for the fic prompt any trans Andrew thoughts? Or trans Neil or trans andreil lol dealers choice
DID SOMEONE SAY TRANSDREIL!?
But I would like to raise you... trans!Kevin. Because it has been STUCK in my HEAD for MONTHS now.
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The knock on the door was heavy but sluggish - more of a crash or a thump than a knock at all. At first, David thought that it was some dumb kid being a jackass (even 5 star hotels had shitty guests), but then it came again. And again. And again.
Then, as David sighed and begrudgingly rolled off his bed to go to the door, he heard a thin, rough voice call through it: "Please... I don't know where else to go..."
David picked up his pace. He did not know what he expected when he jerked the door open, but the teenager standing there was not it - especially not in the state that they were in.
"What the actual fuck, Kaitlyn?
Kaitlyn Day, daughter of world-famous violinist Kayleigh Day and then adopted by Kayleigh's close friend Tetsuji Moriyama in the wake of her mother's death. David had known her for most of her life, albeit from a distance. He had been close with Kayleigh when they'd been younger, and although they'd had something of a falling out shortly before she became pregnant with Kaitlyn they had stayed in touch enough for him to have developed at relationship of sorts with her daughter.
Kaitlyn flinched away from him, actually stumbling backwards quickly enough that her shoulders hit the opposite wall.
"Shit," David cursed, stopping himself from rushing forward. Instead he lifted his hands in a steady, placating gesture and lowered his voice. "Fuck. I'm sorry kid. Don't worry I'm louder than I am mean, you know that. Come on." He stepped back into the room and held the door open for her, doing his best not to stare at the shadows under her eyes or the blood at the corner of her mouth, the bruises starting to form. David Wymack had seen his fair share bruised and battered kids, though, so maybe that was why it was almost more off-putting that, in addition to the physical trauma clearly on display, from the way she held herself to the blood and the bruises, her hair had been chopped off. It hung in uneven chunks around her face, and as she passed by him into the room David saw that there were some patches that had been so close to her scalp the blades had nicked the skin.
Swallowing his questions for the moment, David glanced quickly down the hall -- one way and then the other -- before shutting and locking the door. When he turned back around, Kaitlyn was standing clear on the opposite side of the room, hugging herself and chewing her thumbnail down to the quick.
David gave himself another twenty seconds to get his shit together, then he took a deep breath and stepped forward.
"Kaitlyn, what the fuck happened?"
Even though his voice was calmer now, steady, she still flinched. David grit his teeth against the bubbling of anger that churned in the center of his body -- a vat of blistering, protective rage that was getting closer and closer to boiling over every time she shirked away from him. Perhaps he did not know Kaitlyn as well as he might have if he and Kayleigh had been better to each other, if they hadn't fallen out in the way that they had, but he didn't have to be in the girl's inner circle to know that this... this timid thing before him was not her.
Kaitlyn Day was a fucking thunderstorm in human form. As captivating as she was terrifying, she was a musical prodigy that had been performing in huge, prestigious venues since she was three years old, first on the piano, then on violin, then flute, before stunning the world yet again when she opened her mouth and started to sing. International cross-genre acclaim was achieved when she was only fifteen, after she and her adoptive brother Riko diverted from classical music in a bold move to form a pop band.
She was an idol, with adoring fans on every continent.
She was also, David was remembering very suddenly and with a sharpness that hurt, an eighteen year old kid. She was a wildfire, but she was not invulnerable, and someone had hurt her.
"Kaitlyn," he said again, and he lowered his voice even further. He made himself as small as he could, sinking down to sit on the coffee table that filled out the small sitting area of the hotel suite.
Again, Kaitlyn's shoulders hitched up and her face turned, her brown condensing into a sharp v of discontent. When David opened his mouth to speak again, though, to plea with her to tell him what the fuck was going on and to demand she point him in the direction of the sorry fuck who touched her, her eyes snapped up to his and he finally saw that it wasn't only fear, it wasn't only pain. Burning right beside whatever trauma she was wrestling with was a bright, effervescent rage.
He snapped his mouth shut.
"No," Kaitlyn said. Her voice was rough, raspy. She cleared her throat and held his gaze as she said more clearly, putting in visible effort to keep herself steady to lift up her chin when her instincts were still begging her to duck it.
"No," she said again. "Not... Not Kaitlyn."
David frowned, confused. "What?"
Then she said, "Kevin."
Still not understanding, David shook his head. "Kaitlyn, what? Who is Kevin?" A thought struck him and he had to curl his hands into fists on top of his thighs to keep from standing. "Is he who did this? Point me in his direction, Kaitlyn, and I swear I--"
"No!" This time, her voice cracked, and there was a desperation in her tone that had David pulling back. Her eyes were wide, every muscle in her body taut. She swallowed thickly around the words he could see her trying to say. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, then she grit her teeth and growled, "No. Me. I'm not Kaitlyn. I am Kevin. Kevin."
Tears, a phenomenon that David had never before witnessed with Kaitlyn and had only ever seen once from her mother, welled suddenly in the girls eyes. Her face was flushed, tinged pink around the hurts. With her hair a chopped mess and her eye visibly beginning to well, the tears added a raw sort of wildness that was so far apart from the rigid control Kaitlyn usually adhered to with zealous enthusiasm that he fleetingly wondered if he was instead talking to a different girl entirely. A long-lost twin.
He shook his head, or at least he went to -- but he aborted the gesture mid-motion as the inkling of understanding tugged at him. He studied her, letting her words turn the lights on one at a time until the pieces finished falling into place.
Then he said, "Kevin." A question, a confirmation.
Jade fire eyes held his own and there was so much weight in that single stare.
After a long, tense moment where David didn't think either of them so much as breathed, the bearer of those eyes gave a single slow nod.
David took in a slow breath and nodded as well. "Alright. Okay. That's... good. Kevin." Slowly, so Kevin didn't think David's motive was violence, David pushed himself to his feet and approached. He lifted one hand and reached out. When the kid didn't flinch away, David rested it on his shoulder.
"Kevin," David said again, and because he was still holding the boy's gaze he saw the moment when Kevin's resolve shattered. The tears he had been battling back broke the dam. His shoulders slumped. His knees trembled. When he stumbled, David was there to catch him and he pulled him easily into his arms. He didn't pretend not to hear the sobs that came next, absorbed by his chest the same way the tears made their new home in the fabric of his shirt.
No, instead he wrapped his arms around him, around Kevin. He rested one hand on the back of his neck and squeezed gently and he said, "Hey, it's alright. I've got you, son. It's alright. I've got you. I'm here."
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