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The dorm has been empty for hours by the time Andrew returns. Kevin doesn’t remember when he sank from the couch to the floor, when the sky had turned from dusky orange to blue twilight, casting the room into cold shadow.
Andrew kicks the door shut behind him and Kevin tries not to flinch at the sudden noise in the too quiet room. Andrew tosses his keys at the table without looking. They land with a clatter. Andrew doesn’t say anything. He walks forward until he’s standing over Kevin, gazing down like he expected to find him in this exact state.
Andrew’s eyes are blank, his expression dour. His last dose must have worn off. It’s later than Kevin thought.
Kevin is clutching a bottle of Andrew’s vodka in his hand, already half empty. He expects some kind of retaliation for his theft, is hopeful for it, maybe, but Andrew just kicks Kevin’s shin until Kevin pulls his legs out of Andrew’s path. Kevin wraps his arms around his legs and tucks his chin over a knee, knows he looks pathetic, an overgrown child, too small for his body. He can’t find it in himself to stop the retreat.
Andrew rips the vodka bottle from Kevin’s fingers. It’s unnecessary, the force of it, when Kevin is already so pliant. He’s never given Andrew a reason to see it squirming under his skin, so it’s not like he can blame him. It’s exciting, in theory, the idea of showing Andrew how willing Kevin could be to bend to his hand, how little Andrew would have to push. He doesn’t think Andrew would find it as appealing; he doesn’t seem to do anything without a little brutishness. And anyway, Kevin doesn’t want it, not really. Their whole charade would fall apart. He needs to feel like he’s put up a fight, and Andrew likes to feel like he’s won.
He watches Andrew swig from the bottle with a practiced ease. If anyone else has clocked how intentionally Andrew schools himself into this disinterested façade in his rare moments of sobriety, they haven’t let on. But Kevin knows, recognises it on Andrew’s face as well as he does his own. It takes work, that kind of performance. He wonders, not for the first time, what it would feel like to be a real person and not a collection of carefully curated personas.
Is that what hurts the most when Andrew is dosed up on his meds, that control ceding to the mania so easily? He’d ask if he thought he’d get a real answer. Kevin can’t keep the act up when he’s this plastered, but the plausible deniability is part of the appeal. He hooks up with Andrew for the same reason, for how good it feels, the illusion of handing over his control.
The fantasy of Andrew putting his hands on Kevin in his current state plays through his head. It would be so easy. He’d let Andrew tell him what to do, what to say, who to be. Maybe Kevin could stop being Kevin altogether. It’s an appealing and familiar thought, but the heady rush is replaced by a sort of resigned frustration. Andrew has made it clear he’s uninterested in any initiation of whatever their arrangement is when Kevin is drunk like this. Kevin had considered limiting himself, drinking just enough to put himself outside his body for an hour or two, but waiting for Andrew had made his skin itch and the more readily available of his vices had won out.
He keeps his hand clamped around his calf and resists the urge to reach out and grab for the bottle. The eagerness would likely result in Andrew denying Kevin just to spite him. So he stares forward, keeps his body still, and waits for Andrew to take pity and pass the bottle back. An act Andrew apparently sees through, rolling his eyes when he holds the bottle out in Kevin’s direction and wiggles it back and forth. It’s mocking, but Kevin is too hungry for it, the acknowledgment and the vodka, to bite back.
His fingers grip the neck of the bottle and he lifts it to his mouth, too quick. Vodka dribbles down his chin and he swipes at his skin with the back of his hand, swallowing hard and gasping around the burn. The bottle clacks against the floor as Kevin sets it down with a heavy hand.
“It is not going to run away from you.” Andrew sounds as unimpressed with Kevin as he always does.
“You might,” Kevin mumbles. “With it, I mean.”
Andrew raises an eyebrow. “You are a twenty-one year old with an Amex black card. I’m sure even you could manage to source your own vodka.”
“Aren’t you the one who told me I needed to stop being so uptight? ‘Unclench my asshole’, wasn’t it?” He’s being goaded, he knows that, but the flush of irritation feels good on his skin. Anyway, it’s not like this isn’t Andrew’s end goal when he starts poking at Kevin. He drank Andrew’s vodka, he might as well give him what we wants.
But Andrew just moves to open the window and climbs onto the desk. “I did not mean this.”
He flips open his pack of cigarettes. The snick of the lighter and the glowing flame as Andrew lights the cigarette are as enticing as they always are when Kevin is drunk, so illicit in Andrew’s hands. He stares at the place where the filter presses against Andrew’s lips and imagines pulling the cigarette from Andrew’s mouth and replacing it with his thumb. The urge is easy enough to quell. Like most things Kevin wants, the consequence isn’t worth the indulgence.
He wants to be closer, though, to anchor himself to Andrew. When he tries to stand, his body moves in uneven stops and starts, parts of him staying rooted to the floor. He tries to right himself but there’s nothing to hold on to. Doubling over, he grabs his thighs and dips his head until his vision stops swimming.
“Sit down before you hurt yourself. If you crack your skull open because you tripped over your own drunken feet I will let you bleed out on the floor.” Andrew takes a drag and exhales, barely aiming for the window, and the smoke makes its way outside in lazy curls.
Kevin pulls himself upright and glares at Andrew with exaggerated effort. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me?”
Andrew doesn’t bother turning to look at him. “From Ravens. Your own stupidity is outside the scope of our deal. No man is foolish enough to take on that futile endeavour.”
It takes Kevin a moment to stumble to the wall, but he gets his hands on it and pulls himself over to Andrew, trying to keep his steps level and not quite succeeding. Andrew’s face is bored, but he’s watching Kevin now, eyes tracking the uneven slope of his movements.
“Fascinating to see how all of your Master’s infamous conditioning fails you in the face of half a bottle of bottom shelf vodka. It would at least preserve what is left of your dignity to embarrass yourself on the good stuff, no?”
Kevin’s molars squeak together with how hard he clenches his teeth. The desk bangs against the wall when he drops his weight onto the edge, but Andrew seems unperturbed by the disruption. “Why do you care, if my stupidity is above your pay grade?”
Andrew hums and ashes his cigarette into the little ceramic dish next to his foot. “Drink yourself to death or don’t, I do not care, but you make my job harder with your carelessness. A wounded animal is easier to cage.”
By now, Kevin is accustomed to Andrew’s penchant for never saying what he means, but the alcohol is swirling his brain and making it more difficult than usual to muddle his way through Andrew’s words. He grips the edge of the desk with his right hand until his knuckles bleach white. “Would you stop speaking in riddles for one fucking minute?”
“Stop getting so plastered you can no longer hold a conversation.” The next lungful of smoke is aimed at Kevin’s face. He resolutely does not cough. “Your self-destructive streak was entertaining at first, golden boy, but the shtick is getting old and I am losing my patience.”
Kevin slides himself closer to Andrew and leans his face in. It feels dangerous, heat rolling off Andrew in waves. He always runs so impossibly hot.
“You never had any patience.” Kevin plucks the cigarette from Andrew’s fingers and holds it up between them. “And you don’t get to lecture me about vices.”
Andrew clamps his fingers around Kevin’s chin and wrenches him forward with enough force that the arm holding Kevin up on the desk nearly buckles under him. If his mouth wasn’t being forced shut, he would have whimpered at the contact, but the noise stays mercifully strangled in his throat, comes out more animalistic. Andrew’s jaw ticks at the sound. The cigarette drops from Kevin’s fingers and lands on the desk, ash breaking off in a soft grey clump at the impact.
“You do not want to test me, Day. This is not a fight you will win.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
Andrew flicks Kevin’s head to the side in bored dismissal. “I am not interested in being another blunt object for you to bludgeon yourself with. Go find something else to play with.”
Kevin looks back at Andrew and drops his chin. “I’m not interested in something else.” The voice sounds like his, but he hears the words like they’re falling out of someone else’s mouth. He has tipped over the edge into desperation, he knows that, but the harsh grip of Andrew’s fingers has left him keening. He wants the punishment that follows this sort of insolence, wants to cower at Andrew’s feet, wants to be kicked in the ribs for baring his teeth.
A better man, or perhaps a more sober one, would not have folded so cheap and easy, but it is the unfortunate truth of Kevin’s life that he was raised to be lesser than. He knows better now than to say “please”, he only needed to learn that lesson once. He tips his head forward, stopping shy of pressing into Andrew’s shoulder. He’s not sure what he’s hoping for, really. Anything that will hurt where he can feel it.
Andrew threads his fingers through the hair at the back of Kevin’s skull and wrenches his head up. Finally, Kevin thinks, but the blow doesn’t land. This is not Andrew aiming balls at his head when he clears a shot on goal. This is not Andrew grabbing the grate of his helmet and slamming him against the court walls. This is not Andrew caging him against a locker, long after the others have left for the night. There is a hardness to Andrew’s eyes now. “Do not make me repeat myself. I will not dole out whatever punishment you think you crave. Go sleep this off, I’m sick of looking at you.”
He doesn’t release his grip until Kevin nods, strained against the force of Andrew’s hand in his hair. The tension evaporates from Andrew’s frame and he plucks up his cigarette, turning back to the window like Kevin is no longer there, like that whole display is already an afterthought.
Kevin crawls into bed, doesn’t even make it under the covers before he’s curling in on himself, ears ringing, room pitching like an unmoored ship even as he squeezes his eyes shut. He fights down the nausea and panic and digs his fingernails into his palms until the skin feels like it’s about to split. Sometimes he needs a little pain to keep his head clear.