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Consciousness comes to Kevin like molasses, and he’s determined to put it off as long as possible. His alarm clock trills somewhere on the other side of it all, slightly annoying but not enough to coax him out into the cold. It’s the smacking that is hard to ignore, soft but insistent, on his shoulder and then, fuck—
Kevin loses his grip on sleep when Neil hits him in the face with the pillow, muttering absent threats under his breath that blur together in Kevin’s tired mind. He is awake, but dear god, he doesn’t want to be. Shrinking into a ball, Kevin does his best to drown out Neil’s words and the alarm and the rest of the planet. It’s all too much — too bright, too loud, too harsh. Kevin doesn’t want to exist alongside it. He doesn’t want to exist at all. He wants to melt into this crinkly excuse for a mattress, wants gravity to flatten him down until he is an inanimate part of this bed.
“Practice starts in 20 minutes,” Neil says, and his words jumpstart Kevin’s heart. He has somewhere to be. He has to train. He has to make sure he stretches out his calves properly today — they were a little too tight on the way home from night practice last night. He has to make sure Daisy, the new striker sub, is doing the upper body circuit correctly — her arms were shaking at the end of last week’s game. He has to proofread his essay. He has to finish figuring out that left-wall rebound play with Dan and Neil. He has to, he has to, he has to.
Kevin gives himself to the count of five before he heaves himself up to sitting position. That’s how Riko and Jean used to do it; they’d just drag him to the floor, hurling insults at him. When they were young, the words were teasing. When they got older, they were threats.
Neil is still standing next to Kevin’s bed, arms crossed. He’s frowning, but the display of irritation is thrown off by his wild bedhead and the fact that Kevin knows he’d never hurt him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kevin grumbles, waving him off. Neil only nods his head toward the door, waiting for Kevin to plant heavy feet to the ground and haul his protesting body across the room before he follows. Kevin veers off into the bathroom, putting himself on autopilot as he works through the necessary grooming tasks. When he gets to the kitchenette, Andrew is sitting at the counter, slumped over a bowl of cereal with his chin resting in his palm. Kevin drops onto the stool next to him.
“If he doesn’t knock it off, I’m going to have to take more drastic measures,” Neil is saying. He tosses Kevin a banana from where he leans with a hip propped against the sink, eating an apple as he waits for the coffee machine to finish sputtering. “I wonder where on the lake would be best to dump a body?”
“Not the lake,” Andrew says, swirling his spoon in his milk. “Too many public parks on the shore. It’d wash up in front of some innocent nuclear family and there’d be a whole media circus. Not worth it.”
Kevin peels his banana, hoping they don’t get any more detailed about the realities of waterlogged corpses while he eats.
“Is this about the tutor again?” Kevin asks, his sleep-rough voice breaking twice on the question. Andrew and Neil are not kind people, but they are also not cruel enough to call him out on it.
“He’s been so dysfunctional ever since I told him I was just there to get writing help,” Neil complains. “He barely speaks to me, which would be ideal, except that he won’t fully explain the edits he’s making on my paper. How am I supposed to fix it if he won’t tell me how?”
“How is he supposed to fix his poor little heart that you broke?” Andrew asks, sounding almost pleased by the concept.
“You’re the one who told me to set a boundary!” Neil says, pointing at Andrew with the hand holding the apple. “If I fail this useless lit class because of him, then I don’t care if I traumatize some children on their beach day. I saw plenty of dead bodies growing up. They’ll be fine.”
Kevin rolls his eyes.
“Did you email the tutoring center to request a change?” he asks. Neil blinks at him. Andrew doesn’t look up from his bowl. Fucking idiots.
“You are not allowed to murder people or fail classes,” Kevin says, tamping down on white-hot frustration that probably doesn’t befit the moment. “Just email them that it’s not working, and they’ll set you up with someone else. You can use my laptop after morning practice.”
Neil shrugs, taking one last bite of his apple before tossing the core into the trash.
“Dan, Coach, and I were going to watch some UT footage before my 10am class,” Neil says. The coffee machine lets out a final desperate hiss, and Neil checks his watch before pulling three to-go cups out of the cabinet. “You’re both welcome to come. And maybe Coach will let me use his computer to do the email.”
“Fine,” Kevin says, soothed a bit by the prospect of extending his time at the court this morning. He’s been meaning to talk to Neil about one of UT’s new backliners — he’s small and fast, like Neil, and they’re going to have to figure out something new to make sure Neil can keep beating him. Maybe they’ll also get to work on that left-wall rebound play. (He’s been thinking: if they change it so that the person making the pass dodges their mark on the right side instead of dodging toward the wall, that could potentially disguise the play better — though they might have to change the angle of the throw.)
“Pass,” Andrew says, disrupting Kevin’s thoughts. Kevin allows the usual bout of disappointment over Andrew’s apathy ricochet around his chest without acknowledging it. C’est la vie. There’s no point in contesting it. Andrew will engage when he is motivated — Kevin has seen that this is possible, and that is enough for now.
He gets up to throw his banana peel away, pinching Neil’s bicep as he passes when Neil opens his mouth in an attempt to wheedle Andrew into coming along. Neil twitches, but swallows whatever taunt or bribe he’d had on his tongue. Neil is one of the most consistent sources of Andrew’s motivation. He’s also spoiled by Andrew’s attention; he’d rather piss Andrew off than get no reaction at all. But it is quarter to six on a Tuesday morning, and Kevin sees no reason to risk pissing Andrew off enough that he sits in goal all day out of spite.
Andrew notices, of course. He raises an eyebrow at Kevin in mild amusement.
“Hands off,” he comments before getting up to rinse out his bowl in the sink. Kevin holds his hands up in innocence as he walks away to put his shoes on, but he doesn’t miss the way Andrew soothes his palm over Neil’s arm before pinching it himself.
Nicky and Aaron are waiting by the car when they get outside. Andrew unlocks the doors as soon as they’re close enough for Nicky to start babbling. Kevin’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he pulls it out to check before sliding into the backseat behind Aaron. He freezes when he sees who the text is from.
Realistically, Kevin knows he is safe now. No one is after him anymore. No one is plotting to drag him down into the hole he's clawed out of. He has people who will fight to keep it this way. But Jean’s name in his notifications triggers a chemical reaction in Kevin that he has no choice but to ride out. His lungs shrivel, his ears ring, his vision blurs. A gift from gravity, belated, crushing him down to nothing after all he’s done this morning to latch onto life. He tries to take a breath but finds he can’t, tries to prove that he is alive, that he is here, that—
Andrew snaps his fingers in Kevin’s face, grinding the symphony of Kevin’s senses to a halt. Kevin and Andrew are the only ones still outside, Kevin’s knuckles white on the drivers-side rear door between them. Andrew watches Kevin, and in moments like this he has trouble comprehending that Andrew is over a foot shorter than him. He finds his proof of life in Andrew’s calm stare, in the acknowledgment that Andrew is watching him, watching out for him, seeing him. It’s enough that he can inhale. The air comes easily.
“Let’s go,” Andrew says, getting into the car. Kevin sits and closes his door. Inside, Nicky is giving Neil a rundown of the Jonas Brothers, trying to inspire him to pick a favorite member. He’d assigned Kevin as a “Kevin Jonas girl” based on their shared names last night. Hoping to avoid getting drawn into the conversation, Kevin opens his phone again.
It is an innocuous message. Jean is merely continuing a conversation about Exy they’d been having the night before. They’ve been trying to speak more casually lately. Jeremy started a group chat with the three of them, insisting that there’s no reason why their abuse at the Nest should have to color the years of history and relative trust between them.
The text just caught him off guard — it's basically the middle of the night in California. But Jean’s relationship with sleep has always been opposite to Kevin’s. He has trouble keeping his eyes closed for more than a handful of hours at a time. Kevin just wasn’t expecting him to text so early. He will be more prepared for this possibility tomorrow. He can’t let reactions like this throw off his whole day — there are things he has to do.
Neil turns to look at Kevin from his place in the passenger seat. (Spoiled.) He studies Kevin’s face for a moment before dropping his eyes to the phone in Kevin’s hand.
“Jean wants to know if you’ve figured out how you’re going to beat Peterson,” Kevin explains. Neil’s expression shutters. Good. This means he’s already aware that this is a potential problem.
“Tell Jean to worry about his own district,” Neil snaps, turning back to the windshield. “I’m faster than Peterson.”
Kevin drowns out the conversation that follows. Maybe the rebound play could be helpful against Peterson. If the person passing hit the ball hard enough at the floor, they could get it to double rebound off the wall and stay high in the air long enough for someone to run in from behind. Peterson is fast, but Neil will always win the race if he’s the only one who knows it’s going to happen.
His fingers itch for the play whiteboard as they roll up to the gym. He has to remember this idea when they get back to the court later. He has to figure out if he’s got enough strength to make that kind of pass with his left hand. He has to remember to stretch his calves — they were tight last night, and he’s not making any passes if he can’t run.
As they pull into the gym parking lot, Nicky risks death by telling Andrew that he should be a “Joe girl.”
“Because you’re into the mouthy frontman type,” Nicky says. “He has a good jawline too. I know you like a good jawline — Neil has a great jawline.”
“Get out of my car,” Andrew says in response. He kills the engine and yanks his key from the ignition.
Neil glares whenever he catches Kevin’s eye on the way across the parking lot and into the building. Kevin only scowls back. Neil will just have to get over the Peterson thing — he won’t be the fastest player forever. Kevin has to talk about that with him later.
Daisy is chatting with Renee by the treadmills. Kevin has to do the circuit with her today. She has potential, but she needs to push herself harder in the gym. Maybe he can get her to switch to a heavy racquet by the end of the season. She gives him the stink eye when she sees him looking in their direction, as though she can see what’s about to unfold and is ready to fight him every step of the way. Whatever. Kevin trained Neil Josten. He can handle some freshman from Alabama. Probably.
Coach calls them to order, and the team gets to work. Kevin spends extra time stretching out his calves. They feel good today. He feels good. He has to.