sometime after day 5

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam’s never really reached out to the Nest in general like this before, but at this point - well, he’s running out of options. The work he’s done on his mental walls has paid off, and nothing escapes his thick cloud layer except his words, and the soft hint of wind and feathers that flavors his mental link. ]

( Seems like we got a bit of down time, and I’m looking to put it to good use. I’m getting better with my symbiote ability, but I need someone who’ll let me practice it with them.

Simple explanation is that it’s healing, with a side effect that means it’s gonna hurt. Most likely for me. I can get into specifics if you’re up for it. ) [ If it doesn’t bother them or they’re willing to overlook that it means Sam getting hurt, he means, but seeing as he’s communicating with the Nest in general, he’s not gonna say that.

He already knows more than who person who is bothered by it and never seems willing to let Sam use it on them. ]

( I’ll take as many as I can get, more training can’t hurt. )

Comments

[100mitsubishis]

[Sam shares the sound of a stranger's laughter, and Kavinsky squints against a sun that isn't there. If it was, it would have stationed its burning behind Sam, lighting up his wings so that they'd silhouette a matte black against the backdrop of a massive star. Samael, the angel of death, and here Kavinsky was about to start guessing inane options: Urinal, Purell, whatever.

He doesn't belong in the arms of someone with such good will. He squirms like a kitten, too intent on being released to recognize such a drop would hurt. The moment in which he'd been so human, squeezed with his arms--it's long past. A mere memory that Kavinsky refuses to accept.]

Stop it.

[It's not the snapped out order or ruthless threat he would have told one of his boys, like, give me the gin or let's see if you'll cry home for daddy before we're done. In this case, Kavinsky has no such belief that Sam would go along with him. He's too old and he's seen too much and he's holding him like it isn't hard at all.]

Stop it and save it for someone else, Wingman. I know you got them all lined up.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Usually, when someone tells him to stop, Sam does. Most of the time with no questions asked. (Unless he's being a little shit, of course, and then half the point is not to stop what he's doing, but that's only when he's having fun. Never for something serious, and this is serious.)

But sometimes he pushes, presses for more of an explanation, takes someone out of their comfort zone for just a moment. When he thinks they're doing it as a defense mechanism, as an excuse not to look at things too closely.

Now's one of those times. Sam's up there with his wings flared out and his arms around Kavinsky, after all, talking about the angel of death and how much Kavinsky flirts with him, when's a better time than this?

There's a soft snort when Kavinsky says he's got them lined up, and though he doesn't say there's no one else up here but you and me, the impression comes across anyway. ]

Why? [ Why should he stop it, why should he save it for someone else, he means, but he doesn't have to expand on that. ] What am I supposed to be stopping?

[ He's got something of an idea, of course, but he wants to know what Kavinsky's objecting to. ]

[100mitsubishis]

[There's a sea in Kavinsky's dark gaze. Black and brackish, slamming waves forward against the glass curve of his eyeballs. They want out, they want to flood, they want high tide. Everything drowns, nothing survives. He tilts his head back, his gaze narrowed down to twin slivers.

He could hurt Sam. They're isolated above the station floor and there are those nasty symbiote abilities Kavinsky hasn't played with like he ought to. But resorting to physical violence like that is more of a Lynch or Prokopenko game. Kavinsky hurts, but when he does, it's flashy. A car flips. A keg explodes.

Sam isn't going to put him down until he's said something, is he?]

Going all Sesame Street. I don't need to bond or know about your ex-boyfriend. You didn't like me helping you out with your powers. Got it, man. Won't happen again.

[Kavinsky grits his teeth against ordering Sam to put him down. He doesn't mind the physical closeness or the height; it's the intimacy that makes him want to run.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam watches him back, unafraid. If Kavinsky was older, if he hadn't seen flashes of something more vulnerable inside the kid, maybe Sam wouldn't have the patience to put up with Kavinsky's shit. But Kavinsky is seventeen and angry and hurting, and Sam doesn't know what, but something must have happened to make him feel like this is the only way he can move through the world.

He is a kid, and whatever else, whether Kavinsky wants it or not, Sam's determined that he'll have someone who won't give up on him.

Kavinsky could hurt him, Sam has no doubt of that. From what he knows of the kid, he's absolutely the kind to lash out to hurt - but so far it's only been verbal, so far the only physical harm that Kavinsky's done has been to himself. And Sam's confidence sometimes borders on cockiness, particularly when he's up in the air like this.

This is his element.

It's not the first time that someone called Riley his boyfriend, either meaning it in a derogatory way or trying to understand why his death had messed Sam up so bad or a number of other reasons. It isn't true, but it doesn't bother Sam, and he doesn't react beyond a soft snort. ]

I'll heal you any place, any time; that ain't what this is about. Whoever made you think that you weren't worth anything more than this path of destruction you're on, man, they were wrong.

[100mitsubishis]

No one--

[And what Kavinsky means is no one still living]

--makes me feel that crap. Guys like you need a charity case to keep their dicks wet. Okay.

[For an instant, he almost leaves it there. His case has been made; he will not be Sam's sob story. Salvation is never a one way street.

He who does not wish to be saved won't be. And Kavinsky wouldn't dream of it.

But he continues to speak because otherwise Sam might and he doesn't want to hear the motivational poster.

Hang in there!

It gets better!

Buck up, sport!

Kavinsky knows. Aglionby was addicted to messages of perseverance through adversity. So much so that even a kid like K that skipped class like it was going out of style couldn't avoid the repetitive droning.

What they never consider--teachers, counselors, Sams--is he exterminates his own demons, or consciously makes the choice to wear their skin. That isn't a convenient truth to stomach.]

I've met a couple guys here who'd be so down for your daddy kink. You can tuck them in at night and everything. But me, sweetheart? I'm good.

[He nods in convincing agreement with himself.

A flash of Ronan's ghost. He should have seen that one coming. Sam showed him the man he'd lost--the version of him that stayed behind for Sam to gladly pine over. K won't become that nostalgic loser; he banishes vicious smiles and shaved heads. Forged sunglasses. Races K never wanted to end.

There are things a man just has to give up to stay alive.]

I'm so good.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Didn't say makes, man, I said made.

[ Because Sam'll believe that, believe that Kavinsky doesn't let anyone make him feel like that anymore.

The thing is - Sam's not a motivational poster. The thing is that Sam knows that shit like hang in there and buck up is useless garbage. And while he might believe that it does get better, he knows that telling someone that when they don't wanna hear it is just as useless. There was a time when Sam himself punched someone for it, when he broke someone else's nose for getting up in his face.

And Kavinsky might not be a soldier, but that doesn't matter. He has the same look, the same feel, of someone who's seen too much, done too much. Who thinks there's no coming back from any of it and so he just keeps going, going and going and going, chasing bigger thrills and bigger highs and doing everything he can to feel even the slightest bit alive, until the time when one of those thrills is his last.

He isn't good. ]

That's the biggest load of bullshit I've heard in a while. You're surviving, all right, and you're doing a damn good job of fighting whatever it is on your own terms - for now. But this ain't living. It's dying.

[100mitsubishis]

[Kavinsky stops taking part in the conversation and starts taking stock of the situation. Sam, conveniently, has him trapped. Kavinsky has no trouble walking away from men on solid ground, but hovering many feet above it leaves him with few options. He can either continue to argue his case, or he can do the one thing that sets meddling adults at ease.

Like kids, they're easier to work with when they think they have the upper-hand.]

Okay.

[Two syllables, but he estimates they'll calm Sam down from his frothing goodwill.]

I'm not a good boy. I do bad shit and you don't like it. But since we can't take a bro out roadtrip right now--see, we're in space? A spaceship? Okay. I'll think about what you're saying if you put me down.

[Such civil communication would have made any of Kavinsky's school counselors weep with joy--what a breakthrough! None of them, however, had the priviledge of sharing a Nest with a young man that revels in his ability to manipulate others through rule of cool.

Step one: never let anyone see you sweat and live to tell the tale.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ It doesn't calm Sam down. The frothing goodwill cannot be contained, Kavinsky. ]

Do whatever bad shit you want, man, that's not what I care about.

[ But Kavinsky's decided already, Sam has a feeling - Sam is one of those well meaning adults, stuck on the straight and narrow and who doesn't understand anything, who just sees a kid acting out and wants to scold him and tell him to do better.

As if Kavinsky wasn't already doing the best he knew how, as if that wasn't the problem in the first place. That this is the best he knows how, and no one ever gave enough of a shit to try to figure out why, to try to get through him in a way that didn't involve lecturing or talking down to him. He can damn near feel it, humming across their connection.

Sam slides the hand he's got on Kavinsky's cheek up, tangling it in his hair and tugging, just a little. Just enough to angle his head so Sam can rest his forehead against Kavinsky's, close his eyes and breathe out nice and slow through his nose. Before he pulls away he presses a kiss to the corner of Kavinsky's mouth, quick and barely there. Then he powers down the jets a little, starting back down towards the ground. ]

You don't gotta be a good boy. Just remember when you're fighting your demons that you don't gotta do it alone, all right? That's what I want you to think about.

[100mitsubishis]

[The last time someone's lips touched his own, she was drunk, he was high. They'd wrestled for the pipe and he'd won, so he held it over his head as the girl smeared her lipstick off on his mouth. Sam's another breed and his kiss is a peck, muted, almost like one of those European greetings that make grown American men fluster.

Kavinsky quells his reaction. By the time his feet touch the solid floor, he's a built up fortress. His mouth is a line. His eyebrows parallel.]

I'll put it on my to-do list.