(no subject)

[rockabillyboy]

We need to talk.

He's been turning it over in his head since that conversation with Poison where they'd talked about degrees. He doesn't really know what he wants - he doesn't really know what to do for the best. He's been meditating on and off for a lot of the morning, trying to clear his head, trying to get his thoughts in order. It's not really helping. He checks his phone for the hundredth time.

I'll be at the Center until dinner time.

Comments

[mitsubishievo]

We need to talk was not, generally speaking, a sentence that Kavinsky enjoyed experiencing. He had not experienced it very much throughout his life, because when people needed to talk to him, needed him to act a certain way, needed him to see their version of reason, they tended to lead with a fist. He had not grown up with a lot of talk.

But he was trying. Trying to be better, trying to be conscientious about the situations he was in. The tangled web of his life.

He headed to the Zen Center and, at the front desk, was directed to the meditation room when he asked where Jack was. Coming in seemed like an invasion. He did it anyway, as quiet as he could--and that was very quiet--and then settling down in front of Jack.

[rockabillyboy]

Jack opens his eyes when Kavinsky walks into the room and he stretches his arms up over his head. He manages a lopsided smile.

"Hey."

[mitsubishievo]

"Hey. Congrats on getting your dick back."

Kavinsky managed to not wince after he'd said that. He sat there, cross legged, open but still. Waiting and pondering. He had ideas of what this conversation was about, how it could go. All of them ended with him being one friend less than he'd started.

He hummed. "I shoulda...said something earlier but. Sorry. About how I acted, when you were a girl. I dunno what..."

[rockabillyboy]

"Feeling me up, you mean?" asks Jack, raising his eyebrow slightly. "Shit, man. I wouldn't have pushed so hard if I thought it was actually bothering you. I just assumed because...you know...tits."

He makes a slightly helpless gesture.

[mitsubishievo]

"Yeah, I thought because tits too. Anyway, I just. Sorry about it. Shouldn't have. Did. Had my weird crisis about it and--yeah. We're good now. We're good now?"

That seemed vital. In an ideal world, everything was good. Everything functioned like it was supposed to. And he and Jack, the way they functioned was like this: quiet moments interspersed with hectic nothing, Kavinsky's feelings chewing out his own lungs. This was the world set right.

[rockabillyboy]

"I talked to Poison about it," says Jack, pushing one hand through his hair. "Think I figured something out." He doesn't say it, because he know they both know what he figured out. "Was it the tits or was it me, K?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky blew out a breath. He looked up at the ceiling of the meditation room and tried to think, to put all his words in the right order, to figure out what he even wanted to say.

I'm in love with you and I can't say nothing's going to happen because look at us since the Fourth.

No. He said, "It wasn't not the tits. I wanted to touch you. Even when you looked like that."

[rockabillyboy]

"Yeah, I kind of figured that much out," says Jack, drawing in and letting out a steady breath. "So, now I need you to be really, really honest with me, man. What's going on in your head?"

[mitsubishievo]

Jack still hadn't said what they were here to talk about. Kavinsky was running through all the worst case scenarios--some of which were just patently stupid, given that Jack was in a relationship with another man, but Kavinsky had been through shit. He had experience with fear and rejection and being discarded.

He wished Jack would just say the words I need you to leave me the fuck alone, because that was a hell of a lot easier than Kavinsky willingly getting on this alter as sacrifice.

"I mean, if we're talking generally, I've been working some stuff over with Newt. So that's--it's been on my mind a bit. But you. You're asking about..." He gestured, vaguely between his and Jack's knees, and frowned a little bit.

[rockabillyboy]

"Yeah, I'm asking about you and me," says Jack, his voice calm and quiet. "We need to talk about you and me, K. About what's going on here. What've you been working out with Newt?"

[mitsubishievo]

They both knew exactly what there was to talk about, so there was no point in trying to make that lie happen, in trying to play ignorance in the face of this quiet privacy and seclusion.

Quietly, he said, "Working out the rules for me fucking other people. Jack, I'm gonna need you to do me, like, a real big solid right now and--if this is you, like, telling me to fuck off? You need to just do that."

[rockabillyboy]

"This is not me telling you to fuck off," says Jack, quietly. "I...maybe. Had a similar conversation with Poison."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky was quiet for a second before he let out a hysterical little giggle. He leaned back and back and back until he just flopped down onto the floor. His foot jiggled sporadically, obsessively, going a mile a minute.

"Yeah?" He cleared his throat so it wasn't hoarse and terrified. "How'd that go?"

[rockabillyboy]

"Not...I mean, not bad, considering what I was telling him?" He sighs, rubs his hands over his face. "We talked about what it might look like if he gave me permission to fuck other people."

[mitsubishievo]

"Not bad," Kavinsky said, mouth full around the words. Not bad didn't necessarily mean a whole lot. But Jack going on, explaining what it was that he and Poison had talked about, just made Kavinsky quiet. He parsed through it.

As far as he knew, he was the only person Jack had fucked besides Poison. That certainly narrowed things down.

"Mazel tov," he mumbled.

[rockabillyboy]

"You're not Jewish and I'm a fucking Buddhist," says Jack, the cursing uncharacteristic outside the bedroom. He sighs, letting his head drop for a moment. "But it's not just us, is it? There's a lot of moving parts here. So...what did Newt say?"

There's another question, one that he doesn't ask - not yet. What do you think?

[mitsubishievo]

"You don't know," Kavinsky said, but it was a quiet, whining sort of protest because this whole conversation was a lot. He thought he might have been ready for it, but he wasn't. He wished he had a desk to hide under.

He took a shivering breath and leaned up on his elbows. "Newt and I decided that I can't sneak off. I have to let him know what's going on. I have to check in before anything happens. I have to come home, or say where I'm staying and how long."

And then. Then it was the crux of the deal, in this case. It was the crux that Jack probably needed to hear for whatever he was working for. "I've got standing permission for certain people."

[rockabillyboy]

There was that shiver again, the wave of nerves that felt like when he climbed up to graffiti somewhere high, like standing on the edge of a precipice, teetering somewhere between falling and flight.

"Can I ask who?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky looked at Jack, quiet and intent for a moment, because he didn't feel like he needed to say a Goddamn word. Jack knew. Kavinsky knew that he knew. So what was the point in spelling out something that was only permissive on his end.

So, instead, when he spoke he asked, "Can I ask who you and Poison were talking about letting you fuck?"

[rockabillyboy]

"He's not ready to say yes or no to anything, yet," says Jack, a caveat based on them still being shaky from when he fucked up. "And I would be getting permission to fuck one person. Just one." He looks down, blushing. "Are you going to make me say it?"

[mitsubishievo]

"I said talking about," Kavinsky pointed out, but his mouth felt chalky and strangely worn, incapable of words, incapable of much of anything. In the tangle of discussion with Newt, Kavinsky had not, had never once, actually believed that this could approach a reality.

Kavinsky didn't make Jack say it. He fucked with a thread at a worn spot in the knee of his jeans. "How were you guys talking about permission working?"

[rockabillyboy]

Jack fiddles with the string of beads wrapped around his wrist. His face is burning.

"So, in that scenario, he would...give me blanket permission to be with one person. And just that person. And I guess there'd be some level of negotiating about what's okay and what's not. I mean." He flushes darker and makes a slightly tortured noise. "You know what I'm into." He rubs his face with his hands. "Anything changes we renegotiate."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky didn't swear so much as he breathed out the shape of a curse. He let his body fall back again, let his head thump on the floor, and he stared up at the ceiling, dizzied by all this. It was one thing for Newt to tell him the limits, the structures, the frameworks he had to work in because that was not an actionable thing. That was trust and understanding that something fundamental in Kavinsky could not be satiated; not with two boys, not with dancing, not with a lowgrade and perpetual high.

But that brought up a different thing. He did know what Jack was into, but so was he. Here was a thing he wanted, just within his grasps. Could he sustain a modicum of what Jack needed out of him?

He didn't know how to say yes, but what about me without driving Jack away.

"Dude," he said, softly, and let out a wisp of a laugh. "Do you actually want this? I can behave myself. I can. We can just--it'll be like nothing happened, if that's what it needs to be."

[rockabillyboy]

"Do you think we'd be having this conversation if I didn't want it?" Asks Jack, eyebrows raised. "We just need to...figure out how it's going to work, what it's going to look like, while we've both got our clothes on."

[mitsubishievo]

"Look, I just don't want you to fuckin'..." Kavinsky gestured, wide and vague and expansive, at the ceiling for a moment. "Run into this shit because we screwed around a couple times. My feelings ain't gonna be hurt."

They could be, though. He had a lot of them. He was a mess. It was probably better to say something now, but they both knew it, how deep he was here. And how deep Jack wasn't.

"Don't want you to think that the only way this works out is if you and Poison gotta have some footnote on your relationship that reads 'see exception, J Kavinsky'. You've got good shit goin' with him, man."