This time two days ago I’d just got out of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre having seen The Book of Mormon on Broadway (with @slightlytookish!) I am now back in the UK, and timezones are mysterious and cruel things and so I have inflicted my jetlag on everyone’s favourite Elder Price. Wikipedia states that jetlag can have “cognitive effects include poorer performance on mental tasks and concentration, increased fatigue, headaches, and irritability” so I thought I’d be mean. (Once I’ve got over my jetlag and had this beta’d I’ll AO3 it.)
Plus Nine Kevin Price centric. (McKinley/Price pre-relationship if you squint/want) Canon compliant.
Sleep came easily to Kevin Price, it always had. His bedtime routine had been set in stone since he’d been a young boy; he would say goodnight to his mom and dad, he and his brothers would brush their teeth huddled around the bathroom sink – Lucas helping Ethan, Jack elbowing Michael, and Sarah using their parents en-suite rather than sharing with the boys - and then Kevin would say his prayers, lay down in bed and think of Planet Orlando until those thoughts turned into dreams. Almost always of Planet Orlando.
And, apart from the one time that he snuck out of bed, and the consequences and dreams which followed, that had been Kevin’s night-time routine for nineteen years. He got into bed, he slept, he dreamt and then he woke up. He didn’t oversleep or complain about having to get up in the mornings, always getting at least eight hours, if not nine. He’d make his best crisply first thing in the morning after he work up, and plumped his cushions ready for the night ahead.
Sleep had come easily at the Missionary Training Center too. The days had been full of work, rewarding and sometimes repetitive, but not hard, and Kevin had always been ready to learn. He couldn’t be the best if he didn’t know more than everybody else, so he applied himself and at night dreamt of the Epcot Center and having his photograph taken with Mickey Mouse. The framed picture of Kevin, all teeth and sunburn with Mickey’s hand on his shoulder - taken when Kevin was nine and learning the wonders of Orlando for the first time – had the rest of his siblings in too, and Kevin didn’t think that it was too selfish to want a picture that was just for him.
He’d never flown internationally before. Kevin had slept all the way to Orlando, and it had appeared out the plane window like a dream in his childhood, and there was part of Kevin, that part that was still a child and not a man grown and about to go and spread the word. There was a part of Kevin that expected his mission to start in the same way, a fresh slate. Scene change and suddenly, Uganda.
That wasn’t, it turned out, how international travel worked. It had seemed very civilised for their flight time to be at 4:26, they could sleep on the plane and wake up fresh faced and ready to start the most important two years of their lives. It was Wednesday afternoon when they left Salt Lake City, and Friday evening when they arrived in Kitguli. Flight delays, nearly missed connections and two plane transfers not to mention the late bus meant that they had been travelling for nearly 42 hours, and his new companion had been talking almost non-stop. When Elder Cunningham hadn’t been talking, or filming – “Elder, what do you think about the fact that we might miss our next flight?” “Elder Price, look they’ve got Star Trek on the inflight entertainment system, we should totally watch it together!” “Best friend! Can I have your snacks?” – he had been snoring. Loudly. But Kevin couldn’t sleep, they had been forever chasing sunrises but he couldn’t afford not to be present, this was where Heavenly Father said that he should be, and Heavenly Father wasn’t wrong. There had to be a reason for this, and that reason would be found in Uganda.
Kevin is tired down to the very bones of himself, but, this – men with guns rifling through their cases and stealing their belongings, a blasphemous deprived people who have dismissed the presence of the Latter Day Saints in their village for months - somehow is what Heavenly Father wants of him so that he can get everything that he’s always wanted. And so he has to work for it – if it were easy then it wouldn’t be incredible? Right?
It’s overwhelming and loud, and the village is bustling and bright even at this hour, and for a moment Kevin imagines that the Mission Hut is going to be an oasis of calm, they are Mormons after all. The Elders should be settling down to get ready for sleep, the District Leader, McKinley, should meet them, shake their hands and give them a gentle introduction to progress in the village. And then Kevin can sleep. Once he’s slept, then he can start again. He doesn’t know what day it is.
He finds himself dancing. He wonders, briefly, whether this is twisted take on a Hell Dream. Could this be his punishment for contemplating the complimentary coffee on the plane? Or for judging his new companion? Elder Cunningham isn’t really that bad, and Kevin is tired, and confused. But no, he is unfortunately awake and the dancing is really happening. At least his District Leader appears to be pleased by it. It must be hard to be having gay thoughts, Kevin admires him. He also wishes that he would be quiet.
The bedroom issued to Elder Cunningham and himself is cramped, pokey and dark. It blessedly has two uncomfortable looking single beds, he imagines that Elder Cunningham will want the bed nearest the window – and at this moment Kevin could care less, as long as he can sleep. His prayers are silent, conducted as he undresses, surely Heavenly Father can’t begrudge him for that, and he’s almost settled into blissful silence, when Elder Cunningham starts talking. And Kevin is tired, and exhausted, and starting to run out of patience with his companion, but he can’t not acknowledge Elder Cunningham’s uncertainty. Elder Cunningham has tried to bolster his emotions, not that he needs it, but he’s reminded Kevin that he can do something incredible, and Elder Cunningham’s father should be proud of his son, Cunningham isn’t a bad person, just… intense. He hopes that Cunningham calms down in the morning, that a night’s sleep will be good for both of them and that the world will align itself properly tomorrow.
It doesn’t.
Kevin wakes up tired with a faint headache pounding at his temple, and the day doesn’t get better from there. He should be snappier with his answers, he’s practiced and learnt and he knows these stories and the best ways to introduce people into the Church. But he stumbles when Dr Gotswana starts talking about maggots in unsavoury places, taking longer than he should to pull his concentration back.
Cunningham isn’t helping, and that isn’t fair and he knows it because he can see how much Elder Cunningham is trying to help, but Kevin is light headed and tired. The noise of a gunshot is enough to startle him into semi-consciousness. The sensation of blood is a strange one, warm and tacky. When he yawns he gets blood on his palm. He was standing in front of Elder Cunningham when the General shot the village’s butcher in the face – Kevin can’t remember his name, and he wants to cry and he’s never been an expressively emotional person, at least, not for negative emotions, he should always wear a smile, but he just can’t at the moment, it is too much here – so he is drenched and tired and shocked, while Elder Cunningham is dry, and alert and why had Elder Cunningham’s prayer been answered?
It shouldn’t have been so hard to work out what the right thing to do was, granted, these circumstances were exceptional but there were rules and Kevin had always followed them. But those rules had led him here. They should have led him to Orlando. His incredible journey should have led him there.
And then, it did.
A Hell Dream isn’t restful at the best of times, and these are the worst of times. The dream is vivid, and bright, feathered and sequined, and horrific. It seems to last and lifetime, at least ten hours of his life has been lost to the redness. He’s almost euphoric when he awakens; fear, adrenaline and righteousness pounding through him.
The village is going to be saved, and Kevin is the one who is going to do it. Up until Kevin needs to be saved, and it turns out that it is the village who does it. The village and Nabulungi, and the pageant, and Arnold Cunningham, his best friend.
The days between the events of the General, and the hospital and the baptisms and the Mission President’s visit blur into one. Kevin can’t rest, and when he finds himself stopping then he can’t bear to stop. It’s too much to try and think, it feels as though he hasn’t slept in weeks, and that he hasn’t felt peace in far longer. None of what has passed makes any sense, his head pounds, his body aches he feels violated and confused and - “of course you woke up, you drank twelve cups of coffee!”
But he hasn’t slept.
When they were seven years old Jack had stayed up all night. He’d tried to make Kevin stay up too, saying that it would be fun that they could tell scary stories and sneak around the house, maybe watch some TV or play games while the rest of the house was sleeping. But Kevin had said his prayers and tucked himself into his neatly made bed. The next day Jack was giddy with lack of sleep, he’d rocked on his hands and giggled into his cereal and he’d been sent to bed early without any dessert the next day. Kevin felt like that, watching the car-crash of the pageant unfold in front of him he could barely contain his giddy joy at the misfortune they found themselves in. As though it was happening to somebody else, as though other people were going to suffer for this, as though there were no consequences for them.
And then, at McKinley’s and Cunningham’s and Nabulungi’s faces he felt the true magnitude of the action rock into him like the swell hitting the bow of a boat. Understanding, actual understanding, like Joseph Smith at the moment of his death, you have to believe the words because of what they can do for you, and not just what they say or who said them. Arnold Cunningham had created an Orlando, it had never been about getting Planet Orlando, but about making that within yourself.
Kevin smiled, delirious.
When Kevin woke up he was twisted onto the couch in the living quarters of the Mission Hut, a grown man curled up under a soft pink blanket that wasn’t his. Kinks in his back and a crick in his neck, eyelids still heavy with sleep, a dry mouth, a rested body and a ready soul. It was time to wake up, something unexpected and incredible was about to begin.
