[ closed ]

[rekt]

WHO: John Murphy + Joseph Kavinsky
WHERE: Heropa
WHEN: Waves hands in the direction of late July, early August
WHAT: Some boys have some talks
WARNINGS: Murder talk, mental health talk, bad treatment for mental health, maybe drugs, idk don't read this at work probably.



[ sometimes the forest is too quiet, too peaceful. too many teenage boys running around, being friends, laughing and joking and cuddling, and murphy just can't stomach it. so they're here now - laid out on the rooftop of some Heropa night club, sneaked out through the Employees Only doors and upstairs, now feeling the thrum of the music at their backs while they watch the sky. florida is warm and humid this time of year, but their sides are pressed together, someone's arm behind someone else's head, fingers tangled somewhere. he lifts a hand to flick kavinsky's nose. ] You were a cute kid, you know that?

[ and it was. enough murphy nearly forgot the things that happened just before he was ported out for six years.

kavinsky is everything that feels like relief to murphy, and while there's still a schism between them that murphy's yet to bring up in real conversation, he's come to accept that he's just screwed on that topic. he loves him and there's no way out of that. it simply is. for the past month and change, they've been like this, together without question, without comment on what was before, murphy just acting as if it'd been glossed over entirely, mainly because he had no idea what to do with it. what parts of it he actually took issue to, what parts didn't bother him as much as they probably should, and how much he can really criticize with all he's done himself.

in the end, it's still a jumble in his head, a mess of tangled strings that he can't sort out, but it's a rising knot in his chest. something that has to be dealt with, and something he'll have to trust kavinsky to be straight with him about if that knot is going to shake free. murphy exhales slow and tired, relaxing against k's side, before quietly asking - ]

So. You get over the murder phase while I was gone?

Comments

[pillz]

[the moment of silence flits through the space between them. kavinsky hasn't exactly been quiet since murphy came back, but he's not as consistently a fucking obnoxious, endless loud-ass as he was originally when murphy first met him, nor as eerily polite in his measures of conversation as he was during his chemical lobotomy. these days, he falls somewhere in between. quiet for stretches, like this.

and then a carbonated pop of noise and motion, like the next instant-- when he whips out a pantomime knife, poses with it held dangerously aloft over murphy's head, and says,] Nee nee nee, [a pitchy mockery of oldschool suspense-horror sound effects, and then,] Why, baby, you didn't think it suited me? [the invisible knife falls away, harmless.] Thought you was coming around on that shit, sweetheart. Something to do with roaches eat anything. Even dead people.

[he probably knows that's not exactly how it had gone between them. murphy's byline has always been about survival, not sadism; kavinsky's stint as a serial killer had blurred the line between the two. kavinsky probably remembers that. probably.]

No like?

[rekt]

[ murphy snorts, rolling his eyes and wrists at the wrist imitating a horror movie stabbing over his face. nerd. ] So I'm a cannibal now?

[ because yeah that wasn't the phrase, but good effort trying? sometimes he's almost certain kavinsky forgets this stuff on purpose. or maybe he really is that drug addled. but about the topic at hand, murphy watches him for a long for seconds, skimming his bright eyes, pale skin, the sharp edges of his features. ]

No, it didn't suit you, because you weren't acting like you. [ he could see kavinsky having some kind of crime of passion murder, a revenge strangling, or just hating someone enough for it, and he could accept that, he thinks. but what he was doing was this cold, methodical, distant thing. stuffed a body in a closet and then came to fuck him like he had to get off on it.

murphy has his suspicions about why, because he knows when k changed. the exact night that it clicked - between visiting him at the prison, and then visiting him at the clinic. something happened in there, and he still has no idea what, but it took the boy he knew and twisted something in him. something that shouldn't be twisted up in anyone. his hand reaches up, thumb brushing against kavinsky's pointy little chin. ] You ever gonna tell me what happened in there?

THAT WAS NOT A GAG POSE I ACtually just hit wrong buttons

[pillz]

[it is evident possibly as a result of kavinskyplayer's terrible memory and/or tendency to do things by rote, that there are certain topics and themes doomed to repeat between the two young men.

apparently gag references to cannibalism is one of them.

but on a more serious note, the matter of kavinsky's previous rehabilitation. mind you, he knows that the other boy had just never approved. by now, he knows a little bit about the story why, too. some kind of psychotic ai that stole the minds and souls of every remaining person on earth, in exchange that it would remove their pain, too. the girl with the fucked up mutant hand. kavinsky looks at murphy, and for a moment-- just for a moment— that clinically fearless, dangerously indifferent murderer is staring out of his heavy-lidded eyes again, mathematically calculating his best response.

but the next instant, kavinsky's grunting, glancing away, a show of indifference that's. just annoying enough to be human.] Are you going to break up with my faggot ass if I say no? [he says.] I don't fuck with your people, man. Did you want me to? Reyes? Griffin?

dhsjklfsjda bless u chinanners

[rekt]

If you touch them, I will.

[ one thing that those six years in the Ring did, even if murphy spent the last half a year being a petulant, anti-social ass: spacekru is family. whatever happened on the ground before pales in comparison. another thing - he's no longer willing to put up with this bullshit from kavinsky, but really, he was halfway to that point when he irradiated half of de chima, and kavinsky and his sweater vest came to plead with him through the plexiglass containment cell.

if kavinsky did try to mess with either of them, just to see how far he could push him, he'd do him the favor of not murdering him in the respect that he loves him, but of the two, on the scale of who's done more for him, and lied to him less, raven wins out. maybe try doing better, kavinsky. ]

But for lying to me? Or, 'withholding the truth', whatever bullshit way you want to spin it. [ he hasn't forgotten what happened before, and he hasn't forgiven it, but he's here, so that's... whatever that is. ]

Nah. Just not gonna trust anything you say until you do.

[pillz]

[hmmmmm. kavinsky might be out of his mind in increasingly new and creative ways, but he still has that scintillating ability to determine what he wants and how to get it. coming in behind raven reyes doesn't sound grrreat, although admittedly, he'd pass up on a few apocalypses for a lot of things. more murphy love, or apocalypse. more murphy love, or apocalypse.

(it's usually at this point in decision-making that kavinsky gives up and kidnaps someone's little brother instead.)

he smiles, unbidden. a hundred shark teeth showing bright on his face. he turns his head to look at the other boy.] Fine, [he says.] Okay, future-boy. What do you know about Pavlov? Motherfucker who did some experiments with dogs. World-famous science from 1900s. You probably would've learned about it if you wasn't in space detention, but maybe your kindergarden is real fucking advanced.

[rekt]

[ raven reyes has not been as in trouble with him as kavinsky has been in the last few months. well, prior to the accidental six year sabbatical. but, it's gotten kavinsky to start actually talking to him, rather than dodge the subject, for the first time in forever.

he has murphy's undivided attention, his brows knitting as he tries to remember hearing anything about a dude named pavlov and dogs and what the fuck it has to do with psych clinics and serial killers. ]

I mean, everyone's great great grandparents were astronauts. [ hurr hurr, academia is not hereditary though. ] Must've missed that class. What's Pavlov got to do with you and the clinic?

[pillz]

Conditioning, [kavinsky answers, simply. he reaches over to skip fingertips over the crest of murphy's wrist.] They figured out how to connect up your basic urges-- pain, pleasure, fear, that kind of shit— with other things. Other stimuli. Pavlov got dogs to drool when they heard a bell, even though dogs in nature, they don't give a shit about bells.

At the hospital, I learned to forget some of what hurt. And I learned to like other stuff. Conditioning. I forgot some stuff too, and remembered some things I guess I'd forgot.

[a beat.]

I always feel like you're fucked off at me for wanting to feel better. [he walk-rolls his head closer to murphy's head, his hollow eyes intent.]

[rekt]

We're coming back to Pavlov. [ because don't think that his mind didn't connect the dots between conditioning and connecting up basic urges and the shit that'd been going on between them while Kavinsky was on his stepford murderer kick. and about how fucked up it is to get him to forget things that hurt, only to replace it with serial killings and an eerie numbness. they're coming back to that, but Murphy needs to address that second part first.

leaning up, he props himself part on an elbow, and part against Kavinsky's chest, a hand over the fabric of his shirt collar, thumb tucked under against his bare collar bone. ]

I'm not fucked off about you wanting to feel better. I'm fucked off about you playing jigsaw puzzle with your mind for it. [ there's a lot of routes to feeling better, and while murphy can hardly preach on them (he's his own brand of unhealthy coping mechanisms), he's familiar enough with this one enough to know it's not okay. ] You saw the shit with ALIE, right? Those people were just blissed out zombies. Maybe that's the kind of feeling good you want, but you'll be doing it alone.

[ Murphy's not following him into that, like he wouldn't follow Emori into it. He'd try to save her, sure, but it's not one of those dive in behind them things. He has too much dirty, sick pride in all that's fucked up about him being his own possession to surrender it to someone else. Too much of him wanting to scream 'fuck you, i can handle this on my own'. ] Nobody likes their pain, but what I have that hurts is mine. Take that away, you get a completely different person. Same with you.

So what happens when you find something about us you don't like? Just pay some asshole to wipe that from your mind too? 'Cause it's too hard to deal with otherwise?

tw suicidal ideation

[pillz]

[kavinsky drops his eyes down along murphy's face, staring at his mouth as the other boy asks the question. his own face, the expression on it, edges faintly toward dead-- blank-eyed, mouth lax, the hollows of his cheeks silent as caves with naught but decade-old bear shit shriveling in them.

when kavinsky is unhappy, he tends to look like he feels nothing at all. one might argue that this makes their fights easier, half the time. at least they aren't throwing shit. at least no one gets sucked through an airlock. at least, at least.]

So if it's that or I get wiped off the face of the motherfucking planet, you want me to feel my pain instead?

[it's not loud. it's low, a drone under the background noise of humid floridan wind and trucks shifting gears dozens of feet below.]

[rekt]

[ all months totaled together, murphy's had about a year of exposure into kavinsky's moods, even if his stint as a grade A sociopath muted and blurred a lot of it. the stillness has meaning, the quiet says more than anything else. the blankness that falls over him like a shroud is a door swinging shut, and if murphy's not quick enough, he'll be locked out. the words might be low, but they sting all the same, twisting something in his chest, and a hand instinctively goes out to cup the side of k's face, a need to keep him here. ]

No. Of course not. [ said with a sigh, lips pressing into a tight line, and the introduction of a violent end like that into the conversation has alarms going off in murphy's head. he remembers home, remembers jasper, remembers monty left behind. ] I'm not saying just suck it up. It isn't just that or brainwashing.

[ what he'd come into this conversation wanting to impart is unraveling quickly, fear creeping further and further through him, under his skin and up his throat. unconsciously, murphy's hands start to fidget, brushing the short hair by k's ear, rolling the fabric of his shirt between his fingers, words starting to ramble somewhat. ]

Look - if you want a doctor, get a doctor, a real one. Do the therapy, get some pills, I'll even help you find one. Go with you if you want. I just — [ there's an aching strain that pulls at his voice, throat feeling tight, and murphy instinctively shuts it down, swallowing it back. were this anything else, anyone else, he'd say fuck it and leave at this point. that's the line - when he skitters too close to things too frightening for him, too real, too painful. but joseph kavinsky means the entire fucking universe to him. he'd rather ruin himself than lose him.

tense silence hangs around him as he stills against his lover, murphy feeling heat and shame crawling up his chest and neck, the pressing want to retreat, but he pulls himself closer, up against kavinsky's chest, legs tangled together, and hands framing his face. bringing his forehead down to touch kavinsky's murphy's eyes are still closed (it's easier if he doesn't have to see), and his voice is a quiet, barely there thing. ]

I'm scared. [ he chokes out, fingertips digging in at the sides of kavinsky's cheekbones unintentionally hard. he swallows, voice a rasp. ] I don't wanna lose you. Any part of you.