Fic: "Not What I Do" (Brothers & Sisters)
Happy birthday, mardia! I made you a thing.
Robert/Kevin, set somewhere around early to mid season 3.
Kevin replaces his cell phone every four to six months. Partially it's a status thing (they just keep making them better), partially it's general wear and tear (between his family and his job he racks up a lot of minutes, and if medical science ever does find a link between cell phones and brain cancer, he's screwed), and partially it's general carelessness.
Once in a while, it's because he gets a call at 12:30 at night and throws his phone.
This time it bounces off the end of the couch and lands safely on the rug, still ringing merrily away. Kevin glares at it for two rings, wishing he could really believe he wasn't going to answer it. He's physically incapable of ignoring the damn thing. The need to answer phones is encoded in his DNA.
He scoops it up just before it would go to voice mail. "What?"
"What took you so long?"
He exhales slowly through clenched teeth. "It's after midnight, Robert. I was sleeping."
"You don't sound like you were sleeping."
"I could have been sleeping."
"But you weren't." A normal person would say that triumphantly; Robert just sounds dismissive, as if now that he's determined that he was right, things can continue on in their natural order. "Anyway, I--"
"No," Kevin says, glaring at his reflection in the window, "anyway nothing. No anyway. It's the middle of the night and I am off the clock."
"Politics doesn't work that way."
"Why aren't you asleep?"
"Because politics doesn't work that way. Now let me talk, Kevin."
And Kevin does, in fact, fall silent, for absolutely no good reason. Maybe just because he's tired. He is really, really tired, it's just that he drinks so much coffee at the office he's a little too keyed up to sleep right away.
"I need a favor," Robert says, and Kevin starts digging through the stack of crap on the coffee table, looking for a notepad. "I need you to bring me a change of clothes."
Kevin blinks. "What?"
"Definitely a new shirt and tie, ideally a whole new suit."
"Where am I going to get those?"
Robert gives a sharp, impatient huff. "From my closet?"
"Why don't you get them from your closet?"
"Because I'm not at home, Kevin." Robert's voice can absolutely drip with condescension and sarcasm when he wants it to. "Do you really think I would be calling you to do this if I could just do it myself? Come on."
Kevin looks at his reflection again and mimes jamming the pen into his own eye. "Where are you, then?"
"I'm at the office."
"Why?"
He can hear Robert's hand slam down on the desk. "Do you have to ask so many questions? Can't you just do it? You are the worst assistant in the history of--"
"That's because I'm not your assistant," Kevin snaps back. "Remember? I'm your media director."
Robert actually pauses for a moment. "Well, you're also my brother-in-law. Does that give me any pull?"
Kevin throws the pen down and presses his hand over his eye, hard, hoping that will hold off the headache that is going to swoop down and overwhelm him as a result of this sudden blood pressure spike. "I really don't think my sister would appreciate me showing up at her house at one in the morning to get you a change of clothes." He pauses, suddenly suspicious, and peers at the phone through his fingers. "Why are you at the office all night, anyway? Did you two have a fight?"
"I don't need you to go get them tonight," Robert says. "Just come in early tomorrow and go by the house on your way."
Kevin wants to point out that he's evading questions, but there's a distinct tension in Robert's voice that Kevin finds he doesn't want to disturb. He was kidding at the ranch house when he'd wondered if Robert was serving as some kind of subconscious substitute for Dad, but moments like this proved that, if nothing else, his reaction to the idea of making either man angry was exactly the same. "How early?"
"Kitty gets up at seven and showers for twenty-five minutes, give or take. If you let yourself in at ten after, you should be golden."
Kevin covers his eyes again. "Well, that's unspeakably creepy."
"Can you swing by a drugstore and get me a toothbrush and some deodorant, as well?"
Sometimes you just have to give in and let fate roll right over you. "Yeah," Kevin says, tossing the notepad aside. "Absolutely."
**
Of course, even getting there early doesn't mean the office is empty. People see Kevin come walking in with Robert's clothes over his shoulder and a CVS bag in his hand, and the predictable whispers make the rounds. Kevin ignores comments he overhears, freezes out those addressed to him directly, and comes down hard on the whole staff in arbitrary patterns until the whole thing dries up and blows away in the wind to make room for the next bit of gossip.
Robert doesn't say thank-you or anything, but Kevin didn't expect him to. Robert doesn't mention it at all, which in the rough shorthand they've developed since Kevin joined the staff should mean that it's over and done with, so he forgets about it.
That works for a week.
Scotty has a night off, and they have their usual awesomely exciting night-off plans: eating takeout from one of the three restaurants that are up to Scotty's standards, watching selected movies from Jason Statham's ouevre for all the wrong reasons, and going to bed early. They're half an hour into Death Race when Kevin's phone rings.
Scotty has developed a kind of amazing talent for addressing commentary to his food without coming across as passive-aggressive enough to start a fight. "I'm sure it's something very important."
Kevin looks at the screen on his phone and winces.
"Nora?" Scotty asks politely, jabbing his fork down into the box of rice again.
"Robert," Kevin mutters, getting off the couch and retreating toward the bedroom. "Give me two minutes."
"I'm not going to pause it."
"Like I'm watching for the plot anyway. I'll get rid of him." He steps into the bedroom and flips the phone open. "What?"
If Robert notices the irritation in Kevin's voice, he doesn't show it. "We need to re-draft this statement. It's all wrong."
"It was fine at three o'clock this afternoon." Kevin flings himself down across the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He can hear things exploding in the next room. Jason Statham is probably losing items of clothing right now and he's missing it.
"Well, I'm reading over it again, and it's not fine. It needs to be redone."
"Okay, fine. I'll do that, sometime in between the six different meetings on different sides of the city you have me at tomorrow."
"Come in and do it now."
Kevin actually pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it, because he can't possibly have heard that right. "You must be joking."
"No. Come in now. I'm here, we'll work on it together, get it put to bed so it's not hanging there as a problem."
Kevin grits his teeth, which hurts a surprising amount. Maybe he's been doing that without realizing it lately. "Robert, I am not coming back in to the office tonight."
There's a moment of puzzled silence. "Why not?"
"Because it's Scotty's night off and we're spending time together."
"But you answered your phone."
Kevin grabs one of the pillows and shakes it helplessly. "Because if I didn't, you would just keep calling."
Robert is quiet for a moment. "Come in early tomorrow, then. I'll work on it tonight and you can help me polish it before the first meeting tomorrow."
"Robert." Kevin throws the pillow, helplessly annoyed. "Why are you at the office at all? Go home."
"When I finish this."
Kevin closes his eyes, not wanting to get involved but not really seeing an out. "Look, I know my sister can be difficult, but--"
"This isn't about Kitty." Robert cuts him off as smoothly as he would a freshman reporter. "I'll see you first thing in the morning to go over this."
He hangs up and Kevin blinks at his phone. "I have no idea what just happened here," he says aloud to the empty room.
He could call Robert back. He could go see if Robert is okay. He could call Kitty and see if she's willing to spill what's going on. He could call Sarah and start a round of intensive familial pressure that would make better men than Robert McCallister crumble into dust.
Or he could take the bye and go watch Jason Statham get sweaty and greasy.
"Kevin?" Scotty calls. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." He shoves his phone under the pillows and stands up. Let Robert solve his own problems. It's date night.
He gets halfway to the door before he turns around and goes back for the phone, shoving it deep in his pocket. Just in case.
**
In the morning, of course, Robert acts like there's nothing weird at all about Kevin coming in an hour early, bleary-eyed and clutching his coffee cup like a lifeline, to go over the draft revisions. Some of them are good, some of them make no sense whatsoever, and arguing about the second category takes up so much of Kevin's energy that he forgets to bring up any of the other stuff he meant to. Like what is wrong with you and Kitty? And seriously, stop calling me after work. And are you living at the office?
He doesn't figure that out until well into the third meeting of the day, and by that point he's so exhausted and annoyed that he's willing to write it off as being for the best.
A week after that, his phone rings at eleven fifty-six and he realizes that he made a huge mistake by doing that.
"Robert," he hisses into the phone, throwing the remote across the living room. "What the hell?"
"It's not after midnight," Robert says. "Calm down."
"Don't split hairs with a lawyer." Kevin drags himself off the couch and follows the remote to where it landed and...yes, broke into three pieces. Great. "What do you want?"
"Can you bring me a hamburger?"
Kevin hangs up.
The phone rings again thirty seconds later. "Did you just hang up on me?"
"Did you just ask me to bring you food?"
A grown man who has been elected to the United States Senate should not sound pouty. "I'm hungry."
"Go home."
"Yelling at me is insubordination, you know."
"I could quit, you know. We're not the military."
Robert snorts and Kevin almost hangs up again. "You won't."
"Robert, I am going to hang up on you and go to bed. Either go get food yourself, or go home. God, what did my sister do, anyway?"
"This isn't about Kitty. Why do you keep assuming that?"
"Why else would you be hiding at the office more nights than not?" There's silence for a moment, and Kevin sighs. "McDonalds or Burger King?"
"You don't have to."
Kevin grabs his keys off the bookshelf. "Yeah, well, don't think this means anything. It's just that I don't have anything else to do."
**
All of the lights are out except for Robert's desk lamp, which makes his office look like a Bond villain's lair. All he needs is a monocle and a cat.
Kevin dumps the grease-stained bag of cheeseburgers and fries and the tray of drinks on the desk and flops down in the chair across from Robert's, trying to put as much silent, angry meaning into his eyes as he can.
"Thanks," Robert says, without a trace of sincerity.
"Screw you." Robert's jaw tenses, his equivalent of showing shock, and Kevin points at him. "I am not on the clock right now. You're not my boss, you're my brother-in-law, and I want to know what's going on."
Robert leans back in his chair and folds his hands on the edge of the desk. "Nothing."
"This is a new definition of nothing that keeps calling me at home and dragging me in to work in the middle of the night. What's it going to be next, you wanting to come over and use my shower at four AM?"
"Don't be silly." Robert's voice is cool verging on amused. Kevin has never wanted to hit someone so much in his life. "There's a shower here, on the first floor."
Kevin takes a deep breath, trying to channel his anger into something cold and line-in-the-sand-like. "I'm not your trained monkey, Robert. I'm not your sidekick, I'm not your assistant, and I don't do windows."
Robert's mouth curves into a very slight smile. "If I told you to, you would."
"Excuse me?"
"You're here, aren't you?" Robert gestures, the movement of his hands encompassing the whole office. "You're pissing and moaning and complaining, but you're here. You told me no, but you're here. You did everything I asked. Even brought extra napkins."
Kevin stares at him, his stomach twisting and his face going hot. "So this was all some kind of test?" Robert shrugs. "Probably all the way back to when you hired me, right?" Kevin laughs a little, painfully, getting up out of his chair and walking over to the window. "Wow, I...I don't...were you testing Kitty, too?"
"Leave Kitty out of this." Robert stands up as well, leaning against the desk on his fingertips. "I told you, this isn't about her."
"Then what is it about?" Kevin punches the window and turns around, glaring at him.
Robert shrugs slightly. "I wanted to see if I could."
The only response Kevin can find to that is "Are you some kind of a socipath?"
"Look." Robert's voice is firm and overly-reasonable now, like he's indulgently let things get a little out of hand and now he's going to reassert control over the situation. "If you'll calm down and look at this rationally, I think--"
Kevin doesn't really notice crossing the room; suddenly his hands are just gripping the front of Robert's shirt, shoving him back against the wall behind his desk. "You son of a--"
Robert tries to shove him back and they struggle for a few moments, hands slipping and scrambling for purchase, bodies knocking against each other and the desk and the wall. Kevin stomps down hard on Robert's foot, and Robert's hand tangles in Kevin's tie, yanking him forward and then shoving him back, until Kevin's shoulders hit the wall hard, knocking the wind and the fight out of him for a moment. Robert's standing close enough that Kevin can feel his breath, hot and fast and angry, and he braces himself for Robert to hit him.
Robert kisses him, as fast and violent as a punch would have been. Kevin's head knocks back against the wall again, but he doesn't resist; he's too shocked, his lips parting in a startled gasp that allows Robert to make the kiss deep and brutal, his tongue pushing inside Kevin's mouth.
Kevin assumes he can blame surprise for the fact that he kisses back, surprise or the not-entirely-unreasable assumption that this must be a hallucination, or an alternate reality, this can't possibly be real. His brother-in-law is not kissing him in his office, up against the wall like a scene from a B movie--Robert's weight is not heavy and solid against him and there definitely isn't a distinct hardness against his thigh, or an answering stir in his own body--Robert's hands are absolutely not moving down to fight with Kevin's belt.
"Jesus Christ," Kevin gasps, breaking away from the kiss. "Christ. Robert. Stop."
Robert stills, but doesn't move away, his hand still pressed against Kevin's groin and his breath hot on Kevin's neck.
"We are not doing this," Kevin says, struggling to make his voice firm. "We can't do this. I'm...I'm married. You're married."
Robert takes half a step back, just enough for Kevin to manage a deep breath. "How many times do I have to tell you?" Robert says quietly. "It's not about them. Stop trying to make it about them."
"I think they would disagree."
Robert shrugs, that short, small gesture, pinning Kevin to the wall again with just his eyes. "That's why it's better if they don't know."
Kevin shakes his head slowly, forcing himself to break away from Robert's gaze, to look out the window. "What is it about, then, if it's not..."
"It's about you and me."
Kevin does look at him again, at that. "What about you and me?"
Robert's smooth facade falters a little at that. Fucking finally. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Kevin takes a deep breath and pushes away from the wall, silently thankful that Robert falls back and allows him to do so. "You're insane."
"Yeah." Robert laughs, a short and humorless sound. "And you're here."
Kevin misses a step, but doesn't look back. "I'm going home."
Robert lets him get all the way to the door before he speaks. "I'll see you in the morning."
Kevin knows he should deny that, should resign right now on the spot, should do...something. But instead he just nods, and digs his keys out of his pocket, and leaves in silence.
**
The next day, everything is perfectly normal. And the day after that, and the rest of the week. Robert is the perfectly charming, perfectly unreadable, perfectly perfect politician. The office ticks along like clockwork. Kevin places statements and speeches and all the other assorted bits of paper on Robert's desk, and Robert barely acknowledges him with more than a glance, and he never, ever offers anything that remotely resembles praise or even interest in Kevin's continued existence.
Kevin stares at the wall behind Robert's desk and wonders if this is what a nervous breakdown feels like.
After about a week, he notices that he's started digging his cell phone out of his pocket around eleven-thirty or so, absent-mindedly toying with it while he sits on the couch watching whatever mindless TV is failing to put him to sleep. He thinks about turning it off, or putting it in a drawer, or just throwing it out the damn window.
He holds on to it, feeling the solid little weight in his palm, and he keeps waiting for it to ring.
Robert/Kevin, set somewhere around early to mid season 3.
Kevin replaces his cell phone every four to six months. Partially it's a status thing (they just keep making them better), partially it's general wear and tear (between his family and his job he racks up a lot of minutes, and if medical science ever does find a link between cell phones and brain cancer, he's screwed), and partially it's general carelessness.
Once in a while, it's because he gets a call at 12:30 at night and throws his phone.
This time it bounces off the end of the couch and lands safely on the rug, still ringing merrily away. Kevin glares at it for two rings, wishing he could really believe he wasn't going to answer it. He's physically incapable of ignoring the damn thing. The need to answer phones is encoded in his DNA.
He scoops it up just before it would go to voice mail. "What?"
"What took you so long?"
He exhales slowly through clenched teeth. "It's after midnight, Robert. I was sleeping."
"You don't sound like you were sleeping."
"I could have been sleeping."
"But you weren't." A normal person would say that triumphantly; Robert just sounds dismissive, as if now that he's determined that he was right, things can continue on in their natural order. "Anyway, I--"
"No," Kevin says, glaring at his reflection in the window, "anyway nothing. No anyway. It's the middle of the night and I am off the clock."
"Politics doesn't work that way."
"Why aren't you asleep?"
"Because politics doesn't work that way. Now let me talk, Kevin."
And Kevin does, in fact, fall silent, for absolutely no good reason. Maybe just because he's tired. He is really, really tired, it's just that he drinks so much coffee at the office he's a little too keyed up to sleep right away.
"I need a favor," Robert says, and Kevin starts digging through the stack of crap on the coffee table, looking for a notepad. "I need you to bring me a change of clothes."
Kevin blinks. "What?"
"Definitely a new shirt and tie, ideally a whole new suit."
"Where am I going to get those?"
Robert gives a sharp, impatient huff. "From my closet?"
"Why don't you get them from your closet?"
"Because I'm not at home, Kevin." Robert's voice can absolutely drip with condescension and sarcasm when he wants it to. "Do you really think I would be calling you to do this if I could just do it myself? Come on."
Kevin looks at his reflection again and mimes jamming the pen into his own eye. "Where are you, then?"
"I'm at the office."
"Why?"
He can hear Robert's hand slam down on the desk. "Do you have to ask so many questions? Can't you just do it? You are the worst assistant in the history of--"
"That's because I'm not your assistant," Kevin snaps back. "Remember? I'm your media director."
Robert actually pauses for a moment. "Well, you're also my brother-in-law. Does that give me any pull?"
Kevin throws the pen down and presses his hand over his eye, hard, hoping that will hold off the headache that is going to swoop down and overwhelm him as a result of this sudden blood pressure spike. "I really don't think my sister would appreciate me showing up at her house at one in the morning to get you a change of clothes." He pauses, suddenly suspicious, and peers at the phone through his fingers. "Why are you at the office all night, anyway? Did you two have a fight?"
"I don't need you to go get them tonight," Robert says. "Just come in early tomorrow and go by the house on your way."
Kevin wants to point out that he's evading questions, but there's a distinct tension in Robert's voice that Kevin finds he doesn't want to disturb. He was kidding at the ranch house when he'd wondered if Robert was serving as some kind of subconscious substitute for Dad, but moments like this proved that, if nothing else, his reaction to the idea of making either man angry was exactly the same. "How early?"
"Kitty gets up at seven and showers for twenty-five minutes, give or take. If you let yourself in at ten after, you should be golden."
Kevin covers his eyes again. "Well, that's unspeakably creepy."
"Can you swing by a drugstore and get me a toothbrush and some deodorant, as well?"
Sometimes you just have to give in and let fate roll right over you. "Yeah," Kevin says, tossing the notepad aside. "Absolutely."
**
Of course, even getting there early doesn't mean the office is empty. People see Kevin come walking in with Robert's clothes over his shoulder and a CVS bag in his hand, and the predictable whispers make the rounds. Kevin ignores comments he overhears, freezes out those addressed to him directly, and comes down hard on the whole staff in arbitrary patterns until the whole thing dries up and blows away in the wind to make room for the next bit of gossip.
Robert doesn't say thank-you or anything, but Kevin didn't expect him to. Robert doesn't mention it at all, which in the rough shorthand they've developed since Kevin joined the staff should mean that it's over and done with, so he forgets about it.
That works for a week.
Scotty has a night off, and they have their usual awesomely exciting night-off plans: eating takeout from one of the three restaurants that are up to Scotty's standards, watching selected movies from Jason Statham's ouevre for all the wrong reasons, and going to bed early. They're half an hour into Death Race when Kevin's phone rings.
Scotty has developed a kind of amazing talent for addressing commentary to his food without coming across as passive-aggressive enough to start a fight. "I'm sure it's something very important."
Kevin looks at the screen on his phone and winces.
"Nora?" Scotty asks politely, jabbing his fork down into the box of rice again.
"Robert," Kevin mutters, getting off the couch and retreating toward the bedroom. "Give me two minutes."
"I'm not going to pause it."
"Like I'm watching for the plot anyway. I'll get rid of him." He steps into the bedroom and flips the phone open. "What?"
If Robert notices the irritation in Kevin's voice, he doesn't show it. "We need to re-draft this statement. It's all wrong."
"It was fine at three o'clock this afternoon." Kevin flings himself down across the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He can hear things exploding in the next room. Jason Statham is probably losing items of clothing right now and he's missing it.
"Well, I'm reading over it again, and it's not fine. It needs to be redone."
"Okay, fine. I'll do that, sometime in between the six different meetings on different sides of the city you have me at tomorrow."
"Come in and do it now."
Kevin actually pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it, because he can't possibly have heard that right. "You must be joking."
"No. Come in now. I'm here, we'll work on it together, get it put to bed so it's not hanging there as a problem."
Kevin grits his teeth, which hurts a surprising amount. Maybe he's been doing that without realizing it lately. "Robert, I am not coming back in to the office tonight."
There's a moment of puzzled silence. "Why not?"
"Because it's Scotty's night off and we're spending time together."
"But you answered your phone."
Kevin grabs one of the pillows and shakes it helplessly. "Because if I didn't, you would just keep calling."
Robert is quiet for a moment. "Come in early tomorrow, then. I'll work on it tonight and you can help me polish it before the first meeting tomorrow."
"Robert." Kevin throws the pillow, helplessly annoyed. "Why are you at the office at all? Go home."
"When I finish this."
Kevin closes his eyes, not wanting to get involved but not really seeing an out. "Look, I know my sister can be difficult, but--"
"This isn't about Kitty." Robert cuts him off as smoothly as he would a freshman reporter. "I'll see you first thing in the morning to go over this."
He hangs up and Kevin blinks at his phone. "I have no idea what just happened here," he says aloud to the empty room.
He could call Robert back. He could go see if Robert is okay. He could call Kitty and see if she's willing to spill what's going on. He could call Sarah and start a round of intensive familial pressure that would make better men than Robert McCallister crumble into dust.
Or he could take the bye and go watch Jason Statham get sweaty and greasy.
"Kevin?" Scotty calls. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." He shoves his phone under the pillows and stands up. Let Robert solve his own problems. It's date night.
He gets halfway to the door before he turns around and goes back for the phone, shoving it deep in his pocket. Just in case.
**
In the morning, of course, Robert acts like there's nothing weird at all about Kevin coming in an hour early, bleary-eyed and clutching his coffee cup like a lifeline, to go over the draft revisions. Some of them are good, some of them make no sense whatsoever, and arguing about the second category takes up so much of Kevin's energy that he forgets to bring up any of the other stuff he meant to. Like what is wrong with you and Kitty? And seriously, stop calling me after work. And are you living at the office?
He doesn't figure that out until well into the third meeting of the day, and by that point he's so exhausted and annoyed that he's willing to write it off as being for the best.
A week after that, his phone rings at eleven fifty-six and he realizes that he made a huge mistake by doing that.
"Robert," he hisses into the phone, throwing the remote across the living room. "What the hell?"
"It's not after midnight," Robert says. "Calm down."
"Don't split hairs with a lawyer." Kevin drags himself off the couch and follows the remote to where it landed and...yes, broke into three pieces. Great. "What do you want?"
"Can you bring me a hamburger?"
Kevin hangs up.
The phone rings again thirty seconds later. "Did you just hang up on me?"
"Did you just ask me to bring you food?"
A grown man who has been elected to the United States Senate should not sound pouty. "I'm hungry."
"Go home."
"Yelling at me is insubordination, you know."
"I could quit, you know. We're not the military."
Robert snorts and Kevin almost hangs up again. "You won't."
"Robert, I am going to hang up on you and go to bed. Either go get food yourself, or go home. God, what did my sister do, anyway?"
"This isn't about Kitty. Why do you keep assuming that?"
"Why else would you be hiding at the office more nights than not?" There's silence for a moment, and Kevin sighs. "McDonalds or Burger King?"
"You don't have to."
Kevin grabs his keys off the bookshelf. "Yeah, well, don't think this means anything. It's just that I don't have anything else to do."
**
All of the lights are out except for Robert's desk lamp, which makes his office look like a Bond villain's lair. All he needs is a monocle and a cat.
Kevin dumps the grease-stained bag of cheeseburgers and fries and the tray of drinks on the desk and flops down in the chair across from Robert's, trying to put as much silent, angry meaning into his eyes as he can.
"Thanks," Robert says, without a trace of sincerity.
"Screw you." Robert's jaw tenses, his equivalent of showing shock, and Kevin points at him. "I am not on the clock right now. You're not my boss, you're my brother-in-law, and I want to know what's going on."
Robert leans back in his chair and folds his hands on the edge of the desk. "Nothing."
"This is a new definition of nothing that keeps calling me at home and dragging me in to work in the middle of the night. What's it going to be next, you wanting to come over and use my shower at four AM?"
"Don't be silly." Robert's voice is cool verging on amused. Kevin has never wanted to hit someone so much in his life. "There's a shower here, on the first floor."
Kevin takes a deep breath, trying to channel his anger into something cold and line-in-the-sand-like. "I'm not your trained monkey, Robert. I'm not your sidekick, I'm not your assistant, and I don't do windows."
Robert's mouth curves into a very slight smile. "If I told you to, you would."
"Excuse me?"
"You're here, aren't you?" Robert gestures, the movement of his hands encompassing the whole office. "You're pissing and moaning and complaining, but you're here. You told me no, but you're here. You did everything I asked. Even brought extra napkins."
Kevin stares at him, his stomach twisting and his face going hot. "So this was all some kind of test?" Robert shrugs. "Probably all the way back to when you hired me, right?" Kevin laughs a little, painfully, getting up out of his chair and walking over to the window. "Wow, I...I don't...were you testing Kitty, too?"
"Leave Kitty out of this." Robert stands up as well, leaning against the desk on his fingertips. "I told you, this isn't about her."
"Then what is it about?" Kevin punches the window and turns around, glaring at him.
Robert shrugs slightly. "I wanted to see if I could."
The only response Kevin can find to that is "Are you some kind of a socipath?"
"Look." Robert's voice is firm and overly-reasonable now, like he's indulgently let things get a little out of hand and now he's going to reassert control over the situation. "If you'll calm down and look at this rationally, I think--"
Kevin doesn't really notice crossing the room; suddenly his hands are just gripping the front of Robert's shirt, shoving him back against the wall behind his desk. "You son of a--"
Robert tries to shove him back and they struggle for a few moments, hands slipping and scrambling for purchase, bodies knocking against each other and the desk and the wall. Kevin stomps down hard on Robert's foot, and Robert's hand tangles in Kevin's tie, yanking him forward and then shoving him back, until Kevin's shoulders hit the wall hard, knocking the wind and the fight out of him for a moment. Robert's standing close enough that Kevin can feel his breath, hot and fast and angry, and he braces himself for Robert to hit him.
Robert kisses him, as fast and violent as a punch would have been. Kevin's head knocks back against the wall again, but he doesn't resist; he's too shocked, his lips parting in a startled gasp that allows Robert to make the kiss deep and brutal, his tongue pushing inside Kevin's mouth.
Kevin assumes he can blame surprise for the fact that he kisses back, surprise or the not-entirely-unreasable assumption that this must be a hallucination, or an alternate reality, this can't possibly be real. His brother-in-law is not kissing him in his office, up against the wall like a scene from a B movie--Robert's weight is not heavy and solid against him and there definitely isn't a distinct hardness against his thigh, or an answering stir in his own body--Robert's hands are absolutely not moving down to fight with Kevin's belt.
"Jesus Christ," Kevin gasps, breaking away from the kiss. "Christ. Robert. Stop."
Robert stills, but doesn't move away, his hand still pressed against Kevin's groin and his breath hot on Kevin's neck.
"We are not doing this," Kevin says, struggling to make his voice firm. "We can't do this. I'm...I'm married. You're married."
Robert takes half a step back, just enough for Kevin to manage a deep breath. "How many times do I have to tell you?" Robert says quietly. "It's not about them. Stop trying to make it about them."
"I think they would disagree."
Robert shrugs, that short, small gesture, pinning Kevin to the wall again with just his eyes. "That's why it's better if they don't know."
Kevin shakes his head slowly, forcing himself to break away from Robert's gaze, to look out the window. "What is it about, then, if it's not..."
"It's about you and me."
Kevin does look at him again, at that. "What about you and me?"
Robert's smooth facade falters a little at that. Fucking finally. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Kevin takes a deep breath and pushes away from the wall, silently thankful that Robert falls back and allows him to do so. "You're insane."
"Yeah." Robert laughs, a short and humorless sound. "And you're here."
Kevin misses a step, but doesn't look back. "I'm going home."
Robert lets him get all the way to the door before he speaks. "I'll see you in the morning."
Kevin knows he should deny that, should resign right now on the spot, should do...something. But instead he just nods, and digs his keys out of his pocket, and leaves in silence.
**
The next day, everything is perfectly normal. And the day after that, and the rest of the week. Robert is the perfectly charming, perfectly unreadable, perfectly perfect politician. The office ticks along like clockwork. Kevin places statements and speeches and all the other assorted bits of paper on Robert's desk, and Robert barely acknowledges him with more than a glance, and he never, ever offers anything that remotely resembles praise or even interest in Kevin's continued existence.
Kevin stares at the wall behind Robert's desk and wonders if this is what a nervous breakdown feels like.
After about a week, he notices that he's started digging his cell phone out of his pocket around eleven-thirty or so, absent-mindedly toying with it while he sits on the couch watching whatever mindless TV is failing to put him to sleep. He thinks about turning it off, or putting it in a drawer, or just throwing it out the damn window.
He holds on to it, feeling the solid little weight in his palm, and he keeps waiting for it to ring.