Fic: "Bright Lights Big City" (Brothers & Sisters/SportsNight)
Set pre-series for B&S, post-series for SportsNight. Kevin/Dan. Thanks to romanticalgirl for the beta.
Chad is not the first TV personality Kevin has slept with. If Chad even counts as a “personality,” which the parts of Kevin’s brain that acknowledge the stupidity of his actions tend to doubt. Hard to be a personality if he doesn’t have one. Of course, hard to tell if the man has one when they only see each other at the gym and after dark, and they don’t have actual conversations.
He had conversations with the other TV guy. Well, technically, it was one long conversation, but it felt like dozens, since they sat at the table for hours and bounced from topic to topic without pause. It was kind of a great night. Kind of amazing in its way. And also kind of embarrassing for Kevin to remember, because he had been so very, very young and stupid then.
Nice to know that he's gotten older, but some things never change.
***
He was fresh out of law school and brand-new at his firm, the junior member of a team assigned to one of their big clients. Quo Vadimus, Calvin Traeger’s company, and even though he’d been with the law firm for five years at that point, it was still something discussed in whispers, that he brought his company’s legal affairs to them and they’d better not fuck anything up or every single one of them was going to end up flipping burgers.
He’d only been there for about six months when the whole team flew out to New York to negotiate selling off QV’s cable TV interests. Those were only a few years old, picked up in the Continental Corp merger in 2000; Kevin remembered all the hoopla around the original purchase, all of Traeger’s aggressive and determined statements about how anyone who couldn’t make money off that programming should get out of the money-making business. Pretty damn funny how fast businessmen could do a 180. But Kevin knew that already, just from watching his dad.
As the baby on the team, his job was to sit at the far end of the table, not say a word to anyone, and take copious notes that would never, ever be used. He was also supposed to watch and listen and try to learn something, which happened to be things he excelled at. So he sat and he took notes through negotiations about what to do about the leases on the building, he listened to the agreements on selling off the equipment, and he learned a lot when they got to the part about buying out, selling off, or just plain wiping out employee contracts.
All kinds of interesting stuff there. Uncomfortable, sure, but...interesting.
The on-air talent was the most interesting. Especially the headliners from the sports channel. The one, McCall, had a contract that was airtight and watertight and could probably be used to transport plutonium. His agent was a shark. QV had no choice but to pay that one out, no matter how much they didn’t like it.
The other guy’s agent just wasn’t as good. There were loopholes. There were trapdoors. Kevin had a copy of the contract in front of him while the agent argued with the leaders of his team, and he absently drew circles and squares and tiny axes dripping with blood all around the offending passages. The guy was screwed. Plain and simple. What a shame.
He looked up from his pages every once in a while to watch the guy, sitting next to his agent at the far end of the table. Before too long, Rydell-Daniel Thomas Rydell by the contract-was staring blankly out the window, like his agent had probably told him to do. Kevin didn’t know why the agent had let him come along at all. To humanize the situation? This was a multi-billion-dollar loss for QV. Humanity had nothing to do with anything.
Apparently Rydell had covered enough defeats in sporting events to recognize a total loss when he was in the middle of one. Kevin had to approve of the way he was taking it. Dignity intact, at least.
He also approved of Rydell’s cheekbones, and his eyes, and the way he wore his suit, but that was neither here nor there and Kevin was really supposed to be learning about screwing a guy out of his contract, not thinking about any other form of screwing whatsoever. Not on the company’s time.
But company time ended at six, and the wrap-up meeting for the team only lasted an hour or two before Peterson and Jeffers decided they wanted to enjoy New York a little bit while they were there and let everyone go. Kevin went downstairs to hail a cab and realized there was a bar right across the street. Why go looking when God decided to throw drinks right in front of him?
He sat at the bar and ordered a vodka tonic, and only when the occupant of the stool next to him snapped “You people drink? Don’t you have to go back to your coffins and rest up for tomorrow night?” did he realize that if he was willing to hit up the very nearest bar instead of walking, other people might as well. Especially people who had had very bad days.
“We didn’t bring the coffins with us from California, actually,” he replied, smiling politely. “Cross-country shipping rates are a bitch.”
“Don’t try to be funny,” Rydell muttered, glaring over his own drink. “I’m the funny one here. You’re a lawyer. Lawyers aren’t allowed to be funny.”
“That an official rule?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, like a law?”
“Jack,” Rydell said, turning to the bartender, “do not serve this man.”
“Can’t throw people out for being lawyers, Dan,” Jack said with a shrug.
“I think that’s a policy that should be changed.” Rydell--Dan; Kevin thought that worked for the guy and promptly borrowed it for his own mental use--sighed and glared some more. “Destroying my pride and self-respect up there wasn’t enough, you have to ruin my drink now?”
“I didn’t destroy anything,” Kevin said, sipping his own drink. “I just sat there.”
“I noticed that. Why don’t they let you talk?”
“I’m old enough and smart enough for them to hire me, yet too young and stupid to be permitted to do anything.”
“A paradox for the ages.” Dan stabbed his stirrer hard into his drink. “Actually, you look like you’re about fifteen, so maybe not so much of a paradox.”
“Age is a social construct.”
“No, age is how many years you’ve been alive.”
“Okay,” Kevin said, warming up to the challenge, “but the idea that there are certain ages that matter more than others, that’s socially constructed. Totally arbitrary.”
“You mean like the drinking age? Are you even allowed to have that martini?”
“I have a law degree from Stanford. Pretty hard to pull that off before you turn 21.”
“Oh, well, if we’re degree-dropping--and that wasn’t quite casual, by the way, you’re going to need to be at least fifteen and three-quarters before you can pull if off with any flair--then may I publicly declare that I proudly represent Dartmouth and thus the Ivy League, a little thing you might have heard of but apparently couldn’t get admitted to.”
Kevin blinked. “Okay, first of all, that was amazing sentence structure. Second of all, how many drinks have you had?”
“Thanks, I’m a professional writer.” Dan smiled, a little sheepishly, and Kevin’s bloodstream did a complicated series of dance moves with his hormones, drink, and common sense. “And probably at least one too many.”
Kevin glanced around the bar. “Have you eaten?”
“Not since lunch.”
“There’s a table free,” Kevin said, slightly stunned by his own audacity. “You want to grab some dinner?”
“And talk about age as an arbitrary social construct?”
Kevin shrugged and stood up, smoothing his jacket in a careful motion that only worked with really expensive suits and that he’d practiced an embarrassing number of times to get right.
“We can talk about all kinds of things.”
***
Dan laughed and shook his head, raising his empty glass in a vague gesture of a toast. "Confusion to the Republicans."
"If my sister's going to be their spokesperson, confusion is guaranteed." Kevin grinned and pushed his plate away, glancing down at his watch. "Wow, it got late all of a sudden."
"Past your bedtime?"
"No." Kevin made a face at him. "I just, you know, have to get up and work in the morning."
"Ah." Dan nodded solemnly. "A problem I no longer have."
Kevin winced. "Sorry."
"Nah. Forget it." Dan shrugged. "Under the bridge. I was in a rut anyway. Time for a change."
"I'm sure something good will come along."
Dan glanced at him and smiled, an oddly sad twist to the expression. "God, you're really drunk, Kevin."
"No I'm not." He shook his head and sat up a little straighter. "I'm not."
"Okay." Dan was still smiling, still watching. "But you need to call it a night?"
"I didn't say that."
"Yeah, you did, actually."
"Fine, but I didn't mean it."
"What did you mean, then, Kevin Walker?"
"I meant..." He frowned and wished he had another drink, even though that would probably be a really bad idea, probably lead to him doing something stupid or embarrassing, even more so than he was possibly about to do anyway. "I meant that we didn't talk about arbitrary socially constructed ages."
"You had something else to say about that?" Dan raised an eyebrow and reached for the glass of water still sitting on the table.
"Age of consent," Kevin blurted, looking across the table as intensely and meaningfully as he could. "That's...that's another one that's socially constructed."
Dan nodded slowly. "Okay."
"And one that I passed a long, long...really long time ago."
Dan laughed, low and soft and hinting at something that made Kevin's stomach twist. "You don't do this very often, do you, Kevin?"
"I know what I'm doing, if that's what you mean."
"Don't get defensive." Dan was still smiling and watching, and Kevin thought that if Dan didn't stop that and do something, Kevin was going to go nuts. "I'm just asking."
Kevin shrugged, lifting his chin. "And I'm just saying. I know what I'm doing. And I have a really nice hotel room."
Dan stared at him for a long time, and Kevin swallowed hard, thinking that maybe he'd misjudged, gone too far, pushed too hard. Fucked it up again. Made another mistake. "Sorry," he muttered, looking down at his plate. "I'm--"
"What hotel?"
Kevin looked up. Dan's gaze was steady now, all amusement and uncertainty gone. "What hotel, Kevin?"
"I'll...um." Kevin fumbled in his pocket for his wallet, grabbing bills at random to leave on the table. He didn't care about overtipping, right now. Didn't give a fuck about that. "I'll get a cab."
***
As soon as they got inside the hotel room Kevin muscled Dan back up against the wall, sliding his hands up to grip Dan's biceps and kissing him hard. Dan made a low sound against Kevin's mouth, too close to laughter for Kevin to stand, and he bit at Dan's lip, satisfaction burning through the alcoholic haze when Dan's almost-laugh turned to a gasp of surprise.
"Slow down, Kevin," Dan said, tearing away from the kiss, twisting his arms and easily breaking Kevin's grip. "Hey. Just slow down, okay?"
"C'mon." Kevin lunged in again, fixing his mouth below Dan's ear, kissing and sucking at the delicate skin. "Told you, I know what I'm doing."
"I don't doubt it," Dan said, catching Kevin's wrists and pushing him back a little. "I'd just like this to last more than ten minutes."
"Are you making fun of me?" He'd definitely had too much to drink. Absolutely. This was a really fucking stupid idea, and this guy had just brought him back here to laugh at him, he'd misread all the signs, and... "If you're making fun of me, you can just go, okay?"
Dan shook his head, his thumbs sliding slowly and firmly over Kevin's wrists. "I'm not making fun of you, Kevin."
"Yeah, well, then what are you doing?" Kevin pulled his arms away, stepping back and running one hand through his hair. "What are you doing if you don't want to..."
"I didn't say I didn't want to." Dan stepped forward, undoing the gap between them, not reaching for Kevin again but holding his gaze. "I just said slow down."
"Slow down," Kevin echoed.
"Yeah." Dan nodded and stepped closer still, tilting his head a little toward the bed. "That's all I'm saying, Kevin. Take it slow."
Kevin swallowed, glancing from Dan to the bed and back. Dan reached up and brushed the back of his fingers across Kevin's cheek.
"We can try slow," Kevin said. "Yeah."
Dan leaned in and kissed him then, hands settling warm and solid on Kevin's shoulders, and Kevin could only hope that slow would be possible with his heart beating so fast.
***
Kevin woke up in the morning with his cheek pressed against a spit-wet pillow, the sheets twisted around his waist and a distinct chilliness to the sheets as he rolled over that told him nobody else was in the bed.
Figures, he thought blearily, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes with one hand, the other one scrubbing irritably against the clammy dampness on his cheek. Not like it should be a big surprise...
"Coffee?"
He jumped, startled, looking up to see Dan sitting on the edge of the dresser, fully dressed and sipping from one of the hotel mugs.
"Sure," Kevin mumbled, tugging the sheet up higher. A little late for that, Walker, he thought, but pushing it down again would look even stranger. "You're still here."
Dan raised an eyebrow at him and slid down off the dresser, stepping across and handing him the other mug. "You didn't think I would be?"
"No real reason for you to be, is there?" He winced at the bitterness in his tone, trying to hide behind the mug as he took a sip.
Dan frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching him. "A lot of guys take off on you in the morning, Kevin?"
He shrugged, focusing on the coffee, which was watery and thin and tasted shitty as only hotel-room instant coffee could. "Doesn't matter."
"Yeah." Dan took a swallow of his own coffee, glancing around the room. "You probably need to get showered and get to your thing, huh?"
Kevin squinted at the clock and groaned. "Yeah. Lots of other Quo Vadimus employees who need their lives ruined."
"You're not ruining anything," Dan said, reaching over and patting Kevin's knee, the gesture sexless and actually weirdly paternal, and Kevin flinched away because he couldn't deal with that. "I think we can safely blame all that on Traeger."
"He doesn't give a shit if you blame him or not."
"Believe me, I know." Dan sighed and finished his coffee, looking at the clock as well. "I guess I'll get going, then. Get out of your way."
"It was, um. Nice. To meet you." Kevin winced as soon as the words were out, but Dan smiled.
"Wasn't nice to meet you, but I enjoyed spending some time with you, Kevin. If you get the difference."
"I do. Yeah." Kevin set his mug on the bedside table. "So."
"So." Dan frowned and glanced at him. "Can I offer a couple points of advice?"
Kevin stiffened, the weird paternal vibe getting weirder, and why couldn't he just have a normal one-night stand that felt good and left him alone and a little achy in the morning and didn't have to carry any goddamn life lessons along with it? "Do you have to?"
"No." Dan shook his head and stood up, carrying the mug back over to the dresser and setting it carefully next to the coffee maker. "I don't."
"Okay, that was a shitty thing for me to say." Maybe he could win points back if he owned up to it. "Yeah, you can give advice."
"Two things." Dan tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the dresser. "Always stick around and say goodbye in the morning. It's the menschy thing to do."
Kevin nodded slightly. "And?"
Dan ran his thumb along the edge of the dresser, frowning down at the grain of the wood. "Don't compromise yourself for your career." He smiled suddenly, a humorless twist of his mouth that looked nothing like his television grin or the crooked, sweet look he'd had when they were laughing together the night before. "And especially not for someone else's career."
"That's three," Kevin said, his throat suddenly dry.
"Two and a half." Dan shrugged and stood up. "Anyway. Just some stuff to keep in mind, if you believe I've learned anything from going around the block once or twice."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Get a cab back to my apartment. Stop somewhere for some decent coffee." Dan smiled slightly and moved toward the door.
"And in the grander sense?"
Dan shook his head. "I believe in just taking it as it comes."
"Hell of a way to live."
"Hasn't worked out too badly so far." Dan held up his hand before Kevin could point out the irony of that statement. "And let's leave me the comfort of my illusions."
Kevin smiled and held up his own hands in surrender. "Good luck, Dan."
"You too, Kevin."
***
In retrospect, it's...well, Kevin doesn't really care for retrospect. It's an uncomfortable thing if he thinks about it, so he doesn't think about it, and that works out pretty well ninety-nine percent of the time.
That final one percent, though, that's a pain in the ass. It tends to kick in around three AM, if he can't sleep. Or right after Chad leaves Kevin's place well before morning, or right after the door to Chad's place closes behind him with that too-solid click. Or...
Maybe it's a little more than one percent, lately.
"I'm not compromising anything," Kevin informs Dan on ESPN every night as he flips through the channels. "I know what I'm doing."
That rings a little familiar too, and a little hollow, so he doesn't think about that either. He's changed a lot since back then. He's not a kid anymore. Been around the block and learned his own lessons. All he's doing is...taking things as they come. Absolutely.
He switches the TV off and goes to bed, clinging to the comfort of his illusions.
Chad is not the first TV personality Kevin has slept with. If Chad even counts as a “personality,” which the parts of Kevin’s brain that acknowledge the stupidity of his actions tend to doubt. Hard to be a personality if he doesn’t have one. Of course, hard to tell if the man has one when they only see each other at the gym and after dark, and they don’t have actual conversations.
He had conversations with the other TV guy. Well, technically, it was one long conversation, but it felt like dozens, since they sat at the table for hours and bounced from topic to topic without pause. It was kind of a great night. Kind of amazing in its way. And also kind of embarrassing for Kevin to remember, because he had been so very, very young and stupid then.
Nice to know that he's gotten older, but some things never change.
***
He was fresh out of law school and brand-new at his firm, the junior member of a team assigned to one of their big clients. Quo Vadimus, Calvin Traeger’s company, and even though he’d been with the law firm for five years at that point, it was still something discussed in whispers, that he brought his company’s legal affairs to them and they’d better not fuck anything up or every single one of them was going to end up flipping burgers.
He’d only been there for about six months when the whole team flew out to New York to negotiate selling off QV’s cable TV interests. Those were only a few years old, picked up in the Continental Corp merger in 2000; Kevin remembered all the hoopla around the original purchase, all of Traeger’s aggressive and determined statements about how anyone who couldn’t make money off that programming should get out of the money-making business. Pretty damn funny how fast businessmen could do a 180. But Kevin knew that already, just from watching his dad.
As the baby on the team, his job was to sit at the far end of the table, not say a word to anyone, and take copious notes that would never, ever be used. He was also supposed to watch and listen and try to learn something, which happened to be things he excelled at. So he sat and he took notes through negotiations about what to do about the leases on the building, he listened to the agreements on selling off the equipment, and he learned a lot when they got to the part about buying out, selling off, or just plain wiping out employee contracts.
All kinds of interesting stuff there. Uncomfortable, sure, but...interesting.
The on-air talent was the most interesting. Especially the headliners from the sports channel. The one, McCall, had a contract that was airtight and watertight and could probably be used to transport plutonium. His agent was a shark. QV had no choice but to pay that one out, no matter how much they didn’t like it.
The other guy’s agent just wasn’t as good. There were loopholes. There were trapdoors. Kevin had a copy of the contract in front of him while the agent argued with the leaders of his team, and he absently drew circles and squares and tiny axes dripping with blood all around the offending passages. The guy was screwed. Plain and simple. What a shame.
He looked up from his pages every once in a while to watch the guy, sitting next to his agent at the far end of the table. Before too long, Rydell-Daniel Thomas Rydell by the contract-was staring blankly out the window, like his agent had probably told him to do. Kevin didn’t know why the agent had let him come along at all. To humanize the situation? This was a multi-billion-dollar loss for QV. Humanity had nothing to do with anything.
Apparently Rydell had covered enough defeats in sporting events to recognize a total loss when he was in the middle of one. Kevin had to approve of the way he was taking it. Dignity intact, at least.
He also approved of Rydell’s cheekbones, and his eyes, and the way he wore his suit, but that was neither here nor there and Kevin was really supposed to be learning about screwing a guy out of his contract, not thinking about any other form of screwing whatsoever. Not on the company’s time.
But company time ended at six, and the wrap-up meeting for the team only lasted an hour or two before Peterson and Jeffers decided they wanted to enjoy New York a little bit while they were there and let everyone go. Kevin went downstairs to hail a cab and realized there was a bar right across the street. Why go looking when God decided to throw drinks right in front of him?
He sat at the bar and ordered a vodka tonic, and only when the occupant of the stool next to him snapped “You people drink? Don’t you have to go back to your coffins and rest up for tomorrow night?” did he realize that if he was willing to hit up the very nearest bar instead of walking, other people might as well. Especially people who had had very bad days.
“We didn’t bring the coffins with us from California, actually,” he replied, smiling politely. “Cross-country shipping rates are a bitch.”
“Don’t try to be funny,” Rydell muttered, glaring over his own drink. “I’m the funny one here. You’re a lawyer. Lawyers aren’t allowed to be funny.”
“That an official rule?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, like a law?”
“Jack,” Rydell said, turning to the bartender, “do not serve this man.”
“Can’t throw people out for being lawyers, Dan,” Jack said with a shrug.
“I think that’s a policy that should be changed.” Rydell--Dan; Kevin thought that worked for the guy and promptly borrowed it for his own mental use--sighed and glared some more. “Destroying my pride and self-respect up there wasn’t enough, you have to ruin my drink now?”
“I didn’t destroy anything,” Kevin said, sipping his own drink. “I just sat there.”
“I noticed that. Why don’t they let you talk?”
“I’m old enough and smart enough for them to hire me, yet too young and stupid to be permitted to do anything.”
“A paradox for the ages.” Dan stabbed his stirrer hard into his drink. “Actually, you look like you’re about fifteen, so maybe not so much of a paradox.”
“Age is a social construct.”
“No, age is how many years you’ve been alive.”
“Okay,” Kevin said, warming up to the challenge, “but the idea that there are certain ages that matter more than others, that’s socially constructed. Totally arbitrary.”
“You mean like the drinking age? Are you even allowed to have that martini?”
“I have a law degree from Stanford. Pretty hard to pull that off before you turn 21.”
“Oh, well, if we’re degree-dropping--and that wasn’t quite casual, by the way, you’re going to need to be at least fifteen and three-quarters before you can pull if off with any flair--then may I publicly declare that I proudly represent Dartmouth and thus the Ivy League, a little thing you might have heard of but apparently couldn’t get admitted to.”
Kevin blinked. “Okay, first of all, that was amazing sentence structure. Second of all, how many drinks have you had?”
“Thanks, I’m a professional writer.” Dan smiled, a little sheepishly, and Kevin’s bloodstream did a complicated series of dance moves with his hormones, drink, and common sense. “And probably at least one too many.”
Kevin glanced around the bar. “Have you eaten?”
“Not since lunch.”
“There’s a table free,” Kevin said, slightly stunned by his own audacity. “You want to grab some dinner?”
“And talk about age as an arbitrary social construct?”
Kevin shrugged and stood up, smoothing his jacket in a careful motion that only worked with really expensive suits and that he’d practiced an embarrassing number of times to get right.
“We can talk about all kinds of things.”
***
Dan laughed and shook his head, raising his empty glass in a vague gesture of a toast. "Confusion to the Republicans."
"If my sister's going to be their spokesperson, confusion is guaranteed." Kevin grinned and pushed his plate away, glancing down at his watch. "Wow, it got late all of a sudden."
"Past your bedtime?"
"No." Kevin made a face at him. "I just, you know, have to get up and work in the morning."
"Ah." Dan nodded solemnly. "A problem I no longer have."
Kevin winced. "Sorry."
"Nah. Forget it." Dan shrugged. "Under the bridge. I was in a rut anyway. Time for a change."
"I'm sure something good will come along."
Dan glanced at him and smiled, an oddly sad twist to the expression. "God, you're really drunk, Kevin."
"No I'm not." He shook his head and sat up a little straighter. "I'm not."
"Okay." Dan was still smiling, still watching. "But you need to call it a night?"
"I didn't say that."
"Yeah, you did, actually."
"Fine, but I didn't mean it."
"What did you mean, then, Kevin Walker?"
"I meant..." He frowned and wished he had another drink, even though that would probably be a really bad idea, probably lead to him doing something stupid or embarrassing, even more so than he was possibly about to do anyway. "I meant that we didn't talk about arbitrary socially constructed ages."
"You had something else to say about that?" Dan raised an eyebrow and reached for the glass of water still sitting on the table.
"Age of consent," Kevin blurted, looking across the table as intensely and meaningfully as he could. "That's...that's another one that's socially constructed."
Dan nodded slowly. "Okay."
"And one that I passed a long, long...really long time ago."
Dan laughed, low and soft and hinting at something that made Kevin's stomach twist. "You don't do this very often, do you, Kevin?"
"I know what I'm doing, if that's what you mean."
"Don't get defensive." Dan was still smiling and watching, and Kevin thought that if Dan didn't stop that and do something, Kevin was going to go nuts. "I'm just asking."
Kevin shrugged, lifting his chin. "And I'm just saying. I know what I'm doing. And I have a really nice hotel room."
Dan stared at him for a long time, and Kevin swallowed hard, thinking that maybe he'd misjudged, gone too far, pushed too hard. Fucked it up again. Made another mistake. "Sorry," he muttered, looking down at his plate. "I'm--"
"What hotel?"
Kevin looked up. Dan's gaze was steady now, all amusement and uncertainty gone. "What hotel, Kevin?"
"I'll...um." Kevin fumbled in his pocket for his wallet, grabbing bills at random to leave on the table. He didn't care about overtipping, right now. Didn't give a fuck about that. "I'll get a cab."
***
As soon as they got inside the hotel room Kevin muscled Dan back up against the wall, sliding his hands up to grip Dan's biceps and kissing him hard. Dan made a low sound against Kevin's mouth, too close to laughter for Kevin to stand, and he bit at Dan's lip, satisfaction burning through the alcoholic haze when Dan's almost-laugh turned to a gasp of surprise.
"Slow down, Kevin," Dan said, tearing away from the kiss, twisting his arms and easily breaking Kevin's grip. "Hey. Just slow down, okay?"
"C'mon." Kevin lunged in again, fixing his mouth below Dan's ear, kissing and sucking at the delicate skin. "Told you, I know what I'm doing."
"I don't doubt it," Dan said, catching Kevin's wrists and pushing him back a little. "I'd just like this to last more than ten minutes."
"Are you making fun of me?" He'd definitely had too much to drink. Absolutely. This was a really fucking stupid idea, and this guy had just brought him back here to laugh at him, he'd misread all the signs, and... "If you're making fun of me, you can just go, okay?"
Dan shook his head, his thumbs sliding slowly and firmly over Kevin's wrists. "I'm not making fun of you, Kevin."
"Yeah, well, then what are you doing?" Kevin pulled his arms away, stepping back and running one hand through his hair. "What are you doing if you don't want to..."
"I didn't say I didn't want to." Dan stepped forward, undoing the gap between them, not reaching for Kevin again but holding his gaze. "I just said slow down."
"Slow down," Kevin echoed.
"Yeah." Dan nodded and stepped closer still, tilting his head a little toward the bed. "That's all I'm saying, Kevin. Take it slow."
Kevin swallowed, glancing from Dan to the bed and back. Dan reached up and brushed the back of his fingers across Kevin's cheek.
"We can try slow," Kevin said. "Yeah."
Dan leaned in and kissed him then, hands settling warm and solid on Kevin's shoulders, and Kevin could only hope that slow would be possible with his heart beating so fast.
***
Kevin woke up in the morning with his cheek pressed against a spit-wet pillow, the sheets twisted around his waist and a distinct chilliness to the sheets as he rolled over that told him nobody else was in the bed.
Figures, he thought blearily, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes with one hand, the other one scrubbing irritably against the clammy dampness on his cheek. Not like it should be a big surprise...
"Coffee?"
He jumped, startled, looking up to see Dan sitting on the edge of the dresser, fully dressed and sipping from one of the hotel mugs.
"Sure," Kevin mumbled, tugging the sheet up higher. A little late for that, Walker, he thought, but pushing it down again would look even stranger. "You're still here."
Dan raised an eyebrow at him and slid down off the dresser, stepping across and handing him the other mug. "You didn't think I would be?"
"No real reason for you to be, is there?" He winced at the bitterness in his tone, trying to hide behind the mug as he took a sip.
Dan frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching him. "A lot of guys take off on you in the morning, Kevin?"
He shrugged, focusing on the coffee, which was watery and thin and tasted shitty as only hotel-room instant coffee could. "Doesn't matter."
"Yeah." Dan took a swallow of his own coffee, glancing around the room. "You probably need to get showered and get to your thing, huh?"
Kevin squinted at the clock and groaned. "Yeah. Lots of other Quo Vadimus employees who need their lives ruined."
"You're not ruining anything," Dan said, reaching over and patting Kevin's knee, the gesture sexless and actually weirdly paternal, and Kevin flinched away because he couldn't deal with that. "I think we can safely blame all that on Traeger."
"He doesn't give a shit if you blame him or not."
"Believe me, I know." Dan sighed and finished his coffee, looking at the clock as well. "I guess I'll get going, then. Get out of your way."
"It was, um. Nice. To meet you." Kevin winced as soon as the words were out, but Dan smiled.
"Wasn't nice to meet you, but I enjoyed spending some time with you, Kevin. If you get the difference."
"I do. Yeah." Kevin set his mug on the bedside table. "So."
"So." Dan frowned and glanced at him. "Can I offer a couple points of advice?"
Kevin stiffened, the weird paternal vibe getting weirder, and why couldn't he just have a normal one-night stand that felt good and left him alone and a little achy in the morning and didn't have to carry any goddamn life lessons along with it? "Do you have to?"
"No." Dan shook his head and stood up, carrying the mug back over to the dresser and setting it carefully next to the coffee maker. "I don't."
"Okay, that was a shitty thing for me to say." Maybe he could win points back if he owned up to it. "Yeah, you can give advice."
"Two things." Dan tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the dresser. "Always stick around and say goodbye in the morning. It's the menschy thing to do."
Kevin nodded slightly. "And?"
Dan ran his thumb along the edge of the dresser, frowning down at the grain of the wood. "Don't compromise yourself for your career." He smiled suddenly, a humorless twist of his mouth that looked nothing like his television grin or the crooked, sweet look he'd had when they were laughing together the night before. "And especially not for someone else's career."
"That's three," Kevin said, his throat suddenly dry.
"Two and a half." Dan shrugged and stood up. "Anyway. Just some stuff to keep in mind, if you believe I've learned anything from going around the block once or twice."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Get a cab back to my apartment. Stop somewhere for some decent coffee." Dan smiled slightly and moved toward the door.
"And in the grander sense?"
Dan shook his head. "I believe in just taking it as it comes."
"Hell of a way to live."
"Hasn't worked out too badly so far." Dan held up his hand before Kevin could point out the irony of that statement. "And let's leave me the comfort of my illusions."
Kevin smiled and held up his own hands in surrender. "Good luck, Dan."
"You too, Kevin."
***
In retrospect, it's...well, Kevin doesn't really care for retrospect. It's an uncomfortable thing if he thinks about it, so he doesn't think about it, and that works out pretty well ninety-nine percent of the time.
That final one percent, though, that's a pain in the ass. It tends to kick in around three AM, if he can't sleep. Or right after Chad leaves Kevin's place well before morning, or right after the door to Chad's place closes behind him with that too-solid click. Or...
Maybe it's a little more than one percent, lately.
"I'm not compromising anything," Kevin informs Dan on ESPN every night as he flips through the channels. "I know what I'm doing."
That rings a little familiar too, and a little hollow, so he doesn't think about that either. He's changed a lot since back then. He's not a kid anymore. Been around the block and learned his own lessons. All he's doing is...taking things as they come. Absolutely.
He switches the TV off and goes to bed, clinging to the comfort of his illusions.