Rebirthing

 📅 December 2011

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ: ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴏᴘɪᴏɪᴅ ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇxᴘʟᴏɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ, ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴏᴍᴏᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀ】

Sethfire had returned to work, back to his usual level of fitness after a couple days off; Athena was still in school, though looking eagerly forward to winter break, and just a few days in, life was already developing a schedule for Anarchy, too. He had to go to the clinic in the morning, every morning, which someone always accompanied him to. Mostly Kato so far, like today. He and Anarchy greeted Alicia by name, and Kato flipped through random recovery center pamphlets while Anarchy took his pills and they waited around the requisite amount of time. There was no group to attend today to pass it, so they just sat and intermittently chatted about nothing in particular. 

“‘Bye Alicia. I’ll miss you when he’s all cured,” Kato said, batting his eyes and tossing his ponytail over his shoulder when the half hour wait was up and they made to leave; Anarchy rolled his eyes, though Alicia laughed. 
“And I hope once you two are out that door for good, I only ever see you again at the grocery store. Take care, honey.”

“Bro, are you flirting with my doctors?” Anarchy asked, pocketing his hands and raising an eyebrow at Kato as they started home. It wasn’t too long a walk, and Kato preferred to skip the bus.
“What, you jealous?” Kato asked. “No point: It’d be an ethical violation with you. Unless it’s not me you’re jealous of?” Kato flashed Anarchy a broad, smarmy grin and tilted into his personal bubble with it for a brief moment—then laughed before Anarchy could make sense of what he’d said, and spun away, pulling out his pack of cigarettes. 
“We’re not going straight home, by the way,” Kato said, lighting up; “I gotta do some shopping. ‘Thena’s birthday’s in a couple days.”
“Right, damn…I don’t have much cash on me…” Anarchy muttered. It was maybe a sign of progress that he felt safe enough leaving it in the apartment, now, but inconvenient that Athena had been such a part of establishing that sense of safety, and now all he had on hand to repay her for it with was a 20.
“Doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t be letting you spend it anyway,” Kato said breezily. “C’mon, we gotta catch the Q52. There’s a Hot Topic in the Queens Center.” 

“‘Thena’s been wanting to dye her hair for ages now,” Kato explained on the bus, hanging from the overhead hand grips and lifting his feet off the ground. “Figured I’d grab her some Manic Panic and bleach and a choker or some cool hoops for her helix piercings. When did you get your lip ring?” 
Anarchy ran his tongue over the back of the metal hoop. “...About three years ago, now,” he said. Chey had done it, the same way as he’d done his own, so that they’d be matching. “Not at a shop, obviously.”
“Neat. I did my own snakebites, too,” Kato said, pressing his own tongue against the inside of his bottom lip so the spikes jutted out for emphasis. “You planning on more piercings?”
“Planning? Not really. Haven’t planned for much in general. Maybe I’d get my eyebrow done. Left side, so I can pretend people are lookin’ at that instead of the scar.”
Kato cocked his head to the side. “You don’t like people looking at it?”
“What’s to like?”
Kato let out a small laugh. “The attention, I guess. I don’t know; that’s fair. I wish I had one, but hey, dulce bellum inexpertis.”
“What?” Anarchy frowned.
“‘War is sweet to those who have never experienced it.’ Pindar. Greek poet, actually, but the Latin translation is what got famous.”
“...Right.” Anarchy looked out the bus window just in time to catch sight of the Armed Forces Career Center sign on a building as they passed, and a scowl found his lips. 
“Jesus, sorry, I take it back, I don’t wish I had one,” Kato said, dropping from the hand grips at the look on Anarchy’s face. 
Anarchy shook his head and swallowed the sour expression. “My bad, it wasn’t about you. Fucking army recruitment center.” 
“Oh, good. Our stop is next: We can walk over and spit on it if ya want.”
Anarchy snorted. “I’d rather steer clear, but thanks,” he said, letting the camaraderie melt whatever tension had arisen in him. 

Inside the store, they browsed around rather disparately. Everything seemed to be somewhat expensive, at least to Anarchy, though there were necklaces and bracelets that he could afford. He looked at the chokers hanging up but frowned: They felt weird to him; dog-collar-like. Not an appropriate gift in his book, and certainly not for a girl who’d only met him a few days ago. A few days! It felt so much longer, somehow. Kato interrupted his train of thought by picking up the choker Anarchy had been frowning at. 
“Yeah, she’d dig it,” he said. He checked the tag. “$15, not bad. I can say it’s from you.” 
Anarchy’s frown deepened of its own accord and he shook his head. “I’ll get her something myself, it’s fine,” he said. He eyed Kato's armful of goth clothes. “Where are you getting your money? You don’t have a job, do you?”
“Had one,” Kato shrugged, holding up a t-shirt to assess before returning it to the shelf. “Bussed tables for like, a month, but it sucked ass…quit a bit before you entered stage right. Haven’t applied to a new one yet. Guess I’ll have to, when my cigarette money runs out.”
Anarchy grimaced. “Yeah, guess you will...”

He ended up deciding to get Athena a pair of earrings shaped like spiders that Kato insisted she’d like, and with those and the rest of Kato’s haul, they checked out and headed home.

They didn’t have much to do there other than watch tv or fiddle around with music, which Anarchy had started going along with a little bit, if somewhat bemusedly—Kato, as he’d said, didn’t have a job at current, and Anarchy only had his clinic appointments and group a couple times a week. Sethfire had been encouraging him to consider individual therapy, but he didn’t really want it, or want anyone to have to pay for it—so…he’d end up just hanging out with Kato a lot. 

They crashed, as usual, in Kato's room; he immediately grabbed his composition notebook and started jotting something down—sometimes it seemed like he couldn’t move more than two feet in any direction before being struck by some lyrical idea he needed to make note of.
 “Yo, Anarchy, can you text Seth and ask if there’s wrapping paper somewhere?” Kato asked, without looking up from his writing.
“Why don’t you text him?”
“If it’s in his closet then he’ll think I'm being a dickhead somehow, I dunno. Whatever," Kato muttered, putting down his pen. “I’ll do it.”
“No, it’s fine,” Anarchy ceded. Upon hitting ‘send’ on his text to Sethfire, he glanced up and asked, “Why would you be a dickhead?” 
“Well, usually I am,” Kato drawled. His expression failed to match his tone; he glanced away and his long hair fell  into his eyes. “…My guns are locked in his closet. Sometimes I pretend I’m tryina get at them just to be an ass, but I don’t want to over-ass my welcome, you know. Worry about it sometimes.” 
“He let you keep them?” Anarchy asked, raising an eyebrow.
“What else could he do? They’re my property. And they’re all illegal. Can’t exactly drop ‘em at a police station.” 
Anarchy grimaced. “I guess not…” 

Seth had texted back during the exchange—it turned out that the wrapping paper was at the top of the hall closet. Anarchy typed back a quick ‘thanks’ and paused to turn the phone over in his hands.
Sethfire had bought it for him the same day he went to his first rehab appointment, and it’d arrived the day after: A real phone, not a burner. It had all their numbers in it: Athena, Kato, Sethfire, the clinic. Anarchy sometimes just stopped to marvel at it—he couldn’t help it. 
“Wrapping paper’s in the hall closet,” he told Kato, who looked up and made a quizzical expression at the near-reverent way Anarchy was holding his phone.
Anarchy shrugged and mutedly waved it. “Sorry. I’ve just…I’ve never owned anything this nice. It’s insane…” He still tended to think in terms of how much tar an item was worth, and added, “This thing is like… 50 bags of dope.”
“Or a week in a hostel, huh?” Kato said; “Or food for a month? Seth probably finds it as disgusting as you do. I think that’s why he spends it like he’s dying.”
“Huh?”
“The money.”
Anarchy stopped turning his phone around in his hands to look at Kato. “Is he really that loaded?” he asked.
Kato shrugged. “I don’t have his bank statements. But dude, he grew up in an 8 million dollar house. They had cleaning staff. I was worried about moving in here and being useless and a drain and he just said that he probably wouldn’t have to worry about money ‘soon or ever’ because of his folks. They’re shit people, but that just means they could probably saddle him with a few mil and still get to feel like they’d successfully snubbed him.”

“…I grew up in a trailer,” Anarchy said, after a beat. It made Kato blink.
“Shit, really? I thought you said your mom was a mail-order bride. Isn’t that, like…Don’t you need to have money for that?”
“Yeah, dad used to. He had his own construction company and did good with it for a grip. There was a house, when I was really little, I can’t even remember it much. I was, like, 2. But dad liked to drink more than he liked anything else. Gambling, too. Wish he’d have been worse with that one and just been like those freaks who live at the casino and shit themselves because they can’t leave the slot machine. But he’d just lose a lot of money and come home mad...” Anarchy frowned. “He pissed his money away and hated everyone else for it. The market crash later didn’t help, either.”
“Oh, yeah, guess so…working in construction. And that was the same time Hunter passed, wasn’t it? Damn.”
“Things had started to fall out before then, but yeah, it all went to shit in ‘08.”
“I can see that,” Kato replied slowly, dragging his gaze along Anarchy’s scar. He looked shrewd; thoughtful. “...I hope the wildfires next year are bad,” he said, finally.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Hope he’s drunk in his trailer for ‘em.” Kato shrugged and returned his gaze to his notebook.
“Hm.” Anarchy huffed a fraction of a laugh and a lopsided smile found his lips. “...Thanks.”

He assessed Kato. He was…weird, sort of. They all were, Anarchy supposed, himself included. Kato was just…a lot, and kind of difficult to understand. Athena and Sethfire were…well, Good People. Athena was fiery, for sure, but still—they weren’t very hard to grasp, because they were good. Kato was, too, but he was also bitchy and a little irritating and frequently irritated. Talked a lot, thought a lot. Sometimes condescending, but sometimes…this way.
“What made you decide to help me?” Anarchy asked.
Kato looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Where’d that come from?”
“Dunno. Just been wondering.”
“Hm. Well, I didn’t have a choice. the other two made their minds up that we were adopting you before you even woke up.”
“Nah.”
“What d’you mean, ‘nah’?”
“I mean you decided you gave a shit at some point, you said so. And I know you weren’t down for me being here at first. You acted like a jackass at the hospital. But then you hid my shoes to keep me from leaving, like a 4 year old.”

Kato failed to rise to the relative bait and fiddled with his pen instead, looking contemplative. “I dunno. You’re interesting, I guess. You seemed kinda in a fucked up situation; like, when you took that first phone call...it was just sort of obvious you were…stuck. And you’re fun to talk to—and funny. Would’ve been shitty to have you dip out; never hear from you again.”
“I’m not that interesting,” Anarchy deferred. “I think you just get ‘interesting’ and ‘fucked up’ confused.”
Kato laughed. “Rectangles and squares,” he said. “But nah, you’re interesting. And I know what it’s like to be…caught between a rock and a hard place. Guess I saw it with the call and it was like, ah fuck, this guy needs an out. You’re welcome for hiding your shoes, by the way.”
“Yeah, guess I didn't thank you.” Anarchy studied him. “And for…I don’t know. Not flipping out about shit.”
“Hm?”
“The…I dunno, the sex work bull. I get why Sethfire and Athena freaked, but I guess I needed someone to not act like it was the end of the world. It means a lot that they cared and wanted to help how they did, but…yeah.”
Kato shrugged. “It was fucked up to hear, but it’s not like you didn’t already know it was. Why would I need to make you feel even more on the outs? Again, I know what it’s like. To have people treat you like…you’re abnormal.”
“Right…” Anarchy mused. Kato had shared that he’d gotten to a dark place in school—cornered, how he put it—but hadn’t detailed how he ended up there to begin with, and Athena hadn’t offered any elaboration on why he’d been picked on so terribly either. “What’s wrong with you?” Anarchy asked, only realizing he didn’t articulate the question particularly well when Kato burst into laughter. 

“What did people say was wrong with you?” Anarchy rephrased; “Like, why did they treat you so shitty?”
The laughter left Kato’s expression, which soured. “Do people need a reason?” he asked. “Like, fuck, why’d your dad hit you?”
“No, but they usually think they have one,” Anarchy responded. “My dad thought I was a pussy.”
“Mm.” Kato curled his lip. “Kids at school thought I was gay. Guess it didn’t do me any favors that they were half right.”
Anarchy frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“I’m bisexual.” Kato closed his composition book and shoved it away. “Shit culture. Athena saw it. I spent my whole fucking school experience getting pounded into dust for being a fag, and a dweeb, and a pussy and a sad little weirdo.” Kato looked up at Anarchy. “I dunno what’s wrong with me. I’ve just always been on the outside, and other people can tell, and they wanted me dead for it. Told me to kill myself, told me ‘down the road, not across the street…’ Fucking stupid assholes—even when people were spreading rumors about me and ‘Thena dating, they’d wedge in some bullshit about her being mannish or me being a cross-dresser or a transvestite or something just so they could still rip into us about being gay. And creepy. Fuckheads…” 

“That sucks,” Anarchy muttered. He didn’t know what else to say; it was just awful-sounding. He wasn’t really sure, either, what he made of the semi-homosexuality, but the rest of it helped make better sense of Kato. He really was like a street kid, like Anarchy himself, or Chey; someone with some soft underbelly that he’d been kicked in too many times to let himself define himself by. Needed the forcefulness instead, the venom instead. Even Chey had carried a knife eventually. Sure, Kato hadn’t been roughing it on the ground with muggers and methheads, but he’d been kicked like a stray anyway, and it made sense that he’d learned just as easily that eventually your bark had to have a bite to it, too.

“Guess I see why you got, uh…”
“Homicidal?” Kato let out a cold, humorless laugh. “Yeah. Wasn’t fucking hard. Me and ‘Thena would get into fights and shit; in, like, ninth grade, she stopped me from kicking some fucker in the head ‘cause she was afraid I’d kill him. It was like, who cares if I do? The guy had smacked her.”
“Is that why…the rumors? Y’all going to bat for each other?” Anarchy asked. “Or…?”
Kato blinked; he rubbed his arm. “I mean, yeah…and we hung out all the time. She basically blew up her whole social life to stick up for me, honestly. She dropped all her old friends, so we were sort of the only people in each other’s orbits. So…yeah.”
Anarchy raised an eyebrow. “She did all that and you guys weren’t even together?”
Kato chewed on his cheek and looked away. “Not really.”
“‘Not really?’”
Kato’s posture crumpled further. “It was just…bad timing. By the time we could’ve…tried, I guess, it was too late for me. I was planning my thing, and I didn’t want her to deal with the aftermath as…like, my girlfriend.”
“No follow-up?” Anarchy pressed, curious. The two of them seemed pretty close; how they talked, and looked at each other. They were touchy, albeit in a play-fighty manner, but again…Anarchy had still noticed that whenever one of them left the room, the other’s eyes would linger on the doorway. “I kind of thought y’all might be an item when we first met.”
“No—or…I mean…I don’t know how she feels about me anymore,” Kato confessed. “She still wanted to try for something after I moved in, but…I know I let her down, like, I wanted to kill people and die more than I wanted to be alive and with her and she deserves better than that.” Kato looked wistfully out the window. “I really do hope she gets it.”
Kato suddenly seemed to startle and glared at Anarchy. “You’re not asking to see if she’s available, are you?”
“No,” Anarchy said, raising his eyebrows, unflinching. “You’re still territorial, though, huh?”
Kato worked his jaw for a moment and averted his eyes again. “Sue me.”

They sat in silence for a couple moments; Kato settled and glanced sideways at Anarchy. “...‘No.’ So are you like, fully gay, then?”
Anarchy jerked away from the question, wrinkling his nose and frowning steeply. “I’m straight,” he replied sharply. 
Kato raised his head and narrowed his eyes, frowning too. “But you…?” he started, clearly baffled.
“For dope and money. That’s it. Not my fuckin’ fault women didn’t buy me very often. Fuck,” Anarchy spat.
“Calm down. Sorry,” Kato said. “...That sucks, then. Was it just, like, all up to your boss?”
“Yeah. Everything was through him.”
“...Why didn’t you split?” Kato asked. “I mean…he’s not a crime lord of all of NYC, is he? You said dealers would come ‘poach’ at the squat. Why not go indie and find some desperate housewives or something? If you had to stick to that career. Shit.”
“Wow, I’d never have thought of that,” Anarchy replied, somewhat severely. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. I’m not stupid. I started out as a mule and he acted cool enough for nearly two years. By the time w—I—realized it was a trap, it had already closed. If I take your phone, your computer, most of your clothes, and get you addicted to oxy, then dump you on a random street in the Bronx, you think you’d have an easy time setting yourself up? You need a reliable dealer, you need enough business to afford your shit, and you probably wanna eat sometimes. Also, you don’t want to get busted in case the cops send you home so your dad can fucking murder you. Go ahead. Tell me how you’d do it.”
“Okay, I get it,” Kato said, lifting his hands. “I’m not trying to piss you off. I just…don’t know anything, obviously. I thought maybe he threatened you or something. Did he?”
“Not how you think he did,” Anarchy said. It came out rather serrated again and he sighed. “Sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you. I…don’t know how deep his thing really goes. He acted like he knew what was going on…like, everywhere, with that ‘world.’ Said he’d know if we tried to duck out and take our regulars with us. And just because I know he didn’t own every dealer in Brooklyn doesn’t mean he didn’t act like he owned most of ‘em, or like he could put a dent in the supply for the whole city. How much of it is true? I don’t know. Maybe almost nothing. But the mind games were everywhere. If someone’s good enough at ‘em, they don’t even gotta threaten you to your face. You’ll be too scared to leave anyway.”
“I know,” Kato said. “I didn’t live all that; it doesn’t mean no one’s ever fucked with my head. It was a stupid question for me to ask, I guess, ‘cause, like, why didn’t I just run away from home? From school? ‘Cause I didn’t think I could make it. Make anything of my life, that is…Got convinced I was useless.” He looked down. “Dunno. You ran away, so maybe I figured you had something I didn’t, that would make things different, keep you from being trapped the same kinda way. More fortitude, or something.”
“Fortitude?”
“Guts. Grit. Strength, I don’t know.”

Whatever tension had sprung up between them before had dissolved just as quickly, and Anarchy frowned at the relative resignation in Kato’s tone; his posture.
“I don’t think you’re weak,” Anarchy said, furrowing his brow. “I don’t think either of us are, not really. That’s why they keep tryin’ to tell us we are. It’s the same with Athena, isn’t it? She told me about her folks.”

Kato looked back up and evaluated Anarchy for a fleeting moment, then nodded, a small smile on his lips again. “And you ask what made me want to help you out.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe in destiny, but maybe quantum entanglement.”
“I’m not even gonna ask what that means.”
Kato laughed. “All our fucked up atoms are irrevocably linked for some reason and that’s why Athena had to help me and we all had to help you. Glad you’re here, man. You ever listened to Vanna?”
“Uh…no.” Anarchy allowed the non-sequitur, having gotten relatively accustomed to them from Kato, particularly where music was concerned. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t.”
“Well you’re about to—The Sun Sets Here. Lemme grab my speaker.”
“Alright…so is this something else you’re gonna have me playing on your guitar by the end of next week?” Anarchy ribbed.
“Nah, I’m patient,” Kato grinned back. “I’ll give you three months.”

Anarchy had expected every day of recovery to feel like a slog, but Athena's birthday actually did come up on them fast. It wasn’t easy, going without dope, even with the methadone. Every morning before his trip to the clinic he’d have to sit through intrusive thoughts about how easy it would be to just slip away and buy a bag, and how good it would feel, and all sorts of stupid bullshit that never took into account that he was fed, safe, housed, and happy. Yeah…he was happy. Actually happy. He’d thought maybe he’d ruined it for himself with the drugs, being happy, because it seemed like with Chey gone, there would never be anything again that could compare to being high, and any normal, non-chemical joy would pale in comparison. But he was…happy. It was all so fast. A week into a new life with arguably total strangers and there he was, happy, safe. 

It helped that he and Kato spent whole days together with nothing to do but hang out, and that they all ate dinner together, which still kind of tripped Anarchy up and made him over-emotional. Sitting together at a dinner table, eating and joking and laughing, and no one was drunk or getting ready to be, and no threat of violence permeated. They just sat and ate and asked about each other’s days and pretended to bicker over whose turn it was to do the dishes (never Sethfire’s, because he always cooked) but then they’d all hang out in the kitchen anyway and chat and help out here or there, and if Athena was in charge of the sink, she’d put in too much dish soap and use her whole arms to try and make the biggest soap bubble she possibly could, and they were frequently impressive. Then Kato would pop it and she’d splash him.

It didn’t feel like less than a week. There was a thrum to life with them; a beat. It’d become routine already to hang out in the evenings with Athena and Kato, maybe because it was already routine for them and they’d so naturally accepted him into it. They’d take advantage of the freedom—and it was; actual freedom. After Athena got home from school, the world opened up and they could explore and chill and do everything and nothing. Hit a food truck for overpriced smoothies, or grab candy and energy drinks from a bodega; sit at a park, catch a movie, just wander around and climb up random fire escapes or sit on the steps of a dark office building, listen to a fountain, shoot the shit and smoke. Go up to the apartment roof and pretend the planes landing at JFK or LaGuardia were shooting stars.

“It’ll be more fun in summer. When it’s not freezing and there’s stuff to do,” Kato offered.
“Yeah! Didja ever go to the free concerts or films or anything in summer, Anarchy?” Athena asked, turning her smile to him.
“Uh…yeah, actually. At the beginning, more…” Anarchy shared. He and Chey had; along with some other kids from the squat. Chey preferred the free music; he loved to dance. More girly sort of dancing, so Anarchy hadn’t really joined in, instead electing to watch, but now he wished he had taken part, if only to have the memory. 
“...After, uh, the addiction really set in and everything, I stopped doing as much fun stuff,” Anarchy said, blinking away the past. “Everything kind of became about getting the next dose. I should’ve maybe gone and found…I dunno, ravers or something, made some ‘out of network’ friends, but…I dunno. Like I told you, K-O, there were a lot of mind games going on. It’ll be fun to experience it all without worrying about…drugs or money or if the squat gets raided while we’re out.” He shrugged and shook off the topic. “It’s your birthday tomorrow,” he said to Athena. “You having a party? Am I invited?”
“You guys are the party,” Athena smiled. She gave him a playful shove. “You’d be invited anyway, dummy.” Her smile flickered. “Sethy said my mom called. And asked, like, what we were doing, and if we wanted to go up…” She turned to Kato. “What was it really? Did you hear? I know she wouldn’t actually call just about my birthday. Probably they wanted to see Seth and he just tried to get out of it by reminding them it was my birthday.”
“Your sweet sixteen, even.” Kato blew a stream of pale smoke. “I didn’t hear the call. So…you guys going there? Are we all going there?” he snorted. “That would be something.”
“Nah, fuck that. I told Seth that if they really wanna see me, they can come down here. Sure he phrased it nicer. Sure they’re not gonna. They’ve always been fussing over him living in such a ‘dangerous’ neighborhood.”
“Less dangerous to y’all than that house, seems like,” Anarchy observed.
“What will you do if they do come?” Kato asked around another drag from his cigarette, illuminating them all with the faint orange glow.
“Throw ‘em out the window, I guess,” Athena laughed. “They won’t.”

“My folks are coming,” Athena said, the next morning, when Anarchy and Kato returned from their morning methadone run.
“What?” Kato asked. “Say sike.”
Athena continued to look somewhat shellshocked and just shook her head. “They have some bullshit dinner to attend so they’re going to ‘pop in’ for lunch.”
“Why?” Kato stared at her, his jacket off his shoulders, him apparently having forgotten he was in the middle of removing it until he went to gesticulate something and found himself semi-straightjacketed by it. He disentangled himself and threw his hand out. “For real, the fuck? Are you gonna be okay? We can say you got mono or something, you know.”
“It’ll just be for lunch. I’ll be fine,” Athena asserted. Still, something about her seemed to slowly cave in as the hours passed. By the time Sethfire leaned out of his doorway to interrupt their conversation with the update that their folks were in the car and on their way, Athena appeared to have halved the space she usually took up on the couch; shoulders hunched in, knees pressed together.

She rubbed her arm. “I really didn’t think they’d actually show,” she mumbled. “I better go wash my hair.” Then she got up and vanished into the bathroom, brushing swiftly past Sethfire where he stood in his bedroom doorway. He frowned. 
“So…” Anarchy started, facing Sethfire but glancing back at Kato, “Are we cool with them now ‘cause they did show, or what’s gonna be up?”
Kato snorted. “Oh, fuck no, we’re not cool. They nearly killed her.”
 Sethfire appeared tired; he pushed his glasses higher up onto his nose and sighed. “I did ask her if it was truly okay with her, them attending,” he said, then blinked at Anarchy. “I typically attempt to keep them talking about themselves.”
Kato made a harsh, scoffing sound. “Right, okay. And if they talk about you instead?”
Sethfire grimaced. “Redirect them as you see fit, Kato.” He turned to Anarchy and furrowed his brow, apparent concern thinning his downturned lips. “Anarchy, do remember that my parents are terrible judges of character. They are shallow, self-absorbed people, and I regret throwing you rather into the deep end with them. Should they make any off-colour comments towards you—“
“‘Don’t take it to heart,’” Kato interrupted, finishing Sethfire’s sentence for him and mimicking his accent. Kato snorted. “I got the warning when I first met them, too,” he told Anarchy.
“And were they assholes?” Anarchy asked. “What kind of comments are we talking about? Like, I’ll deal, but—“
“Most of it’s sideways,” Kato said, rolling his eyes; “But be glad ‘Thena cut your hair.”

Their group huddle had to end eventually; Mr. and Mrs. Brookes arrived, and Sethfire went to retrieve them. Meanwhile, Athena finally returned from the bathroom. Her expression flickered like an old film; a jittery near-smile, a fleeting frown; something nervous darkening her eyes, then disappearing, only to return at a blink. Anarchy shot her a reassuring look just as the lock clicked and her folks came in through the door, which Kato seemed to take as a cue: He blew his hair out of his eyes and put on a vaguely tilted grin that didn’t light his eyes quite right and left him looking like a hunting dog, or a hyena.
“‘Sup, Mrs. B?!” he called out—louder than needed—and strode up to Namibia to receive a half-sour simper and a flaccid handshake. 
“Oh, David, how pleasant to see you again…we heard you had come to visit with Sethfire so that he could assist you with your, ah, change of circumstances…Is that yet ongoing?”
“Oh, yeah…” Kato's demeanor changed; his posture wilted. “Turns out I’m sort of a straight up basket case, actually.” His dipped head, cinched brow, and self-deprecating smile seemed to appease her, even if Anarchy felt like all of the above could have been offset by the glint in Kato's eyes. Maybe these folks were so used to brown-nosing that it didn’t matter to them that an ingratiating smile wasn’t genuine, though; didn't even occur to them that it might not be to their benefit.
“You never would have guessed it though, huh?” Kato continued, still with the sheepish tone and deferential head-tilt; “Birthday girl’s always had the keenest eyes of all of us I guess.” He stepped back and looked over his shoulder to Athena, lingering nearby while she made her approach and gave her parents somewhat stiff hugs and received awkward birthday wishes.
Namibia stepped back and gave her daughter a once-over. “You’ve put on—” she started, only to be immediately interrupted by Kato.
“Muscle, I know, right? You should see her box, the bag doesn’t stand a chance!” He shot Athena a warm smile and blinked when he met her eyes, before continuing: “...and lipstick! Damn, it really is a special day—you didn’t use mine, did you?” 
He ignored Namibia's raised, pinched eyebrows while Athena gave a tentative smile, finally, and replied, “No, I know yours is the Nyx: The tubes look totally different. I’m not colorblind.”

“Yes, well…anyway…” Namibia waved away the exchange and instead started complaining to Sethfire about his having had to work on his own birthday; Sethfire made as much an expression of distaste as his mother had at Kato’s apparent lipstick ownership, and attempted to quash the topic turning to him—assisted by Kato, who interrupted again:
 “Yo, you know what, I mentioned Athena’s superhuman perception but then didn’t even introduce you to her newest basketcase!” He waved Anarchy over, forcing him to—rather reluctantly—leave the relative invisibility he’d been enjoying at the back corner of the room. He’d clocked Kato’s apparent birth name and followed suit; introducing himself as ‘Anthony,’ and stiltedly offering that Sethfire was assisting him, too, with, uh, his own ‘change of circumstances.’

“These in-home therapy endeavors of yours are proving fruitful, then?” Mr. Brookes asked Sethfire—or maybe commented, more—his eyes and tone both registered more as icy than interested.
A shallow scowl flitted across Sethfire’s face before he rearranged it back into neutrality. “They are not patients,” he curtly explained; “I am too familiar with David for that, anyway—it would be unethical. No one here is being formally treated by me. I am simply helping however I can.”
“You’ve always been one for charity, I suppose,” Namibia sniffed. She turned back to Anarchy. “Go on, then, tell us a little about yourself.” 
“Uh…I’m probably the only charity case,” he started. He shifted his weight; he hated the eggshell-walking and the nervous, uncharacteristic fawn-like shadow that flickered through Athena’s eyes around her parents. He decided to pull the ripcord. “I’m a heroin addict,” he said. “Recovering, but you know.” 
He got some joy, for once, from having the topic cause someone to recoil. Namibia didn’t bother excusing herself from their interaction politely and instead turned and hissed Sethfire’s name and pulled him aside to have some frantic, judgemental snit at him a few feet away. 

It was a bit of a blast. Todd Brookes asked openly about his scar—a brusque, untempered, “Got that in a fight or something, did you?”
Anarchy folded his arms and shrugged. “Yeah, I chucked a stool into the guy’s ribs, though, and he didn’t get another swing in,” he replied; knowing it was leading and made him seem maybe dangerous, but it was sort of satisfying to see these assholes just as on edge as they made Athena. 

They didn’t loosen up or become more familial over the course of lunch—actually, they somehow sidestepped anything that might have even approached closeness with their daughter: They mentioned family friends having been asking after her—her studies; her college aspirations—but it didn’t come off as a way to remind Athena of how many folks cared about her. Instead, something about their plastic tones and the ambient pressure of the comments had it feeling like they’d been reminded of her by those family friends, and been triggered into now keeping up with her out of a sense of obligation, or something. 
They didn’t say they missed her at home, though they told Sethfire that the house felt empty after he went away, and they fussed over his neighborhood of choice and whether their car would be safe and if he felt safe living there. They didn’t ask Athena the same, or if she was happy there or wanted to move back in with them, and when she answered their questions about her goals, aspirations, and accomplishments not with colleges or grades or whatever else they were fishing for but with updates about her drumming or music, it was met with a curt, insincere, “Oh? Lovely,” then a change of topic and no follow-up. 
They actually asked almost nothing about life itself—what she was up to, or how she felt living with her brother, or her friend, or with a strange man, which certainly was how they viewed Anarchy. They talked at her, more, so whenever they strayed too far from talking about themselves and seemed too at ease with becoming overbearing and Athena seemed too shy, Kato said something out of pocket or Anarchy would jump in to talk openly about being homeless, and being poor, and all sorts of things that put these “snooty shitty” people on edge. 
He had no shortage of praise for Athena, either. Meeting her really had been a turning point for him; he didn’t need to make anything up in order to offer the opinion that Athena had shining qualities in spades; more than any university could hope to teach; that she was a beacon of a person and if it hadn’t been for her, he’d have probably opted to disappear into the evening a week ago and wouldn’t now be sitting in a warm room eating a hot lunch. 

“So thanks,” he told Athena, giving her a small smile. “If the other stuff matters to you, that’s cool and all, I’ll support you. But for me…I’m gonna see you like a lifesaver regardless of if you end up at a community college. Sorry in advance if you go to Harvard in the end and were planning on me giving more of a shit. Or, uh, more of a damn. Or, uh…”
He failed to properly correct his cussing and Athena snorted into her plate, despite her father taking on the expression of having walked into a port-a-john, which he followed with a rather icy comment about Harvard being “objectively impressive.”
“Maybe to some people,” Anarchy shrugged, which made Kato nearly cackle. 
“Yes, people of a certain calibre…” Todd grimaced, before turning to Sethfire; “Like you, you applied—and got in, didn’t you? If it weren’t for your accident—”
“I still would not have attended,” Sethfire interrupted.
Kato laughed again. “You and ‘Thena also hate assigning calibers to people. Me, though, I think it’s fine—”
“Jules!” Athena’s failure to whisper just made Kato’s grin broader.
“I know, you’re a better person for it, no need to remind me. Thanks for keeping me around to see if it rubs off, though.”
“It’ll work eventually, Athena,” Anarchy offered, grinning too, “Look at how much better I’m doing! If anyone can fix him, it’ll be you.”
Kato shot Anarchy a goofy, facetious sort of smile, and both Todd and Namibia were left obviously bemused by the entire exchange—though judging by the sour twist of Todd’s lips, he felt that a dig had been taken at him somewhere.

With himself, Kato, and Sethfire essentially taking turns effusing about Athena’s various virtues and strengths, the three of them managed to edge out most of her parents’ further question-comments about academics or whatever else with praise, or, failing that, by way of Kato derailing the entire conversation in some way or by Anarchy loudly engaging someone about how great it was to own multiple pairs of socks, which soured a comment Mrs. Brookes tried to make about the holes in Athena's shirt collar.

After the meal, Namibia and Todd seemed rather in a hurry to leave. Mrs. Brookes scribbled out a check which she handed to Athena as though she were tipping at a restaurant, and the gesture failed to be warmed by her accompanying, rather rushed, “Well, happy birthday.” 

“Will everyone still, ah, be around, come Christmas?” Namibia asked Sethfire as she pulled on her coat.
“Yes,” Sethfire responded, raising his eyebrows.
The affirmative, unequivocal answer seemed to quite nearly spook them, and Namibia blustered for a moment before Todd swooped in to rescue her with a slightly too-loud exclamation that actually, unfortunately, they’d quite forgotten they would be travelling for the holiday.
“Happy trails, then,” Anarchy deadpanned. He hadn’t missed their darting glances; it was obvious that they were especially put-off by him, specifically. “Great meeting you.”

Athena had clearly noted their aversion as well, and became overly apologetic after they’d left, which Anarchy waved off.
“What? It was on purpose,” he reassured her; “You told me they were snooty and they make you feel like shit. I was having fun freaking them out. I wasn’t gonna take it personally with them.”
“I just didn’t want them to make you feel like…you didn’t belong, or something.”
Anarchy quirked a smile. “Nah. Now, if they’d liked me, that would’ve felt bad.” 
“How much did she pay you to call off your attack dogs?” Kato drawled, reaching into Athena’s pocket for the check.
“Not enough, clearly!” Athena laughed, snatching it back.
“Good news, ‘Key. I saw at least 3 zeroes, so we’re worth a lot,” Kato grinned.
“And how detestable are they, to have you so readily believe they would pay to escape your company?” Sethfire tutted, albeit with a small smile playing on his lips. He pulled Athena into a quick side-hug. “I apologize again for their behavior. Though it does make them far more bearable, having you all about to keep them on their toes. You truly weren’t uncomfortable, Anarchy?”

“I mean, sure, a bit, with using my old name and shit, but…” Anarchy trailed off. It would have been easy to feel outcasted in some way, in all honesty; especially from Sethfire, with his wealth and vocabulary and the obvious favoritism from his well-to-do parents, but somehow the visit from this apparent ‘common enemy’ only seemed to serve to strengthen the bonds between them all.
“I don’t know; I didn’t feel uncomfortable with you guys,” Anarchy said. “The opposite. We were all on the same side. So.”
Sethfire nodded, then turned toward Athena. “And you? You’re alright?” he asked gently.
She nodded, too. “Yeah, I just don't get it…Why they’d come. They don't even want to be here—definitely not for me.”
Sethfire let out a small sigh. “I think they do, but they…fail to understand you,” he said carefully. “They fail to understand either of us, and so they try to…turn us into something they can understand. I do believe they love us, both of us, in the way they’re able. But they are not able to love us well.”
“Ever the diplomat,” Kato drawled. “I do believe they love huffing their own farts with an audience, but that’s just me.” He ducked into his bedroom and emerged with the presents he and Anarchy had wrapped after their prior outing. “If they can’t love you well, then…well, we’re all here to make up for it, y’know.” He flushed slightly with the comment and held out his present. “Like ‘Key said, we’re all on the same side. Fuck ‘em. Happy birthday.”

The rest of Athena’s birthday was far more enjoyable than her parents’ visit. She was delighted by the earrings Anarchy got her, and wore them the rest of the day, only removing them to bleach and dye her hair with Kato’s present to her. That turned into a multi-person affair somehow, with all three of them crammed into the bathroom. There were two sets of instructions—one for the bleach, one for the dye—and Anarchy ended up being the designated instructions-reader while Kato helped Athena with her hair, and Sethfire occasionally stopped in the doorway to make sure no one had succumbed to bleach fumes.
“You guys should do it too!” Athena said, beaming into the mirror. “We can all match.”
Kato rolled his eyes. “We don’t got enough dye for that, even if we only did half my hair.” He made a false-start to touch his long ponytail, averted by Anarchy going, “Bro, bleach.”
“Oh, right…” Kato lowered his bleach-covered gloved hand and shot Anarchy a grin. “Saved my life.”
“What difference would it have made for you, Blondie?” Athena ribbed. “Fine then, though. Anarchy, you in?”
“Huh?”
“Recovery buddies hair buddies?” She smiled at him through the mirror.
“…Yeah, alright. It’s your birthday.”

“You look like a Staraptor,” Kato smirked at Anarchy that evening, standing out on the balcony for his usual cigarette; the red in Athena’s and Anarchy’s hair catching the rose hues of the fast-dimming sunset. 
“You look like a rockstar,” Athena said, for the second time since she’d cut his hair.
“Well, ditto,” Anarchy smiled back at her. The tips of his hair, like hers, matched her scarlet drumset. 
“All that’s left is sounding like rockstars, then,” Kato quipped. “We’re almost there.”