A holiday in Aura Rosesson’s rock star paradise typically began between noon and two, if, of course, he had even gone to bed the previous night. Rather unfortunately, since he’d put his lovely girlfriend through the ringer on Christmas day not forty-eight hours ago, today was not going to be typical, and he definitely wouldn’t think to call it paradise.

He woke up on the couch.

More accurately, he woke up beside the couch, all sore joints and shitty attitude. Grumbling, he wiped last night’s binge-drinking episode out of his eyes and dragged himself back onto the sofa in a hungover heap. Didn’t feel too dope-sick this morning, no, not since he’d helped himself to a little after Lestari turned in last night. There was nothing quite like watching one’s entire Reason for the Season coagulate in a spoon, but at least it’d been relatively smooth sailing after that.

He didn’t hear any Godzilla feet thundering across his hardwood floors, so it might have been safe to surmise that she was still in bed. On a good day he might have made some attempt at breakfast that she would inevitably berate him for, but today wasn’t shaping up to be anything but another dull pot of shit, so he just scrubbed a hand down his unshaven face and turned on the TV. A dolled-up black reporter stood in the foreground of Times Square, fat flakes of snow coming down in a gentle dance. So, that’s what was going on in the real world, eh? Snow? Here comes the New Year? Bull fucking shit. Same as the Old Year.

Aura’s “Old year,” had just about as many signs that he was headed down a bad road as you could fit in just three hundred sixty-five days. Somebody would have to be completely self-obsessed to miss them, but if there was anything Aura could be consistently counted upon to be, it was really fucking self-obsessed. Jack Darling went to prison for a month and he didn’t visit or call the son of a bitch ‘cause that might have been a waste of valuable drug time. During the following months when sitting for hours on end in the cramped studio drove him stir crazy, Aura went and wrapped his car around a light pole. He’d broken his clavicle and dislocated his arm, and smoked a little heroin to numb the pain. The red flag was that he didn’t stop smoking heroin – and eventually started injecting it – long after the pain had been gone.

By the end of Sorry About That’s 2012-13 tour, he was well on his way to being a junkie. Hell, he’d even managed to keep from Lestari the fact that he’d overdosed after a show in Berlin on that tour, and ended up left behind some dive bar to die. At the end of every show he’d come off the stage from that killer adrenaline rush and careen towards a daredevil narcotics campaign in a desperate bid to get even higher. Once SAT started making it big, they raked in more money than Aura knew what to do with, and he took it to the only logical place he could think of: drugs.

He picked up one of his boots, lying by the far leg of the coffee table, and pulled what was left of his blow out of a cleverly placed compartment in the heel. Since Lestari had developed the propensity to drive Aura out of his mind by stealing all of his shit, he’d been forced to get creative. But all he needed now was a little bump to get him up and at ‘em, and he’d be golden. Most people would’ve started a pot of coffee but, shit, everybody had their own little rituals.

With that helpful energy boost, Aura was able to get his ass up off the couch and actually put on some of that coffee. Though he wasn’t terribly knowledgeable in the kitchen, he did get a skillet of bacon going, at which point he pulled a saucepan from the cupboard, snatched up their metal ladle, and made a beeline for the master bedroom. Banging mercilessly on the bottom of the pot, Aura hollered into the bedroom.

“Rise ‘n shine, Jolly Green!"

"I WILL FUCKING MURDER YOU."

No two ways about it: Lestari Kiaidemak was anything but a consistent individual, a trait that very acutely manifested in her sleeping patterns. There were times Lestari woke up at the crack of five in the morning and was in the music room grinding away in drop C whilst Aura was still sleeping the slumber of the dead and dreamin' about eyeliner or floppy hair or whatever the fuck pop punksters dreamed about-- fuck all if Lestari knew. And there were times it was two in the afternoon and any living thing foolish enough to attempt to stir the behemoth from her immutable state of sleep ran the risk of being skinned alive and used as a down comforter (wait, shit, that was death metal as fuck-- Lestari would have to remember that and write some lyrics about it at some point). Hell, there were times she straight up didn't sleep and wiled away the hours of the night playing guitar, sometimes with the compassion not to plug in.

As far as Lestari was concerned, this was one of those 'wake me up and I'll feed you your intestines' mornings. As far as Aura was apparently concerned, this was one of those 'I don't give half a shit' mornings.

The door slammed open, and thusly revealed the immense form of Aborticide's erstwhile singer, guitarist, founder, and creative dictator, lookin' like she coulda slept another ten years and it still wouldn't have been enough. Black rings outlined her slender eyes, which even appeared to have lost a hint of their malachite brilliance, and the creases that lined the contours of her hard-edged mien appeared somehow all the more prominent. An old Napalm Death shirt clung somehow almost wearily to the taut musculature of her upper body, the jeans she had slept the night away in managed to look even more faded and aged than they already were, and the hints of grey beginning to conquer the blackness of her wiry hair had clearly won a major victory the past few days.

Yeah, it was some shit, but frankly, right now she had bigger priorities.

"... izzat bacon?" Lestari commented sluggishly, sniffing the air like a 6'5, 250 pound raccoon. At about that moment, she also actually noticed Aura was standing there-- standin' there lookin' not a whole lot better. A twinge of guilt struck her sharply as she beheld the lingering vestiges of the bruising that yet reluctantly apportioned the canvas of his skin with his multifarious tattoos-- as clear an obstinate memento of a Christmas gone about as wrong as it possibly fucking coulda as her own weariness and tenacious ruefulness.

Not my fault. It's not. It wouldn't have fucking happened if he hadn't decided to get fucked up.

Fuck. What point was there in mulling it all over again when she'd already spent the two days since fucking seething about it? Shit, Lestari didn't know much about Christmas. It'd never really been a big deal to her. But she did know it was apparently supposed to be a time you spent with people you gave a shit about, just... y'know. Just spending time. Hangin' out. Enjoyin' one another's company. All that kinda shit. As far as she was aware, it was decidedly not the fucking time to instead go and get so fucking high you proceeded to camp out under the Christmas tree with a goddamn steak knife ranting about people looking in through the windows.

But hey, she'd been wrong before.

Look, she wasn't gonna say she wasn't still pissed. She liked hangin' out with sober Aura too much not to be incensed when she ended up having to spend the day with 'high off his fucking balls' Aura instead, making sure he didn't dive out the fuckin' window or some shit. But she didn't wanna prolong this any longer than it had to be prolonged: she woulda rather shit just go back to the way it normally was. Well, really, she woulda preferred if Aura just fucking quit doing the thing that was driving her to do shit to him that she wasn't proud of, but apparently, that was just outta the fuckin' question.

"Good fuckin' mornin'," the metalhead grunted by way of the standard greeting to Aura as she shouldered on past him into the kitchen, still looking very much like she coulda been the inspiration for Death's 'Zombie'. Frankly, she still thought they shoulda rerecorded that song on another album like they'd done with Beyond the Unholy Grave and Land of No Return, but with Chuck Schuldiner dead and gone, it seemed that was just another thing that was fated never to come to fruition.

“Yep. It’s all the bacon we have.” He side-stepped her as she passed, hoping to avoid a bruising shoulder check. “Go get it, ya animal.” He waved the ladle. When he wasn’t strung out, doped up, jonesing, or otherwise acting like a bitch, Aura had this goofy and accessible charm about him. Relaxed, he would come around docile as a spoiled housecat, purring and affectionate. The warmer sides of the guitarist had been showing up less and less often, lately.

Oh! But she’d told him good morning, this time, which felt leagues better than the yellow-edged bruises enjoying their last days on the fair, tattooed pallor of his skin. He trailed after her, kitchenware instruments at his sides. After he returned the saucepan and ladle to their respective homes, he cautiously sidled up behind his dear lover. If he leaned up, he could nestle his chin on the crook of her shoulder, arms comfortably loose around her middle.

“Good fuckin’ morning, back,” he mumbled quietly. His physical affection, for the moment, served as an olive branch of sorts. Should she accept it from him, he would believe they were on the road to forgiveness, and all that good shit that strong couples were supposed to excel at. Nothing threw him off quite like being in a crappy way with Lestari. That shit could get to him even when he was away from home, as loathe as he was to admit it.

“I’m going into the studio tomorrow, but I’m free today,” he continued. They’d been running recording sessions for the new album with a new manager, one who still hadn’t gotten the memo that working with Aura was a major pain in the ass. He’d always had this knee-jerk reaction against authority figures, ready to viciously knock heads with anyone ballsy enough to throw down the challenge. The first day he’d met the manager, a few months back, he’d waltzed in with a smarmy attitude, a black eye, and had just spent the night in jail. It definitely set the scene for the rest of their interactions afterwards.

Aura inclined his head, blinking big, mismatched eyes up at the side of Lestari's face. “Whaddya say to doing something for dinner tonight?” He endeavored not to get too close; he was concerned that his odor might have been offensive and hadn’t, for today, gotten around to making the commitment to shower. Admittedly, personal hygiene hadn’t been on the top of his list of priorities for a little while. “I think I’ll have to splurge a little bit to get enough virgins to sacrifice for your meal, but if you’d accept goats’ blood I think I can work something out.”

A smirk flitted across Lestari's svelte lips as she headed off into the kitchen, evoked by Aura's little jibe. "If we're animals, I'm a grizzly bear an' you're a house cat," she retorted over her shoulder, pleased that at least they were sidling back into some semblance of their usual back-and-forth: there was always a day or two, after things got.... uh, particularly intense, that the banter sorta subsided, and they both kept to themselves. A couple days ground past in which Lestari alternated between vehemently condemning Aura for pushing her to do the things she did and loathing herself for doing those same things-- and then, eventually, they both just sorta gravitated back into the usual jive of shit. It was never really a case of Aura in particular seeking to mend the dysfunction, or Lestari deliberately making overtures of contrition. It just sorta... came about. Like a weed, weathering bitter winds, gradually returning to its natural state, or some way metaphorical shit like that (look, she wasn't any good at the whole 'figures of speech' thing: most of her lyrics in Aborticide had been about straight up death and horror type shit, and frankly to this day she had enough trouble with English without having to deal with similes or oxymorons or whatever).

The delicious scent of freshly cooking bacon assailed Lestari's senses as she strode into the kitchen, Aura hot on her tail (there's something vaguely dirty about that expression). She approached the skillet to check on the temperature and the oil and such, and had been about to grunt something to the lovely tune of 'you don't put enough fuckin' oil on this shit, fuckwit', when she felt Aura snake an arm around her abdomen, nuzzling his chin against her shoulder, and the words fell flat on her tongue before they managed to be formed into existence to begin with. "Good fuckin' morning back," he murmured.

Aw hell. Well, that was the end'a that shit. How could she stay pissed off at that?

And then he went and did the whole fuckin' puppy eyes shit for good measure, adding, "Whaddya say to doing something for dinner tonight? I think I’ll have to splurge a little bit to get enough virgins to sacrifice for your meal, but if you’d accept goats’ blood I think I can work something out."

"Goats' blood?" Lestari fired back sceptically, returning his doe-eyed gaze with eyes contorted into a hard, callous glare. "The fuck with that shit, man. Have you seen the protein content of goats' blood? Not to mention the starch content is off the charts. I might as well quit workin' out altogether and start fillin' my stomach with McDonald's or some shit."

An idea struck Lestari right about that moment, and, eager to capitalise on it, she figured she'd tickle Aura's (somewhat bizarre, but hey, everybody's got their quirks) fancy for physical affection in the process. Perhaps a little cynically, she deliberately made a point of initiating the physical affection herself only on select occasions so that they'd have greater impact on those particular opportunities-- namely, in the advent of the aforementioned particularly intense periods. But hey-- whatever would help patch shit up faster. That was her reasoning, anyway, as she encircled an arm around his neck gently from in front of him.

"But if we can't afford the usual virgins on your measly salary of world tours and platinum records," she remarked deviously. "Maybe you should let me take you out for dinner. I got a raise at the bookstore back before... uh, before I got my week off, so I'm just rollin' in the dough here."

Maybe if she did it this way, she could stop feeling like maybe she was to blame for the absolute shitfest that Christmas had eventually spiraled into.