mitsubishievo | Kind of hoping this will turn me round [Jan 16]

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Kind of hoping this will turn me round [Jan 16]

The kittens were all big enough to go to their forever homes, had spent a few days under observation with the vet before he'd gotten the go ahead that they were all healthy enough to go to their new people, and so Kavinsky had been doing that most of the day, closing the studio early so that he could pick them up from the vet and go and deliver them. Some of them were going to people he only obliquely knew--friends of friends, people who had gotten his number from other people but who's faces he knew. Enough of them were going to people he knew well enough. There were only a couple that would be going to the shelter, which he'd done first.

Now, he was at his last stop. He didn't know why he was so nervous about this. But, really, he just didn't know what to say. He and Jack hadn't really talked about whatever their situation was since before New Years, and he'd been pretty quiet to texts. Kavinsky supposed that said enough. He was trying to not let it hurt in his chest. At any rate, Kavinsky was reminding himself that the kitten was for Poison. He'd picked the little thing out because half the time it had the same expression that Poison got when they were at the studio and he didn't like Kavinsky's directions.

He'd let the kitten out of the carrier for the last little bit, hooked into a harness but riding on his shoulders. He was hoping that Dee or Jack would be there; it'd be a quick exchange, and then he could get out. No weird, judgmental looks from Poison--Kavinsky didn't even know if he would prefer that right now; he was pretty sure he'd prefer judgment to what he was sure would be mild gloating to Jack roadblocking him.

He knocked and schooled his face, looking at the kitten on his shoulder. "Ready, kiddo? Time to meet the new family."

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Jillie is aware that they're getting a cat — that Poison is getting a cat — though the when is cloudier. She's smoking, leaning out the window, when she hears the knock. She stubs the cigarette out carefully so she can pick up smoking it after this interruption, then heads to the door, waving smoke out of her face.

She pulls the door open up to the chain's limit and peeks out.

"What?" she says. Her eyes fall to the cat before the man it's perched on. She hesitates, blinks, then follows the cat's body to the shoulder. Not attached. Good. Then she follows the shoulder to the neck, up to the face that she recognizes from the picture Jack had showed her.

"You're Kavinsky," she observes. "Jack's not here."

The face that greeted him was one that he was immediate familiar with because, months ago, Jack had worn one almost exactly like it. He blinked, stared hard. He waited for the swoop to happen, like it always did with Jack. It didn't. He held his breath on that; maybe it would and he just didn't know yet.

"Heyya," he said, and then felt a little guilty at her defensiveness. "You must be Jillian. I just--cat."

He gestured uselessly to the grumpy looking blue kitten on his shoulder, who squeaked at her. "Mind if I come in? Or I can wait in the hall until Poison or Jack or Dee get back from...wherever."

She doesn't answer; she shuts the door unceremoniously and slides the chain out. Then she pulls the door back open.

"Come in," she says. She steps back, hands going to her upper arms to rub. She's wearing a cami and skinny jeans, the necklace Jack got her for Christmas, and nothing else — she hadn't bothered with a bra, either — and the scar on her neck I'd pretty plain.

Kavinsky didn't really react to the door being shut. He didn't hear her walk away, and he put on a soft, pleasant smile when she opened the door again. In full view of her now, he waited for the swoop to happen. It didn't. He breathed out, a little surprised, but mostly grateful for it.

He stepped in, avoiding touching her on the way through the door. His bundle of cat supplies went to the floor, and then the cat came down, still on the harness and leash.

He offered her a wave to her, but didn't extend to shake. Jack hadn't mentioned if Jillie did physical contact with strangers, so he didn't assume that she did. The last thing he needed was to freak her out. "So. Yeah. I'm Kavinsky. And this is--guess I don't know yet. That's up to you guys."

She nods, watching him like she isn't entirely sure what she's seeing. Then she looks down at the cat. "You should stay here," she says. "Until someone comes home. I don't know the first thing about cats." She lowers one forearm and rubs the scar lacing up it. "I can barely take care of myself." She's better. She's getting better. But for all she pushes Jack to understand she's not glass, she still doesn't entirely trust herself.

"Yeah, sure," Kavinsky said. He nodded a little bit, watching her body language carefully. He was getting better at reading people for more than just exploitation, and he hadn't meant for this meeting to happen without supervision.

So, rather than focusing on Jillie--her scars, her curious gaze, the similarity to Jack--he looked around the apartment a little. Then he laughed softly. "Where'd everybody run off to, anyway? Figure Dee's with her boy. Poison and Jack take 'emselves out?"

"Oh, I don't remember," she says. She waves her fingers near her head in a sort of flighty, inattentive gesture. "But it's not a big city, they'll be back." She eyes the cat again, then gestures vaguely in the direction of the living room. "Want anything? I've got . . . water. Cigarettes. Um. Maybe beer. What time is it?" Is it too early for beer?"

Kavinsky arched a brow, just for a moment, because he didn't actually believe for a second that she didn't know. If they'd mentioned, it was there somewhere. She just didn't care to go hunting. He understood that.

At the mention of her offerings, Kavinsky laughed a little. He pulled out his cigarette case from his leather jacket, and then shucked the leather jacket entirely. Their jeans were in a similar wash, he realized.

"I'll take a beer, if you're day drinking too. Hate to be a bad impression."

"I won't be drinking," she clarifies. "I just figured I'd offer if you wanted some." She pulls another cigarette of her own out and works on lighting it as she leads the way into the kitchen.

"So, this is Poison's cat, huh? It looks like an asshole."

Kavinsky flapped a hand and grinned. "So long as you ain't gonna get critical about me day drinking, it's all fly, sweet cheeks." Jillie pulled out a cigarette of her own, and Kavinsky opened up his case, pulling out one of his black paper clove cigarettes. Jack was going to kick his ass, probably; or Poison. He didn't find he cared, in that moment.

"All cats are assholes," Kavinsky pointed out. He had three of them now, he felt he had a pretty solid handle on that. "Nah, that's just his face. He's got this expression like how Poison looks at me when he's in the studio and he doesn't like my opinion."

"Ew, did you seriously just call me that?" she asks, but she's laughing. "God, you're like a crappy 80's movie about the 60's." She laughs again, then drags on her cigarette. Something seems to occur to her as she exhales. "Sorry, that was kind of mean."

Kavinsky cackled brightly, his nose scrunching up a little bit. The tease was familiar, nice. Better than the eye rolls or defensive posturing or anything else that could have been the result of the instant pet name. He turned on the stove fan to help suck out the smoke they were both creating, even though the window was still open.

"Nah, I'm more like those...After School Specials, ya know? Less Grease, more--After School Special." Kavinsky rolled his eyes, angry that he couldn't come up with some other, better pop culture analogy.

She grins and shakes her head. "Whatever, my ass is pretty sweet." She might have been truly offended, before she'd gotten sick. Now, it feels good to have someone talk to her like she's a person. Which, she doesn't want to be unfair. Jack is getting a lot better now that she's leveling out. Girl and Poison are also pretty good. Actually, most people here are pretty good, so long as they don't notice her scars. But it always surprises her, just a little, when people don't treat her like glass.

Kavinsky shrugged, ducking into the fridge to grab a beer. Then he hopped up onto the counter.

"Wouldn't know, I'm a faggot." He fished around in the drawer next to him, pulling out a butter knife rather than a bottle opener; it worked just as well to get he bottle open, when you were as practiced as he was. "Your hips are wider than Jack's, and I've officially lost interest. Phew. Nice and safe with me."

"You're the one that called me 'sweet cheeks,'" she points out. "I was just agreeing with you." She watches him, eyes distant for a moment before she settles in. She gets herself some juice from the fridge and sits on the counter adjacent to him. "You just got married, right?" she adds. "You're the one that Jackson was sleeping with?"

Kavinsky shrugged, an easy gesture. He sipped his beer, and then took an extra sip because of the question. It didn't need an answer beyond that. He set the beer down and fidgeted his ring against the lip of the bottle.

"How're you managing Darrow so far?" he asked instead of answering. He didn't feel like talking about things that weren't, especially when his chest hurt at the knowledge that he was still easily discardable.

"Mm, it's fine," she says. "He's sad, you know. Marriage is this thing that separates a relationship from one kind into another kind. That ring isn't just on your finger. It's this, this— in-vis-i-ble force field, all around you. Jackson can't touch you, now. Does that make sense?" She's not being angry-protective-sister right now. She's being meddlesome-twin-who-wants-her-brother-happy.

"I don't need a lecture on being a side piece," Kavinsky said, smiling while he did it. He'd been in Jack's position, plenty of times. He knew all about that strange, gnawing guilt that came with fucking behind someone's back. But they weren't--or hadn't been, he supposed, since they weren't now, and probably wouldn't be again.

"It's his business to cut it off, like. That's fine. It was fun; we're friends, that's it. He's got Poison. It's not like we were doing something serious for him to cut off. Just took sex out of the equation."

Jillie thinks he's awfully defensive for someone who says it's all fine, and it'd on the tip of her tongue to say so, to press and push and prod the way she sometimes needs for the truth to come out. But she's got Poison and Jack to both think about. So she just gives him a look that plainly says she thinks he's full of shit, finishes her cigarette, and lights another.

"Jack told me you got me my meds the first couple times," she says instead. "I can't remember if I ever passed along a thanks."

He appreciated her dropping it, though he didn't think it was really dropped. He knew he was being defensive--but, if he was being honest, he thought the whole thing was a bit stupid. Nothing had changed. Jack had just made up a line he refused to cross.

Kavinsky lifted his beer bottle, nodding as he drank. "'s cool. Those work okay for you? Hard to get a gauge on--like, the nuance, without having met you." He assumed that she was seeing someone now, but he still felt obligated to offer, "I can get you whatever works."

"I've had a lot worse," she admits. "Jack and Poison didn't tell me where you got it. Just that it was something you were good for." She shrugs a little; it doesn't matter to her how he'd gotten it. She's just grateful she hadn't had to miss out on her meds.

If Jack and Poison hadn't said anything, Kavinsky wasn't sure if he should offer up the explanation. The long and short of it was he'd gotten them, and they were as legal as they could be--even with a forged doctor's letter to go along with them, just in case.

"Well, if you need anything," Kavinsky said, and gave her a thumbs up. "My kool-aid's pretty dang awesome."

"Where'd you even get this cat?" she asks, abruptly changing the subject. It isn't an effort to segue away from the awkwardness of her meds, or the situation that may or may not exist between Kav and Jackson. It's just where her brain is, because the cat is starting to explore the new place, oddly judgmental expression still in tact.

"Found a box of 'em, walking from the tattoo parlor on the north end of town back to my car." Kavinsky didn't mind the abrupt shift in conversation. He was used to those, to subjecting people to his own electric thought and the flow of his conversations thusly. "Me and my boy ended up keeping three of them, but the rest needed homes. Housed most of 'em. A couple had to go to the pound, but they're cute. Should get homes soon."

He was quiet a second, then asked, "You and Jack ever have pets growing up?"

"Mm, no." The cat is pawing curiously at the cupboard door that never quite shuts all the way. Jillie hates that door. She watches the cat paw at it, listens to the door bounce against the framing in little, rhythmic taps that make her itch under the skin.

"Sst!"

She doesn't even mean to make the sound, but it's enough to startle the kitten away from the cupboard, and the tapping stops. Jillie drags her cigarette nearly down to the filter and holds the smoke inside, until the burning makes the itch go away. Then she exhales it slowly.

The kitten skittered away from the cabinet, jumped up onto the counter next to Kavinsky. He stayed still, mostly watching Jillie, and let the kitten climb up onto his thigh to watch her from a safe distance as well.

"Should probably put latches on the cabinets," he observed softly, then kept on as if nothing had happened. "You ever want 'em? My folks wouldn't let me have pets."

Edited 2017-01-27 04:22 (UTC)

Jillie is watching the cat still, and for a long moment, it doesn't seem like she even heard the question. Then she stubs out her cigarette and lights a new one. "No. I was always more interested in sports and boys. I didn't have the time for pets."

If Kavinsky was at all perturbed by Jillie's behavior, he didn't let on. She was harder to read than most people; he couldn't get a good handle on how much of this was her standard, dealing with someone knew, and how much of it was a performance of her illness. So he let it happen, watching her carefully.

He doused his own cigarette in the dregs of his beer, and then lit a new one of his own. "Yes, I can see how getting dicked down would cut into pet time. What sport?"

"Field hockey, mostly," she says. Then, "Dicked down? What the fuck?" She laughs, though, because the mental image is filthy, and she's never heard it before. It's a well-timed distraction from the kitten and her new cigarette, both.

Kavinsky tilted his head slightly at that proclamation. Aglionby didn't have field hockey--or ice hockey--but the sister school had field hockey. It was the sport of dykes, in his experience. He had the presence of mind, just barely, to not say that out loud.

"Aw, c'mon, you've never heard that? You know, when you're--you're really gagging for it. When you really want it." Maybe it had been long enough for Jillie that she didn't remember that. Maybe she'd just looked at boys and, like Jack, hadn't done anything with anyone.

He laughed and waved it off. "Probably a language barrier thing. That east coast, west coast schism."

"I mean, I just call that horny," she says with a shrug. "I don't think we had a saying like that. Dicked down. Gross." She laughs again, though, so obviously she's not offended by it.

"Nah, horny's just the general mission statement. Dicked down is what you want done." Kavinsky winked and laughed a little as well. He dragged at his cigarette, then pushed the kitten away from him so he could get off the counter and get himself another beer. "I'm gonna have to replenish if you keep letting me drink."

"So, what, it's like, 'I wanna get dicked down'?" she asks. She finishes her cigarette, but this time, doesn't light another one. She watches the cat curiously pad along the counter top, investigating the butcher block, the sink, the breadbox. It's kind of cute, she thinks, when it's not making annoying noises.

"Yes, exactly," Kavinsky said, grinning broadly now. He opened up his new bottle of beer and took a swig. Feeling indulgent, though he didn't really want to talk about his and Jack's whatever-it-had-been, he gave a particularly leering grin, and said, "I am pretty positive I said that at least five times in texts to your brother. God, I hope he deleted those."

"I'm going to find out," she resolves with a huge grin that looks like Jack's. She stretches a little, hands going up above her head. "God, it's been forever since I've been fucked." She wiggles in place a little, not because she's trying to entice Kavinsky — not consciously, anyway, since he's a raging homosexual and she's too buxom for his liking — but it feels good when she does it.

"Sure you could find somebody," Kavinsky said with a casual sort of shrug. Her wiggling did not, in fact, do much of anything to him. He was reminded, for a moment, of Jack as a girl, but that was in the smile more than anything else. His lungs ached a little. He gestured at her with the bottle. "Or a nice vibrating boyfriend instead. 'cause like--guys that actually know how to fuck beyond jackhammering? Pretty much impossible to find."

She rolls her eyes, but doesn't disagree. "Toys might be the better option. I'm probably not stable enough for sex yet. Maybe I'll watch lesbo porn, or something."

Kavinsky made a dramatic, fake grossed out face, but he laughed. It was the content more than the watching of the porn that garnered it; to each their own, and all that, he supposed, but he felt good being teasingly disgusted in it. "Enjoy your inch long manicures, baby."

She laughs and rolls her eyes again. "Whatever, I don't even know what I'm in the mood for. My meds sometimes fuck with my libido? So I'm just enjoying this while it lasts."

Kavinsky considered that. His libido, contrary to the rumors around Aglionby, was pretty sedate just by virtue of his being him. He was sexual with people that wanted to be sexual with him, and that was about the extent. Sometimes the drugs altered that, but very rarely.

"That common?" he asked curiously. He knew some drugs messed with libido, but when he thought of it, he thought of viagra and shit; that didn't necessary mess with libido, so much as performance, though, he supposed.

"It makes me mostly un-horny," she specifies. "Like, not all the time, just, sometimes I'll be like, 'oh hey. Not interested in sex right now.' Which is fine, since I'm single and no one's knocking down the door to spread my legs, but it makes me feel, y'know. Normal?" She shrugs, reaching for another cigarette.

"I mean, yeah, that seems mostly normal to me," Kavinsky observed curiously. He sipped his beer. He wasn't particularly interested in the fine minutia of Jillian Vincent's horniness, but it was curious that she would describe a lack of libido that way. "It's not like everyone's all boners all the time or something. I think that's probably another issue entirely, actually."

She shrugs. "I mean, I remember what I was like before I started my meds. It's different, I dunno. It doesn't matter."

"Yeah, I mean, I sorta remember what I was like before I started drugging myself out, too, but." Kavinsky shrugged, expansively. The kitten got down off the counter and went to sniff at the cabinet again. Kavinsky moved so he could pin it shut.

"That shit's not the same, sorry, fuck. I know that. I just mean--I dunno." Kavinsky snorted a little, shaking his head. "Yeah, forget it."

"Forgotten," she says easily enough. "I don't know if you've noticed, but." She holds her forearms out, showing the scars running up them. "Not exactly much room to judge."

Kavinsky shrugged. He came back toward her, leaned up next to her on the counter. He set the beer bottle down, and then showed her his palm. He'd gotten the scar, matching on each palm, over a year ago; they were glossy now, but obvious.

"Most of mine just aren't on the outside," he admitted. But his nose was crooked, his left eye slightly indented at the eyebrow, a particular and consistent hitch to his breathing that suggested not only smokers lung but previously broken ribs. Still, most of his marks were not something that people could look at and categorize. He was sure Jillie understood that too.

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Kind of hoping this will turn me round [Jan 16]

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