Fan-fic: Lines of communication

[sylviane]

Lines of communications

By Marea67
About: Kevin, Scotty, Jason, Kitty, Justin, Tommy.
Rate: Mostly G, a bit of NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they had been, THIS would NEVER have happened.  :(
Summary: Everybody has a POV. It's all season 5 (with  only my own ongoing Chad/Jason story in the background) So there can be ***spoilers***

*****

“Wine?” Jason offers and Kevin looks up.
“Sure, why not…. Thanks.” Kevin lets the glass roll between his hands, but doesn’t drink. Jason sits down next to him.
“So? How are you coping?”

“Did Kitty call you to babysit for Evan or for me?” Kevin asks in return. Jason grins.
“She said it was for Evan, but…. I have my doubts.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need anyone to hold my hand.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing that. That would complicate matters even more.”

There’s a little bit of teasing in Jason’s voice and a cynic smile plays around Kevin’s lips.
“How are you and Chad?”
“Changing the subject, huh?.... Fine. If that’s what you want. Chad is in Bulgaria, shooting some horror/ghost-story and he emails or calls me nearly every day.”

“Lucky you…” Kevin replies with no particular intention.
“Yes, I guess, it beats having a boyfriend who never calls at all,… I suppose.” Jason says, with just enough guilt. Though it’s an easy trap to fall in, Kevin doesn’t answer immediately.
“How are you coping with him gone?” Kevin asks, not sure if he’s really interested.

“I never realized how important it was to get a bit of news from the other side of the world. I’m thrilled every time I hear his voice or get a message…”
“Not feeling jealous?”
“No, I decided to let him be.”

“What does that mean?”
“I can’t force him to be faithful to me and me only. The best way to keep him is to let him go.”
“Wow, whatever happened to the Jason who wanted a committed relationship?”

“I think he realized that he wasn’t that anxious to get involved after all.” Jason smiles. “Chad and I do just fine. We both do the work we love and we meet when we can and when we do, it’s fun and hot and sexy. And then we go our separate ways again. All I ask of him is that he’s honest with me and protects himself properly.”

“I don’t believe I’ve seen his face in the gossip rags lately.”
“No. He claims that, so far, he’s been absolutely faithful to me…. Much to his surprise.”
They both laugh, but not mean-spirited. In fact, Kevin is very happy for Chad and Jason.
“I’m glad you found a way that will make this work for both of you.” Kevin says.

“It’s not perfect, it’s not my dream-relationship, but right now, it will do. I don’t know, if I will still feel the same way five years from now, but we’ll see what happens then. I mean, five years ago I had these ideas of where I would be today and none of them really came through. Nowadays, I adjust as things happen to me.” Jason shrugs.

Kevin remains quiet, knowing that Jason is only filling the silence between them. He takes a sip of wine, swallows it thoughtfully and suddenly, without further explanation, he says:
“It’s bad. Very bad.”

“I can understand that.” Jason nods, immediately understanding that Kevin is answering his earlier question. “It must hurt.”
“Like hell…. And I don’t know what to do, what to say, what to feel, what to think. It’s all such a mess in my head, in my body, my mind….” Kevin blinks hard to push away his tears.

“You love him.” Jason explains needlessly.
“I know, but is that enough? I keep seeing that guy, I keep imagining his hands on Scotty’s body…. And ….” Kevin’s voice breaks. He wipes away his tears.

“You don’t want to hear this.” Kevin then says.
“Talk to me anyway. I’m listening.” Jason insists calmly. Kevin jumps up, paces up and down and suddenly growls:
“How could you possibly understand how I feel?”

Jason remains calm, understanding that it’s only the frustration in Kevin talking.
“Oh, let me see. When I was in Malaysia, I had a boyfriend, whom I neglected for quite a while, until I finally dared to call him and heard from him that he had slept with his ex-boyfriend.

Oh, it was just some one-night-affair, but he broke up with me anyway, because he realized he didn’t feel for me, what he felt for his ex…. It hurt. It hurt very badly… But other than that, you’re right, I couldn’t possibly begin to understand how you feel.” Jason doesn’t really bother to hide his sarcasm.

He can see the shock on Kevin’s face, the look of someone who just realized that he had unintentionally said something very hurtful.
“I’m sorry.” Kevin says embarrassed. “That was …” Kevin shakes his head, unable to find the right word. Jason waves it away.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m past that, and so are you. And it hurt way back then. But ultimately you were right. You do love Scotty more than me and you made the right decision. I would only have been second choice….”
“I’m sorry.” Kevin says again, not sure what exactly he’s sorry for, just that he’s sorry over something.

“Can I ask you something?” He then asks Jason. “When you didn’t contact me, did you really have a crises of faith or was it because you assumed I would screw it up anyway? Did you believe I wouldn’t be able to stay faithful to you? Were you testing my resolve?” Jason shakes his head.

“I don’t know. It was everything. Robert warning me for you. Your family telling me about your past boyfriends, the distance that seemed such a big gap. I loved it to hear you voice on my answering machine. To hear you ask me to contact you. I felt important to you, I hoped you would wait for me, but I forgot that you needed my encouragement for that.

Then Robert told me you had a guest staying at your place. I was curious, and when he mentioned Scotty’s name I got worried. He was the only one the family hadn’t gossiped about, they had mentioned him but differently than they had your other boyfriends. I was trying to figure out what to do.

And the answer dame when I got an angry phone-call from Robert. Kitty had made quite a fuss over the fact that I had never called you and that you were hurting and that you deserved better than me. I was actually a bit taken by surprise. Robert asked me if it was true that you had often contacted me.

And when I admitted, he was angry because you seemed to hold your end of our relationship, I should do the same. So, I finally gathered all my nerves and called you…. Only to find out that I was too late… Did I deliberately sabotage us? I don’t think so. I think I sabotaged us by accident.”

Kevin thinks over Jason words and sits down next to Jason again.
“My turn... What happened exactly that night that you cheated on me?” Jason asks and Kevin looks up, surprised by Jason’s direct question.
“Do you really want to know?” he asks.

“Yes… No… I’m not sure.” Jason replies indecisively. “I already know bits and pieces, but I think that it was an important night to you…”
“I was depressed … over you… Scotty wanted to cheer me up. He got lucky, some party didn’t go according to plan and he brought home a box with lobster… And Champagne… We had sex and that’s it.” Kevin cuts the story short.

He shrugs and Jason shakes his head.
“That’s not it. There’s more. If it was just meaningless sex, just an outlet, then you would not have felt the need to break up with me.”
“I cheated on you. I could not imagine that you would forgive me.”

“No. You broke up with me, but it had nothing to do with the cheating. The cheating was just an excuse. Something had changed. I heard it in your voice.” Jason corrects him.
“What do you expect? A full detail?”

“I don’t want to know, I want you to remember.”
“Like I could forget.” Kevin replies.
“You don’t want to know.” Jason softly accuses. “You just want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“And you seriously want me to discuss what happened between Scotty and me in the night that I cheated on you?” Kevin asks sarcastically.
“Kev, I’m in love with Chad. I’m not angry with either you or Scotty. You are in love with Scotty. I just want you to remember what attracted you to him.”

“It wasn’t just that night. It was everything. The way he challenged me, the way he argued with me. Cupcakes and ice-cream. The way he went with me, back to my apartment, while I was actually with Chad…. Our breakups hurt… But when he walked back into my life…. It was like he had always been there.

I swear that, when I let him stay at my place, it was purely for the company, platonic, I wanted to make it work with you and he respected the rules. He never tried something….” Kevin emphasizes. “But … you didn’t call. And I grew lonelier. I made up all these excuses for you…”

Jason bites his lip, aware that he’s also making Kevin relive certain other moments.
“…. And then I found out that you talked to Robert, but not with me… and that settled it for me. You didn’t want to talk to me. You didn’t care about me and I … didn’t want to be alone for my sister's wedding....  I asked Scotty to be my date. He accepted. He actually had more guilty feelings towards you than I did.”

“That was nice of him.” Jason replies not half as sarcastic as it should have been.
“He is nice.” Kevin points out. “We ate, we drank, ..” Kevin sums up. “We had fun, we laughed, watched some silly movie and got even more drunk and I fell asleep, using him as a pillow…. He woke up first, told me I should go to bed…. And he should go back to his air-mattress,..”
Kevin closes his eyes to block the memory, but it’s no use…

“I don’t know. I didn’t want him to go to his air-mattress and he didn’t either. I just knew it. I don’t know who made the first move. But we kissed and it felt so good to be kissed by him, to be touched by him… It was like all those months that we had been separated never happened. Like it was only the day before that we last kissed.”

“… Like you were where you were supposed to be?” Jason adds. Kevin nods, looking away at the ceiling to not cry, but it’s no use. His eyes fill with tears and they come relentlessly. Jason hesitates for a second, but then wraps his arms around Kevin to hold him tight and offer some comfort.

*****

Kitty opens the door, but before she’s even really inside her house, Jason motions her to keep quiet.
“He’s asleep.” Jason whispers.
“Who? Evan?” She asks in an equally soft voice. Jason grins.

“Yes, Evan too. No, I’m talking about Kevin.”
“Did you manage to talk to him?”
“It was interesting….” Jason deflects the question.
“You’re not going to gossip, are you?” Kitty asks, noticeably disappointed. Jason shakes his head.

“Good, I’m tired anyway. I’ll let him sleep.” Kitty shrugs. She says her goodbye to Jason. She checks on Evan. Takes some wine, but on the doorstep to her bedroom she stops and returns to the living-room where Kevin is asleep. There isn’t much light, but enough for her to see his face.

She sits down in her chair and looks at her younger brother for quite a while. He looks so vulnerable, like he used to when he was a kid. She feels so helpless. There’s nothing she can do to fix it. No more than Kevin could have done something when Robert and she were going through their marriage-crises. It is frustrating.

Besides, she’s not entirely sure if she wants to get involved. She loves Kevin so much and she feels disappointed in Scotty. Yes, it is perhaps unrealistic. She never thought of Scotty as being perfect, no one is, but she hadn’t seen him as a cheater either. When he had stood there during their commitment ceremony, Kitty had believed him, believed in his love for Kevin.

And now she has doubts. Sure, Robert and she had found their way back to each other, but it had been a long struggle. Of course, she had been emotionally invested in Alec, which Scotty hadn’t been with ‘blondie’, but then Scotty had sex with him, something she hadn’t had with Alec.

Aren’t there surveys that show that men usually have less issues with the physical aspects and ‘sex’ has a different meaning for men than for women? She should search the internet tomorrow if it’s true or not. But, for the time being, she doesn’t feel like she can encourage Kevin to try again.

If it’s that easy for Scotty to screw someone else, she doesn’t want to put Kevin in a position where he gets hurt again… Sarah and Nora keep telling her to talk to Kevin, but she doesn’t want to. In her head she replays the conversation she had with Scotty, when he called earlier that day.

“… I was looking at the blankets and wondered… if you had enough of them? Ahm, I could drop a few off and…” Scotty stammers.
“Thank you, we have enough.” Kitty’s voice is chillier than she wanted.
“It’s just that….” Scotty’s voice becomes softer.

“I know… Scotty, believe me, I know. This is so hard, for both of you…. I remember with Robert, … it was hard too. But he had to work through his discovery on his own terms and I think now Kevin needs to do the same.”
“I worry about him.” It sounds sincere enough.

“He doesn’t eat properly, drinks too much, sleeps bad and … I think he misses you…. But that could be my interpretation….. I know this is a hard part to sit through, but you’ve made a mistake and had time to come to terms with your infidelity, now it’s Kevin’s turn… Give him time.”

“I never meant to hurt him.”
“I know. I think he knows as well. But sometimes ‘sorry’ just isn’t enough.”
“So…. I just … wait?”
“You just wait.”

Yes. The waiting is the hardest part. She had dreaded the thought that Robert only stayed with her, because of the campaign. She had nightmares that Robert would give her the divorce papers. If he would have fought her for Evan… She looks at Kevin, who has a frown on his face and sleeps uneasily, and  she takes another sip of wine.

*****

Justin picks up his phone when he sees who’s calling.
“You should have broken Scotty’s face instead. Hope you did some serious damage to the other guy.” Is the first thing he hears, before he can even say hi.
“Hey, Tommy.” Justin grins. “So, you heard?”

“Walker grapevine…”
“Sarah, Kitty or mom? Can’t imagine it was Kevin.”
“Sarah. She thought mom would have told me by now. I’m shocked.”
“We all are.” Justin admits, still reeling with the news a few days later.

“How’s Kev?”
“Feeling bad. As can be expected.” Justin replies reluctantly.
“Yeah, I somehow never thought it would be Scotty….”
“Kevin, maybe… but Scotty….”

“Have you spoken to Scotty?”
“Yes. It’s why I didn’t break his face. He’s so incredibly sorry for what he did.”
“But you can’t take it back. You can’t undo what’s been done.” Tommy says philosophically.
“No.” Justin agrees.

“Do you think, they’ll survive?”
“A lot will depend on Kevin… We all know he’s not that forgiving.”
“He loves Scotty. I’m sure that has to count for something.” Tommy sounds calm, but Justin wonders who he’s trying to convince.

“Cheating is so stupid. It ruins more than it’s worth.” Tommy says after a short silence. “I mean, it took Julia and me such a long time to get over it.”
“Both of you cheated. Your marriage was in serious trouble.”
“Yes, it was,… but that didn’t make it right to cheat.”

“No. Never said it did. It’s just that I never saw Kevin and Scotty is such trouble as you two or Robert and Kitty. Or even Sarah and Joe for that matter. Looking back, I could have seen those cases coming, understand the underlying reasons, but even now, with everything Scotty told me and what I heard from and about Kevin, I still don’t get it.”

“Do you still think about Lena sometimes?” Tommy asks suddenly and Justin stares at his phone.
“Do you?” He asks in return.
“Sometimes. We treated her badly. She was basically a nice girl.”

“She wanted a place to belong…” Justin remembers. “No. I hardly think of her. My mind is too crowded with Rebecca or rather trying not to think about her…”
“Sorry about the divorce. It wasn’t that unexpected, though.”
“No. I screwed that up pretty badly.”

“Holly’s situation wasn’t much help either, was it?”
“No…. Can we go back to discussing Kevin and Scotty?” Justin asks, as the pain of losing Rebecca stings him again. He can hear a short laugh from Tommy. Tommy knows exactly what he’s talking about…

“I can’t stay on the phone long. I have Elizabeth tomorrow, so I want to have a good night’s sleep.”
“Oh, well, in that case, sleep well.” Justin grins, happy to know that Tommy will see his daughter.

“Oh, and Justin?”
“Yes.”
“Look after Kevin for me, will you?”
“I will.” Justin promises.

*****

Kevin opens his eyes and reaches for his watch. Holding it up in the little light that shines in, he reads: 03:17. Oh, no, four more hours till morning… He’ll never be able to fall asleep again.

“What happened exactly that night that you cheated on me? …. I don’t want to know, I want you to remember.”

As if he could forget. As if he could forget the static electricity running through his body when Scotty’s lips touched his, that night.

Scotty’s hungry kisses are met by his own equally hungry reply. Scotty’s hands are on his body, pulling him closer. Kevin slowly lets himself fall on the couch, Scotty is on top of him, heavy, … hard… hardness pressing against his own arousal. A moan, another kiss, Kevin’s hands are in Scotty’s hair, forcing him to continue kissing him.

Scotty breaks the kiss, caresses Kevin’s face, they gaze at each other, unable to believe that here they are again.
“Not tonight….” Kevin whispers. “Not on the air-mattress. Not tonight.”
“No…” Scotty promises.

Kevin lets Scotty lead him to the bedroom. Scotty kisses him again as he opens the buttons on Kevin’s shirt one by one. The shirt falls to the ground and Kevin tugs at Scotty’s t-shirt, wanting to feel Scotty’s naked skin against his own. Kevin’s fingers play with the buttons on Scotty’s jeans. This time he can hear Scotty moan, feel him move closer to his hand… Eager. Hard.

The longing for Scotty’s body against his own nearly takes Kevin’s breath away. Yes, it’s been a hard year, but he had always been aware of Scotty being there. In the middle of the night all he had to do was reach out and Scotty would be there… Had he taken that for granted? Was that what Scotty had felt perhaps?

Kevin turns under the blanket, so that his face faces the back of Kitty’s couch. He closes his eyes again. The emptiness inside is almost unbearable. That night he had woken up with Scotty’s arms tightly around him. Their ‘nostalgic sex-romp” had left him feeling satisfied, tired and lazy.

He had known, right there and then, that he never wanted to wake up in any other place but in Scotty’s arms. Tears start to sting and he cries quietly in the darkness. He makes himself as small as possible, wraps his arms around himself, pretends they are Scotty’s arms and that illusion puts Kevin back to sleep.

*****

Scotty stares at the ceiling somewhere up there in the dark. There’s not much to see, but it’s more restful on his eyes, if he keeps the lights turned off. And it beats staring at that unused pillow beside him. Kevin’s side is unused. He keeps dreaming that the door will open and Kevin will come back and tell him he wants to sleep in their bed… With him.

His fingers slide over the fabric.. It’s the same sheets as that night 3 years ago, when they had their lobster and Champagne-night. He knows it immediately. The longing inside him almost makes him feel sick.

His hands are moving up from Kevin’s knee and underneath him Kevin shakes his head. He can’t hear Kevin’s protest because his mouth is covering Kevin’s, his fingers slide along Kevin’s swollen cock.
“No. Too much…” Kevin manages to stammer between two kisses.

It’s too late. Scotty can feel Kevin come all over his hand. Kevin shivers from the release and Scotty enjoys the feeling of Kevin being so powerless under his hands. He continues to kiss Kevin, caress him, play with him, their naked bodies moving against each other, until slowly Kevin’s body responds again.

“Turn over.” Scotty whispers, unable to think clear at this point. He still knows exactly where Kevin keeps the condoms. It’s like all the lonely months never happened. There’s only the feeling of Kevin moving under his hands, relaxing to his fingers, moaning at the penetration.

Scotty sobs, pressing Kevin’s pillow against his mouth. The soft smell of Kevin’s after-shave is still there. He can’t take it anymore. Scotty turns away, his back to Kevin’s place in the bed. He feels cold and he misses Kevin’s body next to his. He’s so used to Kevin being there.

From that night on three years ago, he had been with Kevin, the longest relationship he had ever had. Kevin had proposed, they had married, they had wanted a child, Kevin had encouraged him to start his own restaurant…. They lost their child, they lost a dear friend, … they lost each other…. And now he might even lose his marriage, he might lose Kevin….

*****

Kevin takes a deep breath. It’s nearly nine. Scotty will most likely be up by now. He knows he can do this. He knows they need to talk. He no longer wants to spend a lonely night on the couch…. He wants to be with Scotty. He cannot imagine his life without Scotty in it. The speed-dial processes the number Kevin pressed.

“Hello?” Scotty’s voice is hopeful, almost as if he’s holding his breath. Kevin opens his mouth to say something, but suddenly it all flows back. “There’s someone else.” “It happened months ago.” Another man’s hands on Scotty’s body. Marcus’s knowing grin. It takes Kevin’s breath away.

“Kev..?” Scotty’s voices is no longer hopeful, but afraid. Kevin shakes his head.
“I’m sorry…. I can’t ….” He whispers and he presses the ‘off’ button. His fingers caress his ring, but then he takes it off and places it next to the phone. He lets his head rest on his arm and he cries for all that he has lost.

*****

Scotty presses the phone to his chest. He had known it was Kevin the moment it rang. He had hoped that this would be the turning point. He had heard Kevin’s whispered words and then the line went dead. He wipes away his tears. He has to have hope. He can’t imagine a life without Kevin. Then he presses the ‘off’ button as well. The link is broken.


THE END