Chapter Text
Kevin Price has accepted nearly every drawback to following his dreams and becoming a dancer except for one: he can’t pay rent without a roommate. He’s always hated sharing, and after living alone for almost two years, he has pretty high standards for personal space. I guess technically he lives in a two bedroom apartment so it’s not like he couldn’t have a roommate if he wanted one, but then he would have to give up the other room as his studio/office/library and is that really worth it? Probably, if it meant he could stop having ramen for every meal.
So, I guess you could call it an act of God when Arnold called him on that early Thursday morning. “Hey buddy,” the call begins, as they usually do.
“What’s up,” Kevin says, suppressing a yawn. He puts the phone between his shoulder and his cheek and turns on the coffee maker.
“Oh, nothing. Just wanted to check in on you,” Arnold answers. For a pathological liar, he’s not very good at it.
Kevin picks up his coffee and walks into his studio. “Arnold, it’s 6 am. What do you need?”
He can practically hear him trying to find a way out of this. “Okay, so I have this friend. I don’t think you’ve met him, but he’s an ex-Mormon too and I think he was even district leader on his mission, I can’t remember where off the top of my head, but—”
“Get to the point.”
“He’s being evicted. In three days.”
Kevin cannot imagine where he could possibly be going with this, but he doesn’t think he’s going to like it. “And that affects me how?” he asks.
“Don’t freak out… I may have told him that he could stay with you.”
Kevin nearly spits coffee all over his mickey mouse pajamas. “Arnold!”
“I’m sorry, I panicked! He can’t stay with me; my apartment is barely big enough for me and Naba. And you did say you needed a roommate,” he says.
“I need a roommate who pays rent! Do you know why people get evicted, Arnold? It’s because they don’t pay rent!” There’s silence on the other end and Kevin immediately feels guilty. He knows how much Arnold hates being talked down to. “I’m sorry. That was harsh. But you can’t keep doing things like this. I know you want to help everyone, but sometimes you have to let people solve their own problems,” he says.
“I know, I’m working on it,” Arnold says, and he sounds like he genuinely means it. “Can he stay with you though? Please? Think of it as a favor to me.”
Kevin pinches his forehead. He can feel a migraine coming on. “Yeah, I guess he can. You gotta give me some time to clean out my studio though.”
He can hear Arnold sigh in relief. “Thank you, I love you, you’re the best best friend in the entire world.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, what’s this guy’s name again?”
”Connor McKinley. You guys are meeting at the Starbucks near the ballet school tomorrow at nine. He’s quite a character so be prepared.”
...
It’s 9:30 am on a Friday and Kevin should be biking to work. Instead, he’s watching anxiously as a red-haired boy who walked in half an hour late orders the most complex drink he has ever seen. His leg bounces nervously and his eyes dart back to the wall clock every few seconds even though he knows he’s going to be late no matter what. His boss probably isn’t even going to care, but the fifteen lulu-lemon clad moms that paid for their daughters’ classes sure will.
Much to Kevin’s annoyance, the boy and his mountain of whip cream and cinnamon finally make their way over to his table five minutes later. He’s wearing ripped jeans and a sweater that looks like it used to belong to somebody’s grandma, but somehow it works. “You must Connor McKinley,” Kevin says, holding out his hand and trying not to sound irritated. Connor does not take it and gives him an odd look.
“And you must be the infamous Kevin Price,” he says, sitting down across from him.
Kevin makes a mental note to ask Arnold what he’s said about him. “That’s me, I guess.” He waits for Connor to, I don’t know, thank him for letting him move into his apartment with a three-day notice?
Instead, with absolutely zero prompting, he says, “You know, they say there’s only two kinds of roommates: those who hate each other and those who want to fuck each other.”
It’s a good thing Kevin isn’t drinking anything this time. “I’m pretty you are the only person who as ever said that,” he says, and he hates that he can feel how red face is.
Connor shrugs. “Maybe, but it’s still true.”
Kevin is suddenly desperate to get this over with. “Okay, well even if we hate each other, rent is due the first week of every month and it’s 4,500 a month so about 2,200 per person—”
“Sorry, no promises on that one. You see, I’m an artist so I make enough money to where I don’t starve to death more than once a month and that’s about it.”
Fantastic. “You are drinking an eight-dollar cup of sugary milk,” Kevin deadpans.
Connor smiles a mischievous smile. “Oh this?” he says, holding up his cup. It has a phone number written on it. “I didn’t buy this. Let’s just say I know the barista.”
“That’s great, do you also happen to know my landlord? Because I can’t afford to pay for two people to live in a two-bedroom apartment in New York by myself,” he snaps.
“We could always downgrade to a one-bedroom if that makes you more comfortable,” Connor says with the same wicked grin.
“Have you ever had a serious conversation in your life?”
“Nope.”
Kevin crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. Connor leans forward almost in unison with a look in his eyes like a Rottweiler watching a piece of meat. They’re startlingly blue and Kevin tries his best not to look intimidated. “Why don’t you have a job at a shitty coffee shop like the rest of the self-obsessed art freaks?” he asks.
“Oh, please. You dancers are no better; all of you ever do is work out and wear tight clothes and drink protein shakes and talk about how hard it is to be in ballet. Don’t you work at a gym or something?”
Kevin doesn’t miss how he carefully dodges the question, but he decides it’s probably not worth getting an answer right now. “No, actually, I teach kids’ dance classes at the arts institute. In fact, I’m late for one right now because of you,” he retorts.
Connor snorts. “It’s not my fault you chose to do that to yourself.”
“Yeah but it’ll come back to bite you if I get fired and you suddenly have no one to pay your bills for you,” Kevin grumbles. They met five minutes ago and they’re already bickering like a middle-aged couple in an airport.
He makes a vague gesture with a sweater-pawed hand. “Arnold will do it,” he says.
He’s probably not wrong and it makes Kevin furious. Arnold works for a big publishing company and makes a lot of money editing children’s books. Him and Naba once paid Kevin’s heating bill against his will after he lost his first job in the middle of January. “You’re unbelievable. I’m going to go apologize to a bunch of 5-year-old girls and try and save my job,” he says, making no move to get up. “If you show up at my house before Sunday I’m not letting you in. And you have to move all your stuff yourself.”
“You’re no fun. I was looking forward to living out my fantasy of sitting on a couch as a pretty boy with big muscles carries me up a flight of stairs,” Connor says. He’s watching closely for Kevin’s reaction which just makes Kevin try harder not to have one.
“Does that usually work for you? Telling boys they have big muscles to get what you want?”
The corner of Connor’s mouth quirks up in amusement. “Yes. Unless they’re super straight, which you’re clearly not.”
Clearly?
The only thing keeping Kevin from asking what it is about him that makes him appear so obviously not straight is the knowledge that Connor wants him to. “Well… it’s not going to work on me. I’m not carrying any of your stuff,” he says, and the flicker of disappointment in those sharp blue eyes makes it worth it.
Kevin looks at his watch. It’s nearly 10 o’clock, and as mad as he is about it, it would probably be better to just call in sick than show up now. That doesn’t mean he’s spending any more time with Connor “you’re clearly not” McKinley than he has to. “Give me your phone number,” he says.
Connor rolls his eyes, pulls out a sharpie, and starts carefully writing the digits out on Kevin’s hand. “If you call me between 4 am and noon, I will block your number,” he warns, sounding dead serious for the first time all day.
As someone who goes to bed at 10:30 and wakes up at 7, Kevin hopes to God that’s not actually his sleep schedule. “I don’t doubt that you will. See you on Sunday,” he says, getting up and grabbing his bag.
As he’s walking out, he hears Connor mutter, “It’s the hair by the way.”
…
Every wall in Kevin’s studio looks like it belongs in a different kind of room. One is lined with mirrors for practicing footwork, one is covered in photographs ranging from family pictures from his childhood to selfies with Arnold, one has a desk and an office chair, and the other one is jam packed with precariously stacked books. He’s been told by nearly every person who’s ever been in his studio that this wall is a safety hazard and that someday all the books are going to come crashing down on him. And now he has to figure out a way to move every book on the wall without proving them right.
As if to add yet another element of danger, Kevin doesn’t own a ladder and the next best option is his office chair and even then, he has to stand on a few books to reach the top shelf. At least if he falls and breaks a bone he probably won’t have to live with a roommate for a while. The medical bill might be worth a few more weeks of peace and quiet.
He’s just gotten to the very back corner of the top shelf, where he’s finding dust covered books he didn’t even know existed, when he sees it. The familiar dark blue cover and gold lettering makes him flinch involuntarily and for a split second, he’s worried he might fall. Out of nowhere, he’s hit with a distant memory of putting it up here for the purpose of forgetting it existed like the rest of the top shelf books.
It was a few months after he moved in, right as he was starting to take steps to dissociate himself from Mormonism. He had just called his mother to let her know that he wouldn’t be coming home for Christmas this year and unsurprisingly, she didn’t react very well. But the thing that really struck a chord for Kevin is that she was using the same language she would use when talking about non-Mormons when he was a kid. She told him that heavenly father didn’t love him and that he was going to hell for denying God. She said that he was no better than a Catholic or an atheist and that he would never be forgiven if he didn’t come home and get help from the Church. After that, Kevin put his copy of the Book of Mormon on the top shelf and he hasn’t picked it up or called his mother since.
He has a sinking feeling that if he picks up the book, something bad is going to happen. He knows it’s irrational, but there’s something about associating that much power with one book for so long that never really leaves you. With shaking hands, he reaches out and slowly picks it up. He holds it gently like it could disintegrate in his hands at any moment and tries not to feel the significance in the worn cover and the creases in the spine. Inside, he knows there are hundreds of passages underlined, circled, highlighted and traced several times over. Kevin tosses it onto the growing pile of books with more force than necessary.
It takes him 4 hours, but he manages to turn his tower of books into a river of books that stretches across the entire room. The tediousness of the work keeps the Book of Mormon out of his head until he gets in bed and finds himself unable to fall asleep. Usually, his strategy for dealing with sleeplessness is working so hard he’s knocked out the second his head hits the pillow, but Kevin has the feeling that that isn’t going to work this time. Besides, the gym would be closed by now and he doesn’t live in the kind of neighborhood where he can go on runs in the middle of the night.
Kevin flips over and puts his pillow over his head in frustration. There is no way he’s being left alone with his thoughts right now. There’s too much he doesn’t want to remember and even more he doesn’t want to believe could happen in the future. He finds himself taking out his laptop and typing Connor McKinley’s name into the search bar. He’s desperate enough for a distraction that he doesn’t even bother coming up with a reason for why he’s doing it.
The first five or six results are sports articles about some baseball player, which tells Kevin that Connor is probably as poor and unknown as he says he is. He’s down to the bottom of the first page before he sees anything mentioning the Connor he’s looking for. It’s an article in The New School Free Press covering an art show for Parsons art students that happened in 2015.
Connor went to Parsons?
Kevin feels a twinge of jealousy. There’s no way he could’ve gotten into a school like that, not when he was seventeen. The idea of studying dance in college hadn’t even entered his head.
There’s a link attached to Connor’s name in the article. Clicking it fills the page with pictures of huge black and white drawings. Every presumption Kevin made about Connor’s talent based on his attitude and financial situation is shattered by seeing his art. The drawings are mostly portraits with a few still lifes and one abstract sketch of the New York skyline. Every piece is at least 4 feet in length and width and incredibly detailed, but there’s not one line that doesn’t serve a purpose. People say that with sketch art there’s always room for error, but it doesn’t look like Connor allows himself any room.
One portrait of a little boy sitting by the edge of a pool takes Kevin’s breath away. He can tell Connor must’ve taken days if not weeks getting the face just right. The boy’s eyes are clearly green without the drawing having any color and his skin glows in soft late afternoon sunlight. He’s looking outward at the viewer with the beginnings of a smile on his face, like someone just told him something wonderful and he hasn’t had time to process it yet. His lips are barely parted, and one corner of his mouth looks like it’s being tugged towards his ear. Kevin can picture what he would look like a few seconds after the frame.
“Wow,” he breathes. It’s hard to believe something so beautiful could come from someone so cynical and cold. It’s also hard to believe that it didn’t sell to some big museum for thousands of dollars. No one knows better than Kevin how hard it is to make it in the arts, but Connor was the type of artist that has the potential to make it. And that was in college. He can’t even imagine what his work must be like now.
Kevin yawns and turns to look out the window behind his bed. It’s raining and the kind of dark that only exists after midnight. He could spend hours looking at the rest of the drawings in the collection, but he needs to go to bed right now if wants to get in his morning workout. Reluctantly, he shuts his laptop and pulls the covers up to his chin.
He falls asleep without a single thought about his parents or the Book of Mormon.
...
It’s impossible to say whether it’s the thunder or the sound of his phone ringing that wakes him up first. Before he even registers that it’s too early for his alarm to be going off, he’s swinging an arm out and blindly feeling for the source of the noise. He drags the phone over to his face and cracks one eye open. The screen reads: “Connor McKinley.”
Kevin lets out an aggravated groan and hits decline. Why is he calling him? They’re not friends, and Kevin thought he made it pretty clear that he’s not helping Connor with anything.
He’s just starting to drift back to sleep when the ringing starts up again. He grumbles some very un-Mormon words and snatches his phone off his nightstand. “You better have a really good reason for this,” he says.
There’s a beat of silence on the other end and then a burst of giggles “What are you wearing?” Connor slurs in a low-pitched tone that Kevin thinks is supposed to sound seductive. Definitely drunk.
Kevin scrubs a hand across his face. “I’m not coming to get you if that’s what this is about,” he says.
“Don’t worry, sleeping beauty—” he pauses to laugh at his own joke. “I’m already here. You just have to come let me in.” Kevin hears someone yell through the phone and from outside his building at the same time and sighs in realization.
The only reason he doesn’t tell Connor to fuck off right then and there is the chattering of his teeth when he speaks and the knowledge that he’s so drunk he probably couldn’t find his way home. “Alright, give me a second,” he says, moving towards the buzzer.
About two minutes after he pushes the button, there’s a burst of loud and erratic knocks on his door. He opens it to find a soaking wet and violently shivering boy in jeans and a thin button-down shirt. His clothes are sticking to him in a way that makes him appear to be made up entirely of sharp angles that could snap at any moment. His skin is slightly grey, and his half-smiling lips are tinged blue at the edges. The only sign that he’s the same person Kevin met that morning is the shock of red hair. He starts to open his mouth to say something, but Kevin cuts him off.
“The bathroom is the first door on the right. Go take a hot shower and I’ll get you some dry clothes and make you some tea. I have cold medicine and cough drops, but if you need something stronger we can get it tomorrow. We’ll talk about this when you don’t look like a walking case of pneumonia.”
Connor has a funny look on his face, almost like he thinks Kevin is trying to trick him. “I like honey in my tea,” he says warily and stumbles past Kevin into the apartment and towards the bathroom.
Now he’s sure that this is the same boy he met this morning because there cannot be more than one person in New York who’s that self-centered. He glares incredulously at his back for a moment then walks off to find him some clothes.
Just as Kevin is stirring the honey into his tea, Connor walks into the kitchen smelling of Kevin’s soap and wearing his Disney pajama pants and an oversized BYU t-shirt that slumps off his collar bone. His cheeks are red from the steam and he still looks just as drunk as he did before. Kevin would never admit it, but it’s actually kind of adorable. “So,” he says, handing him his tea. “Explain.”
Connor takes a drink and flinches at the heat. “They decided to kick me out early. I went home after our date and the door was barred and there was a note on the door saying they’d taken my stuff. Figured I’d go get drunk and find someone to take me home with him,” he says.
“That didn’t work, I’m assuming,” Kevin says.
Connor snorts. “You think I would be here if it did?” He pushes himself up onto the counter and starts swinging his feet like a kid. “No, it didn’t work. Couple of old creeps tried to rope me in, but I’m not that stupid. So I drank until I couldn’t remember where I was and then walked around until I found the address that Arnold told me to write on my hand. It didn’t start raining until after I left.”
“How long were you outside?”
“You ever tried to find a place you’ve never been to at night while drunk? Long enough.”
That’s fair. “You could get sick, you know,” Kevin says.
“I don’t get sick. And I’m pretty sure that’s a myth anyway.”
They’re facing each other, Kevin leaning against fridge and Connor looking down on him from the counter. If he swung his feet an inch farther, he would kick Kevin in the stomach. He seems to be focused on controlling his blinking to avoid looking tired, but the bags under his eyes give it away. “I’m going to go clear the couch off for you before you fall asleep in my kitchen,” Kevin says.
“But I’m not tired,” Connor whines petulantly.
Apparently, he turns into a very rude five year old when he’s drunk.
Kevin moves the heaps of books and papers and miscellaneous crap off his old green couch and finds Connor a blanket. When he walks back into the kitchen, Connor is closely observing his clothes. “I can’t tell which of the things I’m wearing is most embarrassing,” he says. He doesn’t know why that stings, but it does. At this point, he’s indifferent to BYU and he hasn’t cared that much about Disney since he was nineteen, but for some reason he doesn’t want Connor to think his past is embarrassing.
“Okay, time for bed,” says Kevin, repressing the urge to defend his teenage self’s life choices. He holds out his hands to help him off the counter. Of course, Connor doesn’t take them, and instead tries to get down himself, falls, and ends up being caught by Kevin inches from faceplanting onto the tile. He doesn’t look at all fazed and Kevin can’t tell if it’s because he’s drunk or if he genuinely doesn’t feel fear. Neither answer would surprise him.
“Wow, I’m so tired and clumsy. I’m not sure that I can walk to the couch by myself…” Connor says in that ridiculous flirty voice of his.
Kevin has been described on many occasions as the most stubborn person alive, but he gets the feeling that Connor is a close runner up and he’s too tired to be difficult right now. “Oh my god, fine.” He loops one arm under the other boy’s legs, and Connor looks perfectly pleased with himself.
“Did I just hear Kevin Price, perfect ex-Mormon boy, use the lord’s name in vain?” he asks, pulling a face like a scandalized old woman in a movie.
“You said it yourself, it’s ex-Mormon. Those rules don’t apply to me anymore,” he says. Actually, he only recently started swearing and he still can’t bring himself to say some of the worse words out loud, but Connor doesn’t need to know that.
“Maybe I did, but we both know there’s no such thing.”
It’s probably around 4:30 by now, and Kevin’s brain feels mostly like TV static, but the one thought that pierces through the fog is that Connor’s small, sleepy smile looks exactly like the one the boy in his drawing was wearing. It’s an odd expression on a face that seems to be made for condescending sneers, and if Kevin’s mouth twitches a little at the sight it’s definitely not because it makes his chest feel strange and warm like a cup of coffee on a cold day.
In a subconscious effort to physically escape that thought, he drops Connor unceremoniously on the couch, sending a cloud of dust up into the air. “Such a romantic,” Connor deadpans. The smile has been replaced by the drunk equivalent of a scowl.
“If you wanted romance you shouldn’t have showed up at my apartment soaking wet while I was asleep,” Kevin retorts.
“Sounds pretty hot to me.”
“A regular apology would be fine, thanks.”
“I don’t do anything the regular way.”
“Yeah, no shit,” he says, but there’s no venom behind it. Truth be told, Kevin could use some irregularity. He once told Arnold during a drunken rant that he felt like he was born with a gold medal around his neck and he’s spent his entire life waiting for someone to knock him off his podium. He doesn’t remember saying it, but Arnold brought it up a few months ago while complaining to Kevin about how pretentious he was.
He hasn’t thought about that for a while, but the memory resurfaces as he watches a red headed boy fall asleep on his couch. The air feels like uncharted territory and for once, that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.