mitsubishievo | Ignite me, licking at the flames they bring about [Sep 18

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Ignite me, licking at the flames they bring about [Sep 18 | for Newt]

His face was screaming with pain. Kavinsky hadn't felt like that in months, in years probably. It was a different sort of pain to having his nose broken, though no less distracting. Driving home had been miserable.

His face wasn't the only point of pain. He'd only let himself have the one fight, because he'd come out of it rough and rattled and incapable. What was he supposed to do but take himself home? He was useless to another opponent after that. Kavinsky knew he'd done this to himself, he'd asked for this. Poke the bear enough, and this was what you got.

He parked in the garage and hauled himself out of the car and into the house. The lights were off in the front room, but he could see one on in Newt's study, so he headed there first.

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It had happened while he'd lain down for a nap; he'd woken up back to his normal self. Thankfully, he'd lain down in Kavinsky's sweats and a t-shirt so things hadn't been too ridiculous. He had some homework to do, so he'd sat down on the couch in his study with a cup of tea and tried to ignore the fact that he knew exactly where Kavinsky was.

"How bad is it?" he asks, before he turns, and then he actually looks at him. "Oh, shucking hell, Joe."

"Hey, you're back to normal," Kavinsky said, managing a smile that was made lopsided by the bruise on his jaw. That, at least, he thought was just a bruise. But his eyes was still watering and blurry, and he knew what he looked like.

He scuffed a toe against the floor. "It looks worse than it is, I promise. I'm fine."

"I don't want to shucking talk about me," says Newt, standing up and closing some of the difference between them. "What have you done to yourself, love?"

There was an edge in those words, something boiling under the surface--anger, frustration, a fight brewing. He and Newt didn't often fight, and so Kavinsky found himself putting walls up around himself quickly. He didn't step back or go defensive, but he was preparing.

"Nothing. I picked the wrong guy to scrap with tonight, is all. I'll take some aspirin or something and put an icepack on it."

"That's shucking clunk and you know it," says Newt, stepping in so that he can study Kavinsky's face. "You look like you got run over by a bloody bus."

"It--it's not that bad," Kavinsky assured. "I asked for this, I knew he could beat the crap out of me. It was my mistake."

"You're a shucking idiot," says Newt, slipping past Kavinsky in the direction of their bathroom, the little kit with bandages and antiseptic and painkillers.

Kavinsky huffed out a breath as Newt left the study. It was entirely possible he wasn't coming back in here, and so Kavinsky knew he ought to follow him. But, really, all he wanted was to lie down on the daybed in the study and doze off for a couple hours.

He followed after Newt, slinking, defenses finally in place.

Newt takes the first aid kit out of the bathroom and stalks back into their bedroom. He shoots Kavinsky a flat, flat look.

"Sit. Let me look."

Kavinsky sat on the edge of the bed, glad that he'd followed. He was silent and still, eyes cast off to the side. He hadn't done anything wrong, so he didn't know why Newt was so upset. Sure, his eye was probably fucked up, but not bad enough that he'd need to go to the hospital or anything. He'd come back hale and whole. What more was there?

Newt grabs an antiseptic wipe out of the kit and starts in on the more obvious splits and abrasions.

"Why did you let someone do this to your face?"

Kavinsky winced but said nothing as Newt took out his frustration in cleaning his face. He kept his eyes to the side, his mouth turning down in frustrated anguish. He had not gone out expecting to be hurt like this, to come home to such annoyance at what had become a regular spectacle.

"I didn't let him."

Irritated as he is, his touch stays gentle. Newt gently touches the slightly sunken curve of Kavinsky's eye socket.

"Well you didn't shucking stop him."

"You're talkin' like I went lookin' to get my eye busted, Newt." Kavinsky frowned, despite the pain of it. "I didn't ask for this, okay. I did the best I could, and you're actin' like I just stood there and let him wallop on me like some sorta pansy-ass faggot or something."

"I don't know why you go there at all," snaps Newt, though his fingertips stay gentle. "What aren't you getting somewhere else that you get there?"

Kavinsky went very still for a moment. He grabbed Newt's hand, as gentle as he could, to stop him from what he was doing and looked up at him. His busted eye was all bloodshot, the bone so delicately crumbled, but his gaze was intent.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You've got me. You've got Al. You've got Jack. You've got Peter." He frowns. "I just...wish I bloody knew what we weren't giving you that you still need that would stop you going to get the clunk beaten out of you."

Guilt chewed through Kavinsky's chest, aching and consumptive. He didn't--he shouldn't--have to justify himself. But there it was, the bald face of Newt's upset because Kavinsky was too greedy, too broken to just be happy about something.

"I didn't realize being a violent shit bag was mutually exclusive from having a home life." His voice gritted in his throat, rough and gravely from trying to hold himself back. "I'll keep that in mind."

With a heavy, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Newt realises that they're about to fight. It's going to happen.

"I guess you never saw anyone get beaten to death," says Newt, his head tilted slightly. "But, whatever, shank." He shakes off Kavinsky's hand. "You get your kicks wherever you bloody want."

Kavinsky boggled for a moment. He let Newt shake him off and stared at him. He'd told Newt what his father, what Prokopenko, had tried. He'd told him the results of those attempts. Never seen someone beaten to death--he'd held the implements of destruction more than once.

His gaze diverted again. There was no point in bringing that up. It made him the monster he was, after all, that he have that violence in his history and continue to perpetuate it into his present.

"I'll stop going," he said. Slowly, he rose off the bed. "I--I'm gonna go rest on the couch."

He realises as he watches Kavinsky walk away and something inside him sinks, a leadlined weight.

"Shit," he breathes. "Joe. Love. I didn't mean..." He frowns. "I'm a shucking idiot. You scare me. That's all."

"You did mean it," Kavinsky said, weighty and hurt. He stopped in the doorway and bumped his foot against the edge of the jamb. The worst was not the words had been said, but that Newt had meant it, that dismissal, that terrible negligence of Kavinsky's lived truths.

But it all swirled with what Newt said, and Kavinsky wasn't sure if Newt was even listening to his words now, to how they sounded to someone so rife with guilt and self-loathing and destruction under his skin. To hear from this boy who he loved more than life itself that he scared him. Kavinsky ran his thumb against the molding of the door

"Yeah," says Newt, and he keeps his distance right then because, suddenly, everything feels fragile. "I did mean it. But...that doesn't mean I'm not a slinthead for saying it." He closes his eyes. "I've...Too many people I love have died, Joe, and you scare the clunk out of me when you do things like this. Your face..."

"It'll heal," Kavinsky assured. Probably it would even heal without him needing to go to the hospital. He picked the edge of his nail against the door jamb. "I mean it. I'll stop going if it bothers you that much. You're right, I'm not getting anything out of this except getting the shit kicked out of me. So, whatever. One less thing to worry about me doing."

"Don't do that," says Newt, shaking his head. "What do you shucking get out of it?" asks Newt. "I don't...I just don't get it, Joe."

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