Functionally Unhealthy
Title: Functionally Unhealthy
Characters: Quentin Kinley and Tyler Jordan Graham
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1843
Notes: So... these two are actually where the whole Kinley and Graham clans began. With two messed up young men and a whole lot of alcohol and some very poorly-thought-out plans which didn't end as disastrously as any reasonable person would have expected them to. I have some backstory for them I have to sort through that will get posted later. For now... here's a sort of explanation of how and why they're as messed up as they are (and are trying to be less).
Timeline: vague but before June 2014
The thing was, they had a really specific definition of “taking advantage” when they applied it to each other. Because Maria had taken advantage of Tyler Jordan for years without fucking him, and pretty much every girl Quentin had ever dated had taken advantage of him at least two different ways and left him in so much worse condition than she’d found him. But they didn’t really pull that kind of shit with each other. Quentin was so used to things going wrong that he tried to fuck things up every so often, but Tyler Jordan was as quick to forgive as Quentin was quick to anger, and… yeah, okay, so they’d gotten into a couple of actual physical fights, but it wasn’t like they were abusive to each other. They just occasionally threw a few punches and then kissed and made up pretty much right away.
Nobody was getting beaten up on a regular basis-- Quentin usually instigated the fights, because that was his nature, saying asshole things until the only way to shut him up was by giving him what he wanted and taking a swing, but Tyler Jordan had gotten pretty good at stopping the fights within a couple of minutes, and neither of them was really trying to hurt the other even when they were furious with each other. Anyways, after the third fight, Tyler Jordan came to the realization that he’d accidentally classically conditioned Quentin to get hard when his hair was pulled, and after that little revelation it was way easy to derail him whenever he tried to start shit. When they got into it all it took was one good hard yank and asking him whether he really wanted to fight and that was enough of a distraction to make Quentin a little more agreeable.
And yeah, neither of them really saw the other being intoxicated as a hindrance to anything. Nobody was getting coerced into doing anything they didn’t already want to do. But Tyler Jordan came home sloppy drunk three or four nights a week, and Quentin came home and got really stoned two or three nights a week, and when those nights coincided even Janet couldn’t accuse anyone of taking advantage of anyone else. But the nights didn’t always coincide, and neither one of them passed up a chance to get a pliant and willing non-sober boyfriend into bed. They slept in the same bed all the time anyways, and some of those nights just ended up with snuggling and the kind of dumb sappy endearments they’d only say out loud if they thought it might not be remembered in the morning. But Quentin was sweeter when he was stoned, less hung up about being affectionate, and Tyler Jordan actually preferred getting fucked when he was drunk, so… nobody was really being taken advantage of, the way they saw it, they were really just taking care of each other in a way that other (incredibly nosy younger sibling type) people found sketchy.
Anyways, their whole relationship had started when they were nowhere near sober. The night they met, the night they built a raft and tried to sail to Canada, they’d both been drunk enough to think it was a good idea, and by the time they sobered up they’d decided they were friends. Tyler Jordan had broken up with Maria that same day (which was why he was so wasted that sailing to Canada sounded like a bright idea), and Quentin threw his roommate out of the apartment like two days later, and it just made sense for Tyler Jordan and all his fish to move in, because after all, they were friends, and they were both badly in need of a change in situation. And then, out of dumb luck or fate or whatever the fuck had brought them together, they just… kept becoming better friends. Tyler Jordan had an abnormally high tolerance for bullshit, and Quentin wasn’t used to people who were willing to deal with him for any length of time, so Tyler Jordan’s acceptance of his drama queen tendencies kind of moderated them down to manageable levels most of the time. They had a way of egging each other on into silly behavior and then amping it up in the attempt to make each other laugh, and… yeah, they were usually not sober in the evenings when they were playing Guitar Hero or planning the next idiotic caper.
Of course, Quentin got kind of gun-shy when he realized the direction his feelings were evolving, trying to convince himself that he was totally straight kept backfiring as soon as his unconscious mind got involved, and drinking away the gay totally did not work at all. It didn’t take long at all for them to go from strangers to friends, and it didn’t take a whole lot longer to go from friends to lovers once Quentin realized that being drunk was a better excuse for a gay overture than it was a method to prevent one. When he took a chance and kissed Tyler Jordan one summer afternoon, it was a clumsy, hasty kiss, and when they had established that yeah, actually they were both okay with it having happened, Tyler Jordan taunted him into a much better ‘first’ kiss, and then it took less than fifteen minutes of making out before Quentin slid to his knees and pulled Tyler Jordan headlong into the world of sexual experience with an unskilled but eager blowjob. How Maria had dated Tyler Jordan for eleven years without fucking him, Quentin couldn’t even comprehend, because it seemed like the most necessary thing in the world to immediately get his hands on Tyler Jordan and fumble their way through what was Quentin’s first gay experience and Tyler Jordan’s first time coming because of another person of any gender, and honestly? Knowing he’d been Tyler Jordan’s first was a peerless thrill, or at least it was unmatched until five minutes later when Tyler Jordan reciprocated the gesture with more enthusiasm than anyone had ever blown Quentin before despite his total lack of experience.
So yeah, pretty much every major step in their early relationship had been taken under the influence of a lot of alcohol. And yeah, Tyler Jordan was more than a little bit of an alcoholic just in general, and he’d do coke whenever he came across it, but honestly, he was a musician, so everyone kind of expected that sort of misbehavior and as long as he could handle a guitar at night and slog through his real job during the day, it wasn’t a big deal to anyone except overconcerned relatives. And Quentin wasn’t actually an alcoholic, he just smoked a lot of weed and drank in moderation. Okay, relative moderation. Relative to Tyler Jordan. Okay, so it wasn’t moderation at all. But they both had shitty day jobs and honestly what else was there to do in the bad part of Detroit but get super wasted at home and play video games and screw around? It kept them out of worse trouble, at any rate.
Anyways, they still liked each other when they were sober. It wasn’t like their relationship was predicated on being drunk. Although Quentin was usually sober when he tried to pick a fight, because it was harder for him to drown out his self-destructive internal monologue without a blanket of intoxication to throw over it. He was getting a little better about the self-hatred and self-sabotage now that he was with someone who didn’t reinforce it all the time. While they did have a habit of using insults as pet names, Tyler Jordan never tried to cut Quentin down, honestly thought he was pretty awesome and didn’t have any qualms about reminding him of that. And Quentin only tried to fuck things up because he was convinced that Tyler Jordan was too good for him, which apparently was most effectively fixed by punching him in the face and then kissing him until he accepted that he was, in fact, worth a damn.
Although, they both realized that they’d done a far better thing by introducing their brothers than they’d expected to. Quentin was just sick of Orly being so isolated when it was clearly making him miserable to be so alone, and Tyler Jordan was worried about Paul turning into a hermit because he was too jumpy to go out in public, so they arranged for Orly to visit the Graham home for dinner and the two veterans had immediately taken to each other. Of course, neither of them had expected their brothers to fall in love with each other, but it was really completely undeniable how good they were for each other, so they were both happy that it had happened-- because honestly they did want their brothers to be happy, and it was good that there was a respectable pair of a Graham and a Kinley in a steady relationship, because the more everyone focused on how happy Paul and Orly were, the less they paid attention to how dysfunctional Tyler Jordan and Quentin were, even though they were happy too-- just a less socially acceptable version of happiness.
So when Janet chewed Quentin out for taking advantage of Tyler Jordan, Quentin got pissed off, because the only way he really felt like he took advantage of Tyler Jordan was by playing on his good nature to get his way and that really didn’t even work most of the time. What she was accusing him of just felt wrong, the same way that thinking of Tyler Jordan getting fed up and leaving him just felt wrong-- the sort of thing that scared him down to his marrow. And when Wendy asked Tyler Jordan delicately worded questions about visible bruises, he way overshared about the bruises she couldn’t see and she stopped asking pretty quickly, just reminding him that if he felt like he was being abused there were resources, and Tyler Jordan just shook his head because he was fully aware of the fact that he had more power in this relationship than Quentin did simply because of Quentin’s insecurities, the ones that Tyler Jordan tried his hardest to allay and never took advantage of.
And, well, if Quentin started double-checking before he pushed a drunk and willing Tyler Jordan into bed, and if Tyler Jordan spent a couple more minutes trying to talk Quentin down before he took a swing at him, maybe it was because their sisters weren’t complete morons, and because they really did love each other even if their way of showing it was kind of messed up most of the time. They still woke up next to each other every morning, their toothbrushes shared a cup in the bathroom, and every now and then a genuine term of endearment would sneak in between the playful insults. They knew what they meant to each other, even if it was more murky to those outside looking in, and that was what really mattered to them.
Characters: Quentin Kinley and Tyler Jordan Graham
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1843
Notes: So... these two are actually where the whole Kinley and Graham clans began. With two messed up young men and a whole lot of alcohol and some very poorly-thought-out plans which didn't end as disastrously as any reasonable person would have expected them to. I have some backstory for them I have to sort through that will get posted later. For now... here's a sort of explanation of how and why they're as messed up as they are (and are trying to be less).
Timeline: vague but before June 2014
The thing was, they had a really specific definition of “taking advantage” when they applied it to each other. Because Maria had taken advantage of Tyler Jordan for years without fucking him, and pretty much every girl Quentin had ever dated had taken advantage of him at least two different ways and left him in so much worse condition than she’d found him. But they didn’t really pull that kind of shit with each other. Quentin was so used to things going wrong that he tried to fuck things up every so often, but Tyler Jordan was as quick to forgive as Quentin was quick to anger, and… yeah, okay, so they’d gotten into a couple of actual physical fights, but it wasn’t like they were abusive to each other. They just occasionally threw a few punches and then kissed and made up pretty much right away.
Nobody was getting beaten up on a regular basis-- Quentin usually instigated the fights, because that was his nature, saying asshole things until the only way to shut him up was by giving him what he wanted and taking a swing, but Tyler Jordan had gotten pretty good at stopping the fights within a couple of minutes, and neither of them was really trying to hurt the other even when they were furious with each other. Anyways, after the third fight, Tyler Jordan came to the realization that he’d accidentally classically conditioned Quentin to get hard when his hair was pulled, and after that little revelation it was way easy to derail him whenever he tried to start shit. When they got into it all it took was one good hard yank and asking him whether he really wanted to fight and that was enough of a distraction to make Quentin a little more agreeable.
And yeah, neither of them really saw the other being intoxicated as a hindrance to anything. Nobody was getting coerced into doing anything they didn’t already want to do. But Tyler Jordan came home sloppy drunk three or four nights a week, and Quentin came home and got really stoned two or three nights a week, and when those nights coincided even Janet couldn’t accuse anyone of taking advantage of anyone else. But the nights didn’t always coincide, and neither one of them passed up a chance to get a pliant and willing non-sober boyfriend into bed. They slept in the same bed all the time anyways, and some of those nights just ended up with snuggling and the kind of dumb sappy endearments they’d only say out loud if they thought it might not be remembered in the morning. But Quentin was sweeter when he was stoned, less hung up about being affectionate, and Tyler Jordan actually preferred getting fucked when he was drunk, so… nobody was really being taken advantage of, the way they saw it, they were really just taking care of each other in a way that other (incredibly nosy younger sibling type) people found sketchy.
Anyways, their whole relationship had started when they were nowhere near sober. The night they met, the night they built a raft and tried to sail to Canada, they’d both been drunk enough to think it was a good idea, and by the time they sobered up they’d decided they were friends. Tyler Jordan had broken up with Maria that same day (which was why he was so wasted that sailing to Canada sounded like a bright idea), and Quentin threw his roommate out of the apartment like two days later, and it just made sense for Tyler Jordan and all his fish to move in, because after all, they were friends, and they were both badly in need of a change in situation. And then, out of dumb luck or fate or whatever the fuck had brought them together, they just… kept becoming better friends. Tyler Jordan had an abnormally high tolerance for bullshit, and Quentin wasn’t used to people who were willing to deal with him for any length of time, so Tyler Jordan’s acceptance of his drama queen tendencies kind of moderated them down to manageable levels most of the time. They had a way of egging each other on into silly behavior and then amping it up in the attempt to make each other laugh, and… yeah, they were usually not sober in the evenings when they were playing Guitar Hero or planning the next idiotic caper.
Of course, Quentin got kind of gun-shy when he realized the direction his feelings were evolving, trying to convince himself that he was totally straight kept backfiring as soon as his unconscious mind got involved, and drinking away the gay totally did not work at all. It didn’t take long at all for them to go from strangers to friends, and it didn’t take a whole lot longer to go from friends to lovers once Quentin realized that being drunk was a better excuse for a gay overture than it was a method to prevent one. When he took a chance and kissed Tyler Jordan one summer afternoon, it was a clumsy, hasty kiss, and when they had established that yeah, actually they were both okay with it having happened, Tyler Jordan taunted him into a much better ‘first’ kiss, and then it took less than fifteen minutes of making out before Quentin slid to his knees and pulled Tyler Jordan headlong into the world of sexual experience with an unskilled but eager blowjob. How Maria had dated Tyler Jordan for eleven years without fucking him, Quentin couldn’t even comprehend, because it seemed like the most necessary thing in the world to immediately get his hands on Tyler Jordan and fumble their way through what was Quentin’s first gay experience and Tyler Jordan’s first time coming because of another person of any gender, and honestly? Knowing he’d been Tyler Jordan’s first was a peerless thrill, or at least it was unmatched until five minutes later when Tyler Jordan reciprocated the gesture with more enthusiasm than anyone had ever blown Quentin before despite his total lack of experience.
So yeah, pretty much every major step in their early relationship had been taken under the influence of a lot of alcohol. And yeah, Tyler Jordan was more than a little bit of an alcoholic just in general, and he’d do coke whenever he came across it, but honestly, he was a musician, so everyone kind of expected that sort of misbehavior and as long as he could handle a guitar at night and slog through his real job during the day, it wasn’t a big deal to anyone except overconcerned relatives. And Quentin wasn’t actually an alcoholic, he just smoked a lot of weed and drank in moderation. Okay, relative moderation. Relative to Tyler Jordan. Okay, so it wasn’t moderation at all. But they both had shitty day jobs and honestly what else was there to do in the bad part of Detroit but get super wasted at home and play video games and screw around? It kept them out of worse trouble, at any rate.
Anyways, they still liked each other when they were sober. It wasn’t like their relationship was predicated on being drunk. Although Quentin was usually sober when he tried to pick a fight, because it was harder for him to drown out his self-destructive internal monologue without a blanket of intoxication to throw over it. He was getting a little better about the self-hatred and self-sabotage now that he was with someone who didn’t reinforce it all the time. While they did have a habit of using insults as pet names, Tyler Jordan never tried to cut Quentin down, honestly thought he was pretty awesome and didn’t have any qualms about reminding him of that. And Quentin only tried to fuck things up because he was convinced that Tyler Jordan was too good for him, which apparently was most effectively fixed by punching him in the face and then kissing him until he accepted that he was, in fact, worth a damn.
Although, they both realized that they’d done a far better thing by introducing their brothers than they’d expected to. Quentin was just sick of Orly being so isolated when it was clearly making him miserable to be so alone, and Tyler Jordan was worried about Paul turning into a hermit because he was too jumpy to go out in public, so they arranged for Orly to visit the Graham home for dinner and the two veterans had immediately taken to each other. Of course, neither of them had expected their brothers to fall in love with each other, but it was really completely undeniable how good they were for each other, so they were both happy that it had happened-- because honestly they did want their brothers to be happy, and it was good that there was a respectable pair of a Graham and a Kinley in a steady relationship, because the more everyone focused on how happy Paul and Orly were, the less they paid attention to how dysfunctional Tyler Jordan and Quentin were, even though they were happy too-- just a less socially acceptable version of happiness.
So when Janet chewed Quentin out for taking advantage of Tyler Jordan, Quentin got pissed off, because the only way he really felt like he took advantage of Tyler Jordan was by playing on his good nature to get his way and that really didn’t even work most of the time. What she was accusing him of just felt wrong, the same way that thinking of Tyler Jordan getting fed up and leaving him just felt wrong-- the sort of thing that scared him down to his marrow. And when Wendy asked Tyler Jordan delicately worded questions about visible bruises, he way overshared about the bruises she couldn’t see and she stopped asking pretty quickly, just reminding him that if he felt like he was being abused there were resources, and Tyler Jordan just shook his head because he was fully aware of the fact that he had more power in this relationship than Quentin did simply because of Quentin’s insecurities, the ones that Tyler Jordan tried his hardest to allay and never took advantage of.
And, well, if Quentin started double-checking before he pushed a drunk and willing Tyler Jordan into bed, and if Tyler Jordan spent a couple more minutes trying to talk Quentin down before he took a swing at him, maybe it was because their sisters weren’t complete morons, and because they really did love each other even if their way of showing it was kind of messed up most of the time. They still woke up next to each other every morning, their toothbrushes shared a cup in the bathroom, and every now and then a genuine term of endearment would sneak in between the playful insults. They knew what they meant to each other, even if it was more murky to those outside looking in, and that was what really mattered to them.