did a flash fic challenge today & the character i received from the spin2win was kevin. @merceyca prompted “plexiglass” & immediately after that, @vykio prompted “haunted house”, because they love to make life easy for me LMFAO. predictably with this setup, this is kevaaron. so.
kevaaron + haunted house, plexiglass
“This was a terrible idea,” Kevin mutters.
Andrew obviously hears him, but predictably ignores him, instead choosing to poke experimentally at the cleaver hanging from the ceiling. Renee, at his side, gently lowers his arm.
Matt is sandwiched between Dan and Neil, a bit ahead of Andrew. Allison and Nicky seem to be competing to find the ‘hottest corpse’.
Aaron, bringing up the rear with Kevin, slants him a sidelong glance. “Because those two are three seconds from being sent to a sexual harassment seminar or because you’re worried Andrew will try steal a machete from one of the actors?” he asks dryly.
“They’re not sharp enough,” Andrew says blandly. Renee shoots Kevin an apologetic look over her shoulder—he’s not really sure why; or rather, the only answer that comes to mind is at risk of making him flush, so he beats it back with a stick—and loops her arm with Andrew’s, leading him further out of earshot. Andrew allows it.
When Kevin looks back at Aaron, he’s tilting his head.
“Or something else?” Aaron asks.
Kevin weighs up his options. Discovering no good ones, he grumbles, “I think I saw a clown chasing a toddler with a flamethrower.”
Aaron snorts. “The great Kevin Day,” he says. His tone is mocking, but like – in that Aaron way. Kevin doesn’t really know how to explain it. There’s mocking when Aaron means it, how he used to talk to Neil and the scathing tone he turns on the especially annoying freshmen on the line-up, and then there’s like this: that natural tilt to his voice, something blunt and sarcastic, but no force behind it.
Kevin’s seen what it looks like, after all, when Aaron puts his strength into it.
He’s about to huff—something waspish about haunted houses and horror films and the Foxes’ inexplicable idea of what constitutes ‘fun’—when Aaron shifts closer, the sudden flush of body heat emanating off him stealing the words from Kevin’s mouth.
Aaron doesn’t seem concerned with saying anything, so Kevin doesn’t either, just shifts his weight on his next step to move closer to Aaron, now that he’s allowed. Their shoulders brush. Kevin thinks again about Renee’s apologetic expression, and almost bites off his own tongue.
It’s two rooms later—after Matt had to pull Nicky back from peering into a coffin before a guillotine descended on him, and Dan swore loudly at a fortune-teller who appeared suddenly at her side and kept ominously intoning her name while Allison told Neil, yeah, so that’s why you never say anyone’s name in one of these things—that Kevin finally says, “It’s dark.”
Aaron opens his mouth. Pauses. Shuts it. Hums.
Kevin thinks he’s going to have to say more. Explain himself. Talk about claustrophobic spaces, stuck in the dark, threats of violence.
Then Aaron takes his hand, holding it tight, and it’s like the air goes out of Kevin’s lungs.
He thinks about the car ride over, when Aaron and Nicky debated which horror movie to watch later that night. Nicky had been texting the other car at the time, chiming in with suggestions from the upperclassmen, most of which Aaron had shot down. His knee had kept bouncing, the way it did when he was animated, or irritated, or annoyed, or over-tired, or restless, or a thousand other things that Aaron sometimes was, that Kevin sometimes noticed. He’d wanted to reach out and still Aaron’s leg. He hadn’t.
He thinks about a week ago at Eden’s, downing seven shots as he sat at the table, ignoring whatever the fuck Neil and Andrew were doing as he watched Aaron—fucking wasted—tilt his head back on the dance floor, the lights illuminating the line of his throat. He thinks about an hour before they left for Eden’s that same night, arguing with Aaron about something that didn’t really matter, until it did, and he was pressing Aaron against the plexiglass of the court walls, snapping at him, and then kissing him, and kissing him, and kissing him. He thinks about Aaron—pinned halfway up the wall, Kevin raising him up for a better angle, Aaron’s hand leaving an imprint on the plexiglass—kissing him back.
He thinks about a month before that, on the bus on their way back from a game against Belmonte, Aaron sitting beside him and—with a long-suffering sigh—offering one of his earbuds to Kevin. It hadn’t been music Kevin knew, which Kevin had said, to which Aaron had scoffed, and said, You don’t know anything that came out after the 1800s, which was rude, but possibly fair. Still, Kevin had argued the point, and Aaron had objected to each of his statements, and somehow they’d ended up spending the entire journey going through Aaron’s playlists while they tried to—in Aaron’s words—find ‘an actual music taste’ for Kevin.
Kevin thinks about all of these things, and about Renee’s apology, and about Aaron’s hand in his, and about Aaron shifting closer, and Aaron’s sidelong glance, and he swallows.
A clown could try murder him right now, he thinks, and he might not even notice.
Slowly, he squeezes Aaron’s hand: smaller than his, but firm, unwavering.
After a moment, Aaron squeezes back.
