Fic: This is not my (heart) [1/3]
Masterpost | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
When Kevin wakes up one morning and realizes his penis has disappeared, and that the hair on his chest has been replaced with the soft swell of breasts, he takes it pretty calmly. He feels like maybe he should be more upset, but he's just ... not. For all he knows, this happens to everybody at some point, and it's just that nobody ever bothered to tell Kevin about it. (People sort of forget to tell Kevin a lot of things; he's pretty much used to it by now.)
Kevin gets up and takes his shower in the carefully locked bathroom. Sometimes he uses that rare moment of privacy to jerk off, but this morning is an exercise in scrubbing without looking. He's not panicking, exactly, but his body feels put together wrong, and the wrongness gets worse every time his fingers brush over parts he shouldn't have. Getting dressed is almost as bad. His uniform doesn't fit perfectly anymore -- it's loose in some places and tight in others -- but with a couple of layers (yes to the sweater-vest, no to the blazer that's too wide on his shoulders), even he can't tell at a glance that his chest isn't flat. He looks in the mirror for a long time, scrutinizing his face. It hasn't really changed much; no stubble, but the basic shape of him is the same.
Their mom stops to look at Kevin as she drops pancakes on his plate, pausing before moving on to Joe. "Are you feeling all right, honey?" she asks him, and Kevin freezes.
"I'm fine," he says, in a voice that could almost be mistaken for an actual "fine" voice in some countries, Kevin is sure. She looks at him again, then shakes her head as if to clear it and smiles one of those happy-sad smiles she gets when looking at their baby pictures in photo albums.
"I guess you boys are just growing up too fast for me to keep up," she says finally, squeezing Kevin's shoulder and dropping a tragically embarrassing mom kiss on the top of his head as she walks back to the stove for the next round of pancakes.
Frankie watches Kevin with a funny expression on his face all through breakfast, but Nick's too busy eating to bother noticing, and Joe's too busy making fun of Nick over some girl he supposedly has a crush on.
(Kevin is certain that he's a not-particularly-attractive girl. No boys will develop crushes on Kevin. He sighs about this, not sure if it's a happy sigh or a sad sigh, but he stops sighing altogether when Frankie gives him another look.)
He thinks he should probably inform his brothers about this. Nick would be able to tell him if it was one of those Totally Normal Things No One Tells Kevin About, or if Kevin is just weird. Or cursed. Or some kind of freak of nature.
On second thought, he doesn't tell his brothers anything other than, "We're going to be late." If they notice that his voice is a little higher than usual, they don't mention it.
Kevin isn't a genius, not like Nick, but he does just fine in school. He's the steady, reliable, average one in the family -- not particularly talented beyond the guitar, but not a failure at anything either -- and he's always been okay with that. Their parents worry about Joe and take pride in Nick's genius at everything and try to keep Frankie from conquering the world before he hits puberty. Kevin, they don't have to think about. Kevin does his homework, keeps his grades up, doesn't skip class. Except, looking down the hallway that leads to the boys' locker room, he realizes that he does skip class. Specifically, he skips PE, because there's no way he can change and shower without someone noticing that he's ... well, not himself.
He ends up taking refuge in the blissfully empty-this-period music room, where he can hide out in the back corner with his guitar and pretend he's practicing his parts for the orchestra, but secretly play with chord progressions while Nick isn't around to comment as he's working (Nick means well, but it's so distracting to have to explain his thought process every five minutes when all he wants to do is play with it until it sounds right).
So far, Kevin has congratulated himself on how well he's taking his sudden female-ness. He ducked away before Stella could corral him into a before-school fitting, and avoided Macy like the plague (Macy studies pictures of JONAS like there's going to be a pop quiz later -- if she sees him, she'll know). He remembered to go into a stall in the bathroom before he started unzipping at the urinal (massive public humiliation: averted). He sits with his legs spread, guy-style, even though he doesn't need to and even though it feels like he's somehow on display when he does it. He can handle this, he really can.
But maybe he isn't handling it as well as he thought, because when he realizes, abruptly and terrifyingly, that his hands are smaller, his fingers shorter, and that he can't make his girl-fingers reach the right places on the fretboard -- when he realizes that he can't play -- it doesn't take more than a few seconds before he bursts into tears.
Boy-Kevin didn't really cry much, even when he got hurt as a kid, but girl-Kevin is apparently a champion cry-er. Girl-Kevin could probably win awards for crying, and Kevin doesn't know how it happens but somehow he's laughing and crying at the same time and that just makes it worse. His cheeks are wet and he sort of can't breathe and the edge of his guitar is pressing uncomfortably against his chest, so that's of course when the door to the music room opens and Mike Carden walks in.
Kevin does not hang out with Mike Carden. Ever. This is for a number of very important reasons, primarily that Kevin is a good boy (well, usually a boy) who happens to be in a successful and wildly-famous band with his brothers, while Mike Carden smokes in the parking lot after school and is rumored to have killed a man with his bare hands. (Kevin does not entirely disbelieve this rumor.) Also because Mike has never shown even a glimmer of interest in Kevin, or his brothers, or their band. They were in the same biology class sophomore year, and the only time Kevin can even remember speaking to him was when Mike asked, "You got a pen?" He never returned Kevin's pen, but Kevin decided that discretion was the better part of remaining alive, and just stole a new one from Joe.
Stupid girl-Kevin's body doesn't get the memo from his brain (the memo, if written out, would read something like, "DANGER! SHARK!", and feature a picture of Mike and the sharp, pointy teeth with which he is going to eat Kevin alive), because he can't stop crying even though this is very bad and Kevin is going to die before he's ever been kissed, like one of those tragic Lifetime movies where everything is in soft-focus and everyone gets pregnant or has cancer or both.
"Shit," Mike swears, and -- ohgod -- flips the deadbolt on the door with a click. Kevin clings to his guitar like a shield, even though it's digging into his breasts kind of painfully , and tries to will his lip to stop wobbling (unsuccessfully). But Mike doesn't immediately descend to tear the flesh from Kevin's tender limbs. Instead, he asks, "What's wrong?"
Kevin is trying to figure out how to answer that without actually telling Mike anything because it's entirely possible this whole incident is a prelude to blackmail, and he's still crying -- there is something wrong with girl-Kevin's eyes, that's gotta be it, some sort of imbalance of the humors -- when Mike zeroes in on the way the guitar is pressed to Kevin's chest.
"Fuck, you're a girl?" Mike isn't actually freaking out, which Kevin thinks may be a good sign. For one, it means that only one of them is freaking out, not both. Only one freakout at a time; Kevin's almost positive that's a rule or something. Anyway, Mike just sounds surprised, really surprised, like he'd actually put thought into Kevin's not!girl-ness or something and is dismayed to find out he was wrong.
"No, I'm not!" Kevin protests, relinquishing his hold on the guitar only enough so that it's no longer pressed against his breasts.
Mike doesn't seem to get it, though. Instead of being properly weirded out by how Kevin is suddenly possessed of girl parts, he just nods seriously and sits down next to Kevin. "Okay," he says, "I get that. What happened? Was somebody hassling you? Shit, why aren't you wearing your binder? You're in school; anybody could see--" he trails off, like this is supposed to mean something to Kevin, who is not a girl and if Mike is suggesting he wear a bra, that is just not happening. Not in the least because the thought of shopping for one is maybe more horrifying than the thought of not being able to play his guitar ever again. (Maybe. Kevin doesn't have much experience differentiating between shades of abject terror.)
Apparently, though he couldn't bring himself to tell his brothers, Kevin is going to talk to Mike nearly-got-expelled-for-coming-to-class-hungover-again Carden about this. That's ... about what Kevin expects out of life at this point.
"I don't know what happened," he says, loosening his grip on the neck of the guitar (it's not the guitar's fault; she doesn't deserve to be strangled). "I went to sleep and I was normal, and then I woke up with ..." He can't actually say it, but he gestures meaningfully toward his chest with his free hand.
"Wait, what?" Mike stares at him, and Kevin is starting to feel even more uncomfortable in his newly-shaped skin. He thought they'd covered this already, and he really doesn't want to talk about it any more to anyone who can't fix it. Kevin blocks Mike and his sharp-eyed staring out of his mind and tries again to move his fingers from one chord to the next. They still don't reach -- not naturally, not so he can play -- and Kevin wraps himself around the guitar hopelessly. Maybe his sudden female-ness is fatal? He thinks he'd prefer death over having to tell Nick and Joe that he can't be in the band anymore because his chromosomes decided to play musical chairs while he slept.
"You're serious," Mike says softly, unexpected enough that it breaks through Kevin's mental Cone of Silence. He's watching Kevin's hands, not his chest, and Kevin self-consciously curls his fingers against his palm. Kevin looks away and then can't look back, because this is the part where Mike laughs and ties Kevin to the flagpole or whatever.
Except Mike's not laughing.
Rather, Mike has his cell phone out (in blatant violation of school rules, but they're both skipping class so Kevin can't bring himself to be indignant about it), texting at a speed even Stella would admire. He looks satisfied when his phone dings about a minute later.
"Okay, come on," Mike says, standing up and offering Kevin a hand he doesn't take.
"Are you going to tie me to the flagpole?" Kevin's stupid, traitorous mouth says, and Mike's eyebrows shoot up.
"Why would I tie you to the flagpole?" He sounds genuinely confused by this, which gives Kevin some small measure of comfort. "We're going to Bill's. Unless you want to stay here for the rest of the day?"
It's not even lunchtime yet, Kevin realizes, and he contemplates sitting in the cafeteria with his brothers, where surely Macy will find them and see him and he won't be able to avoid Stella and even if, by some miracle, he does manage to hide what's happened, he'll still have to sit through the rest of the day's classes with his legs spread uncomfortably wide, trying to cover up the pitch-change in his voice.
Kevin really, really doesn't want to stay here for the rest of the day.
He carefully replaces the guitar in its case, and when Mike offers his hand again, Kevin grabs it to pull himself up. His girl-hand feels oddly small in Mike's, and Mike takes most of Kevin's weight like it's nothing. Maybe it should be unsettling, that difference in strength that probably wouldn't have existed for boy-Kevin, but as he follows Mike out to his battered old Jeep, Kevin feels more secure than he has since he woke up.
'Bill' turns out to be William Beckett, who sleeps through 5th period AP US History every day but still manages to have the best grade in the class, and his place turns out to be a tiny house on the not-that-bad side of town, which features ugly wood paneling and dingy shag carpet, and a woman surrounded by empty bottles, snoring on the floral-printed sofa.
Kevin figures that this is William's mother, and also that he shouldn't ask questions about her. That's not a problem, because Kevin has loads of questions to ask that in no way feature the passed-out woman on the sofa. For starters, why was it necessary to go to William Beckett's house instead of just going to the mall or wherever people normally went when they skipped school? And also, why did not only William swing up into Mike's Jeep, but also Brendon Urie, the hyper kid from orchestra who -- Kevin is pretty sure -- Mr. Phelps only puts up with because he can play, like, every instrument ever? Kevin knew that Brendon (who's kind of a dork, in a friendly, overly-enthusiastic kind of way) was sort of friends with Mike Might-Have-Killed-a-Guy Carden, the same way he knows vaguely which football players were dating which cheerleaders or that the croquet team hasn't won a match in three years. He didn't know Brendon Urie and Mike Carden were the sort of friends who skipped out of school together.
But then, Kevin hadn't known it was possible to wake up with breasts, either, so maybe he should stop being surprised by things.
The four of them sneak through the living room and up the narrow stairs to a converted attic space that reveals itself to be William's bedroom. Brendon is the only one of them who doesn't have to hunch to avoid banging his head on the angled ceiling; William has to make his way to the precise center of the room, where the ceiling is highest, to stand up straight. Mike immediately flops down into one of the elderly beanbag chairs in the open area of the room, and gestures for Kevin to do the same.
William drops his bag next to his desk and joins them, and Brendon drops his next to a rumpled but made-up mattress in the opposite corner, near the stairs. There are a few milk crates stacked next to it, full of clothes and CDs, and a picture of two smiling, long-haired girls, in a simple frame -- his sisters, maybe? Or maybe not, because it kind of looks like Brendon lives on a mattress in William Beckett's room, and if he has sisters, why isn't he living with them, at home? Kevin can't imagine what it would be like to live away from his brothers, and he suddenly feels completely out of his depth. The feeling gets worse when, lacking a beanbag of his own, Brendon plops himself down in William's lap.
"Not that I'm complaining," Brendon says as William wraps long arms around his waist, "but why are we skipping class today?"
In answer, and before Kevin can figure out what he's doing and stop him, Mike grabs the back of Kevin's carefully layered shirts and tugs, pulling them tight across his chest and revealing the lumps of his stupid breasts.
Brendon's mouth drops open, but it's William who says, "Ah. That's ... interesting," with an inscrutable look on his face. Kevin crosses his arms over his chest, even though Mike has let go of his shirts.
It takes a second, but Brendon finds his voice. "Wait, so you're -- ? Really? I mean, I wouldn't have guessed, but that's the poi -- " Brendon stops as Mike shakes his head.
"He says he woke up like this," Mike explains, and Kevin may be dying of embarrassment, but still.
"He is right here," Kevin grumbles, which is more bitchy than he usually lets himself be, but when he looks up, Mike is smiling at him, and Brendon and William both look amused (William perhaps more so -- Brendon seems to be trying to decide whether to smile or be confused).
"'Woke up' like this?" William asks, and Kevin can hear the air-quotes. "So this morning, poof!--" he cups Brendon's chest with his hands to illustrate, though Brendon looks grumpy about it and bats his hands away. Kevin nods. "Well that's certainly ... unexpected," William muses, staring off into the middle distance and leaving Kevin with the distinct impression that he's just missed something.
"How?" Brendon asks, staring at Kevin so intensely that he might be worried if he didn't know Brendon was a (loudly outspoken) vegetarian. "How did it happen? I mean, did you do something? Was there, like, some creepy guy or maybe a fortune teller, or a weird bottle you found in your attic?" He's scarily serious, like he expects Kevin to reveal that yes, obviously some mysterious stranger cursed him with girl-ness, because that happens all the time in real life and does not sound at all crazy.
Then again, Kevin woke up as a girl that morning. It's possible he needs to adjust his definition of 'crazy'.
"No," Kevin says, not entirely sure how to handle the onslaught of focused Brendon. "Nothing like that. I just ... woke up, and I was like this. We had chili for dinner last night?" he offers as Brendon deflates, shrinking back against William's chest to be cuddled. William pets Brendon's hair the way Kevin's mom used to do when he was sick, and Kevin feels intensely miserable. Not only is he a not-particularly-attractive girl, but he's made the irrepressible Brendon Urie look like someone killed his puppy.
"Sorry, Bren," Mike says, surprisingly soft, and Brendon nods in acknowledgment though he won't meet anyone's eyes. Kevin is so totally and completely lost.
"I know it's not fair," Mike says, "and tell me if I'm a shitty friend for asking, but I thought you might be able to help?" Mike waves at Kevin's chest. "He can't walk around like that."
Brendon closes his eyes for a long minute, and Kevin can see William grip Brendon tighter around his waist and nuzzle into his hair. Brendon takes a deep breath, then another. He droops bonelessly for a second, then pushes off of William's lap and walks over to give Mike a smacking kiss on the cheek.
"You are definitely not a shitty friend, Michael Carden," Brendon declares, then turns and looks determinedly at Kevin. "You're bigger than I am," he purses his lips and hums a little. "It'll be tight, but maybe..." He goes to dig in his milk crates, emerging after some rummaging-interspersed-with-swearing with a piece of peachy-colored fabric and a triumphant expression. He crooks a finger at Kevin. "Come on. The bathroom's downstairs."
Kevin looks at Mike, because Mike seems to know what's going on here whereas Kevin has no clue, but Mike just jerks his chin in Brendon's direction. "Brendon knows what he's doing," Mike tells him, and that's probably all Kevin is going to get, so he follows Brendon down the stairs and past William's still-passed-out mom to a cramped bathroom that smells faintly of stale potpourri and Lysol.
"Shirts off," Brendon commands, which is kind of hilarious since Brendon is tiny, and also mortifying because what? and also absolutely not, never in a million years.
"I'm not taking my shirt off!" Kevin protests, keeping his voice low enough that he's sure it doesn't carry to the living room. Brendon puts his hands on his hips and cocks his head at Kevin.
"You're not taking your shirt off," Brendon agrees, and Kevin breathes a premature sigh of relief before he continues, "You're taking your four shirts off. And believe me, I've seen everything you've got."
Kevin kind of doubts that, because Brendon always seemed ... well, like just as much of a virgin as Kevin, to put it bluntly, and apparently gay, based on all the boy-on-boy PDA that had been happening upstairs (not that Kevin has a problem with that, since ... well, he'd like to like girls, but he hasn't quite figured out how to like girls, and until he does he's going to continue to ignore the sculpted chests and other things he sees in the locker room every day. Really).
But, if Brendon's gay, maybe Kevin doesn't need to worry about taking his shirt off? The thought stalls Kevin's brain out for a second, just long enough for Brendon to come to some sort of decision.
"Okay," Brendon takes a deep breath, hesitating. "Do you swear on your life that you will never breathe a word of this to anyone? I mean anyone, except Bill and Mike 'cause they already know, but, you have to promise." Brendon has some of that intense look back, and Kevin swallows and thinks. He doesn't know if he'd be any good at keeping secrets from Nick and Joe, mostly because they don't have many secrets. But whatever Brendon's so worried about, they probably don't care, since he's pretty sure neither Nick nor Joe have ever spent much time contemplating the life of Brendon Urie. (Remembering the mattress upstairs, Kevin feels kind of bad about that, because maybe they should have been thinking about Brendon, but he can't change the fact that they weren't.)
Kevin nods, and sticks out a hand. "I promise," he says, and Brendon bites his lip nervously but he takes Kevin's hand and seems satisfied. Kevin waits for him to start talking again, but instead Brendon starts unbuttoning his uniform shirt. He's got a t-shirt on underneath, and once he's done neatly folding the uniform, he whips the t-shirt over his head and Kevin blinks in surprise. It takes a second for him to process, because Brendon's wearing some sort of ... something, it's not exactly a shirt and not exactly a bandage, but it resembles the peachy-thing that Brendon had retrieved upstairs and it's tight around Brendon's chest, and okay, Kevin was raised right, so as soon as he realizes that he's essentially looking at Brendon's breasts--hidden under a layer of fabric though they may be--he closes his eyes tight and spins around so fast he hits his hip on the edge of the counter.
"Sorry!" he says reflexively, and he's facing away so he can open his eyes and be extremely interested in the ugly wallpaper in front of him. As such, he doesn't immediately realize that Brendon is sort of laughing at him. He's so not turning around, but he has to know what the hell is going on here.
"Did you-- Did this happen to you, too?" Kevin asks, gesturing at himself. As he follows the pattern of the wallpaper with his eyes, he thinks maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Well, bad for Brendon, maybe, but at least it would mean that Kevin isn't a freak of nature by himself, which would suck more than just being a normal freak of nature. Or something. (Kevin doesn't particularly want to be any sort of freak, but being the only one would be worse, he's sure. They probably dissect you for that.)
"No," Brendon says shortly, his voice tight and sad-sounding. "You can turn around, you know. It's sort of weird talking to your back."
Kevin turns around cautiously, but Brendon has put his t-shirt back on and hopped up to perch on the countertop, his heel tapping lightly against the cabinet beneath. He's still confused, really confused, but Brendon looks sad and Kevin forcibly keeps his mouth closed. He doesn't need to keep making Brendon feel bad.
"My parents named me Brenda," Brendon says, and he almost smiles. "That's already a mistake right there, don't you think? I mean, really, Brenda? Who's named Brenda anymore?"
Kevin swallows hard and listens as Brendon explains; that he never felt right, that he always wanted his big brother's hand-me-downs, not his sister's, that the frilly dresses his mother put him in for family photos felt wrong, that he knew he was a boy, no matter how many times his mom and dad explained things to him, or prayed over him, or made him talk to the bishop. So he moved out, about two years ago. He chopped off his hair and wrapped his chest with an ace bandage and called himself Brendon on his job application for the Smoothie Hut, and he'd been living in a 'crappy apartment' (Kevin doesn't want to think about what that means, if a mattress in William's bedroom is an improvement) until William brought him home and declared that Brendon wasn't allowed to leave. William, apparently, works at the Gap sixteen hours a week, has most of his breaks at the same time as Brendon's, and was the one who helped Brendon fill out all the paperwork he needed to get his scholarship to Horace Mantis.
Kevin's feeling kind of sick to his stomach, because seriously, he doesn't know if he could survive, doing what Brendon's done, and he's tempted to go in for the hug except he's never really spoken to Brendon much before today and then he made Brendon sad so the whole hugging thing might be weird (which is too bad, because Kevin is of the opinion that hugs are awesome).
Brendon taps his heel against the cabinet in a quick, syncopated rhythm. "So now will you please take your ridiculous number of shirts off before Mike thinks I've kidnapped you?" he asks, and waves the peach fabric-thing in front of Kevin, "We still need to see if this fits. It's my loosest binder, but I'm smaller than you." There's not much that Kevin can say to that, so he doesn't. He just strips off his top three layers quickly, and the fourth much, much more slowly, before crossing his arms over his chest to hide himself. Luckily, the embarrassment doesn't last long, maybe because Brendon's gaze is remarkably detached.
"Not too big. That's good," he mutters, then he hops down off the cabinet to help Kevin get the binder arranged properly. It's so tight, and for the first few seconds Kevin wonders if this was all an elaborate plot to asphyxiate him, but then Brendon's fingers are on his breasts oh god shifting things around and breathing gets a little easier. When Kevin looks in the mirror, his chest is almost as flat as usual, though the contour is off a little. Well, probably nobody was paying that close of attention to Kevin's chest, anyway. Brendon gives him a critical once-over, then tosses his t-shirt at his head.
"It's too tight, but you should be okay as long as you don't wear it for too long at a time," he says. "If you stay like this for a while, you should get one that actually fits. I can help, if you want." Brendon shrugs, and Kevin pulls his head through his shirt and says, "Thanks," in a small voice. Brendon beams at him.
"C'mon. We should get back upstairs before Bill's mom wakes up."
They interrupt Mike and William, who were apparently in the middle of an intense and -- judging by their sudden silence -- private conversation, but Brendon either doesn't notice or doesn't care, bouncing over to deposit himself on William's lap once more.
"You're amazing," William tells him, raking his eyes over Kevin, who holds his folded shirts in front of him as a protective barrier.
"Thanks, Bden," Mike says, and Kevin's kind of uncomfortable with that because why does Mike Carden care about any of this? He tucks his extra shirts into his bookbag and wonders if this is going to get extremely awkward very fast, but then Brendon chirps, "Scrabble?" and somehow Kevin finds himself spending the rest of the afternoon eating Doritos and counting triple word scores and arguing about whether 'fucktard' counts as a word or not.
When Mike drops Kevin off a block away from the firehouse and says, "See you tomorrow," Kevin knows that he will, and it feels totally natural to say, "Yeah, see you," and wave a little as Mike drives away.
The next couple of days are the most stressful Kevin's ever had, and that includes the weeks they spent recording their first album, with Nick sniping at everyone and their dad worrying about how much studio time they had left.
The lack of privacy in the firehouse has never really bothered Kevin before, but then, he's never had anything to hide before. He has to time things perfectly -- waking up before his brothers (even Nick, and that's tough) to get into the bathroom before they see him, going to bed after their lights are shut off. He learns how to get the binder on himself, so that it doesn't cut off his entire air supply and doesn't leave his chest looking lumpy, and he starts wearing a t-shirt to bed even though he'd always been a boxers man, and even that leaves him feeling exposed and restless. His boxers are too loose and too empty, and he feels oddly naked all the time.
The hardest part is convincing them that he needs to take a break from band practice for a few days (Kevin refuses to believe his girl-ness will last more than a few days -- it can't, right?). The looks Nick and Joe give him are part disappointment, part betrayal.
"An SAT class?" Nick narrows his eyes at Kevin, who fights the urge to hide under the table. "I didn't know you were thinking about college." He says it like it's an accusation, because it sort of is. Kevin's the first one of them to graduate; the first one to have to decide how to deal with the competing demands of The Band vs. Everything Else.
"Well, I think it's a good idea," their mom tells Nick, spooning another serving of peas onto his plate while he makes an unhappy face at her. "You never know what can happen. You boys have been very lucky, and it's wonderful that the band is such a success." She stares down their dad, who had made a movement like he was going to speak. He makes a zipping motion across his lips and sits back in his chair. "But I think it's very practical of you to make sure you have other options for your future."
Kevin blushes, feeling a little bit dirty for making his mother so proud of a complete and total lie.
His fictitious SAT prep class comes in handy, though, because that day Mike bumps into Kevin outside third period biology and says, "Meet us in the parking lot after school?" and Kevin says, "Okay, yeah," and manages, he thinks, to cover his surprise that Mike is continuing to talk to him.
So he spends another afternoon in William's room -- Mike stowed his Xbox under the front seat of the Jeep, so they carry it upstairs and hook it up to the small, slightly fuzzy TV William has tucked in his closet. Brendon and William laugh gleefully as Kevin dies approximately a million times while Mike teaches him to play Halo, and when he's just had enough of the binder for the day, Brendon takes his off too -- in solidarity, he says. It's weird at first, especially when Mike reaches over to show him the button sequence he needs (again) and his arm brushes against Kevin's chest; Kevin's breath hitches a little, and he thinks maybe Mike notices but he doesn't say anything, sparing Kevin the utter embarrassment of acknowledging how good the contact felt. But everyone just goes on teasing Kevin for being horrifically bad at the game and Mike doesn't start treating Kevin any differently, so with nothing to fight against, Kevin lets himself relax.
That evening and breakfast Thursday morning, though, are horrible, because while Kevin had been trying to keep the Master Chief alive, Nick had officially "fallen in love" (apparently Joe's teasing was right on the money) and he's written twelve songs in as many hours and he wants Joe and Kevin to help with the music. Kevin escapes to school in the morning unscathed, except for the way Nick's hurt eyes burned holes into his back on his way out the door. He and Joe may do their best to discourage Nick's habit of falling in love at the drop of a hat, but they've always been on board when it comes to the music.
Kevin is the worst brother in the history of the universe.
He's hiding out in the second floor boys' bathroom when Brendon finds him. It's long after the bell has rung, and while Kevin is now making a habit of skipping class, Brendon has a bathroom pass dangling from his fingertips.
"You wanna talk about it?" he asks, hopping up on the counter and patting the space next to him. Kevin checks for excess water, then tentatively situates himself. He can kinda see why Brendon likes perching on things so much. It's fun to swing his feet.
"Not really," he says, but he's lying because he follows it with, "My hands are smaller." Brendon appears flummoxed by that, which, in thinking over things, Kevin can understand. "I can't play guitar anymore," he admits quietly, and then Brendon understands, if the sad, breathy, "Oh!" is anything to go by.
"Yeah," Kevin confirms, then swings his feet more vigorously, like that'll make all the hurt go away. Instead all he manages to do his bang his Achilles tendon against the plumbing or the garbage can or whatever's lurking beneath the countertop. Ow.
"So..." Brendon says tentatively, "Your band?"
Kevin shakes his head. "My brothers don't know. Yet, I mean. I have to tell them, but -- " He makes a pained sound, and feels pathetic for it. "The guitar's the only thing I'm good at, you know?" he asks, even though Brendon couldn't possibly know, since Kevin only started talking to Brendon a few days ago. But Brendon, Kevin has discovered, is good people, and Brendon, Kevin remembers, understands about music.
Kevin swings his feet again, heedless of the danger to his abused tendon and needing to express everything he's feeling without resorting to violence or destruction of property. "It's my life. And now it's gone and I'm a girl and I'm ugly and I'm not good at anything!"
(There is still something wrong with girl-Kevin's eyes.)
He's fairly sure that Brendon will, at this point, write him off as a total crazy person and possibly spread word to the entire school and maybe several tabloids that Kevin is certifiable and also cries a lot. Instead, Kevin finds himself with an armful of warm boy. It just so happens that Brendon is also a firm believer in the healing power of hugs, and Kevin hugs him back gratefully.
Normally, he and his brothers touch all the time. They were close-knit to start with, and becoming famous brought them all even closer, so the Lucas household is normally full of high-fives and back-pats and hugs (...okay, maybe not for Nick, but for everyone else), and of course the usual kicking and punching and noogie-ing that comes with having four boys living in the same house. Since the Change, which is what Kevin has decided to call it (since "The Day I Woke Up a Girl and My Life Ended" is too much of a mouthful), he's been avoiding even the casual touches -- it'd be so easy to give it away, and Kevin can't let that happen. He should let his brothers know; he should be honest with them, but if he's going to tell them (and he is, really, he totally is), it's going to be on his own terms.
So Kevin's maybe a little bit touch-starved after two-and-a-half days without having Joe tackle him for the TV remote or picking Frankie up for a piggy-back-ride (which Never Happens, because Frankie's too old for that sort of thing, except for how he's not). Brendon is tiny and skinny, but he gives awesome hugs. Kevin wishes Brendon was just a little bit bigger so he could bury his face in Brendon's shoulder, but this is good, and Kevin holds on as long as he can -- Brendon doesn't seem to mind -- until the bathroom door opens with a bang, and the two of them stiffen and fly apart at the loud and entirely unexpected noise.
Kevin vaguely recognizes the guy who's standing there; he's pretty sure it's the same guy from the percussion section who'd glared daggers at him for a week after he broke that drum when he was trying out for the orchestra. Right now he's not glaring anything, he's just sort of standing there with a blank look on his face, and Brendon's sitting up straighter, his expression pained.
"Spencer -- " Brendon chokes out; and right, yes, Spencer Smith, cold-hearted and iron-fisted ruler of the Horace Mantis drumline, Kevin can totally remember things.
Spencer doesn't say anything. He just keeps looking at them blankly for a moment longer, then turns on the heels of his -- wow, really amazing -- shoes and walks back out the door, though it doesn't slam behind him this time.
"Fuck," Brendon mumbles, sliding down off the countertop and slumping against it. Kevin slides down next to him.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and Brendon nods even though it's incredibly obvious, even to Kevin, that he's really not.
"Yeah," Brendon says, "I'm fine. Just a totally stupid, hopeless crush ... thing. Y'know." He waves a hand dejectedly, and Kevin really doesn't know; he hasn't had many crushes at all, even including that embarrassing debacle with the pizza girl, and none of them were hopeless in a way that could make his voice sound like that.
This time, Brendon's the one gratefully accepting the hug.
"Go out and hang by the Jeep, okay?" Brendon says when he pulls away, and Kevin nods because it's not like he has anything left to lose at this point. The school is probably going to call his parents about the skipped classes just as soon as they realize that his brothers were in school and he wasn't, and even that won't matter once he tells them the band is over, done with; no more JONAS. Kevin is doomed to be an ugly girl who can't play guitar and whose brothers hate him for destroying their band. It is inevitable at this point. There will probably be a Behind the Music special devoted to how much Kevin Lucas sucks at life.
Mike's Jeep is in what Kevin is learning is its regular spot -- the far corner of the parking lot near the athletic fields, just out of view of the classroom windows. Perfectly located should a teenage boy or three (or four) decide to make a strategic escape in the middle of the day, and conveniently angled so that no one inside the building can see Kevin leaning against the passenger side door, scuffing the toes of his shoes against the asphalt occasionally. White Chuck Taylors with green laces; they aren't Kevin's favorite shoes, but these are Joe's anyway. All of Kevin's shoes are too big for his feet, but he's been able to squish into Joe's shoes sometimes, so it's not too weird that he's stolen these. Joe hasn't mentioned it, anyway, and that's the best Kevin hoped for when he made off with them. He has to cinch the laces tightly so they don't feel like they're going to fall off.
He's been waiting for ten or fifteen minutes (stewing over his own imminent demise at the hands of his younger brothers, it feels more like forty or fifty years) when Mike shows up, uniform shirt untucked as usual, with his bookbag slung over his shoulder and his hands stuffed in his pockets.
"Hey," he says, and Kevin looks up from the dirty tips of Joe's shoes to give him a little wave. "Brendon said you needed to get out of here." Mike's keys are in his hand, and the jingle of metal is the most welcome thing Kevin's heard all day.
"I really do," Kevin confirms, sagging back against the door of Mike's Jeep. Mike does the weird thing he does, where he starts to touch Kevin and then stops and then starts again, like he can't make up his mind, but he eventually squeezes Kevin's shoulder reassuringly and unlocks the door for him. (Kevin should inform Mike about his opinions on hugging -- shoulder squeezes are totally just a mild form of hugging, after all. But maybe Mike's just worried that Kevin's girl-ness is catching or something, and Kevin really can't fault him for that.)
Kevin climbs into the front seat, looking back at the building. "They're not coming?" he asks. He'd kind of figured Brendon would be there, too. And William, since it's his house they always crash in. Mike, putting the key in the ignition and firing it up, shakes his head.
"Brendon's got a lab report due and Bill's got a history test or something," he explains with a shrug. "They'll show up later."
Great. Kevin adds 'going to fail AP History' to the list of things that are going tragically and horrendously wrong in his life.
Mike's house isn't too far away from William's, in the same not-that-great part of town. The building is obviously older and in need of a coat of paint, but the lawn has been freshly mowed and there's a cheerful pot of petunias brightening up the front entrance. Kevin gets that empty house feeling the second he walks in the door, which Mike confirms when he says, "My mom works a double shift on Thursdays."
Kevin hangs in the entry, not sure if he should follow while Mike goes into the kitchen and fishes around in the refrigerator, but then Mike reappears with two cold cans of Coke and hands one to Kevin, gesturing down the hallway toward the back of the house. Mike's room is an instantly comfortable combination of blue walls and boy smells and laundry piled in the corner, with an amp and guitar case at the foot of the bed, cables spilling across the carpet in uneven loops, and two more guitars on stands, jostling for space beside Mike's desk.
"You play?" Kevin hadn't known that.
Mike shrugs. "Bill and I are gonna start a band. Brendon plays keyboard," he explains (unnecessarily, since Brendon had taken over playing piano in the orchestra after Nick quit), and Kevin nods, not knowing exactly what to say. Mike sort of looks embarrassed, actually, and Kevin has no idea why he'd be embarrassed. Music is awesome; more awesome than hugs, even. Kevin really, really misses being able to pick up his guitar and just play.
"We're probably not gonna have, like, a headlining arena tour or whatever," Mike says then, cracking his Coke in the awkward silence. Oh. Okay. Right then.
"It's not -- We just got lucky," Kevin says quietly, shifting in the binder containing the evidence that his luck had changed dramatically. "Really lucky. I mean, we still work really hard," he says, double-speed, because they did get lucky but it's not like they hadn't worked day and night for it, but it's maybe not necessary, because Mike's sort of half-smiling at him.
"Yeah, I know. It's cool," he says, and then he drops down to the carpet to pull the guitar out of its case and plug it in. "Here," he says as he stands back up, guitar in hand, and passes it to Kevin. It's a Gibson, a pretty nice one, and Kevin is just distracted enough that he doesn't notice the size of it until it's in his hands. He grips it wonderingly.
"This is -- ?" He looks at Mike, who nods.
"Three-fourths, yeah. My dad got it for me when I was ten. I guess he figured I'd hate him less when he took off." Mike shrugs, but his eyes are unhappy and Kevin wishes he'd gotten up the nerve to discuss the hugging issue earlier. "I never got rid of it, but it's not like I use it anymore, so I thought you might wanna try it? 'Cause of your hands, I mean. I was gonna bring it over to Bill's later, but..."
If Kevin didn't know better, he might label Mike's current expression as "bashful", but that would be very silly, so he doesn't. Instead, he lifts the strap over his head and settles the guitar into position over his hips. Kevin takes a deep breath before wrapping his left hand around the neck, splaying his too-short fingers over the fretboard... And somehow, miraculously, his too-short fingers aren't too short. He fingers different chords, stretching and testing, but it works. It actually works! He plays a few notes -- he'll need to tune the guitar, it's a bit off key -- letting the sound vibrate through him with blissful satisfaction.
He lets the notes fade out of the air, then reverently lifts the strap back over his head and moves to set the guitar gently down in its case.
"Oh. Yeah, I guess it's not what you're used to -- " Mike is saying, but Kevin ignores that, because Mike is being an idiot, and Kevin has more important things to worry about, like whether it might have been better to have the hugging conversation before he launched himself at Mike and wrapped his arms around Mike's neck.
Despite a slight stumble, Mike seems to be okay with it. He stiffens up, at first, and Kevin's a little bit worried that his 'contagious girl-ness' theory was right, or that maybe Mike is not a hugging person and he's about to get the crap beaten out of him, but after a few seconds Mike loosens up and hugs back. (It is at that point that Kevin decides, once and for all, that Mike Carden is not scary and probably has not murdered anyone. Kevin knows the truth, and the truth is that Mike is secretly a cuddler.)
"Thank you," Kevin murmurs into Mike's shoulder, and Mike's arms tighten around him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," Kevin repeats, glad that Mike is big enough that Kevin can bury his face in Mike's shoulder. Mike smells good, and he says, "Hey," and "Of course," and lets Kevin hold on as long as he needs to.
Any suspicious wetness left on Mike's uniform shirt is not Kevin's fault. (Girl-Kevin's eye problems are obviously more serious than he'd originally thought.)
When Brendon and William get there, about forty minutes after the end of the school day according to the glowing green numbers of Mike's alarm clock, Mike is lying on his stomach on his bed, scribbling away at what Kevin thinks is his math homework but might be chemistry or physics -- something that involves Mike tapping things out on his calculator at semi-regular intervals, anyway -- and Kevin, seated on the floor leaning against the bed, is about halfway through JONAS's discography. He's going chronologically from oldest to newest, but he thinks that maybe when he finishes, he'll play them all again in alphabetical order, just because he can.
"Ooh, I love this one!" Brendon exclaims as soon as he walks in the door (it would've disrupted Kevin's rhythm if his fingers weren't so used to playing these songs while any number of crazy things happened on stage or in the audience), dropping his school bag and flopping down with his head near Kevin's thigh, where he can watch his fingers sliding along the fretboard. It takes a second for Kevin to realize that Brendon's humming along with the melody and occasionally singing a line under his breath. It makes him smile.
"Go for it," he tells Brendon, and Brendon flashes him a quick, bright smile before coming in on Nick's next line, perfectly on key. William kicks at Brendon's ankle as he steps over him, and Brendon aims a kick upwards but entirely fails to hit William's ass, which was apparently his intended target. William goes to sit on the bed, falling backwards over Mike, who makes a noise of complaint but doesn't actually move.
"So is that...?" Kevin hears William ask quietly, and he hears Mike's equally quiet, "Yeah. And you can shut up about it."
"I didn't say anything!" William protests, but if he says anything else, Kevin doesn't hear it, because he hits the chorus and Brendon starts belting out Joe's lines, and whatever, something weird is going on, but he's got a guitar and he can play and that's all he's ever really wanted.
Kevin sort of doesn't want to go home.
He loves his family more than anything; that hasn't changed. But he loves being able to hang out with these guys, and loves even more that he doesn't have to hide what's happened. When he gets sick of the binder restricting his movement, he takes it off in the bathroom and throws on a borrowed tank top of Mike's, and no one stares or asks questions, other than Brendon asking him if he wants help getting a binder that fits properly. (He can't admit, yet, that this might be permanent, but he tells Brendon maybe in a couple of days and feels Mike's fingers tugging gently on the curls at the nape of his neck; there could be worse things than this.)
Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal, if Nick and Joe hadn't started spending so much time watching him. Well, it's possible they always watched him and Kevin just didn't notice because he wasn't trying to hide anything from them, but it seems like every time Nick manages to drag his brain away from wooing his latest dream girl with song, he's looking thoughtfully at Kevin. Joe's interest is slightly less easy to read, mostly because Joe has been known to stare thoughtfully at a lump of lint he thought looked like Elvis, but Joe knows Nick like they're the same person; if Nick's watching, Joe is too.
It's just ... easier, to be out from under their eyes, not worrying about what they're seeing. Not worrying if they notice that he can't quite figure out how to stand like a boy without looking like he's trying, or the way he hesitates when he crosses his arms or puts on his seatbelt because it feels weird no matter how often he does it.
Kevin ends up not going through every song again, mostly because Brendon keeps making requests that throw off Kevin's systematic approach, and then they order pizza and Kevin gets the Master Chief killed a few times and eventually all four of them settle in to tackle their homework. Kevin helps Brendon with his Trig and William helps Kevin with his essay for English (it turns out that William likes poetry, which is awesome since Kevin has no idea what any of it means most of the time; he hopes Nick never decides to experiment with writing lyrics in sonnet form).
By the time Kevin has moved on to his Biology reading, sprawled stomach-down on the carpet with a pillow under his chest so he doesn't feel so squashed, Mike has already finished his assignments, so he crashes on the floor with his head next to Brendon's Spanish homework (occasionally providing conjugation help) and his legs draped over Kevin's. It's comfortable and safe and Kevin doesn't want to put the binder back on and face what is sure to be an inquisition at home. But regardless of what he wants, Mike's alarm clock now reads 11:02, and while there's no way his parents are going to believe that his SAT prep class ran this long, it'll be even worse if he doesn't come home at all.
Mike drops William and Brendon off first; William's house is closer to Mike's than Kevin thought it was, close enough to walk, but it's dark and while the neighborhood isn't dangerous, it isn't exactly safe, either. Then Mike takes the long way back to the firehouse, and Kevin appreciates the gesture even if he spends the ride in silence, watching the lights of the houses as they go by. Mike pulls the Jeep over to the curb a couple of blocks from the firehouse, just barely inside the glow of a sickly-orange streetlight.
"Let me see your phone," Mike says, sticking out his hand and twitching his fingers in the appropriate gimme gesture. Kevin has to dig around for it inside his bookbag -- it's been on silent all day, so the fourteen voicemails and twenty-seven text messages are news to him. Yeah. Totally, completely dead as soon as he walks in the door. Kevin hangs his head miserably as Mike pokes at the phone, and Mike has to hold it under his nose to get him to take it back. There's a new entry, complete with phone number and an email address, listed as Mike C.
"Just in case," Mike says, holding the steering wheel with both hands and very deliberately not looking at Kevin. "If you need anything, y'know. Call or whatever."
"I'm going to be grounded forever," Kevin says, which isn't really a response.
Mike shrugs. "I'll be around," he says, followed by, "Don't forget the guitar," as Kevin pops his door open and slides out. He grabs the case out of the back where it had previously been sandwiched between Brendon and William and holds it close.
"Thanks," he tells Mike, meaning it in more ways than he's sure even exist. Mike just nods.
"See you tomorrow," he says as he puts the Jeep in gear and Kevin starts walking home. If I survive, Kevin adds mentally. The odds, he thinks, are not in his favor.
Masterpost | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3