Work Text:
It starts with breaking his finger.
It’s not his playing arm, thank god, but he keeps imagining himself falling, over and over, his foot catching on the inch-high ledge of his shower, replaying the way he’d splayed his hand out to catch himself, overlaid with disgust.
He wouldn’t have broken it if he wasn’t so fucking- there’s no point in that line of thinking, but he thinks it nonetheless.
The whole time he’s being driven to the emergency room - by his manager, no less, who the fuck else would pick up his calls - he thinks: they’re going to see me without my makeup. They’re going to see me without my makeup, I’m going to fucking kill myself. He knows straightening his hair isn’t an option. He can’t imagine braving the pain of holding up the straightener. But not every unbearable human flaw is uncorrectable, even in pain.
He had tried, wincing in front of the bathroom mirror in his bathrobe, scrabbling to open the lid to his eyeliner single-handedly, but with his brain flooded with adrenaline, he’d barely managed to get the narrow lid open before his manager burst in.
“Can you do my eyeliner?” Klavier pleads with her. He’s crying, his body deciding this without his approval.
She looks at Klavier in bewilderment, glances down to his broken hand, and flinches.
“Your eyeliner- Klavier, that’s broken. Get in the goddamn car.”
And yes, the pain is debilitating and his finger is turning purple, but Klavier’s real concern is how goddamn embarrassed he is. Pain is a privilege for the pretty.
If he could only lose those last five pounds turned ten pounds turned twenty pounds, maybe he wouldn’t feel so guilty being stared at in the lobby of an emergency room.
He’s going to have to find a new doctor, one who can’t get in contact with his psychiatrist. He needs to start a GLP-1. At this rate, it’s a health concern. What if he breaks another bone because of his weight? What if he ends up in the emergency room and he hasn’t yet earned the right to cry in public?
He’s weighed to be checked in. He isn’t supposed to look, it’s part of his agreement with his therapist, he never looks at his sobriety visits or annual physicals but the guilt is suffocating. He needs to punish himself. He looks. The number makes him want to throw up.
He’s about ten pounds away from being overweight. Ten pounds away from the point where he calls it quits and finally uses that letter that’s been sitting in his top drawer for years. Twenty pounds over being allowed to cry in an emergency room.
He shouldn’t be this weight. He shouldn’t be this weight. He shouldn’t be in this body. Everything is wrong. He’s going to fucking kill himself.
Half of the waiting room is staring at him. Two college-aged girls are whispering to each other, glancing between him and their phones. What image are they comparing the reality to? He can only hope it’s not those pictures, taken without consent, posted without consent, and seemingly impossible to remove from the internet. He was skinnier then: addiction takes away most of your appetite.
He can imagine what they’re thinking: he’s let himself go. They’re right. He’s gotten complacent. He goes out. He self-soothes. He allows himself movie theater popcorn and popsicles at the beach and birthday cake. He eats.
He needs to do something but there isn’t much he can do right now, the injury making it difficult to focus on much of anything, but if he attempts to twitch his finger, it sends lightning shooting down his spine and it aches like it’s been soaked in acid, so he takes to thinking about his misdeeds and using the pain to cleanse them.
Falling.
His weight.
Kristoph being in prison.
That one time he forgot to give Vongole her meds.
Speaking to anyone at all.
Being here.
The scissors were in his hands. He could have made this a hell of a lot more efficient. He wouldn’t have felt it all that much, with the adrenaline.
“I want to go home,” he says very softly to his manager, sounding more like a petulant toddler than a grown adult with unsightly stubble and a body whose shape he can’t figure out how to control.
“Be quiet,” his manager tells him. “You’re not going anywhere, Gavin. Fill out your paperwork.”
Klavier looks down at the clipboard on his lap. The words all seem to scramble together, blurred. Something falls onto the clipboard and with horror, Klavier realizes that it’s a tear.
He sets the clipboard down, his hands shaking.
“I need to go home.” His voice is quiet now, meek.
A Gavin should always sound confident, Kristoph would tell him. Like the world belongs to you.
He sniffles. “Please take me home.”
His manager rolls her eyes. “Sit down.”
He does not get taken home. He gets his finger set without morphine, given his history, and a cast he’s not allowed to get wet.
The First Time
He doesn’t remember when it started. It’s always been there, inseparable, like KristophAndKlavier, KlavierAndDaryan. KlavierAndHunger, HungerAndMe. He remembers what it was like the first time it got unbearable, when pictures of him were scattered across the internet and all he could think about was the way his stomach creased in his inebriated sprawl.
Sometimes, when Daryan is inside of him and whispering in his ear that he’s safe and he’s loved and he’s beautiful, Klavier is overtaken by rage.
I hate you, he thinks. He imagines pressing a knife up in between his ribs, imagines tearing flesh off with his teeth, imagines looking Daryan in the eyes as Daryan’s hands claw at Klavier’s thumbs pressing into his throat. I hate you. I hate you. I wish you were dead. I’m going to kill you someday. Stop touching me. Stop touching me, you’re hurting me, you’re hurting me, I’m scared.
And then it passes and there is only Daryan, his Daryan, a concerned look in his eyes, stopping to ask if Klavier is alright, if he needs to stop.
He would too, if Klavier asked. A luxury Klavier doesn’t intend to utilize no matter how much he might need it.
No, Daryan asking if Klavier needs to stop only tells Klavier one thing: that he’s not behaving as he’s practiced. His expressions are wrong. He’s struggling to stay hard. He wants to get back to his songwriting. He has to search the room for hidden cameras. He needs to lose twenty pounds.
Inevitably, when someone leaks a sex tape of him that he hadn’t even known existed, he at least wants his ribs visible. He hopes he’s bruised up. He hopes it’s less a sex tape and more of a murder ritual, Daryan threatening him with a knife if he doesn’t behave.
Klavier focuses on what he can control. He thinks of that time they went to the beach in Tampa at midnight, Daryan launching himself headfirst into the water, the lovely way it glistened on his chest as he stood there in the moonlight. The look in his eyes as he watched Klavier in his bathing suit, the sheer want.
Klavier feels his cock twitch.
“I’m alright,” Klavier promises, kissing Daryan’s jaw. “Sorry. I was thinking about how we can fix that riff.”
Daryan laughs. He presses their foreheads together and gives Klavier a moment to compose himself. These are the small moments of kindness. The way he meets Klavier’s eyes, dripping with affection for Klavier’s presumed workaholic habits, Klavier knows that he is seen. He thinks of being seen in public, being seen across the internet, being seen by her, her lips are on him, she’s touching him and he’s scared, he’s scared, he’s angry, he wants her dead, he wants her dead, he’s so tired and none of this is real. He’s drunk. He’s making it up. He hasn’t seen the pictures yet.
“You’re beautiful,” Daryan says, and Klavier wants to hurt him again.
They’re recording with a new producer on the East Coast for all of January, so he’s allowed to get a new doctor for the time that he’s there.
He makes an appointment because, like clockwork, something in his brain tells him he’s dying.
“I’ve been having joint pain in my knee,” he tells her. He knows what it is, a childhood soccer injury that’s never healed right and always acts up during tour when they’re flying around constantly without giving it time to recover from the change in air pressure.
She doesn’t have his medical history. She also doesn’t ask.
She hums and examines his chart. “You could try losing some weight,” she suggests. “It’d be less strain on your joints. Not that you’re overweight, mind you, but you could lose twenty pounds without being under. We might as well try that first.”
Klavier wants to cry.
“I’ve been trying,” he says, careful to pick the words he thinks will be most aligned with his cause. “I haven’t been able to do it, really. I’m thinking about food all the time.”
There’s an art to lying without lying. It’s like Oscar Wilde says, that lying is just another form of storytelling that all artists love. He’s careful to be technically honest.
She nods. “Right. It can be tough to lose weight.”
Klavier is getting impatient. “I’ve seen ads for things like Ozempic.”
He’s careful to use the name that a layperson would be more familiar with. He’s careful to sound nonchalant, like this isn’t another needle he would do just about anything to get his hands on, like this isn’t a flashing red light with neon signs going off in his recovery brain, like his therapist isn’t going to give him that defeated look.
“Let’s start with simple diet changes,” she says cheerfully. “Have you ever counted calories?”
He’s careful not to laugh.
“I haven’t,” he lies. This time it isn’t even technically true.
The Second Time
There’s a home video Klavier is obsessed with for a multitude of reasons. Kristoph, aged seven, is led into his mother’s hospital room, holding onto his father’s hand. Father is recording.
Kristoph lets go and runs to Mama as soon as he sees her. It’s been two days since he’s seen her, which in his mind is practically an eternity. Mama pulls him up onto the hospital bed and snuggles him close, but Kristoph is quickly distracted. There is a clear bassinet to the side of the bed, and in it lays a very small baby, an unusual shade of purple with flaking skin, wrapped in a blue blanket with yellow ducks on it.
The wonder is obvious even in the way Kristoph breathes.
“It’s so little,” he declares.
“He was born a little bit early,” Mama explains. “He was excited to meet you. How do you feel about being a big brother, Kristoph?”
Kristoph does not seem satisfied with this response. He turns to Father, his expression distressed. “Papa, it’s so little.”
“He’s a good eater,” Father reassures him. Out of character - perhaps he was reassuring Mama. “He’ll be nice and big in no time.”
Klavier thinks about that at least three times a day after Kristoph’s trial. He thinks of the obvious distress. He thinks of the way Kristoph had studied his sleeping face, the way he had flinched when Klavier sneezed, the way he had looked over at Mama to see if babies were allowed to do things like that. He thinks about what it means to be small, to have an older brother who looks at you like you’re the best toy he could have gotten from his parents on the week of his birthday, to know you are taken care of.
He thinks of teething on the rock hard pucks of cookie that Kristoph attempts to make at nine years old. He thinks of joint birthday parties with two cakes. He thinks of Kristoph bringing him chocolate from the senior school canteen. He thinks of sympathy casserole and funeral lasagne. He thinks of grief, and how it strips away your agency, and makes you eat and eat and eat and eat, just to feel anything at all.
He thinks about what it means to be a good eater. And he thinks: what is the point of eating if you don’t have an older brother to live for anyways?
But he’s never been good at restriction, not without help that is now entirely inaccessible to him given that his ATM withdrawals are now monitored. So he gets help: in the form of the bottle of top shelf gin Kristoph had given him on his twenty-first birthday, still unopened.
He drinks. And he drinks. And he drinks. And eventually, he becomes such a good drinker that he can finally stop being such a good eater, and he can become nice and small in no time.
He still thinks about that video, when he hears the pull-tab of wet food in the morning, and the rustle of kibble against a ceramic bowl in the evening. At least it’s only twice a day now. And usually, he keeps himself sedated enough that he doesn’t think too much about the fact that his stomach pleads to lick the inside of the empty can.
Simon is the first to notice. Klavier isn’t surprised. Given that he’s back in school for psychology and the fact that he has a firsthand understanding of OCD, Klavier would have been more surprised if he hadn’t been the first to notice.
He doesn’t mention it the first time he notices. They go on a hike together and Klavier sees his eyes narrow at the protein bar Klavier has for lunch when they reach their picnic spot.
“I didn’t want to carry a full packed lunch all the way out here,” Klavier says, and Simon, generously, lets it slide.
He’s less generous the next time.
They go to Target during their lunch break so that Simon can buy new leather gloves for when he trains Taka.
“I don’t feel like eating my sandwich at my desk,” Simon grumbles, glancing at his watch when he finally picks out a pair of gloves that fit his hands. “I’d rather pick something up here.”
So they stand in the ready-meal isle, Simon’s face illuminated by the freezer light. Klavier doesn’t notice that he’s being watched in the reflection of the glass, the way he swallows, the way his fingers twitch, the way his eyes flit to a box that’s fallen over, the nutritional information visible on the back.
He picks up a frozen meal too, because there’s a reason he can stand to lose twenty pounds: hunger is the only thing he can’t seem to stomach.
When they’re back in the car, Simon glances at him through the rearview.
“How long has it been bothering you for again?” He asks, earnest. They both know what he’s referring to.
There’s no point lying to a guy like Simon, too familiar with secrets and the suffering they bring. Klavier shrugs.
“Comes and goes. Been getting worse for a few months.” He pauses. “I wish you didn’t have to ask that question.”
Simon grimaces. “Sorry. I understand, it’s none of my business. I want you to be able to speak to me about it though, if you ever need to. There’s no shame in illness.”
That’s not what Klavier had meant. This is what Klavier had meant: I wish it showed.
The Third Time
He doesn’t know how it’s legal. It doesn’t ask for his ID. It doesn’t ask for a prescription. He does not have to schedule a consultation.
He just has to fill out a form asking for it, and one week and a few hundred dollars later, it is on his doorstep.
There aren’t any needles, which is probably for the best, but Klavier’s read the label: it’s the exact same chemistry. It should still work.
He knows it’s a bad idea as he’s doing it, but what else is he supposed to do? Succumb to the route his body wants to take against his will? He owns his body. He owns his body. It will obey him, one way or another. He will make it obey. Never again will it have a mind of its own, pliant to anyone who wanted to hurt him, never again will it be anyone else’s to claim. It is his to chain, his to whip, his to beat into submission.
It’s not without its failings. He gets tired more easily. His armpits hurt. If a trial runs for hours without a recess, his legs twitch and his vision blurs, but it’s worth it, it’s all worth it for how powerful he feels every time he takes his dose, his body undeniably his.
He hires a dog walker for Vongole when his ankle pain becomes too unbearable to take her on long walks. He throws out emergency meals filling his freezer. He stops inviting Simon over. He flirts with Apollo Justice with a confidence that’s felt foreign to him for years. He has nothing to hide anymore. He is worthy. He is worthy. He is in control.
He finds himself in Apollo’s bed, Apollo’s lips peppering kisses down his stomach as he unbuttons Klavier’s top. He can’t help but tease when Apollo moans.
He makes some cheesy joke about how attractive his body must be to have Apollo moaning like that.
“Pretty full of yourself, huh, Gavin?” Apollo teases and Klavier laughs and laughs, manic, because if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s full.
“I’d rather be full of you, Herr Forehead, if you would hurry up and put on your strap.”
It’s funny, in a way. He doesn’t want to hurt Apollo, and he’s not worried about how he looks anymore, but as they share a moment that should be intimate and collaborative, Klavier can still only think about his own body. It’s morbidly delicious, how it aches to arch his back or lift his hips, how little time it takes for him to tire.
The thought passes his mind, fleeting and quickly discarded: you must still hate it if you get this much pleasure off of seeing it in pain.
He feels himself struggling to stay hard again. So he thinks of Apollo pinching at the loose skin, thinks of Apollo unable to pick him up, thinks of Apollo’s fingers pressing into his throat and his voice saying I hate you, I hate you, I wish you were dead that he’s able to have an orgasm violent enough that he feels woozy afterwards.
-
“It’s legal,” Klavier tells Ema very pointedly when she walks in on him taking a dose in his office in the middle of the workday.
He’s not scheduled for a dose until seven. He needs a dose now: he’s plateauing.
He sees something flash across her face, the expression of a little girl watching her baby brother - born premature, dying, a bad eater.
She stands in the doorway, then steps inside and closes the door behind herself.
“What is it?” She asks.
Whatever she’s thinking is worse than the truth. So he doesn’t have a choice, really.
“Medication,” he says, channeling Oscar Wilde again, storytelling, lying without lying. “It’s entirely legal.”
She frowns. It clicks to her, in that moment, how Klavier looks, a reflection of tabloid covers from years ago, a hoodie pulled over his face as he is led into rehab. He can see it in how she studies him. She knows him, well enough that she’s suspicious, but she doesn’t have the Gramarye sight. It slips through.
“I didn’t know you were sick,” she says.
Klavier almost laughs. He wraps his palm around the bottle and tucks it carefully into his jacket pocket.
“One can only hope to hide such things, Fraulein Skye.”
-
Sebastian brings two packed lunches to Klavier’s office on the third Wednesday Klavier turns him down for lunch.
“I know you haven’t been wanting to go out much these days,” he says with a bright smile, sitting on the floor of Klavier’s office. “So I made some lunch. At least we can keep up our tradition!”
Klavier’s currently on a double dose. The idea of a full meal makes his stomach turn. He can barely stomach much other than yogurt pouches: any solids are going to make his stomach cramp and burn.
Sebastian beams up at him. How could Klavier refuse him?
Klavier forces the food down his gullet. And if he excuses himself to throw it back up in the office bathroom five minutes later, in between his thighs so that his knees aren’t seen on the tiled floor, nobody has to be the wiser.
-
He knows it’s a problem when he starts calling out sick for cases. It’s a bad sign: he remembers this from when he was in active addiction. It’s always a bad sign when you can’t get out of bed. It’s always a bad sign when you stop caring. It’s always a bad sign to be counting down minutes until the next hit.
He weighs himself to cheer himself up. He’s nineteen pounds down - two pounds from being underweight. So he’s not unhealthy, not really, not yet. This is fine. This is fine, he’s fine.
He’s almost perfect. One more pound and he’ll be perfect, he’ll be beautiful, he’ll be worthy and his body will belong to him.
He spends the day flitting in and out of the bathroom, just to make sure he looks the same as he did ten minutes ago.
Apollo comes over that evening. He hands Klavier a container of soup and presses a kiss to his cheek.
“I hope this’ll settle your stomach soon so you can come back to court,” he says. He’s sincere, Klavier can tell. “Going against Payne is so much worse than going against you.”
Klavier laughs. “Worse view?”
Apollo pauses. He seems puzzled by this response. “Well, yeah,” he says. “But more importantly, he’s awful at his job. I’d rather lose a case against you than win a case against him. At least with you, I know we’re going to uncover the truth together.”
That hadn’t even occurred to Klavier as an option. At any rate, he’s going to have to call out more often. He won’t be much good at uncovering the truth on days like this, when he can’t stand for more than ten minutes at a time.
-
He regrets opening the door.
Simon Blackquill is on his doorstep, Taka perched on his shoulder. They’re both watching him with an entirely justified accusatory expression, the afternoon light reflecting rainbows onto the floor.
“You’re avoiding me,” Simon says, matter of factly. There’s a strange underlayer to his expression, something Klavier isn’t able to pinpoint. Or maybe he could, once upon a time, back when he wasn’t so goddamn tired.
Simon glances over Klavier, still in his pajamas, leaning against the door, dark circles under his eyes, his top a size too big. He knows. Simon always seems to know.
“I’ve been sick,” Klavier says.
Simon nods. “So Miss Skye tells me. I wonder how much of her understanding of your affliction is… inaccurate.”
Klavier sighs. “Why are you here, Simon? I’m not in the mood for a lecture about being a bad friend.”
Simon nods. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a letter. He hands it to Klavier. “I’m in no mood to lecture you either, Gavin-dono. You don’t owe an explanation to anyone, not to Miss Skye and certainly not to me. But you do owe some things to yourself, including taking actual care of yourself in illness.”
Klavier turns the letter over in between his fingertips. It doesn’t feel like it’s addressed to him. Klavier Gavin, a friend, feels like someone else.
“It’s like you said,” Klavier says quietly. “I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I don’t have anything to say.”
Simon nods. “I understand. You don’t owe me an explanation. But I don’t owe you my compliance either.” He hesitates. “And believe it or not, some people care about you. For those people, it’s rather difficult watching you slowly kill yourself. I couldn’t not say anything.”
They stand quietly for a moment, a standoff. Simon is waiting to be invited in. Klavier is waiting for him to leave. Simon is the first to buckle. He gives Klavier one last curt nod, and turns. Klavier watches him walk, leaving damp footprints in the hallway carpeting.
He remembers arguing with Kristoph when he’d gotten his first B at Themis.
“You’re distracted,” Kristoph tells him. “It’s that boy. He’s going to drag you down with him.”
Which is probably true: Klavier’s been spending more nights than not awake, texting Daryan throughout the night. He spends every lunch with him, they study together, do their homework together, sit together for all of their classes.
“You’re not going to get me to stop hanging out with him,” Klavier huffs.
Kristoph rolls his eyes and sighs.
“Fine,” he says. “Then put up with getting Bs. You have to pick what you want, Klavier. Do you want some guy, or do you want to win? Us Gavins typically pick winning.”
Klavier’s in love: so sue him. A B is collateral damage that he’s willing to bear. Winning isn’t worth it, not if he has to give Daryan up. Klavier now looks back at that version of himself and winces. He was stupid, he now realizes. People come and go. People hurt you. People are temporary, unpredictable, demanding. Tell me, they say, like they have any right to know.
Victory? Victory is forever.
He sets the letter on his kitchen counter atop the piles of mail he hasn’t gotten to yet and figures it’s best left unread.
-
It keeps him sober, he tells himself. He wouldn’t risk drinking, not when he knows it can interact poorly.
It’s how he justifies it when he cancels his annual physical in fear of his blood work results.
It makes him confident, he tells himself. He hasn’t felt this powerful in years, not since he was a teenager.
It’s how he justifies it when he breaks his own rule and starts counting calories.
It got him a boyfriend, he tells himself. Apollo loves him, truly loves him, he’s told him as much, and Klavier is sure it’s only because he finally looks the way he did back in 2020, freshly eighteen, desirable enough to drug and coerce and record without consent.
It’s how he justifies it when he quits talking to Sebastian, to Ema, to Simon.
It’s the only reason he’s where he needs to be. It’s a success. He’s under. He’s finally under the dream goal he’s been fantasizing about for years, when every doctor he’s ever spoken to told him it wasn’t a reasonable expectation.
It’s how he justifies it when he quits prosecuting and quits music and spends most of his day shivering in bed and counting down the minutes to his next dose.
-
He’s given twenty minutes to pack when he is hospitalized against his will.
It’s all quick: the pain becomes unbearable over the course of twenty minutes. He’s doubled over on the floor and he’s dying, he’s dying, it hurts, the inevitable: he’s given himself an ulcer, his stomach is digesting itself, he’s messed up his dosing somehow and his body is in revolt.
He should have let himself die.
He calls an ambulance.
He is taken in, given painkillers and fluids and cardboard-flavored crackers, and his blood tests are run. It doesn’t matter that it’s not the same chemistry: it’s legally still considered drug abuse. Legally, it’s still considered a relapse. It is determined he is a risk to himself. He is not given the option to leave against medical recommendation.
He can imagine the tabloid covers now.
He calls Apollo to pick up Vongole.
He packs the letter, against his better judgement.
-
You have so many people who love you, the letter from Simon says. You’re my best friend. I want to see you live your life to the fullest. I miss you. I miss doing things with you. I miss going out with you. I miss seeing you laugh. I love you. Please, take care of yourself. Allow others to help. We are here for you.
I’m worried, the letter from Apollo says. The embarrassment makes him sick: that Apollo knew. That he collaborated with Simon on this. I love you. I love you so much. I don’t know how to help. But I want to grow old with you. I want to see you as you’ve always been: driven. I want to see you have the energy to accomplish any goal that crosses your mind.
It’s the last lines of Simon’s letter that mess with him the most. I don’t want to grieve again. I don’t want to be at your premature funeral.
-
He’s allowed to return home two weeks later, with an assigned social worker to check in on him: monthly at first, but if he remains clean, he’s told it’ll slowly become less often.
Apollo offers to pick him up.
“I think I’m okay,” Klavier tells him. “Do you just want to come over later today?”
He calls Simon right afterwards, and asks him to pick him up. They’re quiet as they sit in Simon’s car, stuck in the LA traffic. Klavier tries not to look at his thighs as they flatten against the leather.
“I’m sorry,” Klavier says finally, when they stop at a red light.
Simon glances over at him. “You don’t have to apologize for being unwell. Certainly, if anyone would understand, I would.”
“You would. That’s why I’m sorry. For not talking to you.”
Simon blinks. “You don’t have to apologize for that either.”
“No, I do.” Klavier’s voice is quieter now, tracing his fingers against the textured handrest. “I… when I’m in phases like that, I don’t think clearly. I forget that I’m sick at all. Or… I don’t know, I start feeling proud of being sick. I don’t like having anyone get in between that. So I’m sorry. For making you worry about me. I don’t want a premature funeral either.”
The light turns green. Simon doesn’t respond. He doesn’t say anything until they’re parked outside Klavier’s apartment. He leans back against the headrest and looks out at the setting sun, orange-pink-red in the sky.
“Athena said that to me once,” Simon says with a smile. “I’m sorry for making you worry about me. She was very young then, back when any loud sounds would upset her.”
“She’s gotten better at it now,” Klavier jokes. “Working with Apollo is like exposure therapy.”
Simon laughs at that. He cards his fingers through his fluffy hair. “But she wasn’t good at it then. We had a blackout at the space center. Faulty wiring. We had to wait there in the dark while the repair people arrived. I don’t know what they were doing, but it was loud. It’s very difficult, you know, trying to calm a small child down while they’re screaming and trying to get you to let them go.”
“It’s hard being held when you don’t want to be held.”
“It’s also hard being the bad guy when you’re just trying to keep someone from hurting themselves.” Simon fidgets with his fingers. “She apologized afterwards. Told me she was sorry for making me worry. I didn’t really understand it. Still don’t. Worrying is a side effect of love. It’s inevitable. It’s worth it.”
Klavier considers this. It’s true, he knows, he would worry willingly for Apollo and Simon and Ema and Sebastian and Daryan and Kristoph, Kristoph always, even now. Somehow, he feels like the sole exception to this rule. He doesn’t want anyone worrying about him.
“Still,” Klavier says. “I’m sorry.”
Simon hesitates. Then he pulls Klavier into a hug over the dashboard. “Don’t be,” he says. “Just keep taking care of my friend. I’ve missed him.”
The Times After
Addiction is never really over. He knows he’s going to have to be careful around people who smoke, that he’s going to have to be careful with medication, that he’s going to have to stick to one doctor and stay in one location and is better off without paper cash.
But he also knows that things can be better. He talks to Ema. He goes out to lunch with Sebastian. He invites Simon over.
He reads out excerpts of his sobriety diary to Apollo when he teeters too close to the edge.
It’s not perfect, not even close. There are some losses that are inevitable. There are half a dozen relapses that Klavier knows are inevitable. But there are several dozen more that Klavier knows he will avoid, with his friends and the love they give him. There are some victories that can be earned.
And it’s like Kristoph always said: Us Gavins typically pick winning.