you wanted someone to hurt you [open]

[100mitsubishis]

CHARACTERS: Kavinsky & anyone
WHERE: The Station; Circle Gardens
WHEN: DAY :010.
SUMMARY: Elsewhere, the station turns. Here, Kavinsky gets high.
WARNINGS: Drugs. So many drugs. May update if things get... worse.

[The Circle Gardens are as close as Kavinsky can get to a clearing in a forest, so he's found himself a spot of empty grass to sit on during another day on the good ol' station. It hasn't been that long since he was stripped from planet Earth, but he spent so much of the last few years in a drug haze that all of it-- this moment, and the ones preceding it-- could reasonably be a dream. From dust mote to whistling breeze that isn't a breeze, it's him, whistling. All you have to do is pucker your lips and blow and know exactly where to put your tongue.

Speaking of his tongue, it's tingling. There was a tab on it not long ago. A small strip of an acid hybrid of his favorite make, namely his own. Colors mash together, sometimes into violent neons that have no place amongst the greenery.

He's on a high tier of the garden. He's on a high tier of another variety. And he remembers back when someone kindly shared their moonshine with him.

There's that pied piper voice, temptation on a stick.]

( Wanna come over? )

[A mental call with no set destination. It zigzags, pingpongs, hits then bounces and keeps on coming. Anyone could come and visit with him. He has a little bit of everything (with all his free time, he's been sleeping, creating, God-like).

Forever ago, on a balcony, a witch told him not to fuck around with this stuff so much. He'd affect all of them.

The problem with that warning is it didn't do a thing to turn Kavinsky's path.]

Comments

[100mitsubishis]

[When he jumps-- when, not if-- it will be with certainty that whatever the outcome, it's precisely what he wants to be doing. He will aim to not go too far, to smack down on a landing that will jar his leg without snapping it, but if it does break, he knows a guy with healing powers now. That's opened up a lot of doors for misadventure. Sam never should've told him.]

Do you like to snort or swallow?

[There's a lascivious edge to swallow that has never and will never be appropriate. His mouth likes to wallow in the word. The way his lips part around the wa part is too smooth; he's said this before so many times.]

[wille]

[ Misato can't hide the slight expression of discomfort at the way he utters the word, her traitorous mind quickly jumping to other instances when such treatment of the word would be warranted, none of which should be relevant to the topic at hand. But she knows, also, that the discomfort doesn't stem only from the act but also from how it casts him as the aggressor, the needler, when that has always been her role. ]

I don't know how to snort.

[ Just to keep from having to pronounce the fateful word now. But to present her with a source of fear is to watch her up the ante and raise the stakes. She lets go of the ledge to offer an open palm his way, speaking in English for a change and mimicking him as closely as she can: ]

Give me something to swallow.

[100mitsubishis]

[Kavinsky has never wanted to kiss the girls he's kissed. The coke and the pot, the alcohol and adrenaline, made him want to kiss someone and he had an image to protect. He enjoyed the look of himself, wife beater a size too big, hair gel weathered by a day of sticking his head out the car window, and a flavor of the week letting him use her lap as a pillow. But the hive gets to him. Pricks at him underneath the epidermis. There are a lot of boys here that want to be kissing girls, and if he had to pick one, it's obvious.

Anyway. He has plenty of what she requested.]

Close your eyes.

[But there's a block there. His own interests and also his growing, dangerous esteem for Misato herself. He's never had a parent he could depend on the way he was supposed to, and he isn't about to use her as a substitute, but there is a tentative trust he's been fostering.

The pill he puts on her hand is firetruck red like it should cure headaches and-- to be fair-- it does.]

[wille]

[ Another time, another place, she would protest, because they had kept her eyes closed for too long. But that has nothing to do with this instance, does it? Her jaw works in consternation, unwilling yet curious, before she obeys.

It's probably funny in some cynical cosmic joke sort of way that for all her years and the airs she put on, Misato has only ever slept with one man. One. Her supposed promiscuity is a lie. Her party-loving, adventurous side a mere persona to cover the tight leash she keeps around her own neck and no matter how she much she tries to tell herself that a little pill on the palm of her hand can't be more frightening than facing down a metaphysical wonder the size of a building, the worry still bleeds through the link.

She swallows it with a gulp, like medicine. ]

How long does it take to work?

[100mitsubishis]

[He feels her less and less as an echo and more and more as if he were the center from which concern and anxiety vibrated out. Their link bleeds like an open wound, tainting the air around them thick and red, a deeper hue than the pill he's given her. Kavinsky relishes it, his own strings loose and easy to pluck if she's interested in playing.]
Dry.

[A warm comment, he's impressed she didn't ask him to catnap her up a glass of water. The pill wasn't large, but not everyone takes their vitamins without the accompanying cup of OJ. His eyelids droop. His smirk is a slanting line, one corner of his mouth tucked in.]

Three, two, and one. Happy New Year.

[wille]

[ Misato has never inhaled air that tastes so clear or seen the crisp-clear edges of everything, the leaves with their boundaries, the distinct space between her own fingers held up against the ceiling. Her mind feels both unbearably light and yet heavy, firmly tied to the boy sitting beside her. She clings to her fear, her one true and loyal companion, even as her grip on it loosens. ]

Damn.

[ Damn, she feels good, but it won't last. It's not real. She has to remind herself this in case she becomes used to it, and the comedown might ruin her, so she reaches over for his hand to hold, closing her eyes when she relishes the very act of breathing. ]

They're going to find us, you know. Here, happier than we ever deserved to be.

[100mitsubishis]

Ha. Fuck, babe. Who told you you don't deserve to be happy?

[The dreamer asks, eyes glazed and feverish. His pupils are so wide it's like watching twin eclipses battle it out to cover up any hint of iris. The left is always beating the right by a hair, though the light touches them both the same.

It's a question that could be used to coax or comfort. To find out who hurt you and promise to do wrong by them. Kavinsky isn't that young man who's going to promise to protect the people he's grown attached to. That would be one more lie on the usual trash heap.

So it's one of those rare, innocent inquiries. Naive, maybe, because it doesn't always take someone being that blunt with it. No one ever told Kavinsky he didn't deserve to be happy and yet it's less real joy he feels than spikes of adrenaline that convince him this is what happiness must be. Perhaps it isn't like that for everyone, though, and there is a cleaner, softer version. One that can be felt in the hazy mornings when their heads haven't left their pillows or after watching a particularly good arthouse film. The closest Kavinsky has to that sensation is what he's experiencing right now. The high. His heartbeat slowed by substances that aren't foreign to his body, because it was his mind that made them up.

He would kill for a package of Oreos or even off-brand sandwich cookies. He is half-tempted to fall asleep during Misato's response and bring them back a couple containers' worth.]

[wille]

That's not what I meant.

[ There's no rebuke behind her words. She isn't saying, you've misunderstood but rather, I don't know what to say to make you understand what I mean to say. The link between their minds is a cheat. Misato deserves happiness, she knows this, has told herself time and again and heard it from the lips of others too, but there are as many kinds of happiness as there are kinds of love. See, she's looking for happiness like everyone else, not knowing which is the kind she needs and which is the one she's actually walking toward.

Like this, she feels as if she might float away, untethered. It takes a conscious uncoupling from the self to let go of control and allow herself to feel it all. It's like falling through the sky, knowing the ground is coming up fast but being unable to prompt oneself to feel anything but levity, an overwhelming sense of contentment. A tiny voice in the back of her head is still yelling hold on.

She breathes in and lies back on the floor, feet still dangling over the edge. ]

Kavinsky, ever heard of self-sabotage?

... i'm sorry Kavinsky is shitty

[100mitsubishis]

[He swings his leg over hers. Just one, and his body stays otherwise in its own space, like if it's one limb she won't understand he's being invasive. His thigh over hers, painfully hot from how long he's spent sunning himself like a lizard. At least he's slim, appetite a perpetual problem with everything he pumps into his system to keep it sated. Dinner rolls around and Kavinsky's already had his fill of smoke.]

What? Like kamekazi shit? You're Japanese, right? Thinking about seppuku?

[He slices his hand through the air in front of his own throat. Then he laughs.]

shit meets shit tbh

[wille]

[ He's mixing it up. Kamikaze and seppuku. Honor vs shame. That's not even what it's called. It's shimpu tokkotai, but she isn't Ritsuko, she finds, and she doesn't care to correct him when the principle stands, the details don't matter. Suicide is cowardly, done out of honor or shame. She sees no dignity in it, only sheer desperation. ]

--No.

[ Misato sits up, coolly pushing his leg off of hers as if it were a stray leaf from one of the hanging boughs, but her gaze on him is hard. She's all judgment and barely restrained fury. A lesser woman might be in tears under the weight of the anger and sadness that hide behind her eyes, the red pill having opened the floodgates in her mind. ]

Hypothermia makes you run away from company, from anyone who might help you. People go out into the cold, they strip, and keep walking, naked. As they're dying, they burrow into the snow. It's stupid, isn't it? It's so stupid.

[100mitsubishis]

[Kavinsky hears naked better than he hears hypothermia, and for a moment it sounds like a swell idea. Strip down to nothing and feel the garden under bare skin. He wonders at the type of world Misato came from--was skinnydipping an option in her youth? Did she ever take out to the woods, a couple 40s in a brown paper bag, and launch herself into clear, cold waters? Or is that one of those pleasures she was denied?

His leg is shoved away and he doesn't try to undo her work. If she isn't up to a cuddle, it's not like he's aching for it. Plus, she's bleeding--her mind, anyway--and it's hard to stay touchy-feely with all that weight place on him.]

Okay.

[Because he doesn't quite get it.]

What?

[wille]

[ He doesn't get it, she knows, because who would? She's rambling like an old fool, scaring the poor kid for no good reason at all. She has to remind herself of his young age despite all his posturing, like herself once, thinking that adolescent pain is the peak and the abyss of human emotion without understanding that an ache that remains is an even greater torture. A pebble in one's shoe. ]

It's just-- you wonder if that's what you're doing, and you don't see it.

[ She sighs, retreating to cover her face with her hand because she's embarrassed by the words tumbling out of her mouth and the rest of the words threatening to spill out. It's a pattern, telling that lowering her inhibitions means prompting her to admit weakness. ]

Nevermind. I shouldn't have taken that pill.

[ Remorse. How rare. ]

[100mitsubishis]

[She shouldn't be concerned about scaring Kavinsky, but she also shouldn't concern herself with the boy to begin with, and those alarm bells have long been ignored. He watches her like a fat and tired owl watches a fat and stupid mouse. The prize might be great, but is it worth all the effort to leave his nest?

His leg was dislodged, so he doesn't touch her with that again. His hand on her arm, dragging her palm away from her face.]

The pill isn't the problem. It's you. You want control again and you're fighting all the way upstream. Slow down, baby, slow down and cool it. It's just you and me.

[He shouldn't have said that. There's a flair up of Kavinsky's reservations, his hurt, his own unsavory emotions. But he smooths out the wrinkles before Misato will have the time to touch them.]

[wille]

[ Control is all she has. It's the glue that keeps her multitude selves together, barely coherent, and without it she wouldn't even know who or how to be. Asking her to relinquish it is like asking her to prompt her heart to stop beating. It's autonomous, automatic. The substances in her veins may weaken her grip, but that only prompts her to fight back, try harder to hold on. He's right, anyway. He's making more sense than she is, look at her.

When he pulls aside her hand, she reaches out, further, to place her palm against the side of his face. Her expression is so severe. ]

Why do you take the pills? To float downstream?

[100mitsubishis]

[Misato wants to continue the conversation because she's pegged Kavinsky as the sort of puzzle box with a prize inside. She's a relentless brute, toppling walls like a wolf hunting pigs. Huffing, puffing, asking him questions that he doesn't have good enough answers for. Yes, duh, he wants to escape, but at the same time, he's never been more sure of himself than when he's high.

Kavinsky used to throw bi-weekly Substance Parties. He used to gather up crowds of people, set 'em up, bowl 'em down.

He turns his face in toward Misato's palm and licks it. The whole flat of his tongue resting at the heel of her palm and then lifting up to the base of her fingers. Wet and deliriously warm. The pill he's on has a way of making one's internal temperature skyrocket.]

[wille]

[ Misato is a brute through and through, heavyhanded in her constant attempt to name, to subdue those around her to render them harmless to her, subject to her, but Kavinksy lets her in only to turn the tables on her.

Shocked, she shoves a palm against his chest to push him down and away, wresting her other hand free of his grip as she stumbles to her feet. The world tips on its side, the borders of things righting itself before the colors follow, and there's something nauseating in the pit of her chest, that grows and grows the deeper she inhales, ragged. From here, up here, she can look down on him made small, made less threatening, and still the next breath she takes nearly makes her vomit, so her words must be said through gritted teeth. ]

Enough of this.

[100mitsubishis]

[Kavinsky takes the push without struggle or resistance. Her shove is enough to have him sprawled out on his back, head tilted so hard to one side it could be mistaken for broken, except he's breathing. Smiling with his eyes, smoothly neutral about his lips. At her command, he doesn't lift up an inch. He was wondering when she'd have enough, and it looks like he found the edge.]

Get going, Misa. You don't want to get eaten.

[He snaps his teeth with an audible click before he finally rolls over onto his side and looks out over the ledge they sat on.]

You taste like shit anyway.

[Listless and quiet, he settles down, down, downstream. Flows along in a way that even his broodmates can't replicate.]

[wille]

[ It's an uncomfortable thing, to see herself reflected in another person. To see how she must have looked that time when she had nothing more to offer her ward, scared, grieving and confused, to reach out across the barrier only to be rejected. It was Shinji then sprawled on his side, knees curled close to his chest, but it was Misato on the ground, realizing that it's her, really, who needs the company, who is lonely.

Now, it's still her who feels hurt, the keen ache traveling through the link too easily. Like a chill down one's throat, a need to make it stop. She clenches her fist, feeling her nails against her palm to distract her from the nausea. It all tastes like shit. ]

I only came here to tell you not to fall.

[ A half lie makes a lie. She came here to learn how to take the jump and be alright with falling. Kavinsky is flowing down, out and away, and Misato is holding on fiercely to the banks, too afraid to let go. She's going, one step back, a stumble, then off, down the steps and out of the garden. ]