Chapter Text
Routine is important.
Without routine, Kevin and Andrew wouldn't work like they do. Kevin pulls the chair out for Andrew, and Andrew sits, and the warmth sends goosebumps down his spine. There's no powerplay in the air, but he knows what will happen tonight, and his brain purrs at the playbook.
"How are you?" Kevin asks once he has also taken a seat.
"I haven't committed any crimes worth mentioning." Andrew glances at the menu to check that it's still the same. It is. This restaurant never changes the core of its menu; it's why they go here.
"Brilliant," Kevin answers drily. He looks longer at the menu, even though he's gonna order the same salad as usual — green salad, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, cucumber, goat cheese, and balsamic dressing. He's been trying to like pumpkin seeds for years, it's not working.
"Mr. Day, Mr. Minyard. How are you?" Nino greets them.
"I haven't committed any crimes worth mentioning," Andrew repeats, and Kevin puts his face in his hands.
Kevin's voice is a little muffled. "We're good, thank you. How's it going for you?"
Nino grins. Not because they think Andrew is lying or making a joke, but because they know he isn't — their twin is a former Fox, one of the few worth keeping in contact with.
"Going well. The publicity of refusing Michelin stars keeps bringing in new business," Nino says, grin growing even bigger. "The usual for you?"
"Yes, thank you," Kevin says.
"I'm making changes to the seasonal hors d'oeuvres, may I ask for your opinion on something new I tried?"
Kevin glances at Andrew, then nods. "No shellfish or—"
"—peanuts, I know," Nino says, then vanishes into the kitchen.
"How about you?" Andrew asks, watching the door swing twice before the magnets stop the movement.
Kevin blinks, then shrugs. "Don't talk to me about Exy until the invitations are sent," he says flatly.
Andrew rolls his eyes. Kevin will be invited to the Olympics; he's the best striker in the States and the perfect poster boy, sucking up the entire bullshit the International Olympic Committee feeds their athletes. His fear of not being called upon is ridiculous, but even after breaking several world records, The Raven way is the only way to become the best still rings true in Kevin's head.
"It's a great sacrifice, but I'll manage."
Kevin flips him off. "Apart from that, I'm good. Thea is getting serious about kids, which is pretty terrifying, but if there's one partner in this world that will bodily keep me from fucking up my kids, it's her."
That's probably true. If not, Andrew knows the signs of child abuse, and he will not let it happen under his watch. Kevin does not need to know that, though. "I thought you wanted to wait until she's too old for the Olympics?" he prompts. Thea's involvement in the Olympics is not a problem, because Kevin would crawl to the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee's headquarters and set it on fire if they didn't invite his girlfriend.
It does the trick: Kevin talks about Thea's plans, about how she wants to change her brand marketing, finally making her relationship to Kevin official instead of hiding it, how she made a spreadsheet about which baby courses they should attend in which order, how she plans on baby-proofing the office with all their trophies and memorabilia, even though the kid will obviously not be allowed in there until they are old enough not to try to bite her Olympic medals.
It carries them through the — very good — new hors d'oeuvres up until the end of the main course. Neither of them drink alcohol, though Kevin looks like he desperately needs a shot as he frowns at the pumpkin seeds left over on his plate, piling as many as possible on his fork. He maintains his best Raven press conference face as he eats them all at once.
"You know you don't need to eat them," Andrew tells him.
Kevin flips him off again. "They're healthy."
Andrew is waiting for the day Kevin and his therapist talk about how forcing yourself to eat something based on its nutritional values is not healthy, even if the food itself is, but apparently, that day has not come yet.
They squabble over food all through dessert.
*
Kevin opens the door and takes Andrew's jacket. His pupils are blown, but there's no Command in his voice as he asks, "Are you okay for tonight?"
Andrew thinks for a few seconds, takes stock of what's going on inside of him.
There's tension in his back, his knee hurts from taking a hard fall at practice earlier, he's feeling every body part if he pays attention, but there's no static in the back of his head threatening to overtake his brain. He wants this, and he can allow himself to want it. He nods. "Yes."
"Your clothes are on the bed."
They always are. Andrew opens the door to the guest room. Nobody else uses it. Even Thea's parents have to deal with the smaller guest room without an en-suite. Andrew takes off his jacket first, he's warm already. Then he strips and changes into the clothes waiting for him, soft sweatpants custom-made for him, an oversized shirt, soft socks.
The sheets on the bed are fresh, and all surfaces have been wiped, but everything else is exactly like he left it last month. Once, after Thea had moved in with Kevin and the room had still been untouched, Andrew had asked Kevin about it. Kevin had looked at him, an eyebrow raised in the arrogant way Andrew wants to punch off his face, and asked, "So it would not change anything, for you? If somebody else slept in there?"
Andrew's pissed-off silence had been answer enough. Being seen by Kevin, being understood by Kevin — Andrew has too many therapy sessions under his belt to still deny it, but it doesn't make it less frustrating.
"Can I come in?" Kevin asks from the other side of the door, and Andrew confirms.
Kevin has also changed out of his suit, and he's carrying a bag of supplies that he drops on the desk. When he turns around, Command is running visibly through his body. It's like on the court, when all his focus is on Exy, just that Andrew is at the center of his attention. He locks eyes with Andrew, and his gaze is pushing Andrew down the same way a weighted blanket does.
Andrew falls to his knees in the middle of the room. It doesn't hurt, because there are two carpets stacked on top of each other here. His spine is on fire, warmth pouring out from his core into the rest of his body.
"Good," Kevin says, and Andrew thinks that if he ever starts smiling out of untainted joy, it'll be when he's kneeling for Kevin.
Kevin comes closer, and slowly raises his hand until it's hovering next to Andrew's cheek. Andrew leans his head against it. They share a shiver, running through their bodies as their skin touches, like warm summer rain.
"Close your eyes," Kevin says, and Andrew's world goes dark.
There's only the fingertips on his face, drawing burning hot lines over his skin. Kevin follows his jaw line, the stubble raspy under his finger, then traces Andrew's cheekbones.
"Kevin," Andrew protests weakly when Kevin runs his finger up his nose.
"It's okay, you're doing great." The Command in Kevin's voice wraps another layer around Andrew, more scaffolding to hold him up.
Andrew is shivering from the intensity of Kevin exploring his face, but then there's a second hand on his head, fingers in his hair, keeping him upright. He leans into the touch. Kevin has never let him fall, he won't fall now.
Kevin rubs his thumb over Andrew's forehead with little circling motions until Andrew is dizzy with it.
"Lean forward," Kevin says after seconds, minutes, hours, days, and Andrew feels the soft fabric of Kevin's sweatpants against his forehead. Kevin runs both his hands through Andrew's hair now, massaging his head in a perfectly symmetrical way. "Your hair is getting longer. It looks good."
Andrew presses his face harder against Kevin's thigh, warmth spreading on his face. He focuses on Kevin's fingers on his head, the way they follow the same patterns, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Time doesn't matter here, Andrew doesn't need to keep track of it, so he lets go of the concept.
"Tilt your head back," Kevin tells him, and Andrew laments the loss of his thigh but does as told.
"Good," Kevin says.
Then he kisses him on the forehead, and Andrew stops breathing, warmth flooding his body until it lights up every part.
*
When Andrew comes back to himself he is still kneeling with Kevin in front of him, their foreheads now pressed against each other. Kevin is holding his head up with one hand, the other hand a warm weight on Andrew's neck.
"Hey there," Kevin whispers. With his eyes closed, Andrew can't see his face, but he doesn't need them to hear the smile on Kevin's face.
"Hey," Andrew says. His voice sounds oddly unfamiliar to himself, like it often does in this room. It doesn't scare him, because Kevin's hands are still there and he can feel Kevin's breath on his face.
"Can you stand up? You were pretty out of it."
Andrew hums, slowly becoming aware of how their noses are also touching. His left ankle is twisted and hurting a little. The carpet is soft under his knees, but at some point, he twisted his hip in a way he'll feel tomorrow if he doesn't do anything about it.
"Yes," he tells Kevin.
Kevin hums back. "Get up."
Andrew stands, and the world is spinning around him, but Kevin's still holding onto him. He doesn't fall over.
"Open your eyes."
The light in the room is dimmed — never completely dark, but enough that it doesn't hurt to see again. He focuses on Kevin, whose eyes are dark with power. The air between them is charged, like there's electricity jumping from atom to atom and connecting them. When Kevin opens his mouth to tell him to get the oil, Andrew is already moving, body still swaying from being pulled under. Kevin's gaze is on him the entire time.
Andrew gets the bottle out of the bag from the desk, and turns back around to Kevin.
"Clothes?" Kevin asks. His voice is cool on Andrew's skin, the lack of Command an ice cube on sun-kissed skin. There are few people who are able to switch it off entirely. It's the only way Andrew can trust Kevin, because Kevin can still ask him for consent.
And he does, every time.
"Whatever," Andrew says and watches Kevin strip to his briefs. Andrew knows every inch of Kevin's body, every scar and every mole.
Kevin sits on the bed and looks up at Andrew. It's enough to make Andrew go to his knees again, oil in his hands like an offering to a god — Andrew has never been religious, but in this room, he's worshipping.
"Perfect," Kevin says, and Andrew sways on his spot. Kevin lays on his stomach, muscles working under carefully tanned skin as he adjusts on the bed. He already has broad shoulders, but with his arms crossed over his head, it takes Andrew's breath away.
They've never fucked, and they never will. Not only because of Thea, but also because their relationship is built on this: trust so deep it can't be sexual for Andrew.
"Start with my shoulders," Kevin says, and Andrew climbs on him, sitting on his butt. As he warms the oil between his hands, the smell clouds them in a warm embrace.
"Touching you now," Andrew says, more to warn himself than to warn Kevin. Being touched by Kevin is one thing, touching a mostly naked man who's taller and stronger than him is another.
Kevin's skin is so warm under his hands. Heated up from the inside, a bit like after a treatment with the grain pillows Nicky keeps buying at German Christmas markets. The warmth spans between them, flowing from Andrew's fingertips into Kevin's shoulders and back again.
There's never any sweat, because there is no actual heat, there is just power flowing between them and bodies interpreting the drum of exchange in the best way they can — a hug like home under an afterglow sky.
"Like this?" Andrew asks as he digs in, thumbs working through the knots of Kevin's muscles, gliding smoothly over the warm skin. Kevin moans confirmation into his pillow, and Andrew continues, focusing on the task at hand. Every twitch of muscle, every noise Kevin makes, it goes straight to Andrew's core.
"Left arm," Kevin says after a while, voice pulsing with lazy Command. Andrew is already moving, running his hands over Kevin's shoulder and neck for a last time, then working his way down his arms. Kevin's arms are soft under his hands, the muscles slackening the longer he works on him. There are scars all over his body — not the kind that Andrew hides under his armbands, but the result of a torn apart childhood and rough adolescence. Over the years, Kevin has told him the story of each scar, shared on the balcony behind a veil of cigarette smoke, and most of them are on Tetsuji's rap sheet.
The ones that are worse are Riko's doing. Andrew spends most of his time on them, using the other oil, the one that helps with scars, rubbing it in carefully. Kevin watches him through hooded eyes, head resting on his other arm, breathing evenly.
Kevin makes little noises when Andrew continues with his hand. On his back are four scars to tell the story of how Tetsuji had beaten the urge to fidget out of him, and to this day, Kevin carries his anxiety in tense hands.
The other arm is not as bad. Kevin still switches sides depending on his opponent, but most backliners have a harder time dealing with a left-handed striker. There are more scars here, though.
"Stretch," Kevin tells him when Andrew sits back up, and Andrew grimaces as he does as told. Without a massaging table, his back hurts from the hunched position, but neither of them can bring the vibe of Exy massage therapists into this room, so they make do with the bed. He bends to the sides, back and forth, rolls his shoulders, and repeats the cycle.
"Get something to drink for both of us."
Andrew slides off Kevin, again swaying a little against the gravity — it feels wrong, having to deal with the drawing power of the ground when his pole star is Kevin. There are glasses waiting on the table, and he takes the bottle of soda out of the bag and pours.
Kevin has rolled on his side, head propped up on one arm, a dip in his hip from the bent position that makes him all the more beautiful. Andrew kneels in front of the bed and offers up the glasses.
*
Kevin loves Andrew. Has loved him for years. Graduating from PSU had been terrifying in a hundred ways, but what had kept him up at night was the thought of losing Andrew. Losing his best friend, but also losing this between them, the power play. Exploring how it could happen in a healthy way. This connection that's so different from Kevin's love for Thea but not any less deep.
He looks at the man kneeling in front of him, dressed in clothes Kevin bought for him, expression slack in a way the world isn't allowed to see. It's reserved for this room.
Kevin takes one glass from him and drinks it, the cool soda making him a little less dizzy. He puts the glass on the floor and takes the second one from Andrew's unresisting hands.
"Open your mouth," Kevin tells him and almost lets the glass drop when Andrew's pupils dilate even more. Using Command on Andrew is thrilling, seeing him like it will forever be unfathomable. Kevin holds the glass to Andrew's bottom lip and slowly tilts it, Andrew's gaze warm on his skin. Andrew swallows, once, twice, thrice, and then Kevin takes the glass away again.
"Can I have more?" Andrew predictably asks — the one good health habit Kevin doesn't need to argue with him about is good hydration. The request hangs in the air between them, and Kevin lets a few seconds pass. There is no impatience on Andrew's face, no resentment for having to wait. If Kevin told him no, he would simply accept it. They've never stopped fighting each other every step of their shared journey, but in here?
In here, Andrew trusts Kevin's judgement entirely.
The responsibility could be a weight on Kevin's shoulders, but it's anything but. It's warm power, the rush of a win. Power dancing through Kevin's body, every nerve lighting up to the tune of Andrew's obedience.
Andrew handing this power over to Kevin, handing himself over to Kevin is one of the biggest challenges in Kevin's life.
He told Andrew, once, how scared he sometimes is that he might do the wrong thing, that he could hurt Andrew. Andrew had stared at him for more than half a smoked cigarette worth of time, and then said, "Don't say stupid things."
Kevin will never stop being thankful for his trust, and he'll not allow himself to fuck this up. He takes Andrew's face in his free hand, runs his thumb over the warm skin, following the intricate pattern of barely visible freckles dusting Andrew's cheekbones. Because of how faint they are, they are impossible to see unless one gets within punching distance. It's one of those metaphors in Kevin's head that capture Andrew's personality: He doesn't allow others to see the human parts of himself.
Kevin loves Andrew's freckles.
He puts the glass to Andrew's lips and tilts it again, enraptured with how Andrew closes his eyes out of his own volition as he swallows. His eyelashes are as blond as his hair.
When Andrew finishes his glass, he opens his eyes again, the second until his gaze focuses on Kevin's face, another show of vulnerability. Kevin lets go of him. "Clear away the glasses."
Andrew is already moving before Kevin has finished giving the command. Kevin is privately glad that he's kneeling already, because Andrew's compliance and eagerness to please hit him him like a freight train every single time. Andrew easily drops to his knees again, and Kevin smiles at him. "Well done."
There's that tiny minute shudder that goes through Andrew's body every time he's praised. Kevin can't get enough of it. "My legs, now," he says and pushes himself back on the bed. Andrew follows him up, kneeling between his legs. Kevin pushes another pillow under his head and watches Andrew pour oil into his hands.
"Touching you now," Andrew says. His voice is different, when he's under Command. It's less flat, a bit more of the Southern drawl in it that he normally doesn't show.
Kevin lets his head fall to the side when Andrew starts to massage his thigh, thumbs digging in hard. It hurts, in that exhilarating way he can't get enough off. "Harder," he says and moans when Andrew does as told. Life is a lot, at the moment, and he doesn't get to do as much stretching as he should, so Andrew needs time to work the tension out of his muscles.
"Fuck," Kevin mumbles, eyes half closed, and keeps giving Andrew further instructions. Andrew has never formally learned to do sports massages, but his memory combined with Kevin telling him exactly what to do works incredibly well. The heat in Kevin's body also helps — hours in a hot tub are nothing against the effect of Command running through his body.
It takes almost half an hour until Andrew is finished. He's looking tired by then, the effort of a deep massage demands something different than Exy from his body.
"You were great," Kevin tells him as he sits up, and Andrew sags forward, head against Kevin's shoulder. Kevin slowly puts a hand on his neck and then lets it run down his back, feeling the curve of Andrew's spine. It's the warmest part of him, heat seeping through the fabric.
"Bring me my clothes," Kevin whispers after a couple of minutes.
His legs are a little wobbly as he stands up to dress again, but it's necessary — it's a good day, so it's likely that Andrew will give him permission, but probably not when Kevin is almost completely naked.
Removing Command from his voice feels like jumping into an ice bath after the sauna. Or no, more accurately, like pouring buckets full of ice water over his own body to banish the warmth. It's a conscious, unnatural action, and the biting cold reverberates through Kevin's entire body. "May I?" he asks, looking at Andrew's armbands. The words feel like ice shards in his mouth, but he knows they do not sound like that.
Andrew shivers and then also looks down at his arms. The seconds flow slowly, every breath burning icily in Kevin's nose.
When Andrew says, "Yes," warmth explodes from Kevin's chest again. It's like a change between seasons, thrown from deepest winter into a warm summer evening with a single heartbeat.
"Take the armbands off," he says, and the Command breaking free of the winter ice is so strong Andrew falls to his knees as he tugs on the cloth. Kevin follows him down and grabs the scar oil.
The scars on Andrew's arms are all faded. There haven't been any new ones for years, and Kevin is grateful for it. He doesn't get this kind of self-harm — he understands working himself to collapse on the court, he understands food regiments so brutal he can barely function, he understands pushing through pain, but his methods of self-harm are tied to his goals.
Cutting yourself is just self-destruction.
The oil is cold in his cupped hand, and he uses the time it takes to warm it up to run his fingertips over the bumpy lines on Andrew's arm. Some of them, Kevin knows why they happened. There are long, thick ones close to the left wrist from Aaron's trial, and shorter, more erratic ones on the outer side of his forearm from his broken collarbone recovery during his senior year when the pain meds had made him so high it had felt too much like the court-ordered drugs. These last ones Kevin understands the most.
When Andrew had first shown him the scars all those years ago, most of them had been hard and wiry, uncared for. By now, the skin is as smooth as it can get for wounds that had been stitched by the same hand that caused them.
Kevin had lost his religion when his mother died, but he prays that he'll never find new lines here. Andrew is doing well these days; he has a career and his own space, and he gets along with his teammates. It's what Kevin had hoped for and desperately believed in for years, until it had slowly become the truth.
The oil has warmed up, so he rubs it between his hands and then starts massaging it in. He can't do it one scar at a time the way Andrew does for him, because there are too many — line next to line, some of them criss-crossing — so he works one square inch after square inch.
Andrew is resting his other arm in his lap, eyes closed again. He makes small noises every now and then, and each of them makes the Command in Kevin's body purr — Andrew letting go of control is a sight to behold.
When he's done with both arms, he wipes his hands on his sweats and then runs them through Andrew's hair again, following the lines of his face. "Okay," Kevin says, releasing both of them from the power in the air — it's not as brutal as keeping Command out of his voice when they are still fully in a power play situation. It's a cool summer breeze after a long, hot day, instead of a winter storm.
Andrew blinks, once, twice. He looks down at his arms and doesn't tense when he realizes that they are uncovered.
"Can I go shower or do you need me?" Kevin asks. It's a toss-up, sometimes Andrew needs to be alone right after, sometimes he doesn't want Kevin to leave the room.
"Go," Andrew says, voice still a little drunk on submission.
*
Half an hour later, they sit under the night sky. Andrew eyes the tragically dried plants critically, and Kevin snorts.
"Thea is trying to find her green thumb."
Andrew lights his cigarette and offers the pack to Kevin. Kevin also lights up — he only smokes after powerplay, and only when it's with Andrew. It's part of the routine, sitting together on the roof of Foxhole tower or on the balcony of this apartment complex.
"She does know that you are both athletes and gone for weeks at a time?" Andrew asks drily. During Kevin's shower, he had put on the armbands again. It's weirdly comforting, the way he can still feel the oil on his skin and how it's intensified by the cloth. He leans his head back, looking up at the stars to save himself from the sorry state of the plants.
"I'm not arguing with her," Kevin answers. He has his legs pulled up on the chair and one arm wrapped around his knees. It almost makes him look small, if there weren't the afterglow of power in the air around him. He's always handsome, but right now, relaxed and content and completely at ease, he's downright beautiful.
"Your corpse could be good fertilizer."
Kevin flips him off and almost gets ash on his fresh clothes in the process. "Fuck you."
"Nah," Andrew says, taking a deep drag of his cigarette.
Kevin's phone buzzes, and he looks at it. "Thea asks when she can come home?"
Thea is at her mother's, and Thea's mother is the one who decided that giving her daughter to a man with frozen eyes and a cane was a good idea. Andrew doesn't understand why Thea still talks to her, but Thea doesn't make sense to him anyway. He doesn't need her to, not after he had made sure she would rather burn down an entire city than hurt Kevin. "I'll be gone in half an hour."
After a few seconds, Kevin texts Thea back. They sit in silence for the time it takes each of them to smoke another cigarette, then Kevin brings Andrew to the door.
Neither of them are hugging people, but the traces of power exchange still hanging in the air lowers the wall enough to allow this: Kevin's arms wrapped around Andrew's shoulders, Andrew's face against Kevin's chest. Andrew always uses Kevin's body wash on nights like these, and the familiar smell is like a bubble, protecting them from the world and their pasts. They stand like this for almost five minutes.
In his car, Andrew keeps the windows down even though it's February. He's still too warm for goosebumps to occur. At this time of night, it takes less than an hour to drive from Colorado Springs back to Denver, and his brain is blissfully calm the entire drive.