CHEER FOR #8

When Allison described her Christmas Surprise to Seth, she had used words like new and an experience and exciting and it’s a surprise, Seth, can you quit asking questions and trying to ruin it.

(At the end, the last question Seth was able to fit was “Are we going skiing?” Trying his best to moderate the hopeful inflection in his voice. It was embarrassing enough that she had spent money on him—a general principle he was stubborn about avoiding but was convinced against this time for the sake of holiday spirit and festivities and fuck, Seth, you know I’m not asking for permission, right?—but it was even more embarrassing that he was looking forward to it.

“Sure, Seth,” Allison replied, rolling her eyes. “It’s sex and skiing. Will you stop asking now?”)

TESTING THE MATTRESS

aftg · kevaaron · 4.6k, e. it’s reunion season at the olympic village. kevin has a mattress delivered. aaron copes. —for @naturecalls111, who loves the olympics more than anyone else i know and wanted kevaaron fucking on the olympic cardboard beds, and who also drew that shiny opening ceremony kevin up there <3 love u for keeps we’re still battling tho

“You’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met,” Aaron says. Kevin shrugs, unfazed. “I prefer to think of it as resourceful,” he says, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Aaron watches his knees: up, down, up, down, up, down. He swallows. “You would,” Aaron says, but he privately agrees. It’s still ridiculous, obviously, but arranging for your own personal mattress to be delivered to the Olympics is—technically—resourceful. “You wouldn’t give Jean grief for this,” Kevin says. Aaron snorts, rolling his eyes. “Jean once didn’t tell anyone he cracked a rib for three days,” he says dryly. “Getting a mattress personally delivered to Olympic Village because he’s a princess who needs his comfort isn’t exactly on the cards.”

You can be friends with someone, see, as long as you don’t have to think about any of the times they looked at you with such raw, burning intent that kissing would have made a more convincingly platonic alternative.

Kevin’s top three fantasies this month—he’s pretty diligent about cycling them through, keeping them seasonally relevant, you know—are, as follows:

Kevin’s gold medal—origin unimportant to the fantasy, though it was the Olympics last time—is over both his and Aaron’s necks at the same time, forcing them to press in close, the way Kevin likes. He doesn’t know if this one is physically feasible—maybe he can get a custom ribbon—but he doesn’t care. It makes him feel hot all over, cheeks flushed and dick leaking, to think about the two of them pressed that close together, naked and sweaty and the exhilaration of victory flowing through them both. Kevin’s pride and satisfaction, and Aaron looking at him, that proud smile, rare but fierce, and it’s all for him. Eyes intent, dark, wanting Kevin, proud of Kevin, celebrating Kevin. Kevin’s not too proud to admit that sometimes he can come from that alone, even before he imagines his hand wrapped around both their dicks, or kissing his name out of Aaron’s mouth, or Aaron fucking into him while Kevin tries—and fails—not to chase his mouth for a kiss.

Aaron is sitting on the edge of the pier, ostensibly looking out over the ocean while the rest of their friends do whatever it is they’re doing. Kevin doesn’t bother to fill in those sorts of details in his fantasies, and the auto-complete in his brain is impeded by the fact that when he’s with Aaron, he doesn’t pay attention to them in the background unless they’re being especially loud, annoying or incorrect. So in Kevin’s head, they’re mostly an unfinished sketch background, doing something or other while Aaron looks over the ocean, looking at a distance like some character in one of Jean’s arthouse films. The reality of it is that Kevin is swimming beneath the pier, bobbing his head over Aaron’s dick. Kevin is often a merman in this, when the athlete part of his brain wakes up enough to be like, your muscles would give up before you made Aaron come, and you can’t have that, which is annoying but true. So sometimes Kevin is a merman, and then he has a tangential fantasy in those cases which involves whisking Aaron beneath the ocean and showing him how cool and handsome and good-at-things Kevin is in his natural element, and Aaron is like okay, sure, but can I look at your gills again? in an attempt to not seem so awestruck by Kevin, but his cheeks give him away every time, because Kevin always knows Aaron in his head, even when his fantasies lend themselves to something else. That’s a tangent, anyway. The important thing is sucking off Aaron at the beach while everyone else is there and can’t tell. Kevin came to that one in the shower earlier.

Aaron’s thighs are around Kevin’s head. The reason doesn’t really matter. These days, it’s usually some stupid competition at the beach, because it’s summer and everyone Kevin knows is a competitive asshole, or they’re Andrew, meaning just an asshole, or Jeremy, meaning just competitive. Aaron is sitting on Kevin’s shoulders, his quads visibly working as he clenches his thighs tight around Kevin’s head. Kevin at one point had to fact-check this, wondering if maybe he was just contouring Aaron’s thighs in a horny haze, but no. When they next went to the beach and Kevin watched Aaron’s legs as he took a running jump off the edge of the pier, there was definite action in the quadriceps. Unrelatedly, Kevin had to excuse himself by jumping into the ocean too. Matt had been baffled and Seth had given him a look somewhere between calculating and disgusted, but for the most part, Kevin thinks it was a successful swerve. Anyway. Kevin’s fantasy. Aaron’s thighs are around his head, clenching tight, and Kevin’s dick is hard as a rock. Sometimes Aaron notices, and says something. Sometimes Aaron notices, and his dick stirs against Kevin’s head. Sometimes Aaron doesn’t notice, or doesn’t say anything if he does, and Kevin gets edged by his own fucking head, painfully hard while Aaron says stuff like hurry up, I want to beat Neil or a little to the left, the light is to the left, do you have working eyes or stop fucking moving, I don’t want her to claw out my eyes because you’re complaining about your shoes, I can almost reach her. But that’s usually enough for Kevin, the idea of being so completely surrounded by Aaron’s body heat, the firm muscles in his thighs, the softness of the skin on the underside, pressed against Kevin’s shoulders.

So Kevin is really at a loss when that fantasy starts playing out in person, but develops in a direction he’d never anticipated. Specifically, Neil and Aaron grappling, and then Neil not letting go—because he is the worst person on the entire planet—when Nicky sneak-attacks Matt, Matt loses his footing a little and falls sideways, and Neil fucking swivels Aaron around Kevin’s neck on his way down into the ocean.

Aaron’s startled whoa! is going to live in Kevin’s head forever, probably. Part of him is also impressed at Aaron’s quick instincts, moving his feet enough that they don’t get caught on Kevin’s chest and unbalance them too.

Most of him is stuck in the current moment, though, face-to-face with Aaron’s crotch.

He can feel his dick against his face. He can smell it.

END OF YEAR TRUTHS

aftg · kevaaron · 7.8k, t, for @naturecalls111 & @vykio it's the end of the year, all of kevin’s usual dogs are gone, and aaron has a lot to think about.

“What are you doing?” he murmurs. Part of him wants to say, I hope you know what you’re doing, and another part thinks, What am I doing?, but most of him is sinking into the moment, hips heavy with Kevin’s hands, thinking, We made it. We’re going to make it to next year. Not everyone did. But Aaron did, Kevin did, everyone they give a fuck about did, except for those who were lost long ago. And now Kevin’s fingers are in Aaron’s belt loops, pulling him closer, and his thumbs are brushing over Aaron’s skin, searing right through him, and Aaron’s hands are curling around Kevin’s biceps, Kevin’s breath hitching, and Aaron’s tilting his head to look up at Kevin, and Kevin – Kevin is already looking at him, eyes dark, lidded, intent. “Dancing,” Kevin says, a beat too late. Aaron has to think for a second to remember what he’s even answering. “Dancing,” Aaron echoes. It’s true, technically. In Eden’s, this level of contact with someone else on the dancefloor probably wouldn’t give Aaron pause. But it’s not someone else. It’s Kevin.

“I can see right through you,” Kevin murmurs.

“Oh, yeah?” Aaron challenges. God, he’s close.

“Mm,” Kevin says. “You just don’t want to mark the test.”

It's an accusation, but there’s no censure in his voice. He's amused, mostly; fond too, despite himself. It’s not exactly behaviour he should be encouraging, but—

Aaron huffs. “I never want to mark a test,” he points out. “Undergrads are fucking stupid. Or these ones are, anyway.”

“You were an undergrad once,” Kevin says. He very determinedly keeps his hands steady on the bench. Maybe he’s gripping the edge so he stays in place; so what? That's between him and whatever God Renee believes in enough for the both of them.

“These ones,” Aaron repeats, scoffing. “Anyway, I'd never have taken a history paper. Get real.”

Kevin can’t help the frown there. “History is fascinating,” he argues. Aaron scoffs at him again, but the way he watches Kevin runs counter to that. Like he’s listening to whatever Kevin says, regardless. “It is,” Kevin insists again, clearing his throat.

Aaron's gaze tracks the movement, eyes following the motion of his throat, and Kevin kind of wants to clench the counter edge hard enough to crack the formica. Jesus Christ.

“You like research,” Kevin says. He keeps his eyes on Aaron, watches as he steps in closer again. “History is an endless study of every mistake we’ve ever made—”

“—So we don’t repeat our forefathers’ mistakes?” Aaron asks wryly. “Hate to break it to you, but that’s a non-starter.”

“No,” Kevin says, shaking his head. “We’re bad at learning. Mostly, we don’t even see the patterns for decades, if not centuries.”

Aaron cocks his head. “Doesn’t that frustrate you?” he asks. “I've seen you watch sports. You get mad if people make the same fuck-up within, like, three minutes.”

An image floats in Kevin’s head, unbidden: the two of them at the sports bar, late one night after they finally convinced Jeremy to go the fuck home because the college wasn’t paying him enough to sleep at his desk to reply to nineteen year olds’ panicked emails at 11:17pm before a midnight deadline. Kevin had been unbelievably put-out by the Astros’ scoreline; Aaron hadn’t cared so much, but had seemed to find great entertainment in prodding at Kevin to express his opinion to a bar full of patrons who strongly disagreed with him.

Do you even care about baseball? Kevin had asked in the end, exasperated. He’d unknotted his tie and slipped off his jacket, heated by his opinions and the game and the alcohol and the way Aaron had sat there, head tilted, that clever mouth of his quirked up to the side like a smirk, like a secret.

Not really, Aaron had said, shrugging. He swished his beer a little. I played hockey at school myself. Before Kevin could get too excited about that—a sport! An actual goddamn sport! that wasn’t only worth watching European leagues for, cough cough Jeremy and Jean and fucking football—Aaron added, I like seeing how much you care about it, though, and knocked Kevin right on his ass, metaphorically-speaking.

That night had ended in a blur: Kevin’s flushed cheeks as he lectured the bar at large about heliocentrism after finishing his grumbling about the baseball, Aaron’s quiet snort and eyes that laughed more than his mouth did, alcohol-sticky wood beneath his feet as he made his way to the bathroom, the taste of Aaron’s beer on his lips, Aaron’s cool fingers a balm against his cheek, his mouth a searing heat burning all the way through Kevin.

Then when Kevin’s TA dropped out because of ‘unmanageable stress’ (which was not Kevin’s fault, no matter what Dan says, she and Matt can fuck off) and he had to scramble to figure out what to do, Abby had offered one of her tutors—but only for marking, Kevin, he has no base in history. He’s just smart enough to use a rubric and willing to help. Between this and Jean’s long-suffering offer to lead the tutorial that didn’t clash with his meetings with his advisor, and even Neil’s unlikely assistance in the form of helping restructure the syllabus, it all seemed pretty manageable. (The history department had quietly come to the conclusion that this was not, strictly speaking, acceptable by university standards, but elected to ignore this information until the conclusion of the semester. As far as Kevin’s been able to tell in his years in academia, this is how things tend to work.)

When Abby showed up at his office with Aaron, though, Kevin's cheeks had gone hot enough that she’d asked him if he was sure he wasn’t coming down with a stress fever. Aaron's face had stayed blank, but his eyes were – amused.

It was one thing when Aaron had been the regular third person in the staff room late at night alongside Jeremy and Kevin, rubbing his eyes as he scowled at whatever it was he was looking at. (Anatomy exams, Kevin found out later.) He’d been mostly quiet, but sharply funny when he’d ended up interacting with them, mostly starting with indelicate snorts at whatever madcap thing Jeremy was saying, then incredulous stares at Kevin’s rebuttal, and finally muttered jabs as he worked the coffee machine and Jeremy laughed delightedly and Kevin stared at him with disbelief and a slow-building warmth in the base of his stomach.

It was yet another thing when Aaron had been the guy he bundled up Jeremy with, the guy he got drunk with for hours in a sports bar, the guy who laughed at him and offered him buffalo wings so spicy that they made Aaron’s cheeks red and Kevin’s lips feel like they were on fire, until Aaron kissed him, tipsy outside the bar, the warmth spreading through Kevin overtaking both the chilly night air and the spice-stained echoes on Kevin’s mouth.

But it was another thing entirely for Aaron to be Aaron, meaning Abby's favourite postgrad and the guy who diligently read Kevin’s syllabus on top of his own work just to better understand the marking rubric and hater of psych majors everywhere. Aaron, with his tired eyes and quiet laugh and complete inability to answer a phone call from his brother in a normal way. (At one point, Kevin had been half-concerned he was ordering a hit—less about the morality or legality of the situation, more in a if you get arrested, I’m screwed again type way—until Neil had shown up half an hour later with lunch for Aaron and Aaron had gone, ugh and Neil had rolled his eyes, spotted Kevin, and turned to Aaron to say, you’re one to talk. Aaron had flushed a little, then scowled and flipped Neil off, and said fuck off, to which Neil said, gladly, then see you at dinner? And Aaron had waved his hand. If you eat your fucking vegetables, to which Neil had laughed, and flipped him off, and walked out. Kevin had stared at Aaron, nonplussed, but Aaron had ignored him, focusing instead on the test he was marking while he ate the sandwich Neil had brought.) Aaron, with his unbelievably rude opinions about Kevin’s lack of video game knowledge, and the genuinely unreasonable amount of sour gummies he can put away in an hour, and the unbearably soft look he gets on his face when he’s sleepy and huffy and Kevin has gently dragged away whichever test he’s marking or article he’s reading that’s made him so grumpy late at night.

Aaron, who Kevin actually knows now. And likes even more for it, which is inconvenient and inopportune and probably inevitable.

Kevin clears his throat. “People are meant to try and win in sports,” he says. “History is about things that have already happened. It’s a different ballpark.” There’s a moment, and then, “They’ve already lost the battle. I'm not rooting for anything else there.”

Something flares up in Aaron's eyes at that, and he snakes his hand forward, tugging on Kevin's tie. Kevin, hands still holding onto the bench, allows it.

“But sports are about victory?” Aaron asks. 

He’s not even subtle about procrastinating, Kevin thinks. He wants to laugh. He swallows a sigh instead, and says, a little warningly, “Aaron…”

But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t stop Aaron, doesn’t do anything to stop him. Maybe leans in a little, even.

“Yeah,” Kevin says after a long moment. “History, you live or you die. Sports, you’re the best or you’re not.”

“That's a reductive way of looking at the world,” Aaron says, but it’s that tone he gets sometimes, the one where Kevin doesn’t know if he believes it or if he just wants to poke at Kevin a little. Kevin hates that he likes it as much as he does; that he lets it stoke him up, bites at the bit every time.

“You are not subtle,” Kevin murmurs. The tests are sitting on the table behind Aaron, staring up at the ceiling. Aaron's coffee is abandoned, probably cold.

You are not subtle, Kevin says, and means it, but Aaron’s cocked his eyebrow at him, and there’s something a little taunting in his eyes, and he’s still holding onto Kevin’s tie, and something in Kevin loosens. He sighs, and lets go of the bench, tucking his fingers into Aaron's belt loops instead and pulling him forward.

“Is this a sport?” Aaron asks, because he’s a dick and facetious and he knows just how to make Kevin want to shut him up.

It’s not until he’s got Aaron sitting in front of him and the scissors in his hands that Kevin hesitates.

Aaron notices, because of course he does. They set up a mirror on the bed, propped up against a cushion so Aaron can keep an eye on proceedings. He’d rolled his eyes as Kevin had insisted, but had dutifully adjusted it until he vowed he could see both his hair and Kevin through it. Now he uses it to quirk an eyebrow at Kevin.

“Don’t freak out on me now, Day,” he says. It's that weird-awful mix of goading and gentle that only Aaron can pull off, that specific tone that never fails to tug at the base of Kevin's stomach. Even now, all this time later.

Sometimes it hits Kevin, in moments like this. Growing up, he’d never have thought he could end up here. He wouldn’t have wanted to, wouldn’t have known how. All he had was his mother, and then Riko and Exy and victory, and then it was all torn from him in one fell swing.

But here he is now, in a home that’s his, sunlight streaming through the window and spilling out over Aaron’s bare knee. He’s sitting here, on the bed he sleeps in with the boy who once spent three hours trying to teach him how to play Halo 3, and Aaron is half-smiling at him through the mirror. Aaron is sitting cross-legged on their bed, wearing one of Kevin’s shirts, trusting Kevin so easily.

“I'm not a professional,” Kevin warns.

The snort Aaron lets out is unnecessarily exasperated, Kevin thinks. It’s undeniably fond too, though. Affectionate enough that Kevin feels warmer just by hearing it.

“You’re not a professional anything except Exy player and pain in my ass,” Aaron mutters, then holds up his index finger. “Don’t,” he warns, twisting his torso a little to place the finger against Kevin's grin.

In his defence, Kevin wasn’t actually going to say it. He was just going to preen smugly in Aaron's direction until the message got conveyed. He's a little pleased that Aaron could tell where that was going to go even without Kevin getting to that point. Reminds him that he’s known.

Betsy told him once that knowing could be a form of loving. She said it when he was talking about his mother—trying to detangle why he held on so tightly to the pieces of her he held, and Betsy had looked at him, and said, Kevin, in many ways, the act of being known is an act of love.

Kevin thinks about this, with Aaron's finger pressed up against his lips, fond exasperation in the crinkles around his eyes, and Kevin aches with it. Just this little thing, this little moment, this life he has now, made up of so many of them.

He puts the scissors down for a moment. Before Aaron can tease him for it, Kevin runs his fingers through Aaron's hair. He lightly scratches at Aaron's scalp. Aaron not only allows this, but leans into it, making a huffy, contented noise that’s so cute that Kevin wants to run a mile just to deal with it.

But this is what life is, like this, so Kevin does not do that. He just leans forward and kisses Aaron, finger still caught between their lips.

“Kevin,” Aaron complains, retrieving his finger, but he clearly can’t be too annoyed, because he kisses Kevin back.

“Okay,” Kevin announces after trading a few more kisses. “I'm ready.”

Aaron huffs a laugh. “So generous of you,” Aaron says, but he twists back into his original position. Kevin was originally going to kneel behind him, but he decides to stretch out his legs, bracketing Aaron in between them, Aaron's knees pressing against and on top of his thighs.

“Shh,” Kevin says, picking up the scissors again and running his other hand through Aaron's hair, eyeing it critically to decide where to start. “I'm working.”

microfic monday

KEVIN/AARON • aftg • SLOW