Black Coffee, Unbroken Bonds

📅 March 29, 2018; the morning After Chey's Reappearance

When Anarchy woke up, the first thought he had was one of fear; “Please, God, don’t let me have dreamed it all” accompanied by anxiety filling his chest like ice water. He held his breath in his fear-frozen lungs until he made it to the doorway of Athena’s old bedroom—but there, on an air mattress, amidst the junk that had accumulated in the spare room since Athena’s move—was Chey; asleep and breathing softly in the morning light coming through the window.
Relief hit Anarchy like gravity and he was finally able to breathe out as he sagged against the door-frame.
“You’re still here…” he said hoarsely, disbelief still lapping at the edges of his voice.

“What, were you afraid he wouldn’t be?” Kohao half-snapped from behind Anarchy, who startled—he hadn’t noticed his friend sitting at the breakfast bar, too preoccupied by thoughts of Chey. He recovered from his initial jump, though, and settled back into leaning against the door-frame, watching Chey’s chest rise and fall.
“I thought I might have dreamed it…” he said softly.
“Yeah, well, it wouldn't have been your first time dreaming about him, would it?” Kohao’s voice was strangely sharp, with a note of something like accusation in his tone. It was confusing, and Anarchy turned around to face him, raising an eyebrow. 
“...What?”
Kohao ground his teeth for a second, and seemed to need to wrench open his jaw in order to reply:
“I mean, I heard you say his name in your sleep enough over the years. I figured it would come up at some point, but—ya know. It didn’t.”
Anarchy couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind the bitterness, the bared teeth, the almost betrayed tone, and he cocked his head uncomprehendingly.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing!” Kohao spat, “I’m fine! I’m going out!” He slammed his empty coffee mug on the counter far harder than necessary before aggressively standing up and snatching his jacket off the adjacent barstool.
“Don’t throw a fuckin tantrum because I can’t read your mind!” Anarchy snapped back, “What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up,” Kohao replied stiffly, then worked his jaw for a moment before spitting, “Just that, you know, I’ve shared every fuckin’ thing about my life with you: I’ve trusted you with goddamn everything, and you never bothered to tell me about this guy who’s obviously a huge part of your history!” He shook his head before continuing, his eyes blazing and his tone wounded: “I pour out everything to you and you can’t spare a fucking second to go, ‘Hey, so remember when you asked about my hip tattoo and I said it wasnt fucking relevant? Well actually, there’s some dude out there who I’m clearly in fucking love with and he might turn up out of nowhere one day—’”

“I thought he was dead, K-O!” Anarchy cut Kohao off with a step forward and lifted chin; “I thought he was fucking dead! People had told me I should accept that he was dead.” Anarchy paused and pressed his tongue to his cheek. 
“...But I was in denial for a long time. I didn’t want you or Athena or fucking Sethfire to say the same thing—because I didn’t wanna hear it from people I’d have to believe: Then I’d have to face it! I didn’t talk about it because I trusted you!” He shook his head in something akin to exasperation and furrowed his brow, rankled by Kohao’s words and unable to hold his tongue. “And sorry, but—‘clearly in fucking love with’? Like, one, fuck off—but two—is that actually what you’re pissed about? You ended things, K-O; I told you I was willing to try! You shut that shit down, not me!”
Kohao bristled visibly; his shoulders tensed and he clenched his fists at his sides, leaning into a snarl of a response.
“Do you listen to the shit I fucking say?!” he spat venomously, “NO, that's not what I’m pissed about! I know I ended things between us, I fucking—I know! I’m pissed that you looked me in the goddamn face for, what, six years? Seven? And never told me ANYTHING about a guy you’re gonna CRY IN A DOORWAY OVER!”
“I’m not crying,” Anarchy said flatly. The air was thick with tension and he glanced over his shoulder, noting both his proximity to the bedroom doorway and the volume of his conversation with Kohao. Not wanting to wake up Chey, he took a few steps away and moved closer to Kohao, who set his jaw and glared.
“Listen,” Anarchy said, trying and failing to keep an exasperated edge from his tone, “I’m sorry that you’re hurt, K, alright? I am. But my best friend just basically came back from the fucking dead! Can’t you even try to be happy for me?!”
Kohao’s brows shot up and his eyes went wide and furious; from the hurt and anger contorting his expression, Anarchy might as well have slapped him in the face. He didn’t speak his words so much as throw them, with as much venom behind each syllable as he could muster:
“Oh, yeah, no, sorry, did I not mention—?” he spat sarcastically, with bared teeth and blazing eyes, “I’m fucking ecstatic for you! You must've missed my celebratory backflip!”

It was at that moment that the floorboards creaked behind Anarchy, and Chey stumbled out of the bedroom doorway, rubbing his eyes. With his messy hair and bleary look around, he was a caricature of sleepiness.
“Mmn...you guys’re up early,” he mumbled drowsily, “Who’s doin’ backflips?”
Anarchy wondered how palpable the tension was in the silence that followed, where for a few moments Kohao continued to just glare at Anarchy, a muscle going in his jaw. Finally, though, he tore away from that eye contact to look at Chey.
“Me,” he snapped, “all the way to the fuckin 7-11 for cigs. Need a pack?”
Chey stifled a yawn and blearily shook his head. “Mmnph. Nah, I don’t smoke anymore. Lung cancer’s not my thing…”
“Pity,” Kohao snarled through bared teeth, “Need anything else then?” 
“....Coffee?” Chey replied eventually, squinting through his drowsiness.
“We have a coffee maker,” Kohao said coldly, turning to give Anarchy a withering stare, “‘Key can show you which buttons to press.” With that, he turned on his heel and stalked to the door, which he slammed behind him as he left, leaving Anarchy to pinch the bridge of his nose in exasperation and Chey to stare at the doorway in the wake of the rather melodramatic exit.
“...He hates me,” Chey said eventually, sounding more awake, then turned to Anarchy and shook his head. “‘Key, I don’t want to be fucking anyone’s life up,” he said, “Like, I don’t need to stay here, I can go—”
“No!” Anarchy cut Chey off, a note of panic rising in his voice that he had to swallow. “...I mean, no,” he repeated, less desperately, “He doesn't hate you. He’s just…adjusting. And he can fucking deal.” Anarchy locked eyes with Chey and half-shook his head. “I’m not going to risk losing you again. No matter what.”

📅 March 29, 2018; Evening following previous

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ, ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴘʀᴏsᴛɪᴛᴜᴛɪᴏɴ】

Chey was back. That was essentially the only thought that Anarchy had been able to have since it had become true; nothing else compared. He was positively giddy with relief and whenever Chey was within line of sight those were the syllables Anarchy’s pulse beat to: Chey’s back, Chey’s back, Chey’s back. When Chey was out of sight, though, the anxiety started to creep back in; flanked by grief and something bitter that racked Anarchy with guilt for feeling. He got back from work and that anxious, rueful preoccupation lingered, following him through the door and stealing some fraction of enthusiasm from the greeting he exchanged with Chey. And Chey, ever-perceptive, could clearly see the distance in his eyes; hear the incremental difference in the tone of his returned hello and acknowledgement that Kohao had left for the bars.
“...What’s going on, ‘Key?” Chey asked, frowning his concern.
Anarchy hesitated, but couldn’t keep the question in his chest.
“Why didn’t you look for me?” he asked, “I know you said you thought I was dead. But if you’ve been in the city this whole time—you were even down here in Brooklyn for a bit, weren’t you? Canarsie, right, with your sister?—Why didn’t you at least look? Ask around? Just in case?” There was a heartbroken, half-accusatory ache in his voice that he couldn’t hide, and Chey’s face fell.
“I couldn’t, Anarchy, for so long it wasn’t even an option; I was bouncing from foster home to foster home for two years—” 
“You ran from your first one, though!” Anarchy snapped woundedly, “You could’ve run again! But if you couldn’t, how about after you got out of the system? I was eighteen or nineteen too, some of the guys at the squat would’ve known where I was; I was still getting into fights—”
“I never went back!” Chey said, desperate to breathless, having flinched markedly at Anarchy’s tone, “I never went back to the squat, ‘Key, I know I should have, but please...Just listen to me. And then I promise you can be as upset with me as you want.” His voice was raw but honest as he stood up from his chair and looked beseechingly at Anarchy, who swallowed hard and nodded.
“Okay, yeah...I’m listening.”

“...I was fucked up for a really long time,” Chey murmured, lowering his eyes to the floor, “At first I wouldn’t talk after the cops picked me up, and then they started with the threats—‘we can find out who you are,’ ‘we can find out where you’re supposed to be,’ ‘we can send you to juvie’—and fuck, that was it, wasn’t it? I didn’t want a possession charge at age sixteen. Ended up getting one at eighteen anyhow, but whatever. I caved; I told them what they wanted. But even after it was clear I wasn't going back...there, to my first home, they made sure it was known to every single foster home I went to that I was a user, I was a junkie, I was trouble and would lie or steal or run if given the chance. I was fucking watched for so long, ‘Key. You know how they say ‘You can take the dog out of the fight but you can’t take the fight out of the dog’? Well, they managed it: They took the fight from the dog. I couldn’t get out of my shit mindset; I gave up my hope in myself and everything around me...But you can’t think that I just forgot you. That I didn’t care.” Chey looked up again, his eyes pleading enough to match his tone: “I couldn’t think about it any other way, and the way I saw it, there were three options: One, I go back and I’m right and you’re dead—”
“But—” Anarchy interjected.
 “Don’t, please!” Chey begged, “Don’t say ‘I wasn’t.’ I know that now. But you were shooting into your neck when I got picked up, I was so fucking scared for you! And those fucking articles about bodies in the news while I was getting kicked from home-to-home...No. Option one was I go back and you’re gone and then I have nothing; there’s no hope left at all, not without you. Nothing.” Chey paused and Anarchy felt heartbroken at how he had to briefly tilt his head back to keep from crying. He swallowed hard, though, and managed to force himself to continue, however choked up his voice was:
“Option two—I go looking, I find you, and you’re clean and I’m not. You’re okay and I’m swiping oxy or still turning tricks and buying dope. And...and I knew if I saw you, I wouldn’t be able to stay away; I’d be risking dragging you back into that life. I couldn’t do that; I couldn’t bear the idea of dragging you back down if you’d gotten out. But I really felt it was more likely that you were dead than clean so I went with option three: I stay a coward. I stay away, stay ignorant, and I could have hope and you could, maybe, have a fighting chance,” Chey said heavily, looking back at Anarchy through tired, half-resigned eyes, “I was a fuckin’ coward and I know it, ‘Key: I gave up on myself, on the world—and yeah, I gave up on you. I can’t forgive myself for that; it’s a weight that I’ll always carry. And I know I can’t make it up to you.”

“No, don’t...don’t say that, I don’t want you carrying that weight. You don’t have to make up for anything. You made it back, that’s all I ever wanted,” Anarchy said, feeling somewhat cowed, then paused and tucked his tongue to his cheek. The ache he’d felt earlier lingered on, and crept back into his voice:
“It’s just like—why didn’t you come looking after you got clean?” he asked, “Where were you after that, how did you manage it, I know I’ve heard pieces but where have you been all these fucking years—”
“I was convinced you were dead,” Chey choked out in a rush, “and I didn’t ‘get clean’ for so long, Anarchy, that’s what I was saying about looking for you being dangerous even if I’d managed to have hope! I only got clean because I got lucky. I was an intermittently homeless nineteen-year-old and coming out of my fourth fuckin’ stint in jail when I got pointed toward the outreach program that helped me. And yeah, it got me onto methadone and into therapy, but it wasn’t fast, ‘Key! I didn’t just get clean and get better; I was still all fucked up inside. I relapsed twice and did a lot of other shit instead of heroin. It took ages before I could commit to therapy; it was twenty-fuckin’-sixteen before I finally dealt with my childhood! But I did: I can run a bath now. I can talk about what happened in that house and it’s not fun but I won’t flash back. I worked on some of the shit that happened out on the streets but I left when the shrink suggested I get closure about what happened to you. Because if I did and I proved myself right and you were dead—Capital D, for-a-fact Dead—what would the point be? Of any of it? As long as I didn’t know for certain, I was ‘safe.’ I told you; I was a fucking coward.” 
Anarchy opened his mouth to object, but Chey swiftly shook his head.
“Don’t tell me I wasn’t,” he said tiredly, “I was: I fixed my life and avoided closure because I was too damn scared of the truth. I just hope one day you can forgive me for that.”

“No, that’s all fine!” Anarchy said, “All of that’s not anything you need forgiveness for. I’m really glad you got better; dealt with the stuff you did, and I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have snapped at you before about not looking for me. You say, ‘As long as I didn’t know, I was safe,’ and am I supposed to have wanted you to risk that? Your safety, your recovery? I mean, I have no fuckin’ high horse to sit on: I moved on as best I could, too. So of course I’m not pissed at you for ‘fixing your life.’ But…” A painful lump rose in Anarchy’s throat. “...But why did you leave?”
“I didn’t,” Chey said, looking perplexed, “you know I didn’t; cops—”
“Not then! I mean yesterday. You found me, you came to the show! And left. Why?” Anarchy asked, and all the heartbreak that had driven his voice before had flooded back in. Chey visibly crumpled in the face of it, his shoulders hunching inward.
“I made a bad call, ‘Key,” he replied meekly, “I thought you’d moved on and—and left the past where it was, and you didn’t need a reminder—”
“I did leave the past where it was! But who the fuck ever said I wanted you to stay there too?!” Anarchy demanded, feeling torn up and sweeping his hand out from his chest to gesture the pain of distance; “Why wouldn’t you try, why would you go to leave—” 
“I didn’t feel like I deserved to be there, ‘Key!” Chey said, echoing Anarchy’s gesture, his voice strained and raw, “I didn’t want to be touching your life with dirty hands! Me, the one who got you involved with the drugs and the trafficking and everything? That me, can you imagine, thinking I was entitled to a fucking fraction of your time and attention now that you’re out—”
“Of course I can imagine it!” Anarchy interrupted fiercely, “Of course I can: It’s all I've wanted since the day you vanished! I told you on the streets that I don’t blame you and that hasn’t changed! All I ever wanted from you was for you to make it back.” His voice cracked and it was nearly painful to have his hand at his side and not spanning the distance to Chey’s shoulder; any distance between them felt so wrong as to burn beneath his skin, but he couldn’t quite manage to reach out. 
“...What if I hadn’t seen you?” he croaked, “What if I hadn’t seen you and come after you? You would have just left?”
If Chey had seemed crumpled before, he was quickly approaching shattered; he flinched and clutched his shaking hands to his chest, looking both grief-stricken and pleading with his apology.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It’s all selfish and I can’t justify it to you and I shouldn’t try—but it felt like I was trespassing, ‘Key: Like I was meant to be quarantined back in your past with the rest of the pain,” he said brokenly, tears rolling down his cheeks, “It was killing me to walk away, though, it was killing me, I swear it was, please—” Chey’s hands jerked out apparently involuntarily; reaching out on heartbroken instinct, and Anarchy couldn’t bear not to meet them. Chey clung to the contact like a lifeline.
“It won’t help but I know I never could have managed to keep the distance,” Chey said tearfully, “No matter how hard I might have thought I should try to, I know I never could have. Please believe me on that.”
“...I do,” Anarchy said softly. He lifted one of his hands on impulse and only narrowly avoided pushing a few loose strands of hair out of Chey’s face for him; quickly diverting course to grip Chey’s shoulder instead, “...I just...I can’t lose you again,” he murmured.
“You won’t, I promise,” Chey said earnestly, his eyes still glistening, “I’m staying. For as long as you want me here.”
Anarchy felt the weight of the word infinity in the answer he wanted to give; in the urge to strike endings from the table completely, to throw limits and time and change-of-mind into the ether and have them never be seen as options.
“...Good,” he settled for saying, “We should get you that bed-frame, then.”