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It was no secret that Kavinsky threw the best parties in Henrietta, probably in the whole West Virginia, so Jiang shouldn’t be surprised that it’s so fucking crowded. He hoped that since it’s on the fairgrounds, the amount of people would disperse, but he forgot how much of the space is taken by the cars, so in the end he has to elbow his way through the crowd anyway.He lost sight of Proko like twenty minutes ago and can’t for the life of him locate him again. He sees a few guys from Aglionby, but the majority of people are townies, which is why he’s so surprised K is such a friend with so many of them. He supposes it’s because they’re his best customers, but it’s still weird to watch him laugh and do shots and lines of coke with complete strangers.K, when he’s still only a little drunk, introduces Jiang to a few of the people, but Jiang forgets their names as soon as he hears them. He doesn’t think it’s a big deal, since they’re all too drunk to remember they ever met him in the first place.He would very much like to find Proko or at least Skov and Swan. He’s worried he lost K as well, but then sees him standing on the hood of the Evo, shouting something about a race.Jiang curses and pushes through the crowd to get to him before he manages to do something stupid, like killing himself in a car.“K!” He yells at him and by some miracle K actually hears him and jumps down from the car. He pushes the ever-present sunglasses up to his hair and grins at Jiang. His pupils are blown so wide Jiang can’t see the irises.“Wanna ride with me?” K asks, slinging his arm around Jiang’s shoulders and leaning heavily on him.Jiang does his best not to stumble under his sudden weight. “Jesus, you’re high as a kite. You can’t drive like that.”K rolls his eyes at him and pushes away from him. “Watch me.”“K, I’m serious,” Jiang says, grabbing K’s wrist to stop him. “You’re gonna end up wrapped around a tree.”“You’re such a buzzkill,” K replies, shakes him off and walks to the driver’s side of the Mitsu, clearly determined to prove Jiang wrong.Jiang really doesn’t want to spend the night in the ER, or worse a morgue. Where the hell is Proko when he fucking needs him? Well, desperate times call for desperate actions. “Joseph Kavinsky, don’t you dare to get into that car!”K stops at that and for one crazy second Jiang believes it actually worked. Then he sees K’s expression and quickly reconsiders.K slams the driver’s door shut and stalks back to Jiang and Jiang genuinely wonders if he should run for it.“What did you just say to me?” K asks in a low, dangerous voice. He steps close to him, getting well into his personal space and fuck, Jiang almost forgot how menacing can K actually be when he wants to. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” K continues, poking him in the chest with his index finger.Jiang is at a loss for words. If K wasn’t so high or drunk or just generally fucked up, he would have laughed it off. Probably. If it was Proko yelling at him like that, K would have listened. Probably. But he is fucked up and Jiang isn’t Proko, and K looks like he’s seconds from punching him in the face. Jiang has never been scared of K, but he’s never seen him like this either, so he does the only logical thing he can think of. He lowers his eyes to the ground and stays pointedly silent.“That’s what I fucking thought,” K sneers and marches back to the car without sparing a second glance at Jiang.Only now does Jiang realise he’s shaking. Jesus, he needs to get a grip. He pushes through the people blindly. He doesn’t have a plan; he just wants to get to his car and drive the fuck away from here.Of course, now he practically stumbles into Proko’s arms.“Hey,” Proko greets him cheerfully and grabs him by his upper arm to steady him. “I’ve been looking for you.”Jiang frantically blinks to get rid of the involuntary tears. He’s fine. Everything’s fine. “Yeah, I’ve been looking for you too.”Proko frowns at him. “What’s wrong?”Jiang shakes his head in dismissal. “Nothing.”“Jay.”Jiang really doesn’t want to talk about the fight. “K got high as hell and now he wants to race,” he says instead.Proko sighs. “Idiot,” he mumbles but his words are lost in the screeching of tires as the Evo and a red Mustang shoot forward into a distance.Jiang cringes. Of course, he couldn’t change K’s mind. What was he even thinking? “I think I’m just gonna go,” he says.Proko, who’s been watching the Evo disappear in a cloud of smoke, turns his attention back to him, still frowning. “Did you have a fight with K or something?”Jiang shrugs. “It was nothing,” he assures him.Proko sighs again. “Was he an ass?”“It’s fine. I don’t wanna talk about it.”Proko, thankfully, doesn’t push it. “Do you want me to go with you?” he asks only, his voice impossibly soft.“No, you should keep an eye on K. I’m fine, really.” Maybe if he repeats it enough times, it will be true.Proko doesn’t look like he believes him, but he nods anyway. “Okay. I’ll see you at home, yeah?”Jiang forces himself to nod. His initial plan was to drive to the dorms, but what difference does it make in the end? He says goodbye to Proko, spends ten minutes trying to get out of the fairgrounds without scratching the car or running someone over and drives to K’s house. Once inside, he goes straight to his own bedroom. He hasn’t slept there since they started dating. All of his things got relocated to K’s room, but he doesn’t bother going there. He just kicks off his shoes, crawls under the blanket and wonders if this is how it’s going to go down in the end. There won’t be any big, messy fight, no screaming, no pleading, just K’s cruel dismissal.…Proko patiently waits for K to get out of the Evo, which he does while grinning victoriously. Proko thinks the real victory wasn’t the race won but the fact he managed to survive the drive.“Ilya!” K greets him cheerfully and walks to him, stumbling a little. Jesus, Jiang was right, he is high as hell.“Did you want to kill yourself?” Proko asks him sternly but allows him to wrap his arm around his shoulders and pulls him close with his arm around his waist to keep him steady.“It was fine,” K assures him, stealing his drink from him and taking a swing. “Did you watch? I was on fucking fire!”Proko can’t help but chuckle. He doesn’t point out the obvious, that he was drunk and high and stupid, instead asks him: “What did you say to Jay?”K frowns. “Nothing. He was being a little bitch.”“Right.”“Where is he anyway?” K asks, craning his neck to look around.“He went home.”“What? Why?”“Because you were an ass to him, I presume.”K rolls his eyes, but he does have the decency to look guilty. “Was he mad?”Proko hesitates. Jiang didn’t look mad, he looked hurt, which was objectively worse. Whatever K said to him must’ve been harsh. Proko knew first-hand what an idiot K could be when he’s been partying. “He wasn’t happy.”“Should I go talk to him?”“Like this?” Proko gestures to his current state.K shrugs, like there’s nothing wrong with it.“Do you want to make it worse?”K mumbles something under his breath that Proko is probably glad he can’t understand.Either way, they don’t end up staying at the party for too long after that. Proko doesn’t want K anywhere near any more drinks or drugs and K whines about missing Jiang, as if it wasn’t his fault Jiang wasn’t there anymore.Proko drives them home because even though he knows K has an insane ability to drive even when completely hammered, he doesn’t want to risk it. At home, K makes it all to way to the stairs, where he stops, looks up and frowns.“Do you need some help?” Proko offers amusedly.K frowns at him as well but accepts Proko’s hand and together they walk up to K’s bedroom. “Jay isn’t here,” K says, dumbstruck when he sees the empty bed.“His car’s here,” Proko points out. Surely, he’s in the house somewhere.K is still staring at the bed. “He’s not in the bed.”Proko rolls his eyes at him. “Yes, I can see that.”K lets go of him and sits on the bed, peeking under the covers as if Jiang could somehow hide there without them noticing. When he doesn’t see him, K gets under the covers himself, sighing. “Will you find him?”Proko wants to take a shower and sleep, not look for Jiang, but he knows K will be insufferable if he doesn’t agree, so he obediently goes.Jiang isn’t especially hard to find and when Proko pokes his head into his bedroom, he’s not even asleep.“Hey,” Proko greets him softly.“Hi.”“Are you okay?”“Yeah. I just wanted some space.”“Would it help if I told you K was whining about missing you the whole time?”Jiang smirks. “Was he really?”“Yeah.” Proko gently closes the door behind himself and joins Jiang on the bed. “Whatever he said to you, he was too fucked up to mean it.”Jiang sighs. “I know.”“Did you find him yet?” K yells from across the hall and when he doesn’t get an immediate response, he continues with a fierce: “Ilya!”Proko sighs. “I’m gonna go deal with him and I’ll be right back, okay?”“Okay.”He goes back to K’s room, ready to tell him to shut up and go to sleep, but when he walks in, K is already snoozing, still fully dressed and everything.“Unbelievable,” Proko mumbles. He takes off his shoes and his jeans for him and he doesn’t even stir.Proko leaves K be and goes to take a shower. He smells like fire and alcohol and has to shampoo his hair twice to get it out. When he returns to Jiang, he’s already in bed too, blinking at him with tired eyes and wordlessly lifting the blanket for him.Proko slips next to him and wraps him in his arms. Jiang seemed to be as much of a sucker for cuddles as K, except he didn’t bother trying to pretend otherwise. Now he happily plasters himself to Proko, tangling their legs and hiding his face in Proko’s T-shirt. He mumbles a goodnight and is asleep before can Proko say it back.Proko sighs and pulls him closer, hoping that K will wake up tomorrow, apologise and that would be the end of it.…K wakes up feeling like literal hell. Usually, his body is pretty good at processing both alcohol and drugs, but he clearly overdone it yesterday. He sits up, and wonders if he’s going to puke, but the feeling fortunately passes, and very slowly tries to stand up.It takes him stupidly long to walk downstairs and he’s glad the kitchen is so close to the stairs and he can slump on the barstool.Jiang’s in the kitchen already, making coffee and he gives K a long look that K doesn’t bother trying to interpret.He rubs his eyes and prays for the sweet release of death. “Do you think you could make me a coffee and sprinkle it with some aspirin?” He asks.Jiang makes a sound that could be a scoff or a laugh, K isn’t too sure, but after a few minutes puts a cup of coffee and two aspirins in front of K.“Oh, thanks.” He swallows the aspirins and chases them with the coffee and almost chokes. It’s too fucking bitter. Jiang knows he doesn’t drink plain black coffee. Jiang knows and he watches him now and K makes a point of swallowing without wincing before asking: “Are you mad at me or something?”This time Jiang does scoff. “What do you think?”Okay, he really is. K has no idea why. He doesn’t remember much from last night. He resignedly gets up and splashes some milk into the coffee. “Okay, can you give me like half an hour for the pills to kick in before you start yelling at me?”He thinks that is a fairly reasonable request, considering how ungodly hungover he is, but Jiang doesn’t seem happy. “You’re fucking unbelievable,” he says only and stomps away.K watches him go before leaning his head on the marble counter and closing his eyes. Maybe this is just a bad dream, and he’ll wake up and Jiang will be lying next to him in bed, and everything will be fine.“Well, good morning,” Proko greets him as he walks in.K doesn’t bother lifting his head up. “Are you mad at me too?”Proko chuckles and sits next to him. “No.”“Thank God. Do you know why is Jay mad at me?”“Apparently, you were an idiot.”That much could K guess on his own. “Do I get any more clues?” he sneers.Proko shrugs. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know. You don’t remember?”“Nope.” He takes a tentative sip of the coffee. “Could you maybe talk to Jay?” He suggests. Proko was, after all, so much better at handling conflict than him.“I already talked to him. Now it’s your turn.”K groans. “Fuck me.”“Try opening with that,” Proko suggests amusedly and K glares at him. It only makes him laugh more.“I hate you,” K mumbles, finishes his coffee in one go and pushes himself up to go and find where Jiang went. He really would prefer to wait until the aspirin kicks in, but beggars can’t be choosers. He finds Jiang hiding in his bedroom and it takes all of his willpower not to sprawl on the bed and take a nap.“Are you going to tell me what I did, or should I just apologize?” He asks and immediately winces. It sounded way better in his head.Jiang gives him an unimpressed look. “You got high, decided you wanted to race, then proceeded to yell at me for daring to talk you out of it.”That sounded like a very typical behaviour of his. “Okay. And?”Jiang frowns at him. “What do you mean and?”“Is that it?”“What, is that not enough for you?”To be honest, he expected something a little more dramatic. Surely, Jiang wasn’t mad at him about this. “Well, I thought…” he starts, then thinks better of it. “Nevermind. I’m sorry for yelling at you?”Jiang sighs. “Whatever. I’ll get over it.”K doesn’t think this is something people say at the end of an argument, especially not after receiving an apology. Shit, he really sucked at this.This theory is confirmed when Jiang gets up from where he was sitting on the bed and walks to the door.“Where are you going?” K asks, trying his best not to sound like he is panicking.“For a drive.”“Jay, wait –” He starts but Jiang closes the door behind himself before K can figure out something better to say.He does sprawl on the bed then, cursing himself and his entire bloodline.“That sounded like it went well,” Proko mentions when he slips inside a moment later.K hums and buries his face in one of the pillows. It smells like Jiang’s shampoo. “How come you forgave me after every argument we had?”Proko shrugs and sits next to him. “Because you were pathetic, and I was feeling sorry for you.”K snorts. “Thanks. Love to have a relationship built on pity.”Proko laughs and starts combing his fingers through K’s hair. K makes a pleased sound at that. “You need to be more vulnerable with him.”K scoffs. “That sounds pathetic.”Proko flicks him on the forehead. “Joseph Kavinsky, don’t you scoff at my advice.”It only makes K laugh. He’s dimly aware of Jiang calling him by his full name last night as well, but it sounded serious, and K didn’t like it. Is that why they were fighting?“I hate fighting with him,” he mumbles into the pillow. “I feel like no matter what I say, I only make it worse.”“You do have the ability to do that, yeah,” Proko agrees amusedly.K flips him off. “Could you like, play a mediator maybe? Please?”Proko sighs. “Sure, I can try.”“Uh, I love you.”“I know,” Proko assures him cheerfully, starts combing through his hair again and K falls asleep like that.He wakes up when the door to the bedroom opens and he blinks sleepily at Jiang, standing between the doorframe, looking at the two of them with unreadable expression.“You came back,” K says as if it wasn’t obvious.“Yes,” Jiang agrees and steps into the room.“Are you still mad?”“I don’t know, are you still a jerk?”K rolls his eyes and sits up. “I’ll take that as a yes.”“K,” Proko says softly and K sighs. Right. He’s not going to fuck it up this time. “I’m sorry I was a jerk. I’ll try to be less of a jerk in the future.”Jiang blinks at him, then snorts. “God, that was awful.”K frowns at him. “That was a sincere apology.”“And it was awful.”“Fuck you,” K says but he’s smiling.Jiang smiles too and sits with them on the bed. “I wasn’t mad at you for being a jerk. Well, I was, but mostly I was mad because you never would’ve talked like that if it was Proko there instead of me.”That leaves K speechless for a moment. “Oh,” he manages only.Jiang sighs. “I just… I guess I’m still kind of jealous of your relationship? And I know it’s stupid because you’ve been together for much longer and everything, but sometimes there are these moments when I’m with you when it really hits me that I’m not like either of you and I’m not sure if you don’t hate that.”K has no fucking idea what is he supposed to say to that. He looks at Proko for help, but for once Proko looks as dumbstruck as K.“I think that if I dated another Proko, my head would explode,” K says pensively after a moment.“Gee, thanks,” Proko says flatly.K frowns. “I didn’t mean… You know what? I’ll just shut up.”“That’s probably a good idea,” Proko agrees. “But to be honest, if I dated another you, my head would explode too.”K smirks. “I will take that as a compliment, thank you.”Jiang watches their banter with a fond look in his eyes. “See, all your arguments look like this. You never have big ugly fights.”“That’s because we’ve already had all the big ugly fights,” K says. “You know, about my daddy issues and trust issues and general asshole personality and about how Proko’s a perfectionist and overachiever and always tries to fix me.” Proko opens his mouth to protest but K shushes him. “Nope, we’re not having any of those fights again, don’t even try.” He offers Jiang what he hopes is an encouraging smile. “And now it’s your turn to have all these stupid ugly fights with us. It’s a natural progress of the relationship. Right, P?”“I wouldn’t say it’s natural in every relationship, but it does appear to be in this one, so yes,” Proko agrees.“The good news is,” K continues cheerfully, “that you’ve already covered most of the topics for the big fights, so unless you have some fun insecurities you want to fight about, like whatever this one was, I think we’re good.”Jiang smirks. “Great.”K gives him a pointed look. “And for the record, we’re not dating you because you remind us of each other. We’re dating you because you’re you.”“We like your personality,” Proko clarifies.“And your ass,” K adds.Jiang laughs at that. “Thanks. I like your ass too.”Proko rolls his eyes at them but it’s fond and K is mostly just happy they aren’t fighting anymore. He lies back down and closes his eyes. “I need at least two more hours of sleep,” he announces.“Are you still hungover?” Jiang asks amusedly but lies next to him and snuggles close.He isn’t, or at least not really, but he won’t say no to a few hours of just lying around in bed and cuddling. Not that he would ever admit it aloud. He opens one eye to look at Proko, who’s watching him with a knowing look. He doesn’t say anything though, just lies on the other side of him, happy to play along.