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 Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 12:13 pm
Playing Furniture Tetris felt all too tedious with the pending assignment hanging over his head. He needed to sacrifice a senshi, he needed to make a martyr, and yet here he stood in the middle of a blank condominium directing Kavinsky over the last placement of various unwieldy knickknacks. Lamp goes here, pen sets go there, and Kavinsky can I get your opinion over who you'd kill if you had to kill someone? Just for interest's sake; it's nothing crucial. Isaiah bit his tongue smartly while he offered directions.
Instead of the glass paneling that he grew accustomed to in his old loft, this one featured lacquered black bookshelves on the outer rim and a rolling ladder to reach the area. On the other side, actual stairs led up into the guest bedroom area that he designated on the fly. His bed remained on the first floor, on the exposed concrete, where ne worried little about accessibility. The downside of this setup, though, was that he would never read another one of those second-story books again unless he called Kavinsky in to help him out. Luckily the other man agreed to staying in the condo for a while to help him reorient with basic living.
"No, those go up," he answered helpfully as another box of books appeared. "Oh, but save Catcher in the Rye. I've been wanting to reread that one." With a hand motion, he dismissed the box.
Still, he chewed his lip with the urgency of time lost. Even though he coveted this beautiful exposed-brick loft apartment for the past month, acquiring it meant nothing in light of his current anxieties. Isaiah fought to keep himself in the present, but the present often rejected him - the movers largely ignored him until it came time to set furniture, and Kavinsky needed no interactions while he shifted boxes around. So, Isaiah sat upon his bed with little else to do but daydream about lost time.
"And bring that glass table closer, if you will. I think it'll make a fair end table." Maybe he was the one choosing to waste time.
Slowly Isaiah sunk back into the swaths of fleece and blankets. "Actually, why don't you take a break for a while? We've been at it all morning." He let the suggestive ambiguity hang in the air.
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 5:35 pm
Moving was tedious, whether it was for himself or for someone else. And Isaiah had so much stuff, at least in comparison to Kavinsky, who could, feasibly, fit all of his belongings into three reasonably sized totes. Even just two if he had to. Still, he did it, largely without complaint, because it had been agreed upon.
And while people couldn't call the Russian friendly, or even charming, they couldn't deny that he wasn't reliable. If he committed to something, then he followed through, regardless of whether or not it brought him any joy.
Moving certainly didn't, but having a place to stay where he could still avoid Ellis, because running away from serious conversations with the redhead was much easier than dealing with things. Besides, people didn't tend to stick around for guys like Kavinsky. So, he busied himself with moving boxes that didn't require two or more people and had been putting books away when he was address. "If I find it, sure," he said dismissively, wrapping up his box placement and passing by the bed.
At the request, K looked at Isaiah with an expression that could only convey a really or are you kidding me?, "I'll move things after we get everything about where it should be first." Nitpicky design could wait until they were mostly unpacked in his opinion.
The suggestion of a break seemed feasible and K shrugged, dusting his hands on his pant. "Sure." There was something in the way the older man spoke, sinking into his blankets, that implied something else, but Kavinsky couldn't think of what.
"Could use a smoke."
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2017 12:28 pm
Isaiah sighed and watched some of his hair gust away from his face. While lying in bed, he felt the slow awareness of his soreness dawn on him, and he disliked the immediate muscle tension it provoked. With it came the exhaustion from the previous weeks, from his inability to simply settle down and take some time for bedrest. The thought lulled him; he could simply sack out and let Kavinsky take care of the rest of the condo on his own. Still, his restlessness urged him to stay awake, even if to only engage K on what to put where and why, or ask him to relocate something after the brunt of the mess found its home.
"The balcony is, uh…" Initially he pointed left, and found nothing more than a brick wall. He redirected to the right. "That way. Try not to smoke in the apartment unless you've got a vape. Which, you could use mine if you wanted. We've shared damn near everything else." Intimate relations often opened many previously taboo barriers - sharing cigarettes, drinks, clothes, small idiosyncracies that gave off an allure of being flawed, even in insignificant ways. Through this, Ice knew Kavinsky a little better than when he first turned up for a few odd fixes at any juncture. He knew K was reliable, that he smoked sometimes by the smell on his clothes, and that he spoke with an accent. He was gruff and standoffish. He liked wearing beanies and knew how to dress himself.
Since then, he learned that K had the cheapest taste in cigarettes, that he'd drink anything Ice offered him, and that he had a great body under all the clothing. He wasn't afraid to be rough. He carried a strength with him not belied by his body. And, he was gifted with the insatiable libido that all young men have through their early twenties.
"K. Before you go, have you ever intentionally done something awful? Not, say, spit in someone's soup or key a car, but something really truly bad?" He knew the man carried a shitty life, so he imagined Kavinsky had some concept of Ice's question. Perhaps, if the man felt open to explaining it, Ice might find out about a secret mob boss history that placed K into the Russian mafia. A stretch, but he could hope.
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 8:00 am
Gray eyes followed Isaiah's finger as her pointed one way, then another, while the Russian patted his pockets, looking for his smokes. They weren't in hus usual pockets, which meant they were in his jacket that had been discarded on the floor by the older man's bed. He walked over, paying little heed to the man atop the mattress as he bent over to retrieve the jean jacket and fish the pack out of his right pocket. Once he checked that his lighter was inside the pack, he slid them into his pocket and frowned at his companion.
"I wasn't planning on smoking inside," he said plainly, sounding annoyed that Isaiah would even think that of him. He wasn't raised in a barn, he knew thinks like cigarettes inside was in poor taste and that, more often than not, the lingering smell was unpleasant.
K stooped to pick up his beanie, which had found a resting place besides the leg of the bed, and pulled it over his frost white hair. "I've spent most of my life in and out of juvie," he said instead of answering directly. "Figure it out." There was a pause and a look of consideration on his dark-skinned face. "You gonna come out with me?" He'd be fine if the man didn't, but it felt like something he should ask.
They were going to sort of live together and they'd been spending a fair amount of time around each other anyway. If he was taking a break, he supposed he expected Isaiah to accompany him.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:56 pm
"Okay, okay." Isaiah held up a hand in mock surrender. "Maybe I'm just a little too used to entitled assholes that thought they could smoke in bed with me." He certainly encountered a handful since moving to Destiny City. Briefly he wondered if such behaviors came with the slow destruction of a city. It didn't matter; K had the common sense to avoid it and object to his warnings.
With K's next response, however, Isaiah found his turn to grow frustrated with the other man. "If I could figure it out on my own, I wouldn't be asking. People go to juvie over all kinds of s**t. My first boyfriend went because he got caught hocking weed at high school. Not like there was much else to do during lunch hour but…" Isaiah dropped the sentence there and sat up. "You don't have to tell me what it is. I just want a yes or no. Lie about it if it makes you feel better." Isaiah figured the other man preferred to stay shrouded in secrecy, and he could see the advantage in it. Mystery retained a specific allure, and similarly protected the person from judgements. Still, he imagined that Kavinsky never knew real connection with another person who knew next to nothing about him. Would there be a chance for ice to know more? Possibly, but only if he planned to stay in contact for upwards of a year.
Finally he slid off the bed to follow the taller man. He was reticent to go otuside, especially since he failed to dress appropriately, but laying about while stewing in his own thoughts promised no comforts. Ice slipped the vape from his zippered leather jacket and followed behind, then closed the slider with the heel of his hand. The wind accosted him instantly and stole away some of his carefully-cultivated heat; he was dismayed to discover himself right about the weather.
Finagling the vape to the proper setting demanded some unpracticed dexterity. He managed it after half a minute, however, and joined K by the railing. "It's a serious question, though." Ice leaned his hip against the pony wall to look K in the face. "Has Blah Blah Et Cetera Et Cetera Kavinsky done something terrible in his oh-so-short life?" He asked, and he raised his vape to his lips as he waited.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:42 pm
"Didn't get raised in a barn Isaiah," K snapped, slipping into a more irritated mood. He hardly smoked anyway, didn't like the faint lingering smell of smoke on him and it even showed in the way he tended to smoke. Though, having spent prolonged time with Isaiah, he'd been smoking more often. Ellis would probably hate it and sometimes Kavinsky hated it too, but the more high strung he was the more prone to smoking he was.
It had nothing to do with Isaiah, though the lack of judgement from the older man helped.
"Bad is subjective. If you're asking me if I've killed someone. No. If you're asking if I've ever put someone in the hospital...yes." K always had a problem with stopping when he was getting into fights when he was younger. Being in juvie had been the worst, too easy to lose count of how many times he'd split his knuckles or broken a bone, whether it was his or someone else's.
He fished out a cigarette and pressed it between his lips, trying to light it. "Why? Suddenly interested in my mysterious background now that you've got me at your house?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:53 pm
"Well, having a captive audience has always been my style." Isaiah smiled wryly. He watched Kavinsky toy with the lighter out of the corner of his eye. Briefly he was taken with the idea of shotgunning a kiss with him, though the logistics of working around their smoking paraphernalia deterred him.
Instead, he leaned an arm against the wrought-iron banister and formed a careful fist upon which his stump could rest. "As much as i like to try and peek under the mysterious iron curtain of K, my reason here are a little selfish." He took a deep pull of his vape, held the breath, then watched his exhale as a burgeoning cloud. Already the cold started to get under his skin. "I've always been interested in the people I associate with, but… The reason I ask is I've been faced with a hard decision. No - maybe it's better to call it a bad decision. I guess if I look at it moralistically, I could make either a good decision or a bad decision out of it, but I've been leaning toward the bad. Maybe that's just the kind of person I am.
"But part of the reason I ask is, I want to know if you regretted it. Putting someone in the hospital, that is. Is it something you wished you never did, or do you live with it just fine, or are you proud of it?" He paused, then laughed. The sound died against the distant buildings.
"I could say making bad decisions is definitely my style, but I've learned to regret a lot of them. It doesn't always set in immediately, you know? There's no shame in it until you learn to be ashamed of it. But I'm rambling again. You know by now how to shut me up." He looked to Kavinsky, eyebrows raised.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:38 am
While Isaiah leaned against the banister, Kavinsky found a spot in the corner to lean back into, arms folded across his chest except when he was ashing his cigarette or taking a drag. Stormy gray drifted across the view from the balcony but didn't stay focused on any one thing. Even though he'd made the man come out with him, he couldn't give him his full attention, thought too preoccupied with other things.
K did glance over from time to time, usually when he was exhaling smoke into the cold December air, and appeared to be listening. "Loose morals are a product of circumstance," he added, possibly unhelpfully because he didn't understand what the man was getting at. He'd only gotten halfway through his smoke when he decided it was enough, putting it out against the metal and flicking it over the balcony's edge carelessly.
He didn't really like to litter, but he didn't seem to care at this moment, pushing off the wall and crossing the small space between them to stand a few inches away. "What's there to regret?" He asked instead of answering the posed question. He didn't want to think about the implications of what he'd done, if he regretted anything. He was an angry orphan boy, regret wasn't something he allowed himself to feel.
Except when it came to Ellis, but that was a whole different category.
"You act like I care if you talk," he said, sliding a warm hand against one of Isaiah's hips. There were goosebumps across his dark skin, but Kavinsky didn't look, or feel, bothered by the cold otherwise. "If you want something. Ask for it."
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 2:23 pm
"You're maddening sometimes," he teased with a smile. "Are you trying to excuse yourself or make my decision easier?" 'Loose morals are a product of circumstance'… Of course they are. Nearly every behavioral choice is a product of circumstance. Even taking a s**t is a product of circumstance. You're just blowing smoke up my a**, K. You could be blowing something else up my a** instead and having much more fun.
"I see." Isaiah stepped into the touch, and slid a thin hand around Kavinsky's waist down to the tuck of his a**. "Most people look hard enough to find something to regret. Maybe that's not for you." Keeping a vape balanced between lips proved much harder than a cigarette, the likes of which K just wasted, so eventually Ice needed to release his grip to readjust the smoking paraphernalia. He did so only after taking a drag, and tucked the tube into his back pocket. Leaning upward was of little matter to close the gap in their heights; Ice caught K's lips and released a smoky breath into his temporary roommate's mouth. He did not linger long; the cold proved unfriendly to his libido.
"Come inside," Isaiah urged with a pinch of K's elbow. "It's cold out here." And it was - even K looked rather cold. Before Ice stepped inside, however, he copped a peek down the front of K's pants. "It's cold out here," he reiterated before dropping the matter entirely.
When he came back inside, the vape was taken out of pocket and placed on the nearest table, even if he found its placement rather bothersome. He sighed to himself and rubbed his arm to banish some of the cold. Briefly he considered bouncing on his heels, but the action reminded him too much of Sid. Inwardly he knew he wanted to drop the subject, to accept K's clever diversions and consider the matter closed. He wanted to pretend that the impending jjudgment hung not on his shoulders, or he could excuse himself from the resulting actions. But Scylla's words still grated on him, and even if he did not fully agree with how she disseminated responsibility for it, she had a point - Scholomance still stood as a facilitator, a martyr-maker.
"If I explain it, will you give me a better answer?" Hazel eyes deferred back to his companion and he waited for a favorable response.
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 3:01 pm
K shrugged, expression bland as he looked down at the older man. He didn't have an answer, or if he did, it would likely be both. He wanted no responsibility for the decision that Isaiah ultimately made and, in his opinion, he'd given his opinion. The world was a series of gray shades and it was a matter of deciding how gray you wanted to be. If he had to pick, himself or someone else, he'd pick himself.
Kavinsky assumed Isaiah would do the same.
"What's the point?" He asked, head bending enough to make the kiss easier. "Regret doesn't change anything." There would be no undoing the damage that had been done and it wouldn't change what happened.
Following Isaiah inside, Kavinsky shut the door and rolled his shoulders back, cracking his neck in the process. "Probably not, but you can try anyway." Kavinksy offered, crossing the room until he got to Isaiah's bed and sat on it's edge. "I thought you wanted to think about something else."
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 3:53 pm
Ice clicked his tongue against false teeth. "Regret doesn't change the extrinsic circumstances, but it changes the intrinsic ones. It's all part of that great big journey to better oneself and all that." Kavinsky soon passed him, and Ice aimed a swat at the passing a**.
He started his own leisurely pace into the space, one foot in front of another on the cool concrete. Bare feet offered little noise with successive steps. "You're right, I do. It's not something I like to dwell on, but I've always been one to ruminate." Kavinsky knew this well enough, he supposed. The pair interacted frequently enough that personality traits and habits became common knowledge between them, even if histories often remained in the shadows of the unknowable. For Kavinsky especially, he supposed, the defining events of his life would stay locked behind his resting b***h face. Isaiah did not complain; he liked K regardless.
"Alright," he decided at last. When he reached the bed, Isaiah climbed easily onto the available lap. "Distract me." He smiled, and he considered the usefulness of false teeth for their perfect smile.
The boxes could wait. The rearranging furniture could wait. The thought of impending murder could wait. Perhaps, he mused, such heavy decisions were better made in the moment. Some peculiar facets of life could not be planned for, and one simply needed to act or react and excuse oneself from the fallout. Yes, he needed to murder someone - he knew this. He did not, however, need to focus on how it might irreparably affect his life. He needn't think about his status as following in his father's footsteps, or earning nicknames from people who would not - could not - know.
Kavinsky was just a man - a hired companion meant to cohabitate and assist with the daily tasks that wearied his arm. He doubted the man cared enough to judge him. And the honest simplicity in that arrangement brought its own comfort - the same style of comfort he trusted in with each of their carnal segues.
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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2017 12:19 pm
"If you let it," Kavinsky replied, looking bored with the conversation, though he would let Isaiah continue as long as he saw fit. "Who needs to be better?" He certainly didn't feel any compulsion to be better than he was, even if he struggled to refuse a challenge or hated when people questioned his competence.
It wasn't the same, he told himself.
Isaiah made himself comfortable in Kavinsky's lap and he scooted back, grasped the man by either side of his hips. One side of his mouth quirked upward, a smug little smirk on his mouth, and the closest thing to a smile Pietro Vladimir Illya Ivan Kavinsky ever gave, while he leaned in not quite giving the man what he might want.
Kavinsky was close enough to kiss Isaiah, but he didn't. Instead, his head dipped and he pressed his lips lightly against the man's throat, a touch so light it was hardly there.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2017 1:56 pm
Isaiah huffed dramatically. From his perch, he held the perfect view down upon Kavinsky, and the other man did nigh nothing with it. While he felt the bare touch to the throat, the move offered him very little enjoyment. K knew he preferred his lovers heavy-handed; Ice could only reason that K was toying with him now. Was this supposed to be a distraction?
Ice looked down on the other man with disappointment. His lips flattened into a line. "Is this what you call a diversion? I'd push you down to show you how it's better done but I'm a little handicapped for that now." The admittance of it smarted, and threatened to ruin his mood. It would, he supposed, if he didn't force himself to press further. He knew what he lost, and was reminded of it daily - he couldn't just ignore it or forget about it, even in sleep. The arm would not return. The teeth would not return. The finger would not return. Ignorance formed no acceptance.
Instead, he pressed his hand to the nape of K's neck to urge more contact. "Come on, at least put your teeth into it. Make it worth my while."
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 2:58 pm
K didn't buy into the taunts, the huffiness of the man on his lap. Instead, a singular white brow was raised almost in a challenge. "Looks like your hand is tied," he said, low and rough. His expression didn't say he was teasing, but the slight quirk of his mouth implied such.
"Impatient much?" No heat, just an observation as Kavinsky leaned forward, mouth pressing more firmly against Isaiah's jugular. Slowly, lips parted and his teeth were bared, a n** of teeth there, lips sliding across skin before he bit more harshly, as he'd learned Isaiah liked.
It wasn't too long before there was a nice mottled bruise on the pale man's neck. Nor was it long before Kavinsky grasped Isaiah by the hips and flipped their positions so that the man was pressed into his own bed.
He wanted more teeth and K couldn't see a reason why he shouldn't comply.
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