Work Text:
Neil squawks as Kevin sets out in a hard pace. He has to walk twice as fast to keep up with Kevin’s long strides. “Kevin!”
Lifting a hand, Kevin waves him off. “Pack up. You’re wasting my time.”
It’s at least midnight by now and Neil has not scored a single shot on Andrew who stands bored in his goal. Neil looks back at him with an exaggerated gesture, something along the lines of “help me” and Andrew just offers a casual shrug, arms propped up on his oversized racquet.
He doesn’t interfere with Kevin’s petty grievances, he only steps in when Kevin is in danger. And he hasn’t quite figured out if Neil is one, and he has said as much to Kevin, but he’s testing the waters.
Kevin turns on the shorter striker, eyes blazing. “Prove to me that you want this.”
“I do want this,” Neil says.
That’s not enough for Kevin who peels off the glove on his left hand before pressing it roughly to Neil’s chest. He seethes, “you’d make a better waterboy. Stop taking up space on my court if you’re not ready for it.”
Neil blinks up at him and Kevin can see the anger beginning to simmer. Neil has potential but he squanders it by holding back. Kevin has seen him play and wagered his career on his insistence that Neil Josten could one day be Court, and yet Neil does nothing but waste everything Kevin has put into bringing him here.
“I am ready for it.”
Stepping closer to Neil, Kevin finds he towers over him. Neil has to crane his neck to meet Kevin’s eye, he takes half a step backwards—submission. “Prove it.”
Neil reclaims that half-step by edging closer to Kevin again. “Your standards are unattainable.”
“Score on Andrew.”
Neil’s blood is simmering, the anger that Kevin needs to bring out of him for him to play the game as it was meant to be. “Andrew is impossible to score on.”
“Other goalkeepers will not go easy on you,” Kevin levels. “You will not learn to score on them if Andrew lets your shots pass to save your feelings.”
With a huff, Neil brings up a hand and gestures between their heads. “You’re being ridiculous,” Neil hisses. “I don’t have enough experience. Sorry I’m not a Raven, that must be really hard for you.”
“The Ravens would eat you alive.”
Neil scoffs, “asshole.”
Happy that he’s won this argument, as he always does, Kevin turns back to his path off the court. “Score on Andrew or don’t bother showing up in the morning.”
Kevin stands in the shower, feeling the pressure of the water as it pushes through his hair, pooling in the hollows of his throat and chest, down his long limbs. He basks in the warmth as it melts the edge off of his aching body. He may have gone a bit hard tonight, trying to push Neil to be better, but ultimately failing.
He wasn’t wrong when he said that the Ravens would eat Neil alive. Kevin is tempered and weather-forged by the Nest, but even then he wasn’t strong enough. The Ravens are monsters, feral dogs ready to tear each other to pieces if it means reaching the top, eager to claim one of Riko’s numbers at any cost.
Thinking about it makes the muscles in Kevin’s hand ache. There was no winning over Riko, Kevin was doomed the second someone suspected that he could be better. Kevin’s spot was always number two, he couldn’t supersede it.
Eventually he manages to push away the flood of memories from the Nest, all dark and sullen. The day Riko broke his hand was the worst of his life, but it also saved Kevin from having to spend his entire existence as a toy under Riko’s thumb.
Cranking off the shower, Kevin steps out of the billowing steam and reaches for his towel. All of the other shower stalls are open, Neil and Andrew must still be on the court. Maybe they’ll go until Neil’s wrists break.
Kevin meanders through getting dry and changed, he’s already dreaming of his bed. Though he wouldn’t get to stay in it for very long based on how long they’ve been at it tonight.
He’s zipping up his hoodie when Andrew comes waltzing into the locker room.
The blond just shrugs. “He can’t pick up a racquet but he’s packing up. At this rate he’ll still be here when we come back.”
Andrew disappears and Kevin sits on the bench to wait for him. He rustles through his bag for his phone and to his surprise, he has a bunch of missed calls and texts.
His blood freezes when he realises they’re all from Jean.
They haven’t really spoken since Kevin left. Aside from Kevin calling Jean in a panic to confirm the district change. So him reaching out now is just odd, but trying to contact Kevin so urgently tells a different story. Something has happened.
Six missed calls. Even more unread messages. Asking him to call, begging him to pick up. Again and again until Kevin’s eyes lock onto one in particular.
Jean (11:47pm): Kevin, I’m scared.
Kevin doesn’t even read to the bottom, he sees that message and his phone is ringing in his hand, an outgoing call. He presses the phone to his ear and prays.
It rings.
And rings.
And rings.
Jean doesn’t pick up.
Kevin keeps trying, he’s pacing nervous laps of the locker room when Andrew emerges from his shower, towel hung low on his hips, armbands like tattoos. He lifts an eyebrow at Kevin’s state but doesn’t ask.
The most Andrew does is send Kevin a few curious glances as he gets dressed. When he is almost dressed and Kevin is pacing past him, tapping out another anxious message hoping for a response, he sticks out a hand and Kevin walks right into it, the force of Andrew’s strong arm enough to stop him from moving, but the shift in momentum sends his phone flying from his hands and across the room.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Andrew says. “Coach just had them waxed.”
Kevin ignores him and ducks the blond’s arm, scrambling for his phone. Maybe if he sends one more text, Jean will wake up and tell him everything is okay, he’ll tell him that it resolved while Kevin was in the shower, or on the court yelling at Neil.
The thought of Jean suffering always made Kevin sick, but there was a sort of inevitability to it. As long as he was Riko’s, he would suffer.
Kevin shouldn’t have left him there.
Just as he’s about to record another frantic voicemail, Andrew comes to stand over him. He tilts his head and crosses his arms, looking down on his ward. “What happened?” His voice is as monotone as ever but Kevin can hear the hint of interest, a softening to his words because he knows Kevin is in a fragile state.
Kevin gulps a painful breath, chest hitching. “Jean texted me. A-and called me. He was freaking out, and now he won’t pick up. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Andrew says as he crouches in front of Kevin. “He’s probably asleep.”
Not believing him in the slightest, but his energy is wavering as exhaustion takes him, Kevin just nods like a puppet on someone else’s string and lets Andrew take the phone from his hand and walk out of the locker room, wordlessly expecting for Kevin to follow.
The next day Jean Moreau’s suicide hits the news.
Kevin is adamant against the reality of it all. He feels unmoored, a ship left to drift away without something holding it down. He doesn’t cry, he just sits cross legged on his bed, one of his pyjama pants rolled up to his knee because he couldn’t stop tossing and turning all night, afraid that this is the news the morning would bring.
How he wishes to blot out the sun.
Under the cover of moonlight he could deny it, postpone the day and live in a perfect world again, where Jean is alive and Kevin didn’t fail him.
“Kevi?” Andrew tries and Kevin finally remembers he’s not alone. He looks up from his red ruddy palms and their creases that were meant to tell him something about his life. He can’t remember if his lifelines were this long yesterday.
Andrew is sitting on the edge of Kevin’s bed with an unreadable expression. Not his usual apathy but something almost human. His blond hair is all ruffled and his eyes are intense.
“Kevin?” It’s not like Andrew to treat him so tenderly. “Are you coming to practice?”
That must be where everyone else is, getting ready for practice, or possibly even there. How long has Kevin been sitting here like this? Nothing feels real, maybe it’s all a bad dream.
“Pinch me,” he says in a small breath.
“What?” Andrew asks.
“Pinch me.”
Never one to turn down an opportunity to hurt someone, Andrew leans over and pinches some of the exposed skin on Kevin’s leg, just above the ankle. Kevin feels everything.
Andrew retracts his hand. “You’re not dreaming.”
Shaking his head, Kevin drops his gaze again. He curls his fingers into fists and holds them as tightly as he can, the slight sting giving him something to hold onto.
Unfurling them shows little crescent marks in his palms but they smooth out in less than a second and they look the same again. He keeps expecting the roof to cave in, his life should be in ruins because Jean is dead but he’s sitting in his bed states away, wearing the same pyjamas he always wears, and Andrew is still looking at him with a vague sense of interest.
Why hasn’t the floor opened up and sucked him into the darkness too?
“Is he dead?” Kevin asks in a small voice.
Andrew’s tone is as even as ever when he replies. “Yes.”
“Is it my fault?”
“No.”
Taking a shaky breath, Kevin closes his eyes and tilts his head towards the bunk above him. All the bars and springs and the blue swirls on the mattress, he finds his eyes burning. “I think it is.”
“You are not responsible for his actions,” Andrew says.
“I left him,” Kevin whispers. “I knew he would die if I left and I did it anyway.”
“You would have died if you stayed.”
Andrew is all blurred by Kevin’s watery eyes as he looks to him again. He doesn’t care about the truth. He wants to break something, a plate, a racquet, his hand, anything. He wants to break every bone in his body if it meant he hadn’t been on the court when Jean called last night.
He would’ve driven to Edgar Allen, given himself over to those monsters if it meant he could have saved him.
“At least then he wouldn’t have been alone,” Kevin says, his voice catching and breaking. As he blinks the tears finally fall.
Andrew sighs and pats Kevin on the knee. “I’ll let Coach know you’re staying here today.”
Shaking his head profusely, so much that the tips of his overgrown hair dip into his tear tracks and streak them across his face, Kevin says, “no, I wanna go to practice.”
Before Kevin can get to the locker room, Wymack appears from his office and waves Kevin inside. Wordlessly, he sits in his chair and gestures for Kevin to take the one across from his desk.
“Now, Kevin,” Wymack starts, fluttering his hands between papers on his desk and the pens in his cup. He picks up a pen and clicks it a few times as he tries to find the words.
“I’m fine,” Kevin bristles. He’s full of energy with nowhere to put it. He needs to run laps until he drops dead.
Wymack’s expression is soft, too soft. Kevin doesn’t need pity, he’s not the one who killed himself. “I know you’ve heard about Jean by now. I’m sorry it got to you so early. I would have liked to break the news softly, but I guess there’s no soft way about it.”
Kevin just lets out an unimpressed huff. Being abrasive is a Kevin Day special, but the edge to Wymack’s eyes makes him feel like his facade isn’t working as well as he would like it to. He’s spent his whole life wanting a dad, having one now wouldn’t change anything. And yet, Wymack keeps trying to show up for him even though he doesn’t know that Kevin’s his son.
It unsettles Kevin still to see him being so compassionate. The master would have already bruised him for being late to practice.
He doesn’t need kid gloves.
Leaning forward, Wymack rests his elbow on his desk and props his head up in it. Clearly gauging Kevin’s projected apathy. “I just want you to know that there’s people you can talk to: Betsy, Abby, your team–hell, even me, I might be a bit of a tough nut but my ears do work,” he says. “I can’t fix it for you, but I can damn well try to make it bearable.”
Kevin just nods and looks down at the speckled linoleum floor. There’s a patch of flecks that look a little bit like a dog maw. He spent so many hours staring at this specific spot when he first came to South Carolina. It helps him to not feel all alone here.
“Can I go now?” Kevin asks, keeping his tone disinterested.
“I want you to make an appointment with Betsy before the end of the day,” Wymack says. “Other than that, get changed and catch up with the warm ups.”
He gets up to leave, hasty like he’s running out of air and this office is a fishbowl that god keeps him in to test if his lungs will burst.
“Kevin,” Wymack calls out just as Kevin grabs the door handle.
He freezes but doesn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Kevin chokes on his words so his gratitude goes unspoken as he disappears down the hall.
The court is not any safer from the prying eyes. Seth couldn’t care less, but the rest of the upperclassmen have that deer in headlights look when he stalks out onto the court. He brushes past them without allowing anyone to get a word in.
He doesn’t miss the way that Neil keeps looking at him throughout practice. Little cretin can’t keep his eyes to himself. He should be focusing on making his shots and Kevin has half a mind to tell him that but comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t care.
Something burns in him and it’s devouring him whole.
Ignoring Wymack and the rest of the foxes, Kevin grabs a bucket of balls and heads to the far end of the court. By anyone else’s standards he wouldn’t need to work on his accuracy but he will not be content until he can call his right hand an equal to his left.
That’s the thing about Kevin Day, in his mind he will never be good enough.
So he flings balls at the wall, initially working on his aim but quickly dissolving into throwing them as hard as he can. Until he’s breathing ragged uneven puffs and each hit sounds like a gunshot.
He throws the balls as if it can save him. It can't.
As every strike lands, Kevin pictures a new way that Jean could have ended his life. The public statement Edgar Allen put out just said that he’d taken his life. That leaves a plethora of ways for Kevin to soak his brain in.
Jean with a handful of pills he could have snuck from Josiah’s office. Because he never keeps the door locked, no Raven would dare snoop in there unless they have a deathwish. Jean would have let them beat him to death either way.
The blue veins under Jean’s pale skin, ripped open with god knows what. A razor, most likely. Kevin can see in his mind Jean on the floor of the bathroom, prying apart the plastic to pull out the flimsy blade and take it upon himself.
He would never have been able to get a gun.
He could have stepped into the street. In the middle of the night he would have had to trek so far to get to a busy enough road for someone to hit him. Was it cold? Did he take a hoodie or did he walk out in front of a car in just his pyjamas and his socks?
Strung up by his neck. There’s plenty of sturdy ceiling beams in the Nest, ample opportunities to hang from. Sourcing the rope would be harder, but not impossible.
Jean hates water.
Finding the air suddenly knocked from him, Kevin falls to his knees. His racquet is forgotten as he starts stripping off his helmet, then his throat guard. He can’t breathe.
Every attempt makes his chest tighter, gulps of air become strained wheezes. He’s clawing at his clothes, as if it’s the uniform making it hard. He peels off his shirt and his gloves in a frenzy, he’s shucking off his armour when a hand comes to rest on his shoulder.
It’s Wymack’s voice that breaks through his panic. “Kevin.”
His shuddering and heaving body is pulled in close to Wymack. He smells like coffee and cigarettes and Kevin breathes it in. His face is wet, he doesn’t know how long he’s been crying. All he knows is he can’t breathe, Wymack is here, and Jean is dead.
“You gotta breathe, kid,” Wymack says in his gravelly voice. Kevin can feel the rumble of it in his chest. Wymack is rubbing his back and rocking him gently like he’s an infant and not a grown man. He wonders if this is what it means to have a dad.
Tetsuji had never held him like this, but his mother had. All of his memories with her are sweet. She had never hurt him, even when he climbed into bed crying because he had a nightmare, or he called out to her from his bed because the lightbulb went out and he was scared of the dark.
She always came.
Until she couldn’t and Kevin had to learn to face the dark alone.
He clings to Wymack’s shirt and just lets himself be held. He tries to breathe, his breaths come in staggered chokes as his ribs have grown far too small to hold him. It hurts but eventually they loosen and the air comes in.
“Good job,” Wymack mumbles. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
With his head buried in Wymack’s shirt, Kevin just cries on the court floor and Wymack lets him. Kevin knows he should apologise for burdening him like this, but some selfish part of him wants to feel like he earned it.
Maybe growing up without a dad and having Tetsuji Moriyama as the closest step in, means that now Kevin can lean on Wymack. He learnt long ago not to yearn for a father, but now that he has one, he wishes he could have grown up with him.
Once Kevin has mostly calmed down, he peels himself off of Wymack’s wet shirt and wipes at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers.
“You have nothing to apologise for,” Wymack says. His face is soft but his voice firm.
Shuffling back to put more space between him and his coach, Kevin looks around the court and finds that they’re the only two on it.
“Where’d the team go?” he asks.
“Practice ended two hours ago, so probably class,” Wymack offers up nonchalantly. “You were pretty into it so I thought you could use a little court therapy—Not a stand-in for regular therapy however.”
With a strangled laugh, Kevin wipes his eyes again and rubs tears all over his face but this time he can say “thank you” and have Wymack hear him.
“Alright,” Wymack says, slapping a hand on his thigh. “Why don’t you come sit in my office and I’ll ring Betsy to see when she can see you.”
“But my classes—” Kevin objects.
Wymack holds up his hand. “No classes, get notes later.” He stands up and offers Kevin a hand, “I have snacks in my office.”
That earns a weak chuckle from Kevin who takes his hand and lets himself be hauled to his feet. He stumbles a step but Wymack catches him with a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be lucky if Andrew hasn’t already raided your stash.”
Wymack groans. “I need to invest in locks for everything I own.”
They both know that won’t stop Andrew. But it’s fun to pretend.
Jean Moreau was born in the fall. He dies in it too. Orange leaves litter the grass like the fox paws in the stadium Kevin has come to call home.
Kevin had sworn he would never come back to West Virginia. But he couldn’t leave Jean, he’d already done it once and here he is paying the ultimate price.
Kevin has to watch them lower his dark wood casket into the ground. His parents didn’t want him back, Kevin doesn’t know how they twisted the story so that there was no public outcry that Jean’s body would be buried here and not in France.
Buried in a state that had never been anything but cold to him, maybe on the coast of Marseille he would have been warmed by the sun.
Here under the willows, surrounded by birds but no mourning doves. Kevin could not pull the black feathers entirely.
The Ravens are dressed head to toe in black. Surprisingly the master could deem it inappropriate for them to represent the sport, to proudly be the team that killed him. The press wouldn’t know the difference but the Ravens would not mourn him.
Kevin is all in black too, some habits hard to kill when they’re enscribed into your DNA. Andrew is wearing an oversized denim jacket over his creased dress shirt and slacks. The jacket has rips in the fabric and small silver studs along the seams that catch in the afternoon light and make Kevin feel like the tears in his eyes could have been for something beautiful.
But they’re here to mark the cessation of Jean.
The world is uglier for losing him.
Kevin vaguely remembers the day he met Jean. The scared kid with big anxious eyes, the kid who had never been chosen, offered up to Riko as a plaything, stumbling over English in a thick accent who completely changed on the court.
The Nest had beaten Jean until he broke, he was only sixteen when he entered it, and it had never been easy for him. Kevin watched slowly as the bruises and scars accumulated, as Jean lost his passion for Exy, he didn’t get to enjoy it anymore because his entire life hindered on him playing. He earnt his number a million times over but still he had no place.
The other Ravens resented him for his place on Riko’s Perfect Court, Riko denied him access to Kevin. Jean was just left stranded with nothing to hold onto. The wind swept him down into the darkest corners of the Nest.
The master is saying something placating about how wonderful of an athlete Jean was, about how valued he was by the Ravens. The Ravens that hated him for being anything other than a machine.
Eat. Sleep. Exy. Eat. Sleep. Exy.
Jean was never built to be a robot, Kevin doesn’t think any of the Ravens truly were.
The fact that someone as kind as Jean survived in the Nest for this long is a miracle in and of itself.
There’s nothing left for Kevin in West Virginia anymore. Just a box and the ghost of a boy he should have done better by.
Riko’s endless game, a boy chosen by Kevin as something more than either of them could articulate.
He’ll regret it for the rest of his life.
It’s an eight hour drive from West Virginia to Palmetto. Andrew must hate Kevin for making him drive them back immediately after the funeral but if Kevin spends another night in this cursed state he’s going to rip out his own teeth and eat them.
Andrew just agrees to drive them as long as there’s enough gas station breaks to stock up on snacks. So Kevin curls up in the passenger seat and dutifully offers snacks to Andrew, or naps. He sleeps fitfully and everything is so dark, whenever he wakes at a jostle in the road or Andrew cussing someone out for not indicating it’s like breaking surface tension of water. Like he had been holding his breath the entire time he slept.
This time it just felt a little too real, Kevin needs to reorient himself. The sun is beginning to set, painting the sky in hues of orange and pink—purple where the deepest night begins to blossom.
Deciding to stay awake for a little bit, Kevin finds himself picking over Andrew’s snacks. He eventually eats a few handfuls of caramel covered popcorn and pretends he doesn’t hate the too-sweet taste or when the kernels get stuck in his teeth.
“You’re shaking,” Andrew notes as he looks over, and then back to the road like he never spoke.
“I just–” Kevin groans. He eventually clicks open the glovebox and roots through until his hands find the cool metal shape of a flask— “need a drink,” he says, holding up the flask.
It’s mostly empty and when Kevin unscrews the top and gives it a sniff his mood sours further.
“Whiskey?” he asks.
“It’ll put hair on your chest,” Andrew chimes as he pats Kevin on the shoulder.
“I don’t want hair on my chest,” Kevin sulks. “You know I prefer vodka.”
“Knowing and caring are two different things.”
Kevin takes a swig and swallows, the burn chasing its way down his throat. He makes a face. “Yuck.”
Andrew just laughs. “You’ll be a man one day, Kevi.”
As they pass a sign saying that they’re leaving West Virginia makes Kevin’s stomach turn. He’s leaving Jean behind again, possibly forever. Maybe if Kevin grows up to be less of a coward he could visit Jean’s grave without needing to be drunk off of his feet but that’s a while off.
He left Jean and it’s all he keeps doing.
They get maybe another two miles out of the state when Kevin suddenly feels really nauseous and cold all over. So, like any sane person, he takes a drink from the flask again, enjoys it less, and realises that it did nothing to help.
“How far is the next rest stop?” Kevin asks. His saliva is getting that slimy thickness as it pools by his molars, stomach roiling. He swallows it and tries to bite down on his tongue, keep it at bay.
“No clue,” Andrew says. “Why?”
“I think I need another drink.”
“You have a drink in your hand.”
Kevin stares at the dent in the metal flask and wonders if he can add another by means of Andrew’s smartass skull. “I need literally anything else.”
“Okay, just hold on, we can get to the next town and look for a liquor store,” Andrew says.
Kevin feels the rush coming over him but he nods and just tries to close his eyes and breathe through it.
Because he is not particularly good at not falling apart, they make it another half-mile before Kevin lets out a desperate. “Pull over.”
“What? No.”
“Andrew, pull over,” Kevin says. He’s gripping the handle by his head hard enough that one of his knuckles pops.
“Okay, okay.” Andrew gives in and slows down enough that he can pull over.
The car has barely stopped by the time Kevin is stumbling out of the passenger seat and into the grass where he falls to his knees. And throws up.
His body is wracked by convulsions as it desperately tries to clear out everything Kevin has eaten since birth. He’s coughing and hacking between every heave, so much that he doesn’t notice Andrew until he’s crouched next to him.
He pats Kevin on the back. “You good?”
Satisfied that he’s puked up his entire stomach contents and at least three internal organs, Kevin sits back on his haunches and wipes his mouth with a hand. His face is covered in tears as he turns to Andrew. “I left him there.”
“What?” Andrew’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “Who?”
“Jean,” Kevin chokes on the name like grief is poison in his throat.
Andrew’s expression smooths. “Oh.”
“I-I left him there!” Kevin sobs. He’s bordering on hysterical now, running his hands through his hair and down his clothes as if that will save him from the ache in his chest.
“You didn’t know,” Andrew says, placing an awkward hand on his shoulder.
“I did.” Kevin takes a shuddering breath. Is it just him or is there no air out here? “I knew what would happen to him and I still left!”
Seemingly in a once-in-a-lifetime moment of weakness for dear Andrew Minyard, Kevin finds himself being hugged by him. It’s awkward and stiff and Kevin isn’t sure if Andrew has ever hugged a person before. Andrew doesn’t do affection, he won’t even hug Nicky or Aaron, but he’s holding Kevin on the side of the highway next to a puddle of vomit and his arms are strong like Kevin has never been.
Andrew doesn’t do frilly and placating words, he never lies to spare anyone else’s feelings. So he says, in a way that is not very kind by a regular person’s standards but is like offering up his firstborn, “Jean is dead. You left. If you had stayed, you would both be dead.”
Kevin doesn’t say anything, too drained to argue, too tired to live.
“I’m gonna hop back in the car,” Andrew says after a long while of silently holding Kevin. “But I won’t leave. I’ll stay here as long as you need.”
Kevin just nods and stays in the damp grass.
Before getting back in the driver’s seat, Andrew fishes out a black hoodie from the backseat and comes back to drape it over Kevin’s shaking shoulders. “Don’t freeze to death. The team would be very sad to go on without you.”
“And what about you?”
“I’d get bored.”
Kevin sits out in the cold for a while, he’s unsure how long but when he finally climbs back into the car, the heater is running and Andrew is finishing off a chocolate bar. The goalkeeper looks over at him and Kevin just wordlessly buckles his seatbelt and puts his feet on the dash. Andrew doesn’t even scold him.
Neither of them speak when Andrew drives past the next turn off to a town. They don’t stop again until they need gas which isn’t until nightfall and they’re almost through Virginia.
Wymack so graciously offers—demands—that Kevin stay with him for a bit after the funeral. He just wants to keep an eye on Kevin, but it becomes clear that he’s a bit clumsy around delicate matters.
He cooks and makes sure that Kevin is still meeting all his scholarly and athletic requirements so Palmetto won’t give him the boot but aside from that he’s pretty hands off.
He bans Kevin from his night practices and he, quite notably, does not say anything about Kevin’s drinking.
So Kevin lines up bottle after bottle on the coffee table and throws up until he is exhausted enough to sleep. It’s a vicious cycle and he knows that Wymack is working up the courage to say something, to yank Kevin back from the ledge, but he’s too scared.
The only thing is, Kevin is not sure what he’s scared of. He’s the one who’s scared, this is his father and he doesn’t even know. To him, Kevin is nothing more than another team member, another college kid, maybe a living relic of his mother’s memory. Her eyes, the curve of her nose, the shape of her jaw.
Wymack will have a better idea of what she looked like, Kevin only has a scarce few photos. Everything in his home was lost to him when he was whisked away to Tetsuji’s care, so all he has are some newspaper clippings and pictures from sports magazines. She feels unattainable this way, so disconnected from Kevin, like he’s not her son, but just a fan.
Unsure if he can handle more loss, Kevin keeps her close to his heart and he knows she’ll welcome Jean in there too.
Alcohol disinfects wounds, so Kevin tries drenching his heart in it. As if the bottom of a vodka bottle can make this go away.
So tonight he is back on his schedule of drinking himself stupid. Wymack is asleep in his bedroom and Kevin is just watching past games on the TV and getting intimate with his good friend Absolut Vodka.
In his drunken stupor getting up to grab something to eat, he catches his shin on the coffee table and all the empty bottles come tumbling off and smashing on the floor. Damn hardwood floors, if this apartment were carpeted like the dorms he wouldn’t have this problem. The dorms, however, are home to many mystery stains that likely will never come out.
Dropping to the floor, Kevin starts panickedly trying to pick up the shards of glass. He grabs the big ones first, piling them all as best he can on the coffee table. He’s so uncoordinated that he’s basically taking fistfuls of shards and cutting his hands to shit.
He doesn’t even realise he’s crying again until he sniffles and there’s the click of a door behind him.
“Kevin?” Wymack asks, voice thick with sleep.
Kevin just hiccups on a sob. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’ll clean it up.”
“Hey, hey,” Wymack says in a soft tone. He comes dangerously close to Kevin and the boy freezes, expecting a blow that never comes. Wymack comes down to his level and gently takes one of Kevin’s wrists. “Don’t worry about that, you’re hurting yourself.”
He’s right. Blood is dripping everywhere. Kevin stares at the blood but he cannot feel the sting in his palms. He just feels cold.
Wymack takes Kevin’s other arm and guides the stumbling mess to the bathroom. Turning on the faucet, he sticks Kevin’s hands one by one under the water. Kevin watches the bloodied water circle the drain and wishes he could go with it.
Pulling one hand up to investigate, Wymack swears. “You’ve got glass in your hands, wait here, I’ll get the tweezers and a flashlight.”
“I should die,” Kevin says morosely, still watching the red. Around and around and around before finally draining away through the grate.
Wymack freezes, his grip tightening. Not enough to hurt but to hold Kevin steady. “No, you should not.”
Kevin’s eyes stay locked on the drain. The blood drips onto the porcelain drop by drop. Further messing up Wymack’s apartment. Kevin can’t breathe. How can he drown on dry land?
He’s not sure how long it takes Wymack to find what he needs, his head’s all floaty. Time isn’t real anymore, Jean died yesterday, Kevin will meet him for the first time tomorrow.
“Come on, sit,” Wymack says as he steers Kevin to the toilet where he sits on the closed lid. Wymack drapes a white towel over Kevin’s lap and brings out his tweezers and a head lamp that Kevin is almost certain he’s never used before now.
Wymack works in silence, pulling as many glass shards as he can find out of Kevin’s hands. His palms and fingers are all torn up and bloody. He’s getting blood on Wymack’s white towel.
“I should die,” he says again.
Not looking up, Wymack replies, “you’re not dying today.”
The next few minutes pass in silence. The ache in Kevin’s ribs grows heavier.
Is it guilt or grief?
What’s the difference?
Kevin slides his tongue around his mouth, following the shape of his bottom teeth. Molars, premolars, canines, incisors, canines, premolars, molars. Eventually he manages to speak some of the weight he feels, honest in this sickening white light.
“I need to die.”
Wymack is firm not looking at Kevin as he starts to clean the blood off of Kevin’s hands with cotton pads. They just spread the mess in thick streaks across his pale skin. “No, you don’t.”
“Just let me do this,” Kevin beseeches, “please.”
“You’re drunk,” Wymack says. His hand trembles as he swaps a soaked cotton pad for another. “You don’t mean it.”
The thing is, Kevin really does. He’s so sick of this feeling, the pain that never goes away, his mother, the idea of family, the only real family he’d ever formed, all gone. If he doesn’t have exy he has nothing else.
Kevin has never been wanted since his mother died. He learnt so much under the harmful hand of Tetsuji, it forever warped the way he thinks. He butts heads with the Foxes because if they don’t play they just move on, if Kevin doesn’t play he will die.
Choking on sobs as they tear their way free from the little box inside of him that he tries to keep them locked in, Kevin falls apart. Breaths that feel like they’re tearing him, cutting his ribs into slivers.
“Please, just let me die,” Kevin begs, like a little kid begging his dad to make it all better. “Jean didn’t deserve it. I do.”
There’s fat hot tears running down his face as his chest hitches with every strangled gasp for air. He’s a mess and he knows it. Through the cloud of alcohol, Kevin feels his hands start to sting.
Wymack stands up and, regardless of the mess, pulls Kevin into a hug. “I will never let that happen,” he swears, his grip unwavering.
The next morning, with sloppily bandaged hands and a world-ending hangover, Kevin is dragged to Betsy’s office by Wymack. It’s half an hour before her schedule starts and her hair is still wet from a shower as she warmly smiles at Kevin.
He wonders what strings he had to pull to get her to see him so early, how desperate he must have been. Betsy must sleep with her ringer on for Wymack to have even gotten through last night.
“Have a seat, Kevin,” she says as she gestures to a few chairs in her office.
He tentatively sits in the one furthest away from her chair. If she’s too close she’ll see right through him. He knocks his knees together and folds his hands in his lap, waiting for the killing blow.
Betsy just smiles sweetly again as she takes her seat. She’s wearing a long purple cardigan over her usual blouse and skirt. It’s not really cold enough in here to warrant it. South Carolina doesn’t get too cold, especially not in October. Kevin stares at her shoes. Simple flats with a scalloped edge and tiny holes in the leather following that edge that he can’t figure out the purpose of. Probably just aesthetics.
“Can I get you anything to drink? Water, tea, coffee?”
Kevin just shakes his head. The idea makes him sick. He’s usually functioning at a baseline of being too drunk to be hungover, but Wymack cleared out all the remaining alcohol when he cleaned up the living room last night.
Her smile doesn’t leave.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” Wymack says in a gruff voice before leaving the office. Kevin feels awfully exposed without him here, like a deer in a meadow unaware of the watching hunter and his rifle.
The first real thing Betsy says is as soon as the door clicks shut and she crosses one leg over the other. “My condolences for your loss,” she says. “I understand you and Jean were quite close.”
Kevin shakes his head. “You don’t get to talk about him.”
“Okay,” Betsy amends. “How about we talk about you?”
With a scoff, Kevin’s voice is sharp. “What’s there to talk about?”
“Your drinking, for one, or the injuries to your hands.”
She says it so casually, as if she’s asking him if it’s cloudy outside and not a tornado tearing up Kevin’s insides. They can pick up houses and rip them to shreds and deposit them miles away. His heart is being battered against his ribcage repeatedly and left as a knot in his throat.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Thats okay.” She taps her pen on her clipboard. It has a furry pompom on the end. Kevin eyes it with distaste. Critically unprofessional. “What do you want to talk about?”
Kevin shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about any of it. Not him, not with you, not with anyone.”
If he keeps Jean tucked inside of him he can hold onto the memory of him. He’s starting to forget more than he remembers about his mother, he doesn’t want to forget Jean too.
Wymack finally lets Kevin back on the court at the game the next Friday. He meets Betsy twice a week and he doesn’t say anything about Jean, but they talk about other things and apparently that is enough to satisfy Wymack.
He moved his bag of stuff back into the dorm that morning, finally out from under Wymack’s watchful eye. Only to be under Andrew’s and Andrew knows him better.
The buzzing in his veins he hasn’t been able to shake with just running drills and running laps is still there and it feasts on the roar of the crowd.
Switching his racquet between hands repeatedly, Kevin just breathes in the court. The only place he has ever felt whole. Even with a fractured soul he is finally home.
Neil knocks sticks with him, bringing him back into his body. Kevin looks down at him, he can almost see Neil’s brown contacts through the grate of his helmet.
“Are you with us?” Neil asks.
Kevin gives him a nod, followed by an unsteady, “yeah.”
Neil doesn’t look convinced but walks over to his mark, Kevin follows suit and finds his. A lifetime of games, no starting whistle has ever made his stomach bottom out like this one.
The court erupts into chaos. Kevin can’t keep track of it, the ball is lost in a frenzy of movement and Kevin blows uselessly in the wind like a kite stuck in a tree.
A yelled “Kevin” bursts through the crowd of players and Kevin snaps into focus. Dan has the ball and she takes another step until Kevin locks eyes with her and then she sends it flying. Kevin bodies his mark out of the way and catches the ball. He takes four steps before launching it at the goal.
It lights up red.
His mark roughly knocks shoulders with him as he passes and Kevin is whisked away again.
He turns around to follow the backliner, the black hair creeping out from under his helmet, only an inch or so taller than Kevin, for a flash he’s in black and red.
“Jean?” Kevin asks in a whoosh of air like he’s been kicked in the sternum.
The backliner keeps walking. His uniform changes colour to green and yellow, and reality comes crashing down again. Kevin bites down on his tongue until he tastes metal.
Exy is all Kevin has but the sport is soaked in Jean’s blood. From their Raven days when Jean’s armour would become saturated in it and everyone could smell it on him. And they swarmed like sharks every time. Kevin should have done more for him, while he could, even though he knows he couldn’t have stepped in.
Kevin gets subbed out for Seth after the first twenty minutes and he drags his feet off court. Wymack pats him on the shoulder, Kevin keeps walking until he’s in the locker room.
Punching in his code with shaky fingers takes longer than he would like but after a few tries he feels the click and the door comes open. Buried behind his bag and clothes is a stash of mini vodka bottles, the single shots like you get on aeroplanes. Just for when he needs them.
He downs two and shoves them roughly to the back of the locker before closing it behind him and trudging back out to the game. Andrew eyes him carefully as he joins him on the bench.
“I’m putting you back out at the start of next half,” Wymack tells him. “Neil needs a break and we need some points.”
“Okay,” Kevin says with a nod. He doesn’t really care if he plays or not, still rattled by the brief moment he had in which Jean was still alive and none of this had ever happened.
He’s everywhere Kevin looks. Every part of Kevin’s life is entrenched in Jean.
Leaning in close, Andrew talks in a whisper. “You’ve been drinking,” he says.
“No,” Kevin says too stiffly, refusing to look at Andrew.
“Liar,” Andrew bites. “I can smell it on you.”
“And you’re off your meds,” Kevin says, eyes still locked ahead on the plexiglass wall.
Andrew just laughs. “Me and coach have a deal.”
Taking a measured breath, Kevin turns to Andrew and his intense eyes. He always looks a little bit feverish when he’s off his medication but he knows not to believe it, this is when Andrew is at his most clear-headed.
“Don’t we have a deal?” Kevin asks.
“Hey, I won’t tell him,” Andrew says, holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re no fun when you’re sober.”
Kevin hasn’t been sober in three weeks. Twenty-two days to be precise.
There’s a bit of a buzz in Kevin’s brain by the time the next half starts. He’s all warm and pliable, calmer than he has been in a while. He needs to restock his locker before the next game if this is the only way he can play without seeing ghosts.
He does not know a world in which Exy will not be tied to Jean but he has to live in this one.
He wakes up crying in the early hours of the morning on the following Monday.
Choking on sobs, Kevin tries covering his mouth to soften the noise. He rolls to the side so that his back is to the room and he feels the sweat soaking his shirt and the sheets.
Betsy makes him do dumb breathing exercises for when he has panic attacks but Kevin can never really remember how to do it when he’s panicking. His chest stutters and stops, catching again on a gasped breath, like a stalling car. Start and stop. Start and stop.
He’s in hell. This inbetween of life and death where he can’t even take a breath but his heart is aflurry in his chest.
Shoving his hand deeper into his mouth, Kevin bites on his knuckles, maybe the pain can break through this. His heart is hammering in his chest, begging like a caged animal to be free.
Maybe if he lets it loose it won’t hurt anymore. He doesn’t need a heart to play Exy, the only thing a heart is good for is breaking.
He’s shuddering his way through as deep of a breath as he can muster when someone touches his shoulder carefully.
“Kevi?”
Andrew.
If he woke Andrew there was no telling if Nicky and Aaron were awoken too. Andrew has always been the lightest sleeper though so he remains hopeful that this moment of breaking can stay between the two of them.
“What happened?” he asks in a low voice.
Kevin rolls onto his back. He can barely see Andrew in the teasing light of the early morning. He’s basically a patch of darkness that’s almost indecipherable from his surroundings. Sometimes the low light catches on his pale hair and Kevin can almost make him out.
“Nightmare,” Kevin wheezes.
“What was it about?”
He didn’t need to ask, he already knows. It’s the same thing that’s been on Kevin’s mind for almost a month. His grief has been eating him alive and Andrew knows it.
“Jean.”
Andrew makes a soft noise and Kevin isn’t sure he’s going to get any other answer until he grabs Kevin’s wrist and pulls gently. “Come to the kitchen.”
Sweat-soaked and shaky-legged Kevin stumbles out of the room behind Andrew. He flinches when Andrew turns on the light and wipes at the tears on his face.
Andrew walks him over to the stool in the middle of the dorm’s kitchen that Aaron had been sitting on last night when he let Nicky at his hair with a pair of kitchen scissors. “You don’t need a hairdresser when you can just have friends who were born gay,” Nicky had said. Half an hour before destroying Aaron’s haircut. At least now strangers would be able to tell the twins apart.
Once satisfied by his ward perched on the stool, Andrew pulls two mugs out of the cabinet and places them on the counter. He rustles around in the pantry for a few moments before pulling out an unimaginable pile of sweets.
“I’m not drinking that,” Kevin says.
“I never said you had to,” Andrew replies. “You can have one of Aaron’s teas.”
That is not Kevin’s preferred drink but he’s supposed to stop drinking every time he thinks about Jean. Which has not been going easy. He’s always there, an undercurrent of grief in everything Kevin does. Everything comes back to Jean and all the ways Kevin failed him.
“What does he have?”
Andrew peers in the pantry again. Popping his head back out he says, “chamomile or Earl Grey.”
While chamomile is supposed to be good for sleep, and despite how little rest he has had, he does not feel quite strong enough to sink back into the mercy of his dreams. “Earl Grey.”
Andrew, ever the sinner, heats up the water in the microwave. Kevin watches him do it with discomfort. “We need a kettle,” he says eventually.
“Waste of bench space,” Andrew says. He’s leaning against the counter with his hands gripping the edge as he studies Kevin. His blond hair is a mess atop his head but he looks alert. Kevin feels like a poorly reanimated corpse.
The water heats and Andrew sticks a teabag in it before assembling his own drink. Hot chocolate mix, milk, microwave, canned whipped cream and marshmallows. Kevin’s stomach turns just looking at it.
“That’s gotta be a thousand calories,” he says.
Andrew shrugs. “Only gremlins have to worry about calories after midnight. For everyone else they don’t count.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
His hands are at least warmed by the mug Andrew hands him.
Taking a long sip of his drink, Andrew eyes Kevin carefully. “Another dream about Jean?” he asks.
Andrew’s work of distracting him has brought Kevin out of his head but he still feels like his insides have gone through a blender. He just mirrors Andrew and tries his drink, hoping the mug can protect him from the truth.
In reality, it would crumple with very little resistance.
So Kevin nods and keeps his mug lifted to his face.
“What was it this time?”
Kevin’s chest hitches at the memory. As dreams usually fade into abstract feelings and memorable tokens not too long after he wakes, Kevin can only speak to a few details. He takes a measured breath. “He said it's my fault.”
“You know it’s not,” Andrew says.
No matter what Kevin can never fully reconcile with that. All he knows is that Jean called and texted and he didn’t answer in time and maybe that could have changed everything.
“I can’t get him out of my head,” Kevin laments softly, shaking his head.
“I know.”
The pressure in his chest is building again, along with the heat in his eyes. He can’t keep crying about this, it helps no one. Jean is dead and he’s never coming back no matter if Kevin cries or not. If he didn’t want to cry over Jean he should never have left him in that dark hole.
He has to live with this grief forever. He has to spend the rest of his life wondering if he could have changed everything if he hadn’t been on the court, if he had picked up the phone.
“I failed him,” Kevin sobs as the dam breaks and everything comes flooding out again. “He never had anyone and I left him. When he needed me, I wasn’t there.”
Andrew puts his drink down and steps forward to take Kevin’s from his hand before he spills hot tea everywhere. Setting that on the counter he turns back to Kevin and places a hand on each of his shoulders. At this height they’re almost level, Kevin doesn’t have to look down to look in Andrew’s eyes as hard as steel.
“Jean needed more than you could have given him. Even if you had stayed in the nest, if you gave your life to spare his, he would fall the same,” Andrew says, never wavering in his certainty. “The Nest would have killed you both.”
Kevin knows it’s true, but he should have been there to try and save Jean instead of running states over with his tail between his legs into the arms of a family Jean never got to have.
Later that day at afternoon practice, the lack of sleep and constant irritation from his teammates is driving Kevin up the wall. It’s only a matter of time before he snaps.
They run drills and Kevin keeps a careful eye on Neil. He has potential but he needs to work harder. Without their night practices he’s falling even further behind in his skills. He’ll never make Court at this rate.
Kevin wagered a bet on a losing dog. He sees that now, but he’s desperate to get his money’s worth.
“Your footwork is sloppy,” Kevin notes as Neil comes close enough to hear.
“No, it’s not,” Neil bites back.
They stay stuck in this back and forth pull. Kevin is angry, Neil is angry, tensions are building and the rest of the team is just pretending to do their drills while listening in on the two of them.
Kevin corrects Neil’s feet with a firm tap of his racquet. “You stand like a pigeon.”
“What does that even mean?” Neil huffs, exasperated.
“Maybe you are better suited for the alleys of New York than you are a court,” Kevin says. He pulls his racquet back to his side and gestures with his other hand. “Run it again.”
For a brief second Neil looks like he’s about to whack Kevin with his racquet but the fire in his eyes dulls slightly and he lowers his arm. “Fuck you,” he says.
“Fuck you too,” Kevin replies with an eye roll, uninterested in Neil’s petty anger. “Run it again.”
Neil runs it again, and again, Kevin keeps correcting his posture and that only serves to make him more furious. There’s a burning rage bubbling and Kevin is eager to see what it does when let out on the court. Anger is a very potent emotion and sometimes it will bring you to the brink of death; either that or victory.
The next tap to Neil’s ankle has Neil bringing his racquet down on top of Kevin’s. “Stop hitting me, you idiot,” he hisses in French.
Kevin sees red.
In a blink he has gone from the far-fourth line to the court wall, pinning Neil by the throat like a pesky insect in a frame. His wings need clipping. “Do not defile it with your filthy tongue,” Kevin snaps in English. His voice is all venom.
He’s so used to Jean’s soft accent, the sentences they would share only in complete isolation for fear of Riko’s retribution. Neil is muddying the lines between memory and reality.
The rest of the team has fallen to a standstill now, it’s only a matter of time before someone breaks them apart.
Neil just looks to the side and says in a choked-off voice. “Andrew, get your dog.”
“I don’t control him,” Andrew says in an amused voice from behind Kevin.
Matt is the first to get to the trio and he grabs Kevin by the shoulder and hauls him back. Kevin’s hold on Neil breaks but Neil just stands there and stares at Kevin, meeting his rage with fire. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Matt asks, yanking Kevin further from Neil.
Fighting his hold, Kevin hisses a vitriolic, “let go of me.”
Matt’s grip does not falter.
“Neil, you good?” Dan asks as she comes over. Kevin is trying to wrestle his way out of Matt’s grip and failing, and Neil just stands where Kevin left him with an apocalyptic look on his face.
He nods, bringing up a hand to rub at his neck. “You’re fucking crazy,” he says to Kevin and spits at him before storming off.
Kevin is sitting in Abby’s office with an icepack to his face when Andrew walks through the door, an entertained look on his face. It’s a Wednesday so he’s been at his appointment with Betsy for the last hour and missed all the action.
Their striker line is falling apart and for once it’s not Seth’s fault. He didn’t even throw the first punch. To no one’s surprise, Kevin cracked first.
He split his knuckles on Seth’s helmet but he did get the satisfaction of watching Seth stumble and fall before righting himself and turning on Kevin like a rabid animal.
“You can’t go two days without starting a fight?” Andrew asks as he saunters further into the room.
Kevin stays silent.
Undeterred by Kevin’s lack of response, Andrew comes closer and takes Kevin’s bloody hand and turns it this way and that, examining it. Abby had wiped him off and declared the bloody knuckles to be the extent of the damage but Wymack said that Kevin isn’t allowed back on the court for the rest of the day. “You’re supposed to punch him with your other hand,” he says.
“I didn’t think, I just swung.”
Andrew looks amused as he returns Kevin’s injured hand. “I can see that.” He lifts a hand to the icepack. “You’ll be out of a lot of photoshoots if he broke your nose.”
“Not broken,” Kevin mumbles as Andrew pulls the ice away from Kevin’s face. His nose has stopped bleeding but he’s covered in trails of dry blood. He’s dying for a shower.
Poking gently at Kevin’s nose Andrew hums. “Seth needs to learn how to punch harder. You might have a black eye at most.”
“What’s the prognosis, doctor?” Kevin asks and a smile cuts through Andrew’s face.
“You’ll live.”
True to Andrew’s estimation, Kevin earns himself a black eye for his scrap with Seth. It’s black and blue and swollen by Friday.
“How is he supposed to go out like this?” Nicky asks, gesturing over his shoulder at Kevin.
They won the game so the monsters are going out to Columbia to celebrate. Kevin intends to get so drunk he forgets his name. Andrew has gotten more mindful of Kevin’s alcohol intake and has been monitoring him. The buddy system being ingrained into Kevin for his whole life is really a bummer when it comes to wanting to abuse substances.
Not that Andrew has a leg to stand on.
“Girls will think he looks hot,” Andrew says.
“He looks like a felon!” Nicky squawks.
“He’s too pretty to be a felon,” Aaron says. Kevin isn’t sure if he should thank him or not.
Andrew just flashes a sinister smile. “See? He’ll be fine.”
Surrendering to Andrew’s answer with a reluctant sigh, Nicky just turns to Kevin and pats him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry I said you look like a felon. Maybe Andrew’s right and you’ll be drowning in women. I don’t know the first thing about them.”
“Apology accepted.”
They all get dressed as quickly as they can if they want to hit Eden’s and get fucked up before it closes. That’s the only problem with not adjusting the trip to accommodate game days. Maybe they should switch to Saturdays, but there’s nothing like the sing of victory in your veins along with a healthy dose of alcohol and a mind-bending hangover the next morning.
The drive is mostly a blur, Kevin is already unsteady by the time they get out of the car at Sweetie’s. He stumbles in after the group and Andrew keeps handing him every other cracker to eat. “You’re gonna pass out before we get there if you don’t sober up,” he says.
Kevin dutifully eats the crackers Andrew gives him. They don’t stay for long. Just enough time for Andrew to get what he wants, take some, and head back to the car.
Eden’s Twilight is a vision when they pull up. The thumping music and flashing lights are only just noticeable from the outside, inside it’s overwhelming.
Kevin has to be drunk to tolerate it. The heat of so many bodies pressed together and moving makes him uneasy. Alcohol just makes everything a whole lot easier. It dulls his emotions and lets him sail along the bliss until he crashes.
Drinks are bought and downed and Kevin is sitting in the booth watching Andrew.
“Can I help you?” Andrew asks after a few long moments.
Kevin just shakes his head. He presses his hot cheek to the cool table and drinks in the sensation.
“Go dance off your shots before you puke on my shoes again,” Andrew chides in his monotonous voice.
Kevin wants to say that it was just one time but instead just hums and does as he’s told. He moves in the sea of bodies, rocking back and forth in the waves. Some girl grabs him by the face and she tells him she loves him but she is gone as quickly as she came.
He stumbles through the crowd, letting the lights wash over him.
A hand brushes over his. It’s cold enough to break through his haze and he looks up. Jean is standing a few feet away, bodies surging around him as he stares at Kevin and Kevin stares back.
He’s soaking wet, droplets run down his face and catch in the coloured lights, scattered across Jean’s face like a painting. Dripping in technicolour. Kevin can’t breathe.
Jean turns and walks away from him and Kevin snaps to alertness. “Jean!” he calls out, following him through the people, but the back of Jean’s head is moving faster than Kevin can get his legs to go.
“Jean, slow down!” Kevin shouts, watching Jean’s disappearing head.
Hands strike the floor as Kevin trips and falls, the bodies surge around him but someone pulls him to his feet. Kevin looks up, hoping that Jean has come back for him but this is just some blond man three inches too short and looking at him weird.
“Are you okay?” he asks and Kevin just answers him by shrugging out of his grip and elbowing his way back through the crowd.
He needs to catch up to Jean.
He needs to tell him that he’s sorry.
Everything is a flash, he swears he sees Jean’s dark hair heading towards the door, so he follows as best he can. “Jean!” he calls again.
Stumbling out of the club and into the alleyway has Kevin sucking in a lungful of cold air and looking around wildly. Jean is halfway to the street, walking with his hands in his pockets.
“Jean!”
Kevin runs as best he can to catch up with Jean, he’s a collegiate athlete, he can manage to close the distance. He makes it to the entrance of the alley, and whips his head around to see where Jean has gone. He’s a few steps from Kevin and if Kevin just reaches out…
Grabbing Jean by the shoulder, Kevin lets out a relieved, “Jean.”
“I need you to hear me out,” he says, breath catching in his throat, “in case I never see you again.”
Jean turns and everything is wrong. He’s Jean’s height, with black hair, but his eyes are brown and his nose is straight and there’s no notch in the line of his jaw, or that freckle in Jean’s left eye. And he’s bone dry.
“Whoa,” he says, lifting his hands. His voice is all wrong too, nasally and completely missing the accent. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”
Kevin pulls his hand back and it hangs heavily at his side. “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry.”
“I hope you find your friend,” Not-Jean says as he turns and leaves.
The air leaves Kevin’s lungs with a breathless “yeah, me too.”
Kevin feels way too sober out here. The chill of the night is harrowing on his bleeding heart. He stumbles his way back to the door and the bouncer pats him on the arm and lets him pass.
Suddenly feeling ill, Kevin goes in search of Andrew. He’s not at the booth where they had the drinks. He’s not in the bathroom. He’s not on the balcony. Or at the bar.
But Kevin finds him on the little fenced in patio, taking a long drag from a cigarette. There’s other smokers out here with him and the air is thick in Kevin’s lungs. He takes a breath that was just a little too deep and he starts to cough.
“Kevi,” Andrew says in greeting, smoke trailing out of his mouth with every breath, before sticking the cigarette back in his mouth.
“Help me.”
Andrew stubs out the cigarette and grabs Kevin by the bicep. “What’s wrong?”
Grasping onto the sleeve of Andrew’s leather jacket like it’ll save his life, Kevin breathes ragged.
“I saw Jean,” Kevin gasps as a sob squeezes its way out of his throat. “I–I followed him and it wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t him,” Andrew repeats. He places a steadying hand on each of Kevin’s shoulders and pulls him down to better meet his eye. “You chased a ghost,” he says with a softness Kevin didn’t even know he was capable of.
“I chased a ghost,” Kevin echoes, hollow.