Work Text:
The villa was quiet, deathly so.
V noticed it first thing in the morning, when he padded down the stairs and didn't hear music. Usually there'd be chords spilling into the air before coffee had even finished brewing—Kerry up fairly early testing riffs, cursing when he hit a sour note and making adjustments. Instead, the only sound was the soft click of the percolator and the faint hum of cicadas outside, ushering in the middle of summer.
The desert sun was already streaming through the high windows, throwing sharp rectangles of light across the living room floor. Dust motes floated lazily in the beams, the air dry enough to sting the back of V's throat.
Kerry was curled up on the couch, blanket pulled tight around his shoulders despite the heat. The screen in front of him was dark, his gaze unfocused. He hadn't touched the coffee V had set down for him an hour earlier; it sat cooling on the table, next to a plate of toast that was hardening at the edges.
"Morning," V said, crossing the room. He tried for casual, like it wasn't strange.
Kerry grunted in reply, eyes still fixed somewhere far past the blank wall.
"You good, rockstar?" V leaned against the arm of the couch, waiting for even a flicker of the usual sharp wit from his input.
"Fine." The word was clipped, flat.
V's brow furrowed but he let it drop. Maybe Kerry hadn't slept, maybe something had gotten under his skin.
He didn't push.
Instead he kept himself busy: tidying up the kitchen, rinsing out Kerry's untouched mug, stacking the abandoned and scribbled on sheet music scattered across the coffee table. Every so often he'd toss something light into the air—a joke about Nibbles getting fat, or how the neighbor's automated sprinklers were wasting water again. Nothing landed.
By evening, Kerry hadn't moved much. Same spot on the couch, same blanket, same untouched food. V finally sank down beside him, shoulder brushing his through the fabric, not saying anything at all. Just... trying to be there.
The villa felt muted with Kerry like this, like someone had turned the volume down on the whole world.
——
By the third day, V knew it wasn't just an off mood.
The villa still had a somber rhythm—Kerry's new rhythm. Sad music drifting out from the at home studio at odd hours, the smell of half-burned incense and candles lingering in the air, his favorite guitar propped against the couch unplayed. The space felt too still, like a crypt.
V found a photo frame left out on the counter one morning. One he knew hadn't been there before. The picture inside was worn at the edges, the colors faded: a young boy with messy curls and a face dotted in freckles perched on a beautiful woman's lap, her arms wrapped around him tightly. Both of them smiling, eyes crinkled in the same way. V set it back down carefully, like it might shatter if he handled it too roughly.
Later, a candle appeared above it on the windowsill, wick blackened from being lit and snuffed. The faint tang of smoke hung in the kitchen even though the windows were open.
Kerry didn't mention either of them. He just curled deeper into the couch with that same blanket, eyes shadowed, guitar left untouched in the corner. A notebook lay open on the coffee table—half a page of scribbled lyrics, scratched out so hard the pen had torn the paper.
"You've barely eaten all day," V said gently that night, sliding a new plate of food toward him. "You'll waste away on me."
Kerry didn't even look up. "...Not hungry."
V was staring to worry now and wanted to press it, but the tone in Kerry's voice wasn't something he could easily place—it was a type of fragility V hadn't seen from him before. A grief V hadn't seen in years.
He thought that pushing harder might force something open Kerry wasn't ready to show. So instead V eased down onto the couch beside him again, close enough that their knees brushed. He thumbed through playlists on Kerry's sound system until he found something soft—a few low acoustic tracks from the early 2000's, mostly stripped-down melodies. He let it play quiet in the background, just to break the silence, maybe even pull Kerrybout of his head.
Kerry didn't say anything, but he leaned ever so slightly against him, like the contact mattered more than he could verbalize. Even if the words couldn't be said yet.
V stayed. He'd try to wait for Kerry to come to him.
——
By the fifth day, V couldn't take the silence anymore. It was scaring him.
Kerry was on the couch again, same threadbare blanket, same half-empty mug V laid out on the table beside him hours ago that morning. The desert air pressed dry and heavy through the open windows, cicadas buzzing annoyingly somewhere out back.
The house smelled faintly of smoke from the candle Kerry kept lighting and letting burn down next to the photo.
V carried two new mugs over, one steaming hot. He set it down within reach, pushed the old one aside and dropped onto the couch beside him, shoulder to shoulder. "Ker," he said softly, "baby, this ain't like you. Please talk to me."
Kerry's jaw tightened. He didn't answer, just kept staring at nothing.
V nudged the hot mug closer. "C'mon. I know when you're pissed at me, and this ain't that. You haven't moved—you don't eat. You're scaring me, because this feels like something I can't fix. So please tell me...what's going on?"
Kerry shook his head, muttered something under his breath. V caught only one word: "...No."
But then his shoulders trembled. His hand came up, knuckles pressed to his mouth, like he could force the tears back down.
"Hey," V murmured, laying a hand on his arm. "You don't gotta hold it in with me. You never have to."
That did it, that broke him wide open. Kerry's breath hitched, loud in the stark silence, and suddenly the words spilled out, rough and broken and as uncontrollable as a tsunami against a sea wall.
"It's...my mom." His voice cracked, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his eye, like that could stop the tears. "Anniversary of when she died is today. Every year... fuck, it just gets—it hits me hard. It feels like it gets harder the older I get. Like I'm running out of pieces of her to remember."
V stayed quiet, hand steady on his arm.
Kerry's tears slipped free then, streaking down his face as the memories tumbled out. "She was my everything. She always had my back. Even when I was running around like a gonk and screwin' up—especially then. She'd sing while she cooked, filled the whole damn house with it. I'd wake up to her music. When Dad went away to work for months she took me and my sisters to see her family in the Philippines every summer. I'd run around with my cousins, catch fireflies with her when we got back to California till my hands got tired. And she—"
His voice broke into a sob. "She'd sat me down one day, told me I had talent—a spark in me. Told me I could be anything. That the music in my heart was a gift I had to share with the world."
He dragged in a shaky breath, trying to steady himself, but the grief kept spilling. "Doesn't matter how old I get, some days I still feel like that little boy...and I just want my mom. I want her hand on my cheek, tellin' me It'll be okay. To hear her tell me she loves me again."
The weight of his confession settled heavy in the room, broken only by Kerry's uneven breathing, practically gasping between sobs.
V didn't try to fix it or use any bandaid words to soothe his feelings. He just wrapped an arm around him, pulled him close and tight until Kerry finally let himself fold into the touch. Blanket and all, he leaned against V's chest, his crying shaking through him as he let himself come apart.
V pressed his chin to Kerry's hair, his hand rubbing a soothing rhythm into Kerry's arm and whispered, "I got you. It’s alright, you’ll be okay."
And for the first time all week, Kerry believed those words he'd tried to tell himself over and over. And he just let himself be held.
——
The next evening, the hot sun had slipped behind the mountains, leaving the villa coated in a soft, golden hush. Kerry was in the kitchen, gently lighting a candle on the counter. The flame flickered, throwing warm light across the walls untouched by the sun-rays, illuminating the old photograph of him and his mother propped next to the counter.
V leaned against the doorway, careful not to crowd him. "You want company?" he asked softly.
Kerry glanced over his shoulder, a small, almost shy nod. "If you... want to."
V smiled faintly, and sat nearby at the small breakfast table, hands folded in his lap. He didn't move anything, didn't reach for the candle—just let Kerry set the space.
"This is... how we remember the loved ones we've lost," Kerry said, voice low. "Filipino tradition. You light a candle, leave food, a prayer or two. Maybe a song. Haven't really shared it with anyone in decades, I get rustier every year."
V nodded. "Then I'll follow your lead. Show me."
Kerry's lips curved in a ghost of a smile. He arranged the plate of food he'd picked up earlier carefully beside the candle: a little garlic fried rice, sweet pork, a slice of mango—fruit his mom used to love. The scent wrapped the kitchen in a warm embrace.
V watched silently, impressed by how meticulously Kerry moved. He didn't speak. He didn't intrude on the moment. Just stood, letting Kerry shape the ritual, letting him set the tone.
Then Kerry hummed—a song his mother had sung to him in his youth. Carried by those first waves of deep sleep. It was soft, uneven, faltering at first, but growing steadier as he found the memory in his chest—tucked into his heart. The sound was fragile and beautiful.
V laid a hand gently on Kerry's shoulder and squeezed. He let himself be a grounding presence by his side.
The two of them stayed like that for a while. Candlelight danced across the walls, smoke curling lazily around the photo and into the air. The house felt warm as it settled against in the nighttime desert chill, full of memory and quiet reverence.
Kerry's hand brushed V's knuckles briefly, almost unconsciously, and he didn't pull away. Instead he gripped onto the hand for dear life. The grief was still there, simmering under the surface, but it was shared now, held in the same space as deep love, respect, and trust. V was shouldering him through it now.
——
The candle from earlier still burned low, its flickering light spilling over the edges of the kitchen counter and into the darkened living room. Kerry and V were curled up on the couch, the blanket pulled around both of them. Outside, the air had cooled as wind whispered through the open windows, stirring the faint scent of dry sand and V's outdoor sage pots that clung to the villa.
Kerry rested his head against V's chest, his hand draped lazily across V's side. His breathing was slow, steady, but V could feel the tremor of lingering grief beneath it, soft but persistent.
For a moment, Kerry's mind drifted—not here, not now, but back to another evening somewhere else in California. He was a young boy with scraped knees and a tooth missing, crouched on the porch of their home catching fireflies in mason jars as dusk painted the sky a deep orange. His mother sat beside him, singing a soft tune, her hand steady on her fabric as she patched his clothing from his day's adventures. She laughed when one escaped his grasp, brushing his curls back from his forehead and behind his ear as he pouted. That warmth, that laughter—it lingered, heavy and sweet, like honey in his chest.
"Didn't think I could share this—pain. Not with anyone," Kerry murmured, voice muffled against V's chest. "You made it... easier. Thank you."
V pressed a gentle kiss to his temple. "You're welcome. You don't gotta carry it alone, Ker. Not anymore."
Another memory surfaced, fragile but vivid. Pre-teen Kerry in the Philippines in the hot summertime haze, running recklessly barefoot across a dusty and old courtyard with younger and older cousins alike, shouting and laughing as they played with branches and rocks like they were weapons from another world. His mother called after him in Tagalog, her voice threading through the chaos of children, carrying the scent of mangoes and fried treats in her hands, guiding him back to her. He could feel her touch on his arm again as she lead him inside. He could feel her squeezing, steady and warm, even decades later.
Kerry exhaled, letting the tension in his shoulders melt into V's warmth. He shifted slightly, pressing closer, and V wrapped an arm around him, fingertips brushing over the blanket and settling at the small of Kerry's back.
The candlelight continued its dance, shadows from his kitchen flickered across the walls. Kerry remembered another evening, quiet, in the kitchen as a boy—his mother humming while stirring a fragrant pot he could still smell, pausing occasionally to pinch his cheek and reassure him about the awful lyrics he was writing on construction paper.
The hum of her voice was a tether to safety, to home.
They stayed like that for a long while, him and V. Just quiet silence wrapped around them. The cicadas murmured their unending hum outside, blending with the echo of his distant memories.
Eventually, Kerry's hand relaxed against V's chest, and his breathing evened out into sleep as another memory whispered behind his closed eyes: one of him lying in bed as a child, his mother beside him, humming a lullaby until he drifted off, her fingers drawing lazy circles across his forehead to soothe him after a long day.
V stayed awake a little longer, tracing similar lines and patterns on Kerry's arm, letting him rest. The weight of memory softened by the presence of someone who would hold him through it. Of a new and yet familiar form of love filling the cracks of his old heart.
The grief didn't disappear. It never would. But in that quiet, domestic moment, stitched together with candlelight, hot desert air, and sweet memory, it didn't have to hurt as much when he was missing his mom. Not with V by his side to help him remember the best of her.