We’re Nothing But Blood

 📅 late April, 2018

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ sᴇx ᴀs sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ, sᴇʟғ-ʜᴀᴛʀᴇᴅ, sᴇʟғ-ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴀʟ ɪᴅᴇᴀᴛɪᴏɴ〛

Isaac had been different from the start; something else and beyond and too much of both, because they’d met too soon and with everything out of control. Kato couldn’t help feeling unraveled when it came to thinking about him, unable to get his thoughts in order. 
He’d been rebounding in some way when they met, because Anarchy had been in love and Kato knew he himself had been too, but he was dirty and sick and he couldn’t do it, couldn’t put Anarchy through that and watch everything fall apart like it had with Fawkes. So he threw love out with both hands and hurled himself back into the bar scene, both trying to fill the new, raw hollow in his chest and trying to punish himself for the pain in Anarchy’s eyes.

There, he’d met Isaac; tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and a scar over his left eye. And Kato had given him his real name. That was the real indication that shit had started off already out of control; Isaac should’ve met him as Bennet. But no, he’d met Kato, Julian Kato, and things...went from there.
It was perfect, really. Out of control and absolutely fucking insane, but perfect. Isaac had a darker nature that Kato relished, almost worshipped. They were both unstable as all hell and able to bond over homicidal ideation; two ticking time bombs tangled in Isaac’s sheets or smearing blood against his shower wall. Because Isaac...Isaac was willing to hurt him. Kato knew the sickness of encouraging it but it was thrilling—no, intoxicating, and he couldn’t seem to rein himself in. His abused body was already criss-crossed by scarring and he invited Isaac to reopen anything he wanted, anything. He’d drive Isaac wild like that; panting, naked, his thighs streaming blood, saying “You can cut my neck, too, if you want. I don’t even care about the tattoo. Do it.”

Of course...it was sick. Kato knew his encouragement was tantamount to throwing a gas can into a bonfire from a couple feet away, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d wheedle in a tone of reassurance: “I know you need to let it out, don’t you? I can take it. I want to take it.” Isaac’s hands would shake sometimes; he’d swallow hard and whisper that he felt like he couldn’t control himself; his pupils would contract. Kato never ceased to push harder from there:
“Then stop trying to control yourself.”
He’d feel vindicated when Isaac got dangerous, when the cuts wound up deeper than intended and Isaac was too far gone to care, when the hands around his throat would plunge him into unconsciousness six times in five minutes, leaving him disoriented and unable to swallow without pain. He’d push and push and push the limits; take a belt lash to the face and demand it around his neck. He’d watch sweat bead up on Isaac’s forehead and look him in his mismatched eyes and say, almost coaxingly, “I want to watch you let me die.”

At some point in their downward spiral together, Isaac had asked “what they were,” and Kato had flinched away from the question in the way he never did from a blow.
“We’re nothing,” he’d said, scathing in tone but terrified at heart. He’d been unable to parse the look in Isaac’s eyes that night, and it had unsettled him. 
What were they? They were sick. They were rabid, they were two vicious animals that got off on blood in the air, on the floor, staining their tongues. They weren’t anything with a label. They definitely weren’t lovers.

Despite their “nothingness,” though, Kato was wracked with worry when Isaac started to seem more avoidant as spring drew on. His enthusiasm had appeared to wane; his eyes looked distant. Kato feared it to be disinterest. He had to work harder to push Isaac over the edge and get him to cast aside his reservations, and he grew desperate to reverse whatever this withdrawal was: He needed Isaac. 
Don’t leave, he thought at him, I can take whatever you need to let out. I can be perfect for you. He felt like a neglected farm dog, whining for attention and willing to rip its belly open on a barbed wire fence or tear apart the chicken coop to get it, even in the form of a gun barrel against his skull. 
You could kill me, you could. You’ve always wanted to kill. I’ll die. Don’t leave.

It was some overcast April morning that it all came to a head. Rain had started collecting on Isaac’s bedroom window; the light of dawn was desaturated by the ashen sky. Kato had stayed over despite Isaac needing to work that morning, and both of them silently dressed in the gray light of the color-drained sunrise. It was Isaac who finally broke the silence, fastening the final button of his shirt’s collar and heaving a leaden sigh. Kato had just laced up his boots and was digging his cigarettes out of his pocket in preparation to leave, but stopped short at the sound and raised an eyebrow.
“Listen…” Isaac spoke as carefully as ever, though something about his tone seemed frayed: He sounded halfway to tired and sighed again. “...We shouldn’t keep doing this. It’s been...bothering me. You know that what we have is sick; you’ve said so yourself.” Isaac pursed his lips for a moment.
“Simply put…We need to stop. What with the—the impulses I have, the things that you encourage—? You egg me on and...It feels that a line’s going to get crossed somewhere, Kato. We can’t do this anymore, if only for your safety.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re fucking sorry?” Kato snapped, his tone starting out hurt and confused but quickly diving towards betrayal, “If either of us gave a flying fuck about my safety, I wouldn’t have gone home with you that first night! You’re not sorry! So what’s the real reason? Are you just fucking—fucking bored of me? Did I talk too much about my shitty childhood or something? Because I can shut the fuck up.” 
Kato glared woundedly and let his hair fall into his face, hating the way that bargaining welled up from his chest in spite of the anger, hating the ache of abandonment, hating Isaac for making him feel it with such an obvious lie. 
“That is the real reason,” Isaac said, his brow furrowing, “How could I be bored? It’s just that I didn’t know you that first night. At that point you were just a meaningless fuck, of course I didn’t care about you then. But now—”
“No,” Kato said, cutting Isaac off; “No no no no, Isaac—a ‘meaningless fuck’ is still all I am to you! Don’t you try to—” 
“I’m not going to say something ridiculous like ‘I love you.’ But I do feel I care about you now, Julian, and—”
“God, fuck yourself, liar.” Kato spat the words like blood out of his mouth, taking a sharp step backwards. Bitter, defensive disbelief bared his teeth at the sudden, too-intimate use of his middle name. “You don’t care. You can’t care! That’s your excuse so you can get rid of me!”
The concept of Isaac being honest felt so absurd that being asked to entertain it made Kato want to hit something. Not only was being lied to easier to comprehend than being cared about, it was more likely; was almost certainly the case. Of course. It had to be: Isaac had spoken at length about wanting to kill, about imagining it. Kato had watched his eyes glaze over as he described fantasies of twisting knives in stomachs, feeling blood flooding down his forearms. Why the fuck would he suddenly be scared of that?

“I’m not lying to you, K,” Isaac said. He looked genuinely confused and Kato despised him for being so good an actor.
“Find someone more gullible to tell it to!” Kato snapped. “I know how this works! No one ever wants me the fuck around! I don’t even blame them so it’s fine, I can give you exactly what you want!” 
He spun on his heel and slapped away the hand that tried to catch his arm.
“Delete my fucking number!” he snarled over his shoulder, slamming Isaac’s door behind him. He heard something hit the floor inside and hoped one of those stupid fucking artifacts had shattered.

Anger never hit Kato on its own and always overwhelmed him; rage and worthlessness crashed over his head like relentless waves and his entire body shook independently of his motorcycle’s vibration. He fought off the urge to crash into a road barrier and derided himself for his cowardice when he finally got home, where he locked himself in his room and cried. He was only useful when being used and now he was nothing; not even good enough to be worth killing, even his spilled blood below being of interest. He turned the whole of his life over in his head and supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, but it still burned like hard liquor on an empty stomach and made him feel just as sick. 
He ignored Anarchy leaving for work (Why would he care, anyway, his attention’s all on Chey, now) and played his music loud enough that he could pretend not to hear Chey knock at noon, with an invitation to come out into the kitchen and have lunch, maybe. (Quit trying to win me over, I’m not buying your fucking act.)

Isaac tried to call that night.
“What the fuck do you want?” Kato asked bitterly, having failed to keep himself from picking up.
“To talk. K, I don’t know why you think I’m lying. I don’t want us leaving on bad terms like this, or with you so hurt—” Isaac’s tone sounded silky, persuasive but flat, the same as it had been when they first met. Careful, unrevealing.
“Oh, fuck off,” Kato seethed, his vision swimming with anger again. “You afraid you’ll change your mind? Worried I’ll be interesting enough for you again but you’ll have lost your fucktoy? You’re a fucking psychopath, you don’t care if I’m hurt or not. I’m not falling for it!” Kato slammed the End Call button and only barely resisted the urge to throw his phone against the wall. He hated Isaac knowing he was hurt, hated feeling hurt, and absolutely fucking despised Isaac for trying to convince him it mattered to him. 

“I’m not fucking STUPID!” he yelled at his phone; at the world at large. He wasn’t. He wasn’t gullible, either; he wasn’t going to let another goddamn sociopath act like they gave a shit until they got the chance to help him put a bullet through his own temple for being an inconvenience. Isaac didn’t care; nobody fucking cared; so Kato blocked his number just as he had with all of Nightshrike: One more name on the ever-growing list of liars and abandoners. 
I don’t need your fucking help anyway, Kato thought scathingly across the hazy city. He reopened his scars all on his own and then sat with his forehead pressed to his desk and his fingers in his hair, blood from his wrists matting the sides of his head, hating everyone in his life for not giving it to him straight what a waste he was; instead forcing him to figure it out on his own, over and over and over again.