#balder12

He’s pretty much finished the bottle Dean thought he’d hid. Kevin’s never had horse pee but he suspects that horse pee would be better. It’s a plastic jug, and it stings going down, but he needs some kind of courage and apparently the Winchesters are too cheap to keep myrrh around. He finishes his cup and combs his hair, in front of the mirror in his room. His head feels like it’s bobbing at some long tether, past the end of where his neck should be. His lips feel numb. It’s kinda cool.

He doesn’t knock, at Sam’s room. When the door opens it’s dark and he bangs it into the wall. There’s a jolt, and in the light streaming in from the hallway he sees Sam twisted around, a gun in his hands, the blankets a mess. "What," Sam says, in that voice. Kevin smiles at him. Sam blinks. "Kevin. What?"

"Yeah," Kevin sighs, and crosses the room and crawls right up onto the bed, his limbs all heavy. Sam turns onto his back, surprised, meets him. Kevin’s in socks and sweatpants and the Harvard sweatshirt Dean had given him as a joke, except that Kevin actually loves it and wears it whenever he gets a chance, and Sam’s hands settle on his waist, gripping in through the soft fleecy crimson, holding him. Kevin sighs again, settles in. Sam’s lap, his bed. Firm as a rock, like Kevin’s, but—warm. ‘Cause Sam is there.

"Hey," Sam says, cautious, and Kevin makes a small noise and leans down, lassitude soaking through him from all that shitty shitty booze, and Sam tips his head up and meets the kiss, soft. Soft, but steady, and bracing. He’s like a colossus, Kevin thinks, distantly pleased. That was a good vocab word. The Colossus of Sam. He lips at Sam’s mouth and gets a slow breath, and Sam tipping his head so it’s in the right place, and the kiss is—easy, like that, because Sam makes it easy. His mouth, firm but yielding when Kevin asks, and he doesn’t make fun of Kevin for being shy, or for not—not really—knowing what he’s doing. His hands shift on Kevin’s waist, slip over his back, over the Harvard sweatshirt. Under it, just the edge of his fingers, and Kevin smiles against his mouth and drops his head, the booze swirling steady and dragging as hard as gravity, pinning him into Sam’s lap, making him laugh.

"You’re in a good mood," Sam says. Smile in his voice. Sam, happy. That doesn’t happen too often. Another slow drag of hands, up his back, and Kevin sits back into them, lets Sam take his weight because he totally can. Door’s still open and there’s enough light in here that he can really see—Sam, in a black tee, his hair a little mussed from sleeping, his eyes on Kevin above him. "What's up?"

"I have a plan," Kevin says. He tries to make it sound serious but he doesn't feel all that serious. Sam's eyes narrow a little, looking at his face. "I think—"

"Are you drunk?"

"That," Kevin says, with dignity, "is not relevant."

"Wow," Sam says, "you really are," but he doesn't sound mad or anything. There's a dimple peeking, in his cheek.

They shift a little, Sam moving under his weight. Not that Sam seems to think his weight is any impediment. Kevin's knees spread on the rock-hard mattress and Sam ends up with his back firm against the headboard, his hands still laced easy around Kevin's waist, looking at him. He's an inch or two taller than Sam, sitting like this, and he laughs a little, enjoying it. The top of Sam's head is nice, who knew?

"You have a plan," Sam prompts him. The corner of his mouth keeps turning up, before he makes it go thoughtful again. "Let's hear it."

It feels distant right now. "Well," Kevin says, and drifts for a second. Sam's body is—it's not like he didn't know this, but Sam's body is—nice. Feels nice. He presses his hands against Sam's pecs and they flex, whether on purpose or not Kevin doesn't know but. Wow.

"Kevin."

"I think you should kiss me," Kevin says. Not what he meant to say.

"Is that the plan?"

He grips Sam's shirt, rolls his eyes. "I mean, it is now," and gets Sam to smile briefly before there's the lean up, a big hand between his shoulderblades to keep him balanced while Sam presses their lips together. Firm-and-yielding, and when Kevin's mouth parts on a little breath Sam tips his head and makes the kiss a little—more yielding, a little wet, enough that Kevin's belly already warm from the booze feels like someone turned it to boil.

"How's that," Sam says, when he pulls back. Soft. Smug. Shithead.

"You suck," Kevin says. Somehow his hands ended up in Sam's hair and he plays his fingers through it. It's soft. Sam showered, before he went to bed, and his hair's clean and probably conditioned and just… nice, like the rest of him. "I deserve more than this."

Sam sits still, letting Kevin tangle him up. "You do," he says.

Kevin tweaks a long wave, there at Sam's temple, focusing. The plan. "Yeah, I do," he says, like Sam was arguing. "I mean, I know I'm not like—whatever, hot or a—a stud or something, but I am a Prophet and I feel like I should get more than a kiss every once in a while. Anyway, I don't see anyone else around here that you could make out with, so you might as well—"

"Wait," Sam says, shaking his head, but Kevin does have a plan and he got drunk for this, okay, so he's not going to be interrupted.

"—and if you're like, holding back because I'm a virgin, you don't need to worry about that, all right, because I've read like a lot about it and I figured out my mom's kid-safe password for the internet when I was eleven, okay, so I know how it goes."

Sam's grip on his sides is tight and Kevin squirms. The hands go looser but Sam's staring at him. "You're—Kevin." Kevin makes a small noise. Duh, he's Kevin. Maybe Sam's drunk too. "Kevin, you're twenty."

"I'm twenty-one," he says, offended. Just because the Winchesters lose years all the time doesn't mean everyone else does. He drags his hands through Sam's hair again, sweeping it back from his face, and Sam's giving him this look that he doesn't really get. Sam looks at him a lot in ways he doesn't really get.

"Twenty-one," Sam says, after a few seconds. Kevin nods. "Sorry."

There's a pause, again. Kevin's comfortable, now he's said his piece. He plays with the ends of Sam's hair where they curl forward. It's really different to his, which pretty much just lays there unless Kevin experiments with products. Sam's got—body. Kevin glances down, where Sam's chest rises with his breath, and grins. Yeah, he's got body.

"When I—after that hunt. When I kissed you." One of Sam's hands slides to the center of his chest, right over where it says Harvard. "Was that the first time someone…?"

"I had a girlfriend," Kevin says.

"That's not an answer."

Sam's as bad as his debate coach used to be. "No," he says, exaggerating it, "it wasn't my first kiss." Might as well have been, because he and Channing hadn't been any good at it. Kissing was just wet and kinda gross, Kevin had thought, until a month ago when Sam had looked down at him with this glad proud look on his face after Kevin had given them the research they needed to figure out their hunt, and he'd said you really saved our asses, and Kevin had looked up at him and Sam's face had changed and he'd, very softly, touched Kevin's chin, and Kevin had felt like he'd lost his balance and Sam had looked back and forth between his eyes—like a movie, Kevin thought, dumb in the moment—and he'd dipped, and it had been…

Sam's hands are under his sweatshirt, now. Just holding his back, his thumbs idly stroking. "Tell me what you did with your girlfriend," he says, and it's just an easy suggestion but also it kinda sounds like Sam does sound, sometimes, when something's a suggestion but really it's an order. How he talks to Dean, when they're prepping a hunt.

Kevin's weirdly pleased to be on the other end of it. "Studied mostly," he says. It's just honest but for some reason Sam smiles. He cards his fingers through Sam's hair again. "And—well, I guess this, too." Sam raises his eyebrows, questioning, and Kevin says: "This. I used to braid her hair for her. For dance performances."

"Really," Sam says, and Kevin shrugs. He squirms closer, in Sam's lap, and loosens the fall of hair behind Sam's left ear. Yeah, there's enough. He tips Sam's chin so he has space and starts in. Sam laughs softly. "Okay. Uh—Kevin." Kevin ignores it; he's busy. "When you… did you ever want to do more? With your girlfriend? More than kissing, I mean."

Sam's hair is great to work with. He unwinds a little and restarts with a french braid, instead, since it's so smooth. Sam asked him a question, though. "Um, not really," he says. Three over two over one over two. It's a soothing pattern, very rhythmic. Like differential equations. "It felt awkward. I mean… it was Channing, you know?"

He admires the effect, curving around Sam's ear, and turns his chin again to do the other side. Sam lets him, holding still for it.

"But you want more," Sam says, while the braid forms perfectly over his right ear. "With me."

Kevin pauses. There was something—different, in Sam's voice. He plaits the last inch, finishing, and he's—aware maybe, more than he has been, of Sam's hands on his skin. They're just sitting there, low on his back, the thumbs still gently moving. "I mean," he says, and bites his lip.

With the sides braided, Sam looks like a Viking. He's big enough to be one. "Did you know that Vikings actually had a much better standard of living than most people think?" Kevin says. "They were really big into bathing."

"Yes, I knew that," Sam says. He sits up more and Kevin's weight shifts, in his lap, so that he grabs onto Sam's shoulders to balance, but of course with Sam's hands on his back he wasn't going to budge at all. Sam's hands shift to his hips and he kisses Kevin again, leaning in quick without his usual careful bend where it feels like he's asking to make sure Kevin's okay with it—Kevin sucks air, opens his mouth, and Sam's tongue is—oh, wet but it's not—not like it was, with Channing, and he makes some weird noise and has his fingers in Sam's hair again, at the back where it's so soft, gripping, trying to make sure he doesn't just float away. Sublimation, solid to gas in a second.

"You're hard," Sam says, quietly, when he pulls back. Kevin's dizzy. Oh, he is. He looks down, between them, and Sam's thumb is dragging down the waist of his sweatpants a little, and he is—yeah—bulging there, really obvious. His belly throbs.

Sam's other hand cards through Kevin's hair. It feels nice and he closes his eyes, just feeling. Sam kisses him again, shallow enough that he can still think, and Sam's thumb drags around the curve of his jaw, and Sam's other thumb slips over, to under his bellybutton, rubbing there a little. "You deserve more," Sam says—funny tone—but that's agreement at least, and Kevin's skin goes hot all over. Not drunk enough to be nervous but he…

When he opens his eyes Sam's cheeks are a little red. Kevin wonders suddenly if he's hard, too, but with Sam's eyes on his he doesn't want to look down. "Let me just take care of you," Sam says, abruptly. "You're drunk and I don't—for tonight, at least. Just let me."

Kevin has no idea what that means. "Okay," he says, because he'd probably agree to anything when Sam looks like he does, right now, when he's—feeling as much as he is, right now.

Basically they brought up so many real life issues in that episode (offhand I can name evolution vs. creationism in schools, school segregation, a whole lot of different aspects of colonialism, orthodox vs reform religious teachings, and terrorism) and through it all -- well, obviously I wasn’t supposed to like Vedek Winn but I could not separate my distaste for her from my actual very squidgy embarrassed awful feelings in real life when people I want to be on good terms with assume I’m Christian, and then I have to decide whether to say I’m not and what kind of a conversation about Judaism and Jewishness I’m comfortable with, and then I run the risk of them trying to convert me; even if not, they might still try and fit me into the idea they have of Judaism as Diet Christianity, Now With Less Jesus.  (And the thing is, these people are almost always much better-intentioned than Vedek Winn, and they’re never extremists or anything.  They just want to get along with me, and they just want to think that I’m a good person, and that’s what they think good people are.  But they still make me very uncomfortable and they’ll never realize it.)

On the other hand I wonder a little bit if people who don’t have those feelings normally experienced them while watching that episode?  I kind of hope so, but also I feel like a lot of people who are culturally Christian and relatively socially liberal will be reading the Bajoran religion primarily as a stand-in for Islam in that episode, and secondarily as a stand-in for (specifically) Creationism and other aspects of fundamentalist Christianity.  (To be VERY CLEAR, I don’t want to equate this fictional alien sci fi religion with any real religions, I’m just thinking about how people might have interpreted it.)  They’re in a place where they can say, “what a strange backwards planet, glad I don’t live there, they remind me of this group I don’t understand at all, hopefully Sisko can show them the error of their ways by the end.”

And I feel more like, “Wow, this is where I have always lived, surrounded by people who can’t imagine I don’t share their culture and philosophy,” and then I have to ask, but wait, why are the Federation officers so surprised, why do they argue and get mad?  Can’t they just say “yeah, sure, the prophets, actually that’s not my thing but it’s totally okay if it’s yours but just, it’s not mine, I must have missed the prophets memo, ha ha, that’s on me, I really don’t want confrontation here, anyway, gosh, lovely weather on the promenade today, hope we don’t get rain, how ‘bout them holographic baseball teams.”  Because that’s what I do!  (Man, you don’t even know how many awkward conversations I’ve had about the Cubs trying to avoid making someone feel bad about my lack of their religion.  I don’t even like the Cubs.)

And then I realize, well, of course that’s what I do, I’m not part of a massive, well-armed empire that’s trying to absorb the people who talk to me like this into my culture.  They’re the ones trying to absorb my culture, in fact.  

And then Sisko makes his big rousing speech that assumes that, really, deep down, everyone kind of wants to be like the Federation, that the Federation being good is self-evident, and I’m like, “oh no, they ALSO can’t imagine people don’t think like them!  That is going to alienate the Bajorans as much as Vedek Winn is alienating the O’Briens and Sisko, and it’s all going to be a big mess, you can really only have one group of smug everyone’s-like-me-deep-down-assumers or it all breaks down because no one knows when to change the subject and talk about the space weather.”  And then it was fine?  I don’t know.  It was off-putting.

(I realize “it was fine” is a funny way to say “there was an explosion and an assassination attempt but fortunately no one died.”  In the end O’Brien was betrayed by a non-regular and Kira was sad but like, none of the main cast’s relationship was really in peril in the end, so... it was fine.)

I think also I was a bit taken aback that Kira identified so much with Vedek Winn’s interpretation and cause initially?  I think that would sit better with me if I understood more about Winn’s ideas than “wormhole science bad, it’s a celestial temple.”  Like, is there some kind of philosophy Winn puts forward that Kira found a lot of strength in?  Did she write beautiful religious poetry?  Was she willing to stand up to the Cardassians when most of Bajor’s religious leaders capitulated too easily for Kira’s taste?  I don’t know!  We don’t get any discussion of that, she’s just Misguided for siding with Winn, and then she changes her mind because she has eyes and Winn is obviously evil.

Also, actually, on a worldbuilding note I’m very skeptical about the sheer... organizedness and unity of Bajor’s religion.  You can’t tell me there wouldn’t be sects and splinter groups and a rival religion that decries the orbs and the so-called Prophets as some sort of evil force, and at least a few religions that don’t have orbs in them at all, and well-known temples with orbs that turned out to be like, quartz with LEDs and part of the very important temple ritual experience is eating shrooms so you still have weird hallucinations.