[3/24 - for Peter]

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky slept on the decision, but it was already made. When he awoke the next day, he still had the same damnable face, and he still knew that Poison wasn't going to be in the studio, and so he just didn't go in. He made coffee and breakfast, tidied the house a little bit, and tried to steel himself.

When he knew Peter would be getting toward the end of classes, he texted him, asking him to meet him at the cafe they preferred to go to. Normally, they were high when they ended up there. It had been like that since the January before last, a quiet ritual of boys with aches in their chests.

It was a decent day, and so Kavinsky sat outside. He'd ordered their drinks, knowing by now what Peter liked and how much work he was doing.

He waited.

Comments

[paper_courage]

The week was coming to an end. Peter was grateful. After all of the rehearsals and classes and the eerie silences over usually-hotter phone lines, a weekend sounded to be just the right thing. Maybe he would visit Alec or go on a drive in his new (used) car or travel to some yet-undiscovered part of Darrow right next to the incredible forest from Kavinsky's version of home.

To start off, he was going to meet his boyfriend for coffee in the middle of any old Friday school rush. These were his few hours of personal time: a thing he missed having to schedule in order to accomplish.

"Hey," Peter said brightly, smiling down at the boy and the two drinks before him. Little things like knowing a coffee order or bigger things like bothering to notice the pattern at all kept Peter coming back. To Kavinsky, not the coffee shop; though, Peter supposed, they'd known each other as long as they'd known that coffee shop.

"Thanks, baby." He flopped down into the seat beside Kavinsky, but recovered quickly into a more civilized. He ruined the tableau anyway by leaning in and stealing a quick kiss. "How're you? I notice you're still a distinguished older gentleman." He smiled.

[mitsubishievo]

Seeing Peter made the ache a little bit worse. Kavinsky had never had to do something like this before, and seeing Peter, hearing his voice, having him smile and lean in for that kiss, it stuttered something in his chest.

He returned the kiss on instinct, but it was soft and brief, distracted, and Peter was back in his seat almost immediately.

"Ha, yeah," Kavinsky breathed, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, being a girl lasted about a week, so I figure that's what I've got to look forward to here too, right? How--how was classes and shit?"

Small talk. He didn't know how to rip off his bandage.

[paper_courage]

Kavinsky was nervous. It wasn't the restless thrum that strung through him always, but something edgier. Not dangerous, but different. He was an older dude. He'd been quiet. He'd stopped talking about what he was thinking and feeling. These things added up in Peter's mind. He tried to ignore them, since they were together. Kavinsky had kissed him. He wouldn't have if he didn't want to. Right?

"Nothing exciting. Are you okay?" Peter asked, concern knitting his brow. He didn't know why, but something defensive was building itself in his chest.

[mitsubishievo]

Once upon a time, Joseph Kavinsky had not been so transparent. And he wasn't, still, to a lot of people. Unfortunately, at some point along the way, he'd let people in. Let them close. He didn't know why he'd done that, or how, or how to live without that now. But, in that breath, Kavinsky didn't want to be transparent. He wanted to be cold and calculating, a boy that could hurt people through his indifference.

Instead, he was a boy that could hurt people because he didn't know how else to exist.

"So, this--" He took a breath. He'd rehearsed these words throughout the morning, hoping to get them right. He wasn't going to. "We can't...do this. Right now."

[paper_courage]

Strange words from a strange face. It hardly seems real. If he didn't look, didn't move so much like Kavinsky, Peter might have thought he wasn't, at all. He was an alien look on an alien face and somehow, Peter had still recognized it. Was this the part of him that had given Kavinsky the courage to love him in the first place? That part of him that was magic and light and that he would never understand?

"What do you mean?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky stared down at the table because he couldn't bring himself to look up and see Peter's face just then. He couldn't stand the thought of it. Quietly, just over the noise of the cafe, Kavinsky said, "I mean, I fucked up. Again. And I--Newt pointed out that this whole open relationship thing isn't working. So."

Probably, Kavinsky owed Peter more of an explanation than that, but everything felt like excuses against the back of his mouth, bitter and vile. That, at least, he'd maintained for himself. There were no excuses. Very rarely were there even apologies.

"Last night, I ran into Poison. He was drunk, and I--I got him off in the backseat of his car."

[paper_courage]

There were three blows in there, each stung as much as the last. Open relationship. Slap. Isn't working. Slap. Got him off. Slap. For an irrational moment, Peter felt relief that it had been the backseat and not the front. Peter nearly laughed at how absurd that "comfort" was.

"I didn't think we were in an open relationship," Peter said, a bit acidic, the past tense of it another stinging reminder that this was the conversation he thought it was. "There was your husband and your boyfriend and sometimes whatever Jack is." That last part still left a taste in his mouth, but that was none of his business. Actually, that tasted sour to him, too.

"You cheated," he said, the words slipping from his lips like a memory of something else entirely. "On Newt. And me."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky had some thoughts about defending that particular choice of phrases. What the hell else did you call being married, having a boyfriend, and fucking someone else? That sounded pretty damn open to him. Now, it was closed. He needed to put a break on things, figure himself out, breathe for a moment until the guilty ache in his lungs abated.

Peter's voice was raw and tender and wounded. Kavinsky knew how this hurt, he knew what Jason had done to Peter.

"Yeah," he said. He didn't lump Jack in there. He'd done something entirely different, where that was involved. He'd deal with it when he could deal with it, but it wasn't important right now.

"Yeah, I cheated. And by some miracle, despite that this is the second time I've done this, Newt is still putting up with my shit, but I--we need to take a break, right now. I need to figure out what the hell I'm doing, why I'm doing this shit. So."

[paper_courage]

This had little to do with Jason. Okay, it did and it didn't.

"I'm not arguing for my place in your life," Peter said, shaking his head a bit. His hands were in his lap. He looked away because he had to. A face that didn't quite belong to Kavinsky was speaking in a voice that very much did belong to Kavinsky and telling him that his life as he knew it was about to shift. If he wasn't careful, he would lose his balance.

"We can take a break, whatever you need. We said we were friends first." Peter said, and though he meant it, though his heart felt stopped-up like the shower drain in the boys' dorms at St. Cecilia's, fat tears brimmed over, out, and down. A petulant thing in him thought with abject horror that this was the worst possible way he could react, simply because he had done so.

"Tell me what that means." Just like that, hindsight flooded him. This conversation was too late.

[mitsubishievo]

"I'm not either," Kavinsky said, scrubbing his fingers into his hair briefly. He didn't look at Peter either for a moment, but he could hear the frustration, the hurt, in the way that he breathed. Why was he like this? He knew, but that didn't take back the things he'd done, didn't make any of it easier.

"We are friends," he said, a breath of words. He looked at Peter and regretted it. All he wanted was to hold him, to take the words back, to make this better. Pretend none of it had ever happened. That wasn't any better than having done it in the first place. Peter deserved better than someone who was not, officially, chronic in his infidelity.

"What what means?" Kavinsky asked. As if he knew what any of this meant. As if he'd taken a break from a relationship before, and knew how to structure this and make it okay.

"It...it means we take some time, and figure shit out. I figure out if I can be with someone besides Newt, sexually. You figure out if you can be with someone that's cheated on the people he cares about, twice." He scrubbed his hands on his face. "It means I'm at the studio and home a lot. That I don't dance anymore. That we maybe only hang out in public because I've apparently got lace for self control."

[paper_courage]

Some bitter thing bubbled over Peter's lips. It could have been a laugh, but if it were, it was no laugh Peter had ever uttered. If Peter looked at him, he would find a way to not believe it. He had to listen to his words, to systematically shut down every part of him that wanted to reach out, to scream. Anything. Whatever it took to walk away from the moment with a piece of his dignity intact.

"You said we were safe," Peter said. He hated the little note in his voice that sounded so betrayed. He was a boy in the dorms again, running down the hallway and falling just short of the church doors, all questions like do you know and answers of well, of course you do.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky gave a single, exhausted sniffle. He hadn't cried since last night, getting home and going in to tell Newt what he'd done, so it was reflex more than anything else. He knew he'd probably wail in the shower later. There was no point avoiding it.

"I also said it wouldn't happen again," he said, all his bitterness turned inward. He knew the things he'd said. He knew their weight, their gravity, and the reality of broken promises set up against his actions. This was why the world thought he was a liar and a monster.

"Peter, we met while I was broke off from Newt and Al after cheating," Kavinsky breathed, a desperation for Peter to understand, to come to his own conclusions, to make these decision, even in anger. He scrubbed at the back of his neck, dug his nails in a bit. "So maybe that means, at some point, we work this out. But I know what infidelity means to you. I know what I did. And this break--this is important, right now. To figure things out."

[paper_courage]

"Don't tell me what's going on in my head, Joseph," Peter said, holding onto the thread of that because it was fastened to a balloon called self-awareness that might have been able to pull him out of vague fog. Standing up for Peter looked like firmness, like some sort of teenage knowledge with a more adult temperament. He wanted to talk. His senior year of high school had seen all the fighting Peter was capable of in his lifetime. Since coming to Darrow, there had been at least 3 more.

If things were shifting, he wanted to leave bitterness behind.

"I knew who you were when I fell in love with you," Peter said simply. The first time he'd felt it -- the first time he'd let himself -- was well after he found out Kavinsky's mind, his heart had been so dark that he'd killed. Peter thought that might have changed things. It didn't. Peter was in his arms, pouring his heart out after. He'd left thinking his something was nothing.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky lifted his hands, supplicant and submissive, but his face was screwed up, pained, for a moment. It was true. Peter had been cheated on before, and it had been an unforgivable thing in the moment. Even if this was forgivable, didn't want to be the boy that kept simply kicking this poor behavior down the road, only to run into it again.

He cupped his hands against the back of his neck.

"I'm sorry," he breathed. He hated this. He'd never had to do something like this before. No one had ever been so close to him before. "I'm sorry, Peter."

[paper_courage]

Kavinsky was so easily kicked away. Peter had thought it before. Joseph Kavinsky was a magnet of danger, with just enough relative sobriety and slice-of-life-self-awareness thanks to the things he'd found in his strange, newly relocated life. In his shoulders, he was braced for a fall. He looked tired -- or perhaps just older.

"I'm going to go," Peter said. He noticed his drink was untouched. He nearly reached for it out of horrified politeness. He didn't. Instead, he got up and ducked into his bag. As he did, he thought.

Then, he said, "you can have whatever space you want, but I won't wait for you." And that was when the tears turned on. His cheeks went neon, and he hated it so much that it nearly took out the possibility of neutrality. Like he had a chance.

His hands gripped around the strap of his bag, near where his heart was twining in on thorns beneath. "I love you. I wish--" he stopped in the name of dignity, of grace. "--lots of things." He swiped at his face.