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.”