A Refugee's Face

There was a room upstairs at the party, where people were doing body painting. Kavinsky had wandered up earlier and lost his shirt and ended up streaked with paint. He still had his hat on, which was such a ridiculous thing to have retained throughout that endeavor, but he'd managed it. It had long ago gotten streaked with glitter and dye splatter, splashes of color on his skin and the hat. Pinks and blues and now he was streaked and swirled with body paint in intricate streaks of fingers from the waist of his pants across his torso.

He found Newt on the main floor, back toward the entrance to the garden. He was a vision in color-streaked white. Kavinsky wrapped around him and kissed his neck.

"Enjoying yourself?"

A week before, Kavinsky had gone and dyed and blown eggs. It had been too early, really, to do it, but that was alright. He was forgiving himself because of the way that holidays fell out here, and because nobody really cared. There was no one to hold him accountable accept for himself. But today? Today was Easter for him, and this year it felt very important. He wasn't sure why it felt more important than the year before, especially, but he was glad for it this year.

He'd made up the house for the festivities. There were garlands and streamers, red and yellow and green all over the house and the garden. Kavinsky was mad that it was still so cold and dreary, but damn if he wasn't going to make it feel nice, at least in spirit.

And of course, there's food. Kozunak and lamb, stuffed peppers and panagyurishte eggs, cheese with bread, and more alcohol than was probably necessary.

It felt good to open the home. He'd invited everyone he could think of to invite, whether or not they celebrated Easter--this one or the western one--or not, because he wanted the noise of people in his home. It had been years, it felt like, since he'd had a proper Easter celebration. He didn't go to services or anything. This was all the holiness he needed today: food and people and feeling lifted himself.


[Gathering type post. Enjoy the food and drinks and good mood.]

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.

It was lazy, and early enough that the crowd wasn't very big, and Kavinsky was jittery with nerves. Newt hadn't actually said when he was coming, just that he was, and that was half of the appeal of this. At the same time, Kavinsky wished he had a little bit of something to go off of, a little foundation so he could quite fidgeting between sets.

He checked his phone. Nothing since he'd told Newt that he was heading into work.

All he could do was do his job, he supposed. And it was his turn to get up there, to be consumable, to be desirable. Kavinsky liked doing this. He knew it kept him good and honest. The attention boiled under his skin pleasantly, the control he had of when and how he showed himself off. And, if he was honest, he liked this variety of showing off.

His music started. He let the anxiety of not knowing if and when Newt was coming wash away as he started to dance.

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."

It was a series of half-cryptic texts that brought Kavinsky away from work--it was slow today, for once--and over to High Gate Terrace to see Jack. He had not been specifically invited, which settled some guilt in his stomach; the last time he'd come over uninvited and unannounced had gone understandably poorly. But he hadn't been drinking, and he wasn't feeling manic, so it wasn't a bad day to swing by and see why Jack was being cryptic and evasive.

He took the stairs, just to doubly wear himself down of any nervous energy in his bones. When he got to the door, he knocked, pulling out his phone to look at the texts from Jack again, and to send one along to Newt so that he knew where he was.

They've been figuring out the edges of things while Newt was like this. Kavinsky relished that he was capable to figure out these edges; if this had been back in February or March, he didn't think he'd be able to. But here was this boy, and here was he, abounding with love, and they were constantly tangled around each other as they ever were, just slightly different shaped.

That afternoon had started out in the garden, and moved inside when the weather started to turn toward rain. And then Newt had been stripping down for a bath. And then Kavinsky had been pulling him away from that to kiss on the bed, slowly and filthily.

They were still tangled up together, sprawled across the bed, Newt stripped and Kavinsky painfully hard in his jeans as he rubbed at Newt's cunt.

Kavinsky couldn't stand his own skin. Newt was a fire cracker, understanding but wanting to be protective of something that, ultimately, he didn't understand at the core of it. Al had that pitying look in his eyes, a lost boy who needed to be told what to do and how he could be of use. And, of course, neither of them could help with this. Neither of them had words stamped into their skin, glaring through every stitch of clothing, announcing themselves to the world.

He'd promised he wouldn't hurt himself. So, for Newt, he would not. But there were plenty of ways to erase himself without shredding his body.

So he got into the Mitsubishi and drove. There was nowhere to drive to. Back in Virginia, he would have gone to DC and asked to be put to task. Here in Darrow, he didn't have that option. He did--Newt would do whatever he asked of him, within reason. And that was the problem. Within reason. So he drove and drove, the world repeating itself like the backdrop of a vintage movie. He drove until everything seemed to blur together.

He drove until the Mitsubishi ran out of gas.

He could walk home from here. Instead, he sat in the car, looking belligerently out the windshield.

Though the forest hadn't given them what they wanted, it had been a good starting point, a good rubric, for how to work on the problem, and Kavinsky had been glad for that. When they'd left, he'd dreamt Lee a bottle of paramorphine cut with antiemetic; something to get him through until they figured something out. It would be stronger and more effective than anything the doctors would give him was for sure.

So he and Ronan had worked. They dreamed. They were working on something of a deadline, though the difficulties of that were that neither of them really knew what that deadline was. Weeks at this point, months? Who knew. The best they could hope for, as far as Kavinsky knew, was easing suffering. He was alright with that, he supposed, as long as it did something this time, something more than they'd done in the forest.

The medicine he and Ronan dreamed together didn't look like anything special. Little pills that practically looked generic, when it came right down to it. They could have been something that Lee came from home with. Except these ones, hopefully, would do something for him. These ones, hopefully, would save his life.

After that, alone, Kavinsky could construct the elaboration of pharmaceuticals. Paramorphines, antiemetics, sedatives, orexigenics, everything else that Kavinsky could think of that someone going through cancer would need; everything he could think of to combat the symptoms and effects of the cancer itself, as well as the symptoms and effects of the chemotherapy, and any side effects of the drug that he and Ronan had dreamt up that they hadn't thought to dream out of the drug itself.

All told, the venture took longer than Kavinsky had meant it to. He chalked that up to jobs and boyfriends and Ronan having to dodge out on his crew, for fear of telling them he was consorting with the enemy. But when it was done, it was done. He collected all the little bottles and all the little cases together, and he headed over to Lee's apartment to deliver the, hopefully, good news.