|
For Oshun, who wanted AJ/Kevin. Somehow, Kevin always knew when he was tempted. AJ didn't question the pyschic powers that led Kevin to his side, but he was grateful for them, grateful especially in cities that were not L.A., where his sponser couldn't come at a moment's notice. Kevin didn't make it easier, didn't make the hunger go away--AJ had come to realize that nothing would do that, and had slowly learned to live with it--but he strengthened AJ's resolve, lent him steel. He sat across from him on the bus, the tumbler of water that AJ had been trying by sheer mental will to turn into vodka between them, and in his eyes AJ read so many things. "You're dead to me." Those words, from that man, could have destroyed him, had he not already destroyed himself. Instead, they drove him to admit his problems, to get help, and in the end they were only words, and Kevin was there at his side, offering love and support and a shoulder to lean on. At first, AJ talked and talked, poured out his bile and desires, and pooled them on the table for Kevin to pick at, but Kevin never picked. He should have known that--whenever they were sick, really sick not just sniffling and stir crazy, Kevin looked after them without comment. Even Sweet D would balk eventually, but Kevin rolled his sleeves up and waded in, and AJ loved his mother more than any woman on earth but sometimes he wished he'd gone to Kevin for help instead, before he realized that wishing for the past to change was hopeless, and all that he could do was ask forgiveness. It wasn't until his second bout with AA, when he buckled down to work, that someone explained to him the great secret: forgiveness could never be earned, only offered. Kevin offered it up in spades, and just as AJ knew if he drank again Kevin would disappear, he knew that when he stopped, and pulled himself together, Kevin would help with the pulling. Whenever the urge was mastered, when he picked up the tumbler of water and poured it down the sink, he'd turn to Kevin, to speak, but Kevin always got there first. "Thank you." He said it every time, as though it wasn't AJ who needed to do the thanking, as though his presence were a foregone conclusion. But then, he was Kevin, so perhaps it was.
|