mitsubishievo | Still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man's belief [post-GAPS]

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Still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man's belief [post-GAPS]

There was so much blood.

There were people doing triage and shock check and all that trauma care, but Kavinsky couldn't be around people. He'd been around people--anonymous faces and voices he didn't know, his senses wiped clean and white and static when he wasn't being a vile, pithy monster--for days, weeks, it turned out. He was hungry, thirsty. His hands were shaking. He was still holding the wrench. There was blood on the wrench.

He walked home.

The house looked still and quiet from the outside. He stared at it like a stupid thing, like he'd never seen it before. Where were his keys? He didn't have them. No house key, no car keys, no key to the studio or his locker at the club. No stupid key fob with the Mitsubishi's lock, useless here in Darrow. His breath rattled up high in his chest, hysterical. When had he lost them? Was it the night the men had taken him? Was it sometime after that? Was it when he'd had the wrench, now discarded somewhere back on the walk, left in a bush while he'd been emptying an already empty gut?

His knuckles were smeared with blood. It was under his nails. The last time they'd looked like this--the last time...

He walked up to the door and knocked. He had to knock on his own door.

Tears rolled down his cheeks.

There was so much blood.

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He had homework. He hadn't been doing. Dinner needed to be made. The lights in the kitchen stayed off. Newt is wearing the same clothes as he's been wearing for days now, unshaved, unshowered. In decline. It had been bad enough when Al had ended up in the other city but, back then, they'd barely known each other. When Kavinsky had gone - been taken, it seemed like, from what Newt had been hearing - he'd had a ring on his finger. That meant something.

Newt hadn't expected to feel like this ever again, not after Alby.

A knock on the door jars him. He hasn't seen anyone for days. He's been texting Thomas, but that's all he's managed.

But there's a knock on the door.

He opens it and, when he sees who's standing there, there's this horrible moment when he doesn't think that his knees are going to be able to hold him. He wobbles and, in the end, he sages up the doorframe and just stares at the boy in front of him.

Because he is the boy, bloodied. But seemingly whole.
Tears start, immediate. Unbidden. He's been holding an ocean locked up inside him.

He reaches out for the boy in front of him and drags him into an embrace without a word said between them.

Kavinsky flinched for a moment, overwhelmed by contact even after being around people. It had been intermittent when it had happened; the rest of the time had been pathetic, insufferable; sensory deprivation in the most thorough sort of way, until he could hear his body working, until he felt like he was going absolutely mad, all so they could try and make him dream.

But then it was the smell of Newt. Even unwashed, that sharp sort of smell--a bit like the hospital, but without that underlying, clinical sanitation to cut through the desperation of letting yourself founder--Kavinsky knew the smell of this boy so intimately, so clearly, that it washed through him like torrential rains, sudden and stinging and harsh. He clung to Newt desperately, trying not to think about the fact that he was smearing blood against his clothes and his hair and his skin.

His voice warbled, broke; he tried, so hard, to stay steady. "Sorry. I'm late. And I think...I think I lost my keys."

A little sound spills out of Newt, something like a sob. He clings to Kavinsky so tight that he has to be bruising him but his arms aren't listening to impulses from his brain and he can't make himself loosen his hold. He can barely make himself breath. He presses his face into the crook of Kavinsky's neck. Dimly, he registers the blood but, mostly, he's focusing on the familiar shape of the boy in his arms.

"I don't give a shuck about your keys," he says, quietly, edges of the words indistinct with tears. "We'll get you new shucking keys."

If they stood out here, on the stoop of their little home, much longer, Kavinsky was aware that he wasn't going to be able to stand up much longer. It was not because his boots--dream things--would not support his feet, which were not aching, because the insoles of the boots were perfectly conformed to his feet; but his knees would collapse out from under him, and he would slide down the doorjamb, and he wasn't entirely sure he would be able to get back up under his own power once that happened.

He pressed his lips softly to Newt's hair.

"Can I come inside, though? Can we go in?"

"Oh, shucking hell."

It hadn't even occurred to Newt to move, once he had Kavinsky in his arms again. Still wrapped around him, unwilling to let go, he shuffles them inside the house, into the hallway, knocks the front door shut with one bare heel. "I thought you were never coming back," he says, quietly. "I thought they were never going to let you come back."

It had felt like W.I.C.K.E.D all over again.

"I don't know if they planned to," Kavinsky said, soft and honest. His hands were shaking. He balled them up, tight, in Newt's shirt and he kept himself as close to him as he could get. The house was dark and quiet but not silent, and that was good.

He could feel his mouth moving, and he was making words, he was sure, but he wasn't really sure what they were after that. The connection from his head to his mouth was completely shut off, and the noise of it seemed to cut off at some point on the way back to his ears. All he could hope was that it was coherent, but he didn't even know that.

He pulled back, just a little bit, an looked at Newt. He'd smeared blood on him. He reached, tried to wipe it off, but his hands were covered in it. It just smeared more. A soft noise broke off whatever he was saying, right in the middle of a word.

There's a lot of blood. He remembers how much blood he'd seen in his life, in the Glade, in the Scorch, afterwards. Kavinsky is soaked in it, smearing it everywhere he touches, and that sounds that he makes cuts right to Newt's heart.

"C'mon," he says, gently, pulling away from Kavinsky, but only so he can catch him by both hands. "Come with me."

"I should..."

He thought of a guard--god, he hoped it was a guard, he hoped he hadn't taken down someone like them, like him in some fundamental, cosmic way; an immigrant, an immigrant, that's what they kept calling them--and the wrench he'd held in his fist. Newt held his hands so gently, like he deserved that gentleness.

He thought of a baseball bat, almost two years ago now, and his stomach rolled painfully.

"...wash up."

Kavinsky isn't pulling away from his touch, which is something, Newt supposes. He's not sure what he'd do if that happens. Gently, lightly, he squeezes Kavinsky's hands.

"I'll come," he says. He finds himself unwilling to let his boyfriend out of his sight.

Kavinsky didn't question it, though he wanted to push Newt away. He should. What he was, why they had wanted him and not Newt, not Al--that was reason enough to push Newt away. It was always going to be like that. He was always going to be a freak, a monster.

He looked down at Newt's hands, fair and gentle and untarnished in comparison to his own, carrying their own marks. Callouses, little old scars from wear and life. He loved those hands. He squeezed back, squeezed his eyes shut, made himself keep breathing.

They make slow, steady progress towards the bathroom. Newt keeps hold of Kavinsky's hands. When they picked this place, they deliberately picked a tub big enough but it's the shower than Newt makes a beeline for. He lets go of Kavinsky long enough to reach in and turn on the water, as hot as he thinks either of them can stand.

As soon as the water was on, Kavinsky stepped into it, clothes and all. Almost instantly, the water ran solemnly pink. There wasn't as much blood as there looked. It was spattered and streaked all over him, seeped into his clothes. He tore off his boots and tossed them aside, careful only to avoid Newt. Otherwise, he didn't care for the rest of his clothing. They were ruined anyway. The stink of that place, the taint of what he'd done, was melded into them.

He curled up on the floor of the shower, tight and small as he could get, and told himself to keep breathing. The heat of the water stung, even through fabric, but he shivered like he was freezing. He clung to the back of his neck. Thin, pink water swirled, swirled, swirled down the drain. There was blood on his hands, under his nails, in the creases of his knuckles.

Newt stands there numbly for a moment, just watching, his hands hanging nerveless at his sides. His mouth works for a moment before he actually manages to say something.

"What do you need?" Not what do you want. Never that. He doubts the answer would be the same.

Kavinsky was still a moment, like he hadn't heard. The water was hot, hot, not hot enough. He didn't dare turn it up, worried if he did he would keep turning it up until he scalded himself. He stared at the water, thin and pink at the train.

Slowly, he reached out. The shower door wasn't even shut. They were getting water everywhere. He'd worry about it later, when he felt less like a wretch. Now, what he wanted and what he needed were the same thing--to feel human again. And this boy--this boy who was broken but not like him, never like him, neither of them would ever be broken like that, thank God--could help with that.

He reached out like he never could back in New Jersey or Virginia, grabbing for Newt, pulling him into the small, cramped shower, dragging him down, clothes and all. Tangled up with him. Thin, pink water swirled down the drain, and Kavinsky let himself break.

Newt sinks down onto the floor of the shower with him, curls in close and gives him something to collapse against. His fingers comb through Kavinsky's wet hair, separating slick strands.

"I've got you," he says. It comes out like a promise.

He shook, something powerful and primordial, as he let himself sob against Newt's chest. It was quiet, all caught down in his chest, shaking him to his core as he clung to the other boy with a desperate, aching sort of pain. Newt's fingers were a distinction, a reality, more than the water was. He could feel Newt's nails, short but firm, in his hair and against his scalp; he leaned himself into the touch, just a little, trying to stifle every ounce of worry, every fear, that might turn into guilt or terror, that might crawl under his skin and become manifest if he let himself sleep.

Newt's eyes keep stinging, the steady trickle of tears dripping off his nose and into Kavinsky's hair. He wants to comfort the boy trembling in his arms but he doesn't know what he's supposed to say.

"I love you," he says, quietly. "Are you...did they..."

The questions are too terrible to ask.

Kavinsky shook his head, for now. In a minute. In a minute, he could talk about it. In a minute, he could put himself back together and act like he was a whole person, like he didn't feel all cored out. In a minute, they could strip and slide up to their necks in their oversized tub, and he could tell him whatever he wanted to know. But for now, there was nothing. He didn't even know if he knew words, at the moment; not in English, or Bulgarian. There was quiet in his head, which was better than staticky, sticky nothingness. In a minute, he would try to piece it all together.

Newt stays where he is, one hand buried in Kavinsky's hair, the other arm wrapped tight around his waist, holding him in close, his clothes soaked through. He presses his lips against Kavinsky's temple to keep I love you from trickling out of him constantly.

It took more than a minute, but eventually, slowly, he pulled himself back under control. The tears stopped and his breathing calmed down, and he rested there, head pressed against Newt's chest while Newt's face was pressed against his brow. Things felt real, at least, and that was enough.

"...let's get in the bath?" His voice was a wreck.

Newt doesn't hesitate. He pulls away from Kavinsky for long enough to turn off the shower, to step out of the cubicle and get the bath running. He'll mop the floor later; right now, he's got more pressing concerns. He holds out both hands to Kavinsky, still curled in the shower.

"Come on," he says, softly. "Let me help."

He watched Newt, quiet, as Newt moved. It seemed a great effort to uncurl himself, but he needed to. He had to. If he could do that, he could do anything. He wondered, for a moment, whether it was the exhaustion or the lingering drugs they'd given him, the sensory deprivation or everything he'd done to get out, that was making it so difficult just to tell his body get up off the damn floor.

He moved, jerky and arrhythmic. He peeled his shirt off over his head, dropping it into the shower. There were bruises on his arms, little track marks from an IV. They would fade. He hated needles.

He came close to Newt and pulled, gently, at his shirt as well.

Newt raises his arms, lets Kavinsky strip him out of his shirt. His hands drop to Kavinsky's waits and, unbuttoning his jeans and shoving them down, underwear too. There's no sex in a touch like that; Newt just knows the importance of skin on skin. He shucks his own trousers and then climbs into the tub while it's still filling, waiting for Kavinsky. Usually, it's the other way around but, now, Newt figures the other boy could stand to be held.

He stood there a moment, once they were both stripped, and watched Newt slide into the tub. Two steps. Two steps, and then he would be in as well. There were little curls of steam rising from the water, and this was not a dream.

Just to be sure, Kavinsky dug his nails into his palm. He knew that wasn't a good way to tell if it was a dream or not. He'd been hurt in dreams plenty of times.

He climbed into the tub, sprawling chest to chest against Newt. Like Newt getting into the tub, disrupting their normal configuration, this too disrupted it; it assured him, again, that he wasn't dreaming. He could watch Newt's face, carefully, for any signs of change, any warp in expression, any flicker that this was anything but reality. But for now, he just put his face into Newt's neck and inhaled the smell of his skin.

Knees spread and resting against th sides of the tub to accommodate Kavinsky between them, Newt wraps his arms around his boyfriend, stroking gently up and down his spine. He turns his head, presses a gentle kiss against his forehead.

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