mitsubishievo | “Bonus round,” Kavinsky said. Then: “Open.”

Entry tags:

“Bonus round,” Kavinsky said. Then: “Open.”

Lynch was strung out and sleepy and compliant, and it was easy to ply him on the red drug. His lips and tongue were warm around Kavinsky’s fingers, conjuring thoughts of his lips and tongue around other things; Kavinsky grinned at him, teeth in a skull. Kavinsky avoided this pill for the most part himself. It was a doozy, a real kicker. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Lynch was a desperate man, in that moment. It was a good look on him.

Kavinsky watched the other boy slump back into sleep, eyes lulling back in his skull, listless on the hood of the defunct engine red Camaro. No engine. What a fuck. The half-light of still early morning washed over Lynch’s fair skin; ebony and ivory, with that inky tattoo. Kavinsky’s fingers itched. Lynch didn’t twitch as he traced the tattoo; his eyes moved a little—the flicker of dreams, not wakefulness. The red drug would keep him out longer than the green drug did.

They were quite a pair. Quite a pair. Thick as thieves.

Lynch would be a better associate than Prokopenko, that was for sure. No doubting that.

“Shit,” Kavisnky said to no one. His fingers glanced over Lynch’s lower back, his hip, his thigh. He climbed off the hood of the defunct Camaro, kicked a tire as he hopped off and stretched for a moment. From his back pocket of his pants, he pulled his dime bag, tapping some out onto the roof of the Camaro near Lynch’s prostrate body. It was only a shade lighter than Lynch’s skin in the early, rosy light. He drew a line, brought it up.

“Shit.”

Lynch’s eyes were half-slits and flickering. It was always an eerie thing with sleep. Sometimes Prokopenko did that. But Prokopenko was a fucking forgery—Ronan Lynch was real. So fucking real.

“Come on, sweetheart.” Kavinsky drew out and brought up the second line, burning and vicious. “Come on back.”

He climbed up onto the hood of the Camaro again and closed his eyes. No pill this time. He wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t dream. Just rest his eyes for one moment, until Lynch woke up with that obnoxious car of Dick-fucking-Gansey’s and they could move the fuck on over it. The dream place was too thin now, anyway, too sapped out from them fucking around.

He reached out and brushed a hand across the roof of the Camaro. Just one moment.

There was a shift. There was no metal of the Camaro under his fingers, under his back. No Ronan Lynch, no abandoned lot by the fairgrounds filled with dream things.

But he knew these trees. He knew this forest.

“Shit.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's quiet in Cabeswater. Too quiet. Ronan drowns out the silence with his music turned up as loud as he can stand it, stretches out in the grass and tries to lose himself there. It's not likely anyone will come looking for him, but there's a part of Ronan that's sure the forest will hide him regardless, purely because Ronan wants to be hidden.

Ronan is very studiously not thinking about anything at all and he peeks an eye open when he feels Chainsaw drop to his chest, her mouth opening in a squawk Ronan can't hear.

He lifts his head to pull of his headphones, left still shoulder throbbing in pain. He frowns.

The trees are murmuring.

It's not a particularly strange occurrence in itself -- the trees are rarely quiet when Ronan's around -- but it's the tone this time, the current of agitation that makes Ronan's hair stand on end.

Gingerly, he sits up, Chainsaw fluttering up into the air with a sharp cry, circling.

Something is definitely off.

The dream place didn't feel right, there was something off here. For one thing, it wasn't ... dreaming enough. And Kavinsky knew he didn't fall into his fugue like he did normally when he dreamed. So there was something off about the whole situation. The trees felt real. The air felt real. Everything felt real. Sometimes it would do that in the dreams, too. In Prokopenko's dream, everything had felt very real, right down to the skin. It's what made Proko such a good forgery.

Kavinsky wasn't making a forgery. He wasn't even trying to pull anything important out of the dream place. The place was supposed to feel sapped, near dormant; he and Ronan had been bled the bitch dry for that stupid Camaro. This place was alive and radiant.

What was he here the steal, then?

The longer Ronan listens, the louder the murmuring, the buzz growing over the sound of Ronan's music still filtering through his headphones. He has to concentrate to pick out the words, his Latin rusty after months and months of little use. One word keeps repeating in the midst though:

"Thief."

It's sharp. Clearly accusatory.

Something prickles at the back of Ronan's neck and he reaches into his pocket to turn off his music. There's nothing but the trees then, the rustling and their hushed, frantic tones.

"Thief. Thief."

Under his feet, the dream place was getting brambly, changing as he walk. It was growing aware of him. He'd been in too long, but he couldn't seem to wake himself up. He swore he'd only closed his eyes for a moment, and there wasn't even anything he'd intended to come in for. The path under his feet was becoming overgrown and awful, thrones cutting into his feet, trees reaching out for his bare arms.

He powered through, deliberate. It was only a dream. It would let him in. He pulled his sunglasses out of his back pocket, making sure that everything else was there and would stay there, because he wasn't dropping something in this stupid dream and having to double back for it if something went awry, and put them on, so he wouldn't risk a bramble to the eye.

He ran his fingers along a tree that was suddenly too close. The bark was real and biting and tough, energetic under his fingertips. He paused, trying to find a crack to rip into.

The energy isn't directed at him Ronan realizes, but at something else, something he can't see. Beneath the murmuring, Ronan is able to make out more, his brow furrowing when he realizes they're asking for help.

But Ronan isn't the eyes and hands of Cabeswater and he shakes his head.

"How the fuck--"

His words stop short, catch in his throat.

There's a meadow stretched between them, light streaking down through the trees, but the figure is unmistakable. Fucking sunglasses and everything. Ronan stares, watches as Kavinsky curls his fingers in bark, tugging.

"Hey!" His voice is sharp, cutting through the buzz of the trees and he steps out of the undergrowth.

He suddenly doesn't know if he's dreaming or not. But maybe it doesn't matter.

"The fuck are you doing?"

Kavinsky looked up from the bark. He hadn't noticed the meadow a moment before, but the whole landscape was a shifting thing, like it was as much alive as he was, like any dream shifted from one minute to the next. He wondered how long he was going to be asleep.

Except when he and Ronan had slept in the Evo together, on the ground surrounded by Evos, Kavinsky could hear Ronan in fits and starts. Now, all he heard was thee rustle of more leaves than there could possibly be above and around them, whipping at him.

He tore off a chunk of bark.

"Hey, Lynch. I'd ask if you had a nice nap, but you look like you've been fighting with a shitty Camaro again."

The trees react sharply, a growing frenzy of sound that nearly makes Ronan's lips curl into a darker sneer.

He has no idea what Kavinsky's talking about -- except that's not true, is it? he does know if only from stories, piecing the clues together -- and he doesn't care. If this is a dream, he'll wake up and Cabeswater will protect him.

If not...

"When do you get here?" he snarls because Kavinsky isn't acting like a newcomer. He isn't confused or frantic, scrambling to make sense where none exists. No, this Kavinsky is still acting like Kavinsky, all infuriating coolness under a sharp smile.

He watched Ronan's face, and there's a disconnect there, a disfamiliarity, that settled somewhere in Kavinsky's lungs like smoke. He stepped out of the trees and into the grass. Here, there weren't any brambles, but the grass was deep enough that he'd have to be careful for rocks. He could reach down and reach the top of the grass with his fingertips. Slowly, he moved toward Ronan.

"Don't you know, Lynch? I live here."

He smiled, sharp and shark-like. Man-eater. There were shadows under Ronan's eyes, vivid and angry, his nose was swollen; Kavinsky wanted to meet whoever it was that could go tete-a-tete with Ronan Lynch and make him come out looking like he'd met a tire iron.

Ronan doesn't move, eyes narrowing as Kavinsky steps closer, practically floating across the deep grass.

"This place isn't for you," Ronan argues, tipping his chin upward toward the trees. "They don't like you."

He has no idea if Kavinsky will even know what he's talking about or if maybe Kavinsky can hear them, too. The trees don't speak Russian or Douchebag as far as he knows.

"Harsh."

There was a drop of blood running down his arm, though, where a bramble caught his arm as he pushed his way through the forest. He lifted his opposite hand to it, swiping the blood up with his thumb, and licked it clean. Out here in the field, there were no brambles and briers; after a moment, he pushed the sunglasses up on top of his hair, thumb still in his mouth to suck the blood clean off.

The leaves murmured on a wind that didn't move in the meadow. Kavinsky snorted.

Only a few feet separate them now and Ronan's eyes track the path of Kavinsky's thumb to his mouth, the expression on his own face unflinching.

"Ego somniat?" Ronan says, head turned slightly to direct his questions to the trees. They're still unsettled, leaves rustling in a slowly growing frenzy, tall grass whipping at Ronan's hands.

The answer comes in moments, clear and unmistakable and something like dread drops heavy in Ronan's gut.

"Tell me the last thing you remember," Ronan says, nearly a snarl. "Before you woke up here. Tell me."

"I remember my dream place being a hell of a lot sleepier than it's being right now, that's for damn sure," Kavinsky said. His lips curled on a knowledge that was meant to be shared, one that was meant to be shared with Ronan, because they were one and the same, the two of them, when it came right down to it. "Nice of you to get it into such nice shape for me. Gonna have to show me that trick. You show me yours and I'll show you mine."

They weren't sleeping. Kavinsky's palms itched with sweat despite a slight, dreary chill in the air. He'd lost time somewhere, in a way he never had before.

"I know what you are," Kavinsky said, smiling widening lazily. He was standing in front of him now, almost within arms reach, a refugee from summer with his skin still sticky with morning and weekend working sweat.

Kavinsky doesn't waver, smirk still curving his lips as he steps closer until their an arms length away. He looks out of place here, a blade within rolling hills, misted sunlight bouncing off his bare skin.

"That was a shit answer," Ronan replies, ignoring the rest. Given what he's been told, Ronan doesn't doubt that Kavinsky knows much more than Ronan would like. Exactly what he knows remains to be seen.

Ronan isn't entirely sure he wants to find out.

"I'll ask again, more slowly this time. What..." Ronan asks, stretching out the words, "is the last thing... you remember?"

"That was a perfectly respectable answer, Lynch. You asked me the last thing I remembered." Kavinsky spread his arms open wide, taking in the meadow, the rustling trees, the brambles and darkness behind him and Ronan's much more calm and safe area of Cabeswater. The blood on his hands and feet from walking through the trees unwanted and uninvited was a stigmata, a lance of blood he hadn't noticed before moving sluggishly on his right side.

"I sure as shit don't remember this."

Then, he brought his hands together, fingers clasped but fore and middle fingers extended. His hands a gun. Boom.

"I sure as shit remember you. And I ain't the one with the head injury--new head injury too, from the looks of it."

If this were a dream, there'd have been a bullet, and a hole straight through Ronan's chest.

As it is, there's a hole but no bullet.

Ronan's mouth curves into a sneer at the reminder of the bruise across his face, the broken pieces thanks to Krem, only a physical manifestation of every other broken part of Ronan's life.

"You don't even know you're somewhere else, do you?" he says, eyes narrowed. "Probably too drugged up to even care."

Kavinsky's grin widened, if that was possible. He was impressed Ronan still had teeth in his skull; who or whatever he'd fought wasn't like the horror that had tried to kill him in front of the gates when Kavinsky had learned they were the same thing. Who or whatever it was wanted to teach him a lesson on manners.

Ronan clearly hadn't learned it. Dick wasn't keeping him on a tight enough leash.

"I don't know if you've noticed, Ronan," --he said it like he was actually saying substance or bomb or car accident-- "but it doesn't fucking matter where we're at. This place is the one that matters."

He laughed, bringing his fingers down to the tall grass again. He could feel the energy, even though he wasn't sleeping. Who cared if the crash was going to be awful in an hour or two? He would sleep for a week. The dream place was real, it was a place, a real thing, and he and Ronan were both standing in it, toe to toe, bloody beasts in tandem.

The simmering anger under Ronan's skin flares and he steps in close, nearly nose to nose, the brambles and thorns surrounding Kavinsky shuddering away from Ronan's feet.

"If this place doesn't kill you, I will," he says, hand clenched in a tight fist. "I know what you did. Gansey and Adam are here too - they told me everything. I should fucking gut you right now."

Kavinsky's grin slipped, eyebrows coming together briefly. He huffed a breath through his nose. His gaze fell to Ronan's mouth, brief, brief and then he was looking back up at Ronan's face, his eyes, looking at him and not the bruises or the minute crack in the skin on his nose, the swelling there, how his hair was starting to earnestly peach-fuzz when it had been slick when they'd laid on the hood of the defunct Camaro and he'd closed his eyes for just one moment.

"What are you talking about?"

His hands were up and onto Ronan's shoulders, gentling like Ronan were a wild thing. "The hell do Dick or Parrish have to do with anything, man?"

The second Kavinsky's hands are on him, Ronan shoves, eyes wild and fury railing through him.

"Don't fucking touch me," he snarls, grinning snake-like as brambles and vines curl around Kavinsky's ankles, working with Ronan to take him down. Ronan wonders if Cabeswater actually could kill him, if the growth could just swallow him whole, effectively bury him alive.

"You kidnapped Matthew," he continues, absolutely livid, now all the anger, all the hurt from the past week culminating and flying outward now that there's target. And a damn good one. "You almost fucking killed him."

Ronan's hand is on Kavinsky's throat now, eyes like fire. "Give me one good fucking reason why I shouldn't crush your windpipe right now, you Russian mobster piece of shit."

Kavinsky stumbles, startled by Ronan's violence because he's seen it--in cars, in school, at people; never at him, except when they race--and to be on the other side of it is strange and awesome and exhilarating. His hands go to Ronan's wrists, bracing, in case he falls. He'll take Ronan down with him.

The brambles cut him, but brace him up, vines wrapping his legs, rooting him into place, upright and subject to Ronan's visceral violence and anger and wrath.

"What--I didn't--" Kavinsky hisses, the moment before Ronan's hand is on his throat and he growls. Turns his chin up and exposes his throat to Ronan's palm in a way that eases the grip but would make it all the more easy to destroy him.

A laugh snaked out of him, and he shut his eyes. "Yeah, talk dirty to me, sweetheart."

Edited 2015-10-09 20:53 (UTC)

There's a flash, for just a second or two, of what looks like actual fear in Kavinsky's eyes. Fear and genuine confusion.

It hadn't occurred to Ronan that this could be Kavinsky from before the party Adam had described. Even now, he's not sure it makes a difference. It's still Kavinsky, he's still capable of the same horrible things. His sneer is still the same one Ronan remembers so vividly along with every shitty word from his lips.

It really would be so easy. Out here in Cabeswater no one would even know. The forest would protect him, would hide the body even. Ronan squeezes for just a second, the temptation overwhelming.

Strangely, he finds himself thinking of Noah. Noah from only days ago, with his wide ghostly eyes staring at Ronan with such betrayal. He thinks of Gansey, of what he'd say, what he'd do if he ever did find out. He thinks of Adam...

Ronan uncurls his fingers and it feels like defeat, a growl ripping from his chest as he shoves again, but this time stepping back. Stepping away.

"If Cabeswater kills you, that's not my problem," he says, voice a low snarl. "Good luck finding your way out, fuckface."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“Bonus round,” Kavinsky said. Then: “Open.”

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject