Loose Threads and In-betweens

📅 late January 2018

[ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴀʟɪᴛʏ]

“Talk me out of shooting heroin,” were the first words out of Kato’s mouth upon crossing Nick’s threshold that day, and honestly quite nearly the only reason he’d even gone over. 
It was something about having “broken up with” ‘Key, something about proving it had been the right decision—and something about the related fact that his entire chest hurt like he was having a full scale heart attack, so a narcotic stood half a chance of actually feeling like medicine. 
“Shit, bro, you don’t have any on you, do you?” Nick asked hurriedly; “You can't bring that shit in here, man.” He’d frozen with his hand still on the open door, his brown eyes wide and nervous. Kato’s lips twisted downward; his hands shook. He willed his voice not to.
“No. I haven’t bought any yet, that's why I’m telling you to talk me out of it.”
Nick shut the door and stared at him, his usual laid-back demeanor abruptly absent; his expression shadowed with concern.

“...You’ll die, dude,” he said—then, maybe knowing that wasnt necessarily a downside in Kato’s mind—added, “or you won’t but you’ll turn into a fuckin’ nod-zombie who only lives for the next hit of dope and nothing else. You can’t do that to your art, ya know?”
“My what?”
Nick looked nearly sorrowful. “Your music, dude, your band, right, that you’ve mentioned a couple times? Your art. Can’t ditch it all.”

It meant something to Kato that Nick had worded it in that way, and for a brief moment he was frozen by the new shard of grief that pierced his heart over the fact that he’d somehow come to matter to Nick; matter enough that despite all efforts to keep their circling of the drain away from the rest of his life, Nick knew enough to invoke the band; the music. Maybe it should have hit Kato as hope, or something closer to comfort, but it stabbed instead because it was just more mess: More people caring too much but not enough, caring when they shouldn’t because he had somehow pulled the wool over their eyes and made them think he was worth it.

Kato let out some anguished, scoff-adjacent sound and threw himself onto Nick’s couch. “Fine. Dial 9-1 on your phone and leave it open, anyway,” he said, unzipping his bag.
“Dude, what?” Nick was starting to sound closer to scared than simply apprehensive; the effect of his own presence felt like needles on Kato’s skin and his eyes burned.
“I’ve got coke, I’ve got molly, I’ve got a water bottle filled with Bacardi and I just blew up a potential relationship on purpose despite my own fucking feelings, so I think I’m about ready to either feel better or call it all quits—and I don’t care which one I get,” Kato spat, trying to keep his tone scathing to avoid sounding tearful. He doubted he succeeded.

“Man, whoa, slow down,” Nick said, stepping into Kato’s periphery and patting the air with his hands; “We can get on whatever shit later if we feel like it, but maybe let’s start out with a drink and a spliff. And talk a bit.”
“I don’t have weed.”
“I know. I do: I’m sharing.” Nick frowned, almost doe-eyed and somehow persuasive. “C’mon. Just hit the pause button with me for a sec, bro.” 

It wasn’t what Kato wanted—what he wanted was to have a heart attack right there on the floor, and then neither he nor ‘Key would have to deal with what-ifing at all: There would be no other option except moving on and Kato wouldn’t have to hate himself and Anarchy over it when it happened. He knew himself and hated it; because he felt the truth of that anticipation, felt both sides of him, tearing him apart in a fight that neither were winning. There was the half of his heart that begged him, begged him, to give in and love ‘Key: 
I do love him, he thought helplessly to himself, and he loves me...but he can’t, and I can’t. And that was true, so he was forced into feeling the second half of his heart, the half he loathed so much, bearing down on him with the urge to hate Anarchy instead. 
Hate him, outright, for making all this pain happen. Why was he so fucking stupid? To care? To fall in love with the broken mess he was fucking? Why couldn’t he go get a pair of goddamn glasses and realize he might as well go ahead and confess to his favorite fucking clean-up towel?
Kato wanted to scream. Because now he had to feel guilty, he had to be the heartbreaker, he was never allowed to do anything right because he was always forced into being the goddamn bad guy!

While Nick rolled them up a joint, Kato put his head in hands and wished he hadn’t come over. He wished he’d just bought dope and overdosed in a parking lot. He wished he had a razorblade to his skin.

He wasn’t in the right mindset to have a good high, he didn’t think, but Nick ceded to letting him bump a bit of Special K, too, and the excruciating intensity of his emotions seemed, gradually, to level off a bit lower as they sat and smoked, while Nick listened to Kato blow off all the steam he could without mentioning Anarchy’s name. It was hard to make the intricacies of it all understood while talking around everything he felt the need to talk around, but he managed to get it across well enough, he felt, at least by the time he let out an anguished noise and punched the sofa, saying “And it doesn’t matter what I want or that he loves me! I’d kill him, I’d kill him with how I am. With who I fucking am.”

From there it was back to well-worn complaints that he’d made a couple hundred times before; addressing that ‘how’ and ‘who’ and the ‘why’s of both: All the shit circumstances that had conspired against him his whole life; twisted him apart and spat him out the way he was now.
Honestly, it was comforting to bitch his way back to more familiar strife, and Kato was feeling about as chilled out as someone only two joints and one listening ear away from total emotional implosion could be by the time he said,

“Like, it’d be one thing if all my problems were fucking dating problems, yanno, like a normie? That’s what the fuck most people’s issues are, right? But fuck, no, I’ve got my goddamn life. My bandmate Seth, right, he fuckin’... He saved my ass when I was a teenager and there’s just...there’s shit there, you know, he did that for me. But he’s just lost his fucking mind over the past couple years and I'm just fuckin’... so done with it? Like, what the hell do I do if he shows up at band practice with his neck all fucked up again? Just die before he does? Fuckin’ abysmal. Life is shit.” Kato scoffed some bitter noise and replaced the sound from between his teeth with the joint, which he dragged from until his objecting lungs forced him to cough. He passed to Nick, who took it with a distracted blink; his brow furrowed, he frowned as though in thought.
“Wait, sorry, what’s your band’s name again?” he asked, taking a puff while Kato caught his breath again.

“Uhhh fuck, dunno I’ve said it. Don’t show up at shows and act like you know me,” Kato said, only to realize that he no longer cared about people knowing about how he went out to meet up with a ‘friend’ he only ever bonded with through substances. Secrecy was a vestigial concept at this point; everyone had found out about the cocaine already. Nothing mattered. 
“...Or actually, do whatever the fuck you want,” he said; “My band’s called Edge of Infinity.”
“Oh, yooo…Is your friend Seth, like, a brother?” Nick asked, gesturing towards himself; “And like...really tall?”
Kato stared at him. “Wh...How? You already know our band, or what—? No, no you don’t, I’m lead and I’m fuckin’ talking to you. How the fuck do you know Seth?”
“Met him at Jazz’s place once or twice, since they hang out a lot. She told me he was in a band, and the neck thing connected the dots for me.”
Kato’s frown deepened. “What? Jazz, like, your fuckin’ middle school friend? Seth knows her? How the fuck…? He has never once mentioned knowing a fucking Jazz to me.”

Nick seemed able to sense the storm brewing behind Kato’s eyes; his own expression grew apprehensive.
“Damn, he’s never talked about her? That’s weird...I guess you and me aren’t the only ones chilling on the down low, then…” Nick frowned. “Uh, if you ever, like, meet her? Jazz? Don’t...mention all the stuff we do together, eh? She’d fuss over it, yanno…”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. If I meet her. Wonder about that.” Kato stood up. “Maybe I’ll see about it.”

Nick had already articulated the fact that the two of them had their own discreet friendship, and that was the only way Kato had found out about Seth’s, but anger and alcohol made it easier to ignore and Kato swept out onto Nick’s balcony and dialed Sethfire’s number, though not as enraged as he’d be if his high wasn’t lingering, and aggravated by it because holy shit, did he want to blow his top.

“So you have a secret girlfriend,” Kato said as soon as he heard the click of Seth picking up the call.
“...What?” Seth asked. If he was pretending to be totally confused, he was very good at it. Kato curled his lip.
“I guess there’s another plausible reason you secretly meet up with this mysterious ‘Jazz’ and never tell fucking anyone about it?”
Sethfire breathed something soft yet exasperated-sounding that made Kato wish yet again that he wasn’t high, because he’d be hitting flashpoint otherwise and he was dying to. At the very least he was still able to snap.
“Straight up, the fuck, Seth? You get to be all up in my fucking business from age sixteen on but you can just sneak—”
“Julian—”
“Double standards as shit but whatever, I know you love your secrets—”
“Okay, I hear that you’re hurt, but I—”
“Hurt? No, no fucking way! Good for you, Seth, really, glad you finally found someone you care enough to talk to!”
Silence. A small breath.
“...Jazz has rather intense anxiety and for some amount of time was resistant to being introduced, or mentioned, to new people. This has lessened, and I have failed to bring my friendship with her to your attention since, but…” Seth sounded disappointed; Kato hated that tone. “Am I not entitled to simply living my life, Kato? I do not ask after your personal affairs now that you’re an adult if I can help it. How did you come to hear about Jazz?”
“...Met someone who knew about you who had no business to,” Kato replied stiffly, trying to throw off any shame attempting to creep up on him.
“...What? Who? Oh—Nicholas?”
“So even Jazz lets her friends on about each other, then? Interesting, that,” Kato drawled, only to instinctively quail when he heard Seth let out another exasperated-sounding breath.
“...Perhaps sometime soon I will get the opportunity to introduce her to everyone. I will talk to her about what she feels comfortable with. Her decision. Is there anything else I can help you with tonight, Julian?”
“No, no, that’s it. Have a good one.” Kato slammed the ‘End Call’ button, fuming and guilty over Sethfire’s short, disappointed tone. He hated feeling guilty. Everyone always made him feel fucking guilty.

He slunk back in from the balcony feeling like a kicked dog but trying not to betray it to Nick, who raised a curious eyebrow from the couch.
“So….’Sup?”
“Nothing really. Seth says he might actually let us in the band meet Jazz if she’s cool with it,” Kato replied as nonchalantly as he could manage, rolling a careless shoulder and settling back into the sofa.
“Oh, neat,” Nick said. “She’s dope. Helped me out a lot.”
“Sure, yeah. Dope.”

Nick glanced sideways at him. “...You’re over that, right? I talked you out of buyin’ tar or anything? Because you can’t, K, you really can’t—”
“No, yeah, I fucking know,” Kato half-snapped. “It’d kill ‘Key if I did. I won’t.” He sighed and tossed Nick an apologetic look. “...Sorry for making you deal with me.”
“No sorries, bro. I’ve needed to be dealt with before; that’s what I’m talkin’ about, with Jazz. It’s all good, man. It’s all good.”

“It’s all good.”
Kato stared at Nick’s carpet and thought about the cigarette burns in his own bedroom’s; thought about the splintered wood around his door’s latch and how it no longer locked.
“I’ll be alright,” he’d said to Anarchy.
‘It’s all good.’ ‘I’ll be alright.’ How the fuck am I going to manage that? Just by making everyone else in my life talk me down from doing stupid shit?

Kato closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. Anarchy knew how he really felt and was heartsick too. Seth had to be pissed as shit at him now. Athena had other fish to fucking fry. He couldn’t do heroin; maybe he could just drink even harder than he usually did.
“...It’s all something, at least, Nick.”
Nick gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Hey, it all being something is better than it all being nothing, if you ask me. You feel?”

Not really.
“Yeah, sure,” Kato said;
(“I’ll be alright.”)
“I feel.”