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It's another random day in the manor when Kevin finally decides to go talk to one specific sailor sitting by himself in the garden.
He had accidentally come across Jose as he took a stroll around the limited living space they had been given, and felt like ignoring him would be kind of a dick move. There was no real purpose in his head as he walked closer, no real thought or interest in the man; he was just being polite. That's what people did. Even when locked up in some weird manor surrounded by strangers, he remained civil, because it was all he could do.
As he walks closer to the man sitting by the fountain, he picks up on a few starting things. For one, the afternoon orange shade enveloping the garden; and for two, the sparks of warm light like candles over the fountain water. The observation stops him in his tracks for a moment, as he allows himself to gaze over the flickering specks in quiet water, something he would have quickly dismissed in the past.
“It's nice, isn't it.”
Kevin is not surprised by the voice speaking up, nor the mismatched eyes which had turned to him sometime during his reflection. Though the words came out of nowhere, unannounced, they had not disturbed the tableau around him neither had they jolted him up.
So he detaches his heavy eyes from the fountain and looks at the other. “It’s pretty sweet.” he answers without making any additional effort. Jose nods wisely at him, a corner of his mouth slightly quirking up.
The sailor then remains quiet, only shifting to throw a leg on top of the other, before patting the space next to himself as if inviting Kevin to sit down with him. The stones were a bit wet; he could see it from their glossy appearance, and they seemed kind of uncomfortable too, but he joins him anyways.
Weirdly, the cowboy does not find himself forced to speak nor say anything more, no boring courtesy, no repetitive greeting, just two guys looking at the little square of sky visible from the top of the garden.
It was comfortable. The pinkish clouds remind him of something, and so does the quiet presence next to him, but he cannot place his finger on it. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, still feeling slightly enticed to say at least one word, any word, yet nothing comes to him and he remains silently staring at a peculiar purple spot high up.
After a while, he decides to glance over to Jose, and finds him looking down at his metallic hand, inspecting the flexing fingers with very little interest. Still no word. His mouth had fallen back down, expression puzzlingly hollow, seemingly having forgotten that Kevin was even here to begin with. Said cowboy who, now curious and finding a topic to speak of, starts a thought.
“Say-“
“Baden !”
The new voice does effectively break the orange tint around him, through the layer of stars in the fountain, and through the cotton candy clouds. Kevin stays with his mouth dumbly open, watching the sailor jump on his feet with unexpected stress in his spine, and greet Demi who flies down the stairs. The bartender starts rapid firing unintelligible words, pulling him away, and before the cowboy has time to even complain, the garden is empty again.
He is unsure how to feel about that, looking down at his own hand made of pure natural flesh, and closes it into a fist. He could feel the fingers against his palm, his short nails against skin, and faint pulsations of blood.
Then, he opens it up, laying it flat on the wet stones of the fountain.
There is a confusing ball of nerves in his stomach.
.
“Say, were ya born with that hand ?”
Second time Kevin really interacts with Jose is then, starting with kind of a lame remark, just satisficing his curiosity. The sailor was “busy” swirling an unknown liquid at the bottom of his glass, and raised his head up.
There is hesitation before his words. “Were you born with the cowboy hat ?”
“I was. Now you answer.”
He makes an odd noise between a laugh and a sigh, which Kevin marks down as oddly endearing. For a guy. Which was normal. Guys had endearing qualities to attract girls. He snaps out of the thought when the other clears his throat, raising the metallic hand.
“No, I wasn't born with it.”
“How did ya get it, then ?”
The same hesitation strikes, then he raises a finger to his lips. “Secret.” He whispers, so quiet that the cowboy has to lean forward to hear him. There is a tiny foreign note lying under his word which Kevin picks up on immediately, but does not focus on as the other puts his hand back on the table to flick his glass.
The icy mechanic sound made by that gesture takes him aback with its intensity and he leans back in his chair as Jose good-naturedly huffs a laugh at him again. He matches is with a bemused chuckle of his own even though they had not said anything very funny; something in the way the sailor's eyes crinkled slightly at the edges and the way his mouth opened unsymmetrically to grin just forced Kevin to smile.
He shakes his head, forcing his gaze down to the table and dismiss whatever thought was running in the back of his head. “Okay, keep your secrets. But can İ ask more about it ? I've never seen stuff like this before.”
“I’m a wonder, I'm aware.” Jose lightly responds, accompanying his words with a swing of said metal arm, “And sure. You may ask away if you so desire.” Before setting it down on the table between the both of them.
It was a wonder for sure. The metal arm looked as technically complex as Tracy's bot, and moved as naturally if not more fluently than any flesh arm could. While the sailor waited for an answer he occupied himself by drumming on the table; each finger rose and hit the wood smoothly, with no mechanic hitch, which Kevin observed for long enough that the other could remark but not too long—because he was not creepy.
“Can you feel stuff with it ?” he eventually asks, poking at it with his pinkie. Being of metal, it did not sink under the touch like flesh nor did it feel like an actual human part, so the cowboy had no awkwardness prodding around it.
Apparently, Jose did not care about said prodding either. “No, I can’t.”
“So you don't feel my hand ?”
The first officer watches said actual living human palm is pressed over his knuckles in curious testing, before pulling his arm back under the table, and into his pocket. “It's metal, Ayuso, it doesn't feel.”
“Okay.” he answers sheepishly, shifting his elbow back to his side, thinking he must have disrupted whatever nice atmosphere they had between them from the uncharacteristically curt answer he had gotten. For a moment there, he keeps his gaze locked on the wooden surface in front of him, ready to accept solitude if the other decided to leave, hurt.
He does not. After a few seconds, the silence is broken by Jose downing the meagre last drops of alcohol left in his glass, which prompts another question from the cowboy. “What are you drinking ?”
“Some sort of whisky. I just let Demi do her thing.” The sailor answers with a snort, turning the now completely empty glass upside down on the table. “You wanted some ?”
“Naw. I don't like alcohol too much.”
“Me neither.” When Kevin raises his head in concerned confusion, he gets a simple laugh as an answer before the man gets up and pushes his chair back in its place. “I’d love to stay and chat, but İ have a match in a few,” he politely points out, bowing, “I'll hopefully see you soon, Ayuso.”
‘Hopefully see you soon ?’ the cowboy mulls over the words, feeling his face scrunch up, then gives a little wave to the man who was patiently waiting for a reply. “Good luck !”
“I’ll need it.”
With a short chuckle and the quiet ruffle of a coat, Jose is gone. Again. Kevin is left alone at the table, upturned glass in front of him, gazing at the spot where the other sat previously, a bit lost in thoughts. There was...something about the man he could not understand, something about the man which was so charming it attracted the cowboy to him.
And as the now familiar ball of stress settles in his stomach, he lets his head fall down on the wood.
.
Later on, he learns the match had gone terribly wrong, and does not get the occasion to see Jose in a full week. He does not get any proper explanation on the match either other than worried rumours that the hunters were sinking deeper into madness.
But he does search for him, and the other members of the fated team to understand, though none of them seemed capable of giving him satisfactory answers. From Emma who frustratingly avoided the questions to Emily who insisted that everything was just fine, he arrived to dead ends. They did not want to cause panic, he supposed, but they were making him grow even more curious and impatient for answers.
In the lobby of a match sometime after those interrogations he finally finds the last member of said team; a certain skittish decoder with a tendency to forget crucial details. Meeting him there, as he sat waiting next to this scientific partner, was just his luck.
“Hey !” he calls out upon arriving, making a beeline for him, “I was searching for you !”
A pause. Luca blinks owlishly, glances at Melly next to him, then points to himself. “Me ?”
“Yes ! It's about that match you had, y'know, with Jose, Emma, and Emi-“
“I'll have to cut you off there, Mr Ayuso.” The former prisoner raises a hand, firm but polite. “I’m sorry. I just...don't wish to speak of it.” With that, he lowers his hand back down almost bashfully, curling it into a fist then uncurling it quickly to lay it flat on the table. “I hope you understand.”
For a moment, Kevin is at a loss for words. Part of him is furious, wants to push further for answers; while the other part is considering the man's shuddering smile, and the fear in his mismatched eyes. Because of that internal feud he fails to notice their last teammate entering the lobby, instead focusing on how Luca's shoulder sink forward.
“Okay. I'm just checking, no need to look so terrified,” he mumbles half-heartedly, “This ain't a police interrogation.”
The former prisoner's lips pinch even tighter in a nervous smile. “Haha. Sorry again, though, it was just...rough. İn not the normal kind.” His expression somewhat darkens then. “I suppose you’ve heard the rumours.”
“I have, yeah.” Kevin mumbles, sitting down in the empty chair next to the prisoner who in turn props his chin on top of his hands with a short sigh. He was wearing gloves, the cowboy realizes then. He does not think he has ever seen him without them either. Why were his hands hidden ?
“It truly is starting to worry me, to be fair,” Luca keeps on speaking at a fairly quick pace, more for himself than Kevin, “There is something about their strikes which has been feeling much realer lately—not that they weren’t violent before, it’s just that—the game-like quality of their chase is dying out and being replaced by actual will to kill, you know ?” he pauses, for too short an instant. “Or maybe you wouldn’t. How long has it been since your last match, Mr Ayuso ?”
The cowboy is reduced to silence for a while, there. He had nothing against the former inventor, really, the man was all shades of polite and strange kindness, but he had a habit of saying too many words in too little time and switch subjects without expecting any comment on his musings. Sitting next to him, the entomologist watched silently, the black circle in place of her face unmoving. She eventually gestures with a flick of her wrist to Kevin, who is more than grateful when she speaks for him.
“If I may, I believe it has been around two weeks.” Her voice is muted, but it attracts the prisoner’s full attention.
“That’s quite a while !”
“Guess it is.” The cowboy picks up then, nodding as a thanks to the entomologist. “I didn’t get much scheduled these days, no idea why. Maybe it’s cause you newbies need more matches to catch up with us ?”
Melly subtly tenses up at that, and Luca’s face freezes in an awkward grimace. “Huh.” He says. “I did have close to five matches per week lately. Professor Plinius as well.”
Right then, an impressed whistle comes from the last member of their team who had been sitting in the corner unnoticed for some time. As he gets the three’s attention—and especially Kevin’s, who suppresses a quiet exclamation—he speaks up. “Didn’t they letcha have a break after that mess of a match ?”
“How I wish they had !” the prisoner lets out a loud laugh, tinted with hysteria, throwing his head backwards. It renders both the cowboy and entomologist perfectly quiet, until he rubs a hand over his bad eye. “Mr Baden—I had another one the day right after.”
“Was it bad ?”
Kevin notices how imperceptibly Melly had pulled her chair closer to Luca, her hand gripping his arm just as he opens and closes his mouth. He hesitates on his next sentence. “It was better than the one we had together.”
“Be thankful for small mercies, then.” Jose wistfully replies, leaning back into his chair. “Good luck, everyone.”
Kevin notices that nobody quite really bothers answering after that, instead more focused on their respective tools for the match. He himself absentmindedly tugs on his lasso, which had been left unused for a while yet remained familiarly firm under his hands, his attention still fixed on the first officer at the end of the table.
A part of him is a little angry, to be fair. Jose had just come back out of the blue for this match, as annoyingly confusing as always, playing with his pocket watch as he waited. Even the prisoner, who was currently not so subtly bouncing his leg under the table, had actually bothered showing up to general meals and such; Kevin had seen him around, he just did not find a suitable occasion to speak to him on the matter. He remained without answers.
He almost lets out a curse when the ball of nerves in the pit of his stomach tightens, sandpaper rubbing his insides. The itch persists, gets even worse as the seconds tick by.
10.
Most of his body is on fire by this point. It should not be, however. This is not his first match, and he knows perfectly what he needs to do. His role had been defined before he even set foot inside the manor, through years of losing people because of his incapability of saving them. He thinks about them a lot, really.
Each match, each chair, each rescue. He needs to be right on time, he needs to protect, he needs to save the damsel in distress. Even if the hunting was but a mere game, he refused to live with more corpses he was unable to take the finishing blow for. As his eyes slide over to all the members at the table (an entomologist with no face, a prisoner with no past, and a sailor with no name), his stomach buzzes up with newfound stress.
1.
Oh fuck.
.
Follow me !
Soon after Kevin sends the rushed message, a dishevelled first officer enters his peripheral vision, tripping on a pebble. He had to admit that the brooding and composed facade the man usually kept on had practically fallen straight on its face and probably would not get up in a while, which was simultaneously worrying and the routine.
They all cracked in the game.
When Jose actually physically falls in the dirt a few feet away from the cipher Kevin was working on, he lets out a loud groan of frustration. In the few seconds it takes for the cowboy to prime his work, the fallen man had kept on obnoxiously sighing from his spot.
Then, he jogs up to the sailor, kneeling down and pulling out his first aid kit. “Stop complaining, I’m right ‘ere.”
“Greaaaat.” Jose dramatically groans, flinching at the touch, before hissing. “I don’t usually punch ladies, but if this bloody queen keeps annoying me I might have to pull out the big guns.”
“How ungentlemanly.”
“The way she fuckin’ strikes is ungentlewomanly ! Who in hell uses a broken piece o’ glass as a weapon ?? My god,” he stops a second to slap Kevin as he reached for the bruised spot on his neck, “she even worse than the two gods o’ death or somethin’. At least their umbrella looks expensive.”
Letting out a bemused chuckle, the cowboy leans back for a moment to rub his nose. “You sound like a drunken sailor.” He remarks, earning a short sigh as only answer. Apparently the first officer’s feelings were hurt, because he suddenly falls silent under his care. For a few seconds, Kevin is unable to focus on anything else than the uncomfortable blood making his gloves stick to his fingers, gestures clumsy around the wound.
Then, Jose decides to point out the elephant in the room, subtle as always. “You do realize that little gauze isn’t gonna do anything, right ?”
“It’s all I have.” He mumbles through clenched teeth, suddenly anxious. Said gauze is not positioned well, the cowboy can see it, but his hands are shaking too much to position it well. The wound is not like the ones he is used to—it is much deeper for one, and does not seem to want to stop bleeding, much to his growing panic. He presses the bandage harder, tries to push all the crimson back inside, out of the way, where he cannot see it, where it stops existing.
Why did Jose sound so calm about it ? Had this actually become routine while Kevin took his jolly good time enjoying the manor’s food and its pretty little garden with that window showing the sky that was so blue—opposite to the red colouring his fingers, the red he wore each day, the red weighing on his shoulders—
The red slipping through and out of the first officer’s body, colouring the soil underneath them as it went. They are not on mud anymore, it’s all
“Ayuso.”
He barely registers the hand on his neck. It itches him. “What,” his voice itches as well, painfully squeezes itself out, “what in hell ?”
“Yeah.” Jose sounds worn out, a tone he used much too often for anyone’s liking. “Yeah.” He repeats. The cowboy realizes then that his mismatched eyes are evading him, fixed on Kevin’s hands. His gloves, more precisely.
The first officer awkwardly coughs, his hand lingers on the other’s neck a little longer before retreating to his side, immediately getting tainted red as he grips his own coat. “Well. Sorry for your gloves. They’re kinda ruined.”
“Your coat is what’s ruined.”
A disgruntled chuckle is all he gets as an answer for a short while, in which he finds himself staring dumbly at the other, refusing to look at his own dirty hands. The ball of nerves in his stomach is not a small buzzing he could ignore—it turns into an all devouring typhoon, sucking him dry of thoughts and words. He cannot even begin to imagine how Jose is feeling, but he does try, and it just amplifies the freezing ache inside.
There has to be something to say. The wounded man is clearly expecting something, from the way he simply sits there in his own blood, blinking slowly.
He looks so terribly exhausted it makes Kevin want to cry. The lump in his throat is there—but god, he cannot, he cannot, he is a hero and a little blood never killed anyone—
“Hey, uh.” The cowboy blinks as fast as possible, praying the tears in his eyes are as invisible as he wishes them to be. “I know it doesn’t mean much. But for what it’s worth...I’m fine.”
Never has he heard a more convincing lie. “Right-“ he scoffs, he can hear his own throat closing on itself—yup, that tear does fall. “Right, totally.”
As they fall into yet another awkward silence, he aggressively rubs his nose, looking down. He can feel the embarrassing drops on his cheeks, making their sweet little way down and painting his face brightly. Jose had noticed it, because how could he not. Right now, Kevin wishes he just left without saying a thing; the first officer was good at improvised leaves anyways, surely he would figure something out. Maybe he could make it theatrical even, at least enough to distract whatever god there was above them from seeing the great Kevin Ayuso cry like a little boy.
But he does not. There is a hand on his shoulder this time, gripping firmly. Another hand adds itself soon enough, and Kevin finds himself facing the other, strongly held in place. He has never seen this expression on Jose’s face before. It feels so much more alive than his usual narcotic state, it feels so much more than usual period, and it is a surprise big enough to make his vision clear up.
“Okay, look.” A pause. The sailor opens his mouth, closes it, chews his lip with a grunt, all while gently rocking back and forth on the ground. They are gripped together—the cowboy realizes he had instinctively grabbed the other’s forearms—and now are both kind of swinging. The movement is a bit uncomfortable, and Kevin half-wishes it for it to end. But there is something akin to the kind waves carrying a shipwrecked man to the shore in the swing that makes the cowboy’s heart gradually quiet down.
The first officer still had not added much more to his words. Maybe he did not need to. For the record, he does make a significant effort, nervously attempting to show...comfort ? “Things are gonna go okay, probably,” he is rambling on, rocking a bit faster, “I mean they have to, it’s not like they ever went wrong ? Plus it’s not that bad,” his voice progressively grows weaker, squeakier as he goes and it is the funniest thing Kevin has ever seen, “I’ve lived through worse—literally lost my arm, you know,”
“Yeah I know.” Somehow, he is laughing because Jose’s face is a comic mix between worry, confusion, and bottomless awkwardness. The sailor looks a bit hurt for the second time in their exchange, though simultaneously relieved. He gives a strong, warm squeeze to the other’s shoulders before letting go, resting his hands back on his lap.
Kevin’s throat still hurts, and his stomach has not stopped spinning in all kinds of directions, but there is someone who is sitting in front of him and struggles so bad with the enormous heart who sucked up all the alcohol he consumed instead of drowning in it, and who was trying.
“I’m bad with words.” Jose unceremoniously mumbles, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It is unsymmetrical. “So if you ever need any help from me, expect more physical than smart stuff.” His face scrunches up for a second, then with his usual laugh, “Any sort of physical you wish, I guess !”
What sort of physical did Kevin wish ? This was not the moment to think about it, so he just scoffs back instead, gesturing t get up. His cheeks are still burning, but it is not as embarrassing as before, for some reason. “I got a cipher to finish, Baden, you’re being distracting.”
“Right,” the sailor’s eyes briefly flash in something too painful to describe, before he props himself up as well. If he winces, he does not comment on it. “And I got damsels to rescue. Thanks for the patch up.”
Kevin would have barely called it a patch up, but he still nods. Then pauses, he too at a loss for words, just staring. “No problem. Thank you.”
He hopes Jose can hear what he means. He really does, because he is out of words and he does not think he can express nor articulate anything else but gratitude. Nothing had happened—but it had been enough.
Maybe he is the one who needed saving.
The first officer nods, and off he goes as fast as he had appeared. Once more, the only sound enveloping Kevin is the slow ticking of the cipher machine next to him, waiting to be decoded.
His stomach is light, but so is his head.
.