The Heartbreak Blood That’s Spilt

 📅 late April, 2018

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴀʟᴄᴏʜᴏʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ʙʀɪᴇғ ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴs ᴛᴏ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴀʟɪᴛʏ & sᴇx ᴀs sᴇʟғ-ʜᴀʀᴍ〛

Kohao had started the year out feeling sick inside and desperate for a fix, and as winter had worn painfully on, he found Isaac to be an easy—if objectively horrific—brand of self-medication. Addictive, honestly; he made cortisol hit like heroin and Kohao couldn’t stop going back to him, even with every alarm bell in his life ringing over it. 
Spring came in with fresh air and new growth, though, in both plants and people, buds and bonds, and during the exchange of seasons, Storm started to become more of a presence in Kohao’s life, as well—and a far less violent one than Isaac. 

Kohao took to hanging out with her more and more often after late March, when Anarchy’s “best friend” had resurfaced from the past and—of course—blown Kohao’s fucking life apart again. Chey was loud and nosy and in-fucking-sufferably present, and both he and Anarchy tended to look at one another like they’d just gotten fucking engaged. Kohao avoided seeing either of them as best he could, and Storm kindly continued to put up with his kicked-puppy presence in her life. 
He came over and played his guitar on her floor; running lyrics past her for the album she’d encouraged him to foist on his friends, or writing scraps of verse for her just to get his creativity flowing.

“Tell me what you’re pissed about right now and I’ll start a song about it,” he’d say out of boredom, and she’d reel off about work hours or old family problems or the weather, and he’d slap down some lines that would make her laugh or eye him like a fortune teller she wasn’t sure she wanted to believe. 
He spent more than one night on her couch after getting too smashed to get his ass home—not that he didn’t still try, but she wrestled his keys out of his hand, with a half exasperated, “You’re wasted enough that you could crash a cable car. No way I’m letting you on a motorcycle.” 

Outside of keeping him from DUIs, though, she’d actually been one of the more disappointingly unreactive people when it came to his motorcycle. She’d acknowledged it was a nice ride when he’d first gotten it, sure, but failed to be horrified by his tales of how exactly he’d worked up the cash for his bike, her own stint in the adult industry playing out as a lack of shock in her expression and replies of “Yeah, I’ve heard that pays well,” and “Damn. I wouldn’t do that myself even for a cheque, but hey, whatever works for you.”

She was good at being unreactive, really. In general. She emoted, it wasn’t that she didn’t, but her laughter was dry and her answers could be closed and she could blanket an entire conversation in sarcasm if she chose to—and she often chose to. It would slip a bit if she drank, though, and so Kohao knew he and his ever-present alcohol were privy to a little more openness than perhaps the rest of the world. Still, Storm didn’t tend to “lose it” how he did, and when she talked about “breakdowns” they usually involved very few things breaking. A stark contrast to what Kohao classed as a breakdown, where he could easily end up ticking boxes for his knuckles, his nose, his door-frame and his drywall. 
No, Storm seemed even-keeled even when upset, generally contained and, for the most part, all shored up: A good companion for someone as castaway and washed-up as Kohao felt.

He was still camping out on her couch one April afternoon, having spent the previous night there and not yet returned home. Anarchy had called twice, but Kohao hadn’t bothered to call back yet, because as far as he was fucking concerned, ‘Key could stand to think about someone other than Chey for more than two damn seconds. He was mulling over if he thought Anarchy was actually worried yet or not, just about ready to decide whether to tip towards bitterness or hold off, when the door all but slammed open. Storm aggressively yanked her keys out of the lock with a sour expression on her face that failed to quite neutralize when she caught sight of him.
“Oh. You’re still here,” she said flatly. 
“Just say ‘get out,’ if you want me gone,” he responded, shrugging. 
“Pfft. Nah, fuck it, stay. I was thinking I'd make Athena deal with me, but you’re good enough.”
 “Great, I love being good enough. That's my favorite compliment.” 

Storm stayed silent instead of laughing and crossed the room to him, dropping her binoculars on the coffee table and exchanging them for the vodka Kohao had been nursing incrementally throughout the day, which she didn’t even pause to read the label off of before taking a swig from. 
“Holy shit, what happened today?” Kohao asked, sitting up to stare at her.
“Ask me again when that hits,” she said, throwing herself onto the sofa, next to him. Her eyes looked red-rimmed and wounded. Kohao started to wonder if he was not, in fact, good enough, and if he should try and get Athena to replace him.
“Uh.”
“Wish I could be good enough,” Storm said suddenly. Her voice cracked, spurring her into taking a second drink of vodka. Kohao grimaced, uncertainty tugging his cheek between his teeth, where he worried it. 
“...What’s up, Storm?” he asked again, softening his tone.

There was a long silence before Storm answered. “....I confessed to Jazz today,” she said, then let out some dry-sounding half-sob and hit her fist against the couch. “I don’t fucking get it! Why do I feel this way if it’s all useless?! Why do I have to care and want her like that if it’s not...if it’s not—!” Another sob; Storm put her hands to her face. “She doesn’t feel the same, or she says she doesn’t. But fuck, like, we talk all the time, it feels like something to me! At first she just kept repeating ‘I just can’t, Storm, I just can’t.’ What the fuck does that mean?! Can’t what? Love me, see me?! See that this fucking hurts?!”

Kohao couldn’t help but feel blindsided, suddenly choking on the memory of his own words; his own ‘I just can’t’, literally said that way; ‘I just can’t and you just can’t and it's so much...’ Words he’d begged Anarchy to understand; begged Anarchy not to hate him for.

“It, uh...I think sometimes it means they...well, that they just can't…?” Kohao offered awkwardly, rubbing Storm’s shoulder and trying not to fall too deep into introspection. “I know that doesn’t help but—there's just, there’s a level of desperation in saying that, y'know, sometimes people mean they feel like they can’t anything and it isn’t really you—”
“Like they can’t anything…?” Storm frowned. “Jazz did say...like...part of her reasoning was that she thinks we’re too different: I’m outgoing and she isn’t, she thinks I have a ‘fuller future’ than she does...but why not let me help build a fuller future for her then?!” Storm’s voice cracked again; Kohao’s heart ached. For her, yes, but not just her, because—
This is what he felt, Kohao thought to himself; That’s what ‘Key wanted to be able to do. Help me; love me and help me. Help me have a future. Help me have a future with him…

He tried to snap himself out of it, to focus on the present and not the heartbreak that seemed so hellbent on overtaking him.
“People—sometimes people can’t envision, like, stuff, Storm,” he floundered. He’d felt like a decent enough a wordsmith when writing lyrics on her floor, bullshitting slant-rhymes and half-singing some scrap of verse about nothing;

Keep getting up at dawn, only workin’ to turn your house key
Coming home at midnight to water your houseplants with Bacardi
And they should be reaching for the sun but they’re still passed out from that party
Growing toward the ground, but we’re right there with ‘em, aren't we?

But now, when trying to offer comfort, instead of feeling talented, he felt nearly incoherent. He was projecting too much of himself onto Jazz and he knew it, but even down to her reasoning he couldn’t force away a chill of kinship. The potential suicidality of her I-don’t-have-a-future sentiment hit too close to home, and he made a mental note to try and find a way to check up on her after everything here was sorted out.

Storm shook her head at the ground, oblivious to his inner turmoil; trapped in her own. “I could be good for her,” she said miserably. “I know I could, K, like, so what if we’re different as people? It’s not like I’m bothered by her being shy! I can be outgoing enough for both of us! I can pull this fucking cart, you know, I’d be willing to make it work…” She choked back tears. They came anyway. She tried to drown them with more vodka. “Why doesn’t she want that…? I’d do it for her.”
“I...I know,” Kohao said, his own throat tightening. “I know you would, Storm, and I know that you’d be fuckin’ great at it! At being, y’know, there for her. God knows you’ve been here for me! It’s not…there’s just no way in hell this is about you being ‘good enough’ or not.” He felt his own eyes burning. “It just sounds like she feels that it’s not...it’s not meant to be this way between you two, and...and she’s gonna have her reasons whether they make sense to you or not. And you can’t help it. No matter how incredible a person you are.”

“Then what?” Storm asked, achingly, frustration and grief both tearing at her voice; “What do I do? I can’t help feeling this way, I’ve wanted to stop! But it just sticks around! So I just fucking hurt? I hurt and I can’t fucking change it?”
“It will change.” Kohao wished his voice would stop threatening to break. “Maybe you can’t do anything about your feelings, I don’t know shit about controlling mine, but...Things will change. And new people will come into your life and she’s just...giving you permission. For when they do. For when things change.”
“....Permission.” Her tone was ambivalent; incredulous. She took another, brooding, pull from the bottle. Kohao finally took it out of her hands and set it aside as he fumbled for how to explain.
“It’s just like...regardless of what...fucking anybody wants? Her or you? She’s saying it won’t work. So it won’t. And fuckin’...you can try, you know, you can go back over and yell and scream and kick down her door and beg. And you could do that for as long as you wanted, or at least until the cops took you in, but it wouldn’t make it work. And as long as you were doing that, you wouldn’t notice whether you had options that did or not. She’s...she’s saying you don’t have to pull the cart, like you called it. And that you can take the damn blinders off, too.”
“...I want to, though,” Storm said, nearly meekly, her words starting to slur; “I want to pull it for her.”

“...Yeah. And she’s saying she won’t let you.”

The vodka caught up to Storm fast, and Kohao hung around to murmur what comfort he could muster and ensure that she was neither about to puke nor do anything stupid—but he was ready to leave by the time she decided to crash for the night. He needed to get out of there, needed to find somewhere to grieve—or else to kill his own feelings and dig his nails into anger again. Despite his desperation for escape, though, he took a moment’s pause as he prepared to leave: Perched on his bike, helmet under one arm, he shot a text to Seth, asking if Jazz was okay; something had concerned him.
When he got back home, Chey’s bedroom was empty, while there were two forms in Anarchy’s bed that Kohao could make out from the hall. He choked on the urge to scream, whether at himself or the pair beneath the covers, and instead decided Storm had known the right route to take for whatever shit concoction of emotions this was. He had half a bottle of rum sitting on his dresser, and he felt it could stand to be empty instead of him. He drained it and called Isaac to say he needed to see him sometime that week.

The next morning he woke up to his own hangover and a message from Storm about hers; “wearing shades to work on a rainy day because I’m just that cool,” she appended to a selfie, where she still clearly squinted from behind her sunglasses.
He also had a text from Jazz.

J: «seth said you were worried about me! I’m totally fine, but thank you so much for caring ^w^»

Squinting his eyes against the brightness of his phone and fumbling his way out to the fire escape for a cigarette, Kohao tapped out a reply:

K: «yeah no problem. just heard in the rumor mill you might not be feeling great, glad it’s not the case. you can always text someone if you need to anyway.»
J: « :3 thank you so much kohao! That means a lot to hear!»

He noted the tone shift from their first—and only—text exchange beforehand, where her anxiety had been so noticeable it might as well have been rolling off the phone screen like flare smoke. This time, it was nowhere near so present.

“She made people feel a little easier,” Storm had said, and throughout the day Kohao mulled that over again, as a concept: People being ‘easier.’ New people had flooded into Kohao’s life, it felt: First Storm herself, then Jazz, now Chey and the people met through him. Storm had gotten ‘easier.’ Maybe Jazz, too, a bit, even if Kohao didn’t quite know who or how she was, or what he was meant to be to her… He mused.
People. “Easier.”

Afternoon came cloudily in, and Kohao arranged to meet Storm back at her place so that he could hang out for her break and pick up his guitar. Chey was typing away on the sectional, as usual, when Kohao came out into the living area, and he glanced up from his laptop at the sound of footsteps.
“Oh! Hey, K-O,” he said with a smile.
“Hey Chey,” Kohao replied instead of openly glaring, though he couldn’t quell the dislike that shot up through his chest and made his voice come out clipped and cold. There was too much there, with Chey: Too much he couldn’t understand, too much he couldn’t fucking trust. 
“Where are you headed?” Chey asked pleasantly, unreactive as ever to the animosity in the air. Kohao started to curl his lip at the sunny tone but was interrupted by Anarchy coming out of the bathroom and raising an apprehensive eyebrow from the mouth of the hallway. Kohao swallowed the snapped none-of-your-business he’d wanted to fling back and walked out the door without responding at all, instead.

When he and Storm met up at her flat, they could have passed for twins if identicality were based on emotional wounds: They headed out onto her balcony wearing congruent, downcast expressions; some combination of bitterness and grief apparent on each of their faces; in each of their tones when they exchanged greetings, and, too, in the quiet that fell afterwards. They wordlessly pulled a pair of Dr. Peppers from Storm’s fridge and skipped the alcohol for the moment, or at least outright—Kohao had a mini of Fireball in his jacket pocket that he tipped into his soda without comment or explanation. None was really needed, it seemed. 
Outside, Storm pulled out her lighter without any prompting and didn’t even manage to voice surprise when Kohao flipped the script on her and offered her one of his cigarettes. She took it.

“...I kinda did the same thing she did,” Kohao said eventually, breaking the long stretch of silence they’d spent just looking out over Brooklyn, their smoke hanging in the humid air; “The same thing as Jazz did. I was with a guy and we’d been...together, a lot, y’know, and he ended up telling me he loved me. That he wanted to date.” Kohao frowned; a lump found its way into his throat. “...I just couldn’t.” 
Storm seemed nearly startled when his voice broke. “But you wish you could have?” she asked. “Or…?”
“It never would’ve been good for him to be with me. I told him so.”
“...But you wish it would have.”
“I could wish a lot of things, Storm,” Kohao said, “and it wouldn’t change jack shit.”
“...Hear hear, then,” she replied, accepting the waver of his voice in lieu of a more open answer and tapping their drinks together. “To messy emotional bullshit, then. Glad to have someone who gets it, anyway.”
“Yeah. Me too.”