Work Text:
The session stretched late into the night. The track, a minimalist beast, finally stood on its own.
The silence after the final playback was awkward, but it felt complete.
The work was finished.
Travis felt empty.
The adrenaline that had fueled him during those last few hours vanished, replaced by a familiar ache in his thigh.
Each pulse of pain reminded him of the studio, the bandage, Kanye’s thumb pressing down. He had been trying to forget that memory all night, burying it in work.
Kanye leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking. He turned slowly to face Travis, his expression hard to read in the dim light. He took a sip of water, his gaze fixed on Travis.
Travis focused on shutting down his laptop, feeling tense. He sensed the heavy silence approaching, the inevitable return to the outside world.
He just wanted to go home, retreat into the dark, and forget the look he had seen in Kanye’s eyes.
“So,” Kanye said, his voice low and rumbling, breaking the machinery's hum.
“What was that about?”
Travis’s fingers froze on the trackpad. He didn’t look up.
“What was what about?”
“Earlier. When I checked your…” Kanye gestured vaguely toward Travis’s leg.
“You got... you know, hard.”
The bluntness of his words knocked the air out of Travis’s lungs.
He had hoped, perhaps naively, that Kanye would ignore it.
He was wrong.
“I didn’t,” Travis mumbled, his voice thick.
He finally met Kanye’s gaze. The older man’s face was unreadable.
“It was the pain. You… you shocked my system, man. It was a nerve reaction. A reflex.”
Kanye stared at him. He showed no anger or disgust, just curiosity, like Travis was some confusing code.
“A reflex,” he repeated, flatly.
“Yeah,” Travis rushed, his words spilling out too quickly.
“You ever get hit in the knee? Your leg kicks. It’s like that. Just biology.”
He could almost hear the desperate sound of his own lies, like a child trying to explain a broken vase.
“Biology,” Kanye echoed.
He set his water bottle down on the console with a soft click.
“So it wasn’t… psychological?”
The question sliced through Travis. It peeled away the flimsy excuse, going straight for the heart of it.
“No,” he gasped.
He stood up abruptly, the chair screeching. The movement sent a fresh wave of pain through his leg, grounding him and making him feel sick.
“Why do you make it something it’s not? I told you it was an accident. I was in pain. You were hurting me.”
“I was assessing you,” Kanye corrected, his tone still calm.
It was too calm.
It felt like the calm before a storm, and only Travis sensed the pressure building.
“You needed to be cleaned out. You were all… cluttered. I fixed it.”
“You didn’t fix anything!” The words shot out of Travis, a sudden burst he hadn’t known was building. His voice cracked at the end.
“You just pressed on my stitches, Ye! What kind of assessment is that? What kind of…”
He was trembling now. He felt it start in his hands, an uncontrollable shake moving up his arms. The room felt cramped, the air thick. Kanye’s quiet, probing gaze felt heavy.
“Then explain it to me,” Kanye said, spreading his hands as if inviting Travis to the board.
“If it wasn’t biology, and it wasn’t psychology… what was it, Jacques? Help me understand.”
That use of his real name flipped a switch in Travis.
Not ‘Trav,’ the casual nickname.
Jacques.
It felt like a summons to the principal's office, like he was about to be expelled.
“I don’t know!” Travis shouted, his voice ragged.
He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots.
“I don’t know, okay? It just happens! It happens when you look at me too long. It happens when you use that tone in your voice that says I’m messing up. It happens when you touch my shoulder, or say my name a certain way, or when you don’t show up to my stuff and I’m left wondering what I did wrong!”
The floodgates opened. He babbled, tears of frustration and shame stinging the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t stop. The confession had a momentum of its own.
“You call me brilliant and then treat me like I’m nothing. You say I remind you of yourself, then you look at me like I’m some bug on your windshield. You pull me in and push me away, and I don’t know which way is up anymore! What do you want from me? Do you want me to be you? Do you want me to be better than you? Do you just want me to sit here, take whatever you give me, and say ‘thank you’?”
He was gasping for air, tears streaming down his face.
He hated it.
He hated crying in front of him. It felt like the ultimate weakness.
But he couldn’t stop. The dam had burst.
“And yeah! Yeah, I got hard! Because you were touching me! Because you finally paid attention, and it hurt, and it felt real, and I’m so tired of feeling like a ghost in this room! I’d rather you hurt me than ignore me! At least then I know I’m here! At least then I matter!”
He was sobbing openly now, his body shaking. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to hold it together.
He had said too much.
He had revealed the whole, ugly mess. There was no taking any of it back.
Kanye remained still.
He sat in his chair, his curiosity gone.
His expression was blank. Not cruel, not mocking. Just blank, as if Travis had spoken in a language he didn’t know.
The silence after Travis’s outburst was deafening.
It was worse than the shouting.
It felt like a void.
Travis wiped his nose on his sleeve, a childish gesture that added to his shame.
He waited for dismissal.
For laughter.
For the cold statement that would put him back in his place forever.
He couldn’t stand the silence.
He had to fill it.
He had to offer the one piece of truth he had left, the only thing that made any sense of the chaos.
“I love you.”
The words fell into the room, small and broken. They didn’t sound romantic. They felt like a terminal diagnosis.
He said it, and the silence that followed felt thicker, heavier.
Kanye blinked.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. No words came.
No rejection.
No acceptance.
Travis couldn’t bear it. The words felt inadequate. They were just noise. They hadn’t changed anything. A wild impulse seized him, born of total desperation.
If words meant nothing, maybe action meant something.
He took two stumbling steps forward, closing the distance.
Before his brain could catch on, before Kanye could flinch or speak, Travis leaned down and pressed his mouth against Kanye’s.
It wasn’t a good kiss. It was desperate and wet, salty with tears. His lips trembled. He just held them there, a clumsy pressure, waiting to be thrown away.
He wasn’t tossed aside.
For a second, nothing happened.
Kanye stood rigid, a statue under the unexpected kiss.
Then, a jolt ran through Travis’s system.
Kanye’s lips moved.
Just a little.
Not pushing him away.
Not kissing back with passion, but yielding.
There was the faintest response, a softening, a brief acknowledgment of the kiss that, against all logic, was shared.
That tiny movement, that almost-kiss, shattered him more than any cruelty.
Travis jerked back, electrified.
He stared, wide-eyed, his lips still tingling.
Kanye looked up at him, his expression shattered.
The blank shock was replaced by something raw and unguarded.
He looked lost.
For the first time, it seemed Travis had changed something in him.
“I… I…” Kanye started, his voice a strained whisper.
But Travis’s mind raced, rewriting the moment before it could settle into truth.
'He didn’t kiss back. It was a flinch, a muscle spasm. He was pulling away and you felt it wrong. You’re disgusting. He’s horrified. Look at his face.'
The narrative snapped into place, a familiar cage of shame.
The beautiful, terrifying possibility of that split-second response was too much to handle.
It was easier to believe he was worthless.
“I’m sorry,” Travis gasped, his words frantic.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t— I have to go.”
He didn’t wait.
He couldn’t.
He turned and lunged for the door, his leg screaming in protest.
He fumbled with the heavy handle, his vision blurry.
He didn’t look back.
He couldn’t see whatever was on Kanye’s face: disgust, pity, confusion.
He wrenched the door open and stumbled into the bright, sterile hallway. The door swung shut with a solid, final thud, cutting off the studio, the humming machines, the man he had just kissed.
He half-ran, half-limped down the corridor, his breath coming in ragged sobs that echoed off the concrete walls.
His mind screamed in chaos.
'He didn’t kiss back he didn’t kiss back he didn’t kiss back.'
He repeated it like a mantra, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to erase the impossible, fleeting feeling of it.
He burst through the stairwell door into cooler air.
He took the steps two at a time, ignoring the fire in his thigh.
He needed to be gone.
He needed to be anywhere but here, where the ghost of a kiss that probably never happened lingered in the air.
In the studio, Kanye remained seated.
He slowly raised a hand to his mouth, his fingers brushing his lips.
He stared at the closed door, his eyes wide.
He wasn’t thinking about power, art, or assessment.
He was just feeling.
A strange tingling on his skin, and a hollow quiet where Travis's chaos had just been.
He opened his mouth again, but all that came out was a soft, bewildered sigh into the empty room.
Outside, Travis fled into the night, the taste of tears and a lie he desperately needed to believe still on his tongue.