thatsallthereis | [For Kavinsky, Unfortunately]

[For Kavinsky, Unfortunately]

Gansey's heart was not in this.

There had to be another way, he'd thought. Surely there was some magic-maker in Darrow that could make so perfectly what Niall Lynch had once made. Henry's father had spent years trying to duplicate RoboBee's "technology" and was still not quite there. Tony Stark had tried and the outcome had been disastrous. It had landed Henry in the hospital. Tech couldn't do what a dreamer's mind could. Luckily, Gansey knew a dreamer. Less luckily, it was Ronan and he was feeling scorned. Things had blown up so spectacularly that Gansey hadn't even bothered to ask. He got the feeling that Adam agreed. There was no need to make all of this worse. Maybe some silence on the topic of Henry would do them some good.

That didn't change that something had to be done, and that there was only one other person that could do it.

if Gansey were to have asked Henry for Kavinsky's boyfriend's number, Henry would get suspicious. The last thing wanted was to get Henry's hopes up about feeling whole again when he still had to find a way to convince Kavinsky to do this. He didn't know what it would cost, and it would definitely cost something. Gansey only hoped it was something he could provide.

The young fellow with the poor judgement that worked at The Dressing Room did not provide Kavinsky's number, but he took Gansey's down. It hadn't been very long at all before he heard back. They set a meeting at a coffee place near the ocean. There, Gansey sat, rotating his phone between two fingers and wishing he had another option.

An orange door slammed. A door with a bell jingled open. Kavinsky was already there, but Gansey decided to get a coffee first. He smiled at the barista and tried to keep the same mirth. It was hard.

"Kavinsky," Gansey said by way of greeting, sitting himself down. "Thank you for meeting me." He didn't ask if Kavinsky wanted anything because he didn't care.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's an unprecedented situation. The Henriettas did not reach out to Kavinsky, and he was fine with that. They lived in their worlds, and while that world was Darrow, it was no longer the press and mesh of being at Aglionby Academy.

Kavinsky let Gansey sweat it out, but not for long. Whatever this was, Gansey needed Kavinsky for a reason, and so he had no problems in making Gansey wait, but he found that he wanted to know what this was about. The texts had been vague at best.

He strolled in a few minutes passed their appointed time. Gansey's chair was clearly situated. Kavinsky ordered himself a coffee and then came to join Gansey's table with the casual air of someone meeting with an old school acquaintance--that was, after all, what was happening.

"You gonna keep being cryptic about why you needed to meet me," Kavinsky asked, smiling pleasantly. "Because I've got a busy schedule, man."

They were playing the same game and that prickled under Gansey's skin unpleasantly. The only way to rise above was to stick to nothing but truth. To a point. Perhaps it would be wise to show some quarter when it came to his personal opinion of Joseph Kavinsky. Kavinsky, who took pleasure in running down coeds from other schools. Kavinsky who kidnapped Matthew Lynch because Ronan wouldn't give him the time of day. Kavinsky who, for reasons Gansey refused to understand, dreamed himself a lackey. The sight of Prokopenko sleeping behind the wheel of his douchemobile was something etched in Gansey's mind. Kavinsky knew a kind of pain worse than death, and it had made him something Gansey could scarcely look at.

Now, here he was, about to ask for a business relationship. A favor.

"Have a seat," Gansey said civilly, firmly. That part was not negotiable. If they were going to do this, they were going to be on the same plane. Gansey would try like hell not to think of it as stooping far below him. That meant offering something up. He continued, "I would like to talk business."

Edited 2016-12-20 00:03 (UTC)

Kavinsky sat.

He was not surprised to hear that this was a business transaction, but since it was a business transaction, he let himself slouch. Gansey was still and concerned and obviously upset that he had been forced, by whatever means, to come to Kavinsky. Kavinsky, in the end, was good at playing the people that someone needed him to be. Gansey needed Kavinsky to be what he had been in Aglionby--volatile, dangerous, awful. While Kavinsky didn't know what purpose it served, he knew that he had to at least start this out as the boy that Gansey despised.

So Kavinsky leaned back in his chair, slung his elbows up, and smiled.

"So talk business, Dick."

Gansey's disdain crackled in his middle; it sent flames leaping up to the back of his throat. How had they come to this? If Ronan and Gansey were so far on the outs that Gansey had to ask something like this of Kavinsky, wasn't the little shit getting exactly what he'd wanted. Some of Kavinsky's priorities must have changed since they'd left, or Blue and Adam wouldn't bother defending him like they occasionally did. Gansey reminded himself again to try and see Darrow as a place where people found peace.

"I need you to dream me an item -- it is somewhat complex in nature. I trust you'd be up to the task." What Gansey trusted was that if his luck was what it had been in Henrietta, gravity would smash that smug prick right off of that chair and onto his ass. No such luck there.

"I am in the market for a robotic bee. I have detailed schematics of a technological replica that caused unintended side-effects. I can also answer any questions you may have about aesthetic and functionality." He did not give up these things just yet. The whole revelation was something like an opening gambit. He continued with a preemptive, "your commentary is not required. Tell me: what might something like this cost?"

That Gansey needed him to dream something didn't specifically surprise Kavinsky--it was what Kavinsky did, and this Gansey, it seemed, had a sort of terrible knowledge of Kavinsky's ability that the one Kavinsky remembered back in Henrietta hadn't had. But why not Ronan? Of course Dick Gansey would have chosen Ronan to dream him something, if he was going to ask anyone.

Kavinsky was quiet as Gansey worked through the very most bare bones of what he needed. He arched a brow slightly.

"This for Cheng?" Peter had said something about him collapsing at school, and he'd had to drive Peter over to see him in the hospital. He hadn't asked; he didn't care. But Kavinsky had never seen them run together at school, so this shift was a curious one to him.

And why the hell was it a fucking bee.

Kavinsky shook his head. "Depends on the functionality. I specialize in reproduction, bro. If your prototype is bust on him, giving it to me to dissect isn't gonna help."

Gansey did not dignify this question with an answer. Kavinsky knew damn well who it was for and why. Even if he hadn't known what was going on at Aglionby, that poor ginger kid was friends with Henry, had even visited Henry at the hospital. He knew who the bee was for, and he knew it had failed. This was a game Gansey was not interested in playing.

"Perhaps you could tell me what will help then," Gansey said tightly. Kavinsky was a classic headcase, all form and no function. There were millions of prep school boys just like him, he just happened to be the only one in Henrietta. That didn't make him special or unique, it made him obnoxious.

Kavinsky lifted a brow at Gansey. If he was expecting the answers out of him, he was going to have to figure out a way to ask the question in the first place. In fact, Kavinsky didn't really know what Gansey was hoping to do, or prove, here. Maybe that nothing had changed.

The waitress brought Kavinsky's drink. He thanked her.

"The original," he said, deadpan. That was really all Kavinsky could think of that would help this situation--the original thing that Cheng had had, back in Henrietta, that strange dreamt bee. "I don't know if you're being purposefully obtuse or not here, Dick, but you're coming here, asking me for something that I've never put hands on before, and you want to give me the thing that broke your boyfriend for a week so I can try and make it?"

Kavinsky scoffed and sipped his coffee. "You tell me what it does, what it looks like, how it works--how he makes it work. You want a forgery, I can get you one, but not if you toss me a piece of garbage and say Have at."

Kavinsky had thanked the barista. Gansey was smacked for a loop, though it manifested as nothing but a curious brow lift. He didn't call her baby in a gross, not-quite-heterosexual way, nor did he ignore her the way so many Aglionby boys treated clerks and waiters. There were little things that made Gansey wonder if he'd changed. Moreover, he wondered if it mattered. Kidnapping, dreaming himself friends, and exploding into a cloud of dragon smoke: these were not the kinds of things that left a person because of a location change. Did all people deserve a second chance? If so, how much more heinous would a crime have to be before it was deemed unacceptable? He'd stolen away with Matthew because Ronan wouldn't give him the time of day. He would have blown him up if Gansey and his court hadn't sprung to action. Ronan had to dream for his brother's life. Gansey couldn't shrug those things off, not in the face of them.

"I don't have the original," Gansey said, somehow measuring his disdain out in a portion that resembled only mere frustration. "I know you can create without the original." Unless he'd seen a giant glittering dragon in his travels through the seedy underbelly of Bulgaria. Jersey, maybe. Gansey could absolutely believe there was a dragon lurking in New Jersey -- other than Kavinsky himself.

"I told you: it is a robotic bee. It interfaces with an app and responds to Henry's brainwaves through fingerprint association." It didn't matter. Kavinsky knew who it was for. Saying it out loud didn't change a thing, regardless of what Kavinsky called him. He'd called Ronan similar things and Gansey had never bothered to correct. In the relative public eye, there were no secrets and there was no use trying to squash conjecture.

"I've sketched a reasonable facsimile as I recall it." He produced a piece of paper ripped from a journal. It wasn't bad. No 3D detail or anything, but it was colored brightly, an amber glow from within and three strong lines that provided some kind of bodily perspective. "It is important the device connect to abstract concepts. The thoughts must be fully actualized, but they do not need to be transmittable by language with the additional option of voice commands.

"The app is a brightly colored interface -- though details as such are not as important as functionality." Something Kavinsky didn't seem to understand. "I am not specific on the details, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to craft it in such a way that the app can be built from Henry's memory, via fingerprint connection." He paused here with a look that tried not to say am I going to fast for you?

Kavinsky took the sketch. He looked at it. He let Gansey ramble on. The sketch, by itself, would likely be enough for Kavinsky to make something. The difficulty, of course, was in not fundamentally understanding the properties. Kavinsky was a forger, and he prided himself on the thoroughness of his work. He'd never seen this thing in any real action.

"The hell's the app gotta do with it?" Kavinsky mumbled speculatively. "If it reads his brainwaves, you really think it needs a fuckin' app to work? C'mon, man."

This was a dream thing. Even if Henry Cheng didn't have any sort of weird thing going on with his head, it probably would have made it so. Thought, intention, need; all of these things were powerful. There was no need for technology in the mix of it. Whatever technology had come along after the bee, it was a product of functionality. An addition. An understanding of something more, something unknowable.

Kavinsky held the drawing out toward Gansey again. Fluttering it a little bit.

"Why me? Lynch not putting out? He hurt you moved on to greener pastures or somethin'?" Kavinsky shrugged a shoulder. "Lotta other magical fuckers in this place, Dickie. I know you ain't wanna deal with me."

"Do you wish to create a passable replica or do you wish to streamline another dreamer's work?" A dreamer, his tone suggested, whose work was worth so very much more.

Gansey did not like this. It tasted in Gansey's mouth like acid, offensive. Worse was the way the feeling curdled in his stomach. Something in Gansey wanted to kick the chair under the table, to tell Kavinsky to fuck himself and leave with his metaphorical coattails flapping righteously behind him. That would have been it: another disaster dodged by a wordsmith protagonist that -- until he became the product of a dream thing -- had only the power to turn abstract thought into trackable language. It was a thing people took for granted until they needed it. It was a thing that Henry needed a thing to help him with. Remarkable, brilliant Henry with his a million ideas a minute and just the one mouth to express them. Patient, compassionate Henry, who deserved to be whole. Gansey wanted so desperately to be the one who provided it.

If Gansey were Ronan, he would have sneered. If Gansey had been speaking to Ronan, he might have let himself have it, anyway. Ronan was, in Gansey's heart, part of a quarantined area. There were things he couldn't unhear. Things, he noted, that sounded very well like they could have come out of Joseph Kavinsky's polluted, smirking mouth.

"My reasons are of no consequence to you," Gansey said, his wave dismissive. His arms crossed at his chest. "Can you do it or not?"

Kavinsky laughed and rolled his eyes. He knew he wasn't the first, or second, or probably even fifth option, if it were possible. Dick was here because he didn't have any options, because he knew that Kavinsky could do it, and he was trying to bank that Kavinsky's pride, his ability to gloat, was worth more to him than knowing that he was only an option because there were no other options.

Desperation wasn't a good look on Richard Gansey.

"I can," Kavinsky said. He sipped his coffee and gave Gansey an almost pitying look. "But since I've got no good reason to help you assure you get laid, I think I'm gonna pass."

The coffee was only about half empty from the periodic sip he'd taken since he'd gotten it. To sacrifice it seemed like a waste, somehow, since it was pretty decent coffee. This was Kavinsky's pride, though: setting the mug down and rising from the table, shrugging vaguely.

"You wanna know how much it would cost you, Dick? There isn't a price tag, because you could not pay me enough to give you something you want. There is not amount of money I could tell you that thing is worth that would hold you in my debt long enough to make it worth my while."

He smiled, all tooth, a glittering skull of a grin, and shifted behind his seat. His long fingers drummed on the back of the chair for a moment. His ring clacked dully against the chair, shifted a little.

Pass was not something Gansey had expected to hear. Pass hadn't even been an option. No, if Gansey asked for a thing in earnest, he tended to get it. If he had a temper tantrum when he didn't, that would make him no different than Kavinsky.

No, no, he was so very different than Kavinsky. There was more than a scuff of a shoe against the floor in disappointment that separated them. Gansey had a future, he had people that counted on him and that he trusted. It appeared Kavinsky had these things in Darrow, though. Appeared because he wasn't capable of those things -- Gansey had seen that first hand. Good people didn't do the things that Joseph Kavinsky did. Not just the forgery and the questionable choice in friends, but all of the lying and the explosion and the amount of self-hatred that caused one to burst into flames or die via dragon. Gansey had a flair for life. Kavinsky had one for destruction. That was not okay.

He was on his feet and Gansey stayed where he was. Standing did not give power any more than sitting relinquished it, but it certainly made a statement. Gansey was, nonetheless, incredulous. "Beg your pardon?" he said, blinking from behind wire frames. "So that's it? A couple of jokes at Henry's expense and you're showing me the door?" As if there was a high road for him to take. That was almost enough to make Gansey laugh. On the inside.

Edited 2017-01-14 06:27 (UTC)

Kavinsky scrutinized Gansey in that moment, still grinning, still standing there. There was no reason for any further exchange. But there was such bafflement in Gansey's eyes. He'd really, genuinely thought that he could purchase from Kavinsky, that he could come in here, eyes and heart blazing, and get what he wanted. And he thought, honestly, that that made him a better person.

there was no altruism here, as far as Kavinsky could see. No reason for Gansey's righteousness. For a boy that thought he knew a lot about the world, Kavinsky hoped that this was a revelation: that outside of Henrietta, Aglionby especially, and in Darrow, Gansey had no clout.

"Oh, no-no, Dickie. Do not get me wrong. I haven't said shit about Cheng." And he hadn't. Jabs had been at Dick, at what appeared a sensitive spot, at what appeared a lack of understanding and knowledge. Kavinsky, in times like this, preferred the easier target.

"This is all about you. Isn't it always? Dick Gansey, saint of monsters and savior of dusty boys since 2010. This is about reminding you that this place does not work by your rules."

Kavinsky leaned over the chair, just a bit. He did not get into Gansey's face. He thought the other boy might hit him, and Kavinsky didn't relish being escorted out of a place. "You can't buy your way into fixing this. The Ganseys don't fucking matter here. You're just another shleb like the rest of us."

He reached out, and patted Gansey's cheek. Soft, and just once. Then, he pulled away from the table, whistling nonchalantly as he left Gansey behind him and stepped out of the shop without a single glance back.

The jokes had been at the expense of his sexuality -- at his affection for Henry and the nature of their relationship -- but there was no use arguing semantics with a serpent. Gansey did not move. He kept his eyes angled up, undercut by cheekbones of steel and a jaw just as rigid. Kavinsky leaned and Gansey did not. Saying no was to be the only thing Kavinsky ever had on Richard Gansey III. He wouldn't rail, nor would he beg -- the mere idea was laughable.

"Do not touch me," Gansey said, sure of not much else but that Kavinsky was not going to touch him again. Kavinsky had a soul here. There were people and things he didn't want to lose. That made him a neutered Kavinsky. The Gansey Dynasty may not have meant anything here, but Gansey had the comfort of knowing that he was the same person. That no matter what his name meant, he was still doing good. Helping. Not hindering on a grudge like a petty child.

The bell chimed and Gansey let go of his breath. Well. That was an ill-advised venture. He should have just talked to Ronan.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[For Kavinsky, Unfortunately]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject