mitsubishievo | Static on the line, I hear it all the time

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Static on the line, I hear it all the time

He was upset, and well fucking aware that he had no right to be. He'd made this for himself. It didn't stop the aching hurt in his lungs, the burning misery behind his eyes. It didn't stop him from feeling wounded and cut loose. He tried to just accept it. He'd never been good at rejection.

So he was going to drown it out. Liquor and smoking and pills and being numbed to the bone seemed like a good way to deal with the feeling of wanting to lay down in a ditch and let the roots of the world grow over him.

He had no right to be this upset.

He put his headphones in his phone, turned up his music until his ears ached a little bit. The tequila bottle was heavy with liquid, but that would change. The reefer in his hand would burn down to his fingers, and he'd be fine with it. He opened all the windows so the smell wouldn't clutter or effect the cats.

He just didn't want to feel right now. He had a right to that, at least.

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He knows his husband well enough to know that this? This is not a good shucking sign. He stands in the doorway, Gally curled up in the crook of one arm and he watches Kavinsky smoke for a moment. He doesn't disturb him; he just walks into the room and sits down in his favourite armchair, curling his legs up into the chair with him and settling the cat in his lap.

He waits.

Kavinsky danced along to his noisy music. He was well aware of Newt sitting there, watching him. He drank. He smoked. He danced and slowly he came to look at Newt, waiting for him to say something.

He wasn't going to, and maybe Kavinsky had done that too. So he watched him for a moment, lips curled against the lip of the bottle, until he could make words.

He pushed the headphone off his ears, letting them noisily sit around his neck. "I'm garbage."

"You've been saying that to me since the day I met you," says Newt, eyebrows raised, scratching between Gally's ears. "And I still don't shucking believe you."

"Jack hates my guts," Kavinsky said, drinking again, and then rolling his eyes lazily. "It doesn't matter, I know that. I made this myself, I made the bed, gotta lay in it. But it--it fuckin' sucks."

He swayed his hips and closed his eyes. Pulled a deep drag on the joint. "Pretty sure, you know, I've proved I'm garbage, ya know?"

"Well, that's Jack's problem," reasons Newt, watching Kavinsky drink. "And you did bring it on yourself, but..." He frowns. "You've got to see how much better you are. You know what this reminds me of? That bender you went on right after we shucking met."

"I don't feel better off," Kavinsky admittedly, looking up at the ceiling. The pills he'd taken were starting to hit, and he felt over-light and thin.

"Nah," he said, shaking his head. "More like after you kicked me out. But, hey. Haven't dreamed up a monster, yet. Haven't tried to wreck every physical thing I own."

"Don't you are," says Newt, rolling his eyes a little. "Remember that you're a husband now, shuckface. I own half of everything you own."

Newt was dismissing the situation, in a way, and Kavinsky pressed down on everything. He tried to press it down. He swallowed down more of the tequila and looked up at the ceiling again.

"I'm fine," he said, insistent. He tilted his head toward his headphones and hummed along with his music vaguely. "I'll figure it out. 'm not gonna drink m'self into a stupor for a week."

"I'll believe it when I shucking see it," says Newt, worrying the inside of his lip for a moment. "What do you need from me, love? What can I do?"

Kavinsky let himself collapse inward a little bit. He shifted, and sank into the couch. He rested the bottle between his knees and leaned a little, just trying to find his center for a second.

When he spoke, it was quiet and anxious and terrified. "I want you to like me again," he said. "I just--fuck, I dunno. I want to be miserable for five minutes. I want to not--to not feel all this."

Kavinsky looked at the bottle. "I can manage that last one, at least."

"I always like you," points out Newt. "There was about five minutes there where I was mad as a shucking snake at you but..I always like you. You're my favourite shucking person, clunkhead."

"There's been more than five minutes," Kavinsky rumbled, lulling his head to look at Newt for a moment. Slowly, he shuffled around to the end of the couch, closest to Newt and his chair.

He held out the joint to him, a curious peace offering, the only thing he felt like he had to offer. He was trying. To be good. To be dutiful. To not be wrecked with guilt and lose and frustration that he'd all built into this.

"I don't know why I'm like this," he admitted, which wasn't entirely true. "But I hate it. I fuckin'..."

Newt leans forward and takes the joint, taking a hit. He holds it for a second and then tips his head back and lets it go.

"Why do you think you're like it? You need to talk to me, shank. Get all the poison out."

"You my therapist now too?" Kavinsky asked, no heat in his voice, just a curious sort of wonder and sadness. He watched Newt's throat as he breathed. He thought about the bruises he'd left on his shoulders that first night he'd looked older, and how, in the aftermath of everything, he wanted bruises but not those fine, sexy kind. Just marks that matched how raw and fragile he felt for having fucked up so grandly.

"Because I've been like this for, like, half my life," he said, mild, coarse only from the liquor. "Because I've gotten real good at being the shitbag everybody expects me to be over the years."

"I'm your shucking husband," says Newt. "And then means something. It's got to." He takes another hit on the joint and then leans forward to offer it back. "Or you can just sit there and get shucked up and I'll go to bed with the cats."

Kavinsky cowed a little. He took the joint back and held it, tilted the bottle of tequila this way and that, let the sting in his eyes linger until it went away again.

"It means a lot, okay," he said, soft and rough and earnest. "It means everything to me."

He was quiet a moment and then he laughed, a breathless, broken sound. "I'm not even upset that he's mad at me, like. Good. He should be mad at me, I fucked up. I'm upset that I'm upset. That's so fuckin' stupid. Upset because I want...I want to stop feeling shit. God, Henrietta had that goin' for it. I was so fucked up all the time, I just didn't feel anything."

"Yeah, but we couldn't have been a thing in Henrietta, could we? You couldn't have felt like...like shucking home to me, there, could you?"

He shifts over in his chair, an oversized armchair that he looks to curl up in and read. "Come here to me."

Kavinsky set the bottle aside and grabbed the ash tray off the coffee table, putting the joint out before he came over to Newt. It was a squeeze to get them both in the chair, but he tangled up against Newt, nosing at his hair gently.

"I like this," he said softly. "I love this. Everything we have here. I'm sorry I'm a fuckin' mess."

"You've been a fucking mess since the day I met you," says Newt, pressing a kiss against Kavinsky's temple. "But you're my fucking mess, and I'm not going anywhere, okay? Whatever you do. I'm here. We'll figure it out."

"Not doin' anything," Kavinsky pointed out. He went to work, he came home and cooked, he loved his husband constantly and without reservation. He was trying, desperately, to push everything but those things out of himself. He was trying.

"Maybe I should get another tattoo or something," he said, sort of speculatively. He breathed out a laugh. "Good thing I didn't get somethin' for Peter and Jack, huh. Man, that'd've been...been real fuckin' stupid."

"Just because it ended doesn't mean you loved them any shucking less," reasons Newt, softly. "Neither of us love Al any less, and he's been gone for months." He kisses Kavinsky's forehead again, curls his arm more tightly around him. "What do you think you'd get?"

Newt was right. Things were easier, over all, but in the day-to-day, Kavinsky could miss Al like a limb. He knew it was harder even for Newt sometimes. Still, they managed. Kavinsky didn't want to manage this. He wanted to feel like he hadn't ruined everything.

"Dunno yet," he admitted. He curled up his sleeve and ran his thumbs over the letter-art he'd gotten months ago, the world is a nightmare. It felt more real now. "Somethin' a little more hopeful, maybe, on the other arm?"

Newt nods, his fingers overlapping with Kavinsky's as he traces the lines of the tattoo. "Flowers, maybe."

"Could do flowers," Kavinsky said with a nod. He wound his arms around Newt and held onto him. "Make myself into your garden, too."

"A sleeve of them," says Jack, tracing his fingers down the length of Kavinsky's arm. "I could help you pick."

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