❝this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing.❞

kade indulged himself when he slept with rome; let rome bite his neck, grab his hips, fuck him slowly and deeply until kade was clawing at his back. he let himself sink slowly down, let rome in with a soft gasp, and ride him until he was tense with want.

they could fuck for a little while, drugs making them want each other, but drugs also making them take longer to get to what they wanted. but that was fine with kade. he could do this with rome, he could hold on to the back of his knees, nails digging into his sweat soaked skin as blood rushed in his ears.

he didn’t care about any sexuality crises he could have been having if he gave himself a chance to do that. instead, he let himself feel, let his body fly, let the high elevate his orgasm and leave him boneless. 

because when he started coming down, he would hate himself again.

“you’re okay?” rome asks afterwards, throwing kade a towel.

“fucking fantastic, thanks,” kade replies, not sure if that came out as surly and sarcastic or blissed out and euphoric. he’s not sure which he’s feeling any more. “can i use your bathtub?”

“ha. yeah, sure, i’m gonna step out for a bit. do you want anything?”

“dude, i want ihop. or tacos. but i can’t have either of those things, so i’ll just eat whatever you bring me.”

rome raised an eyebrow. kade’s high self was nothing new to him. he was erratic and happy, often rambling to himself in english, only stopping to speak korean if he had something to say to one of his little friends. 

“alright. call me if you need anything, i’ll be back in awhile.”

“uh huh.”

kade didn’t have to pretend with rome, and he didn’t have to pretend with alexei. while rome knew what was going on with kade, as kade did ramble, and once rambled a bit too far, alexei didn’t know.

but did it matter? what could either of them do? there was nothing to be done. death was very... final in that way.

the tub in question was a deep ceramic piece of work that kade could sink into. there wasn’t bubbles in the tub, but he lit coconut candles, poured a little oil into the heated water and stretched himself out in it.

the heat and steam kept his high going, kept him floating, blood rushing through his veins, pulsing with every beat of his heart. 

and though i may have lost my way, all paths lead straight to you.

he was on a bridge. pacing back and forth like always, his arms out as he walked the railing. 

“why are you like this,” kade muttered to himself, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep them from getting cold.

like what? 

like what indeed. 

surly and snappish to people who gave a fuck. docking and dodging right out of their grasp but he knew he was wrong, he was dead wrong, but every time he thought of seeing him like this, he rejected it. they wouldn’t understand. they wouldn’t get it, would they?

they would want to fix him.

but what was there to fix? they wouldn’t understand.

it’s hard to grasp the void inside him that he filled with drugs and sex and what was left of his superiority. they would want to get him clean, as though he didn’t already use drugs all the time. he used to use adderall to study. he smokes half a bowl to calm down and the rest of it to put him to sleep. he’s had shrooms before, but that wasn’t going to happen again.

why would anything else be different. why should it be different?

it’s different, because kade knows exactly what he’s doing. 

he was chasing after an in between. he’s chasing life, chasing the high points of life that would make his heart race, but could make his heart stop. 

it was a balancing act. a precarious balance that could tip over and kill him at any point, or give him a high to make him feel like living.

he knows what he’s doing. 

after one month, a coma is then diagnosed as persistent vegetative state. after eight months, he’s truly just fooling himself. he knows better than that. dominic isn’t weak willed. it’s him. dominic is being realistic. kade is being childish.

with every line he does, every time he mixes, every time he feels his heart thud a little harder against his chest when he pops a pill, he’s closer. he’s closer to where she is, because she’s where he can’t reach.

he can’t hear her anymore. it’s something that grates on him daily, something that grates on the open wound that is his father’s death, the sores around it that is his father’s family. and they are his father’s family, not his, that folded blood test be damned. 

alice, in her eternal brilliance, had documents written in case of emergency. as head of the park family, the money that fell to him, along with the stocks, bonds and properties were his to do what he wanted to, whether he finished school or not. alice had already begun the painstakingly long process of getting things taken care of for him, in case anything happened.

kade looked up at the sky. it was one of those silent winter nights, the kind where snow had piled up high from a long day of covering the ground with thick flakes. it was still snowing, falling silently, piling on and around kade.

he was fine with it. he let out a sigh he could see. 

the bridge he was on was high, and overlooked the han river. 

nothing about korea is different from the last few times he’d been in the country. it wasn’t the first time he’d been in seoul. his parents had brought him more than once. he had seen the han river plenty of times. he had seen it with his mother, even.

he remembers being little and sitting on his father’s shoulders as they took in the view, a gentle, sweet smile on his mother’s lips. it was a good memory. a fond one.

all that was left was memories. for a bit of time, he fooled himself. some mild drug use to get him through the worst of it while his mother recovered. they could heal from his father’s death together. kade could be right beside her, he could take care of her and be the man she wanted him to be; to be the man she had birthed him to be. 

but months had gone by. the itch in his throat and the itch in his nose weren’t mild, his days were spent in a haze of getting through the day to get to the night so he could live. and wasn’t that fucked up? he lived at night with a racing heart and lips on his that he barely cared about.

so what was the point, really? what was the point of anything? he lived outside the usual scope of humanity, he lived in the 1%, so it wasn’t a case of work until he retired and waited until he was to die. he used to have purpose. he used to have things he wanted, dreams that he made into a reality. he used to love himself, he used to love life, he used to be full of life. 

he used to have friends, he used to have people that he could go to, but he had closed himself off. it was no fault of theirs. death was simply... very final. it was an end. an end that kade doesn’t know how to deal with.

he feels dead inside, now. a piece of him died eight months ago, and he couldn’t... fill that hole, that void where something was always supposed to be. there was so much unanswered, comfort that was once there was ripped away and trapped thousands awhile away from him, and even if he was there, holding her hand every step of the way, she would always be out of his reach.

she was gone.

and just like drowning, all the struggling in the world wouldn’t save her.

it fucking hurts like bee stings, like a kidney punch, like a fucking wound being ripped open further, to grab at his heart and squeeze it while it pump pumped away in a body that wanted to give up. it was sharp and hot and agonizing; and in that second, a wave of grief washed over him, so poignant, so pointed, that he tipped forward without truly considering what he was doing. he sucked in a breath as he fell.

he was high enough that hitting the water was painful. not as painful as the rock he cracked his head against. not as painful as the tangled mass of emotions that daily threatened to overtake him.

and as he sank, unmoving and accepting, dark starting to cloud his vision, he wondered what kind of man he could have been.

kade shut his eyes. 

he didn’t have to struggle anymore.