Title: "À la recherche"
Characters: Kilgore Trout (future Davin) Andrews & his namesake, Uncle Davin Andrews.
Requested by: No one! I just felt the need to get this out.
Prompt: "quaking need"
Summary: Confessions, emotions, sadness.
Rating: PG-13ish. Nothing major; it's mostly just depressing.
For: my 100(ish) prompts.

Kilgore's sneakers squeaked loudly as he wandered out of the rain, letting the wet plastic hit the linoleum and slide. None of the first few nurses he saw were familiar, and he didn't mind. By now, he didn't need to stop and ask them where Uncle Davin's room was. Luckily, the receptionist ignored him. En route to the elevator, he walked by two doctors coming together, a nurse with a wheelchair-ridden patient (dressed in street clothes, which meant that the lucky guy got out of here today), a small throng of medical students or interns or whatever they were following diminutive Doctor Nakamura (the one who'd been in and out of Uncle Davin's room, explaining the worsening of his condition), and no one said anything. Maybe it was just that they were used to Kilgore being here, after all this time. A soaking wet Kilgore probably fell outside of what they'd grown accustomed to, but they all did the good thing and avoided looking at or talking to him. Shuffling purposefully through the crowd, Kilgore tried to keep his eyes down and kept his hands wrapped around the strap of his messenger bag. Only when he got to the elevators and saw one closing did he lose the composure he'd picked up, tried to keep up. The noise of his sneakers squealed like tires and he nearly felt his ankle twist as he dashed to meet the closing doors. Sharing the space with him was some woman — she looked younger than Mom and Dad, but older than Virginia, and as she tucked a piece of honey-colored hair behind her ear, she gave him an inquisitive look over her wire-frame glasses. "Get caught outside?" she asked, smiling. "I walked here," he informed her. From memory, he pushed the button for the fifth floor. She was going to the third. "Whoever you're seeing must be important." Kilgore nodded, but said no more — not that it particularly mattered. Whatever she was doing here, she had the good sense to know when someone wanted their personal space. As the elevator slowed for her floor, she sent another smile his way and wished him good luck. He didn't need luck. He needed … well. Maybe he didn't know what he needed, but it definitely included his uncle not to be in the hospital, dying. Why couldn't it have been someone else's uncle who was going to die? Wrinkling his nose and trying not to grind his teeth together, Kilgore stepped out of the elevator, eyes on the linoleum, feet headed right for Room 517. When he got there, Uncle Davin was reading Proust — in the original French, even, not that Sodome et Gomorrhe really needed to be translated for the reference to be tenable. It was even horrifyingly appropriate for what prompted him out of the house, down the blocks of Ithaca streets that made up the just-over-two miles between home and the hospital. As he lingered near the doorway, still looking at the floor, he teetered on his elongating limbs and wondered if he had enough quarters to get on the pay phone and call Sid for a ride home. He'd managed getting here, but his bones had already hurt from the growth spurt he was going through and Kilgore was sure that walking back home in the rain was pretty well impossible. After hesitating long enough, he forced himself to look up and loudly cleared his throat. Uncle Davin looked away from his book and smiled. Kilgore liked seeing that smile — or at least, he always had. It sort of lost its luster when the IV and various other medical instruments got factored into things. "Hey, kiddo. …Did you fall in the creek getting over here?" "Sid was busy, and Gin's with her boyfriend, and Anaïs said she didn't feel like driving with me," Kilgore explained, clenching his fingers around the strap of his bag. "So I walked. …Can I come in?" As soon as Uncle Davin nodded, Kilgore nearly tripped over his own feet getting into the room and closed the door behind him. It wasn't that he didn't trust the doctors and nurses; he just didn't trust Dad or someone not to come and show up when Kilgore didn't need them here. Already, he felt ill, and the subject hadn't even come up yet. They'd barely talked. His heart was pounding in his chest so loudly that Uncle Davin had to hear it too, and even if that weren't the case, he was sure that he'd throw up before too long, and if he didn't do that, he'd probably make his palms start bleeding from pressing his nails into them too hard, and breathing had stopped coming to him easily, and his eyes felt hot and wet, and… "Kilgore." Uncle Davin said his name firmly, but not harshly; unlike Mom, Uncle Davin could manage to say his name tenderly. But it wasn't that that made Kilgore look up from the floor and start breathing right again. Uncle Davin's hand was on his shoulder. "What's wrong, kiddo?" There were a lot of possible answers to that. None of the real ones came up. "…You shouldn't be out of bed?" Kilgore reminded him timidly. How did he not hear the IV clattering when Uncle Davin moved over here? "Doctor Nakamura was going somewhere else when I ran into him on the way up, but if one of the nurses… I mean, they'd have to tell him, right? And he wouldn't like it, and—" "Me? I'm as fine as I'm going to be while I'm on the way out." Nothing about Uncle Davin's face or tone was lying, and none of his usual wit or levity was coming through. "They're making me comfortable; that's all I can ask for. You, on the other hand? You, I'm worried about." "You don't need to, I mean, I — it's nothing, really, I'm just being stupid—" Uncle Davin's hand tightened on Kilgore's shoulder briefly, but not uncomfortably. "You came down here in the rain instead of waiting for someone to drive you. Whatever it is, it's important." Even though he nodded in agreement with this assessment, Kilgore gave his uncle what he liked to think was a Very Significant And Intimidating Look. It probably wasn't anywhere close to that, but at least Uncle Davin played along. He backed up towards his bed, pulling the IV and bringing Kilgore along by the shoulder; before he sat back on the hospital mattress, he gently coaxed Kilgore down into the plastic chair that any number of nurses and visitors had used before him. Sitting was probably supposed to be comforting, but it wasn't. All the chair really made him think about was the arguments he'd had to listen to while sitting in it — Dad failing to convince Uncle Davin to take part of his liver; Mom, Dad, and Davin arguing over whether or not Kilgore really needed to watch his uncle die; Mom and Dad hissing at each other while Uncle Davin slept, trying not to wake him… After a decent length of silence had passed between them, Uncle Davin finally broke it for Kilgore: "So… whatever it is, you want to talk about it without saying it," he commented pensively. Kilgore nodded, and he went on, "Alright. We'll piece it up together then, how's that?" Another nod. "Then let's start with the most obvious one, aside from Jadis and Maugrim, I mean: school?" Kilgore managed a small smile at Uncle Davin's names for his parents, but it morphed into a wrinkled nose fairly quickly. "It's July," he pointed out. Uncle Davin shrugged. "So it is, but you never know. I'm betting Sid and Anaïs are pretty flustered with starting college in September, and you're going off to high school… It'd be natural to dread it. I did. Your dad won't admit it, but he did too." "I'm not dreading it," Kilgore told his uncle, earnest in his dispiritedness. "I just — I already know it's going to suck. I've had enough time to prepare for that, I guess." "What makes you so sure about that?" Looking away from his uncle, Kilgore blinked several times; anything he could do to stop tearing up was fine by him. "Well, it's not like there's any way it's going to get better," he said. Whether he was being downtrodden or matter-of-fact was something he'd lost track of. "I mean… sure, I'm going to that family legacy prep school thing now, but… it's not like it's going to be any different? I can't see how it's going to be any different, anyway. …It's just going to be a new group of people to hate me." And he'd be living with Grandpa James and Grandma Louise, who were both pretty open about the fact that he was their least favorite among their grandchildren. And Sid was going to be off at Columbia, five hours and several train transfers away in New York City, probably making tons of friends and winning over his professors just by showing up — because, really, who in their right mind didn't love Sid? And Uncle Davin was, in all likelihood, going to be dead. And Kilgore would be alone, listening to Sarah, Fiona, Alanis, Joni, Hole, The Carpenters, and Sonic Youth, reading whatever Mom told him to read when she called, wishing that maybe someone would want to be his friend. Feeling one of Uncle Davin's hands on his own, Kilgore looked up again. "You're going to do fine, Kilgore," he said, so sure of it that Kilgore almost believed it. "Don't go ruling the whole thing out yet. Just wait." Kilgore wanted to believe that. He'd long outgrown his habit of taking everything that Uncle Davin told him on complete, unquestioning faith, but it was asking too much of him not to want to believe what his uncle told him. After all, what real adult figures did he have? His parents, both of whom had earned the nicknames that Uncle Davin had given them. James and Louise, neither of whom thought Kilgore was worth anything positive. Marlin and Clara, Dad and Davin's parents, who were… better than James and Lousie, but could still be difficult to reach, sometimes. Mom's brother, Alex, who was off in California or Michigan or something, who was a poet and had some friend called Jason, and who Kilgore didn't really know at all, excepting that he suffered from the same thing Kilgore did, in a manner of speaking. And Uncle Davin, who actually took the time to treat him like a person, even if he wasn't always there. …It was just too hard to believe that when there wasn't any evidence for it. Anyone who'd been his friend before had been using him, or had just moved on when it became undeniably obvious that he was an incurable nerd. Kilgore must have gone too silent for too long, because Uncle Davin's hand squeezed his. "Come on, kiddo. What's giving that overworked brain of yours grief?" Before he could even consider other options, Kilgore blurted, "I'm gay." To him, it sounded as though he was shouting this from the rooftops; in reality, the sound was quiet, and not much unlike choking. And then it was out there, and there wasn't any taking it back. Uncle Davin squeezed Kilgore's hand again, and this time, Kilgore returned the gesture, practically cleaving to his uncle. While his grip fell short of any strength expectations, Kilgore still felt his arm shaking, which got his shoulder trembling right in time with it. He'd said it. He'd actually managed to say it — but now it was out there, and something bad was bound to happen, and… "Does anybody else know yet?" Uncle Davin asked solemnly. Eyes down, Kilgore tried to keep his tone clinical. "Some jocks at school have called me 'faggot' before, but… I don't know, I don't think they really know, they're just giving me Hell because I'm not them." "You know that's not what I meant, Kilgore." Hearing that felt like having a gold-coated, fifty-pound lead brick dropping into his stomach. "What about the family?" Frantically, Kilgore swallowed and shook his head. "I can't tell them—" "What about Sid?" "He's moving to the City, soon, and he has friends, and he'll have classes — he has other things to worry about. And I just — I can't tell him." More than even the fact that Sid would be busy, coming clean would have required admitting that Kilgore had knowingly and willfully looked his brother in the eyes and lied to him. Kilgore had pretended to be straight and interested in a girl at school; he was pretty much stuck keeping up that lie now. Uncle Davin, thankfully, skipped asking about Ginny and Anaïs. There wasn't any reason to ask why Kilgore hadn't told them; Ginny would have run and told Mom, and Anaïs would have only given Kilgore Hell over it. "So… what do they think?" "I don't know… probably that I'm straight and just can't get a girlfriend because no one in their right mind's ever going to be interested. Female or otherwise." "You're thirteen, Kilgore; give it time. It feels like it, but trust me, your life's not over yet." A sigh, and then a jerk on Kilgore's hand that made him look right up and meet his uncle's eyes. While Uncle Davin had that eye contact, he added on, "Kilgore… I know that you know that I wouldn't rat you out unless you were really in trouble. So, answer this honestly: are you only telling me this because I'm dying?" Kilgore's stomach twisted uncomfortably and, slowly but surely, the tears he'd held back started coming out. "No, it's not, I just — it isn't, I — they already think I'm broken, I — I can't give them another reason, and I just, I…" Kilgore didn't trail off so much as cut himself off with a sob. The tears came in greater number, and echoes of the first sob started coming from him. He hardly noticed Uncle Davin shuffling around, but as soon as he felt his Uncle's arms around his shoulders, he clung to the man, buried his face in Uncle Davin's neck, and sobbed. Gently petting Kilgore's hair, Uncle Davin told him, "It's okay, kiddo; you're not broken. I love you. Even when I'm gone, that's not going to change." Weakly, Kilgore managed to whisper, "I'm not ready for you to go." Uncle Davin couldn't die. Kilgore needed him. Thinking about how much he needed him just made Kilgore cling to his uncle harder. "Want to know a secret, kiddo?" Delicately, Uncle Davin kissed his temple. "I'm not ready either."