Don’t Trust A Matchmaker With A Zippo In His Pocket

📅 April 2014

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ʙʀɪᴇғ ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ】

Anarchy was frustrated.
No, that was wrong. Kato was frustrating. 

There was nothing that would change the fact that Kato had been instrumental in Anarchy’s rescue and recovery; the fact that they’d spent nearly every waking hour together for essentially the first full year after Anarchy’d been rescued, maybe longer, and still spent far more time within earshot of each other than out—even with Anarchy trying to find more work these days. They were close, and when they had disagreements they’d always work them out. Anarchy had put effort into being better as a person after they’d had a physical fight a while back and their friendship had somehow seemed stronger, after.

But Kato could be fucking frustrating.

Anarchy couldn’t consistently parse quite why, but his friend seemed to have times where he just needed to push buttons. Sometimes there would turn out to be an explanation, like he’d felt slighted and was fight-picking; sometimes it would be as obviously performative as it had been out on the streets when kids were jockeying for a place in the hierarchy. But sometimes it just seemed like he would because he could. Or maybe old wounds still stung sometimes so he found ways to share the sore spot.

This time they were hanging out at Eocene, post-show, letting the music crowd drain out and the nightclub crowd drain in. Kato respected Astra enough to not argue with her when she’d informed him that her bartenders would be alerted to the fact that he was under 21, just like they had been with Gabe and Ian, but he had no issue finding and using a loophole; he’d gotten plenty of practice in being “the twink who never buys his own drink” as he put it, and was sipping liquor he’d flirted out of some guy when he sauntered back over to Anarchy that evening. He didn’t miss the unimpressed expression.

“Is it still the gay part about this that turns you off, ‘Key? ‘Cause I’m getting doubtful,” Kato said, smirking.
Anarchy tried to wave away the bait. “It’s all of it, man, c’mon. You know Astra wouldn’t be cool with it. How old was the guy who bought you the drink, anyway? What’s he look like?” Anarchy frowned; how Kato described some of his previous bar encounters had made his hook-up partners sound patently predatory, and Anarchy wanted to be aware if there was some creep looking for where the kid he wanted to grope had slipped off to.
Kato just chuckled.
“Young for me, honestly, probably twenties. He wasn’t very good looking, but he was sweet. Maybe I’ll find him again if I’m bored. Why? You worried you have some competition?” Kato abruptly leaned into Anarchy’s space, with coy eyes and a smarmy curl to his lips. Anarchy shoved him back into his own barstool.
“I’m not gay, dude, fuck off with that.”
Kato laughed again instead of apologizing.
“Okay, right. Who’s the hottest chick in here, then?” he asked.

It was said like a ‘gotcha’ and Anarchy curled his lip, but the idea of not engaging made his stomach turn, in case Kato took it as not moral high ground, but proof of his supposed secret homosexual tendencies. He scanned the room and gestured casually to a curvy blonde girl a little ways down the bar, talking to her friends: Her long, goldilocks-coloured hair and short pink skirt made her look the part of a 2000’s TV-show love interest anyway.

“Her,” Anarchy said.
Kato turned and seemed to scrutinize the girl for a moment, making an indecipherable expression but slowly nodding.
“...Yeah, she’s cute,” he said slowly. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, you, in the pink skirt? My friend thinks you’re a knock-out!” he called, gesturing to Anarchy as soon as the girl turned to look. 
“Oh my fuckin’ god,” Anarchy mumbled, only barely resisting the urge to hide his face in his hands and instead shooting a glare at Kato and what he hoped was an apologetic smile at the girl. She looked less irate than he expected, though, and gave him a swift look-over as her two smiling friends tittered into her ear. She sauntered over and gave Anarchy another up-and-down, pursing her lips and briefly pressing the rim of her drink against them as if in thought.
“Like, for actual?” she asked him, a vaguely yuppie sort of lilt her voice that complemented her bouncy walk and failed to grate. She was easily over a foot shorter than him, doll-faced and cute, with big eyes and a ‘soft’ figure; the type of California-looking girl Anarchy could easily have imagined ending up with if he’d never left the West Coast.

“Uh, yeah, like, he’s puttin’ me on the spot like an ass but he told me to point out the hottest girl in the room, and...seems like it’s you, right?” Anarchy offered, casually hooking a thumb in his pocket, smiling, and trying his best not to betray how awkward the situation felt. He appeared to be succeeding; a self-conscious sort of smile bloomed across the girl’s face and her shoulders shimmied with the compliment. 
“Seems like it’s me!” she said happily, stepping into his space and batting her eyes. “Well, what’s your name, then, handsome? I’m Angela. You can call me Angie though.”
“Angie, alright. I’m Anarchy. My friends call me ‘Key, though.”

“Well, this is working out great,” Kato said, clapping his hands together. “I’ll let you two chill, then. Ask him what it’s like to be in a band, huh, Angela?” 
Angela blinked up at Anarchy, undeniably more taken; “You’re in a band? Do you play the guitar? Do you sing?”
Kato grinned like the Cheshire cat and vanished into the crowd, leaving Anarchy to acknowledge as humbly as he could, that yes, he played bass guitar, and sure, he sang a bit, but mostly he did unclean vocals, and that yeah, it “was, like, a screamo band or something.”

Fortunately Angela didn’t seem turned off by that, despite her admitted music taste leaning more towards pop. She just seemed delighted by his guitar playing and his height and the fact that he had a workout routine. 
She took him over to say hi to her girlfriends, both of whose names immediately fell out of Anarchy’s head but who clearly had Angie’s best interests at heart and launched into inquiries about what he did for a living and how old he was, while casting glances at his scar but thankfully not outright interrogating him over it.
Gig work; and 19, a month away from 20, he answered their questions honestly; Which is the only reason I haven’t offered to buy you a drink yet, Angie, other than you already having one. After tittering over his age for a moment but apparently finding it acceptable, they’d asked if he was there for the music instead of the bar, then—and he’d said yes, in a way, through a half-self-conscious smile: His band had just played an opening set a couple hours ago.

“So, it’s like, a real band?!” Angela had squeaked, rather delightedly; “I’ll have to come and see you next time!”
“Kinda thinking we could see each other again sooner than that,” Anarchy said, crossing his fingers that he sounded smoother than he felt; “I gotta pack my equipment home tonight, but maybe...I could get your number?”

She readily added her number to his phone with a lipstick mark emoji beside her contact name and texted herself a winky face while casting him a flirtatious smile that felt like a shot of adrenaline straight to the ego; he hung around with a grin on his face for as long as he could, answering questions about music and his tattoos and listening to sorority drama he couldn’t parse until Kato texted him asking him where the fuck he was, at which point he shot Angela a departing smile and gave her a quick, one-armed hug.
 “Gotta run,” he said apologetically, “Band’s impatient. Great meeting you tonight, though, Ang. I’ll text you.”
As he left, he overheard one of her friends fail to whisper, “Not gonna lie, I wouldn't mind helping him ‘pack his equipment’ home,” followed by a bunch of giggling. 

There was a spring in his step when he walked through the band room door and he swung to shoulder-check Kato as he passed him, getting a playful shove in return.
“Took you long enough, asshole,” Kato said; “Seth’s been the one helping Athena with her drumset.” 
“Yeah, well, I was talking to a girl,” Anarchy shrugged. “Got Angie’s number. Might see her again, who knows?”
“For real? You’re gonna try for it?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Oh, and—Thanks for being my wingman.” Anarchy clapped Kato on the back. 

It wasn’t often he managed to leave his uncannily quick friend wordless, but he’d finally done it. He relished the chance to soak it in.

—

He ended up seeing Angela again the next day. He went out to her campus and they got coffee and walked and talked about her classes, and her friends, and he supplied some funny anecdotes from conversations within his social circle but mostly just listened. It was nice, it felt like something else to be walking around with a girl on his arm. So he asked her out again, and she started inviting him out—and over—and one day she introduced him as her boyfriend and hey—! It was happening. 
It was cool to end up with a girlfriend. Like, it was new, and Anarchy kept not quite knowing what he was doing or what to talk about, but women were supposed to be complicated, right? He was gonna fumble a bit. But it was neat! It felt good, whether it was taking her to the movies or standing with her while she window-shopped or mindlessly agreeing that whichever zoo animal she was looking at absolutely was either “the cutest thing” or “totally creepy looking.” 

He did have to talk about himself eventually; with Angela or with her friends, who had fewer qualms about prodding him for information. He wore mostly long sleeves around them and needless to say, didn’t mention his daily trips to the methadone clinic at all—that would certainly have been too juicy a piece of gossip to not spread around and form opinions about. Still, they found other things to ask after. The dog-tags were his brother’s. Yes, his brother was dead. A friend had done his tattoos. No, he hadn’t gone to any of those high schools they mentioned—he was from Fresno, and actually, had never gone to any high school. He did mostly manual labor right now. You know how the job market is.

Angela’s friends were polite enough to talk around his scar, at least to his face, but their eyes spoke for them—circumspect glances that made Anarchy feel self-conscious and gossiped about. Judging by her college conversations in his company, Angela could power the rumor mill with the best of them—never unkindly, though, which afforded Anarchy some comfort. Even when it came to cheating scandals, she’d often ask questions about all the involved parties and their respective emotions; the closest she came to shit-talking was in regards to nigh-indesputible creeps. It did reassure him that the entertainment value of the gossip for her seemed to be the situations themselves and not in having something over on other people…and the fact that she waited until they were alone to really ask him about himself.

“So, we’re like, kind of serious now,” she said, the two of them post-gaming up in her apartment after an evening out with her friends. “Am I allowed to ask about the, you know…” she trailed her finger across her eye and down her cheek. “People have been wondering. Is it from, like, a bar fight or something?”
“Ah, I wish…” Anarchy spun his can of hard seltzer around on her coffee table and looked at it instead of her. “My dad was an alcoholic,” he said.
“Oh,” Angela squeaked.
“He got really drunk one night after my brother died and slashed me with a broken bottle.” Anarchy frowned and glanced at Angela, who looked vaguely stricken. “I don’t really care if people know that. Like, you can tell people—I just don’t want anyone to pity me.” 
“I wouldn’t let anyone treat you different,” Angela said quickly, rubbing his bicep. She wrapped her arms around him and frowned. “I’m sorry. That’s so crazy, like…I don’t get how someone can just be evil like that! It’s like a movie.” 
“Eh, my life would be a pretty crappy movie,” Anarchy replied. “Or…well, maybe not right now.” He pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Right now it would be a pretty good movie. Kinda Hallmark, but, ya know…Good, I think.” 
She giggled and nuzzled against his chest. “I think so too. We should watch The Notebook! Have you ever seen it?”
“No, never, actually.”

It was a decent movie. Most of Angie’s favorite movies were like that; decent; ones he hadn’t seen. The majority were what he’d class as ‘chick flicks,’ and though they were deeper than he expected them to be and he definitely preferred them to Kato’s endless stream of crime and/or history documentaries, he maybe didn’t find them as moving as Angela would have wanted him to. He got watery-eyed at The Notebook, of course, he wasn’t a robot or anything, but he found Titanic mostly boring and annoying. When it came to his movies, Angela seemed to find Snowpiercer the same way, albeit with the addition of ‘horrific.’ 

It wasn’t just movies, Anarchy had to acknowledge when Kato asked “how it was going” and if “‘the girlfriend thing’ lived up to expectations,” because, sure, overall they didn’t have too much in common, really, but Anarchy figured that was just what ‘opposites attract’ meant and let it be enough that she wanted him around and it felt excellent to finally have a girl. “No expectations to start with,” he told Kato, “I’m just letting it ride, man, see where it goes.” 
Kato’d rolled his eyes and said “Sounds like great chemistry.”

Anarchy let the snideness go without the dignity of acknowledgement. Angela—yeah, they weren’t a match made in heaven or anything, there was some spark missing for that label, but she was fine; she was sweet! Rather like how Valentines sweethearts were sweet; in a way that not everyone quite took to. Kato, for one, had already formed the opinion that she was a bit airheaded, but that hadn’t meant much of anything until one post-date afternoon where Anarchy invited her up to his apartment to chill.  

She eagerly agreed and plastered herself to his side on the elevator ride up, seeming a little disappointed when they walked in the door and found Athena and Kato in the living area.
“Sup? Got Angie with me,” Anarchy greeted, squeezing Angela’s shoulders affirmingly.
“Dope, I was just thinking about trying to do some split-screen Halo but K-O’s being lazy. You wanna do a level with me, Angela?” Athena offered, holding a controller out from the sofa, ready to toss it.
“Oh! No, I wouldn’t know how,” Angela declined; Anarchy held out his hands. 
“I’ll take it then, ‘Thena.”

They settled on the couch, the four of them shooting the shit while Anarchy and Athena worked their way through Reach levels with varying degrees of successful cooperation and minor, playful bickering. During the quieter moments where Athena and Anarchy had to concentrate a bit harder, Angela stiltedly attempted to foster a conversation with Kato, who had draped himself in the chair across from the sofa like a Jarl on a throne, lazily observing the TV screen through half-interested eyes and occasionally offering rather critique-laden commentary.

“So, um, Kato! What do you do for fun?” Angela ventured.
“Self-destruct and read, mostly,” he drawled, turning his attention to her and tucking one leg up so that he was no longer in contact with the floor.
“Oh.” Angela awkwardly shifted her weight; “...What are you reading?” 
“Right now?” He laughed. “Quora questions that piss me the fuck off. Was bitching to Athena about it at lunch today, what’d I say? ‘Napoleon could never live up to Caesar and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fucken manlet too.’”
“You’re biased,” Athena said in a tone of boredom, not even taking her eyes off the screen.
“Sure am, but ha! It’s fucking true.”
“...What’s in a Napoleon?” Angela asked. 
“What?” Kato responded; Anarchy could see his confused expression in his periphery.
“Caesar?” Angela prompted innocently; “Like the salad? It's not as good?”  

Kato stared at her for a solid couple beats. “You’re fucking with me, right?” he asked.
Angela frowned but her silence stood in for a head-shake and Kato made some wide-eyed disbelieving sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but still cut like one.
“Dude, are you stupid? Napoleon was a French general. And fucking emperor—he sold us Louisiana.”
“C’mon, K, not everyone knows things…” Anarchy protested. 
“Yeah, idiot, I don’t expect you to, but she’s in college,” Kato responded, waving him off and swinging his legs off the chair to lean forward and focus on Angela, who shrank back in her chair. 
“C’mon. Waterloo? Nothing?” he prompted; almost chided.
“…I thought that was about Bill Clinton or someone.”
Kato looked blankly at her. “What the fuck? Waterloo?”
“Wasn’t that the scandal thing?”
“…Oh my fucking god. Do you mean Watergate? With Nixon? Holy shit.” He did laugh, then, a cold, cruel sort of laugh that reeked of superiority and elicited a snapped a “Shut the fuck up, K-O,” from Athena. Angela let out a wounded “I’m glad it’s so funny,” and got up to stalk out.

“...Er...I’ll be right back,” Anarchy said, and followed his girlfriend out into the hall, where he did his best to reassure her that that was just how Kato was, not anything personal;
“He calls me a fucktard, like, twice a week,” Anarchy soothed, “Don’t let it get to you. C’mon, really, he didn’t mean anything.”

Athena was glaring at Kato when they walked back in, and he immediately raised his open palms as a mea culpa gesture and offered Angela a brief dip of his head.
“Sorry, I’m a shit; sometimes I forget what acceptable human interaction is like,” he said, with a lopsided smile that could have passed for either a smirk or a wince; “Shouldn’t have been rude. My bad. Years of getting beaten the fuck down in the school system and being treated like it’s all fine will really mess up your barometer reading on what the rest of the human race thinks is okay, turns out.”

Angela kindly ignored the weakness of his apology and the fact that the entire thing was a woe-is-me excuse, and instead pivoted the conversation straight into his hands with, “Oh, I’m sorry. You were, like, bullied, or something?”
“He got smacked around a lot,” Athena interjected to prevent Kato expounding on his trials, tribulations, and attempted atrocity; “Our school didn’t give a shit. Just let him go through it. Not that that’s justification for being an asshole.”
“Oooh, that sucks,” Angela said; “I was lucky, I went to a private school and I don’t think there was any bullying...Like, some people were mean there a bit, but that’s normal, right? It wasn’t like actual bullying.”
Kato’s expression closed off too quickly to even allow him to sneer. “Oh, I guarantee you it was,” he said stiffly. “It’s just easier to be fucking blind when you’re not the target.”
He was the one to sweep off that time, leaving Angela to stare uncomprehendingly up at Anarchy.

“I’m literally just talking! Does he have a problem or something?” she asked.
“Several,” both Anarchy and Athena replied, rather tiredly.

Angela finally seemed comfortable enough to ask questions after Kato had shut himself in his room, but in all honesty, Anarchy would’ve rather kept playing Halo. He didn’t mind listening to her sorority gossip or talking her through an insecurity here or there—questions like “Isn’t that just crazy?” or “Does this top actually look good or are you just saying it?” were non-threatening, basically meaningless. But—
“So…how did you guys meet each other?” Angela asked, motioning between Anarchy and Athena. 
“Just by chance,” Anarchy answered quickly. “I was in a rough spot and needed somewhere to stay; they had room.” He gave Athena a glance that she raised an eyebrow at, but she respected that he didn’t want to get into the darkness of it all yet and nodded along.
“…Lucky we did, too, we needed a bassist,” she said.
“Oh, okay! Yeah, lucky…Roommates can be kind of a crapshoot here. My first ones were terrible so my parents helped me get a studio for myself. I feel bad, though, ya know? Like, I should be doing it all myself.”
“I get that, but also eh, fuck it. If your family wants to help you, let ‘em. Our band’s not exactly Beatles-level yet so my brother basically takes care of us with this,” Athena replied easily, gesturing to the flat at large. Anarchy found himself extremely grateful for her presence. Angela gave her a smile, too.
“That’s really nice of him! To support you all. How, um, how long have you and Kato been, like, together?” she asked politely.
“Uh…never?” Athena snorted. “I mean, that was maybe a thing but we’re not…we’re just friends?”
“Oh…Isn’t this a two-bedroom though?” Angela awkwardly waved her hand towards the hall. She pursed her lips and then leaned forward to whisper, “More importantly—what’s the ‘thing?!’”
“I mean, sure…I guess we’re in ‘Key’s bedroom right now,” Athena responded, with a stilted wave around the living room, and Anarchy found himself feeling rather downtrodden and hot in the ears while it was clarified that he did, in fact, sleep on the couch. Thankfully Kato and Athena’s “near miss” in high school was juicy enough gossip to quickly move the conversation along to, despite Athena handwaving much of it away with “We were kids, you know, and drinking the Kool-Aid; ‘he was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious,’ that sort of thing. We were really close and I think we felt like, oh, this must be ‘more.’ It wasn’t though—we’re both pretty gay. Best friends works better.”

Angela was leaning forward and had just opened her mouth to maybe ask something when Kato reemerged from the bedroom, looking no less sullen than when he left.
“Oh, Private School is still here,” he said, raking his icy stare over Angela, his cold tone and curled lip immediately dimming her previous sparkle. 
Athena twisted around to glare at him. “Ya know, green’s really not your color, K. Cool it,” she snapped back at him, and they got into a minor spat that Angela and Anarchy quietly excused themselves from and used as cover to head out.

“Sorry about that, he gets into moods sometimes,” Anarchy said to Angela in the elevator; “Athena’s the girl but he’s the one with PMS.”
“It’s okay. Athena was nice. Why didn’t you tell me you sleep on the couch and stuff?” she asked, looking up at him. He frowned and fiddled with his bracelet, his cheeks warming with embarrassment again.
“It didn’t really come up,” he muttered at first, then sighed, a half-grimace tugging his lips sideways. “It makes me look like a loser,” he confessed.
“No it doesn’t!” Angela objected.

The elevator dinged.

“You’re not a loser,” she continued, leaning against him sweetly as they walked towards her bus stop. “I’d never think that about you, ‘Key! I’m not judgy like that.”
“No, I know. Sorry, Angie. I just felt embarrassed, I guess.”
“Well, you don’t need to.” She smiled up at him and blinked reassuringly, then leaned her head against his arm again. “Why don’t you get your own room somewhere else though? It doesn’t seem fun to deal with Athena and Kato arguing like that…with his, um, moods and all.”
Anarchy conceded a chuckle, but shrugged off the suggestion. “It’s not that bad. He’s just a bitch sometimes.”

Athena and Kato seemed to have resolved the verbal portion of their argument by the time Anarchy got back up to the flat, even though Athena still had her arms crossed. Anarchy plucked a piece of junk mail out of the mail holder at the closet and tossed the envelope at Kato’s head like a frisbee.
“You need to be less of an ass; Angie thinks I oughta find my own place and escape,” Anarchy joked. “You’re making her think it’s like a rage room here or something.” 
Kato obviously didn’t find anything funny about the comment; he glared and smacked the envelope onto the coffee table. “Yeah, maybe you should move in with her since she’s so much more fun to be around,” he hissed, then huffed out of the room again, leaving Anarchy and Athena to exchange eye contact.
“What’s his deal today?” Anarchy asked.
Athena shrugged and picked her controller back up. “He’s him. Halo?”

--

Despite having set Anarchy up with her, Kato’s opinion of Angela had seemed to sink through the floor: He took to making snide comments within earshot when she was over, or deliberately talking over her head if he could, or eye-rolling when she did speak. 
He bitched about her wanting Anarchy over so often, and how she was taking up all his time, now, and what was so great about her anyway?
“She has to ask him over to her place because you’re a raging dickhead every time she’s here,” Athena snapped, having been the one to jump to Angela’s defense more than once, when Anarchy found the situation too uncomfortable; “Just leave him and his girlfriend alone!”
“It’s not my fault she’s insufferably airheaded,” Kato retorted. “I only have one nerve, ya know, and she gets all the fuck over it. Looks and talks exactly like the dimwits who just stood around and watched their meathead boyfriends kick the shit out of me in high school! You know, the type who don’t realize that they’re the stupid bitch from Mean Girls?”
“Do you realize you’re being the bitch-bitch from Mean Girls, then?” Athena had fired back, and the two of them had gotten into an argument that Anarchy stayed out of as best he could.

In all honesty Anarchy didn’t quite see what Kato was talking about, and it seemed built mostly on assumptions. Angela was in college, even if she did confide in him that she was failing a couple classes.
“I’m feeling, like, so dumb all the time,” she said about it. He wrapped her in a hug and ruffled her hair affectionately.
“You’re not, though,” he said. “You’re in school to learn and all that shit, yanno? They’d be out their jobs if you went in knowing it all already.” He cracked a smile for her. “I didn’t even finish elementary school for real, okay? With my homeschooling bullshit and all, maybe I could pass 8th grade right now. So no sweat, yeah? I don’t have a high horse to be on here.”

His words and him taking her out for a pick-me-up date of some pink, fruity drink did seem to help, and she smiled up at him and told him he was just the sweetest, and that was the other thing—she wasn’t mean. She wasn’t mean at all, but Kato was. Or at least rude.

Anarchy’d never felt “like, so dumb” regarding his own education, or lack thereof, so when Kato got fed up with him for whatever reason, and called him braindead, or an idiot, or a dumb bitch, it just kind of bounced off of him. So when he invited Angela over to hang out—as he often did, finding group settings to be a little less pressure—and Kato was less than pleasant, Anarchy generally grimaced and told her again, “Don’t worry about it, that’s just K-O.” 
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” she snapped at him eventually; stopping him short as he accompanied her home. “Why are you so, like, fine with him being a jerk?”
“...I dunno,” Anarchy mumbled, rather awkwardly. “It’s just how he’s always been. He’s nice other times.”
“Not to me,” Angela said. Anarchy scratched the back of his neck with one hand and rubbed the space between her shoulder blades with the other. 
“...Sorry,” was all he had to offer. It seemed rather unsatisfactory even to him.