We’re Nothing But Blood

 📅 late April, 2018

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ sᴇx ᴀs sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ, sᴇʟғ-ʜᴀᴛʀᴇᴅ, sᴇʟғ-ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴀʟ ɪᴅᴇᴀᴛɪᴏɴ〛

Isaac had been different from the start; something else and beyond and too much of both, because they’d met too soon or too late and with everything out of control. Kato couldn’t help feeling unraveled when it came to him, unable to get his thoughts in order. 
He’d been rebounding in some sick way when they met, because Anarchy had been in love and Kato had been too, but he was dirty and toxic and he couldn’t do it, couldn’t put Anarchy through that and watch everything fall apart like it had with Fawkes. So he threw love out with both hands and hurled himself back into the bar scene, both trying to fill the new, raw hollow in his chest and trying to punish himself for the pain in Anarchy’s eyes.

There, he’d met Isaac; tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and a scar over his left eye. And Kato had given him his real name. That was the real indication that shit had started off already out of control: Isaac should’ve met him as Bennet. But no, he’d met Kato, Julian Kato, and things...went from there.
It was ideal, really. Out of control and absolutely fucking insane, but still. Isaac had a darker nature that Kato took gruesome refuge in. They were both unstable as all hell and able to bond over the gory and the taboo; two ticking time bombs tangled in Isaac’s sheets or smearing blood against his shower wall. Because Isaac...Isaac was willing to hurt him. Kato knew the sickness of encouraging it but it was thrilling—no, intoxicating, and he couldn’t seem to rein himself in. His abused body was already criss-crossed by scarring and he invited Isaac to reopen anything he wanted, anything. He’d drive Isaac wild like that; panting, naked, his thighs streaming blood, saying “You can cut my neck, too, if you want. I don’t even care about the tattoo. Do it.”

Of course...it was sick. Kato knew his encouragement was tantamount to throwing a gas can into a bonfire from a couple feet away, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I know you need to let it out, don’t you? I can take it. I want to take it,” he’d breathe; nearly beg.
Isaac’s hands would shake sometimes with the struggle of self-restraint; he’d swallow hard and whisper that he felt like he couldn’t control himself; his pupils would contract. Kato never ceased to push harder from there:
“Then stop trying to control yourself.”

He’d feel vindicated when Isaac got dangerous, when the cuts wound up deeper than intended and Isaac was too far gone to care, when the hands around his throat would plunge him into unconsciousness six times in five minutes, leaving him disoriented and unable to swallow without pain. He’d push and push and push the limits; take a belt lash to the face and demand it around his neck. He’d watch sweat bead up on Isaac’s forehead and look him in his mismatched eyes and say, almost coaxingly, “I want to watch you let me die.”

It felt like maybe his world was righting itself again.

Then, at some point in their downward spiral together, Isaac had asked “what they were,” and Kato had flinched away from the question in the way he never did from a blow.
“We’re nothing,” he’d said, scathing in tone but abruptly terrified at heart. He’d been unable to parse the effect that the emotionless look in Isaac’s eyes that night had had on him, and it left him unsettled.
What were they? They were sick. They were rabid, they were two vicious animals that got off on blood in the air, on the floor, staining their tongues. They weren’t anything with a label. They definitely weren’t lovers.

Despite their “nothingness,” though, the question and the nearly bored tone Isaac had used when asking it, and when receiving the answer, had cut into him. Isaac had a knack for that.
He didn’t want anything from Isaac—not anything like that, at least. He wanted new scars and for the world to make sense again. But somehow it ached anyway, that it didn’t matter what his answer was. That for Isaac it was the same as asking what the weather was, or if traffic was bad today. An evaluation of circumstances with nothing else beyond it.
By that metric, Isaac was perfect, still perfect, for who Kato had gotten used to being, before—hardened, masochistic—but was abruptly antithetical to the soft, wounded creature he realized he’d become. He was trying to reclaim his old reality, fighting tooth and nail to return to familiar ground within himself, but Anarchy had ruined it. 

Kato had never let himself want with a man he was sleeping with, not after middle school. Just a couple years ago he would have quite nearly cackled at the concept. For fucking what? Stupid idea, inane, even. He trusted men like he trusted razor blades or bloodletting. And it worked, it had worked, to be with them in that way. He could get his fucking ya-yas out and they’d hurt him and use him for their own benefit and be done with it, and it was all fine because he’d chosen it. Controlled it. And it made sense of him, and of the world. But Anarchy had destroyed that, because Anarchy didn’t, wouldn't, hurt him. Wouldn’t throw him away. Anarchy wanted him—loved him—and it was like taking a sledgehammer to the tail end of Kato’s Prince Rupert’s drop of a worldview and now nothing made any sense. 
Because now he wanted. He wanted Anarchy but couldn’t have him, and even though he didn’t want Isaac, he suddenly couldn’t stand him and the fact that Isaac would never want him or love him. 

Isaac wasn’t supposed to care, but Kato started noticing all the ways he didn’t, anyway: The fact that he only really talked about himself, and any curiosities he expressed in regards to Kato were over things that might somehow circle back and affect his own life. He had no interest in “hanging out,” and any afterglow between them only lasted as long as the smell of blood in the air did. Then Isaac would tell Kato he ought to go home, and if he absolutely had to shower beforehand, to not use any of the products in there and to not get any blood on the bath mat.

Kato thrashed around in his head, disoriented, hating Isaac, hating Anarchy, because despite being polar opposites with no knowledge of one another it felt like they’d somehow colluded in making him feel young and stupid, young and stupid for wanting, the same way his father had: His father who could never see him, want him, love him; his father who also needed the bath mat clean and perfect, the house clean and perfect, his life clean and perfect; who also wore his collared shirts buttoned all the way up. He’d always wished his dad would hit him, just so the hatred between them would be realized—justified—and it would all make sense. At least Isaac hit him. Kato resented him for that, too, though, because Isaac didn’t even hate him. Isaac didn’t care at all.

He hated Isaac but still ended up vying for his interest; knowing he wouldn’t care, couldn’t care, a self-described sociopath, but desperate for Isaac to care about something, even if it was just how pretty an object he could be. Make him care how he cared about the curiosities and artifacts he carefully collected and curated. A trophy for the shelf; something to hang on the wall like a diploma. Or a deer head.
He felt like a neglected farm dog, whining for attention and willing to rip its belly open on a barbed wire fence or tear apart the chicken coop to get it, even in the form of a gun barrel against his skull. 
I can take whatever you need to let out. I can be perfect for you.
You could kill me, you could. You’ve always wanted to kill. I’ll die.

He wanted to die. He wanted to be looked at, noticed; then wanted to be hurt for his weakness, punished for it, get sense beaten back into him—but no, he didn’t want that, not actually. He wanted to be loved, because Anarchy had fucking ruined him, and Isaac couldn’t cut away the damage. 
No one would ever be able to cut away the damage.

It was some overcast April morning that it all came to a head. Rain had started collecting on Isaac’s living room window; the light of dawn was desaturated by the ashen sky. Kato had stayed over despite Isaac needing to work that morning, arguably because he was too drunk to ride home the previous night and if Isaac called him an Uber like he’d wanted to, the cut on his neck might’ve raised some concerns. So Isaac had begrudgingly allowed him to stay the night on the couch, and Kato seethed over it—over being treated as an inconvenience, a trespasser—while both of them silently dressed to leave in the gray light of the color-drained sunrise. 

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” Kato finally said; testing the words out and scrutinizing Isaac's face for a reaction. Some fleeting disappointment was all the gratification he got. 
“...Pity,” Isaac responded. Maybe there was some anger buried in his tone, under six layers of careful indifference, but maybe Kato just wanted that to be true. His own expression twisted.
“That’s it?” Kato asked, maybe snarled. “That fucking easy, huh?”
“I thought we’d agreed there weren’t any strings attached here,” Isaac said; emotionless, infuriatingly cold. Nearly haughty, nearly fucking pitying.
Kato hated his guts.
“No, I guess there aren’t, not fucking any! Are you just—just fucking bored of me? Did I talk too much about my shitty childhood or something? The shine came off the apple already, might as well pitch it in the trash?” Kato glared at Isaac and folded his arms, letting his hair fall into his face, hating that something wounded had worked its way into his tone past the rage.
Isaac just blinked stonily back at him, unmoved. “I don’t know why you’re acting like I’ve done anything here,” he said. “You’re cutting yourself loose, Kato. Of course I'm not bored: It’ll be inconvenient to not be able to see you again. You’re being a hassle right now, though, and no…I don’t particularly care about your childhood.”
“‘Inconvenient?!’ You—You’re not even human,” Kato spat the words like blood out of his mouth, lunging forward, uncrossing his arms to clench his trembling fists at his sides. He wanted Isaac to hurt; wanted someone to hurt. “You’re twisted. I knew you were, but Jesus Christ. Fucked up twinks a dime a dozen for you? No loss, you’ll just go down to the local orphanage and pick up some 18-year old with daddy issues who aged out of the system today so you can cut them up?”
Isaac's lip curled. “You are unhinged,” he said. “What are you even doing? Did you get attached?”
“To you?” Kato asked. He laughed, but it came out shrill, somewhat hysterical. “Attached to you? No one could get attached to you! You’re a fucking guillotine!”
Isaac’s mouth twitched, as though amused. “Guilty as charged. I thought you wanted that anyway,” he said carelessly.
“Want…? What I want? I want someone to give a shit!” Kato burst out, flinging his arms wide. His head was pounding.
Isaac lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “About you?” He gave Kato a once-over, his superior expression souring with disdain. “Well, you certainly won’t achieve that by behaving this way.”
“Fuck off and die,” Kato snarled, then spun on his heel and stormed to the exit, slamming Isaac’s door behind him. He heard something hit the floor inside and hoped one of those stupid fucking artifacts had shattered.

Anger never hit Kato on its own and always overwhelmed him; rage and worthlessness crashed over his head like relentless waves and his entire body shook independently of his motorcycle’s vibration. He fought off the urge to crash into a road barrier and derided himself for his cowardice when he finally got home, where he locked himself in his room and cried. He was only useful when being used and now he was nothing; not even good enough to be worth killing, even his spilled blood below being of interest. He turned the whole of his life over in his head and supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, but it still burned like hard liquor on an empty stomach and made him feel just as sick. 
He ignored Anarchy leaving for work (Why would he care, anyway, his attention’s all on Chey, now) and played his music loud enough that he could pretend not to hear Chey knock at noon, with an invitation to come out into the kitchen and have lunch, maybe. (Quit trying to win me over, I’m not buying your fucking act.)

Isaac tried to call that night.
“What the fuck do you want?” Kato asked bitterly, having failed to keep himself from picking up.
“Are you done behaving like a child?” Isaac asked. “I’d rather not have to replace you, and you didn’t seem in control of yourself anyway. You can’t actually want out.” His tone sounded silky, if somewhat irritated, and coiled into something persuasive but flat, the same as it had been when they first met. Careful, unrevealing.
“Oh, fuck off,” Kato seethed, his vision swimming with anger again. “You change your mind? Suddenly I’m interesting enough for you again as soon as you realize you lost your fucktoy? You’re a fucking psychopath, you don’t care about what I ‘actually’ want! You don’t know anything about me!” Kato slammed the End Call button and only barely resisted the urge to throw his phone against the wall. He hated Isaac knowing he was hurt, hated feeling hurt, and absolutely fucking despised Isaac for trying to convince him of anything at all.  

“I’m not fucking STUPID!” he yelled at his phone; at the world at large. He wasn’t. He wasn’t gullible, either; he wasn’t going to let another goddamn sociopath act like they gave a shit until they got the chance to help him put a bullet through his own temple for being an inconvenience. Isaac didn’t care; nobody fucking cared; so Kato blocked his number just as he had with all of Nightshrike: One more name on the ever-growing list of liars and abandoners. 
I don’t need your fucking help anyway, Kato thought scathingly across the hazy city. He reopened his scars all on his own and then sat with his forehead pressed to his desk and his fingers in his hair, blood from his wrists matting the sides of his head, hating everyone in his life for not giving it to him straight what a waste he was; instead forcing him to figure it out on his own, over and over and over again.