The Heartbreak Blood That’s Spilt

 📅 late April, 2018

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

Kato 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 Kato 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 Kato’s life, as well—and a far less violent one than Isaac. 

It was accidental, mostly; collateral bonding due to Kato having taken to coming over and hanging out with Athena more and more often after late March, when Anarchy’s “best friend” had resurfaced from the past and—of course—blown Kato’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. Kato avoided seeing either of them as best he could, and Athena kindly continued to put up with his kicked-puppy presence in her life. 

He knew that she’d fled that apartment herself half to get away from him, and even though he was chronically angry again, it wasn’t at her this time and he did his best to keep it from leaching out into the air too much. She knew he was bothered; she asked as much and he couldn’t tell her everything that he was grieving—aggrieving, even—but he admitted it.

“It just doesn’t feel fair that we scraped him off the fucking pavement—literally—and he hid this guy from us all these years, and now they’re, like, conjoined,” he told her. “I heard ‘Key out on why and I guess I get it, like, in my fucking head, but I still feel…betrayed, somehow, I guess. And I just need some time to deal with it, but now he’s in my space all the time and trying to be my buddy and it’s like…give me some goddamned room to breathe, dude, I’m still assimilating knowledge of your existence into my life! I can’t deal with the incessant everything-else.”
“It was really good of you to offer him my old room,” Athena said, instead of telling him to get over it and be happy for Anarchy, how he was afraid she would. “And I’m really grateful to you for being, like, willing to offer him a spot in the band, too, despite everything. I’m sure it means the world to ‘Key. You’re really doing great.”

“Gold stars all around,” Storm offered, having eavesdropped on half the conversation while getting ready to head out. “And for what it’s worth, K, I think I get it. I’d probably be a bit pissed too. Why aren’t you, ‘Thena?”
Athena took on a contemplative expression. “...I dunno,” she finally sighed, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s like with Seth, for me. I feel a…tug, somewhere, like, I want the people I love to feel like they can tell me things! And it’s like, ‘aw,’ to know that they didn’t. But I trust ‘Key, and so…I suppose I trust his reasons. Or I trust that his reasons felt reasonable to him.” She paused and pursed her lips at the floor for a moment before looking back up, something confessional in her eyes. “...And I’ve never had to worry about ‘Key, so…him not telling me something I never had to worry about, that I still don’t have to worry about…? Feels pretty alright. In comparison.”
“To Seth?” Kato asked, guiltily, his own secret kept from her pitting his stomach.
“I just wish he’d tell me what he’s feeling,” Athena acceded. “What he thinks about. I love him, and it’s like he won’t let me know him at all.”
Storm made an equivocal expression. “I think the world expects too much of siblings,” they said. “We’re meant to read each other's minds. Have our own language and all that shit. It’s not the same, but I don’t speak my brother’s, either.”
“Sure, but you resent each other,” Athena said. Storm rolled their eyes and gave some half-chagrined smile.
“Yeah, that’s probably all we do share.”
“I think resentment is every family’s mother tongue. You and Seth are exceptions,” Kato concluded, nodding towards Athena. 
“I’ll drink to that,” Storm laughed, grabbing their keys from the counter. “Or I would, but…have other plans in the way. Maybe tonight.”

Kato was still camping out on Athena’s couch by evening, having not yet returned home even though Athena had a date with Teagan and left him with only her cactus and a tarantula for company. Anarchy had called twice, but Kato 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 yanked their keys out of the lock with a sour expression on their face that failed to quite neutralize when they caught sight of him.
“Oh. You’re still here,” they 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 a pair of binoculars on the coffee table and exchanging them for the vodka Kato had been nursing incrementally throughout the day, which they didn’t even pause to read the label off of before taking a swig from. 
“Holy shit, what happened today?” Kato asked, sitting up to stare at them.
“Ask me again when that hits,” they said, throwing themself onto the sofa, next to him. Their eyes looked red-rimmed and wounded. Kato started to wonder if he was not, in fact, good enough, and if he should try and get Athena to replace him. Teagan wouldn’t be happy, but hey, she wasn’t his biggest fan anyway, so he didn’t have that much to lose.
“Uh,” was all he managed to articulate.
“Wish I could be good enough,” Storm said suddenly. Their voice cracked, spurring them into taking a second drink of vodka. Kato 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,” they said, then let out some dry-sounding sob of a snarl and hit their 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—!” Storm put their hands to their face, but swiftly abandoned the gesture to rake their fingers through their hair. “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?!”

Kato 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…?” Kato 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 thing was that she thinks we’re too different: I can do things and she ‘can’t,’ she thinks I have a ‘fuller future’ than she does...but why not let me help build a future for her then?!” Storm’s voice cracked again; Kato’s heart ached. For them, yes, but not just them, because—
This is what he felt, Kato 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 their and Athena’s floor, bullshitting slant-rhymes and half-singing them 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 their head at the ground, oblivious to his inner turmoil; trapped in their own. “I could be good for her,” they 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’m a goddamn introvert too! And she doesn’t have to ‘do’ things, like, I can pull this fucking cart, you know, I’d be willing to make it work…” They choked back tears. They came anyway. Storm swiped a hand across their face with an assailant’s aggression and tried to drown any show of weakness with more vodka. “Why doesn’t she want that…? I’d do it for her.”
“I...I know,” Kato 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 their 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.” Kato 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.” Their tone was ambivalent; incredulous. They took another, brooding, pull from the bottle. Kato finally took it out of their 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, their 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 Kato hung around to murmur what comfort he could muster and ensure that they were neither about to puke nor do anything stupid—but he was ready to leave by the time they 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 eventually got back home, Chey’s bedroom was empty, while there were two forms in Anarchy’s bed that Kato 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 theirs; “wearing shades to work on a rainy day because I’m just that cool,” they appended to a selfie, where they still clearly squinted from behind their 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, Kato 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 kato! 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 Kato mulled that over again, as a concept: People being ‘easier.’ New people had flooded into Kato’s life, it felt: First Storm themself, then Jazz, now Chey and the people met through him. Storm had gotten ‘easier.’ Maybe Jazz, too, a bit, even if Kato 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 Kato arranged to meet Storm back at their place so that he could hang out and pick up his guitar. Chey was typing away on the sectional, as usual, when Kato 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,” Kato 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. Kato 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. Kato 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 their flat, they could have passed for twins if identicality were based on emotional wounds: They headed out onto the 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—Kato 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 their lighter without any prompting and didn’t even manage to voice surprise when Kato flipped the script and offered them one of his cigarettes. They took it.

“...I kinda did the same thing she did,” Kato 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.” Kato 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?” they 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,” Kato said, “and it wouldn’t change jack shit.”
“...Hear hear, then,” they 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.”