Chapter Text
“So, funny story.”
Kayn doesn’t look up from his mobile game. He’s laid across their couch, one leg draped over the couch’s back and the other dangling off its side, his dick practically hanging out the side of his baseball shorts – the optimal gaming position, he’d always say. His fingers drum violently on the corners of his screen, and his brows are furrowed as he chews on a particularly long strip of dried cuttlefish. Ezreal clears his throat and tries again.
“I’m gonna be an hour away from your hometown. For Lunar New Years’.”
“Ugh, fuck!” Kayn screams at his phone, punching the side of the couch with a fist. “Don’t fucking walk into the enemy jungle raw like that, you stupid son of a bitch!”
“So I was thinking,” Ezreal continues placidly from the couch across from him, “I could drop by your dad’s while you’re there. Y’know, just to visit and stuff. Maybe stay a couple days somewhere nearby? Then we could hang out.”
“Oh my god, that stupid fucking jungle int actually cost us the game.”
“I don’t have anything better to do that week, anyway,” Ezreal sighs, closing his eyes and leaning back in his seat for dramatic effect. “I’d love to have someone to keep me company.”
He cracks an eyelid open at Kayn, still tapping intently on his phone screen with absolutely zero reaction. Kayn hadn’t even glanced up at Ezreal once.
“A family,” he says very pointedly now, dropping the theatrics, “to keep lonely old me company. Over the weekend. The weekend with the holiday about family reunions.”
“DIE ALREADY — ow!”
Ezreal had poked the side of Kayn’s stomach with his big toe in annoyance. “Are you even listening?”
Kayn grumbles, twisting his head (and his phone) away from Ezreal. “New Years’. My dad’s house. Whatever.”
“I want to visit,” Ezreal sighs. “Pay my respects and all that. And you gotta ask your family first, or else it’s gonna be real awkward if I randomly show up with all my bags.”
“Like that’s never happened before – owww!”
Ezreal digs his toe extra forcefully into Kayn’s side this time, keeping it there until Kayn’s twisting away from it with what little space he has on the couch.
“Promise me you’ll ask them? Pretty please?”
“Ugh. Okay. Sure.”
Ezreal leans away with another sigh. That’s about the best he can get out of Kayn, really.
-+++++-
Kayn’s childhood home is a quaint little two-storey house in the middle of a nowhere town in the nowhere province of Bahrl – the kind of place that had houses with yards that bled into the unkempt forests around it and had more neatly trimmed grass and homemade mud-paths than actual house . If you squinted, you could make out the beginnings of a wrought-iron front gate from the road it sat on, its metal grills woven into simple flower and leaf shapes, deliberately and cleverly masked with the shrubbery of knobbly trees.
It sat on a gentle slope on the very edge of a town that was, already, sitting gingerly on the cusp of civilization; a town that Ezreal must’ve spent his entire life force trying to get to, because what do you mean half the town isn’t plotted on Google Maps. It looked like a simple enough drive on his phone, an hour out from the city he was doing some promotional work for his album in, but the flat, placid map on his app didn’t account for the fact that the only exit out into the town was a singular, featureless fork in the road off the highway, barely noticeable at the speed limit. Ezreal, being Ezreal, continued on his merry way (belting his heart out to old pop hits in his rental car) until he realised he’d been unwittingly driving straight for two hours.
Oops.
By the time he reaches Yanlei’s outer limits it’s half past eight – he’d started driving at three – and he’s probably called Kayn at least six times trying to find his street (none of which get picked up. Or acknowledged). It also started snowing, which wouldn’t bother Ezreal as much normally – if it weren’t for the fact that he hadn’t bothered to pay more for snow chains for his rental car. Surely it can’t be that bad, said the inner-city idiot approximately one day ago, who’d never had to drive a car across icy roads a day in his life.
It is, in fact, that bad, as he comes to find out that biting January evening, while he’s walking across the parking lot into the motel he’d hastily pulled into five minutes prior. It takes every shivering muscle in his core to stop the smoothed-over soles of his sneakers from sliding backwards and flipping him over like a Looney Tunes character.
The freckly, cat-like Vastayan behind the front desk of the motel barely acknowledges Ezreal’s existence as he walks in, cold and kind of miserable looking, the bell on the poster-plastered glass door chiming pleasantly behind him as it slowly swings shut. The dim white LEDs on the ceiling wash everything in a stale, watery manila.
“Name, how many people, how many nights,” came the bored voice of the Vastayan behind the plexiglass. He’s watching a video on his phone at an incredible volume, and Ezreal wonders vaguely how it isn’t destroying the eardrums of the giant ears on his head.
“Ez – uhh, Jarro. Jarro Lightfeather. Just me.” Ezreal fumbles around his pockets for his phone. “One night, please.”
“Uh huh.” The receptionist glances briefly at Ezreal as he’s pulling his phone out of his back pocket. “This place is cold hard cash only. None of that fancy phone payment stuff.”
“ Cash only?” Ezreal’s mentally counting the amount of paper money he has in his car, which was about enough for a fun drink and a pizza – definitely not enough for a night at a motel, however shitty it was. “I’m not from around here. Can’t I just send it to your personal account first or something?”
The receptionist rolls his eyes. “I’m not about to catch a case because of you, city boy. Sleep a night in your car or something.”
See, Ezreal was many things, but sleeping a night in his car in the freezing winter was not something he could just will his way through, even with the heater on full blast – how the hell is he going to maintain his ten step skincare routine without a sink and a towel? Plus the heater was going to dry his skin out – there’s no way he’s showing up to Kayn’s house tomorrow looking like a shrivelled mummy. His eye twitches. Clearly, this receptionist didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Ezreal Lymere would not be caught dead skipping a single day of serum and moisturiser.
“Look, surely you can slot me in for the cheapest room you have,” he pleads, leaning forward against the counter. “I have, like, fifteen dollars. What does that get me?”
“A parking spot and a coffee,” the receptionist snorts.
“Come on,” Ezreal gripes, his nose almost pressed against the plexiglass. “Can’t I sleep in your lobby? Use your bathroom or something and take a shower?”
The receptionist swings his chair pointedly away from him now, thumbing the volume up even louder on his phone, much to Ezreal’s incredulity. Probably the loudest go away Ezreal has experienced in a while. How can someone be so cruel?
“Look,” Ezreal starts, “I said my name was Jarro Lightfeather just now, but actually it was just a pseudonym. Maybe you’ll know me better by my real name, Ezr –”
The bell on the front door chimes pleasantly again as a middle-aged man trudges in, in thick, dark winter wear and snow boots, down feather hoodie thrown over his scarred face – he looked like a local. He has a wad of cash clutched in his gloved hand already, a wad of cash Ezreal stares at oh-so longingly as he walks over to the front desk and practically slams it on the counter.
“One night,” he says gruffly.
The receptionist, with one hand still on the side of his phone, reaches down to an unseen cabinet below his desk and fishes out a pair of silver keys, attached to a keyring with a yellow tag. He swivels back over to the man and dangles it through the window in the plexiglass on one furry finger.
“Checkout’s at ten,” he replies, with a pleasant tone completely opposite from what he was using with Ezreal. “Don’t be late.”
-+++++-
“W-wait!” Ezreal shouts across the parking lot.
The rooms of the motel weren’t connected to the main lobby, Ezreal had realised about ten seconds ago, as he followed the man back out into the cold. It was around nine p.m. now, and the snow was starting to really come down; Ezreal's willpower to just suck it up and brave through it crumbled the moment he saw the ice forming on the surface of little puddles in the asphalt.
The man continues trudging slowly towards the motel rooms to the side of the main lobby, one hand firmly inside his coat pocket, the other clutching a small, brown suitcase. He doesn’t seem to notice Ezreal treading carefully towards him, trying desperately not to slip on the slippery asphalt. Or maybe he’s pointedly ignoring him. Either way, Ezreal manages to eventually catch up with him when he finally arrives at his room door, all the way at the outermost end of the one-storey motel building, about twenty metres from the lobby entrance.
Ezreal watches from a little distance away as the man pulls out the hand in his coat pocket, silver keys clinking against each other as they dangle on his finger, and he starts daydreaming about a warm, soft bed. Heater on, covered in blankets, warm chocolate… he feels like that one story of the girl selling matches by the roadside dreaming of a warm Christmas. Oh, the misery.
“I – um,” Ezreal stutters. His voice sounds so wimpy from how much he’s shivering that he flushes red from hearing it come out of his mouth. “Uh. Is it – is it possible if I share? The room? With you?”
The man pauses, his key already in the lock; he turns his head slightly, but not all the way where Ezreal can actually see what he looks like. Ezreal’s already feeling the weight of his incredibly stupid plan.
“I won’t bother you or anything,” he continues, words tumbling out of his mouth as the nervousness builds in his throat. “There’s – there’s like, two beds in there, right? That’s what the guy said at the counter. I can pay half of the room to you through my phone, or cash tomorrow when I meet up with my friend. Or wire transfer. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
The man says nothing. He turns back towards the door and turns the lock with a click , before pulling the key back out and pushing down on the latch.
“Please!” Ezreal steps in a little closer, his eyes starting to water incredibly pathetically with tears. “I don’t wanna sleep in my car. Look, I’m completely harmless. All I need is a warm bed to spend the night. I’ll even be gone before you’re awake. I promise.”
The man takes his hand off the latch with a quiet sigh, and finally speaks, his low voice gravelly in the January air. “Where are you from? Piltover?”
“Somewhat.” Ezreal shivers as an icy gust of wind snakes across his limbs.
The man turns to face Ezreal properly now; the shaggy white hair under his hood frames a pair of tired, light brown eyes, and, as he pulls his black face mask down, a thin-lipped, scarred mouth, crowned by a thin dusting of a faint five-o-clock shadow. His eyes narrow as they sweep Ezreal up and down.
“Don’t try anything smart with me,” he says flatly after a few seconds. “I’ll know. You try to steal anything, or jack my car, or try and harm me, you’re going to be in a world of pain like you’ve never known before. You will stay out of my way, and be quiet. I sleep light.”
Ezreal nods his head vehemently. “Best behaviour. Pinky promise.”
The man scoffs and turns back to the door, pushing it open.
The inside of the motel room is about as fancy as any other fifty-dollar a night joint, dull and beige, with two single beds pushed up against the peeling wallpaper and a singular, stale yellow lamp on a sad-looking nightstand between the two of them. The whole room is about as wide as ten paces across, from the front door to the weird bathroom-kitchen amalgamation next to the dusty closet. Ezreal’s dreams of maintaining his skin routine evaporate immediately when his eyes fall on the rusty sink and suspiciously stained towels. Oh whatever, he thinks to himself. I’ll be brave.
The man slips out of his boots, placing his suitcase down next to the bed closest to the door and kicking the space heater to life. Ezreal shuffles awkwardly to the other bed, emptying his pockets out on the sheets as he desperately tries to find his earbuds. (He left them in the car, but he doesn’t remember until sometime next morning.) The stinging silence is so painfully awkward that Ezreal feels like death would probably be a sweeter fate.
“Um,” he starts meekly, staring at a random point on the wall, “thanks. A lot.”
He only gets a grunt in response.
“Do – are you – are you going to use the bathroom, or anything?” Ezreal continues, fumbling with the lip of his sneakers as he tries to unlace them. “To shower?”
“You can use it if you want.”
Ezreal slides his sneakers off one by one, taking care to put them back down on the ground as lightly as possible. Who knows what would happen if he kicks them off like he does back in the dorms. “I – I will. Yeah. Thanks.”
He stands up carefully, every squeak in the bedsprings along the way making his blood pressure spike, and takes the three steps across the floor into the bathroom.
He shuts the bathroom door faster than he’s ever closed any door in his life.
-+++++-
Ezreal has to give it to the motel though, the shower water is hot and pressurized, and he almost forgives them for the absolutely sordid shower floor under his shower slippers. He pretends not to see the molding shower curtains as he leans over to pump some motel shampoo – chained to the shower wall in a hilariously intimidating wrought-iron cage –- into his cupped hand. The suds foam satisfyingly in his neon green hair.
He finally steps out of the shower five minutes later, being careful not to step onto the suspiciously spotted floor mat. Ezreal admires the view in the tiny mirror above the bathroom-kitchen sink – flushed cheeks and wet hair, glowing skin and chiseled body, towel wrapped around his waist, looking absolutely stunning as usual. He throws himself a wink through the fogged glass and almost forgets about the predicament outside the bathroom door.
The predicament, of course, catches up with him almost immediately as he steps out of his slippers onto the yellowing motel carpet, in the form of freezing winter temperatures and dead silence. Didn’t the man switch the heater on twenty minutes ago before he stepped into the shower? The steaming shower air spills out from behind Ezreal like liquid nitrogen; his shivering breaths form clouds in the air.
Speaking of which, the man had disappeared. There’s not much question about it; the room is absolutely tiny, and the only other door was the way out. His thick coat and a bathroom towel is the only thing left of him on his bed, both folded neatly into squares next to his pillow; Ezreal’s looking around as he throws his clothes back on as quickly as possible, but the keys are gone, too. So he’s basically locked in.
Great.
Trembling, he walks over to the space heater and tries to flip it on, but whatever the man did to it, it hadn’t worked. He pushes every button on its top, to no avail, and after thirty seconds he gives up. Whatever man. He pads back over to his own bed and buries himself into the duvet, cocooning his entire body in warm bed sheet. Whatever.
“Whatever!” he screams out to the ceiling to no one in particular, kicking his legs under the duvet so angrily that it tumbles off of him onto the floor. “Whatever. Whatever man. If that weird old guy wants to kill me for breaking the space heater, it’s whatever man. Whatever!”
“The space heater was broken when we came in.”
Ezreal’s legs freeze mid-air so comically he looks like a cartoon character getting caught in some criminal act. He creaks his neck towards the door.
Standing in the doorway, hand on the latch and framed against the backdrop of an outside streetlamp, was the man – or at least Ezreal pieces together that it is, because he’s standing in the middle of the freezing January winter with nothing except a pair of sweatpants and running shoes on. Shaggy white hair in his eyes and sweat trickling down his heaving, bare chest, exhaling clouds of steamy air through his parted lips that waft past his heavily tattooed upper body, he leans a muscled arm on the doorframe, training his light brown eyes across the room on Ezreal.
“Sorry,” he says, in that low, gravelly voice (though now that Ezreal knows what it’s attached to, it’s stirring something… weird in him). “I went for a run.”
Ezreal gawks. “It’s below freezing. In the middle of the night.”
The man steps into the light of the bedside lamp as he closes the door behind him. Holy fuck. It’s an absolutely glorious view – there isn’t a single untrained muscle on his scarred body, gleaming gloriously with sweat all over, his chiseled abs catching the light like he’s some kind of A-list actor. The veins in his arm muscles, protruding from age, move and flex as he reaches for the towel he’s left on his bed. Ezreal can only watch him with his mouth half-open like an idiot.
“So it is.” The man wipes himself down with the towel – sensually in Ezreal’s mind, though he’s really just doing it normally. Ezreal gapes at the muscles in pecs and his arms as he throws it aside nonchalantly.
“This – you’re –” Ezreal’s words are choking up in his throat like some blushing teenager. “Um. Was it… a good run?”
The man raises an eyebrow at Ezreal, and doesn’t reply. He sits down on the bed facing away from Ezreal and unlatches his suitcase, and Ezreal marvels at the way his snaking tattoos cup around his back muscles as his arms move back and forth, rummaging through his suitcase. The stupidly romantic dimness of the bedside lamp makes Ezreal swallow back at least six different extremely inappropriate thoughts.
There’s heat pooling between his legs.
What the fuck is going on.
Is it because he’s cold? Is it because he’s craving intimacy? Does he just want to curl into someone’s warm embrace – someone’s warm, tight, muscly embrace – to get him through the night? Does he actually want to reduce himself to some weirdo who fucks some random guy he met literally on the side of the road? Is this what he’s become? He desperately tries to shake the increasingly nasty thoughts starting to build in his head. Like how good those abs would look, on top of him. Like how pretty this man would be, eyes closed and grunting into him… pounding him into the headboard…
“Anyway, about the payment split,” the man says, snapping Ezreal out of his horny stupor. “I don’t have those phone payment things, but my children are flying back home tomorrow, I’ll have you send it to one of them. I’m probably leaving early tomorrow to make it back before sunrise, so I’ll leave a number you can call before I go.”
“Payment,” Ezreal repeats, slightly stupefied. “Oh yeah. Uh. I can do anything.”
He’s fucking hard.
The man twists his body to look at Ezreal; his face is mostly placid, but Ezreal swears he looks a little concerned, or maybe he doesn’t. Or maybe he’s going crazy. “Are you okay?”
“Uh. Yeah! Yeah. I’m – I’m good. Money. Payment. Yeah. I’m cool with whatever.” Ezreal’s hastily picking the duvet off the carpet, desperately trying to hide his erection.
“No, I meant,” the man says, raising an eyebrow, “your whole face is red. Did you catch a cold in that long-ass shower you were taking?”
“Nope!” Ezreal laughs, shrill and unnatural, his golden eyes desperately looking for anything else to look at in the room other than his temporary roommate’s gleaming chest. He’s grabbing as much bed sheet as possible, pushing them down between his legs. Very natural. “Nope. Perfectly fine. I’m so healthy. Very normal.”
The man’s lips curl slightly, in what Ezreal swears is amusement. He stands up from the bed again, dropping whatever he was holding back into his suitcase, turning his body as he walks slowly to the end of Ezreal’s bed, his hawk-like eyes trained on Ezreal the entire time. He lets out a slow, careful breath, and it wafts out of his nose into the wintry air, gusting over his face so gorgeously it’s all Ezreal can do not to blush even harder.
“You don’t look normal,” he muses.
“Uhhhh.” For the first time in his twenty-four years of existence, Ezreal Lymere is completely speechless. Witless . Stopped absolutely dead in his tracks by this ridiculously attractive old man, who now stares down at him like he’s some kind of worm. Even when Kayn’s fucking with him – or fucking him, senseless – his magic hat of witty comebacks and quips has never failed him. Until now.
“I have a bag of cold pills,” the man continues, crossing his arms. “If you need them –”
“ NO! ” Ezreal smacks his hand over his mouth. That came out way louder than he wanted. “Erm – ahem – no. No thanks. It’s okay. I can sleep it off.”
“Can you?” The man steps in a little closer. “Doesn’t look like it’ll pass so soon.”
His brown eyes drop to Ezreal’s duvet, now bundled almost exclusively between his legs, clutched so tightly around Ezreal’s trembling fingers that they’re turning white from his grip. Ezreal’s heart drops all the way to his balls.
He knows .
He knows, Ezreal repeats to himself in horror, now wanting nothing more than to either, a) sink into the folds of his bed sheets, never to reappear in the mortal realm ever again, or, b) ram his head directly into the dull beige wall behind him until he gets a life-altering concussion that will put him in a twenty year coma. He knows. Ezreal is so embarrassed he thinks if he cuts his dick off right now it’d probably hurt less than this insane situation he’s just goofed his way into.
The man’s lips curl into a small, strangely familiar smirk.
“So, what will it be?” he says, now planting himself on the side of Ezreal’s bed. His hands travel dangerously close to that little bundle of bedsheets. “Cold pills? Sleep it off?”
The man’s hands snake up Ezreal’s exposed left leg, prompting a full-body shiver from the younger man in response.
“Or do you want me to fuck it out of you?”
-+++++-
Of course he’s gonna fuck him, he’s not insane. There’s no other place Ezreal would rather be that night other than crying below him, moaning and whimpering and whining into those chiseled, tattooed abs, clawing at his marble-cut back like an animal, scratching more scars into his alabaster skin. Folding and stretching above Ezreal as the man pounds his hips into Ezreal’s hole, fast and rough and powerful, his thick hands gripping the headboard so tight his knuckles are flexing with every thrust.
“Aren’t you a good boy,” the man growls into Ezreal’s ear, his voice weaving itself into Ezreal’s desperate whimpering. “Do you like it when I’m fucking you rough?”
“Gods,” Ezreal cries into the back of his eyelids, squeezed shut in heavy pleasure, stars flashing every time the curve of the man’s cock pounds into his prostate. “I do. I do. Mmh – ah – rougher –”
“Needy little thing.” The older man’s lips curl into that awfully familiar lopsided smirk as he closes a hand around Ezreal’s throat, lightly at first, slowly pressing down into the younger man’s trachea with his thumb. It’s all Ezreal can do not to start choking on his own moans; his parted lips heave steaming breaths from his plump lips, flushed red in desperation. “Is this what you wanted? When you were staring at me through the doorway?”
“Yes – ah – yes,” Ezreal chokes out, half a moan and half a cry, looking up through long, heavy lashes, every nerve in his face burning red with desire.
The man bucks his hips so hard Ezreal’s head slams into the pillow behind him, but Ezreal’s too blissed-out to feel any pain; the younger man lets out a moan under him, so sweet and so yearning, begging for that final release.
He’s close. With strong, forceful hands, the man grips onto Ezreal’s waist, small under his large hands, his fingers sinking so deep into Ezreal’s fair skin it starts bruising almost immediately. Ezreal feels the man pull his back off the bed and start fucking him in earnest, chasing his climax with unrelenting, violent thrusts until Ezreal melts into nothing but a sobbing mess underneath him, legs and arms locked around the man’s back like he’s clawing out from his grave. Praying for that closing high.
That high washes over Ezreal in the depths of his belly, shooting out in loads into his body – and out of his cock – as the man hilts into him with a final thrust, pressing so hard into Ezreal’s hole he’s practically folding him in half. It leaks out onto the sheets, pooling thickly onto the bed below them; the man doesn’t let go, though. He stays like this until every last bit of the creampie finishes inside Ezreal, heaving, exhaling, pumping hot, steaming breaths into the wintry air. His brown eyes, flared with almost animalistic desire, stare down at Ezreal from behind tousled white hair.
They stay like this, for a while, as the man finally eases himself out of Ezreal and rocks backwards onto the bed, breathing hard as he leans back on one arm. Ezreal doesn’t move; he can’t move, really, except to flop his limbs down uselessly onto the bed. Everything from his waist down feels like it’s been fucked numb.
His half-open eyes fix on the broken smoke detector hanging half-off the ceiling, his hazy, horny stupor finally clearing the way for logical thought as he comes down slowly from the orgasm’s high. His ears ring with a pleasant buzz; he doesn’t notice that the other man has padded his way into the shower until he hears the shower water come on, and the steam seeps out over his face.
Ezreal pushes himself upright on his elbows, extremely, extremely slowly, groaning as the consequences of his very rough tastes make themselves known throughout his body. He grabs a fistful of tissues from the nightstand and dry wipes himself down – to the best of his ability – before grabbing another fistful and throwing it onto the wettest spots of his bed.
He sinks back down into his pillow, disbelief finally seeping in.
The best fucking sex he’s ever had. In a moldy, yellowing motel. Somewhere in a nowhere town in a nowhere province. With a nowhere man.
“Whatever, man,” he groans to himself, burying his face into impending sleep.
-+++++-
As promised, his strange roommate had long disappeared by the time Ezreal is conscious again; he finds himself cocooned in a fresh duvet from the other bed in watery morning sunlight, the staleness of the motel clouded by the man’s lingering scent still clinging to the linens. Ezreal’s eyes open a slither, before giving in to the weight of sleep and closing again.
But he doesn’t fall back asleep; his phone is buzzing, buzzing violently on the nightstand, and he tries to ignore it – for all of thirty seconds. Someone’s calling him, back to back calls like he’s in trouble, and does not want to be ignored.
“Fuuuuck,” Ezreal groans, turning away from the nightstand and folding the pillow over his ear. No amount of smooshed cotton against his eardrum could drown out the sound of the buzzing, though, and Ezreal eventually gives up, sitting up on his elbows and reaching over to finally pick up his phone.
The call screen flashes briefly before ending, but Ezreal has caller ID, and a sharp eye – a sharp eye that is now widening in horror as he realizes what kind of trouble he’s in. His lock screen unfurls in a long list of missed calls and text messages; all from one particularly antsy purple-blue-haired man.
He has all of five seconds to stare at the time in the middle of his screen – 9:18am, it read – before another call window bursts into his screen again, this time ringing long enough for Ezreal to confirm his fears. Shieda Kayn is calling , it says, underneath a pulsing circle of one of Kayn’s thirst-trap selfies; those green and red eyes stare up at him through the display as Ezreal sucks in a laboured breath through his teeth, and picks up the call.
“Hey,” Ezreal says – or, well, croaks – pleasantly into the receiver.
“Holy fucking shit!” Kayn’s loud, boisterous voice bursts through the speaker, ringing in Ezreal’s ears and bouncing around his brain. “Where the hell were you? I just landed, my phone just loaded all those missed calls from you – I was going to send a search party out to look for your dead body, dude.”
“Kayn.” Ezreal sits up a little more, pulling his legs over the side of his bed and resting his feet on the carpet. “Um, yeah, I’m okay. I’m holed up at some shitty motel because it was snowing. Where were you?”
“Connecting flight got delayed,” came Kayn’s slightly crackling voice over the speaker. “Flight got pushed back, what, eight hours? Pilot said there was a really bad blizzard. I was stuck in some nasty airport with no signal.”
“Ugh. Explains.” Ezreal puts the phone on speaker as he slowly stands up off the bed; he lays the phone gingerly on the sheets as he starts picking pieces of his outfit off the floor where he’d thrown them. Shirt on the nightstand. Pants next to the bathroom door. Underwear next to the closet.
“Where are you right now? I can come pick you up.”
“I have a rental car, you’re gonna have to drive that,” Ezreal quips, hopping around on one foot as he’s putting his socks on.
Sounds of gusting wind gargle unpleasantly through the speaker. “You said you’re at a motel? Is it Yanlei Inn?”
“I think so.” Ezreal tugs his pants up past his blue briefs. “I’m pretty sure it’s the only motel for miles.”
“ Okay, stay put,” Kayn says, “ I’ll be there in an hour.”
-+++++-
With the way Kayn’s driving, you’d’ve thought he was being chased down for a felony. Right hand on the wheel, left hand scrolling through his phone, he’s practically bulldozing the rental car through every single slippery bump and pothole at least thirty over the speed limit, completely unperturbed. Serene, even, chewing on a stick of beef jerky like he isn’t sending Ezreal into cardiac arrest every time they round a corner.
Ezreal’s fingers run along the thin edges of a neatly folded receipt in his pocket, his eyes fixed on the most unmoving point of the horizon in front of him. Gritting his teeth through the acidic churning in his stomach and the swaying in his head. Kayn’s been banned from driving the band truck for so long that Ezreal’s forgotten how god-awful his driving is; with every balls-shrivelling jerk of the car he makes a mental note never to doubt Yone’s judgement ever again.
“There was a curry store in that lot when I was fifteen,” Kayn says casually, pointing at a parting in the trees; Ezreal can make out the beginnings of an empty parking lot. Kind of. “I used to eat this, like, XXL giant curry plate thing like twice a week. Used to jack random shit from the supermarket next to it too. Until my dad found out.” Kayn chuckles. “Good times.”
“That’s nice,” Ezreal replies weakly. He’s thinking good, happy, non-motion sick, not puking thoughts. Two feet planted on nice, stable earth. Solid, non-moving ground. Stationary planes.
“Yeah.” Kayn flashes that stupid little lopsided smirk of his in Ezreal’s direction. Ezreal feels an odd twist in his gut.
It reminds him of someone.
“Hey,” Ezreal quips, “can I ask you a weird question?”
“Mm.”
“I met this dude yesterday,” Ezreal continues carefully, “he – um – lent me some cash for the motel. ‘Cuz I didn’t have any, and the motel was cash only, and it was snowing –”
Kayn sighs. “Get to the point, Ez.”
“I didn’t get his name,” Ezreal says, “and he was supposed to leave me a number, but, uh, he didn’t. And I wanna pay him back.” He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Maybe you might know who he is.”
“Maybe.”
“He’s, like, a local, I think?” Ezreal watches a far away plane crawl slowly across the sky. “Brown eyes. White hair. Kinda old. Five o’clock shadow?”
“That’s half the male population of Yanlei,” Kayn snorts. “You gotta be more specific.”
“He – has – uh, tattoos?”
“Uh huh.”
Ezreal’s eyes glaze over slightly. “Muscly.”
“Uh huh.”
“Low voice. Kinda snappy.” Strong hands. Powerful grip.
“Uh huh.”
“He was –” Rough? Violent? Authoritative , assertive, unforgiving in the way he fucked Ezreal – with that massive girth – “uhhh. Taller than me.”
Kayn wrinkles his nose. “So am I. He’s not special.”
“You’re not helping,” Ezreal complains.
“Neither are you.” Kayn yanks on the beef jerky still hanging out of his mouth, snapping it in half. “You’ve described at least thirty different people in this general vicinity.”
“He – I think he has kids?”
Kayn reaches over to the radio and skips two songs on the queue. “He didn’t tell you anything else about himself?”
“No,” Ezreal wails, putting his face in his hands. “And now there’s twenty five dollars that I can’t pay him back, because I forgot to ask him for his number.” And a burning pit in his pelvis he can’t shake off.
Kayn’s foot is on the brakes, easing the car ever slower as he’s drawing closer to their exit.
“Sounds like you wanted to forget, if you had a whole ass night to think about it,” Kayn says with a roll of his eyes. “Just forget about it. You’ll be out of this town forever in, like, five days anyway.”
“But –”
Kayn swerves them into their exit suddenly, lurching Ezreal a little too far to the right for his liking.
-+++++-
It’s a short walk up the gently sloping gravel driveway of Kayn’s childhood home, past a massive garden of hibernating flora and a covered swimming pool, all fringed by thick piles of fresh snow. Ezreal notes the random little artifacts of family history along the way – two broken kid’s bikes lying against a bit of fence, one blue and one green, both faded and rusted from age; a weathered basketball hoop with the net half missing; old hamster cages, an abandoned dog kennel. The works.
Ezreal’s a little jealous. Maybe.
Kayn’s already fumbling around his pockets for his keys by the time Ezreal huffs his way to the front door with his three luggages. “My sister’s supposed to be home,” he grumbles.
“Call her?” Ezreal carefully sets his luggages down on the HOME SWEET HOME mat in front of the door.
“Her phone’s probably dead –”
The lock clicks, turns, and the front door slowly swings inward.
The fabled sister of Kayn pokes her head around the door, her long, two-toned hair pulled taut into a high bun at the back of her head. She has a little twinkle in her eye as she pulls the hood of her oversized sweater over her head, grinning at them both with a gleaming set of popstar pearly whites. “Hey boys.”
Ezreal gapes at her.
“Wait. Your sister is Akali from K/DA?” he says incredulously as Kayn kicks off his shoes in the entryway. “All this time?”
“We’re not related,” Kayn gripes, slipping into a pair of bright pink fluffy slippers; his comment earns him a light punch from Akali in the shoulder.
“Thank god for that,” Akali snorts. “Nice to meet you. I’m this idiot’s older sister. Adopted,” she adds pointedly as she watches Kayn almost stub his toe trying to close the front door. “You’re Ezreal?”
Ezreal laughs nervously. “The one and only.”
“Cool.”
Akali leads both of them up the stairs to drop Ezreal’s bags off – Kayn begrudgingly carrying two bags now instead of none – and Ezreal’s wandering eyes trace the story of their childhood along the walls. Framed family photographs hang in neat intervals; the earliest, baby-est Kayn that makes Ezreal pause is a scrawny, angry-looking ten year old Kayn, his close-cropped hair making his ears look way too big for his head. A slightly older Akali stands slightly away from him, equally scrawny and pissed off, the two of them looking like they’d just fought off camera. It’s strangely endearing; Ezreal can’t help but smile a little.
There’s an older man between the two of them in most of the pictures, presumably their dad, usually holding them both firmly by the shoulder. Furrowed brows, deep-set cheekbones and slightly scarred face, tattoos peeking out from under sleeves and collars; sometimes he has Kayn’s annoying little smirk, sometimes he has the same twinkle in Akali’s eye.
Most of the times he’s making Ezreal shudder from the strangely uncanny resemblance to his little motel stranger.
“Here’s your room.” Akali opens the door to the guest room, a simple room with a super-single and a desk, facing a reasonably-sized window. “Bathroom’s down the hall and to the left. We all use the same one on this floor though, there’s another one next to the kitchen downstairs if you really need it.”
Ezreal’s eyes are wandering to the bathroom door, watching as faint wisps of steam seep out lazily and disappear. “Got it.”
Akali follows his gaze. “Our dad’s in there,” she gestures vaguely down the hall, “he’s probably getting out of there soon, you can go in after if you wanna – I showered an hour ago. And Kayn doesn’t shower.”
“Akali, I’m not ten anymore, I know how to take a fucking shower –”
“ Sure you do.”
The two of them start bickering behind him, but Ezreal isn’t really listening. He’s staring, jaw slack, at the bathroom door as it slowly swings open, and pours a waterfall of shower steam out onto light hardwood floor.
He thinks he’s seen the legs that step out from behind the door before, tattoos coiled tight around the calves up into the thighs, snaking up a short towel hiked up on dangerously chiselled, glistening abs. He thinks he’s seen the dark blue tattoos that guide Ezreal’s eyes up before; they snake past a thin layer of chest hair, cupping and curling around scarred skin, pulling his eyes gently up into hard, solid pecs, before they end at the base of a sharp face.
He thinks he’s seen this man before.
This man with a faint five o’clock shadow. And light brown eyes. And shaggy white hair.
“Dad,” he hears Akali call from behind him, “nice timing. Kayn just got here with his friend.”
Dad?
“U-u-uh,” Ezreal stammers. “Uh… uhm. H-hello.”
‘Dad’ steps out fully from the bathroom, gently closing the door shut behind him. His face doesn’t betray any emotion, save a tiny jerk of his left eyebrow as his eyes fall onto Ezreal, now flushed so red he’s practically steaming.
The motel man is Kayn’s dad.
The motel man is Kayn’s dad, Ezreal keeps repeating in his head in horror as said man walks over to them, one hand on the lip of his towel. The motel man is Kayn's dad. He gives Ezreal a light, polite smile – so casual you couldn’t have guessed he was inside of Ezreal less than twenty four hours ago.
The motel man is Kayn's dad.
“Nice to meet you,” Kayn's dad says lightly, the smile on his lips not quite reaching his eyes. He extends one of those rough, scarred hands. “I’m Zed.”