mitsubishievo | All my friends are on the block, I'm the new king [for Newt]

It takes Newt a little while to figure out that he's there. He wanders into his study barefoot, tea cup in hand and bends, slightly, to look under the desk, to find his boyfriend curled up in the footspace.

"What the shuck are you doing under there, Joe?"

"Oh, you know," Kavinsky said, light as if he weren't curled up like a damn five year old under a desk. "Having some sort of sexuality crisis or something. Existential crisis. Hiding from the world in general until it all makes sense again. You know, the usual. How was your day? Work and all? Sorry 'm back so late. Jack and I saw a movie."

"Might have known that shank would be involved." A little stiffly, Newt slides down to sit on the floor in front of his desk, tea cradled between his hands. "Want to talk about it, love?"

Kavinsky looked up, looking pained for a moment. He murmured, "I left a note that I was gonna go chill with him. Sorry. I should have texted or something. I should've..."

He didn't know what he should have done. Quietly, he said, "Not really, but like, yeah, totally? You know how I get about talking about this shit."

"And you know how bloody likely I am to let it drop until you get it off your chest," says Newt, settling back with his back to the couch. He nudges Kavinsky with his toes. "So spill it, shank."

Kavinsky was quiet for a long moment. Less because he didn't want to talk about it and more because he wasn't sure how. How was he even supposed to explain what was going on in his head when he didn't really know what was going on. This would have been so much easier if it had been Newt he'd figured this out with.

"I think I might be in trouble? About Jack. Like..." Kavinsky kept cupping the back of his neck but leaned his head back against the side of the foot space of the desk. "I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I just wanna put everything away and maybe it'll stop."

Newt doesn't say anything, not at first. He blows over the surface of his tea and takes a sip and then looks up at Kavinsky, eyebrows slightly raised.

"Trouble how?" he asks, gently.

"Don't think it's just a crush," Kavinsky said, a miserable note creeping into his voice. He could feel his ring pressed into his neck. He'd, maybe, definitely known this for weeks if not months now. He'd known this, maybe, probably since he'd known it was a crush at all.

"And he's a girl right now, like I was in February? I--he was teasing me about being all weird about it, and I ended up groping him?" He looked, shamefully, at Newt then. "'m sorry. 'm sorry, I know I shouldn've..."

"Not just a crush," echoes Newt, his voice level and calm. He frowns a little at how miserable Kavinsky sounds, takes another sip of his tea. "Nothing else happened?"

"I--I mean, he was only in his panties when I--" Kavinsky stopped and shook his head. "We acted like nothing happen, like we have been since we fucked last, when Poison was upset about it. Went to the movies. Brought him home and then came home 'nd I've been under here since."

He looked at Newt and wanted, so badly, to curl up under his chin and be held. He didn't think he deserved that, though. So he stayed very still and waited for the shoe to fall.

"Okay," says Newt slowly, weighing what had happened up against how upset Kavinsky appeared."And why was he just in his panties?"

"Changing so we could go to the movies. Didn't wanna wear yoga pants an' a t-shirt an' no bra. Told him I'd pick his outfit." And there had been the teasing and the casual accusation that Kavinsky shouldn't be looking, and that was true. He shouldn't have been looking for a wealth of reasons. He shouldn't have wanted to look.

He rocked his knees up to his chest and said in a tight, worried voice, "I got hard from touching him. While he was a girl."

That's another thing entirely. Newt blinks.

"Really?"

Kavinsky closed in around himself, as small as he could make himself. That spoke more than the words did, really. He hadn't even really liked touching himself when he was a girl, but doing it for Newt and Al had been so good. He didn't think he wanted to touch Jack like that. But he had touched him. And he'd liked it. And that hurt something structural in him.

He took a great, shuttering breath. "'m sorry, sugar. 'm sorry."

His posture, the way he curls in on himself, hurts Newt. He sets his tea cup down and shuffles closer until he can reach out and touch his hair with one hand, his bicep with the other.

"Stop saying you're sorry like you did something wrong, love," he says, quietly. "Just talk to me about it. I need to know what's in your shucking head."

The touch was a grounding one, something real and concrete and Kavinsky wasn't trying to hurt anyone here. He just worried, these days. He missed when he didn't worry about it, when he was a mess of a boy, disregarding the wake in his path. It was easier when he cared less.

"I just," Kavinsky started, then faltered. Finally he said, "I dunno if it was just because it was Jack, or what. I've never--not with girls. That shit doesn't do anything for me."

Then he took a shuddering breath. He tapped the back of his head against the desk, careful of where he could feel Newt's fingers. He just needed the relief of sharp pain, just for a second. "Doesn't matter, just. Just sucks. I love you guys, and I shouldn't be thinking about other people."

"We love you too," says Newt, quietly, simply. He squeezes Kavinsky's shoulder gently. "And I think we're a long way past shouldn't, don't you." He tilts his head, trying to get Kavinsky to look at him, trying to make eye contact. "Do you think you're in love with him? With Jack?"

As far as Newt can see, this is not an "either/or" situation.

Apologies jumped to his mouth, but he swallowed them, ignoring the way they kicked down his throat. He breathed, shakily, and tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. He loved Newt, he loved Al, it didn't matter. His boys were a tangible, real thing, his boys loved him for some unknown reason, they made him feel like he might be complete. He shouldn't, shouldn't, should not--

But he had. And sitting there on the desk was the hardest because, when he looked at how he felt, who he felt it for, how long and why and how? It all chewed at him miserably for a moment before he did what he could to shove all the feelings into a box and think about them seriously and critically.

"Yes," he breathed, voice low and even. "Peter too, I just--that's gotta be friends, man. I worry I don't know the difference sometimes, I dunno if he's like my brother or--I think I might know with Jack? God."

Newt takes it in stride. If Alby turned up here, they'd have a world of shucking trouble to sort through, but it'd be the same with Minho, with Gally. Newt takes a breath.

"So what's the ideal situation here?" he asks. "In a charmed world, everything working out perfectly for everyone, no-one getting hurt - what do you want?"

Kavinsky didn't work well in ideals, in fantasies, in dreams. Even though he was a dreamer, even though half of his life was made up of fantastic dream things, his reality had always been defined by the people around him. He didn't know how to make that different, how to claim it.

The only thing he'd ever wanted to claim as his own was his death. And this was life, life, life bursting out of his chest, out of his soul.

Kavinsky caught Newt's hand gently. "I don't wanna lose you guys. Any of you. You or Al, Jack, Peter. I just want--" He ran his thumb over Newt's knuckle. "I want to keep being friends with them, and maybe sometimes kiss, I guess. I dunno. I want everyone to be okay."

Newt turns his hand, threading their fingers together. He leans in and presses a kiss against the corner of Kavinsky's mouth.

"Firstly, you're not going to lose me or Al. Ever," he says, gently. "I can promise you that much,, love." A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "Sometimes kiss, sometimes take them to bed?"

It was such a quiet, wholesome reassurance. Like the first touch, Newt lacing their fingers was grounding, and the kiss was grounding, and the words lifted a weight from Kavinsky's shoulders, or at least recentered the weight. He leaned into Newt, just a touch.

"I mean," and he snorted just a little, because he had taken Jack to bed. "What d'you want me to say, sugar? How do I make this good?"

"I don't know what's bad about this, Joe," says Newt, quietly, still holding on firmly to Kavinsky's hand. "I just want to know what I can do for you. If it's permission you need, you've bloody got it. Stop acting like you've fucked up. You're okay, shank."

Kavinsky put that up, a color cell to a light, against everything else. Against the evolution of their relationship. Slowly, he scooted out from under the desk. Not much. But enough that he wasn't crammed up in there.

"I'm always gonna ask, before I do anything." This would not be December, reckless and stupid. "And you've got--you've gotta be able to tell me no, that even though I have permission, it doesn't mean I can do something. And. And I'll always come home, or I'll tell you why 'm staying out and--"

This was the guideline of his stability, the structure, the framework that he needed so he didn't lapse into the boy he'd been in Henrietta, cheap, and easy, and volatile. He loved this house too much, these boys.

"Right," says Newt, nodding. "And you are going to run every single thing past me and the first time you disappear will be the last time." He doesn't mention January because he doesn't need to. He knows they both remember. "We're both in on this or it doesn't happen, K."

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