A Refugee's Face

They weren't far from the apartment, because Kavinsky had only just been coming from there in the first place. He kept close to Jack, sort of thrilled, because it was months since they'd done something like this, something that wasn't just hanging out together in places where they could be held accountable to their actions.

They went up to the penthouse, and almost as soon as they were in the door, Kavinsky hauled Jack in and kissed him hungrily. He'd been thinking about it every time Jack looked at his mouth in the cafe, and now that they were alone, he finally could.

"Strip," he growled against Jack's mouth, hand coming up to cup his throat gently.

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.

This was not a date. Kavinsky and Jack had agreed that they were not dating, and so this was not a date. It was this: Kavinsky worrying if he was coming on too strong with an outfit that was all tight jeans and loose shirt; Jack picking him up in his car; them laughing with the top down even though it was getting too cold for that; a club, and Kavinsky teasing Jack that he still needed to use a fake ID, and Jack teasing Kavinsky that one of his boys would need to use a fake ID for a whole extra year.

The club was noisy and dim and full of people. Kavinsky didn't think he'd really gone out in ages; he was normally working on weekends, when he would want to go out, and work and school occupied Newt, and Al, and Peter.

"Isn't it a school night?" he asked Jack, next to his ear so he didn't shout himself hoarse in the first ten minutes they were there. He gave Jack's arm a squeeze. "I'm gonna get a drink. What do you want?"

There was an understanding at the house out on Lark Street, with it's peaceful garden and it's magic birds and it's loving boys, that when Kavinsky went to work at the club on the weekends, it was, in part, to keep him safe and sane with them. This was an appropriate and acceptable expression of his manic need for attention: people looking at his body, people who could not really touch him, and he could give them what they wanted for a moment, for a price. And when it was over, he put all the layers back on and he went on to the house on Lark Street, with it's garden and birds and boys, and they could take all the layers off and it was better, so much better, because he never thought of anyone else.

Except now he had.

Joseph Kavinsky, despite dating and being absolutely head over heels with two boys, did not think of himself as someone who was capable of multiple loves. But that was before Jack Vincent had appeared in the Arch Studio break room, before the quick-fire attempt at friendship had turned into a swooping, consumptive crush. That was before Newt had sat him down and laughingly, jokingly pointed out that Kavinsky talked about Jack the way he talked about Al, or him, and--well. Here they were.

"It can only ever be him," Newt told him, serious, holding Kavinsky's hand and pressing his thumb against the spinner ring. Kavinsky had kissed him and said, "He's got someone, sugar. The Fourth was a one off." But it was a comfort, in a way. A release. Knowing that they had come so far from December and January that Newt could trust him with this, that Newt would trust him to come back--not because he'd been told strictly to, but because Kavinsky always wanted to come back. Just like dancing, Kavinsky could show his skin, but only Newt and Al could crawl this deep inside his chest.

So, that night, Kavinsky danced. The same as any weekend. He had a new routine--less pole work, more filthy gyrations and insinuation of what his body was capable of doing in bed. And that was when he saw Jack Vincent in the crowd.

They went back to Jack's. It was closer than Poison's, didn't carry the strangeness of shared spaces that Kavinsky's did. So it was Jack's and that was that, once they'd worked out that it was happening, that this wasn't just some strange, fumbling tease slightly away from the bonfire. Kavinsky was glad for the cocktail of drugs pulsing in his system from the substance party, the dampened edges it gave him as they crossed the ground floor for the elevator.

In the elevator, he carefully sandwiched Jack between himself and Poison. That was maybe unfair since Jack was the tallest of the three of them. But he was also the least experienced with drugs, as far as Kavinsky knew, and sort of the driving force of all this. Kavinsky could appreciate all the aesthetics of Poison's face and body--it was all very nice, and he certainly wasn't say no to any of that, but--well, there wasn't really a but there, either. He just figured he shouldn't ought to impose himself in the middle of them, unless he was invited to.

He supposed he was, in a way. Otherwise they wouldn't be going back to Jack's apartment. Kavinsky double checked his phone, just to make sure he hadn't imagined that Newt had told him this was alright. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Jack, at Poison. His stomach swooped.

He was so screwed.