Chapter Text
Neil runs flat out for he doesn’t know how many blocks, the tequila super-powering his legs past the constraint of his goddamned skinny jeans, his speed whipping his brain into silent numbness. He’s gone far enough that he doesn’t know where he is when his stupid not-running shoes slip on some stupid, damp, moss-covered aesthetic of a cobblestone and he catapults to the ground.
The skinny jeans rip and the asphalt tears into his knees; he loses a shoe, skins his palm, and an enterprising rosebush slashes down the side of his cheek as he falls.
Neil rolls immediately to his side - instinct more than anything since laying flat on your face on an exy court will get you trampled - and lays in a half moon curve on the sidewalk gulping a few quick, careful breaths, before he leverages himself up and scoots onto the curb to inspect the damage.
There’s blood trickling down his cheek, and his knees are stinging, but nothing seems to be broken. Neil heaves a shudder, squeezes his eyes tight at his stupidity, and leans back across the ground to retrieve his wayward shoe. He spies his phone a foot away from the rosebush, so he snags that too. The screen is now shattered so badly that he can’t even run his finger across it. Staring down at five missed calls and innumerable notifications from Kevin and Robin, Neil realizes with absolute blinding, sobering certainty that he has royally fucked up.
He hears a soft tsking sound, and drags his eyes up from the useless screen to find a person with blue hair and bright red lips squatting down in front of him, head cocked to the side.
“Y’allright there, love?” Their accent drips honey and their skin drips glitter - what is with this city and the glitter? - and before Neil can tense up, he realizes that though they’ve changed out of the costume and the wig, the person in front of him is Elvis from the drag show.
“I’m fine,” Neil says, blowing out a breath.
Elvis hums, giving him a quick once over. “Yeah, you look it. Can I call someone for you?” they offer with a nod at Neil’s glowing mess of a phone.
“I-” Neil starts, because yes, he needs to call Kevin, or Andrew at the very least, but the only words clawing out of his throat are the ones that he’s kept bundled up for years, and he can’t say those words - certainly not over the phone in front of a stranger - so he just stares back at Elvis, who has now produced an actual honest to goodness handkerchief.
“Thanks,” Neil says uncertainly, taking it from them only because he can feel the blood from his cheek starting to drip down his neck and those are memories he does not want to stir up.
“You’re welcome,” Elvis says smoothly, rooting around in the giant bag at their side for a moment before producing a small bottle of water branded with the Nana’s logo that is somehow still glistening with cold. Neil hesitates and Elvis smirks, rocking back on their heels a bit. “Don’t worry, sugar, it’s sealed,” they say. Neil frowns at the “sugar” but he takes the bottle and downs it in one go.
“Well,” Elvis says. They grin, then lean forward to drop several strands of blue and gold Mardi Gras beads over Neil’s head before standing up and fluffing the edges of their post-drag kimono. “Looks like your ride is here.”
Neil blinks up at them in confusion for a moment before whipping his head around to see Kevin, his long strides eating up the distance between them from half a block away, his phone gripped tight in both hands, his brow easing slightly in relief when he looks up from it and sees Neil. Neil can’t tear his eyes off of Kevin until Kevin has folded himself onto the curb next to Neil, and when Neil looks back, Elvis is gone.
Kevin reaches over wordlessly, pulls one of the strands of blue beads over Neil’s head and puts it over his own. His knee presses against Neil’s, his iPhone still lit up in his hand, flashing the icon he’d followed to find Neil. The humidity of the New Orleans night is claustrophobic and Neil is wrung out and hollow and he can’t do this anymore.
Neil says, “We need to talk.” He turns to look at Kevin before he says it, so he catches the flash of fear that flits across Kevin’s face before he masks it.
“Not here, though,” Kevin says.
Neil grits his teeth. He feels like he might burst, all the fight gone out of him, but this is his fault, the two of them sitting here on the curb, Kevin closed off, his hurt radiating in the air. Kevin swipes a finger in the blood on Neil’s cheek and Neil flinches, but doesn’t pull away.
“Please, Neil.”
Neil nods jerkily, lets Kevin pull him bodily to his feet. Neil doesn’t know where they are but Kevin seems to, and he turns resolutely, tugging Neil after him by his wrist.
They take the thirty minute walk shoulder to shoulder. Neil’s knees hurt with every step, and he swipes Elvis’ handkerchief across his jaw when the blood threatens to spill over again, and he doesn’t say a fucking word.
It’s after 1am when they get back to the house, and Neil is well and truly sober and well and truly exhausted. It seems like a week ago that he’d driven them from Austin to New Orleans and it was just this morning. Well, yesterday morning.
Neil can hear the murmuring in the kitchen when Kevin lets them in, and he steels himself when he realizes Andrew and Jeremy are still awake. Andrew appears almost immediately, Jeremy on his heels. Andrew’s club clothes have been exchanged for soft black sweats and the look on his face is bland and bored if you don’t know better. Neil knows better. Jeremy wheels on his heel when he gets a good look at Neil, but Andrew steps forward to grip Neil’s chin firmly.
“I’m sor-” Neil tries, but Andrew tightens his fingers and forces Neil’s mouth closed.
“Don’t,” Andrew says. He tilts Neil’s face, and Jeremy reappears with a giant, bright red first aid kit, which he passes off into Kevin’s outstretched hands. “Idiot,” Andrew says with a jarring shake before letting him go. “Don’t get blood on Robin’s sheets.” With that, Andrew grabs Jeremy’s arm and tows him off to bed.
“Night guys,” Jeremy calls over his shoulder, and then they are gone.
Kevin says, “In here,” and leads the way into the bright light of the kitchen. He pushes Neil against the kitchen island with a terse, “Stay.” Neil stays. Kevin washes his hands and splays open the med kit on the counter next to Neil. “Off,” Kevin says, and Neil ignores the hitch in his belly when Kevin tugs at his belt.
Neil shucks his pants off obediently, but he freezes when Kevin drops down to his knees at Neil’s feet. “Kevin,” Neil protests weakly, but Kevin ignores him, douses the cotton in hydrogen peroxide, and starts to gently clean Neil’s knees.
The tenderness almost unravels him. Neil bites his tongue, thinks if he was prone to tears he’d be crying, watches the look of concentration on Kevin’s face with a choked feeling in his throat instead because the Nest robbed him of any tears long ago.
When Kevin finishes Neil’s knees, he moves to Neil’s skinned palm, giving it the same tender ministrations as he cleans it.
And then Kevin is standing, looking Neil in the eyes, and Neil’s heart is breaking, and he’s drowning in green.
“Kevin,” Neil tries again, but Kevin just shakes his head.
“Not yet,” he says, and he gets a fresh piece of cotton, tilts Neil’s face with calloused fingers, and cleans the blood from Neil’s cheek.
It’s not until Kevin has placed a line of bandaids on the deepest cut, tossed the trash, scooped up Neil’s jeans from the floor - not until they’ve climbed the stairs, shut the door to Robin’s room, sat side by side on the fluffy bed, that Kevin visibly braces himself, turns to look at Neil, and says, “Okay.”
Neil blows out a breath. Sucks in another raggedly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It won’t happen again.” Neil means it, means it even if he has to never drink a drop of alcohol again to keep himself together. He won’t fuck this up. He won’t lose Kevin.
“Which part?” Kevin says. Neil can still hear the hurt but he hears anger too, tucked in the creases of Kevin’s words. “The dance floor or when you ran the fuck away from me?”
“All of it,” Neil promises. “And I wasn’t running away from you.”
“Sure looked like it from where I was standing.”
Neil nods. “I panicked.”
“Okay.” Kevin draws the word out, hesitates, then says, “Why?”
And that’s the crux of it isn’t it? The part Neil has avoided, the part that he thought he could bury deep down and pretend wasn’t there to keep what they have - to protect it. And then he’d spilled over his edges in the lights of a dance floor, wrapped in tequila, pressed against the one person Neil wouldn’t survive losing.
Neil looks at a spot on the wall to avoid Kevin’s piercing gaze. “Because I want to touch you,” he says. “All the time. I want to kiss you. I can’t stop thinking about when we-,” Neil stops because he can’t find the word. “I want more,” he forces himself to say, “But I am not willing to lose you over it.”
“Me too,” Kevin says, and Neil snaps his gaze to Kevin.
“What?” Neil demands.
Kevin has the goddamned audacity to roll his eyes. “Of course I want the same thing, Neil, Jesus. I wasn’t sure you did at first, we didn’t talk about it but-”
“I thought you regretted it,” Neil says on a rush of breath.
Kevin does look away then, runs a hand through his hair and when he drops it back onto the bed his finger brushes Neil’s thigh. “I was terrified. I still am. And then you didn’t bring it up, and I thought that maybe…” he trails off.
“Maybe what?” Neil prompts.
“I thought that you regretted it,” Kevin bites out. “And the stakes were too high. They are still too high.”
Neil can’t breathe. “Tell me what you mean by that?”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Kevin says quietly. “What if it breaks us? I’m not willing to lose you, either.”
Neil’s heart is in his stomach, and he’s desperately trying to grasp the thread, because he thinks Kevin is saying, he knows Kevin is saying… but he can’t possibly be, can he?
“Kevin,” Neil says very carefully. “Are you saying you want me?”
“You’re kind of stupid if you didn’t already know that,” Kevin says, and drags his hand through his hair again, a nervous gesture, but this time he drops it right on top of Neil’s, tangles their fingers tightly. It hurts, squishes Neil’s scraped palm, but the pain is grounding, centering.
Neil takes a deep breath, shifts so he is sitting sideways and facing Kevin dead on, looks him right in his green, green eyes and lets himself reach for the hope fluttering in his heart because he’s never been a coward. “You and I? We already work. I may be stupid, but I do know that. If you want more, too, I don’t want to ignore it out of fear. After everything we’ve been through, this will not be the thing that breaks us, Kevin. I won’t let it.”
Kevin stares at him for a long, long time. Eons. Neil dies and comes back to life twice in the grip of that stare, his fingers still crushed under Kevin’s, his palm throbbing insistently.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Kevin reaches up with his free hand, slides a thumb across Neil’s lower lip, and Neil thinks he might shatter right there if Kevin says no, but Kevin doesn’t. Instead he slips that hand behind Neil’s neck, leans in, pulls until they are forehead to forehead and Kevin says, “It’s always been you, you know,” and Neil’s voice is barely contained joy when he says, “Same.”
It’s different this time, when Neil leans in, when he kisses Kevin. He’s gentle, almost tentative. His heart is thudding in his ears and Kevin’s breath hitches against his, and it is this softest thing, the most important thing Neil has ever done, this kiss. It swells within him, he thinks he really might burst. He’s lost and found in that first slide of his tongue against Kevin’s, the controlled fall as they splay across the bed, as Kevin hauls Neil close. It’s a fever dream and the realest thing that’s ever happened all at once. Neil is floating and he’s grounded and this is Kevin - his Kevin - in his arms and Neil will never let him go.
“Just this, yeah?” Kevin says quietly when they pull apart long enough to stare at each other, Neil half on top of Kevin, their arms and legs and breath entangled. “Just this, tonight.”
“Yes,” Neil kisses his answer on the corner of Kevin’s mouth. “We have time.”
“All the time in the world,” Kevin says, and wonder colors his words.
Neil can’t tamp down his giddy smile so he hides it in Kevin’s neck because this is happening this is happening this time it is really happening.
EPILOGUE
Alice Kevin Wymack is perfect, Neil thinks; almost as perfect as the look on Kevin’s face when he holds her for the first time.
“I can’t believe you gave her a boy’s name,” Kevin says quietly.
Wymack clears his throat. “Middle name,” he says. “Plus my Foxes these days say names don’t have gender, so don’t get fucking sappy.”
Neil thinks pot, kettle and turns away so he’s not staring as father and son both pretend like the sheen in their eyes isn’t tears.
Abby’s grin is fond and knowing, and she tilts her head. “Come on, Neil, let’s give these two a minute. I’ve got both guest rooms set up for you upstairs.”
“Um, Abby?” Kevin calls out. He doesn’t look up from Alice, but a blush tinges his cheeks when he says, “We’ll just need the one room this time.”
Wymack snorts loudly. Abby beams at Neil, who refuses to drop her gaze. “Just the one room then,” she agrees diplomatically.
They are only halfway up the stairs with the bags when Wymack says, just loud enough for Neil to hear: “Took you two idiots long enough.”