Chapter Text
He lifted the spoon to his mouth, blowing away the tendrils of hot steam before taking a taste. His nose wrinkled at the first sip, both from the heat and the stubborn flavor. He put down the spoon and spun around, looking over the impressive display of seasonings and spices he had spread across the countertop. He had been at it for two hours, adding and combining different salts and vegetables, trying to get it right. He’d already thrown out two batches entirely after he added decidedly too much garlic and oregano, and he wasn’t even sure if Kevin liked oregano, like how do you date someone, live with someone for over two years and not even know their feelings on Oregano?
Connor braced his hands on the counter, hunching forward over his workspace.
This had to be perfect.
Because it was a cold and rainy day in Brooklyn, and people liked comfort food on cold and rainy days, and Kevin would be home any minute now, undoubtedly in need of comfort.
It was his first day of therapy.
They had been back in the states for a couple months now, the two of them making off for New York City almost immediately upon their return. They had dreamed and schemed about it for months in Uganda, staying up into the wee hours of the night, hands intertwined between them on their pushed-together beds (having taken full advantage of Arnold’s extended stays with Nabalungi). They talked dreamily about the possibilities of the big city; what they would do there, where they would work, where they would live. Connor held back tears one night as he imagined a world in which he could walk down the street holding hands with his boyfriend and not be given a second glance.
Kevin’s ideations of a life in Orlando had withered in unison with his faith in organized religion. There was too much of an association between the two, he’d pondered aloud one evening. Two childlike fantasies he couldn’t hold onto any longer. Not with the things he’d seen. The things he’d experienced. It was a dream that belonged to the old Kevin, one that he felt he could no longer stake any claim in.
As the end of their unofficial two year mission grew nearer, the big red circle on the calendar that marked the beginning of the great and terrifying unknown loomed over them. Their wild dreams and fantasies began to take the form of concrete plans and logistical steps. Kevin’s grandfather had set up a trust fund years before he passed, ensuring that Kevin and his siblings would come into a decent sum of money when they each turned 21. It was meant mostly to go toward college tuition after their missions, but there was no legal stipulation in the contract. Maybe he could go to school in the city, or he could take some time to finally figure out for himself what he wanted to do with his life.
Connor, being the chronic overachiever that he was, had been quietly taking distance-learning courses during the mission. Kevin had been the one to make the discovery when he found Connor holed up in his office at two in the morning, hunched over the old, brick-like laptop, typing away at his latest research paper. His face had burned red when he was caught, stuttering through an explanation that he didn’t want to seem like he was showing off or make the other boys think he wasn’t fully committed to his duties as their district leader. Because he was. Kevin had cut him off with a kiss, and when he pulled away, Connor was surprised to find nothing but admiration in his boyfriend’s eyes.
Those college credits, combined with the college classes he’d taken concurrently with his high school curriculum, insured him a Bachelor’s degree within a few months of returning. Fortunately, his essay writing skills had granted him plenty of scholarship money, leaving him with zero debt and even a little bit of money leftover to get him started. He was grateful for that. It was certainly more help than he would be getting from his parents.
Living in New York with Kevin felt like a dream. Their apartment was small and definitely broke several health and safety codes, and their finances were tight, but it didn’t matter. Two years prior, these challenges might have seemed insurmountable, but something about surviving in a poor, war-torn African village had prepared them for the bleakest of circumstances. They felt like they could face anything now. Uganda had changed them. For worse and for better, they had come into themselves there, found their identities, found a purpose that surpassed anything the church or their tiny corner of the world had ever offered them. Now, the simple joy of having a consistent flow of running water and a working stove top felt like nothing short of a luxury.
Connor had landed a job waiting tables at one of New York’s tourist-centered Broadway themed diners. Kevin had teased him about his enthusiasm over a food service job when he easily could have gotten something worthy of his degree and impressive service & leadership background, but Connor couldn’t resist the allure of working even adjacent to show business.
Kevin didn’t have much room to talk, either. He’d smiled wryly at his boyfriend the day he came home holding a job application for a barista job opening. Connor had shaken his head in mock disappointment, but smiled back, knowing how satisfying it was for Kevin to raise yet another metaphorical middle finger to the church that had left them behind.
Things were going well. They were working, they were acclimating, they were happy.
Mostly.
One day, Connor had come home from a late shift at the diner to find Kevin awake and sitting on the couch, his eyes red-rimmed and unfocused, knees pulled to his chest. Connor knew something was wrong the second he saw him. He recognized that look all too easily.
“It’s been a while since you had a nightmare,” Connor had moved across the room to sit next to him, keeping a manageable distance.
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Kevin replied without looking up, “I haven’t slept.”
Apparently, Kevin had experienced an unpleasant encounter on the subway coming home from work.
His shift had gone later than usual, making him hit the brunt of MTA rush hour for his commute. Crowds and tight spaces were not Kevin’s forte to begin with, but he’d told himself a cramped train car was all part of the New York experience, that it wasn’t worth wasting the money on an Uber to get home, and it was only a 20 minute ride, anyway. And it had been fine, until it wasn’t. Until a towering man moved a little too close, nudging up against Kevin from behind, trapping him between his body and the pole. Kevin thought it was an accident at first — after all, it was shoulder to shoulder and hardly a smooth ride — but it didn’t matter. His mind had already taken off without him, sprinting full speed ahead toward the dark place he had mostly learned to avoid. It only got worse when the man didn’t correct himself, his body “accidentally” bumping into Kevin again and again as the train car jostled the swaying crowd, and all he could do was stand there, frozen, his knuckles draining white around the pole. Remembering. When the sliding doors opened three stops before his own, Kevin had broken through the wall of bags and shoulders between him and the exit, not even daring to look back at the face of the man who had crowded him before collapsing against the wall, gasping for air.
He had walked the rest of the way home.
“I thought I was over it,” Kevin whispered after relaying the story to Connor, a single tear sliding down his cheek, “It’s been two years. I should be over it.”
The following days felt like a distant echo of a time both of them would have liked to forget. The era of quiet avoidance and sleepless nights and anxious hovering. Those weeks in Uganda when Kevin had been so broken, Connor had been so worried, and they had both been so lost. Except now, there were a few distinct differences. For one, there was no buffer of a house of teenage Mormons to offer distraction. There was no work to be done for a suffering village or residual panic over a church that had abandoned them. And then there was the biggest difference; Kevin was no longer the anxious newcomer, and Connor was no longer the unsure district leader trying to save a boy he hardly knew.
Now, they were Kevin and Connor.
Kevin and Connor, who slept in each other’s arms, brushed their teeth next to each other, who held hands on the sidewalk and kissed on the lips every chance they got. They were best friends and roommates and lovers and everything in between. He loved Kevin. Fiercely, passionately loved him, and Kevin had spent the past two years showing Connor in every way he knew how that the feeling was mutual. In their time together, they’d endured more than some people go through in their whole lives, and an inevitable bond had been formed, sealed tightly, forged by fire. Which is why Connor couldn’t stand by this time and watch Kevin fold in on himself again.
It hadn’t been easy talking him into seeing a therapist — both for Connor and for Kevin. Their upbringing hadn’t exactly encouraged airing out your darker thoughts, and Connor’s experience with “therapists” was hardly ideal, but he knew deep down that this was not the same thing that his parents had forced on him as a teenager. Kevin needed help that Connor couldn’t provide for him. He deserved it. They hadn’t had access to it in Uganda, but now they did. And he finally agreed. After a particularly bad nightmare, he had curled into Connor’s side and Connor felt the words, small and broken and whispered against his t-shirt, “I want to get better.”
And now that he was taking this huge and terrifying leap to better himself, the least Connor could do is offer him whatever modicum of comfort he could when he got home, even if that took the form of the perfect bowl of soup on a cold, rainy November day.
He was just about to toss out the latest batch and start fresh when he heard keys jigging in the doorknob.
“Shoot!”
He hurriedly gathered the plethora of spices into his arms, shoving them back into the cabinet and placing the lid on the pot, switching the gas off. He spun around just in time to see Kevin walking through the door, pushing the hood of his sweatshirt back to reveal rain-glistened bangs. His eyes danced frantically over Kevin’s face, his body language, trying to gauge just how bad things were.
“Hi,” Connor greeted lamely, hands wringing nervously in front of him, “I made soup.”
Kevin slid his jacket off his shoulders, offering Connor a forced smile.
“Thanks, Con.”
Even from the kitchen, Connor could make out the red rims around his eyes. He watched after him as he crossed the room and folded himself stiffly into the couch, unsure of how to approach.
“Are you… hungry?” He waited a beat before backtracking, “It’s okay if you’re not. You don’t have to eat now if you don’t want. Or at all. Whatever you need.”
He paused, his voice softening as he took a step closer to the couch.
“What do you need?”
He expected Kevin to shrug it off, tell him he was fine and down a bowl of soup for show. He expected him to go to bed early without talking about it and then wake up early to make them both breakfast and pretend everything was okay. What he didn’t expect was for Kevin’s smile to twitch downward before faltering altogether, crumbling his stoic mask into pieces. Connor, still in his apron, rushed to his side, hovering his hands over Kevin’s suddenly slumped from, requesting silent permission, but it was Kevin who initiated contact, falling into his side as if he physically couldn’t stay upright for one more second. It was all the invitation Connor needed to wrap him up in his arms, feeling his boyfriend’s shoulders shake against him and wishing he could squeeze all the pain out of him.
“Oh, honey,” Connor’s voice broke, his own lip starting to tremble, “I’m right here.”
As Kevin’s sobs grew rougher and more strained as they clawed from his raw throat, a ball of guilt rapidly ballooned in Connor’s chest. No bowl of soup, no matter how perfect, could make up for the fact that Connor had pushed him into taking this step, and clearly it had been too soon, too much, for him to handle. Each tear that soaked through his t-shirt was a tear that he had pulled from him, and it stung . Soon, Connor had tears running down his cheeks, too, his hand moving in slow, soothing circles over Kevin’s back.
“I’m sorry,” Connor whispered. It was barely audible, and it brought him back two years, back to when they found themselves in a mirror of their current position, when Kevin broke under the weight of his secret and Connor was rendered incapable of anything but the lame utterance of apologies that would never be enough. After all this time, he resented how he could still find himself completely at a loss to help the man he’d admired them and loved now. But Kevin stiffened slightly at his words, pausing before untucking himself from Connor’s side enough to look up at him. The tears glistening from his long lashes were another punch to the gut.
“Why are you sorry?” Kevin asked, his brow furrowing as he noticed Connor was crying too. Ashamed, Connor swiped at his eyes, feeling like he had no right to take up any emotional real estate here.
“Because,” Connor replied, running fingers through Kevin’s damp hair, “I shouldn’t have pushed you into going to therapy if you didn’t want to go. I should have listened to you, and I’m sorry it caused you more pain.”
Kevin pulled away entirely then.
“Don’t,” Kevin shook his head, “You have nothing to apologize for. You were right.”
Despite their circumstances, Connor found a smirk pulling at his lips.
“Can you say that last part one more time? I need to savor the moment.”
Then Kevin’s mouth mirrored his own, and they both took a breath of relief as they giggled, the weight of the room seeming to lift, even if just a little. Connor took the opportunity to reach across his lap and take Kevin’s hand, smiling when he returned the gesture with a squeeze.
“I mean it,” Kevin emphasized, “Today was…”
He trailed off, his eyes drifting somewhere else for a moment before continuing.
“It wasn’t easy. But I feel like. Like, I don’t know. Like I’m doing the right thing.”
Connor breathed out a sigh of relief.
“I’m so glad to hear that, Kev,” he smiled and scooted backward until he was leaning against the arm of the couch, his arms opening in invitation, “Come here.”
Kevin obliged, moving to join him. He situated himself between Connor’s legs and leaned back against his chest, relaxing into his personal space as slender, familiar arms wound around his torso.
“Is this okay?” He felt the words whispered into the top of his hair and nodded. There were times when even Connor’s gentle touch was too much for Kevin, and they had both learned to navigate those waters. Now was not one of those times, and they were both grateful for the much needed contact. They lay in silence for a few minutes, the scent of the forgotten soup wafting into the living room, Connor’s fingertips tracing lightly over Kevin’s arms.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Connor offered carefully, making sure Kevin knew that he was in no way obligated to do so.
Kevin hesitated for a moment.
“There’s not much to report,” he said, “We didn’t really get into it much today. She said we can ease into it as slowly as I needed.”
“Good,” Connor nodded, “That’s good. So, she makes you feel safe?”
He hesitated again.
“She seems good at what she does,” he settled, “She said she specializes in working with people who have been, um. You know... assaulted.”
His voice cracked on the last word, a nervous swallow breaking his dialogue. Connor tightened his embrace just slightly. He knew that Kevin still had a difficult time verbalizing what had been done to him, and Connor could hardly blame him.
They fell quiet again, and Connor figured that was the end of the conversation. He was fine with it, really. Kevin didn’t owe him a single word of it if he didn’t want to speak about it. But Kevin surprised him by offering more, this time in a softer voice.
“At the beginning, I had to fill out some paperwork. Just basic medical history, stuff like that,” he paused, taking a deep breath, “But then I got to the back page, and it was different kinds of questions. Rows of little white boxes next to words and I was supposed to check off the ones that I applied to me.”
Connor continued stroking up and down Kevin’s arms, feeling how he was beginning to shake again.
“A lot of them were things I didn’t even recognize, but then I got to the second row, and I… I saw it,” he paused, seemingly from necessity, and Connor’s stomach turned as he began to realize what Kevin was talking about, “Just staring up at me in black and white. Like it’s something so simple. Like everything he did to me could be reduced to words on a page and a little white box.”
Another tear slid down Connor’s face, and he was grateful that their position didn’t allow Kevin to see it.
“And it was so stupid, but I froze up. I had my pen hovering over the box but I couldn’t make myself mark the page. Like ticking that tiny, white box was signing a contract that made it real.”
“I can’t imagine how hard this is for you, Kev,” Connor told him earnestly.
“Even though we didn’t talk about it much today, it was enough to make me realize that doing this means not making myself forget anymore. It means pulling it to the forefront of my mind instead of pushing it to the backburner, and I wasn’t prepared for how much that hurts .”
Connor leaned his head against the back of Kevin’s, nuzzling as close as he could get. He inhaled deeply, reveling in the familiar scent of Kevin’s cheap shampoo and aftershave, a welcome reminder that he was here and alive and safe. Eyes closed, he rattled off his next thought without thinking about it.
“A lot of survivors of sexual trauma report relapses in PTSD after seeking treatment for the first time,” Connor rattled off without thinking, “It’s natural for things to feel raw after revisiting something you’ve buried for so long.”
He only realized his slip-up when Kevin tensed in his arms, and then the heat creeped into Connor’s cheeks. Kevin twisted around slightly in his arms so he could look up at him, his brows knitted together in confusion.
“How do you know that?”
Connor was quite sure the pink in his cheeks was visible, as it was every time, and he ducked his head slightly, evading Kevin’s questioning gaze.
“I, um. It was just something that I read,” he mumbled.
When Kevin just kept staring at him, pulling away to sit up completely and face him, Connor expelled a long breath and willed himself to hand over the truth, embarrassing as it was.
“Back when we were in Uganda,” he started, “After everything, um. After you told me what happened to you, I felt so helpless. I wanted to be there for you, I wanted to help you, and I felt like I was doing everything wrong. So I did what I do best. I researched.”
He glanced up at Kevin for the briefest moment, unable to read what he saw there in his eyes, and immediately lowered his gaze again before continuing.
“As you know, we had limited internet access, but I used whatever time and resources I could to read up on articles and testimonials and…” he trailed off with a wave of his hand, dismissive and embarassed, “I know it sounds stupid. So very Elder McKinley of me to do more-or-less homework on the situation, and I hope you don’t think— I mean, I hope you’re not offended or mad or—”
Much to Connor’s surprise, his rambling was cut off by a soft pair of lips pressing against his. There was nothing sexual about it, but there was an unmistakable charge in the gesture; something desperate and raw and sweet. They stayed pressed together like that for several moments, Kevin’s hand coming up to rest on Connor’s cheek. Connor brought his hand up to cover his, a gentle thumb stroking over the back of his hand. When they finally pulled away, Connor was surprised to see a fresh wave of tears threatening to spill in Kevin’s eyes. A pang of worry throbbed in Connor’s chest, but before he could question him, Kevin tilted his forehead against his, keeping his hand on his boyfriend’s cheek as he whispered.
“You did that for me?”
Connor blinked. Once, twice. That look in Kevin’s eyes. He recognized it then as love. He nodded.
Before he could comment further, Kevin’s chin was hooked over Connor’s shoulder, his arms thrown tightly around him, and he accepted the embrace without a thought, lifting his own arms to wrap around Kevin’s back. They seemed to let out a breath in unison, breathing a little bit easier in each others arms. Connor closed his eyes.
“Kevin, I have to ask you something.”
He felt him stiffen in his arms and squeezed a little tighter, a small smile playing at his lips.
“How do you feel about Oregano?”