Cataclysm (Sequel to Wanderlust) (Kellic)

Chapter 2

I forgot to put the warnings at the beginning of the first chapter, but they’re pretty much the same as Wanderlust anyways: alcohol and/or drug use, smut, and some other dark/triggering topics/thoughts.

This chapter is really short (or at least a lot shorter than most of them are) and I apologize. The rest will hopefully be longer. Also, the updates might take a bit longer sometimes because school is dumb, but you probably won’t have to go more than 4 days without an update of something, even if it’s not this fic (I have some other ones I want to start working on…).

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Chapter 2 - I Know What I Should Do, But I Just Can’t Turn Away

He’s kissing me in my bedroom, and I’m kissing back the same way. It’s fast and messy because of how drunk I am, but he doesn’t seem to care, pressing his body closer to mine and running his hands underneath my shirt. I tangle my fingers in his hair and pull him with me to the bed, falling down on it with him on top of me. Our lips never break contact, instead moving perfectly in sync as he makes out with me. The scene was almost exactly the same last night, but I’m too wasted to care as he pulls our clothes off and tosses them to the floor.

It’s not too hard to guess what happens next.

—

When I wake up the next morning, I am alone, which is kind of new. For a while now, I’ve been waking up next to Kellin, and before that, it was Craig. It’s strange not to have a body pressed up against mine, and after a few short moments, I remember two things: 1. Kellin is gone. 2. Last night, I fell asleep with Craig—who, it seems, isn’t here.

I put my shirt on and drag myself out of bed, feeling dirty and used. My head is pounding even worse than it was the night before, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. Still, I force myself to make my way downstairs in the faint hope that Craig is just in the living room or something.

After a brief survey of the house, I find that not only is he gone; Jaime is, too, though that’s probably because he’s at work. Well, this is just fucking great—I’m hungover and abandoned by the guy I just had sex with…again. I guess I deserve it.

I take some painkillers and then lie down on the couch, focusing my gaze on the coffee table in an effort to get the world to stop spinning. God, if only it were that easy with emotional pain, I think randomly, in regards to the painkillers. Just take a little pill, and within half an hour, your mind is calm and content.

Although, you actually can kill emotional pain with painkillers. You just need a lot of them.

My heart speeds up at the shock of my own idea. I haven’t thought about killing myself since…well, I guess it was the night that I got drunk in Pittsburgh. I don’t remember it, but according to Kellin, I told him I wanted to die. I wouldn’t be too surprised.

Fuck. Now there’s a memory. It’s a memory of that night in Pittsburgh—not the one where I got drunk, but the one after that, the one where we rode up the Duquesne Incline, where we looked out at the city from far away, where we kissed above the lights and the water and the chaos. That was the night that I noticed the stars in his eyes—the things they held in their bright, colorful depths. I can still picture them twinkling. Those eyes could light up the whole world.

I find myself longing to have him back, his head on my chest and his soft breathing in my ear, but then I think of the voice that would interrupt my thoughts every moment I’d spend with him: You don’t love him. You just want someone, because you can’t handle being alone. Look at what a horrible person you’ve turned into.

I know it’s true, and I can’t live with that.

I want to talk to someone about it, anyone at all, but I have a feeling that nobody really understands it, even if Jaime says he does. Everyone knows how it feels to get their heart broken, but who the fuck knows what it’s like to use someone because of it? Who the fuck would understand when I say that it was the loneliness and heartache speaking, not love? How can I possibly explain it without being looked at as heartless? I can’t. I know I can’t. Because I am heartless, aren’t I?

—

"Vic, we’ve decided to break through your horrific existential crisis by taking you night-karting."

This is what Jaime says to me as soon as he gets home, Tony and Mike following him into the house. I’ve barely moved all day. Fucking hell.

"No," I say. "Leave me to wallow in self-hatred." I’m only half-kidding.

"Questioning your every action is not going to help anything," Jaime states bluntly, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet. "Your mind is being really dumb and inconvenient right now, so I think you should do something mindless."

"Ignoring my problems isn’t going to help anything, either," I point out.

"You’re not going to come to a solution if all you do is go over the same things a million times. Now come on. The night is young."

They mean well, I know they do, but because my mind is—just like Jaime said—dumb and inconvenient, I find myself remembering the last time I went to this go-kart place. It was with Kellin, of course; that was the night that the term “night-karting” came to be. I lose myself in the tracks, in the races, in the here and now, so that I don’t have to remember it all.

Fuck. What would he think of me if he got into my head?

By the time we get back home, I’m already sort of fucked up, my thoughts bouncing around from this to that. I should probably just get to sleep and end it right there, but that’s the moment when a text pops up onto my screen, a text from Craig:

I need you. Come over.

I really should hate him by now, but I don’t. I don’t know why. It’s fucking me up. I’m so not over him, and even though everything inside of me is screaming that this whole thing is a bad idea, I find myself heading out the front door and through the neighborhood anyways.

I don’t even know what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it. I should not be willing to come whenever I’m called like a fucking animal. I should not be willing to let him have sex with me and then kick me to the curb with no remorse. I should not be so wrapped up in him, and I have no idea how it came to be this way. Add that to the list of things that are wrong with me.

When I get to Craig’s house, he answers the door before I even reach the porch, beckoning for me to come inside. I do, unable to stop myself from blurting out, “What about your boyfriend?” It’s something that’s been bothering me, that he’s used me to cheat on someone. I don’t want to be a part of that.

"I broke up with him," he replies smoothly, which catches me off-guard. Surely he couldn’t have broken up with the guy just for me. He wouldn’t do that. Would he?

"Why?" I ask as he takes my hand and leads me upstairs.

"Because. I always liked you better," he explains simply. "And so you don’t have a guilty conscience about anything."

When we get to his room, all the talking stops, Craig pressing me against the wall as his lips attack mine. He’s fast and rough, like he’s starving for me, even though this is the third night in a row that this has happened, and the only time where we’ve both been sober.

I let him do all these things to me, let him have his way with me, but at this point, it just feels mechanical, like I’m disconnected from everything that’s going on. Really, I’m only doing this to please him, but the whole time, my mind is in a different place. Kellin is gone, so I’m running back to Craig, letting him use me like a toy so I can forget about everything else. Maybe this is why he can’t stay away from me, why I always crawl back to him: He and I, we’re both horrible. We deserve each other.