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 Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 7:50 pm
Kavinsky grunted in what could only be assumed to be thanks when Isaiah lit his smoke for him, taking a drag and looking at the man from the corner of his eye when he was leaned into. "Ellis is family, more or less." He said, head tipping back to blow the smoke into the air. "Don't see eye to eye on much, but he's always there picking me up when I pick fights."
Besides Baba, Ellis was the only one who stuck around which made him special.
''Sides, he's not my type." Though he wouldn't have been surprised if people thought they were an item, if only because K was softer around Ellis.
When Isaiah shifted, so did Kavinsky and he moved to drape his unoccupied arm across Isaiah's shoulders and, instinctively, pulled him in a little closer.
"If it doesn't work and can't be fixed, best to move on." He knew it wasn't that simple. "But I get it." He thought about the deaths of both of his parents and what it made him feel like every time those dates rolled around. He wouldn't want something sad on his birthday either. "Sounds like you don't fit."
He let his cigarette be stolen, giving Isaiah you sure look before shrugging. "I like you enough to spend time around you. Should count for something."
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Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:25 pm
Failing to see eye to eye sounded closer to a familial mark than Isaiah imagined it could be. How often had he and his parents lacked similar points of view? And yet, in light of his father’s transgressions, he reconsidered the possibility of a pattern. ‚Father‘ was a term of biological relation to Isaiah more than a family role; he would’ve kept it at that, but America’s patrilineal systems branded him with his father’s family name. And since Zähne became tragic irony if kept, he only had Varney as a fallback.
„Seeing eye-to-eye gets boring after a while.“ Isaiah confirmed simply. Kavinsky added weight to his shuolders, and with it came welcome heat. He offered no objections. „Not at all sucks just as much.“ Isaiah never puzzled out the type of person Kavinsky would respect; he supposed by context that K preferred someone with tolerance for his volatility. Perhaps stupidity, too? Most people only tolerated so many of the same mistake before they moved on; was Ellis dense, or did he simply not care to enforce those kinds of rules? Were it not beyond proper social mores, Isaiah would’ve liked to meet this person.
He greatly enjoyed Kavinsky’s habit of not prying too far into personal matters. Isaiah considered that why they fell into step so easily after the first washer break. Isaiah tried not to chuckle about how the second break was entirely their fault.
No, he and Gwen didn’t fit. They still remained worlds apart in their experiences and views. The old adage of ‚opposites attract‘ proved heinously false in their case.
In taking a drag, Isaiah wrinkled his nose and coughed. The cigarette was quickly returned, alongside an incredulous look. He declined to comment further. „Since you like spending time around me, I guess i don’t have to pay you for this.“ Or your awful taste in cigarettes.
„I bet you’d make a great hitman. Not talkative, pretty terse, don’t ask too many questions. Someone just needs to teach you to shoot.“ Isaiah formed a gun with his hand and placed it beneath K’s chin. It fired with a flick of his wrist.
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Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:37 pm
Private as he was, Kavinsky wasn't going to lend too much more in the way of information about his relationship with Ellis because it would require him getting into the nitty gritty details of his past. While much of his disposition and demeanor explained the type of person he was, much was shrouded in mystery.
Even now, he could imagine the whispers of the adults when he sat outside the principal's office with bloody knuckles because he'd punched some kid for calling Baba crazy. It wasn't just insults that received a fist to the face, it was pity too. Poor little Pietro.
There was a reason why he never let anyone call him anything other than his last name or some variation of it anymore beside Ellie.
"Difference is knowing how much you're willing to bend." From what he'd gathered, Gwen was willing to bend too much and that made her a person who was too malleable. Malleable people weren't people he wanted in his life because there wouldn't be honesty, not true honesty anyway and wasn't the point of being with someone that you wanted to be with them and not someone who changed just to please you?"
Taking his cigarette back, there was a slight snort as he shook his head. "Can't always afford better ones." There was a reason he was always working.
"Consider it a crappy birthday present. Here you go, you get the gift of my time." It was said incredibly dryly with only the barest hint of amusement in his voice. "Who's to say I don't know how to shoot. Russian inventor."
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Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 8:37 am
Isaiah grunted affirmatively. There wasn’t much enjoyment in a doormat for him, and while Gwen had some spunk in her objections, she ultimately crumbled into one. He missed having relationships where he was the one getting exposed to new things rather than the other way around, but a Suburban Queen offered nothing he would want to take. He made a good shot of it, however, and knew for any future conquests that Normal wasn’t an option - that Sheltered needed to look elsewhere.
Ice glared at Kavinsky, unimpressed. Budget a little better, honey, and you’ll get some decent toys. He sat up just enough to fish for his own pack, and bobbed for a cigarette with his teeth. Another flick of the lighter and he could indulge in something marginally better than floor trash rolled into a cancer stick. „Get richer clients,“ he criticized around a puff. He knew it wasn’t that simple, that clawing his way out of paycheck-to-paycheck living required immense cleverness, creativity, a massive amount of luck, and a willingness to risk his own life in coming to Destiny City. He paid for it, too - his apartment burned, and the debris totaled his car. Any attempts Kavinsky made to move up from the poorletariat likely met with disaster.
Mirth produced a snort. Crappy birthday present indeed. „Good. You can take me to my dentist appointment Monday.“ If Kavinsky could drive, then renting a car for the day proved an easy solution for the distance. If not, then Isaiah was staring down an hour commute or longer, pending wait times. If Kavinsky couldn’t drive… Well, hopefully they won’t get pulled over, because Isaiah would make him drive regardless.
There wasn’t much else he could lose.
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Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 8:54 am
This was an off week for him, with the job flow dropping considerably after all of the holiday parties had trickled down to a minimal and with many being more frugal and scrouge like than before with the pending gift buying holidays. Even now, work at the shop had become minimal at best which left K wondering if he'd have to rely on Ellis and his three to four jobs to pick up the slack if he failed to provide his full half of rent.
"I would, but someone's been demanding a lot of my time lately." It was clearly said in jest because not once had Kavinsky said no to a call from Isaiah. He'd even sought him out once, an unusual action for a man like him. "Doesn't matter, don't smoke them enough to care about quality."
Twice a week was the norm for him, if even that. A casual habit he'd developed in the days where he'd been skipping class to pursue things that mattered. Like earning an income. Besides, Kavinsky had never lived a life where money wasn't a problem, not after his mother died and his father was cast into an outsider role by all of the communities they'd lived in.
"Fine," he agreed, shrugging his shoulder and adjusting his position so the bark wasn't digging into his back as much, likely jostling Isaiah as he did so. "Don't have a car though." Insurance was too expensive right now.
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Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 3:15 pm
“Charge him more, then,“ Isaiah quipped back. He hoped Kavinsky didn’t take him seriously on that - thanks to the Negaverse, he would remain short on cash unless he sold his business. His apartment, his car, parts of his own body… To stand against them, or even in neutrality, cost far too much to be feasible. Isaiah shuddered to think what ‚bankruptcy‘ meant in their eyes. Would he become little more than a youma stalking the streets, left to serve them without objection? Or would his starseed populate their coffers and await a terrible fate in their stomachs?
He knew he couldn’t continue living like this, however. The knot in his stomach never faded, and while going out raised his fears far higher, staying inside promised a slow return to insanity. He could leave DC, he knew, but what guarantee was there that Negaverse agents wouldn’t follow him? What if he moved into an area nigh dominated by them? If he stayed, his injuries left him easily identifiable - even if he never powered up again, they would find him by virtue of stalking medical records. He could prevent this if he canceled on receiving dentures, but even then, what quality of life was left? If he could but work with them for a time, maybe he could soften their eye and bide his few days until he could manage some escape.
Or, more likely, he wove himself too tightly into his own web of deceit. There he would remain until Metallia devoured him, one way or another.
The anxiety refused to cease. Simmering in his gut, it grew to wrench his intestines together and leave him hunched from their pain. A thin sheen of sweat appeared on his brow when panic threatened to overtake him. He swallowed, and called to mind methods of grounding. Perhaps this was enough.
„I’ll rent a car,“ he added at last to Kavinsky’s comment. Sitting up, he struggled to his feet with the help of Kavinsky’s shoulder. „Take me home.“
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Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 10:29 pm
"Been thinking about it," he shot right back, smirking a little.
The playfulness slipped away as he watched something process through Isaiah's mind. Telling what the man was thinking about was nigh impossible and he knew so little about Isaiah's life outside of the odd jobs and slight conversations that he couldn't have even hypothesized.
Kavinsky doubted that it was about the lover he was leaving, because that would have shown more readily as they'd talked about it and when Isaiah struggled to stand, which K let happen and didn't offer help outside of the hand that slid down from the man's shoulder to his back.
Snuffing the last dredges of his cigarette, he put it out against the trunk of the tree and rose after. Dusting his hands off he cocked his head, brow arched in curiosity but nothing was said.
It wasn't his business. Some times a man just wanted to brood and not be bothered about why.
"All the way?" He asked, stepping in front of Isaiah and crouching so the man could pick however he wanted to be carried, be it his shoulders or a piggyback. "Surprised you tired so soon."
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Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 1:08 pm
Perhaps it fell to Isaiah to point out the obvious. „Pain is hard.“ He settled onto Kavinsky’s back without qualm. The anxiolytics he received sapped the rest of his tolerance for movement; Isaiah felt bone-weary and exhausted after only a few hours outside. Earlier in the week, he hardly made it to coffee with the other man. Now, he managed a farther distance, despite his leg acting up in the colder climate. Briefly Isaiah wondered when brain transplants became possible - operating a braindead model’s body sounded like a dream at this stage.
Isaiah hummed thoughtfully. „To the bus stop. I’ll walk from there.“ His mind remained preoccupied with appraisals of threats, tales of the bogeyman, sights within Negaspace itself. The more he considered it, the more he realized that such dwellings could age a man in record time, leave him old and brittle against the plight of the world. They saw what they were up against in the Negaverse’s bowels - youma for miles, and just as many agents. And how many of Order came to fight? How many died down there, thinking they could make a difference? What came of their efforts was only a dent, and even that smoothed away in due time. Now he hardly noticed a change in their ranks, save that they grew angrier.
He knew world comparisons to this fight. He wondered when the concentration camps would come.
But he found no point in dwelling over futility. That’s all this was - care or recklessness only affected the arrival of the inevitable, whether soon or far in the future. All his precautions about the alleys, avoiding doctors, and telling Kavinksy to drop him at unrelated locations only meant that he would spend longer in hiding from his fate. Was there not more to it than that? Knights had the Code, an entity that distributed to them its power, and it shared parallels with Metallia. Could they not match the other army?
As Isaiah sat silent against K’s back, he mulled over a next course of action. The Code must have answers. But could he speak to it on Olympus again? Would he need to reclaim his signet ring for another conversation? Bitterly, he imagined so.
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