Fic: "Maps of Places That You've Never Been" (Brothers & Sisters)
Kevin-centric, of course. Mild kind of spoilers for the "Family Day" episode, I suppose. My resolution to write happy!Kevin fic continues to not be fulfilled.
Thanks to romanticalgirl for the beta, and for not killing me for continuing to do my writing in Wordpad, instead of a program with a spellcheck.
Kevin isn't sure if you can ever really grow up as long as you can always go home. He steps through the door of that house and he might as well be eight or twelve or seventeen, coming in for food or scolding or comfort as needed. He still knows just about every twist and beat of his siblings' business, and they know his, just as if they were still living under one roof; the whole concept of building separate lives, individual stories and secrets that they don't share or trade parts in, just never quite seemed to happen for any of them.
Things are different now, of course, changing against everyone's will. There's that empty chair at the dinner table-- or rather, not empty at all, but piled higher and higher with exposed secrets, and guilt, and stuff that Kevin just can't quite reconcile with the dad he knew all his life. Except he can, around three AM when he's too tired to fool himself, and he has to admit that Dad was capable of all those lies all along, and Kevin knew it, and admired it about him. He always thought that capability was called "being smart" or "being strong" or maybe just "being grown-up." Not "being a liar," like it looks now.
It was part of what made him Dad, that aura of omnipotence, of infallibility. Dad knew everything. Dad had all the answers. You took anything to him, and he'd fix it, never any doubt.
And he's not there anymore.
Kevin knows that he and Tommy have been trying to divide up the job of being Dad, fumbling badly and without the slightest clue how to do it or even why it needs to be done. It would be easy to let the family just be less close; it would even be normal. The bonds would ease and those separate shells that the Walkers don't seem to grow would form in a hurry and become their own distinct lives, if watching other people was any indication. Why fight it?
Because it's scary, and it's unfamiliar, and it's not who they are.
So Tommy tries to be Dad at Ojai, and takes this as literally as everything else in his life by deciding to be a dad for real, too. Suddenly it's essential that he and Julia have a baby, where before it seemed like there was all the time in the world to grow up and get there. Suddenly the clock's jumped forward for Tommy, and being Tommy, that means he's going to hustle to catch up.
And Kevin picks up his half of the burden, tries to fix things, to have the answers, to know everything and anything when Mom or his brothers and sisters go looking. It's hard. It sucks. He wonders if it was like this for Dad.
**
He and Tommy go to the bar one night, the same run-down place Dad used to go, the same place he took them both when they came of age. The same place the two of them came and drank on the night Justin left for basic, both feeling all the way down to the uncomfortable parts of their souls that their little brother was passing them up on the milestones to becoming a man, that he'd taken an unfair shortcut.
"I helped Joe fix their washer today," Tommy says suddenly, frowning at his beer. Kevin blinks, puzzled.
"Good for you?"
Tommy shakes his head and goes on. "I caught my thumb with the wrench, right, and cussed at it. Sarah said I sounded just like Dad."
Kevin smiles a little, picturing it easily. "You probably did. You've got all his little tics and habits, seriously."
"You've got your share," Tommy says, then shakes his head again. "You know, my whole life people have told me that. That I'm just like him."
"You kind of are."
"And I always took it as a compliment." Tommy sips his beer and glances sideways at Kevin. "But now, you know, I've got to wonder-- damn, if I'm just like Dad, should I divorce Julia and run out of town now, before I have a chance to fuck up everything?"
"Tommy." Kevin stares at him, and he can't quite believe his brother thinks that, except for the part where it makes perfect sense. If they're both trying to be Dad, what if they turn into Dad, more than they already are by the habits and conditioning of a lifetime? He remembers standing on the stairs and telling Scotty how he's never been good at being faithful, while looking at his father's photo and writing the weakness off as something in the blood. Maybe his flippant remarks had substance, and oh God, what does he do with that? "Tommy, you'll be a great dad."
"Well, I'm going to try, but we all thought Dad was a great dad, didn't we?"
"He was. I mean, we all turned out all right, didn't we?" They think of Justin at the same time and drop their eyes to their drinks in the same movement, something else probably stolen from Dad. "Look, you can imitate the good stuff and learn from the mistakes. Not make the same ones."
"I don't want my kid to sit around after I'm dead wondering if maybe they should hate me." Tommy shoots his bottle cap across the bar and they watch it fall to the floor, the clatter lost under the jukebox's endless supply of bad classic rock.
Kevin knows his brother, knows this is more vulnerable than Tommy can stand to be, and if he doesn't hit back with a joke to bring Tommy's defenses back up again, things are going to get awkward and ugly and bad. "Julia won't let it get to that," he says, balancing his own bottle cap on edge in the precise center of his napkin. "She'll kick your ass and if you cheat on her, she'll just kill you."
Tommy laughs, only a little but enough to ease some of the tension in Kevin's spine. Laughing is good. Laughing he can do. "No, she wouldn't."
"No, she wouldn't." Kevin kills his beer and shrugs. "But you're still not going to do it. You won't cheat on her, Tommy, don't worry about it. You're not that guy."
"You don't think it's in the genes?"
"Genes don't work like that," Kevin says, tired of this conversation and uncomfortable and wanting two or three more beers to wash the sour anticipation of disaster from his mouth. How many years of this do they have to look forward to, of sitting around waiting to settle nature or nurture once and for all, to find out just how much they are their father's sons? "Besides, if they do, then I guess Kitty and I got the cheating gene and you and Sarah are clear."
"What about Justin?"
"I don't try to guess about Justin anymore." He digs his keys out of his pocket and pushes the beer bottle away. "Come on, Tommy, let me drive you home. Your wife's probably wondering where you are."
**
After he drops Tommy off, Kevin sits in a gas station for a long few minutes, trying to decide if he wants to go home or find another bar, another kind of distraction to go with the alcohol and keep him from thinking so damn much about mortality and responsibility and this undiscovered country that he suspects is simply called "adulthood" and further suspects that he's just not ready for.
In the end, he shakes his head and slips the car in gear and heads back to his apartment, where there's vodka and bad TV if he wants it and a stack of files on his desk if he can't sleep. It's the adult thing to do, he thinks. The responsible thing. Picking up guys in bars is a kid's game and he's not supposed to be a kid anymore, not in this place where he's traveling without a guide.
**
He cuts out from work early a few days later, because his desk is clear for once and his focus is shot and if he stares at those glass walls for another minute he's going to end up in a facility a lot less comfortable than Justin's. He drives up the coast and inland at random, until he's pretty well into the suburbs, and then he goes up one street and down another until he's completely turned around. He pulls into a parking lot to get his bearings, not realizing until the car is parked and his sunglasses are off and he's fumbling under the passenger seat for a map that it's the parking lot of a church.
He blinks and sits back, looking at the steeple against the sky, the stained glass and brick, the neat lettering on the sign declaring it St. Luke's. Maybe Dad pulled him here, too, to the faith of that side of the family. Not that he knows what to do with it. He has vague memories of a few Christmas services with Grandma and Grandpa Walker, but he's probably only crossed a church door a half a dozen times in his life and never with any faith or fervor.
He slips the keys from the ignition and rolls them in his palm, still studying the building. There's a standing invitation for any of them to accompany Uncle Saul to temple, but it's stood unused for so long that to take an interest now would cause total chaos, and a Passover overcompensation that would put Mom's Hanukkah efforts to shame. He was raised a good secular humanist at Mom's knee, and even just by nature, mystery isn't his thing. Ending up here is random chance, not any kind of sign.
"What the hell," he mutters, not recognizing the joke until he's halfway to the church door.
It's empty and silent inside, and he stands awkwardly in the dim light, looking at the stained glass and the statues, the crucifix over the altar. Jesus looks more tired than exultant. His father was a tough act to follow, too.
"As if there was any doubt about my damnation," he mutters, feeling himself blush and looking away. Off to the side he sees the stairstep-rows of candles, mostly unlit. He's seen enough movies to know that you light one and pray for the dead. He isn't sure if a nonbeliever is allowed to do it, but there's nobody here and he doesn't think God will object too much to someone bending the rules in good faith. And bending the rules is definitely appropriate if he's honoring Dad.
He slips a ten-dollar bill into the contribution box and lights a candle, then shoves his hands in his pockets and stands back to watch the flame. He's probably supposed to say something now, a Hail Mary or an Our Father or something else Grandma Walker would disapprove of his not knowing.
"Hi," he says instead, looking at the statue of Mary beside the candles. "I'm not...one of yours, I guess. Well, except that I guess we all are if you look at it like that. Um. But I'm one of the ones you guys supposedly really don't like. I hope you won't hold that against my dad. It wasn't his idea." He swallows and this is ridiculous, this is superstition and not even one that he believes in. But he wants to talk, to say this to someone, even if it's a statue of a myth, so he goes on.
"I...well, I don't know if I believe in heaven. I don't, I guess. No proof. Not even any evidence. There's still all that reasonable doubt. I'm really good at doubt. I mean, I envy Uncle Saul his faith." He frowns down at his shoes on the scuffed floor. "I think faith must be a nice thing. A reassuring thing." He glances up at the candle, melting slowly to the bottom of its glass cup, tiny flame bobbing and weaving above the wax. "But if Dad is still around somewhere, if you could tell him that we miss him...that I miss him. And that I wish...I..." He looks away again. "I wish he hadn't done all the things he did, but I still love him." He shakes his head, his throat closing tight and catching his voice. "And I wish he was here."
He turns away and hurries back out to his car, hands shaking and vision blurred. What the hell was that? Not his belief, not his ritual, not his anything. His feelings, but those weren't going to get him anywhere, in there or out here.
He drives for another half-hour and gets even more turned around than before, finally pulling into a fast-food restaurant. He splashes cold water on his face in the restroom and then orders a vanilla milkshake and a cheeseburger, blowing his diet to hell but soothing some inner ten-year-old who wants nothing more than to scream and cry.
There's a poster on the wall congratulating the local high school's volleyball team. He digs his phone out of his pocket and calls Tommy.
"No, I've never been there," his brother says when Kevin reads him the town name. "But I think Sarah mentioned going up there for something last summer. You should call her. You get yourself lost, Kevin?"
"A little bit." He folds the wrapper from his burger into smaller and smaller squares and squints out the window at the sinking sun.
"That's not like you," Tommy says, and Kevin can hear him frowning. "Usually you triple-check directions and get six maps before you do anything."
"It's not always an option."
"Where were you trying to go, anyway?"
"Doesn't matter." Kevin sighs and pushes his tray away. "Thanks, Tommy. I'll call Sarah and then I'll find my way home."
"Drive west till you run into the ocean and then turn left. You can ID the ocean, right?"
"Ha ha," Kevin says flatly, and hangs up. But he smiles a little as he throws his stuff away and walks back to his car, dialing Sarah as he goes.
Thanks to romanticalgirl for the beta, and for not killing me for continuing to do my writing in Wordpad, instead of a program with a spellcheck.
Kevin isn't sure if you can ever really grow up as long as you can always go home. He steps through the door of that house and he might as well be eight or twelve or seventeen, coming in for food or scolding or comfort as needed. He still knows just about every twist and beat of his siblings' business, and they know his, just as if they were still living under one roof; the whole concept of building separate lives, individual stories and secrets that they don't share or trade parts in, just never quite seemed to happen for any of them.
Things are different now, of course, changing against everyone's will. There's that empty chair at the dinner table-- or rather, not empty at all, but piled higher and higher with exposed secrets, and guilt, and stuff that Kevin just can't quite reconcile with the dad he knew all his life. Except he can, around three AM when he's too tired to fool himself, and he has to admit that Dad was capable of all those lies all along, and Kevin knew it, and admired it about him. He always thought that capability was called "being smart" or "being strong" or maybe just "being grown-up." Not "being a liar," like it looks now.
It was part of what made him Dad, that aura of omnipotence, of infallibility. Dad knew everything. Dad had all the answers. You took anything to him, and he'd fix it, never any doubt.
And he's not there anymore.
Kevin knows that he and Tommy have been trying to divide up the job of being Dad, fumbling badly and without the slightest clue how to do it or even why it needs to be done. It would be easy to let the family just be less close; it would even be normal. The bonds would ease and those separate shells that the Walkers don't seem to grow would form in a hurry and become their own distinct lives, if watching other people was any indication. Why fight it?
Because it's scary, and it's unfamiliar, and it's not who they are.
So Tommy tries to be Dad at Ojai, and takes this as literally as everything else in his life by deciding to be a dad for real, too. Suddenly it's essential that he and Julia have a baby, where before it seemed like there was all the time in the world to grow up and get there. Suddenly the clock's jumped forward for Tommy, and being Tommy, that means he's going to hustle to catch up.
And Kevin picks up his half of the burden, tries to fix things, to have the answers, to know everything and anything when Mom or his brothers and sisters go looking. It's hard. It sucks. He wonders if it was like this for Dad.
**
He and Tommy go to the bar one night, the same run-down place Dad used to go, the same place he took them both when they came of age. The same place the two of them came and drank on the night Justin left for basic, both feeling all the way down to the uncomfortable parts of their souls that their little brother was passing them up on the milestones to becoming a man, that he'd taken an unfair shortcut.
"I helped Joe fix their washer today," Tommy says suddenly, frowning at his beer. Kevin blinks, puzzled.
"Good for you?"
Tommy shakes his head and goes on. "I caught my thumb with the wrench, right, and cussed at it. Sarah said I sounded just like Dad."
Kevin smiles a little, picturing it easily. "You probably did. You've got all his little tics and habits, seriously."
"You've got your share," Tommy says, then shakes his head again. "You know, my whole life people have told me that. That I'm just like him."
"You kind of are."
"And I always took it as a compliment." Tommy sips his beer and glances sideways at Kevin. "But now, you know, I've got to wonder-- damn, if I'm just like Dad, should I divorce Julia and run out of town now, before I have a chance to fuck up everything?"
"Tommy." Kevin stares at him, and he can't quite believe his brother thinks that, except for the part where it makes perfect sense. If they're both trying to be Dad, what if they turn into Dad, more than they already are by the habits and conditioning of a lifetime? He remembers standing on the stairs and telling Scotty how he's never been good at being faithful, while looking at his father's photo and writing the weakness off as something in the blood. Maybe his flippant remarks had substance, and oh God, what does he do with that? "Tommy, you'll be a great dad."
"Well, I'm going to try, but we all thought Dad was a great dad, didn't we?"
"He was. I mean, we all turned out all right, didn't we?" They think of Justin at the same time and drop their eyes to their drinks in the same movement, something else probably stolen from Dad. "Look, you can imitate the good stuff and learn from the mistakes. Not make the same ones."
"I don't want my kid to sit around after I'm dead wondering if maybe they should hate me." Tommy shoots his bottle cap across the bar and they watch it fall to the floor, the clatter lost under the jukebox's endless supply of bad classic rock.
Kevin knows his brother, knows this is more vulnerable than Tommy can stand to be, and if he doesn't hit back with a joke to bring Tommy's defenses back up again, things are going to get awkward and ugly and bad. "Julia won't let it get to that," he says, balancing his own bottle cap on edge in the precise center of his napkin. "She'll kick your ass and if you cheat on her, she'll just kill you."
Tommy laughs, only a little but enough to ease some of the tension in Kevin's spine. Laughing is good. Laughing he can do. "No, she wouldn't."
"No, she wouldn't." Kevin kills his beer and shrugs. "But you're still not going to do it. You won't cheat on her, Tommy, don't worry about it. You're not that guy."
"You don't think it's in the genes?"
"Genes don't work like that," Kevin says, tired of this conversation and uncomfortable and wanting two or three more beers to wash the sour anticipation of disaster from his mouth. How many years of this do they have to look forward to, of sitting around waiting to settle nature or nurture once and for all, to find out just how much they are their father's sons? "Besides, if they do, then I guess Kitty and I got the cheating gene and you and Sarah are clear."
"What about Justin?"
"I don't try to guess about Justin anymore." He digs his keys out of his pocket and pushes the beer bottle away. "Come on, Tommy, let me drive you home. Your wife's probably wondering where you are."
**
After he drops Tommy off, Kevin sits in a gas station for a long few minutes, trying to decide if he wants to go home or find another bar, another kind of distraction to go with the alcohol and keep him from thinking so damn much about mortality and responsibility and this undiscovered country that he suspects is simply called "adulthood" and further suspects that he's just not ready for.
In the end, he shakes his head and slips the car in gear and heads back to his apartment, where there's vodka and bad TV if he wants it and a stack of files on his desk if he can't sleep. It's the adult thing to do, he thinks. The responsible thing. Picking up guys in bars is a kid's game and he's not supposed to be a kid anymore, not in this place where he's traveling without a guide.
**
He cuts out from work early a few days later, because his desk is clear for once and his focus is shot and if he stares at those glass walls for another minute he's going to end up in a facility a lot less comfortable than Justin's. He drives up the coast and inland at random, until he's pretty well into the suburbs, and then he goes up one street and down another until he's completely turned around. He pulls into a parking lot to get his bearings, not realizing until the car is parked and his sunglasses are off and he's fumbling under the passenger seat for a map that it's the parking lot of a church.
He blinks and sits back, looking at the steeple against the sky, the stained glass and brick, the neat lettering on the sign declaring it St. Luke's. Maybe Dad pulled him here, too, to the faith of that side of the family. Not that he knows what to do with it. He has vague memories of a few Christmas services with Grandma and Grandpa Walker, but he's probably only crossed a church door a half a dozen times in his life and never with any faith or fervor.
He slips the keys from the ignition and rolls them in his palm, still studying the building. There's a standing invitation for any of them to accompany Uncle Saul to temple, but it's stood unused for so long that to take an interest now would cause total chaos, and a Passover overcompensation that would put Mom's Hanukkah efforts to shame. He was raised a good secular humanist at Mom's knee, and even just by nature, mystery isn't his thing. Ending up here is random chance, not any kind of sign.
"What the hell," he mutters, not recognizing the joke until he's halfway to the church door.
It's empty and silent inside, and he stands awkwardly in the dim light, looking at the stained glass and the statues, the crucifix over the altar. Jesus looks more tired than exultant. His father was a tough act to follow, too.
"As if there was any doubt about my damnation," he mutters, feeling himself blush and looking away. Off to the side he sees the stairstep-rows of candles, mostly unlit. He's seen enough movies to know that you light one and pray for the dead. He isn't sure if a nonbeliever is allowed to do it, but there's nobody here and he doesn't think God will object too much to someone bending the rules in good faith. And bending the rules is definitely appropriate if he's honoring Dad.
He slips a ten-dollar bill into the contribution box and lights a candle, then shoves his hands in his pockets and stands back to watch the flame. He's probably supposed to say something now, a Hail Mary or an Our Father or something else Grandma Walker would disapprove of his not knowing.
"Hi," he says instead, looking at the statue of Mary beside the candles. "I'm not...one of yours, I guess. Well, except that I guess we all are if you look at it like that. Um. But I'm one of the ones you guys supposedly really don't like. I hope you won't hold that against my dad. It wasn't his idea." He swallows and this is ridiculous, this is superstition and not even one that he believes in. But he wants to talk, to say this to someone, even if it's a statue of a myth, so he goes on.
"I...well, I don't know if I believe in heaven. I don't, I guess. No proof. Not even any evidence. There's still all that reasonable doubt. I'm really good at doubt. I mean, I envy Uncle Saul his faith." He frowns down at his shoes on the scuffed floor. "I think faith must be a nice thing. A reassuring thing." He glances up at the candle, melting slowly to the bottom of its glass cup, tiny flame bobbing and weaving above the wax. "But if Dad is still around somewhere, if you could tell him that we miss him...that I miss him. And that I wish...I..." He looks away again. "I wish he hadn't done all the things he did, but I still love him." He shakes his head, his throat closing tight and catching his voice. "And I wish he was here."
He turns away and hurries back out to his car, hands shaking and vision blurred. What the hell was that? Not his belief, not his ritual, not his anything. His feelings, but those weren't going to get him anywhere, in there or out here.
He drives for another half-hour and gets even more turned around than before, finally pulling into a fast-food restaurant. He splashes cold water on his face in the restroom and then orders a vanilla milkshake and a cheeseburger, blowing his diet to hell but soothing some inner ten-year-old who wants nothing more than to scream and cry.
There's a poster on the wall congratulating the local high school's volleyball team. He digs his phone out of his pocket and calls Tommy.
"No, I've never been there," his brother says when Kevin reads him the town name. "But I think Sarah mentioned going up there for something last summer. You should call her. You get yourself lost, Kevin?"
"A little bit." He folds the wrapper from his burger into smaller and smaller squares and squints out the window at the sinking sun.
"That's not like you," Tommy says, and Kevin can hear him frowning. "Usually you triple-check directions and get six maps before you do anything."
"It's not always an option."
"Where were you trying to go, anyway?"
"Doesn't matter." Kevin sighs and pushes his tray away. "Thanks, Tommy. I'll call Sarah and then I'll find my way home."
"Drive west till you run into the ocean and then turn left. You can ID the ocean, right?"
"Ha ha," Kevin says flatly, and hangs up. But he smiles a little as he throws his stuff away and walks back to his car, dialing Sarah as he goes.