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darkblueboxs · 4 years

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Best Laid Plans

For #aftgsummer

Prompt: Day trip

Pairing: Kandreil

Read here or on AO3

Kevin’s plan for the last day of summer is bullet-proof: he has a huge wall calendar, a copy of his class schedule, a note of every Exy match and banquet date, a print-out of essay deadlines and exam dates, and enough pens and sticky notes to stock a stationary shop. All he has to do is put it all together.

Unfortunately, he forgot to factor his partners into the equation.

He is laying out his highlighters by order of preference when the sound of Neil’s head hitting his desk echoes across the room. Kevin doesn’t even bother with a cursory upwards glance; he can imagine well enough the image of despondency that would meet him if he did.

“Is all of second year going to be like this?” Neil groans into his stack of textbooks.

“No,” Kevin answers, at the same time that Andrew says, “Yes.”

“It’s a matter of planning,” Kevin continues, sending Andrew an arch look. “As long as you make a schedule, stick to it, plan out your work periods and your rest times and stick to a regular sleep pattern-” Neil huffs sceptically, but Kevin continues as though he didn’t hear, “You’ll find it perfectly manageable.”

Neil sits up to cast a doubtful look in Andrew’s direction. Andrew simply shrugs. “It’ll work out.”

“You can’t just say that about everything.” Kevin turns back to his planner. He doesn’t realise Andrew has moved from the sofa until he feels the brush of his breath on the back of his neck. Bracing his arm on the back of Kevin’s chair, Andrew leans over him to inspect Kevin’s progress.

“You have every minute of your every day planned from now until Christmas,” he observes flatly. Curiosity piqued, Neil joins him on Kevin’s other side.

“Wow,” he says as he studies the neat blocks of colour denoting Kevin’s activities. “I’m amazed you didn’t plot your bathroom breaks onto this, too.”

“I don’t need a planner to tell me when to take a shit,” he says irritably.

“What about me and Andrew? Do we get our own highlighter colour?” Neil leans forwards, pretending to read from a particular quadrant. “Sunday, seven am, get boned.”

“You two can ‘bone’ all you want at seven am on a Sunday, I’ll be enjoying my one lie-in of the week, thank you.”

Tired of their bickering, Andrew reaches between them to flip Kevin’s planner shut.

“Hey!”

“We’re going for a drive,” Andrew announces. He doesn’t wait for Neil or Kevin’s response, but leads the way with the typical certainty that they will follow.

Kevin and Neil flick a look at each other. The three of them have come as close to telepathy as anyone ever will, and this is the look that says, is this worth fighting him over?

The answer is, as always, a resounding no.

After Neil wins the scuffle for the front seat, Kevin settles into the middle back seat, arms crossed. Neil flicks a triumphant smirk over his shoulder, which Kevin replies to with a scowl. The Maserati’s engine purrs through the leather as Andrew throws it into gear. Kevin lets his head fall back as they pull onto the motorway, mentally mapping out and re-arranging his plans for the day onto the blank fabric of the ceiling. There’s a rustle as Neil finds the packet of peanuts Kevin stashed in the glove compartment, and a moment later one bounces off his forehead.

“Andrew,” Kevin complains.

Andrew sighs heavily through his nose. “Children.”

Neil cackles, and Kevin reaches around the seat to throttle him, and Andrew threatens to pull over and stuff them both in the boot, bringing the scuffle to an end. At some point during their distraction he pulled off from the road that would take them to downtown Columbia, electing instead to loop around the metropolis.

“Where the hell are we going, Andrew?” Kevin watches as buildings give way to long stretches of scrubland, bleached brown by weeks of sun. Midday is approaching, and soon a stuffy car will be the last place any of them want to be trapped. Andrew shrugs and merges onto another road seemingly at random.

“I think I hitchhiked here once,” Neil muses.

“How? It’s so empty.” The road stretches out like an endless tar river ahead of them. Other traffic is sparse to non-existent; the idea of breaking down out here is daunting enough. Kevin can’t imagine trudging along the roadside in the summer heat, waiting for a truck to take pity on him, subject to the chaotic whims of the world. Kevin isn’t as dependant on company as he was when he left the nest, but still the endless stretches of emptiness scratch at the remaining agoraphobia in the back of his mind.

Suddenly, Andrew slams on the breaks, hard enough that the strap of Kevin’s seatbelt cuts off the flow of oxygen. Neil jolts forwards, saved from smacking his face off the dashboard by Andrew’s arm. The bag of peanuts is not so lucky, scattering over the front seats in a cascade of empty shells.

“Fuck,” Neil chokes out. Kevin reaches forward to grasp his shoulder, and Neil clamps his hand down over it, reassuring each other of their presence. They look to Andrew; the hand that was not thrown out to protect Neil is clamped, white-knuckled, on the wheel.

Their explanation stares at them from the other side of the windscreen, a tall, slender deer with large, brown eyes. Its ear twitches as it watches them, caught between fear and curiosity.

“Move,” Andrew says as though the animal can hear him. “Move, you idiot.”

Neil leans across him to tap the horn. Startled by the noise, the deer darts across the road and disappears amongst the trees. After flicking a glance over Neil, Andrew turns to pinch Kevin’s chin between his fingers, turning his head back and forth to inspect the damage. The seatbelt left a red line across his collarbone, which Kevin insists does not hurt. Andrew prods it with his forefinger, and when he receives no reaction, he nods. He cups Kevin’s cheek briefly before letting go, the closest Andrew comes to acts of reassurance.

“She came out of nowhere,” Neil says. Andrew hums in agreement. He taps his fingers against the wheel, but does not start the engine up again until Kevin’s breathing has returned to normal.

They end up weaving along Lake Murray, bursts of endless, glittering blue backing the rows of trees that flash past. Andrew’s speed is unaffected by their brush with the deer, but his eyes don’t stray from the road ahead, not even to take in the glowing vistas as they pass.

Andrew picks an exit at random, and they pull up near a small jetty. At the peak of summer it would be swarmed with fishers and families in campervans. As the season draws to the end, only a few stragglers remain, a mother watching her toddlers chase each other around the picnic tables while kayakers splash each other with their oars a little way out from the boathouse. The boathouse shares its building with a shop that sells snacks and children’s toys. Andrew swings past the plastic bats and balls to raid the slim freezer of its popsicles while Neil stares at a map marking hiking trails and beauty spots.

They sit on the end of the jetty, feet swinging over the edge while they devour their purchases. Kevin catches Neil using his soda as an ice-pack, and the ensuing squabble nearly ends with them tumbling into the lake. Andrew watches them through lidded eyes, popsicle dangling from his mouth as he leans back on his arms. Noticing the reddening patches spreading across the back of Andrew’s neck, Kevin sends Neil back to the shop with a nod, distracting Andrew from his absence by debating which bird species were responsible for the orchestra of chirps and calls echoing across the forest. Andrew scowls when Neil returns with a bottle of sunscreen, but after a lecture from Kevin and pleading eyes from Neil, he submits to having his arms and neck slathered with factor fifty.

Andrew finds a picnic bench in the shade to drape himself over while Neil drags Kevin along a walking trail that meanders along the ins and outs of the coastline, finishing at a sandy outlet that gives then a panoramic view of the lake. Kevin ruminates on geographical quirks and features of the area until Neil grows tired of Kevin’s musings and persuades him to abandon his socks and shoes on the white sand so they can wade along the shallow embankment. The sludgy sand of the lakebed gives way so easily underfoot that for a second Kevin fells as though he’s being sucked down into quicksand. He stumbles, knocking into Neil as he does so. Neil mistakes it for a challenge, and bumps him back. Kevin, having barely recovered his balance, loses it all over again. He reaches out for Neil’s arm in the vain hope of steadying himself, but succeeds only in pulling Neil over with him.

They crash into the water with identical shouts. When Kevin looks up, Neil is pushing his sodden bangs back from his eyes. Neil takes one look at his expression and bursts out laughing. Kevin reaches for Neil’s shirt, the idea of drowning him in the sapphire lake water growing in its appeal, but is distracted from his mission when Neil catches Kevin’s mouth with his instead.

They stay there a while, drenched clothes plastered to their skin as the cool water swirls and laps at them, kissing the salty-sweet taste of the lake from each other’s lips.

They stumble back to the picnic benches, where they find Andrew absorbed in watching birds flit back and forth between the bird feeders hanging overhead. He levels the dripping pair with a long look.

“You have a hickey,” he says to Neil at last.

“Jealous?” Neil responds. Andrew’s eyes flick to Kevin, as good a confirmation as any. Kevin’s lips twitch as he tilts his head to one side, making a show of looking Andrew over.

“He needs more sunscreen,” Kevin announces. Andrew rolls his eyes.

When Andrew is slathered up once again to Kevin and Neil’s satisfaction, Kevin rewards him with a soft kiss to his pulse-point, enjoying the way Andrew’s body shivers under the point of contact.

“You’re dripping everywhere,” Andrew says.

“You think I did this?” Kevin levels Neil with a pointed look. Neil shrugs the accusation off.

They find an empty stretch of sand to settle down on, leaving the sun to do the heavy work of drying them off. After a cursory glance to ensure they’re alone, Neil pulls his shirt over his head and lies it out on a rock, stretching out on the sand.

“Sun lotion,” Andrew reminds him smugly.

“Fuck you.” Neil yawns. Soon, he is fast asleep, head pillowed in his arms while the sun warms his shoulder blades.

Kevin slides his feet around in the sand, mesmerised by the patterns it makes as the grains shift and tumble around him. Andrew arches an eyebrow at him.

“I travelled a lot, back when I was… in the nest. Never to places like this, though. It was always major cities, sporting events, press ops. Even then, my every minute was filled with promotions and endorsements and matches and interviews. I never had time to see much of anything.” Kevin picks up a handful of sand, enjoys the way it sifts through his fingers. “It’s quiet.”

Andrew pushes up suddenly, stalking off back in the direction of the boat house. He comes back with – Kevin blinks – a plastic toy set in a net bag. Little shovels, a bucket, brightly coloured moulds for pressing shapes of crabs and starfish into the sand. He dumps the contents into Kevin’s lap save for a shovel.

“Sandcastles work best with damp sand,” he offers, before moving off to work on his own project. When Kevin looks up several minutes later, most of Neil’s torso is buried in sand.

He makes a sandcastle, then another, then stacks one on top of the other two, quietly proud when the structure holds.

Neil wakes up as Andrew is smoothing sand over his shoulders with the blunt side of the spade. He wriggles to dislodge the wet sludge before hurling a clump at Andrew’s head. Andrew rolls behind Kevin’s larger frame in time to avoid Neil’s attack, and Kevin glares at Neil until he raises his hands in surrender.

As the sun sinks, the sky smooths into a pool of pinks and oranges, and the lake winks the colours back up to the heavens. They lean against each other and watch, side-by-side, while Andrew points out osprey and egrets as they flit from one end of the horizon to the other.

As the sun falls behind the line of the trees, Kevin realises with a start that the day is over, and he hasn’t done any of the things he planned to do with it. Then, he realises with a slow, creeping kind of irritation that quickly gives way to something warm and painfully affectionate, that this was Andrew’s plan all along.

“Andrew,” Kevin says. Andrew hums, but does not lift his head from its resting place on Kevin’s shoulder.

The words escape him, so Kevin doesn’t try to find them. Andrew will understand; he always does, after all.

It’s going to be a great school year.

Thanks for reading!

#aftg summer #kandreil #aftg #tfc #all for the game #my fic

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