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The blinds that the previous tenants had left in the apartment are white and relatively useless at keeping the bedroom dark after the sun has risen. Arnold is not very bothered by it; once he is asleep he sleeps heavily until someone shakes him awake, or he reaches that point where his body simply doesn’t need any more sleep and he automatically wakes up.
It is worse for Kevin, who is a light sleeper. He has developed a habit of burrowing his head under the covers in the mornings before their alarm goes off, and even then, he will sleep restlessly, bothered by the heat and the stuffiness until he simply gives up and goes to take a shower and get ready for the day. It means that Arnold will wake up to an empty bed more often than not, which is simply not fair. Kevin may hate the feeling of being sweaty and messy, but despite all the years they have been together, Arnold still gets a bit of a kick out of seeing him like that. He likes when Kevin is picture-perfect and not a hair out of order, but he likes the messy, human Kevin even more, morning breath and stubble and all. It makes him want to wrap his body around him and never let him leave. And every morning, Arnold fails to do that, betrayed by his own body’s need for sleep.
So when Arnold wakes up surprisingly early on Sunday and Kevin is still a warm presence next to him beneath the covers, Arnold takes the opportunity to hook his leg around Kevin's knee, snake an arm around his waist and press himself as close as humanly possible. Sometimes Kevin complains about the tightness of his hugs, but hey. It’s his own fault for being so handsome, and charming, and cute.
The pile of blankets moves slightly as Kevin shifts, then his head emerges, eyelids still heavy with sleep. "G'morning."
"Hey." He clears his throat to try and get rid of some of the sleep-roughness. "I dreamed about Mickey Mouse."
"Okay.“ Kevin yawns, then shifts a little before he seems to realize that Arnold is attached to him like a vise, rubs a hand over his eyes. “Sounds like a good dream? Or a terrifying one.”
"He was trying to explain the string theory to Goofy." Which had been weird, because Arnold only has a very vague idea of what the string theory consists of, and he doesn't remember exactly what Mickey had said, but Arnold knows with a strange certainty that it had been about the string theory. "And then they ate corn cobs."
"Sounds exciting,“ Kevin drawls. “I don't remember what I dreamed about." Kevin rarely does, and when he does, he rarely wants to talk about it, as though the only dreams he really do remember are the bad ones. Which must suck. Arnold dreams a lot. "No, wait, actually. There were ponies."
"Ponies? Like, from My Little Pony?"
Because Arnold may have forced Kevin to watch the entirety of Friendship is Magic, and Kevin refuses to admit that he actually enjoys it. But Kevin makes a face at the question. "No. Real ponies. Or horses, I guess, but they were small."
Arnold grins, presses his nose against Kevin's upper arm. Neither of them probably smell very good at the moment; the apartment gets seriously hot during the summer and yet, neither of them can sleep without a blanket. And at least they stink together, which seems to cancel things out because Arnold thinks that Kevin doesn't really smell of anything at all except himself and perhaps a tiny bit of sweat. "What happened then?"
"Nothing." Kevin stretches his legs lazily. "They were just there. On a field."
"Sounds boring."
"It wasn't. It was peaceful." Kevin begins to move his legs, trying to disentangle himself and that is just not okay. His hair is standing up at strange angles thanks to the wax he uses daily, and it is already as long as it used to be before chemotherapy; perhaps even longer, as though Kevin has forgotten that he might actually need a haircut at some point.
And when Arnold looks closely, it is so difficult to see any trace of the disease, anymore. The expression in his eyes is different somehow, older, and there are very fine lines beneath them that might turn into wrinkles someday, and under his t-shirt Arnold knows that there are scars from when they had removed parts of Kevin's stomach and intestines along with the tumors. But other than that, he looks good. Healthy, even, and surprisingly sexy for someone who still has morning crust in the corners of his eyes.
Arnold tightens his arm around Kevin's waist, doesn't feel a single ounce of shame over how whiny his voice sounds. "No. Stay."
"We have to get up sometime," Kevin protests, even as he stops moving.
"Why? It's Sunday. Let's watch the cartoons."
"The TV is in the living room," Kevin sounds bemused. "We still have to get up."
"We can watch on the tablet." Arnold kisses Kevin’s shoulder, because he thinks it might make him cuter. He has no idea how he looks at the moment, but he probably needs it. “Please?”
He can almost hear Kevin roll his eyes, but, he can also almost hear him give in. It is the sound of a slow exhalation, and it is the feeling of Kevin’s body relaxing fully again. “But I’m hungry,” is his last, faint protest.
Even now, Arnold loves to hear Kevin say that, because he had spent the better part of last year not eating much at all, throwing up whatever he had forced down, and then finally going through pretty much the same process again as the scar tissue had caused volvulus and he had needed another surgery. But Arnold finds himself almost completely able to shake those memories away now.
“Breakfast in bed!” he says quickly. “Toast and jam and eggs and ham and juice… I’ll fix it.”
He kicks the covers off himself, only somewhat reluctantly removes himself from Kevin’s side, and stands up. He is not the best cook, but he can manage eggs and toast, at least.
“Can I take a shower in the meantime?” Kevin asks, rolling over onto his elbow to look at Arnold as though he thinks that Arnold is totally in charge of this morning. And yeah, Arnold likes the idea of being in charge of it. Sunday mornings are the best.
“No,” he says, wagging his finger at him to get the point across. “Don’t move.”
He knows that Kevin is seriously bad at being idle, but Arnold so rarely gets the chance to spoil him the way he really deserves to be spoiled, after everything, so he thinks that Kevin will just have to suck it up for today.
And Kevin merely grimaces at him but doesn’t protest, then turns around to reach for the tablet on the bedside table. “Fine. Don’t forget the coffee.”
Arnold grins so wide, it almost hurts his cheeks. But it is a good feeling. “I won’t!”
They hadn’t meant for it to turn into a celebration, and Arnold keeps glancing over at Kevin whenever he gets the time because he can see how frazzled Kevin’s nerves are; it is insane that no one else seems to be able to pick up on it. It hadn’t even been a proper declaration of health, because apparently that won’t come for a long time yet, but the people around them seem to take “currently cancer free” as pretty much the same thing.
It isn’t, though. And Arnold can only watch dully while Mr. Price wants to make a toast to his son’s good health, and he probably means well, even, but he somehow makes it about the family’s trials rather than about Kevin’s own, and they weren’t even there until the last couple of months when people had begun to understand how serious it was.
Arnold scratches his own arm frenetically, trying to distract himself. He’s not used to these feelings of resentment, doesn’t like it. But in the past year he has come to realize that the Price family deals with bad situations about as well as Kevin had done during his first couple of days in Uganda: loudly and dramatically.
And Arnold appreciates how they had pulled themselves together, finally, and he appreciates the financial support, but it’s difficult to forgive them for the emotional stress that they had unintentionally put Kevin through.
Across the room, he can see Kevin swallow carefully, then put his hand over his mouth. There is a moment when Arnold wonders if his boyfriend is going to throw up right there and then, in the middle of his father’s speech, but then Kevin slips away. Arnold glances around, then follows as discreetly as he can manage.
He finds Kevin hunched over the toilet bowl, lips pressed together in a grimace, and he would be worried, except he is used to this now and sometimes Kevin’s food can come up as quickly as it goes down, for no real reason except that his body and his mind are trying to deal with the continuous attacks that they’ve been forced to endure over the past year.
“Hey,” Arnold says, closing and locking the bathroom door behind him. “Should I tell people to leave?” He’s not sure if it would actually work; he’s not looking forward to trying to be imposing and force people out of the door, but he will do it if Kevin wants him to.
“I don’t want to ruin anything.” Kevin wipes sweat away from his forehead, gives Arnold a rueful smile. “I’m fine. Just…tired.”
He is resting his forearms against the rim of the toilet bowl, then after a moment’s hesitation, he rests his cheek against his arms. It would be disgusting if their bathroom wasn’t as clean as it was, to be honest.
Arnold clumsily slides down to sit on the tile floor beside Kevin. “You’re not ruining anything. They are.”
“Mhm.” Kevin closes his eyes, presses his lips together again, and Arnold tries not to watch the way he swallows several times. “Just give me a minute.”
“Want to be alone?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kevin replies tiredly. And yeah, Arnold has seen Kevin in worse states than this. And he knows that Kevin prefers not to be touched right now, even though Arnold’s entire body is aching for the chance to run his fingers through Kevin’s hair, to massage his back, to do something. But that’s the way things have been lately. Arnold can’t do anything; he can only be there.
He watched quietly while Kevin’s entire body tenses up, but he doesn’t throw up, he only clears his throat and spits into the toilet a couple of times before finally sighing and sitting back. His eyes are red-rimmed. “I’m tired.”
“I know, buddy.” Arnold tries to smile encouragingly. “But tomorrow it’ll just be the two of us. Let’s do nothing, then.”
Kevin smiles back weakly, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “Sounds perfect.”
“What are you doing?” Arnold asks wearily.
Kevin looks up from where he is sitting on the floor, sorting through the stacks of paper that they keep tucking away into folders for proper filing someday. “What does it look like?” When Arnold doesn’t answer, he wrinkles his nose. “Cleaning.”
“But why?” He should be resting, not going through years-old, probably entirely unimportant papers.
Kevin shrugs. “Just getting rid of things. There’s no point in leaving all this around, you know?”
Arnold doesn’t know. “Come on, let’s watch a movie.” There are only a couple of weeks until Kevin’s surgery, and he tries not to think about it. Maybe Kevin is thinking too much, to counter him. He had completed his radiation therapy several weeks ago but is still tired most of the time, because apparently blasting your cancer cells with ionizing energy affects more than just the cancer. They are still waiting to see how damaged the surrounding tissue had been because again, apparently it is difficult to aim at only a few offending cells.
“In a minute.” Kevin offers him a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just want to finish this first.”
Arnold watches him for a minute, the ‘throw away’ pile growing bigger and bigger. He opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and closes it again, shrugging and walking away.
"I'll look like an egg."
Arnold feels laughter bubble up in his throat; it almost hurts because it is such a strange, unexpected feeling. "No you won't. Why do you think that?"
"All bald people do, to some degree," Kevin replies casually while he fiddles with the electric shaver. "This is the longest setting, I think."
Arnold’s laughter comes out then, a bit too high, a bit unsteady. Kevin may have developed a sense of cynicism in Uganda (who hadn't, really?) but it is exceptionally rare for him to be judgmental, especially in a mean-spirited way. Arnold takes the shaver from him. "Wouldn't it be easier to shave it all at once?"
Kevin adjusts the old towel that he has draped over his shoulders. "No, I read about this. It's easier to cut it shorter first. It'll get stuck in the shaver if it’s too long."
"Huh." It is strange, how it is getting easier to talk about things like this casually. Like, there is a part of him that wants nothing more than to scream and cry because things are so constantly unfair; they're not supposed to have to beg their families for money to be able to cover the hospital bills. They're not supposed to have to deal with study breaks and lost study grants. They’re certainly not supposed to have to deal with chemotherapy. He takes a breath to calm himself, then glances around hesitantly. "How do we do this?"
"Just let it fall on the floor." Kevin sighs. "Don't step in it too much."
"Okay," Arnold says, and he thinks he hears Kevin sigh again, remorsefully, before Arnold clicks the button and the shaver comes to life. And Kevin's hair might have thinned out in the last couple of weeks, but it is still so strange to watch it fall to the floor in heavy, dark brown locks. It is a surprisingly quick procedure. He turns the shaver off, and the sudden silence feels heavy so Arnold runs his hand over Kevin's now considerably shorter hair. "Hey, I didn't know you had a mole behind your ear."
"I do not." Kevin twists in his seat to frown at him. The new haircut, temporary as it may be, looks strange on him, but not altogether bad. His eyes look bigger, and his mouth too. "You're making that up."
"I'm totally not," Arnold protests. "It's right here, I swear." He touches a spot behind Kevin's ear that doesn't actually have a mole, grins a little when Kevin swats his hand away. "Hey, maybe you should do me as well."
He says is jokingly, but actually does mean it. Maybe Kevin would feel better about this if he wasn't the only one to go bald. Heck, maybe Arnold would feel better if he could provide some kind of companionship through it all.
Kevin is silent for a moment, then shakes his head. He is looking ahead again, and from his position behind Kevin's back, Arnold can't see his face. "Nah. You'll just have to have enough hair for the two of us, pal. Besides, your hair would probably dull the blades."
Well then. Arnold makes a face to the back of Kevin's head for the jab at the texture of his hair, but doesn't protest. It is a pain in the ass sometimes: curly and thick and completely unmanageable. He hands the shaver back to Kevin for him to fiddle with. "If you're mean, I'll take your eyebrows too."
"My eyebrows aren't falling out," Kevin says, leaving the at least not yet unspoken. The doctors had told them it was different for everyone. Sometimes everything went. Sometimes it didn't. "Touch them and die."
Arnold makes a frightened, high-pitched sound, purely for Kevin's benefit. But Kevin is too focused on changing the settings on the shaver to laugh, and Arnold simply watches him for a moment before a thought hits him. "Hey. We could totally have given you a mohawk for a moment. Missed photo-opportunity."
Kevin pauses, right hand hovering over the shaver. He seems to be hesitating, then, he hands Arnold the shaver. "So do it now. We can send a picture to Connor to freak him out."
If Arnold wasn't holding the shaver, he might have applauded. And so, his hand only hesitates a little before he turns the shaver on again.
"Ready?" he asks, and Kevin doesn't reply, merely shrugs one shoulder with what is probably faux nonchalance, and Arnold takes that as permission to begin to shave Kevin's remaining hair off, starting with the sides.
“Bad day?” Arnold asks. His glasses are still misted up after stepping from the dry cold and into the apartment, but he can tell from the scent alone that what Kevin is shoveling into his mouth is probably store-bought, microwaved apple pie. It almost feels like betrayal, both because they have agreed that apple pie should be homemade or not at all (which, to be honest, means that they never actually eat apple pie), and because Kevin doesn’t seem to have saved any for him.
It is not strange, per se, to come home to a somewhat different Kevin every afternoon. He had been spiraling for a while, is only very slowly coming back to some sort of middle ground again, whatever that means. Chemotherapy isn’t fun.
“I’m fine,” Kevin says between bites, and Arnold’s glasses have cleared by now, he can see the crease between Kevin’s eyebrows. But then Kevin looks up and pats on the couch beside him. “Join me?”
Kevin, who had been strangely unsurprised to hear the diagnosis. Who had just kind of resigned himself to it all and who spends half of his time now doing not much of anything at all, and the other half trying to keep himself up to date on his classes, despite the fact that he has been granted a leave of absence until after Christmas, and possibly longer, depending on how things turn out.
Arnold toes his shoes off and joins his boyfriend on the couch. “So what’s with the, uh.” He motions at the plate.
“Want some?” Kevin holds out the spoon. “It’s pretty disgusting.”
It looks greyish and lumpy and had probably been frozen when Kevin bought it. Arnold opens his mouth and lets Kevin feed it to him and Arnold isn’t usually very picky, but yeah. He grimaces. “Oh man.”
“I know, right?” Kevin stirs in the remaining scraps on the plate with the spoon. “I can’t believe I actually spent money on that.”
“We all make mistakes,” Arnold says forgivingly, teasingly. “We could make our own instead.”
“Do you even know how to bake?” Kevin sets the plate aside on their tiny coffee table; they had only barely managed to fit a couch, a table and a TV into their miniature living room. It doesn’t give them space to do much else, but at least the arrangement gives a semblance of an actual home. “Because I don’t.”
“It can’t be that difficult.” Arnold tries to remember if he had ever seen his mother make an apple pie. She used to make them quite often when he was a kid, but he doesn’t really remember ever watching her bake. “We just need apples, and sugar, and–” He shrugs. “Flour, right?”
At least it earns him a small smile, and the crease between Kevin’s eyebrows disappear. “Something like that, I guess.”
He has dark bags under his eyes, but he still has something that Arnold can’t explain, even though his cheeks are pale and hollow. But his eyes, well. He can seem apathetic, and tired, and calm, which are all so weird on him, but there is also this strange certainty that Arnold can’t describe. It reminds him of how he used to look back in Uganda, when they’d been working on the Book of Arnold together. Like he had somehow been blessed somehow, been given a purpose perhaps, and it just doesn’t really make sense because through it all, Kevin has been a source of comfort to Arnold and not the other way around. As though Arnold is the one with a potentially fatal disease, not Kevin.
Something clenches in his chest at the mere thought of death. He fights it off. “You sure you’re okay, buddy? Because that looks like comfort food to me.”
“Well, it wasn’t very comforting,” Kevin replies, a little snidely perhaps, squirms around on the couch to face him. “And I told you, I’m fine. I’m great. I just wanted some pie.”
“Okay.” Arnold doesn’t move when Kevin rests his head on his shoulder. The times when Kevin is in the mood to cuddle are few and far between; even more so recently. He slips an arm around his back, trying not to think about how thin his boyfriend is.
Life is not fair, not really. Some people their age are dressing up and enjoying some Halloween parties right now. Some people have supportive families, and some people are struggling with theirs, like Arnold knows that Connor McKinley is doing right now, a few states over. And some people are fighting death, for no reason at all except for bad luck.
At least Kevin is warm against Arnold’s side, warm and calm and perhaps a little bit sad, if Arnold is reading his mood correctly. He is not fine, in any case, but that is, strangely, perhaps, a good thing. Maybe Kevin needs to be sad, sometimes.
“I’ll learn to bake a proper one,” he promises quietly, and Kevin nods against his shoulder and doesn’t say anything else.
Kevin’s CBC results are terrible and Arnold doesn’t really know what that means except that the doctors are keeping him overnight, which then turns into a second night, and a third. And apparently not even hospitalization is enough to get either of their parents to talk to them; Arnold had thought that he was kind of over that whole part of his life by now, but it turns out that there are some things make you really miss your mother, and by that third night alone in his and Kevin’s bed Arnold starts to get scared.
He wonders if Kevin misses his mother too; Kevin, who doesn’t say much, who is pale and thin and picks at the dry hospital cafeteria carrot cake with his fingers until there are only crumbles left. He is being treated for stomach ulcers and fatigue syndrome while being generally X-rayed and poked at during the days. In the evenings he sends Arnold texts about the nurses and doctors he likes and dislikes, about the old woman who insists on keeping her catheter bag on the table next to her while she eats, and about how getting contrast injected in the wrong vein can really freaking hurt.
And Arnold hates to sleep alone nowadays. He tries to find it in himself to enjoy sprawling over the extra space, but the sheets feel cold against his skin. The bedroom is too quiet without Kevin’s tiny snores and mumbled protests whenever Arnold accidentally pokes him when he rolls around or stretches out. It’s lonely and it’s boring and Arnold doesn’t even remember how to hide his unhappiness with exuberance anymore, the way he used to.
"I have cancer," Kevin says on the seventh day, over one of the cafeteria croissants. "The doctors told me yesterday."
“Oh,” Arnold replies, before his feelings can catch up with him. Kevin says it much in the same way that he complains about the nurses that keep missing his veins when taking blood samples, like it’s a minor inconvenience, so Arnold merely looks at him for a moment as he tries to process the words, then tries to smile even though it feels wrong. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’m really not.” Kevin is picking the croissant apart with his fingers without eating it, carefully tearing smaller and smaller pieces from it. “They’re trying to decide the best way to treat it.”
"What--" Arnold feels his voice fail him as something seems to want to suck all the heat from his body. "How? Where?"
"Stomach," Kevin says simply, and bizarrely, he smiles a little. “But hey, they’re saying I can go home soon.” As though that is all that matters.
“I guess.” Arnold doesn’t really know what to say, or what any of this means, so he leans forward, over the table, and puts his hands over Kevin’s, making him to stop picking at the massacred croissant. “It’ll be great to have you back, buddy.”
He even manages to smile a little; Kevin smiles back, and mostly just looks tired.
"Is that Connor?" Kevin calls from the kitchen. "Tell him that I aced the exam."
Arnold looks at Connor's grainy image on the screen; either Connor needs to buy a new webcam or Arnold needs to buy a new computer with the capacity for decent resolution. He shrugs. "You heard him, right?”
"Indeed." Even though Connor looks tired he gives Arnold a somewhat wry smile. He had spent hours on the phone, patiently guiding Kevin through the basics of mathematical statistics, which, to Kevin’s utmost surprise and frustration, had made absolutely no sense to him. It had been impressive, really, because trying to teach an impatient and stressed Kevin Price something like that couldn’t have been easy, or even good for Connor’s mental health. "Tell him congratulations. Is he feeling better now that the exams are over?"
And just like that, Arnold finds himself hesitating just a moment longer than he had expected himself to. He doesn’t want to worry his friend, who frankly has enough on his plate as it is while trying to make if through his last year of college without his parents’ financial support. But at the same time, Arnold doesn’t have that many people to vent to; even after several years he still finds himself in awe that he has people he can call friends, and the temptation becomes too great. “Not really. I think he might be close to burned-out or something. He quit his part-time job though, so that’s something.”
They do feel the lack of money, though, which probably contributes to Kevin’s stress. But what are they supposed to do, really? School is expensive. Food is expensive. Their apartment is expensive. They do have the option to split up and move into the dorms instead, but they both still think that it’s worth some extra stress over money just to get to live together. Even though they barely have time to see each other nowadays, either way.
Arnold can see Connor purse his lips thoughtfully, as though he is going to say something, but he seems to hear Kevin approach almost as well as Arnold does and pauses.
Kevin drops the keys on the chest of drawers. "Hey. And hey, Connor." He grabs a sweater from the closet before joining Arnold in front of the computer, nudging the side of Arnold's head with his elbow. "Is it just me, or is it freezing in here?"
"Just you, buddy," Arnold replies, and it is too uncomfortable to twist his neck to look at his boyfriend, so instead he keeps looking at the screen, and ends up catching the moment when Connor’s expression changes. And Arnold doesn’t quite know why, but he will keep remembering that moment for years to come, maybe because that is when he truly gets it, too.
"Kevin," Connor says mildly. "I hate to say this, but you look terrible."
"Well thank you." Kevin sounds offended. "You don't look too hot yourself."
And Arnold finds himself not wanting to but he squirms around, tries to look at Kevin with Connor’s eyes, and there is a pressure over his chest that won’t leave him for quite some time.
He knows that Kevin has been tired lately, that he has lost weight, that he more often than not lets Arnold carry the heavier grocery bags from the store, that he gets winded from simple things like walking the short distance from the bus stop. But that could be so many things: stress, a persistent cold, lack of sleep, the way he constantly works and studies too much. And Arnold has always been by his side, has been aware of the change but never shocked by it.
He is now.
Kevin is pale, and his skin seems dry somehow, almost like paper stretched over sunken cheeks. There are dark bags under his eyes, and he is hugging the sweater around him as though he actually is freezing, despite the summer heat and the lack of proper air conditioning in the apartment.
"No, I mean--" Connor shakes his head on the screen. "Go to a doctor-terrible. Are you eating at all?"
He doesn't look hesitant very often, but now Kevin makes an odd sort of face. “I haven’t been very hungry lately.” There is a silence after that, and it is strange to see Kevin look so, well, openly pensive. “You know, maybe I should go see a doctor.”
"You do that," Connor says, voice still careful, but Arnold knows him well enough to tell that he is worried. And Arnold is so, so grateful that they have friends like Connor in their life, because obviously Arnold isn’t enough to make sure his boyfriend takes care of himself properly. The pressure over his chest intensifies, he reaches to take Kevin’s hand in his, and that feels cold, too.
Hopefully, probably, things will be fine.