An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“Why are we doing this anyway?” Kevin whined. “This is so dumb.”
Thea swatted his arm. “It’s not like you to back down from a challenge,” she said.
“For like sports or academics, both of which are noble pursuits,” Kevin protested. The camera zoomed in, showing an extreme closeup of a pimple on his chin.
“One,” Neil interrupted. The camera zoomed back out and swung over to Neil. “Last week, it was your idea to have a race to see who could eat a plate of spaghetti the fastest using only a spoon. Two, this might actually have practical application in the near future since you’re one of the straights and will probably wind up with a picket fence and 2.4 kids in the next five years. Three, are you scared?”
Andrew and Neil, Katelyn and Aaron, Kevin and Thea, Matt and Dan, and Nicky and Erik compete to see who is the best parent.
Here it is! Fic #100 for AFTG! Congratulations @aftgnextgeneration. I hope you enjoy your prize!
Sometimes people will call muldayni unhealthy because one time Thea yelled at Kevin for not contacting her for months and then ship him with Andrew who literally stabbed and strangled him. We are not the same.
Kevin/Jean, Kevin/Jeremy, Kevin/Neil, Kevin/Andrew, some combo of the lot like ok but can we not minimize Thea Muldani?
Thea’s a strong af woman of color who is as good with a dildo as she is with an exy racquet- that boy is lucky to have her. She can top him on the court and in the bedroom, and honestly what more could Kevin ask for?
Kevin and Thea, buff athlete power couple™, have a contest every morning as to who can chug their protein shake the fastest
the winner writes it on the calendar
Once their kids are old enough they join in with their morning OJ
for a full minute every weekday morning, the mayhem of them all rushing to get out the door is replaced by the sounds of frantic gulping as the entire family stands in the kitchen, staring each other down and chugging as fast as they can physically manage
Andrew and Neil are the first other people to see this lovely tradition after they crash at K & T’s for a night
Neil immediately dives into the fray with his own protein shake, which Kevin made and bullied him into taking
Andrew, whose breakfast consists of an entire box of poptarts that he brought himself (Kevin whined for 20 minutes about the corruptive effect on his children), gets up and leaves the room
talk show host: so I hear you two have a friendly competition at breakfast!!
kevin: oh! well karen, there’s nothing friendly about it
thea: it’s to the death
they left out the bit where the winner dramatically dips and kisses the loser after they’re both done
I never really bought into Kevin/Thea long term. Do you have any thoughts on that relationship? What little I've read up on Robin I feel like Kevin and her might be an interesting pairing. If not romantic than at least friends.
i mean, thea’s such a minor character in the books that you can kind of make of her what you will really. i know in canon she like...throws a laptop at kevin or something, but she’s pretty pissed at him for cutting her off so, you know, probably fair, and also...i find that kinda reaction interesting in a character.
personally i’m into muldayni (probably if you search that tag on my blog you can find some fic of them) - i think they’re a good combination of ‘anxious but determined’ and ‘badass capable leader’ where kevin, who is essentially assholish but soft, has someone tough to lean on, and thea, who has had to be tough her entire career as a woman on a team that doesn’t respect women much, can be soft with him and know he’ll never use that against her
i haven’t thought about robin/kevin at all, and my first thought is of course that she’s too young for him because i’m old and boring lmaooo. i do think they’d understand each other eventually, but i think kevin is too tough-love for her at first because he learned to ‘manage’ his anxiety by telling himself to harden tf up (BAD TECHNIQUE KEVIN PLS GO TO THERAPY) and that’s never gonna be an approach that works for robin (or, like, anyone, really). i reckon they can learn from each other for sure, though
she really loves exy, and i think they def have that in common. also, they probably discuss the upsides and downsides of being andreil’s pseudo-charges when andrew and neil aren’t around
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Kevin and Thea patch things up, even when the fabric is threadbare.
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Thea is still at the hotel when the bus pulls in the parking lot.
Kevin knows because she’s waiting for them on the porch, fiddling with her pendant, arms crossed on her chest. Thea is built like the ferocious backliner that she is: standing there in the dim light, with a solid stance and her legs open shoulder-width, she looks as immovable as she is. Kevin’s heart does a little complicated thing. He gets it, Neil’s trust in Andrew; he’s always understood it, known it, maybe because he’s lived with the promise of the same thing for years, before it was ripped off him with his hand.
The Foxes cheer sleepily when Wymack cuts off the engine. It’s almost three am and they’ve been functionned off remnants of adrenaline until Neil got back from his questioning. They’re all more or less fused with their seats from exhaustion; if Kevin were to turn over, he’s pretty sure he’d see Neil slouching on Andrew.
Nicky is the first one out of the bus, possibly because Erik just crossed the glass door of the hotel, looking even more tired than they are. Allison’s heels are heard next on the noisy steps, half-carried by Renee who looks more rested than any of them, possibly because she’s not entirely human.
Kevin watches them all file out of the bus, barely registering it, before something pokes him hard in the head.
“Are you going to get up sometimes this century?” Neil asks.
His eyes are bright and he’s standing close, close to Andrew. His good mood instantly worsens Kevin’s. They won, and Kevin is glad of it, wanted nothing else. But he’s been feeling on edge ever since the buzzer rang the last second of the match, waiting for the other shoe to drop and drag him down with him.
“You won,” Andrew says when Kevin doesn’t move. “Isn’t that everything you wanted in your pathetically obsessed life?”
“We won,” Neil says, and then they wait.
Kevin glances on his right. Thea is still standing there, talking with Matt and Dan as the others crowd the brightly lit hall.
“Ah,” Neil says. “Well, you can’t sleep here.”
“As if you’ve ever confronted your problems head on,” Kevin mutters, which is ridiculous. Neil’s ruined skin and bruised psyche are proof that he does.
Neil kicks him in the shin but waits for him nonetheless, and Kevin doesn’t have a choice. He shoulders his bag and slowly makes his way out of the bus.
Andrew follows them; he’s the last one on the bus but the first one in the hotel, considering he shoulders past Kevin without looking back and doesn’t stop until he reaches Abby, who gives him one of the keys she’s just gathered from the front desk.
“You have a visitor,” Wymack says as Kevin stops in front of him. He’s smoking at the bottom of the stairs, watching everyone pair off and disappear inside the hotel through the large glass doors.
It’s been hours: the celebratory mood lasted a few minutes but was beaten down by the hours of questioning which followed the game, but still he looks proud as he gazes at Kevin. They’re the same height, which Kevin never realized before, though he should have. Exhaustion falls onto him like a heavy coat: he’s tired of pushing back his moment of rest, of the awkwardness he always waddles through.
Wymack is still looking at him steadily, waiting for something Kevin isn’t sure he can give him.
“You should stop smoking,” he blurts out.
“You should stop drinking,” Wymack retorts.
Kevin doesn’t have anything to say to that. He should, he knows he should: it’s unhealthy and addictive, two things his game doesn’t need. He didn’t drink in the Nest—hat’s a Foxes novelty.
“I can see you stalling,” Wymack says a heartbeat later, “go.”
“You don’t—”
“Kevin, I’m the one who’s gonna have to drag your ass out of bed in the morning. We’re leaving at ten.”
A glance at his watch tells him it’s past three thirty. Kevin groans. At least they’re taking the bus: he’ll only have to be awake long enough to cross the parking lot.
He drags his feet to the entrance of the hotel and rocks to a stop in front of Thea., who doesn’t say anything for a long time but lifts her hand in the air, halfway to his face. Her pendant falls back against her shirt, shiny and possibly skin warm.
“Good game,” she says after a while.
“We were desperate.”
“Yes. And you won.”
They did. Kevin is still reeling. His entire world is realigning like stars in the sky: he can’t help the pride he feels at being the better team. Worry and doubt are always waiting behind the door; they freeze his limbs the time of a breath, leaving panic strong enough to paralyze in their way.
He wants to go to bed and sleep his worries out. He wants a drink, he wants to go back onto the court at Palmetto and lose himself in the repetitive movement of throwing balls at a plexiglass wall, being his own judge and jury.
“You did well,” Thea says again. Then: “We need to talk.”
Kevin guesses they do, but he also has to rock on his feet a little to stay upright. Thea grips him by the shoulder and he sags so entirely in her grip that it surprises them both.
“Can we… later?”
“I have to go back tomorrow.”
Kevin glances around. He makes eye contact with Abby through the glass, holding a spare key card. Thea follows him when he steps inside and takes his bag when he slouches against the elevator wall.
His room is on the fourth floor. Through the cracked open doors he can hear his teammates talking and getting ready for bed, still high with victory and team spirit. A door opens as they cross the hallways, and Kevin tenses instinctively, but it’s only Renee, crossing from one room to another, a charger in hand. She smiles and waves but doesn’t say anything. Kevin can almost understand how she can be Andrew’s friend.
It’s not until the door opens to a single double bed in the middle of the dark room that he realizes that he expected to room with Andrew and Neil.
He flops down on the bed, Thea closes the door, and they’re suddenly alone. Kevin’s mind brings out memories, unprompted, of what it meant to be alone with Thea: the sex, the conversations, the notes they passed in secret, holding out whatever they could of a relationship, until both of them were free to do it for real. There had always been the weight of this waiting on the horizon, but Kevin didn’t realize how fake it was until he left the Ravens behind.
Now begins the real freedom, the real experiment.
Thea sits down next to him, but she doesn’t lie down like him, choosing instead to shove him almost off the bed.
“What the fuck,” he splutters as he catches himself in-extremis.
“If you lie down now you’ll fall asleep.”
Would that really be that bad? Kevin’s mind supplies, but he doesn’t voice the question. There is no avoiding this conversation if they want the fragile thread stretched thin between them to grow back into something real.
“We need to talk about what it means,” she says.
“What what means?”
“What it means to be us.” A pause, then: “If you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m leaving.”
She means it: she gets up before Kevin can count to three. His hand shots up instinctively, catching her wrist.
“Wait,” he says, tugging lightly until she’s facing him back. “I’m taking this seriously. I—I want to talk.” She’s still waiting, so he grits the words out: “You told me we’d have a shot at something after I graduate. It’s still two years away and—I don’t want to wait.”
The silence is frightening. Kevin can feel his palms get damp and his heartbeat kicking, his mind reeling: it’s the same kind of anxious urgency he’s always felt whenever he thought of Wymack as more than a coach, that dries up his throat until he can’t force words out. Alcohol, he’s discovered, is the only thing fluid enough to pass through, but he knows that’s not an option.
“What do you want?” Thea asks, stepping closer. She turns her hand in his until she’s loosely circling his wrist back. Her fingers are hot against his skin, as she always is.
“I want—” It’s not an easy thing to formulate.
“Do you want a relationship?”
Now she sounds as hesitant as he is. Neither of them is good at this; they were Ravens, after all.
“I want to able to talk to you,” Kevin says.
It’s not the right thing to say.
“You have my number. You could have talked to me at any time during the past year and a half.”
Thea has his number too, now: he disconnected his old line when he left Evermore but she stole his phone and called herself with it the last time she came to Palmetto. It was a few weeks ago. They haven’t talked since, except for last night, when Thea told him she’d come to the game.
“I don’t know what being in a relationship means,” Kevin says after a while. “And I don’t think you know either, but I’m tired of being scared all the time.”
“Yes,” she says, “I thought so.”
Thea presses her thumb against his tattoo at that. The little jolt of pain the pressure sends is a welcome reminder of the step he took and the things he’s finally left behind. He has to ask:
“Is that what made you want to try again?”
“Yes.”
Her callused palm is fully cupping his jaw, now, and Kevin rests his head against it, closing his burning eyes. He wants to go to sleep, he wants to stay up talking to her all night, hearing her break down the game in her smooth accent, he wants—
He wants.
“You need to sleep,” Thea says. “Are you still a morning person?”
Kevin grunts, listening to her puff of laughter. He never was: everyone knows that.
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” She disentangles herself from him, leaving cold air on his skin where she was touching him. Kevin’s eyes shot open.
“We leave at ten.”
“I’ll call you.”
“In the evening,” he says, and she smiles.
“You’ll be on the Court by the evening.”
He will. Then again, if she doesn’t call too late, maybe he’ll wait. He thinks he can do that.
Neil tells them on the bus, just before stepping off. He looks at Kevin when he says the words, without malice but with the lack of pity that characterizes him.
It’s fine. Or, it’s not, but Kevin has never wanted pity in the first place.
He leaves with Abby and has a panic attack in her car, then almost drinks himself in a stupor at her house before Wymack comes in and takes the bottle away.
“He’s dead,” Kevin tells him; he feels like it’s the only thing he’s said all day. “He’s dead.”
There’s a clatter in the bedroom where Abby disappeared ten minutes earlier with her medical pack. Jean, Kevin thinks, but even in his alcohol-addled state he can’t imagine a way they can comfort each other.
“Alright,” Wymack says, “come with me. I need a drink.”
“You took the vodka,” Kevin mumbles as he lets Wymack frog-march him to the car.
“I meant coffee.”
No one ever means coffee when they say they need a drink, but Kevin stays silent for the rest of the trip. It’s not on the news yet: according to Neil, Riko was stone cold by the time Kevin went to sleep that morning, so what do a few hours matter anyway?
Wymack brings him to a diner a few miles away from campus, possibly so Kevin doesn’t have access to his alcohol stash. They have bitter coffee and greasy burgers that Kevin vomits right up ten minutes later during a panic attack that leaves him hunched over the toilet seat on the diner’s dirty bathroom floor.
“You okay in there?” someone asks, but the steps move away when they get no answer.
Kevin doesn’t do much more of the rest of his Saturday, pestering Wymack until he drives him to the court. He always meant to go there anyway; the smell of the floor polish and the leather of his gear usually helps him focus his stray thoughts, but this time the effort to gear up and fetch balls and a racquet is too much. He crouches down on the giant paw in the middle of the floor in his jeans and sneakers and tries to remember how to breathe.
The buzz of his phone against his hip startles him so much he falls on his ass, one hand flying behind him to steady himself.
It’s Thea, calling him like she said she would.
Kevin almost doesn’t pick up.
“Kevin,” she says when he finally does.
“He’s dead,” is the only thing he can articulate. He thinks Thea might get it. She’s not like Neil, incensed and intent on vengeance. She’s like him, angry and wounded and still a little bit scarred.
“I hate him for what he did to you,” she says.
“You think he got what he deserved.”
It’s not even a question. The answer is simple: yes or no. Kevin is incapable of answering it himself.
“I think he’s dead, and now it doesn’t matter anymore.”
He realizes that her lack of surprise means that the news has spread. It’s unfathomable, the world being privy to the ugly reality of Riko’s death. They’ll all say it was a suicide, and that front covering the truth is familiar, but they’ll be waiting for a reaction Kevin can’t hide.
“Kevin. Breathe.”
“Count them for me,” he gasps, so she does, in her unshakable voice: “One,” and she inhales, “two,” and they let go.
“Will you come to the funeral?”
“Will you?”
He will; how can he not? For a moment he surprises himself daydreaming about not going, staying in bed with the covers drawn over his head. But no, that can’t happen: not after they beat the Ravens, not now that the cameras are focused, more than ever, on their little ragtag team. Not after he made such accusations live on TV weeks ago. They will whispers and point fingers, his reputation will be in shatters.
Kevin says this to Thea in between big gulps of air. She stays silent, thinking, judging. Thea is good at compartmentalizing and seeing the bigger picture; she makes sacrifices and sees them through. She understands.
“Alright,” she says after they’ve rehashed it three times. “Sit up straight, you’ll hurt your back.”
The floor is cool under Kevin’s forehead but he’s still covered in cold sweat and it sticks when he unfolds from his curled position.
“How did you know?”
“You always curl up as tight as possible.”
He didn’t know that she’d noticed. He didn’t know that she’d cared to before: his attacks in the Nest were always either supervised by Riko or private. Much of his privacy was fake: he shared it with Riko, with Jean. With Thea.
It’s normal that they know these things about each other. That’s what couples do, after all.
“Talk to me,” he says as he gets up on shaky legs. He almost falls down when the blood rushes back into his feet, but he manages to stay upright and starts down the court, following the path they take when they run warm-ups around the court.
“About what?”
“Anything. About you, anything.”
It’s them, so Thea talks about Exy. She hashes down her team’s season, the internal struggles and petty in-fighting that cost them a game.
“I know the feeling,” Kevin says, almost joking.
There is a moment of silence where laughter should be, then Thea is off again, explaining her latest game. Kevin saw it live, on his laptop. The livestream broke once and he almost cried out loud, but he only missed Thea’s team scoring. He doesn’t tell her but listens carefully as she talks to him about game strategy he could only guess at as a spectator. She’s ruthless on the court, never backing down. Listening to her determination is almost as good as seeing it or experiencing first hand. He craves it, sometimes: the memory of their year of playing together, Kevin choosing her as his mark in scrimmage because he was obsessed with measuring his strategic play with her strength. It worked well. He thinks it might work even better on the same side of the court, but that’s a thought for the future.
When Thea’s done with the game, she goes on another one, less interesting, that she played against the Boston Rebels.
“We stayed in town the next day,” she says. “Saw all the historical landmarks.”
It’s more than an olive branch, it’s a rope thrown to a drowning man. Kevin takes it and relearns how to swim.
“Tell me.”
She tells him; about the churches, the houses, the Liberty tour and the narrow streets of the northern part of town. Kevin has travelled a lot, but never to Boston. Maybe they should go one day, when they have time and a more solid start to their relationship.
The beeping sound of his phone battery startles him out of the conversation.
“I should go,” he tells her, hand on the court’s doors. “My phone is going to die.”
“Alright.” She’s not one for goodbyes. “Don’t stay alone,” she warns.
She knows as well as he does how well Ravens do alone. Kevin thinks for Jean, still in bed in Abby’s guest room. He wishes he could visit him, bring him some of the comfort they used to share in whispered French. But his relationship with Jean is a closed door he doesn’t have the key to unlock.
Noise alerts him when he steps out of the foyer. The scrapping of a chair against the floor, the click of a light being turned off. Wymack steps out of his office a second later, leaning on the doorjamb.
“I’m not,” he assures Thea.
Riko is dead, and Kevin’s shadow with him, the spiral inside him threatening to swallow him whole. But he has the Foxes, and Thea, and Wymack—his father. This is enough, for now, for Kevin to be able to see a sliver of blue sky past the storm.
