Butane Blondes

📅 May 2014

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ʙʀɪᴇғ ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ, ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ】

It was a relief to Anarchy when Kato started seeing Leucosia. It was maybe a little surprising after all his flings and his bloviating about his attraction to men that he’d ended up with a girlfriend, but hey…love worked in mysterious ways, didn’t it? Not that Anarchy would’ve necessarily defined what Kato and Leucosia were doing as ‘love.’ He wasn’t stupid, and Kato’s occasional use of cocaine freaked him the fuck out, and he could tell that this new girl of his wasn’t exactly encouraging sobriety.
But Kato was happy, and Kato acted like maybe it was love, and Kato was busy more often and thankfully more absent when Anarchy wanted to have Angela over. 

The friction between her and Kato more or less solved—unless Kato was around, in which case it wasn’t solved and Kato treated her presence like a punchline—Anarchy tried to make it all work in the rest of their relationship. It just seemed like he was missing a necessary puzzle piece or two. He’d buy her flowers sometimes, and take her out to lunch or dinner or coffee; and she appreciated it, clearly! But flowers and dates turned out to not be all of a relationship and she kept seeming to want more out of Anarchy than he could really give her. 

He was just never in the mood when they were chilling together, not really; he didn’t know why, and he’d try to have them be going out places or hanging with other people so that the topic wouldn’t come up—but eventually she got so fed up she asked if he didn’t have a medical issue of some kind. He wondered, but figured it was probably just his past fucking with him. Trauma and shit; he’d just spent too long in his adolescence with ‘sex’ being gay and coerced and intermittently violent. Of course it was hard for him now to actually do it with someone.
Not that he talked to Angie about that. That was the other thing she wanted from him.

“Closeness,” she said emphatically, trying to have a heart-to-heart with him in her kitchen one afternoon, nearly two months after they’d first met. 
“I’m, like, a foot away from you,” Anarchy deflected, smiling and gesturing the distance between himself and the iced tea in her hand. She returned the smile but it seemed somewhat tight.
“That’s not what I mean—we’re dating! I wanna feel like you talk to me! Aren’t boyfriends and girlfriends supposed to be, like, best friends to each other?”
“Are they?” he asked. Angela huffed.
“Yeah, duh! That’s why all the cutest marriage stories have that line in there about how you’re supposed to marry your best friend!” 
“God, and I can’t do that, that would be fuckin’ K-O,” Anarchy almost laughed, missing the point so hard it had to seem like he was dodging it. 
Angela pursed her lips; a sour expression, not the thoughtful one of their first meeting. “He’s still your best friend to you then? Even though he’s a bully to me all the time?”
“Ah, don’t cast him like that—he’s been through some shit, yanno, that’s just how he deals. It’s not real, don’t let it get to you.”
“Uh, it feels pretty effin’ real when he’s saying nasty things about me!” Angela spat back.
“He doesn’t really mean it, though.”
“You’re always making excuses for him!” Angela snapped; “I’m your girlfriend but you always take his side! What even am I to you?! We’ve had sex, like, once, you barely kiss me, you don’t talk to me about your feelings, and you clearly prefer your friends over me! Is that all I am to you? An extra friend? I don’t feel special!”
“It’s not like it’s personal, I’ve just known them longer so we’re closer,” Anarchy said appeasingly.

She just glared at him for a beat, at first. Then her frown deepened and Anarchy abruptly found himself drenched in the iced tea that she’d been sipping.

“You are an inconsiderate DOUCHEBAG, Anarchy Keystone!” Angela yelled, slamming her empty glass back down on the counter; “If you just want arm candy then let a girl know that before she wastes her time with you! I was never just looking to be your pretty little acquaintance!”

“You’re home early...What the fuck happened to you?” Kato asked when Anarchy walked through the door, downtrodden and still sticky with iced tea.
“...I’m single. Ang and I had a fight, I guess. She said I didn’t treat her like my girlfriend,” Anarchy replied, unzipping his hoodie for the laundry. “Apparently I made her feel like my ‘pretty little acquaintance.’”
“Wow. ‘Acquaintance’ is a pretty big word for her, isn’t it?” Kato smirked. Anarchy frowned and, after a beat, threw his sugar-soaked jacket at him.
“Ya know what? Fuck off, K.” Anarchy folded his arms. “You’re my best friend, dude, but you’re being shitty. And a hypocrite! Like, people bullied you and your dad made you feel like you couldn’t be smart enough, so now you’re doing both those things to other people to, what, feel better? Don’t you see that’s fucked?”
Kato extricated himself from the jacket, bristling and spitting like a feral cat. “You don’t—you don’t fucking understand me at all,” he snarled, his eyes blazing. 
Anarchy frowned. “Well what else is it? You just enjoy being a jackass? That ain’t better, man.”
Kato curled his lip; his sneer trembled. “No, you’re right,” he seethed; “Sorry the girl you didn’t even wanna fuck dropped your ass and now you’re stuck with the shittier of the two dumb blondes in your life.”
He jumped to his feet and shoved past Anarchy to yank on his own jacket. “I’m going to Leu’s. Enjoy not having to fucking deal with me I guess.” He slammed the door.

Anarchy sat around, intermittently baffled by the afternoon’s turnout, until Athena returned home from Cinnabar Ink, her left arm wrapped up to cover a brand-new partial sleeve of some many-horned, sharp-taloned fantasy creature that stretched from her wrist to her collarbone. The wrap made her look like she’d just returned from war, but apparently Anarchy looked even more haggard.
“Bruh, you okay?” she said, raising a concerned eyebrow while she jiggled her key free of the lock.
Anarchy raised his hands into some palm-up, confused surrender. “I’m pissing everyone off today,” he said. “If you yell at me too, I’m not talking to anyone else without a lawyer.”

“...Yikes,” Athena offered, after Anarchy filled her in about the day’s events. He rubbed his brow with his forefinger and thumb.
“So now K-O’s out with his new girl, and Angie blocked me, I think. I tried texting her, but…yeah.”
“Rough.” Athena gave Anarchy a pitying sort of lopsided smile. “I’m sorry, ‘Key, I love ya like a brother but you were a bit of a douchebag. I was defending Angie more often than you were. Guess I see why…”
“He yells at you, too, I just didn’t wanna deal with it,” Anarchy conceded. He flopped back on the couch. “I just don’t get it. Angie had a point, but K just…he didn’t even explain himself. He was just pissed I called him out. I know he’s not a shitty dude deep down, so what the fuck?”
Athena shrugged. “Maybe even he doesn’t know why he does it.” She patted Anarchy on the back. “Fawkes is going to Eocene tonight after doing Coah’s neck tat. They’ll both be there, wanna come with? They probably won’t yell at you either. K’s always chiller after he talks to Leucosia anyway: She’ll have gassed him up about his songs or something and he’ll be in a better mood by the time we get back.”
“Yeah…” Anarchy scrubbed his hand down his face and sighed. “I guess that’s what he sees in her.” Silently he wondered if Kato’s typical mood boost from his visits with Leucosia wasn’t more due to their shared affinity for substances. 

“Oof,” Athena said, though her eyes stayed kind. “No fan, huh?”
“No, but I’m not gonna give him his own medicine either,” Anarchy said. He shrugged. “I dunno what his problem was with Angie, but I’m not petty like that.”
“Too understanding of him, more like, yeah,” Athena agreed.
“Eh. He stuck out my shit out before, I know…you both did. The Hugh Jass and the withdrawals and, you know, everything.” Anarchy grimaced; Kato had done him the kindness of never telling on him to Athena about the shitty homophobic comments he’d made a couple years back, or about their ensuing fistfight. He’d let Anarchy grow from it in relative privacy, and even if he’d needle the sore spot on occasion, like when they’d first met Angela, it wasn’t like he aired that dirty laundry or held it over Anarchy’s head. 
“So, yeah…I don’t need to get him back for it. I hope his thing works out better.”