Moving Forward - Kick Ass/Red Mist
Title: Moving Forward
Rating: R, violence, language, and h/c.
Pairing: Crave (Chris/Dave) and Kist (Kick Ass/Red Mist)
Summary: "But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward." - Rochy
Notes: Dedicated in its entirety to seeingrightly , whose conversation in the pairing post gave me a raging hard-onplot bunny for these two. Completely un-beta'd, all mistakes (and there will be many) are mine.
+++
Moving Forward
+++
Life kind of went on.
No one really cared that Kick Ass and some mysterious other masked man got their shit handed to them on the internet, live for everyone to see. It didn't inspire many people to take up a life of fighting crime, if anything it was a convincing deterent.
With D'Amico dead and his criminal empire all but burned to the ground, it seemed only natural to retire, and so Dave did.
For all of the few weeks it took him to recover so that he could walk without looking like he shit himself.
Once he could walk right, and breathe without it feeling like his ribs were snapping in two, he was back in that wet suit faster than Mindy could name the make and model of a gun. People were less inclined to fuck with him after seeing what he survived on the internet; if anything the criminal underworld had begun drawing conclusions about his beating being followed so closely by the destruction of the D'Amico empire. Usually all it took to stop a rape or mugging was for him to clear his throat and get their attention. Then they'd high tail it.
One of the biggest weirds was seeing Chris D'Amico in school, looking him in the eyes, and knowing that he knew that he'd been the one to blow his father to kingdom come.
Toddy was being a total douchebag, sitting across the lunch table from him and attempting, with no success, to chat up one of Katie's friends. Katie was sticking pretty close to his side after the D'Amico incident, like if she didn't have constant physical contact he might disappear. With her closeness came a wave of friends who would slip in and out of their conversations throughout the day.
He hadn't told her that he still patrolled.
Mindy called him a pussy for it daily.
D'Amico strolled into the lunch room with an air of such casual belonging that he immediately stuck out. Their eyes met, and they held one another's gaze for a long moment. Dave was struck, as he always was, with a strange sense of sadness and a hint of bitterness. Chris looked away first, and Dave followed his line of vision to where Mindy was sitting with boys of her own year. He wondered if he got the same look of chilly focus that she did when met with face with a D'Amico.
He blinked back to his immediate surroundings when Katie nudged him in the ribs. The table had gone quiet, Toddy and Marty, and Katie watching him with questioning gazes.
"Dude, what's up with you and D'Amico?" Toddy finally asked.
Dave tried to play it cool, but only managed to look mildly horrified and like a deer caught in the headlights, "Huh?"
"You two both get intense looks on your faces when you see each other," Katie said quietly.
Dave tried to smile it off, shaking his head, "I just spaced out. What were we talking about?"
And the conversation picked back up around him like he and D'Amico had never stared each other down.
Life just kept going on.
+++
Dave was staring at himself in the mirror in the bathroom closest to his next class. He tilted his head this way and that, trying to see if his face looked that much different after John D'Amico. There was some scaring along his jaw, and on his cheek and near his ear. That bit was from when he'd taken a billy club to the face, he thought, running his fingers over it.
The door opened to his right, and his eyes flicked up as Chris D'Amico entered the room, his gait a little uneven, his lanky form just slightly awkward to watch. He moved right to the sink beside Dave's, and turned it on to wash his hands. He used more cold water than hot, Dave noted absently.
"What do you think of the newest issue of Buffy?"
Dave blinked, shrugged, "I was less enthused than I thought I'd be to hear about Dawn's sex life."
Chris gave a forced laugh, "Right? I'd much rather see some Buffy action."
Dave nodded, returned to staring at himself in the mirror, leaning in coser to squint at discolored skin around his right eye. Scaring, and rather than look badass it made him look like he might have liver spots.
"Do you know what you're doing for your science project?" he asked after a beat, noticing that the water was off, but D'Amico was still standing there, staring at him.
That earned him an inelegant shrug of Chris' thin shoulders. "Potato battery? What about you?"
"No idea," he admited, "I'll figure something out."
"Yeah."
They stared at each other for a minute, the silence filling up the space between them like fog. The longer it laster, the harder it was to think of anything to say.
"You've got macaroni in your hair," D'Amico said finally.
"Huh?" Dave asked, confused.
"Dude, I'm not kidding," D'Amico insisted, reaching for him.
It took every ounce of reserve he had not to flinch back and aim a kick at the other boy, but his control was rewarded when nothing bad happened. Instead of D'Amico knocking him out, or grabbing his hair and using it to smash his face repeatedly against the mirror, the boy simply reached out, plucked a slimy, sticky noodle from his curls, and tossed it aside. Then they were back to that silent staring contest.
"Thanks," Dave said lamely after a considerable amount of time.
"No problem," D'Amico said, "See you in biology?"
Dave nodded and watched the lanky boy leave.
+++
When the sun set, the cockroaches came out.
The seedy underbelly of the beast of the city was revealed, and it took the form of pimps, drug pushers, and crabby cabbies. Kick Ass liked to patrol in the darker neighborhoods, not because the better lit ones were lacking for crime, but because in the seedier hoods the crimes were more likely to end with someone getting shanked. He may have been a touch bitter that the better lit neighborhoods had better police presence too, while the poor were left up shit creek without a paddle.
He ran into Red Mist twenty minutes into his patrol.
The dark clad superhero had detached himself from the shadows of an alleyway as though he'd been waiting there all night. Something in the way he walked spoke of repressed anger, an edgy jerk to his gait that made him seem predatory. Kick Ass did his best to maintain his cool, even when a fist connected with his face hard enough to knock him to the ground. That fist was followed by several kicks to his stomach, ribs and back as Red Mist circled him.
"You stupid little cunt," the masked crusader spat, lashing out another kick to his back.
Kick Ass curled in on himself in an attempt to protect his vitals, trying to think of a way he could get to his feet. He was saved the trouble of plotting such a move when rough hands rolled him over onto his back and lifted him up by his shoulders. He only had a minute to think before one of the hands vanished and reappeared in the form of a fist. It connected with his stomach hard enough that he gagged.
"Pussy," Red Mist snapped, punching Kick Ass in the face again, "Goddamn, fuckin-"
Red Mist's words turned into a gargled shout of suprised pain when Kick Ass kneed him in the nuts. It was a shot below the belt, yeah, but if it meant having enough teeth left in his mouth to eat his cereal in the morning, he was willing to go there.
He stumbled backwards and hit a brick wall, leaning heavilly against it for support, and watched as Red Mist crumbled to the dirty ground, curling into a fetal position and giving loud gasps of agony.
"Fuck," the would-be-villain weazed.
"What the fuck?" Kick Ass demanded, still clinging to the wall.
Red Mist curled in on himself further, "Killed my dad, asshole."
Kick Ass pushed himself away from the wall and stumbled to where Red Mist was laying, sinking down to his knees. He had to grit his teeth against the agony the action caused, lances of pain shooting out from bruised muscles and (probably) cracked ribs. He let out a few harsh breaths before reaching down and punching Red Mist, hard, in the shoulder. The guy let out a surprised shout and rolled over to glare darkly in Kick Ass's face.
"Your dad was evil," Kick Ass said, "He killed people, he was-was a captain of the drug industry, and illegal arms dealing."
Red Mist inhaled a wet sniff through his nose, and Kick Ass cringed, "Man, don't cry."
"I'm not, crying, you pussy!" Red Mist shouted, but the tears were glittery and obvious on the black paint that surrounded his eyes
"Aw, c'mon," Kick Ass begged, "Don't, I can't- I hate it when girls cry."
The fist that lashed out and hit him in the face wasn't that surprising, nor was the shouted, "I'm not a fucking girl, dickweed!"
What was surprising was the fresh torrent of tears and body shaking sobs that followed. Kick Ass knelt awkwardly on the pavement, hesitating for a few uncomfortable seconds before reaching out and gently patting the crying boy on the shoulder. Red Mist halfheartedly shrugged him away, and Kick Ass rolled his eyes and sighed before grappling the lanky man into a hug.
It was incredibly uncomfortable, sitting cross legged in a dank, stinking alleyway with the person who'd proclaimed himself his arch nemesis sitting halfway in his lap while he sobbed. Kick Ass wasn't sure what to do. Should he try to talk to him? What the hell would he say, anyway? Sorry I blew up your dad with a bazooka, but he was an asshole anyway!
That would be tactful.
He settled for awkwardly mumbled words of comfort. You'll be alright and Shh, it's okay, I got ya. If anything, the words of 'comfort' only served to make the teen cry more. Kick Ass wondered if maybe he was doing the comforting wrong. He added in gentle back rubs. They helped, and Red Mist relaxed into his sobs, his hands reaching out to cling to Kick Ass's wet suit.
He tried to remember how he'd comforted a distressed Katie after he'd gotten home from killing the elder D'Amico, but nothing he'd done then seemed to apply at that moment in time. He couldn't kiss Red Mist to make it better, he couldn't strip off his clothes and make it okay bodily. Could he?
No; he shouldn't even think it.
"Shh, it's alright," he whispered, Red Mist's sobs dying down into bizarre little hiccups.
At some point he must have started rocking back and forth, because he had to forcibly stop himself from repeating the motion as the hiccups gave way to uneven breaths. The alley fell deathly quiet, the two of them sitting completely still against one another. The silence stretched out between them, Kick Ass dared to break it.
"Are you-Gah! What the fuck!?"
He reeled back, shoving Red Mist out of his lap and reaching up to clutch his smarting nose. The little fucker had hit him! What a little prick!
"If you think that-that we're friends now, just because I cried," the word was said as a sneer of distaste, "You're dead wrong!"
Kick Ass's surprise turned to anger and he glared, "I was trying to be nice, you complete sack of dicks!"
He saw something flash through Red Mist's face, it wasn't quite hesitation, wasn't quite surprise, but it was something, and then the teen was struggling to his feet and backing away. Kick Ass followed suit, watching him through narrowed eyes.
Kick Ass pulled his fingers away from his nose and they were streaked with blood. Just great, he'd have to explain a broken nose to Katie. Like he needed the stress of explaining to her that he was patrolling hardcore enough to get bloodied. Like he needed the dots between his bruises and Chris D-Fucking-Amico's getting connected and for her to start asking for details, again, about what had happened to him all those weeks ago.
He was brought out of his internal rant by the uncertain shuffle of feet on concrete, and took an instinctive step back as Red Mist took one towards him. The inside of his mask was starting to feel slimy as blood oozed under it, and he grimaced. That was the last goddamn time he tried to be nice.
Red Mist lifted a hand towards him, but then it fell to his side, fingers closing into a loose fist. They regarded each other for a moment, and Kick Ass got the feeling that something was going unsaid; that there were words on the other boy's tongue that he desperately wanted to say.
A high, feminine scream broke their quiet contemplation of one another, and Kick Ass didn't need to look back to know that Red Mist wasn't following him towards its source.
---
The school's lunchroom was always loud; like deafeningly loud.
Dave really didn't like it, but he wouldn't miss the opportunity to see Katie, or Toddy, or get a glimpse of Mindy just to have a quiet meal in one of the classrooms. But he was paying less attention to the conversation at their table than usual, his eyes taking in every face that entered the lunchroom. He couldn't stop thinking of it. Of how broken, and how clingy, and how in need Red Mist had been. Stopping a mugging turned to rape hadn't even gotten it off his mind, though it had earned him a nasty bruise on his hip from where the mugger had knocked him into the wall.
But what was a bruised hip on top of two black eyes, a broken nose and several aching ribs?
That had been fun to explain to Katie. He let her think it was all in self defense. That some douchebags had tried to mug him on his way home and he'd only retaliated. He let her think he hadn't gone out looking for trouble.
The lie hung heavily between them, both of them aware of it, neither willing to address it.
Throughout lunch he ignored the food getting pelted at him by his friends and watched for Chris D'Amico.
He didn't show up, and Dave sighed as the bell rang and the wave of students surged up towards the doors. His next class was on the second floor, Katie's was on the first. They shared a quick kiss at the stairs and parted ways.
Deciding to make sure nothing had split open and was bleeding again, Dave headed for the bathroom at the end of the hall. Most of the lightbulbs were out, and it was ill taken care of. Barely anyone used it when it wasn't an emergency; that made it the perfect place to check on barely hidden war wounds.
It was less abandoned that usual.
It was still dimly lit, and the tiles on the floor and walls were cracking and crumbling. Three of the four sinks didn't work, and only two of the toilets flushed. The mirrors were all covered in lewd comments about which girls were hot to screw.
And Chris D'Amico was staring him down from across the room.
Distantly he heard the last warning bell for class go off; he ignored it, edging towards Chris with all the care of someone approaching a wild animal. "So, what did you think of the spoilers Whedon posted on his website?"
He saw Chris swallow hard, almost heard it in the echoing room, "They sounded pretty lame."
"That's what I thought," Dave said, moving to turn on the sink that worked, almost close enough to Chris to brush shoulders, "Marty tried to throttle me for blasphemy."
He stared at himself in the mirror and lifted damp fingers to work gently at crusty blood around one nostril. Chris fidgeted in his peripheral.
"Your friend is a douche," the rich, lanky loner finally said, "And you've got shit in your hair again. Don't you ever brush it?"
This time the outstretched hand didn't make it to his hair. He caught it by the wrist and held it firmly, "Not really. Hurts to brush it."
He could feel a fluttery pulse underneath his fingers, felt the muscles there tighten and tense as the fingers flexed ineffectually. "Let go."
"No," Dave said, glaring, feeling a deep sense of curiosity and morbid fascination fill him. It egged him on like a drunk friend trying to backseat drive.
He thought he saw something like panic flit across Chris' face, chased quickly away by hopelessness. Feeling bold, and stupid, and hormonal, and all manner of other things, Dave reached out with his other hand to cup the back of Chris' neck, using his hold on his wrist to drag him closer so that he could, what? Kiss him? He pulled him close enough that they were breathing each others breath, close enough that keeping their eyes open and trying to focus became a quick and painful headache.
Close enough that he could hear the gentlest hitch in Chris' breathing as the boy's other hand reached for his hip, smarting the bruise there and making him press closer still.
When their lips came together it wasn't perfect. It was the antithesis of perfect. His lip resplit open along a wound that Chris had given him the night before, and their noses bumped hard enough that he hissed and pulled away.
"Shit," Chris was saying, looking mortified, "I'm sor-"
"Mmm," Dave hummed quietly against his lips, cutting him off mid apology and trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his face.
He finally let go of the captured wrist, and that hand tangled painfully in his hair, tugging some of the strands out at the roots. But it was okay, because at the same time as that was happening Chris was pulling away and running his tongue over Dave's bottom lip in a way that soothed the stinging burn of the cut.
Maybe he could kiss him better, he thought, crowding Chris back so that he slipped into the space between the sinks and hit the wall. Maybe he could strip off his clothes and force him to forget all those tears and sorrows.
Their lips crushed together again, and it didn't matter that it hurt his entire, bruised, face. It didn't matter that his nose was bleeding again and making their kiss taste like copper; staining their shirts.
It just didn't matter anymore.
Chris whimpered, and in the echo that bounced back to them it was a sob.
"It's alright," Dave murmured, pressing kisses to Chris' eyes and cheeks and forehead. "I've got you."
Life went on, and it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but it wasn't all monsoons and hale storms either. It just was, and they could succomb to that and die, or they could keep moving forward.
Rating: R, violence, language, and h/c.
Pairing: Crave (Chris/Dave) and Kist (Kick Ass/Red Mist)
Summary: "But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward." - Rochy
Notes: Dedicated in its entirety to seeingrightly , whose conversation in the pairing post gave me a raging hard-onplot bunny for these two. Completely un-beta'd, all mistakes (and there will be many) are mine.
+++
Moving Forward
+++
Life kind of went on.
No one really cared that Kick Ass and some mysterious other masked man got their shit handed to them on the internet, live for everyone to see. It didn't inspire many people to take up a life of fighting crime, if anything it was a convincing deterent.
With D'Amico dead and his criminal empire all but burned to the ground, it seemed only natural to retire, and so Dave did.
For all of the few weeks it took him to recover so that he could walk without looking like he shit himself.
Once he could walk right, and breathe without it feeling like his ribs were snapping in two, he was back in that wet suit faster than Mindy could name the make and model of a gun. People were less inclined to fuck with him after seeing what he survived on the internet; if anything the criminal underworld had begun drawing conclusions about his beating being followed so closely by the destruction of the D'Amico empire. Usually all it took to stop a rape or mugging was for him to clear his throat and get their attention. Then they'd high tail it.
One of the biggest weirds was seeing Chris D'Amico in school, looking him in the eyes, and knowing that he knew that he'd been the one to blow his father to kingdom come.
Toddy was being a total douchebag, sitting across the lunch table from him and attempting, with no success, to chat up one of Katie's friends. Katie was sticking pretty close to his side after the D'Amico incident, like if she didn't have constant physical contact he might disappear. With her closeness came a wave of friends who would slip in and out of their conversations throughout the day.
He hadn't told her that he still patrolled.
Mindy called him a pussy for it daily.
D'Amico strolled into the lunch room with an air of such casual belonging that he immediately stuck out. Their eyes met, and they held one another's gaze for a long moment. Dave was struck, as he always was, with a strange sense of sadness and a hint of bitterness. Chris looked away first, and Dave followed his line of vision to where Mindy was sitting with boys of her own year. He wondered if he got the same look of chilly focus that she did when met with face with a D'Amico.
He blinked back to his immediate surroundings when Katie nudged him in the ribs. The table had gone quiet, Toddy and Marty, and Katie watching him with questioning gazes.
"Dude, what's up with you and D'Amico?" Toddy finally asked.
Dave tried to play it cool, but only managed to look mildly horrified and like a deer caught in the headlights, "Huh?"
"You two both get intense looks on your faces when you see each other," Katie said quietly.
Dave tried to smile it off, shaking his head, "I just spaced out. What were we talking about?"
And the conversation picked back up around him like he and D'Amico had never stared each other down.
Life just kept going on.
+++
Dave was staring at himself in the mirror in the bathroom closest to his next class. He tilted his head this way and that, trying to see if his face looked that much different after John D'Amico. There was some scaring along his jaw, and on his cheek and near his ear. That bit was from when he'd taken a billy club to the face, he thought, running his fingers over it.
The door opened to his right, and his eyes flicked up as Chris D'Amico entered the room, his gait a little uneven, his lanky form just slightly awkward to watch. He moved right to the sink beside Dave's, and turned it on to wash his hands. He used more cold water than hot, Dave noted absently.
"What do you think of the newest issue of Buffy?"
Dave blinked, shrugged, "I was less enthused than I thought I'd be to hear about Dawn's sex life."
Chris gave a forced laugh, "Right? I'd much rather see some Buffy action."
Dave nodded, returned to staring at himself in the mirror, leaning in coser to squint at discolored skin around his right eye. Scaring, and rather than look badass it made him look like he might have liver spots.
"Do you know what you're doing for your science project?" he asked after a beat, noticing that the water was off, but D'Amico was still standing there, staring at him.
That earned him an inelegant shrug of Chris' thin shoulders. "Potato battery? What about you?"
"No idea," he admited, "I'll figure something out."
"Yeah."
They stared at each other for a minute, the silence filling up the space between them like fog. The longer it laster, the harder it was to think of anything to say.
"You've got macaroni in your hair," D'Amico said finally.
"Huh?" Dave asked, confused.
"Dude, I'm not kidding," D'Amico insisted, reaching for him.
It took every ounce of reserve he had not to flinch back and aim a kick at the other boy, but his control was rewarded when nothing bad happened. Instead of D'Amico knocking him out, or grabbing his hair and using it to smash his face repeatedly against the mirror, the boy simply reached out, plucked a slimy, sticky noodle from his curls, and tossed it aside. Then they were back to that silent staring contest.
"Thanks," Dave said lamely after a considerable amount of time.
"No problem," D'Amico said, "See you in biology?"
Dave nodded and watched the lanky boy leave.
+++
When the sun set, the cockroaches came out.
The seedy underbelly of the beast of the city was revealed, and it took the form of pimps, drug pushers, and crabby cabbies. Kick Ass liked to patrol in the darker neighborhoods, not because the better lit ones were lacking for crime, but because in the seedier hoods the crimes were more likely to end with someone getting shanked. He may have been a touch bitter that the better lit neighborhoods had better police presence too, while the poor were left up shit creek without a paddle.
He ran into Red Mist twenty minutes into his patrol.
The dark clad superhero had detached himself from the shadows of an alleyway as though he'd been waiting there all night. Something in the way he walked spoke of repressed anger, an edgy jerk to his gait that made him seem predatory. Kick Ass did his best to maintain his cool, even when a fist connected with his face hard enough to knock him to the ground. That fist was followed by several kicks to his stomach, ribs and back as Red Mist circled him.
"You stupid little cunt," the masked crusader spat, lashing out another kick to his back.
Kick Ass curled in on himself in an attempt to protect his vitals, trying to think of a way he could get to his feet. He was saved the trouble of plotting such a move when rough hands rolled him over onto his back and lifted him up by his shoulders. He only had a minute to think before one of the hands vanished and reappeared in the form of a fist. It connected with his stomach hard enough that he gagged.
"Pussy," Red Mist snapped, punching Kick Ass in the face again, "Goddamn, fuckin-"
Red Mist's words turned into a gargled shout of suprised pain when Kick Ass kneed him in the nuts. It was a shot below the belt, yeah, but if it meant having enough teeth left in his mouth to eat his cereal in the morning, he was willing to go there.
He stumbled backwards and hit a brick wall, leaning heavilly against it for support, and watched as Red Mist crumbled to the dirty ground, curling into a fetal position and giving loud gasps of agony.
"Fuck," the would-be-villain weazed.
"What the fuck?" Kick Ass demanded, still clinging to the wall.
Red Mist curled in on himself further, "Killed my dad, asshole."
Kick Ass pushed himself away from the wall and stumbled to where Red Mist was laying, sinking down to his knees. He had to grit his teeth against the agony the action caused, lances of pain shooting out from bruised muscles and (probably) cracked ribs. He let out a few harsh breaths before reaching down and punching Red Mist, hard, in the shoulder. The guy let out a surprised shout and rolled over to glare darkly in Kick Ass's face.
"Your dad was evil," Kick Ass said, "He killed people, he was-was a captain of the drug industry, and illegal arms dealing."
Red Mist inhaled a wet sniff through his nose, and Kick Ass cringed, "Man, don't cry."
"I'm not, crying, you pussy!" Red Mist shouted, but the tears were glittery and obvious on the black paint that surrounded his eyes
"Aw, c'mon," Kick Ass begged, "Don't, I can't- I hate it when girls cry."
The fist that lashed out and hit him in the face wasn't that surprising, nor was the shouted, "I'm not a fucking girl, dickweed!"
What was surprising was the fresh torrent of tears and body shaking sobs that followed. Kick Ass knelt awkwardly on the pavement, hesitating for a few uncomfortable seconds before reaching out and gently patting the crying boy on the shoulder. Red Mist halfheartedly shrugged him away, and Kick Ass rolled his eyes and sighed before grappling the lanky man into a hug.
It was incredibly uncomfortable, sitting cross legged in a dank, stinking alleyway with the person who'd proclaimed himself his arch nemesis sitting halfway in his lap while he sobbed. Kick Ass wasn't sure what to do. Should he try to talk to him? What the hell would he say, anyway? Sorry I blew up your dad with a bazooka, but he was an asshole anyway!
That would be tactful.
He settled for awkwardly mumbled words of comfort. You'll be alright and Shh, it's okay, I got ya. If anything, the words of 'comfort' only served to make the teen cry more. Kick Ass wondered if maybe he was doing the comforting wrong. He added in gentle back rubs. They helped, and Red Mist relaxed into his sobs, his hands reaching out to cling to Kick Ass's wet suit.
He tried to remember how he'd comforted a distressed Katie after he'd gotten home from killing the elder D'Amico, but nothing he'd done then seemed to apply at that moment in time. He couldn't kiss Red Mist to make it better, he couldn't strip off his clothes and make it okay bodily. Could he?
No; he shouldn't even think it.
"Shh, it's alright," he whispered, Red Mist's sobs dying down into bizarre little hiccups.
At some point he must have started rocking back and forth, because he had to forcibly stop himself from repeating the motion as the hiccups gave way to uneven breaths. The alley fell deathly quiet, the two of them sitting completely still against one another. The silence stretched out between them, Kick Ass dared to break it.
"Are you-Gah! What the fuck!?"
He reeled back, shoving Red Mist out of his lap and reaching up to clutch his smarting nose. The little fucker had hit him! What a little prick!
"If you think that-that we're friends now, just because I cried," the word was said as a sneer of distaste, "You're dead wrong!"
Kick Ass's surprise turned to anger and he glared, "I was trying to be nice, you complete sack of dicks!"
He saw something flash through Red Mist's face, it wasn't quite hesitation, wasn't quite surprise, but it was something, and then the teen was struggling to his feet and backing away. Kick Ass followed suit, watching him through narrowed eyes.
Kick Ass pulled his fingers away from his nose and they were streaked with blood. Just great, he'd have to explain a broken nose to Katie. Like he needed the stress of explaining to her that he was patrolling hardcore enough to get bloodied. Like he needed the dots between his bruises and Chris D-Fucking-Amico's getting connected and for her to start asking for details, again, about what had happened to him all those weeks ago.
He was brought out of his internal rant by the uncertain shuffle of feet on concrete, and took an instinctive step back as Red Mist took one towards him. The inside of his mask was starting to feel slimy as blood oozed under it, and he grimaced. That was the last goddamn time he tried to be nice.
Red Mist lifted a hand towards him, but then it fell to his side, fingers closing into a loose fist. They regarded each other for a moment, and Kick Ass got the feeling that something was going unsaid; that there were words on the other boy's tongue that he desperately wanted to say.
A high, feminine scream broke their quiet contemplation of one another, and Kick Ass didn't need to look back to know that Red Mist wasn't following him towards its source.
---
The school's lunchroom was always loud; like deafeningly loud.
Dave really didn't like it, but he wouldn't miss the opportunity to see Katie, or Toddy, or get a glimpse of Mindy just to have a quiet meal in one of the classrooms. But he was paying less attention to the conversation at their table than usual, his eyes taking in every face that entered the lunchroom. He couldn't stop thinking of it. Of how broken, and how clingy, and how in need Red Mist had been. Stopping a mugging turned to rape hadn't even gotten it off his mind, though it had earned him a nasty bruise on his hip from where the mugger had knocked him into the wall.
But what was a bruised hip on top of two black eyes, a broken nose and several aching ribs?
That had been fun to explain to Katie. He let her think it was all in self defense. That some douchebags had tried to mug him on his way home and he'd only retaliated. He let her think he hadn't gone out looking for trouble.
The lie hung heavily between them, both of them aware of it, neither willing to address it.
Throughout lunch he ignored the food getting pelted at him by his friends and watched for Chris D'Amico.
He didn't show up, and Dave sighed as the bell rang and the wave of students surged up towards the doors. His next class was on the second floor, Katie's was on the first. They shared a quick kiss at the stairs and parted ways.
Deciding to make sure nothing had split open and was bleeding again, Dave headed for the bathroom at the end of the hall. Most of the lightbulbs were out, and it was ill taken care of. Barely anyone used it when it wasn't an emergency; that made it the perfect place to check on barely hidden war wounds.
It was less abandoned that usual.
It was still dimly lit, and the tiles on the floor and walls were cracking and crumbling. Three of the four sinks didn't work, and only two of the toilets flushed. The mirrors were all covered in lewd comments about which girls were hot to screw.
And Chris D'Amico was staring him down from across the room.
Distantly he heard the last warning bell for class go off; he ignored it, edging towards Chris with all the care of someone approaching a wild animal. "So, what did you think of the spoilers Whedon posted on his website?"
He saw Chris swallow hard, almost heard it in the echoing room, "They sounded pretty lame."
"That's what I thought," Dave said, moving to turn on the sink that worked, almost close enough to Chris to brush shoulders, "Marty tried to throttle me for blasphemy."
He stared at himself in the mirror and lifted damp fingers to work gently at crusty blood around one nostril. Chris fidgeted in his peripheral.
"Your friend is a douche," the rich, lanky loner finally said, "And you've got shit in your hair again. Don't you ever brush it?"
This time the outstretched hand didn't make it to his hair. He caught it by the wrist and held it firmly, "Not really. Hurts to brush it."
He could feel a fluttery pulse underneath his fingers, felt the muscles there tighten and tense as the fingers flexed ineffectually. "Let go."
"No," Dave said, glaring, feeling a deep sense of curiosity and morbid fascination fill him. It egged him on like a drunk friend trying to backseat drive.
He thought he saw something like panic flit across Chris' face, chased quickly away by hopelessness. Feeling bold, and stupid, and hormonal, and all manner of other things, Dave reached out with his other hand to cup the back of Chris' neck, using his hold on his wrist to drag him closer so that he could, what? Kiss him? He pulled him close enough that they were breathing each others breath, close enough that keeping their eyes open and trying to focus became a quick and painful headache.
Close enough that he could hear the gentlest hitch in Chris' breathing as the boy's other hand reached for his hip, smarting the bruise there and making him press closer still.
When their lips came together it wasn't perfect. It was the antithesis of perfect. His lip resplit open along a wound that Chris had given him the night before, and their noses bumped hard enough that he hissed and pulled away.
"Shit," Chris was saying, looking mortified, "I'm sor-"
"Mmm," Dave hummed quietly against his lips, cutting him off mid apology and trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his face.
He finally let go of the captured wrist, and that hand tangled painfully in his hair, tugging some of the strands out at the roots. But it was okay, because at the same time as that was happening Chris was pulling away and running his tongue over Dave's bottom lip in a way that soothed the stinging burn of the cut.
Maybe he could kiss him better, he thought, crowding Chris back so that he slipped into the space between the sinks and hit the wall. Maybe he could strip off his clothes and force him to forget all those tears and sorrows.
Their lips crushed together again, and it didn't matter that it hurt his entire, bruised, face. It didn't matter that his nose was bleeding again and making their kiss taste like copper; staining their shirts.
It just didn't matter anymore.
Chris whimpered, and in the echo that bounced back to them it was a sob.
"It's alright," Dave murmured, pressing kisses to Chris' eyes and cheeks and forehead. "I've got you."
Life went on, and it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but it wasn't all monsoons and hale storms either. It just was, and they could succomb to that and die, or they could keep moving forward.