Red Sky Morning

📅 Spring, 2014

【ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴇᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴅɪsᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ʙᴇʜᴀᴠɪᴏʀs, sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ, ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, sᴇx, ᴀɴᴅ ᴍᴀss ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀ】

He wrote her a song. Too soon, but what else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t get her golden-eyed expression from their conversation in the smoker’s pit out of his head. Talking to Leucosia had been easy, yeah, and Kato wanted more of it—more of their opposite-of-small-talk, and he wanted her to know, no, feel—that he recognized the intensity of connection that they’d had; wanted it known that it wasn’t a one-off on his part, because surely (surely) it hadn’t been on hers. Not with what they’d talked about, what they’d shared, what their twin scars silently affirmed in the cold neon-lit night. 

He couldn’t figure out how to get it across by text, though, and even when he talked to people, without injecting music into it he never really knew if he was making himself clear. With his band it was obviously immaterial, but when it came to people he wasn’t already making music with, pure conversation seemed to lack whatever it took to bridge that gap between what he said and what he meant, what people meant to him. 
So he churned out a minute-30 of a single about doomed men at sea at least not dying alone and hoped she liked siren_song.mp3 as much as he enjoyed talking to her. 

He didn’t know quite what he expected in return, and maybe he’d worried more than he’d expected anyway, but he definitely didn’t expect a poem. That’s what she did, though: Wrote him a poem; a gothic-romantic partner to his song where the siren lived alone in a lighthouse so that she could sing but still ward away the ships which would otherwise wreck themselves on the rocky coast in pursuit of her voice. 

Something between them seemed…celestial, almost. Gravitational; moon and tide. She drew him like nothing else. He was in the middle of business-talking with Bryluen and the rest of them about the fashion contract she was willing to pull strings to get them in on when a text from Leu came in, welcome reprieve from Bryluen’s legalese, however well-intentioned and apologetic.
“Work sux today and my boss already yelled @ me,” Leu’s text read; “wanna come make my shift less shit? I miss ur face.”
“Bry, can you just give me something to sign and we’ll call it a day?” he asked, interrupting something Sethfire was asking and having to offer some repetent gesture; “Like, I’m sorry, I just don’t understand anything you’re saying. When my phone forces Terms & Conditions on me I just hit ‘I Agree.’ And I trust you more than I trust Apple, so…”

Bryluen fortunately laughed instead of taking offense, and said she didn’t think he personally would need to sign anything, since he was just going to be kind of acting on extended behalf of her contract, though it would help if he had an agent—she could find him one—and she hadn’t meant to bore him.
“You’re not boring, I just have somewhere to be. Thanks, Bryluen. Really. I’ll get back to you about the agent stuff…Maybe just talk to Seth, I think he at least knows what words mean.”
He gathered his things and offered Athena and Gabe a grin instead of an answer when they asked where it was he had to be, he hadn’t mentioned any plans.

Leucosia was a barmaid at some cramped, dark Bushwick sports bar where his fake would fly, unlike at Eocene, and he spent the hours waiting for her shift to end getting comfortably drunk and talking to her too much—definitely a distraction; also definitely buying enough shots to keep her boss off her back. 
Eventually midnight rolled around, accompanied by her approaching him from behind and tugging his head back by his ponytail.
“Yeah, I guess you’ll do tonight, singer-boy,” she said with a slivered-moon smile; her silver piercings and black lipstick pairing like starshine on dark water. “I closed out your tab already.”
“Hey, thanks—‘you’ll do’ is my favorite compliment, though I thought the siren was meant to do the singing,” Kato chuckled up at her; “And just for tonight?”
“Call it a test run, sailor,” she smirked. Their words weaved like poetry; the room weaved with them and he got to his feet with a little extra effort. He hesitated after pulling out his wallet and let out a small laugh.
“I don't wanna tip you too little and be an asshole, but I don’t want to tip you too much and make you feel like an emotional prostitute or something, either.” 
“I think they call those ‘therapists,’” she said, accepting the wad of bills he handed her without counting them.
“It always feels weird paying friends,” he commented as they sauntered out into the night air together; “I never know what to do with Bayer or Fawkes either. It’d be easier if y’all just pulled a knife and asked for my wallet.”
“Oh,  is that what we are?” she asked, putting a cigarette between her lips and rummaging around her purse for her lighter; “Friends?” 
“Well, we don’t gotta be if you hate my guts or something Leu, damn,” he joked, offering her his zippo. “Was the tip that bad?” 
She accepted the light and alcohol lent him the courage to loop his arm over her shoulders. She smiled.
“There we go,” she said as a breath of smoke, leaning into him and slipping his lighter back into his pocket, letting her fingertips linger briefly along his beltline. “Now we’re on the same page.”

Almost everywhere sit-down was closed or closing anyway, so instead of sitting in a stuffy restaurant and roleplaying romance like performance art, they ridiculed the concept as a whole and opted for some half-date of eating cheap take-out on her couch; picking up dinner on the way back to her shitty little Bed-Stuy apartment. It was a coin-slot sized studio above a church whose wan plastic sign peeled in the slipstream of passing trucks, and Kato tripped on the narrow, uneven stairs inside, nearly dropping their food.
“Careful not to dash yourself upon my rocky shores,” Leucosia teased.
“You’ll have to tie me to the mast, I guess.”
“Kinky.”

God, she was easy to talk to. Easy to laugh with. She didn’t feel like someone he was only just barely getting to know. Sure, there was plenty they didn’t really know about one another yet: Over dinner, he picked up where their last in-person interaction had left off and asked more about school, risking the anxious cigarette they’d both need—though he stuffed his curiosity about what rage she might feel and just how much of a Mallory she really would’ve been to his Mickey and instead asked properly, finally, how she’d gotten to know Gabe.
“I know he throws an arm around anyone he likes, I mean, he does it to me and as far as I know he’s not down bad, but I assumed y’all were an item,” Kato said.
“No, though we actually did get to talking because he gave me a valentine in 7th grade.”
“And you’ve been pining ever since?”
“You flirt like you’re playing target practice with your own feet, Kato.”
“Hey, sue me for trying to scope the competition. He has the black fringe and everything,” Kato joked, holding four fingers over one of his eyes and peering at her through them like bangs. Leucosia rolled her eyes and reached around to pull his ponytail free of his hair-tie.
“He’s not competition. We’ve only ever been friends. His mom died in 7th, you know, so we didn’t really follow up on that valentine, and then he was there for me through all my shitty exes and told me he sees me like a sister, so.” She fluffed Kato’s hair into his face properly and leaned her cheek into her palm while he blew the stray strands out of his eyes. “How about you and your band? Do I have anything to worry about there? Again about school rumors, but everyone always thought you and Athena were, you know…something.”
“Mm. An almost, I guess,” Kato confessed. “I had a crush. I think she did too? But…we were kids, you know, and I didn’t want to ask her out for real because I thought it’d be a bad time for her later—post-NBK, if you will—being the school shooter’s girlfriend.”
“How chivalrous,” Leucosia offered dryly. “No follow-up after it fell through, though?” Her tone seemed a little clipped, but still—a little hopeful. Hopefully a little hopeful. Kato chased it and laughed off the concept of her needing any apprehension.
“It was never going to go anywhere to begin with! Everything I’m interested in aside from music she finds boring or alarming, and I think the successful-romance route is to go ‘I love you so much that I’ll overcome my violent urges,’ not ‘hey, heads up, if you don’t want to be caught in the crossfire, I’m indulging my violent urges tomorrow.’ ‘Thena and I are just friends—probably like you and Gabe: She’s more like a sister to me.”

Leucosia smiled and shimmied closer to him on the couch, tucking herself against his shoulder. “You make a good point. How did you meet Anarchy? He wasn’t at school with us, right?”
“He’s not competition either.” Kato rolled his eyes. “How we met is maybe more his story to tell, though…I don’t know. He wasn’t at school with us.”
Leucosia pouted. “I hate not knowing things, it makes me worry,” she said. “I told you how I met Gabe. I’d tell you how I met any of my exes, too, if you asked.”
“‘Key isn’t an ex,” Kato clarified, waving his hands and nearly laughing. “It’s not like that. Honestly, he would probably find it more embarrassing if we met because he gave me a valentine in 7th grade, but fortunately for him it’s just trauma history.”
“7th grade always is trauma history itself, anyway, in my opinion, but okay.” Leucosia glanced away, then back up at him. “I really wouldn’t judge.”
“I know you wouldn’t…He was going through some shit, like…drug addiction stuff. He doesn’t want everyone necessarily, like, knowing. Especially right off the bat. Keep it between us that I told you?”
“Duh I will. Thanks for explaining.” Leucosia twirled a strand of his hair around her index finger and gave him a small, tilted smile. “Everyone’s got skeletons in their closets. I get that. I don’t want people treating me shitty because of mine, so why would I ever make a deal about somebody else’s? Besides…a meth problem or whatever bothers me way less than if you guys were ex-fuckbuddies or something. Then I don’t need to worry he’ll steal your heart. Just, like, your shit to pawn.”

Somehow, even as they were delving more into intimacy and history with it, it just didn’t feel to Kato like he was breaking new ground with her. She felt familiar and talking with her was like reminiscing, almost, as though they’d already known all these things about each other and just needed quick refresher courses. They could joke about it all already; rib one another and laugh about their high school crushes which would never have worked out.

She, like him, clearly hadn’t left everything from high school behind, though. She excused herself after they finished eating, and her studio was just too small and its walls too frail to conceal the sound of her purging. It struck Kato as both tragic and…well, thrilling, almost. Her eyes were red-rimmed and sadder when she emerged from the bathroom, though, her cheeks and knuckles pink. She carried herself like a kicked dog and he hated the abrupt, unnecessary shame-distance which sprung up between them.

“You don’t need to do that, ya know,” he said when he emerged from the bathroom himself after shoving his own fingers down his throat for the first time since high school, more because she did first than because he actually planned on it—and there was something like relief or even deeper shining in her eyes when she replied, “Well, neither do you,” so it felt…worth it.
“Mm. Shall we skip the hypocrisy, then?” 

They were awful together. It was fantastic. Sure, maybe half of why he’d really thrown himself into seeing her was because Anarchy had been “busy,” but any kind of comparison in company died quick, because Leu was just…so phenomenally different. Anarchy sometimes acted like Kato was just being an ass for the fuck of it, like with Angela; he didn’t understand carrying rage around like a guard dog and a gunshot wound at the same time. Anarchy could be bitter or righteous, but he didn’t get anger the way Leu did; somehow despite his history he just couldn’t wrap his head around how threatening people could seem; how they could feel to Kato like walking maps of his flaws and their mere presence grated, like a challenge, or sandpaper on skin. Anarchy definitely didn’t get the sex and the drugs and the drinking: Fuck, ‘Key explicitly hated all of it. He’d be appalled by the eating disorder shit, too, Kato knew. To Anarchy it would be some other insane bullshit to tell Seth about and have him try to solve. 
But with Leu…? Kato felt free from judgment in her presence: They could do anything together. Smoke, burn, snort a line; binge and purge, even; more vulnerable than sex, more vulnerable than anything. They could rage against society or humanity as a whole, for fucking them up and leaving them out and making both of them feel like they were too much and not enough and damned to the inescapable paradox. She didn’t try to sell him on some optimistic fantasy or make him feel like he thought “wrong.” She knew what he meant, always. It was like she’d met him in his own world, one no one else had ever shared with him. Everything that he’d felt forced to keep private before, forced to feel ashamed of, was just…just life, with Leu. They could lay in bed beside one another and cut; their wounds met as readily as their lips.

“I don’t think I ever felt loved before,” she said at some point—too soon, like his song had been—as they lay tangled together in her bed, her words as naked and vulnerable as their bodies. “Like, I thought so at the time, but then they’d treat me bad, you know? Treat me like…a convenience, or an inconvenience…They’d just take advantage of how much I loved them and know that they never needed to put the work in to know me, or love me, because I’d always be there for them to use. Or abuse. Until they got bored, or fed up with me having problems…and they’d leave, so easily, because it never mattered to them. But now…Now I know what it’s actually like…” Abruptly her eyes were shining; tears threatening to dewdrop her lashes. “—And I’m so scared you’ll leave! I don’t know how I'd survive you leaving too, now that I know how it feels to actually have someone get me. There’s nobody else like you. I just…”
“I’m not,” Kato interrupted, bringing his hand up to brush her cheek; comb his fingers through her hair. He let his touch linger, his thumb gentle on the curve of her jaw; his fingertips resting on her neck. He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m not leaving. I feel it too: It’s like I’m not fucking broken when I’m with you—it’s like I’m just a person.”
“You are just a person,” she breathed, bringing one of her hands up to symmetrically cup his jaw, too. “We shouldn’t have to feel fucked up just because we are fucked up.”