Chapter Text
Kevin doesn't remember sitting down.
One moment he’d been standing at the kitchen counter with a bottle in his hand, staring at nothing. The next, he’s on the floor with his back against the cabinets and his legs stretched crookedly across the tile, vodka burning a path down his throat. It tastes like punishment.
The kitchen light hums above him. It has a stutter in it, a buzz, buzz, buzzing. Every flicker scratches against the inside of his skull. Kevin had noticed it weeks ago and forgotten about it immediately after. Now it feels unbearable.
He drinks again. The vodka is cheap. Nicky bought it, probably, for mixing drinks or maybe just with Kevin in mind.
Kevin presses his head back against the cabinet door and closes his eyes. One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days since Riko died.
He remembers waking the next morning and expecting something to be different. Expecting the sky to split open or the air to feel lighter. Expecting the fear that lives lodged inside his throat to suddenly melt away. Expecting to feel free.
Instead, the sun had risen. People went to classes. Cars moved through traffic. Neil had cursed at breakfast because Aaron had stolen his coffee. Andrew had kicked Kevin under the table when he stared too long into nothing. The world continued in all its awful indifference.
Riko was gone. He was dead. And beneath all the horror and grief and shock, buried beneath layers and layers of guilt, there had been a kernel of relief.
Relief. The ugliest thing in the world.
It wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of Riko’s laughter in Kevin’s ear.
His stomach twists. He drinks again.
Riko's face rises uninvited in his mind, a crystal clear and red-stained image. Not the dead version, not blood and shattered bone and headlines. No, Kevin’s mind pictures Riko at eleven, with sharp eyes and sharper smiles.
Riko, wrapping an arm around Kevin’s shoulders, telling him his plans for their Perfect Court. Riko’s eyes flashing in fear and excitement that fatal day when The Butcher paid the Nest a visit. Riko laughing. Riko’s fists in Kevin’s stomach, his ribs, his hair. Riko whispering you belong to me. Riko’s eyes on Jean, his hands, his knives.
Jean.
Kevin swallows hard against the nausea that bubbles up in his throat. Jean's face rises beside Riko's in his mind immediately, as if Kevin's brain has tied them together so tightly that one cannot exist without dragging the other into view.
Jean at fourteen with exhausted eyes and blood on his knuckles. Jean standing beside Kevin on the Court, shoulders pulled straight despite pain folding him inward. Jean looking at Kevin after practice, after injuries, after nights that drew on too long, with an unwavering loyalty Kevin had never earned.
Kevin squeezes his eyes shut.
He should have saved him. He could’ve, maybe. Before Riko went off the rails completely, back when there was reason behind his cruelty, maybe Kevin could’ve protected Jean.
The Nest had been burning around them long before Kevin left it. Riko had been unraveling for years, pulling everyone down with him. The Master had watched and done nothing, but Jean - Jean had stood there beside Kevin through all of it. Beside him, always beside him, like the partner he could never truly have.
And Kevin had run from him.
Vodka burns raw down Kevin’s throat, his body numbed enough that he can barely feel it anymore.
Neil would tell him he didn’t run, that he survived. He’d say it like facts are facts and Kevin is stupid for arguing with them. Andrew would hold Kevin’s face and tell him to stop spiraling.
Kevin presses the heel of his palm into his eye. The nausea crawls higher. He takes another drink, his hand shaking as he raises the bottle to his lips.
He misses Riko. God, he misses him. That's the worst part. He misses the boy before everything twisted itself rotten, before the blood drying on court floors started to stain.
He misses the brother who had grabbed Kevin's hand and dragged him onto a court with bright eyes and impossible dreams. Misses the child who had whispered it's us against everyone else.
He mourns him.
And at the same time, Kevin is glad he's dead. Because Riko cannot hurt Jean anymore. He can’t hurt Neil or Andrew.
He can’t hurt Kevin.
Riko is dead.
Dead.
And Kevin still wakes up expecting footsteps behind him. Still feels phantom fingers around his wrist. Still feels fear slide cold beneath his skin. Because the thing about grief is that people talk about it like losing someone removes them from your life. Like death closes a door.
But Riko had lived inside Kevin long before he died. Riko had carved himself into Kevin's bones and wrapped around his ribs and buried himself beneath Kevin's skin. Riko had taken a knife and hollowed Kevin out slowly, carefully, until there was space enough to fit himself inside. He had lived there for years.
Death hadn't pulled him out. No, death had only turned him into a ghost.
Riko was dead. But Kevin still carried him.
Kevin stares blankly at the cabinet opposite him. Maybe Riko will never leave. Maybe that’s his real punishment.
Riko had ruined him. Riko had loved him. Riko had hurt him. Riko had understood him. Riko had been his brother. Riko had never been his brother at all.
Kevin laughs and the sound shatters out in front of him. So does the empty vodka bottle - it slips from Kevin’s fingers and fissures into a million clear slivers across the kitchen tile with a deafening crack.
His eyes sting. He doesn't realize he's crying until something wet slips down his cheek.
Kevin distantly hears the front door open, voices filtering in down the hall. He can’t make out the words, his head feels like it's under water.
Kevin doesn't look up. He’s drowning.
He hears silence. A long silence. Then -
"Kevin?"
Neil’s voice, filled with carbonated concern, bubbling over the word and onto the floor.
Kevin blinks slowly. Their faces appear above him a moment later.
Neil is wearing one of Andrew’s t-shirts, his hair windswept and pushed out of his face. Andrew stands beside him with one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around an empty ice cream cup. The purple plastic spoon is between his teeth, a poor replacement for a cigarette. Neither of them say anything.
Kevin stares. Neil's eyes move to the glass on the floor. Andrew's eyes stay on Kevin.
Kevin wants to say something. Wants to apologize, though for what he can’t quite remember. His tongue feels swollen at the bottom of his mouth, like there’s not enough room for the words to squeeze out.
Neil kneels in front of Kevin, his movements slow. Kevin wants to tell him to be careful, that there’s a chunk of glass below Neil’s right knee, and if he moves he’s going to get cut - but the words don’t come. What Kevin says instead is, “He’s dead.”
Neil's expression doesn’t change, but there’s a new crease between his eyebrows, and his lips turn further downwards. Kevin thinks, stupidly, that Neil always looks younger when he's worried. The sharpness leaves his face. His eyes go soft, though they’re always softer when he’s looking at Kevin.
"I know," Neil says quietly.
Kevin realizes suddenly that Neil had known what day it was from the moment he'd woken up this morning. Of course he had, he’s the one who had to watch Riko’s last breaths. Of course he’d known. Neil had known and hadn't said anything. Had given Kevin the space he thought he needed.
Kevin's throat tightens painfully. "Oh." It's all he manages.
Neil frowns and looks over his shoulder at Andrew. He’s saying something that Kevin can distantly recognize is in English, but the words sound wrong, and he can’t keep up.
Andrew is still standing there in the doorway, his eyes on Kevin even as he responds to Neil with the same syrupy voice.
Kevin is caught off guard by the sudden and violent urge to ask him not to leave.
Kevin is drunk and grieving and fifteen years old and thirteen years old and twenty years old all at once, and somewhere beneath all of it is terror, small and ugly and childish. Andrew always keeps that terror at bay.
His mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
Andrew pulls the spoon from between his teeth. "First aid kit is under the sink," he says flatly as he disappears down the hall.
Kevin stares after him.
First aid kit. The words drift around in Kevin's head for a second, bumping uselessly against the inside of his skull. First aid kit? For what?
Neil is still crouched in front of him, saying something Kevin doesn't catch. The kitchen light buzzes overhead. That stupid buzz.
Kevin blinks slowly, then looks down.
Oh.
His left hand is hanging limply in his lap. Thin streams of red trail over the back of it, threading through old white scars and disappearing beneath his wrist. Glass must have caught him when the bottle shattered. He hadn't even felt it happen.
Kevin stares. The buzzing goes quiet, filled instead with a rushing in his ears. The blood settles into old lines, fills old paths, reopening the scars on Kevin's hands as precisely as the butt of a racket.
His lungs suddenly forget how to work.
No.
No, no -
The kitchen disappears. For one awful second he's back under fluorescent lights and black-painted walls and Riko's voice is in his ear and his hand hurts, there’s blood on the court and Jean is screaming somewhere -
A scarred hand waves in front of his face.
"Kevin."
Neil. Again.
"Kevin."
Kevin blinks. Neil's eyes are fixed on him, wide and worried.
"Can you stand?"
Kevin swallows. Nods.
Neil looks like he wants to argue, but Kevin pushes himself upward anyway, too fast for Neil to stop him. The floor shifts.
The room tilts sideways and Kevin pitches forward with a startled noise. Neil catches him instantly, strong hands around his shoulders, around his waist. Steady. Always steady.
Kevin ends up folded halfway against him, forehead brushing Neil's shoulder.
"Oh," Kevin says again into Neil's shirt. "No."
"I've got you," Neil says into his hair, holding him up.
Kevin closes his eyes. He likes the way those words sound.
Neil starts walking. Kevin doesn't entirely help. His feet drag a little. The hallway stretches ahead of him, the path to the bathroom turned miles too long. Everything feels too far away.
"He used to cut my hair." The words leave Kevin's mouth suddenly. Neil doesn't react, just adjusts his grip and keeps walking. Kevin laughs weakly. "He was terrible at it."
His throat tightens. "He'd pull too hard."
Step. Step. Step. "He always pulled too hard."
Neil opens the bathroom door, directing Kevin to sit on the closed toilet lid. Kevin slumps against Neil’s chest, pressing his face into the fabric of his shirt as Neil twists to turn on the shower. He smells like Andrew.
Water rushes from the showerhead. Kevin watches Neil stick his hand beneath it, adjusting the temperature carefully.
"He wasn’t always bad." Kevin's voice sounds far away.
Steam starts curling upward. Neil moves around the bathroom, calm and quiet. No impatience, no frustration at Kevin’s breakdown.
"He wasn’t always bad," Kevin mumbles again, louder this time, insistent. He wants Neil to understand that he’s not just mourning a monster, but he doesn’t know how.
Neil turns back toward him. His eyes soften again. "I know, Kev."
Kevin nods. He lets Neil pull his shoes off. Lets him peel his sweat-slicked shirt from his shoulders. Everything feels distant and slow, like moving underwater.
"I miss him," Kevin admits as Neil pulls his sweatpants down his thighs. The words are tiny, barely there, but Neil still hears them.
Kevin stares blankly at the tile while Neil carefully works him out of his clothes with practical, unhurried movements. There’s nothing charged about the moment, and Kevin takes a second to briefly wish Neil was stripping him of his clothes in just about any other context. Neil pulls off his own shirt, but leaves his shorts on, and Kevin reaches out a hand to brush against the silvery scars down Neil’s ribs. He knows who put those lines there, knows which knife was used.
He suddenly feels exhausted. Bone-deep exhausted.
Neil helps him stand again. Guides him carefully toward the shower. Warm steam curls around them. Kevin steps inside and nearly sways again before Neil catches his elbow. He doesn’t even feel Neil stepping into the shower behind him, doesn’t hear the curtain being pulled shut.
Kevin leans against the wall and closes his eyes as warm water runs over his shoulders and down his spine. The steam should feel too thick, too close, another thing pressing against him, but instead Kevin feels something inside him loosen by fractions. Tiny pieces. Things wound so tightly he hadn't realized they were hurting until now.
Neil guides him carefully beneath the spray. "Lean back a little."
Kevin obeys without thinking. Always easy with Neil.
The water catches in Kevin's hair immediately, plastering dark strands against his forehead and temples. His head feels heavy. Everything feels heavy.
Neil reaches for the shampoo bottle. Kevin watches him through half-lidded eyes. He doesn't remember Andrew buying that shampoo. Doesn't remember putting it in the shower. Strange, the things your brain notices while falling apart.
Neil works some into his hands and then gently threads his fingers into Kevin's hair. Kevin's eyes close instantly. The feeling punches all the air from his lungs.
Neil doesn't pull. Doesn't tug. Just slow fingers working through damp hair, rubbing careful circles against his scalp.
Kevin's chest aches. Neil's fingertips skim behind his ears, gentle, and Kevin feels abruptly, painfully drunk. There’s something dark and miserable inside him that doesn't know what to do with tenderness Neil offers him, doesn’t know what to do with this care.
Part of Kevin still expects affection to hurt. Expects hands to become fists. Expects care to come with conditions. There are never any conditions with Neil.
Neil hums quietly under his breath. It’s not a song Kevin recognizes, just noise, but he loses himself in it anyway, opening his eyes to watch Neil’s face.
Neil is close, damp from steam, curls sticking to his forehead. His expression is focused with the kind of seriousness he usually reserves for exy and making Andrew eat vegetables, and Kevin thinks:
I don’t deserve this.
The thought settles in Kevin's chest. Heavy, like a stone dropped into deep water.
Neil's fingers continue their slow movements through his hair, working soap through damp strands with impossible patience. Kevin watches him through wet eyelashes and thinks about last winter. About the banquet and the plane ticket and Riko’s warning. About Neil coming back from the Nest beaten and bruised and tattooed. Stubbornness carved into every line of his body and fear trembling underneath.
Neil had been so close. If Kevin had gotten in his way, if Kevin hadn’t kept his mouth shut, Neil could've escaped. Could've stayed untouched by the Nest.
Instead Kevin had let him go. Kevin had stood there and watched Neil walk directly toward horrors he knew too well.
"I'm sorry."
Neil's hands pause for half a second. "For what?" he asks quietly.
Kevin shakes his head. "You know."
Neil waits. Kevin stares at the shower wall. The water runs over tile and skin and old scars.
"For letting you go." The words scrape their way out. "To the Nest."
Neil’s hands disappear from Kevin’s hair, but he barely registers it. He thinks of Neil bleeding, of handcuffs and sharpened knives. Of Riko's smile. Of the sounds.
God.
Kevin squeezes his eyes shut. "It was for nothing," he mutters. His throat closes around the words. “I knew he wouldn’t keep his promise. But I still let you go.”
Silence. Just water.
Warm fingers brush across Kevin's face. Neil wipes water from beneath Kevin's eyes, or maybe its tears. Kevin doesn't know anymore.
"I'd do it again a thousand times," Neil says, sounding so sure of himself.
Kevin’s eyes snap open, and he stares at the man in front of him.
Neil shrugs one shoulder slightly. "I would've gone anyway, with or without your help."
Neil says it simply. Like gravity exists, like the sky is blue, and Kevin knows without a doubt that he’s right. He thinks, you're stronger than I am, and hates himself for it.
Neil stills, and it takes Kevin a second too long to realize that he didn’t just think the words. He’d spoken them aloud into the quiet of the bathroom.
Neil steps back slightly and Kevin immediately misses the warmth. Then Neil reaches forward and cups Kevin's face in both hands. His palms are cold despite the shower water. His thumbs brush lightly beneath Kevin's eyes and Kevin leans into his touch.
"Kevin." His voice is quiet, firm. "You are not a coward for leaving."
Kevin wants to argue. Wants to explain that survival and bravery aren't the same thing. Wants to say Jean stayed, Jean endured, while Kevin left.
But Neil is looking at him with that impossible certainty. That awful, relentless certainty, and Kevin doesn’t believe him. Not even a little. But Neil believes his words, and Kevin doesn't have enough strength tonight to fight him. So he doesn't.
He just closes his eyes. Lets Neil tilt his head back. Lets warm water rinse the soap from his hair. Neil's hands stay steady, working through Kevin's hair until it's clean. Sliding carefully down his shoulders, across his arms. Slow movements over skin and tight muscles. Up and down his shoulder blades, his back, his legs.
Kevin feels wrung out. Like grief had sunk claws into his ribs and pulled everything out of him piece by piece. But Neil never rushes. Never pulls too hard. Just washes him carefully, quietly, like Kevin is something worth handling gently.
Eventually the water stops. The sudden silence feels out of place.
Neil reaches for the towel hanging over the door and wraps it around Kevin, holding him as they step out of the shower.
Neil dries his hair first. Rubbing carefully as to not cause tangles, the towel moving down to Kevin’s shoulders, his torso, his hands. Kevin relishes every touch without realizing it.
Neil guides him back to the closed toilet seat and Kevin drops onto it bonelessly. He brushes damp hair away from Kevin's forehead and says, "Stay here."
Kevin sits perfectly still as Neil leaves the room, doesn’t let himself breathe until he’s back with fresh clothes in his hands.
Neil crouches in front of him again. "Hey." His mouth twitches slightly. "Still with me?"
"Barely."
Neil huffs a quiet laugh. Kevin likes that sound too.
He lets Neil guide his arms through the shirt sleeves. Lets him tug the soft cotton down over damp skin and carefully work sweatpants over his legs. Neil is practical about it, movements slow because Kevin keeps forgetting to help.
He pulls a white box out from underneath the sink, opens it and picks out a couple small bandages. His touch is featherlight as he wraps each bandage around the thin cuts on Kevin’s fingers, pressing his mouth to the white scars lining the back of his hand in an open-mouthed kiss.
Shivers crawl down Kevin’s spine at the contact.
When Kevin is dressed, Neil stands and quickly strips out of his soaked shorts, towel-drying himself with little concern for dignity. Kevin watches him blearily from the toilet seat.
Neil catches him staring. Kevin expects him to make a joke or a move or something. Instead, Neil just steps closer and brushes damp hair from Kevin's eyes. "C'mon," he says.
Kevin lets himself be pulled to his feet. The walk back to the bedroom feels shorter somehow. Kevin leans heavily into Neil as they move through the hallway.
When they pass the kitchen, Kevin slows. Stops.
The floor is clean, no traces of the glass or vodka or blood Kevin had left behind. Nothing left of his breakdown except a faint smell of alcohol hanging in the air.
Sitting on Kevin's nightstand inside his bedroom is a chilled glass of water and two Tylenol. Kevin feels something warm and painful bloom beneath his ribs.
Andrew never says ‘I love you’ with words, but it's in the knives and bruised knuckles and ice cream spoons. In the cleaned-up messes and first aid kits and water beside the bed.
Neil squeezes his shoulder lightly and keeps walking. Kevin goes, because he is tired. God, he is tired.
Neil sits him carefully on the edge of the bed first, helping him take the Tylenol and drink half the water before pulling the blankets back. Then he guides Kevin down, and Kevin sinks into the mattress, feeling like a puppet with its strings cut.
The room is dim. Quiet. Kevin stares at the ceiling, at the water damage in the corner, at the cracks.
And suddenly - so suddenly he almost misses the switch - he's back in the Nest. His old home. Cold, scratchy sheets beneath him, darkness pressing in from every wall, the ceiling hanging low over Riko’s voice in his ears.
You belong to me.
It’s you and me, Kevin. It’s just us.
Kevin Day, Kevin Day, Kevin Day -
Panic crawls cold beneath his skin. He’s drowning.
No. He can’t.
No, no, no -
Kevin flails a hand out and grabs a fistful of Neil's shirt before he can move away. His fingers shake with how hard he’s holding on, but he can’t make himself let go.
Neil freezes immediately, not quite pulling away but not moving any closer either.
Kevin hates how small his voice sounds when he begs, "Don't leave me alone. Not…not right now." The words scrape out of his throat.
Neil’s shoulders draw in tighter, and he nods slow enough that Kevin can see the movement in the dim lights. He motions for Kevin to move over, and Kevin shifts until he feels his back hit the wall, still holding on.
"Okay," Neil says quietly as he climbs into bed beside him and immediately Kevin curls into him, pressing his face into Neil's shoulder, fitting himself against warmth and skin and heartbeat.
Neil wraps an arm around him automatically. Kevin feels him shift slightly, feels movement at the foot of his bed. Murmured words, Neil talking to someone. Andrew, probably. Kevin doesn't listen.
He just inches closer, inhaling against Neil’s chest. He hears a whispered, “You’re not alone anymore,” spoken into his hair, the press of lips against his forehead, and Kevin lets himself drift off, falling into sleep with Neil’s arms around him and Andrew’s steady presence not far behind.