your way through my room, are you?” Kato drawled from the couch, not bothering to sit up and take his one boot off the coffee table, keeping the majority of his focus on his game of Skyrim. 
“No. You already told me not to. Is anyone else home?”
“Nope, just me. Sorry to disappoint.” 
“It’s not disappointing.” Aetos trotted over to stand behind the couch without any further attempt at conversation, and several minutes passed like that; with him just watching Kato fight off bandits and pick flowers in-game until Kato became uncomfortable with the silent observation.

“...Do you wanna play, kid?” he asked, twisting around and offering out the controller to Aetos, who frowned at the word ‘kid’ but shook his head. 
“I wouldn’t know how. It’s interesting enough watching you play.” He tilted his head and studied the TV screen, as though musing. “...I never had an Xbox or real video games or anything. Most of them weren’t allowed.”
Kato reared back, furrowing his brow. “What? What the fuck games did you play, then?” he asked, unable to imagine life as Aetos had lived it without some shot at escapism.
“Wii bowling. Miniclip games if I could. Math games...and I had a real cool virtual aquarium I took great care of.” Aetos smiled slyly. “They shouldn't have let me play Fish Tycoon. Selectively breeding virtual fish is a gateway drug to finding out about evolution.”
“Holy shit,” Kato snorted, “you weren’t supposed to know about evolution?”
“I wasn't supposed to believe it was true, at the very least.” Aetos shrugged a shoulder. “Your parents were less strict about that stuff?”
“My dad would've manually strangled me if I didn’t believe in evolution,” Kato drawled. “He’s a biologist.”
“Oh.” Aetos looked confused. “...The same sort of thing happened with you as with me, though, right? So for you it was just homophobia—?”
“What?” Kato stared at Aetos. Aetos stared blankly back. 
“...That’s why you’re so angry with religion, isn’t it? How you reacted on the bridge...I figured you’d been kicked out for being queer, too. Am I wrong?”
“Oh boy, are you.” Kato smirked. “I dunno how my parents would’ve felt about me being gay. They would’ve had to care about me as a person to know I’m queer anyway, but I didn’t even get that.”

A snarling wolf jumped out from the undergrowth in-game; Kato button-mashed reactively and got a killscreen of his character smashing its head in with a mace. The corner of Kato’s mouth twitched as he glanced up at Aetos.
“Tch. What did Seth even tell you about me?”
Aetos frowned. “Just that you couldn’t keep living at home, so he’d offered you a place to stay.”
“How fuckin’ decent of him.” Kato let out a bark of a laugh and paused the game so he could turn around and face Aetos fully. “Humble, too. Doesn’t even brag on saving 20-odd people’s lives, huh?”
“What?”
“Maybe more, maybe less, seems like everyone’s always gunning for a higher body count than they get, right?”
“What are you talking about?” Aetos took a step backwards, his expression more wary than outright frightened. Kato grinned.
“I was going to shoot up my fucking school. I was even younger than you are. You think if I put a gun in your hand now, you could pull the trigger on a person?” 
“No way! What—?”
“‘Cause holy fuck, I could have.” Kato hopped up to sit on the couch’s back, lazing along it with a cat-like stretch before swinging his legs over. Aetos pursed his lips. 

“You wanna know what school was like?” Kato asked. “Hell. It was fucking hell. Even if my parents had been totally chill with me being gay, you know who fuckin’ wouldn’t have been? The entire student body.” Kato laughed even though nothing was funny; a high, cold, cruel sound that made Aetos fold his arms and shrink backwards.
“You ever have a footballer kick you in the stomach and call you a faggot?” Kato asked; a drawled near-whisper that still made Aetos wince as he shook his head.
“Hm. How about four of them taking turns?”
Head-shake.
“With a crowd of blank-faced, good-for-nothing, piece-of-shit bystanders looking on while you retched?”
“No,” Aetos murmured.
“Oh.” Kato shrugged his shoulders. “Then maybe it won't make sense, me wanting the fuckers to eat lead.”
“...Even if I had, it wouldn’t,” Aetos said curtly after a long pause. “Make sense to murder people? Even with—“
Kato frowned and hopped off the couch; Aetos flinched at the impact of his boots on the floor.
“Gonna ‘thou shalt not kill’ at me, kid? How about we go with 2 Kings 2:23-24 instead? Think if throwing an insult is good enough to get a bear sicced on you, a public beating is worth a 9mm to the skull, huh?” Kato barked.
“Wh…? That’s intended as a fable, it’s about respecting God and His Chosen, it’s not liter—“
“Always convenient excuses, aren’t there?” Kato interrupted. Aetos lifted his chin. 
“Why are you using a faith you claim to hate to make your excuses, then? You don’t live by it, so you can't even argue your morality with—“
“I get to prove a point on cherry-picking and it sometimes shocks morons into shutting their traps for a second,” Kato snapped, baring his teeth; “I don’t need excuses. And I definitely don’t need them from God.”
Aetos stared at him through unreadable, gilded eyes. “...I’ll pray for you,” he said.

He’d already turned to leave before Kato had the chance to tell him to go fuck himself.

Kato was practically startled when he heard Aetos come downstairs the following afternoon. He sat up more stiffly on the couch as Aetos stepped into his peripheral vision.
“I’m the only one here,” Kato said in a greeting’s stead.
“Okay.” Aetos took a seat on the couch beside Kato, who raised an eyebrow and turned to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Hanging out? Watching you play?” Aetos replied, eyes on the TV screen. “Bandit.”

Kato turned back to Skyrim and dispatched a thief trying to mug his character, then paused the game and looked at Aetos again.
“Okay,” he said brusquely, his words feeling like ice between his teeth; “There’s no way you actually like me, so what's your angle? To ‘Save’ me from the fiery pits of Hell? I’m sorry to inform you I’ve reserved my seat already.” 
Aetos rolled his eyes at the hostility. “What you intend to do with your soul isn’t my business; I just pray for your peace. Anyway. Yesterday you asked if I wanted to play. Can I?” Aetos reached expectantly out for the controller. Vaguely dumbfounded, Kato handed it to him.
“Can you teach me how?” Aetos asked.
“Uh, sure.” Kato scooted over and pointed to the controller. “First off, um, you use the joysticks to move…” 

By the time Athena arrived back home, Aetos had gotten good enough at the game to not need instruction and to be able to converse while playing. He’d taken an interest in the TES series’ pantheon and by then had Kato’s character following around a traveling Vigilant of Stendarr, helping them out along the intermittently-violent, winding cobblestone roads of Tamriel.
“Oh! Hey, Aetos, and K... How’s it going, you two?'' Athena asked.
“Great,” Aetos responded easily; “Kato taught me how to play Skyrim. I should probably go back upstairs, though, I didn’t realize how long it’s been. Some of that atmospheric music is really pretty, thanks for showing me.” 

Athena gave him a sisterly sort of shoulder-punch as he stood up. “Tell my brother I say hey,” she said, a little more concern to her tone than her words would have indicated on their own; “Come get me if you or Sethy need anything, okay? Or just in general, if you want to talk. I’m available.”
“Of course. Thanks, ‘Thena.” Aetos gave her a smile and headed down the hall.

“...It’s good to see you and him getting along,” Athena said, turning to Kato after Aetos departed. “I was worried you’d be a bit too hard on him, honestly.”
“I thought I was going to be, too,” Kato said, feeling wrong-footed by the entire situation, “But he—”

He was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of Skyrim’s tavern music as played on guitar coming from down the hall. Nearly-disbelieving, Kato stood up and padded down the hallway to his bedroom door, tailed by Athena. They were greeted by the sight of Aetos sitting on the windowsill, playing Kato’s guitar.
“Oh, sorry!” he said, setting the instrument down and not looking either sorry or even particularly ‘caught,’ “Just wanted to see if I could. See you both later!” He waved and vanished up the metal steps.

“...He doesn’t make it easy,” Kato completed his sentence. “...I think he was in a tavern once, maybe twice, while playing. He just did that from memory.”
“We should go ahead and get him a keyboard like you suggested, huh?” Athena asked. If Kato wasn’t mistaken, there was a cheeky sort of smile shaping her tone that he couldn’t bother being irked by.
“Yeah. We fucking should.”