dreaming drugs

[thedreamthief]

This isn't a friendship. It likely never could be, Ronan thinks.

But, regardless of his feelings on the matter, he and Kavinsky are undoubtedly intrinsically linked, and, when it comes to dream thieving, they work better together. Ronan brings the power of Cabeswater with him, uses its fondness for him to his advantage, always careful to not ask for or take too much. Kavinsky brings the detail, uses his years spent honing and perfecting his abilities to create things no one would guess to be anything but wholly real.

There's a part of him, even now, that wonders why Kavinsky is bothering with any of this, why he cares to help Lee or anyone else in the same predicament. Such a selfless act doesn't strike him as fitting the Kavinsky he knows, though it could be a matter of alleviating sheer boredom.

And it could be that should they find something that works, Kavinsky will find a way to monetize it.

Ronan does have a plan for that, however.

For now, he's still playing along, glancing sharply over at Kavinsky as they step into Ronan's typical clearing. "Pills, right?" he says, wiping his hands off on his jeans as he drops to sit on the ground.

Comments

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky looked around the clearing warily. The trees were quiet, for now, and there were no brambles or thorns in the grass, yet. For the moment, the forest did not mind him. Perhaps it was waiting to see what they had in mind; or it was listening to Ronan more than it was acting out against him. Kavinsky didn't know, and he didn't let himself care, really.

He was aware, distinctly, that Ronan didn't trust him. He didn't need him to, really. Not for this to work. All he needed was for Ronan to work with him. Ronan hadn't trusted him in the warehouse either--or, really, in the field of Mitsubishis. This, at least, had them on an even keel. Neither of them really knew what they were doing, but it was a bit more like what they both knew. Collaboration was, in this case, the mother of some of their best inventions.

Neither of them really needed to sleep to dream anymore, but it had a nice rhythm to it. Kavinsky dropped down into the grass as well, secure that the forest wasn't going to try and swallow him up.

For now, at least.

"Yeah, pills." He grinned, cheekily, at Ronan. "So, Lynch. Your head or mine?"

[thedreamthief]

"Yours," Ronan replies, not even needing to consider it. "You know him better, you know his condition."

Moreover, Kavinsky knows drugs. There isn't a doubt in Ronan's mind that Kavinsky is more skilled at technical dreaming. He's had yeas of practice where Ronan's only had months. The only thing that makes Ronan powerful is Cabeswater's affinity for him.

And, of course, Ronan still doesn't trust Kavinsky any farther than he can throw him. He's not about to let the little shit anywhere inside his dreams. Not again.

Leaning back against an overturned log, Ronan keeps his legs bent at the knee as he rests his hands on his stomach. "You seen him recently?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky leaned back, smirking a little. He could almost hear the mistrust in Ronan's reasoning, but he didn't let it sink under his skin. It stuck there, right on the surface, an oil slick. He had given Ronan no reason to mistrust him--recently. But he was always the liar, the thief. These were the constructions of themselves, the realities of the world, the armors they built through the eyes of other people.

"Checked in the other day to see how he was feeling, but haven't seen him since we brought him out here."

One of the Aglionby birds he'd dreamt up, months ago now, flitted down out of the trees. It fluttered around Kavinsky's head, then over to Ronan, landing on his knee. Kavinsky watched it curiously a moment. He knew, ultimately, the birds were more the forest's than they were his. Still, there was some spark of jealousy that threatened to smolder into a fire, that threatened to fan large and angry, if that damn bird lingered on Ronan Lynch's knee when he already had this whole damn place's favor.

But the bird seemed to figure out whatever its little mind wanted to figure out. It flitted off Ronan's knee without offense and came back over to Kavinsky, pecking at the collar of his shirt a moment, before it fluttered off in a flurry of furious feathers, off into the trees again.

"Alright. Whenever you're ready, princess."

[thedreamthief]

It isn't the first time Ronan's seen a bird like this one in Cabeswater. There'd been a few of them their last trip here together, with Lee, but just like that time, it feels strangely disconcerting. It's one thing to know Kavinsky can dream drugs and cars and weapons, and something else entirely to know he can dream living, breathing things as easily as Ronan. After all, what use does Kavinsky have for animals?

Ronan's mental answer to that is sudden and revolting, that ever-present ball of distrust boiling hotter.

The bird flutters away before Ronan can so much as reach a hand out to touch him, and he perches on Kavinsky shoulder, the sun through the trees highlighting his wings before he's off once again.

"They stay here?" he asks, momentarily distracted from the task at hand. "The birds. They stay in Cabeswater?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky was still, leaned back in the grass, like he didn't hear the question, like maybe he'd dropped off into his own head for a second. Slowly, he turned his head, looking at Ronan with one dark eye. Catlike and curious.

"For now," he said. He didn't know if he'd leave them here, once Newt had his garden started in the back yard of their little house. But that wasn't any of Ronan's business. All that mattered was that, for now, these birds lived here in the trees, one of the few things about the dream place that didn't loathe him.

But he could see, dark in Ronan's gaze, how that distrust twisted. Kavinsky laughed, tilting his head back. "I dreamed them for one of my boyfriends. So maybe they'll go back to my place one day. Not that it's any of your fucking business."

He sprawled, lazy and slow, all the way down into the grass, and closed his eyes. The sun shone down against his eyelids, through the leaves of the tree, and he let himself drift like that a little, let himself be just a little tense for a moment in case Ronan took exception to what he would no doubt think was yet another lie.

[thedreamthief]

One of Kavinsky's boyfriends. Jesus. More than one asshole in this city has fallen for this douchebag's spell? Ronan shouldn't be surprised, he knows. This town if full of people who don't know of Kavinsky's penchant for destruction and Ronan sure as hell isn't the type to warn people. He'll just await the fallout.

Rolling his eyes, Ronan relaxes further against the log, legs stretched out in front of him. He tries to forget about the birds for now, forget about what ever fucking plans Kavinsky has for them. He'll come back to it later.

The trees whisper then, a hushed murmur that seems strangely reassuring and Ronan takes a breath, calming himself.

"So how the fuck are we doing this?" he asks then, tipping his head back. "In and out? Or do we gotta stay around and cook shit up like a meth lab?"

[mitsubishievo]

"Now where's the fun if I tell you how the magic's done?" Kavinsky said, voice all lazy, down in his chest, relaxed now. He listened to the whispering breeze in the trees, that strange almost murmur that he could never quite hear. He could feel the edge of the dream coming toward him, and, before he reached out toward it, he reached out toward where he could feel the distinction of Ronan's energy as well, that strangely similar hiccup in everything else, so much like his own but so different.

And then, between one breath and the next, he was dreaming.

It was not the forest, but a real dream. A construction of things. They were looking for something here. The both of them, together. He was the mastermind of drugs, the technical precision of science from time spent studying how chemistry and biology worked together. Ronan was a theoretical construct, so sort of poet, so sort of artist, all the sort of things that Kavinsky couldn't manage without the logistics in play already.

A plain, white hallway stretched out in front of them, endless, sterile. Doors lined the hall, all identical. Kavinsky heaved a huge sigh. "Man, I hate this one."

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky slips under between one breath and the next and Ronan frowns after him for only a moment before following, relaxing mind and muscle, and drifting. If asked, he still isn't sure he could explain how it happens, how his subconscious mind can seek out and slip into Kavinsky's, how they can share the same dream space.

All he knows is he can.

They're no longer in Cabeswater, likely no longer anywhere in Darrow, and Ronan frowns down at the plain, white tile at his feet. "This one?" he asks, unsettled less by the hospital-like expanse of hallway in front of him than by Kavinsky's reaction. "Then why the fuck are we here?"

He takes a few steps forward, glancing at a door as he passes, unable to see through the small glass window that adorns it.

[mitsubishievo]

"Drugs, dumb shit," Kavinsky snapped, though his tone was only half as biting as it could have been. He watched Ronan approach one of the doors and had a conflicted moment of hoping that something was behind the door and simply hauling him away from the door in case there was something in there.

"Come on," he grumbled, shoving a hand in his pocket and picking a direction to head down the endless hallway.

He was well versed in this particular dream. Not just for any particular purpose like this, but because it was a recurrent one, one that had been with him for years. It didn't help to have someone he cared about spend time in a hospital every three months. This just reminded him that that was coming up. It made his skin crawl.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan tosses Kavinsky a glare at that half-assed answer, but he doesn't snipe in return. They're in Kavinsky's dream space, his head, and the last thing Ronan wants to do is make him volatile. Ronan does have some control in here, enough to be able to get himself out should he need to, but that doesn't mean he has any desire to see what sick shit Kavinsky could pull out before that point.

Giving the door one last glance, Ronan follows Kavinsky down the hall. It's eerily quiet, devoid of the sounds Ronan would equate with a hospital. Nobody's screaming or crying or wailing. There isn't so much as a single machine beeping.

"Memory or imagination?" Ronan asks after a long moment, nearly side by side with Kavinsky now.

[mitsubishievo]

"Grab bag," Kavinsky admitted. "I've seen my fair share of hospitals. But the dispensary is strictly theoretical." He ran his fingers against the wall nearest him, feeling the coolness of the wall under his fingertips, pulling them away each time they passed a door so he never actually touched a single one of those. Only ever the walls.

"So. Let's you and me talk through this wonder drug we're making, or we're gonna be in here a while trying to find it."

The hall stretched, yawning and silent except for them walking through it, and that was probably one of the worst parts of the dream. The quiet. It wasn't bad when it stayed quiet, so Kavinsky focused on that. The hallway's quiet, their footfalls, the shuffle of jeans and shirts, the scrape of his fingers on the wall.

"It can't just take the cancer away, not instantly. So it's gotta be gradual, but not so slow that the cancer can just regrow."

[thedreamthief]

Not for the first time, Ronan wonders exactly how much of Kavinsky's life is shrouded in mystery, how much he keeps hidden by choice or necessity. He isn't curious enough to ask any more questions though and he keeps his eyes ahead, frowning as they continue down the seemingly endless hall.

"So something that attacks the cancer cells maybe," Ronan says, twisting one finger around the bands of his opposite wrist and tugging lightly. "Eats them away from the inside?"

That's not enough detail and Ronan knows it. Details are Kavinsky's strong point.

"What about something that replicates the effects of chemo?"

[mitsubishievo]

"Chemo makes him sick," Kavinsky said, more thoughtful than dismissive. He hadn't read up enough on why chemotherapy made people sick, but it just made sense, fundamentally. You pumped enough foreign chemicals into someone's body, eventually their body would just start to reject everything.

"Could be," he started, taking his hand away from the wall and working the knuckle into his own arm thoughtfully for a moment, "an inoculation. Rather than a pill? Like a flu shot or something, they give you a deactivated virus, and it creates a low grade infection, white blood cells create antibodies to that specific strain of the virus."

The words came out, but as soon as Kavinsky got to antibodies he knew he'd thought in the wrong direction. He shook his head. "No, fuck. It's gotta be a pill. It can't key in with the white blood cells, or he might get an autoimmune response."

[thedreamthief]

"Chemo makes him sick because it's fucking poison," Ronan says, continuing on that train of thought after Kavinsky's little derailment. He pulls at the bands on his wrist, twists them hard enough to cut off the circulation in the tip of one finger before letting go and doing the same to his next finger.

Despite all the shit Kavinsky had given him on Lee, all the charts and forms and research, Ronan still isn't a fucking doctor. He's never even wanted to be. He still feels completely out of his depth in this shit.

"You've already made him some anti-nausea shit, right? How about working that into the chemo pill? Or the not-chemo pill or whatever. What if we replicate what the chemo is doing without making it poison?"

[mitsubishievo]

"All drugs are poison, man," Kavinsky pointed out mildly. It wasn't a bad suggestion though, but it felt wrong, like the inoculation idea that had came to Kavinsky and that he had just as quickly dismissed.

He watched Ronan fidget with his bracelets out of the corner of his eye, the way he had countless times back in Henrietta. A part of him wondered if they were the originals or the ones he'd dreamed up. He'd never really gotten close enough to look for the little imperfections that a dream thing inevitably had, the little inconsistencies that, even under careful scrutiny, he couldn't emulate even in a good forgery. He wondered if Ronan would have ever thought to wear a Kavinsky forgery, or if the bracelets Kavinsky had given him in Nino's that night had ended up on his bedroom floor.

There was no point thinking about it now. It didn't matter to either of them.

"Okay, let's stop thinking of it like a known thing for a fuckin' second here. Mining unknown territories. Boldly going and all that shit. Starship Fuckwit, our four year mission: what the fuck is it that we're replicating? We need to shrink the tumors, replace them with new, healthy tissue. We need to encourage the body not to revert to cancerous growths. We need..."

[thedreamthief]

"New cells," Ronan finishes, frowning in concentration.

It still doesn't feel quite right, but it does feel like a start. Untangling one finger from his bracelets, Ronan rubs at his chin as he glances over at Kavinsky again.

"You said something before, back that first day, about changing the mutation of his DNA. What about a pill that does that? Or fuck, more than one. One pill that kills the tumors, shrinks them. Attacks the symptoms so the second pill can take care of the foundational shit in the DNA itself."

[mitsubishievo]

"Go in halfsies," Kavinsky said, sort of vacantly. "Like a placebo, sort of. If there's an even number of pills, it would balance out over time. Like a coin toss. Heads, shrink the tumors with new tissue growth. Tails, recodes the mitochondrial DNA so it doesn't revert to cancerous regrowth."

There was an end to the hallway ahead, and it forked--left and right. Kavinsky stopped, quiet and still for a moment, as if he was listening to something at a very great distance even though there was still almost no sound in the eerie white sterility of this dream. He tapped his fingers against each other thoughtfully, then turned, abruptly, toward the left fork.

"Okay, so that's what it does. And then, theoretically, he could go off them after a while. Cancer goes into remission, goes away entirely. Boom, no more drugs."

[thedreamthief]

They reach the end of the hallway which, in itself, feels strange given how long it seems they've been walking.

But it makes sense, Ronan thinks. In the concept of a dream. The hallway splits with a decision, changing to a new path, a new possibility. Abstract and concrete both at once.

The walls are still a sterile, blinding white.

"Does it?" he asks, glancing over at Kavinsky, brow furrowed. "Cancer goes into remission, but it can always flare again. Cancer cells come back. Unless we change something to keep them out, remove the possibility."

Not that Ronan has a fucking clue how, but if Kavinsky can dream up drugs that make a person slip into unconsciousness immediately, if he can dream up every kind of hallucinogen known to man and then some, there's every chance he can dream this, some pill that could fundamentally alter a person's DNA.

[mitsubishievo]

"Okay, if you're going to be so fucking negative, I'm kicking you out."

Something in the dream rippled, shifted. It was not a wakefulness, but an awareness. Kavinsky stopped for a moment, ran his hands back through his hair. They could go around and around on this, but at the end of the day, Lee was still sick and Kavinsky had said he would try. The prospect of the answer to this puzzle being just out of reach because he and Ronan were just going to talk circles around each other, ships passing in the night, was a frustration like nothing else.

They'd always been just that. Ships passing in the night. Cars passing in the night, in the gleam between street lights. For once, to Kavinsky, that gleam seemed more like a lighthouse and less like the wick of a stick of dynamite. Kavinsky worked his knuckles into his scalp until it hurt and then huffed out a breath that was like a release.

"If the pills, in combination, shrink the tumors--remission--and rework the mitochondrial DNA of the surrounding tissue to pre-cancer settings--I dunno, reboot--then they do their job." Kavinsky looked down the hall they'd taken, scuffed his boot across the too-white tile and watched as the skid he'd made stayed a moment, then disappeared.

[thedreamthief]

They've stopped in the middle of the endless hallway, Kavinsky's eyes sharp when he turns to Ronan, gleaming like a knife. He's wired, Ronan realizes. Itching in a way Ronan knows all too well himself, a restless energy thrumming through his veins.

But this is Kavinsky's dream and they're here for a reason. However much enjoyment Ronan may get from pushing Kavinsky into a fist fight in the middle of a dream, they have shit to do.

"Do you think it's possible?" he asks, eyebrow arched as the dark skid against the white tile evaporates before his eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest, eyeing Kavinsky carefully. "You think you can do it?"

Ronan isn't sure himself if it's possible, if Kavinsky knows enough of the details to get it right. If he knows enough to teach Ronan.

[mitsubishievo]

"I can try," Kavinsky said, putting confidence and determination in his voice. The more he believed it, the more it would work. That was how he'd made his first Mitsubishi--stubbornness and determination and weeks of looking over specs before hand.

He walked again, turning so he was walking backward so he could look at Ronan directly now rather than out of the corner of his eye.

"It's not just me--it's us, man. We're making this shit. I'm the foundation, the hardline, the technical details. You're the fancy, theoretical voice here. And that's how we are gonna make a drug that saves a guy's life."

[thedreamthief]

There's a confidence in Kavinsky's tone, a stubborn bravado-bordering-on-machismo that Ronan, despite himself, finds alluring. His lips twitch into a crooked grin before he can catch himself and he gives a quick, dismissive shake of his head.

"Drugs," he says, still walking forward as Kavinsky walks backwards, their steps not in time with one another, but near enough. "To start off with, at least. One to shrink the tumor and one to change his DNA. And a few to combat his symptoms, the nausea and shit. If we try cramming that into one pill right off the bat, things could get complicated. Better to start of simple."

He still isn't sure how he feels about any of this, working with Kavinsky, even on something like this. But he can't deny the thrill, can't deny the idea of possibly curing fucking cancer isn't getting to him.

[mitsubishievo]

"No, I wouldn't cram it all in one pill anyway," Kavinsky said, shaking his head. "Not all the other stuff--the antiemetic, the narcotics, sleeping pills, appetite stims, whatever; that shit all conflicts too much, they all treat individual symptoms he has right now, they're all about dealing with issues he's already got, but they've got to be controlled. Most of that shit can't even be in a single pill together, it'd go all haywire. Balancing out all the chemical properties on any of those just to get the proportions right would get crazy."

Start simple. The basics. It didn't get much more basic than what they were trying to do here, trying to rework a guy's whole DNA so he'd stop being predisposed to cancer, but also without rewriting anything else about him. Nothing else.

Who were they to play God here? Nothing but a pair of sad, sorry kids, really. Two little monsters that God had set on some strange factory default he hadn't really meant to--one more fantastical, one more practical; but both of them had created life in their time. This was a different sort of life they were creating. This was going back to a root, a core, that they had missed in all their other creations.

Something out of nothing.

At the end of the hall was a door. It had a faint, dark glow behind it. Kavinsky felt that it was there, still turned around. He pulled up short, paused, drumming his fingers against each other.

[thedreamthief]

It's impressive, Ronan will admit even if he'll never say as much out loud. Kavinsky knows his fucking drugs and, apparently, that knowledge extends beyond the recreational shit. He wonders how much of what he's saying is based on knowledge he's had for years, garnered while creating the fucking red and green pills and the hundreds of hallucinogens for his parties, and how much is from the last few weeks, from scouring medical books and studying Lee's records.

Because Kavinsky isn't stupid. He never has been. It's one of the many reason he's so fucking dangerous.

They're stopped at a door and Ronan frowns as Kavinsky drums his fingers against it. He isn't pushing it in or reaching for the knob.

"What?" Ronan asks, glancing from Kavinsky to the door and back again. "You afraid what's on the other side or something? This is your dream, man."

Ronan knows all too well how a dream can get out of hand, how it morphs and shifts out of control, how the creatures in his own mind can fight back. Can kill. Kavinsky has his own Terrors, Ronan knows. Both those in his dreams and those not. He just doesn't know how they manifest.

[mitsubishievo]

"Making sure it's the one we want," Kavinsky said. He didn't really have to explain himself to Ronan, he didn't feel like. Dreams were treacherous places, able to turn into something dark and sinister at the slightest provocation. It's why he'd threatened to kick Ronan out if he was going to be negative. These pills didn't need doubt in them. They needed to work.

And he needed this door to be clean and clear behind it. Nothing behind it. At least, nothing that might come after them.

Kavinsky turned around slowly and looked at the door. Like the hallways, like all the other doors, it was plain and white and unassuming. The only thing about it that marked it as anything out of the ordinary was that knowledge in him that this was it, and the strange, dark sort of glow around the edges, under the bottom of the door. He stepped up to it slowly. Like the walls, the door was cool to the touch.

The door knob turned slowly under his palm. Kavinsky remembered the energy of the cosmic rope in his palm, burning him until he woke with the marks on his hands. They were still there, coarse, pink scars like friction burn. They were the most obvious of the scars he had anymore. He wasn't sure if he was proud of that or not.

Inside, the room was dark. Just inside the swing of the door, where the light of the hallway fell, was a single pill bottle.

Kavinsky hated this dream.

He snatched the bottle off the ground and slammed the door shut, turning away from it. "Okay. Time to wake up now."

[thedreamthief]

Even if he wanted to, Ronan knows better than to say a damn word right now. Kavinsky stalks in front of the closed door, looks left and then right down the hallway. Ronan looks too, as though he might spot something himself, Orphan Girl peeking out from behind a window, might hear the tell-tale kch-kch-kch-kch that still haunts him, dormant but lingering.

Kavinsky feels the door, tests the knob. It's a careful touch, one that screams of a familiar sort of terror.

This isn't a dream Ronan knows. It couldn't be. They're in Kavinsky's head.

But it's a feeling he knows all too well.

Kavinsly turns the knob on the door and the hallway shrinks inward, pulling in like a folding slinky, the walls dissolving into nothing but an incomprehensible void. There's no sound to it, no crumbling or screeching. Nothing but a horrific silence, shattered only by the slamming door and Kavinsky's voice.

Gasping, Ronan's eyes snap open, heart thundering in his chest as he blinks up at the tree branches of him.

"The fuck was that?" he murmurs a moment later, pushing up onto his elbows to glare at Kavinsky.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky laid still, even after he'd woken. He could feel the pill bottle in his hand, clutched there like a life line, like a sacred thing. Overhead, the sun dappled through the leaves. The trees whipped, like they did, on a breeze of dissatisfaction with his presence. He laid still and listed to the thundering bump-bump-bump bassline of his heart beat in his temples.

Nothing had followed them out. The sky was clear, the forest was still where they were, and Ronan was reacting as he ought to--only to the dream itself.

Kavinsky sat up, uncurling his fist to look at the bottle. It was plain and white, no label or other identifying feature. He opened the lid--child safety cap, he hadn't even thought about that; he supposed it might not matter--and shook a couple of the pills out into his hand. They looked almost like aspirin, if not for their blue coating.

"I told you I hate that one."

[thedreamthief]

Propped on his elbows, Ronan eyes the bottle in Kavinsky's hand. It looks perfectly ordinary, not so much as a label plastered to the plastic. Kavinsky twists off the cap and drops a few, nondescript blue pills into the palm of his hand.

They've done it. Hopefully. There's no telling if those drugs will help Lee or kill him and there's only one way now to find out.

"You could've dreamt up a different one," he says even though he knows it doesn't really work that way. Kavinsky's terrors aren't like Ronan's, but that doesn't mean they're any less present. Nodding down at the pills, he adds, "You think they'll work?"

[mitsubishievo]

"No I couldn't have," Kavinsky said. He rolled his eyes and dropped the pills back into the bottle. The other drugs he had in mind, ones to ease Lee's suffering if these didn't work or if they worked wrong, would be easier. They wouldn't take him to that place. They wouldn't try to drag him into that darkness.

He smoothed his thumb over the months old, white scars he had on his arms from the last time he'd had a nightmare bad enough to yank something out of a dream. It had been years since that had happened. He wasn't sure if it was Darrow or his strange, growing openness that he'd cultivated himself away from in Henrietta. It didn't matter.

"Hope so," he said, and nodded. He tossed the bottle into the air, then caught it when it came down. "Just have to hope that if they don't work, they don't make shit worse."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan watches the bottle fly into the air, gaze lingering on it once it's nestled again in Kavinsky's hand. His lips tug into a deeper frown as he sits up fully, drawing his legs in under knees.

"We should dream a counter drug," he says, not sure why he hadn't thought of it before. He nods at the bottle. It looks completely innocuous, but its contents could either cure or kill a man, a man Ronan has only met once, a man who may only be a ploy in some elaborate Kavinsky scheme, but still a man.

He meets Kavinsky's eyes again, still untrusting. "Something like a basic system restore or whatever-the-fuck in case that shit does make it worse."

[mitsubishievo]

"Yeah," Kavinsky said, staring at the bottle, his eyebrows drawing together. If they tried to dream something else up from his head, that same something from nothing, it ran the risk of the same tumultuous dreamscape, the long white hallways and endless doors and that crushing silence that had chased them out.

"Don't suppose you can ask the forest nicely," he said, rolling his eyes just a little. He looked up at the trees, dubiousness written on his face. Even if the forest didn't hate him, his portion of this request, there was no reason for it to give them what they wanted at a gentle behest. It was one of the reasons Kavinsky had never gotten in a habit of asking.

"Or we can try it without sleeping." Kavinsky shrugged. "Climbing in my head, odds are pretty heavily in favor of a repeat performance of what we just went through."

[thedreamthief]

"Not yours," Ronan agrees without so much as a pause of consideration. They've likely pushed the limits enough as it is letting Kavinsky steer the last theft, using his mind and ministrations. Cabeswater hasn't put up a fight just yet, but Ronan would guess that's because he's here, his presence weighing the forest in their favor, particularly with Kavinsky largely behaving.

He glances at the bottle in Kavinsky's hand again, weighing the options. They could sleep again and Ronan could find Orphan Girl, could explain the situation to her again and ask her permission. It's as likely to work as not sleeping, he thinks, though he's not sure how she'll react with Kavinsky so close.

"Let's try without sleep," he decides, shifting slightly on the ground. "Shouldn't be as hard as that shit, should it?" he says, nodding at the bottle. "We just need something that'll set him back to his chemical make-up as it is right now."

Right, it'll be a real fuckin' breeze.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky rolled a shoulder in a shrug, not the least offended by the easy dismissal. He wanted to go into his own head with a dream right now even less than Ronan, because he knew what was in there. He knew how to throw Ronan out, if he needed to. But he'd always have to be locked up in it, dreams or not, always stuck with the things that lived in his head. He knew Ronan was the same way.

He lounged back on his elbows, trying to make his mind go blank. He looked up at the whispering tree branches above them, the dappled light, the complex series of overlapping life that shielded their clearing. He snorted, a little, at the idea that this was going to be easy.

"Yeah, just. Cosmic reset red pill or whatever," Kavinsky said with a vague sort of laugh. "Kill switch for gene therapy. How could we possibly fuck that up?"

[thedreamthief]

Despite himself, Ronan's lips tug into a faint grin as he sits up a little straighter, smoothing his hands over the knees of his jeans.

"The forest has met Lee, at least," he points out, looking away from Kavinsky then and toward the trees, the leaves glittering and winking in a breeze Ronan can't feel. He rests his hand on his knee, palm up and considers for a moment. Concentrates.

Cabeswater knows Lee, it let him meditate here and dream here, let him create flowers to his will and alleviate some of his suffering. Even if the effects hadn't lasted beyond the forest itself, it had touched and let Lee touch in return. They had become acquainted with one another.

Ronan can only hope it was enough for Cabeswater to pull from, to create a copy of Lee's very DNA and a drug that can reset if needed.

Pulling in a deep, slow breath, Ronan rubs the tips of his fingers together and opens his palm again, accepting.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky laid there, leaned back on his elbows, and watched Ronan. This was the marvel of someone creative over someone technical, he supposed, at the end of the day. Kavinsky had never been poetry and art and creation, even when he had created. His forgeries were based solely off the things that he knew, and things that he knew too well, too keenly. Things he had studied with such an eye that it was obsessive. If the task at hand had been to create Ronan Lynch--or even to create Lee, which would be trickier--Kavinsky could do a fair job of it, he thought, if Darrow would allow such a thing. People were harder than birds.

Kavinsky laid there, leaned back on his elbows, and thought of Lee. Of meeting him the very first time in the gay bar with Newt, and speaking with him seriously that first time back in late January, of asking him about what his suffering was like, of reading all his medical files like those were a summation of a life.

He watched Ronan's hand--his fingers, his palm, the bend of his wrist--and felt something around them. He tried not to worry about it. He just kept focusing on Ronan and thinking about Lee, about the variations of normal he'd seen in the man, what he was like now, and how that would be their default.

[thedreamthief]

The shift is gradual, the air flickering as old molecules make room for new ones and the space in Ronan's empty palm is slowly filled with a small, orange medical bottle. It flickers into being from the bottom up, created little by little per Ronan's silent specifications.

It isn't the first thing Ronan's created while awake, but it's still astounding to watch, the careful, steady creation of a thing from scratch, the item matching perfectly the image inside Ronan's own head.

But, in this case, it isn't the outer casing that matters at all, but what's inside.

His fingers snap inward around the bottle once it's whole and complete in his hand, a slow grin curving his lips as he glances briefly over at Kavinsky. Twisting the cap open he finds four red pills inside, nondescript but for a single L carved on one side.

Hopefully, the pills won't even be needed, but there's no way of knowing whether they'll work without testing. The risk in all of this is immense and they both know it, but at this point, Lee is willing to try anything, he assumes.

Tapping one out of the bottle, he shows it to Kavinsky proudly. "Hopefully it's not just a fuckin' aspirin."

[mitsubishievo]

"Your aspirin'll go real well with my placebo," Kavinsky assured, something that was as much as assurance of the veracity of their drugs as it was one part silent hope for their success to match Ronan's and equal counterpart jab at Ronan's own ability to dream up a counter measure to a drug that was more Kavinsky's work than not.

He sat up from the grass more fully, not the lounge back on his elbows but an echo of Ronan's casual pose, curled up with knees bent and arms crossed over top. They made interesting, possibly awful bookends in this almost mythical world, dreaming their drugs that went against some cosmic order of things.

Fuck the cosmic order. Sometimes, people didn't deserve to die. Especially not in this place that seemed to like to save people from themselves.

After a moment, he stretched his hand out for the orange pill bottle. "I'll put it with the others, so he'll have it, but it'll only get written instructions. Don't want him to go in expecting the blue pill to fuck shit up, you know? Predestination's a bitch."

[thedreamthief]

"If you did your shit right, it won't matter if he goes in expecting things to get fucked or not," Ronan points out. He's never been one for positive energy or whatever-the-fuck. Shit happened. It didn't matter what any one person or even group of people believed, shit got fucked when you least expected it.

Then again, Lee is some kind of Buddhist or some shit so it probably makes a difference to him.

Ronan tosses the bottle at Kavinsky then leans back into the grass, head cocked. "You really doing this for nothing?" he asks then because he's still not sure he believes it. Not everything is the same in this city; Ronan's been here long enough to understand that.

But this is Kavinsky and some things are harder to believe than others.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky caught the bottle and then flipped Ronan off, casual and easy in the gesture, but he laughed a little bit too. It was natural, an extension of every antagonism and heavy handed, violent flirtation they had--he had--flung between them since he'd known what Ronan was.

"I told you, when we started: practice. Sharp work. It's a puzzle." Kavinsky shrugged. Darrow had been good to him in many ways. But at the end of the day, he was still a product of where he'd come from--Bulgaria, New Jersey, Virginia. And there was still a small copse of bodies here with distrustful eyes that he owed nothing: no explanations, no open book of his hows and whys, no precedence for why he would soften in a place like this.

Ronan's question wasn't just why are you doing this or what's the catch, it was a question of all the little things that didn't hold up to his preconceptions from Henrietta. It was a question of all the things that didn't hold up to the boy that had dreamt with him in the warehouse. It was a question of everything that put into question the monster that Ronan, and Parrish and Dick and Sargent, and hundreds of people who weren't here--who were back in Henrietta, who had seen or heard things that Kavinsky had once done and might do but had not done--knew, or thought they knew. Ronan's question was about the little birds, not just about the pills. And Kavinsky knew that.

But it wasn't really any of Ronan's damn business.

[thedreamthief]

Is a simple puzzle enough to satisfy Kavinsky? Knowing what he does, and having both seen and heard what he's capable of, Ronan isn't so sure. But asking further isn't likely to get him any closer to the truth, asking further isn't likely to make him ever believe Kavinsky's motivations are pure, even if they are.

And that's a big fucking if.

So he only shrugs instead. If these pills work, the red ones, Ronan can easily dream more. And he has Cabeswater's favor, could speak with the trees to plead his case in dreaming up maybe not something exactly like Kavinksy's pills, but something similar. Ronan will find a way to circumvent whatever it is Kavinsky might have planned.

The goal, right now, is singular. The goal is to help Lee. Ronan will tackle whatever fallout there may be later.

Pushing up to his feet, Ronan wipes his hands off on the sides of his jeans, then motions back toward the path with a jerk of his head. "We done here?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky watched Ronan, closed and curious and guarded. The forest was as quiet as a forest ever was. It didn't seem to speak to Ronan, and it certainly didn't say anything to Kavinsky; but it also wasn't trying to tear into him. Small favors, he supposed. Kavinsky wasn't sure how much of a gift horse it was at this point.

He watched Ronan as he got to his feet, then rolled to his as well. He stretched, yawning vaguely as he shoved both pill bottles into the pockets of his jacket.

"Yeah, we're done," he assured. "I'll give Lee the pills when he can see me next."

He cast Ronan another look, closed and curious and guarded. "Sure you'll be glad to be rid of me and sneaking off without lover boy knowing."

[thedreamthief]

"I'm not hiding anything from him," Ronan says, though the edge in his tone makes it clear there's nothing further to say about it, not with Kavinsky. Not about Adam.

And it occurs to Ronan in that moment, the truth in it. He may not be talking about what it is he and Kavinsky are doing and, to the outside eye, it might look like he and Kavinsky are sneaking off together -- because they are -- but it's not to get high and jerk each other off or whatever some might assume. It's to try save some asshole's life.

And Adam trusts him. Adam trusts him. That's not to be fucked with.

Ronan realizes then he should probably tell Adam what's going on, if only to avoid any unnecessary worries.

"Let me know if you hear something," he adds, though he has his own plans to track Lee down and make sure he's being monitored. "Text or whatthefuckever."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky sucked the back of his teeth, then casually clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Obnoxious and sharp and dropping the subject like it had glanced a blow. He said nothing, not with words, but his eyes did; liar. He didn't offer any truths himself, though. It was none of Ronan's damn business, anyway.

He scraped dirt and detritus off his jeans and headed toward the path that had led them into the clearing. Now, as always--as it had months ago, when Kavinsky had arrived and, for the first time ever, he'd physically walked from this forest--it would lead them out of the clearing.

"Yeah, I'll keep you up to date," he said, nodding a little. "I'll tell him to keep you up to date, too. Not that you pay fuckin' attention to your phone and shit. Miracle of miracles you've been this limp-dick responsive."

[thedreamthief]

The look Kavinsky gives him isn't difficult to decipher, something in it almost challenging, though Ronan doesn't back down in the slightest. Kavinsky thinks he knows so much about Ronan because of what they are, this ability they share. They may be two beasts cut from the same cloth, but Ronan refuses to let that be only the start of their similarities. He doesn't want Kavinsky to know him, to get him.

Even though he knows he may not have a choice.

"I pay attention when it's important," he replies finally, lips curling in a sharp grin, tone heavy with the implication that Kavinsky rarely classifies as important.

He walks a few steps behind Kavinsky, preferring to keep him in his line of sight as the trees rustle behind them, offering their goodbyes. The Pig is parked not far off the road and Ronan heads for it as he fishes his keys out of his pockets and doesn't extend the courtesy of Cabeswater to Kavinsky before opening the door with a creak and slamming it closed after himself.