Chapter Text
The thing Kayn has with Ezreal is new and obvious. Ezreal's long hair isn't quite enough to cover the hickeys and bite marks on his neck, and Kayn doesn't seem to be bothered with hiding anything at all, walking around shirtless so everyone can see the nail-gouges down his back. And as if the sight of either of them wasn't enough, they're loud . Like they want the whole house to hear it when they go at each other.
Yone supposes he shouldn't be surprised by that. The energy that was previously put into petty squabbles is just going towards their near-nightly trysts now. He supposes he shouldn't complain, either.
…but he does worry about them.
It's stupid, and none of his business, except as their bandmate and producer and friend , he hopes, it totally is. Yone has yet to see them do anything… domestic. He's caught them with tongues down each other's throats a few times, and somehow, that's what they find embarrassing. It's absurd. Yone doesn't understand it. How can they fuck so loud at night that poor, polite K'sante is the one to knock on their door to get them to quiet down, and walk around bearing wounds like trophies, yet they can't seem to stomach something as simple as sitting too close to each other on movie nights?
Kayn and Ezreal are two powder kegs always ready to explode, set off best by each other. Maybe that's why. Maybe they're saving the rest of Heartsteel the secondhand embarrassment of how over-the-top their PDA would be. Maybe the sexual relationship is all they want from each other.
It's a bullshit line of thought. Yone's been around the block enough times to know what longing looks like, and whenever Kayn's not looking, Ezreal's wearing that expression like it'll never go out of style. So, he worries.
Then he worries even more when the nighttime noises abruptly stop.
It's more obvious that something's shifted drastically in Ezreal and Kayn's day-to-day interactions. They fight more, about dumber things, but the spats don't last as long as they used to. They break off awkward and tense, Ezreal glaring, Kayn avoiding eye contact altogether. K'sante is the first to gently ask if something happened between them, and when Kayn snaps that nothing's ever happened , Ezreal's jaw drops before he storms off to his room, eyes glossy and shoulders hiked up to his ears. It hurts to watch him hurt. Yone feels helpless as he watches the boy stomp up the stairs, and only drowns deeper in the feeling when he catches Kayn silently slipping out the door to the front porch, just as tense, just as upset. Kayn sits outside in the early winter chill for three hours, steadily working his way through a crushed pack of cigarettes. Yone keeps an eye on him through a sliver of curtain. When Kayn fumbles for his fourth cig, thumb failing over, and over, and over to strike a flame from his old Bic lighter, Yone gathers his wits and cracks the door open.
"Kayn," he calls softly. The boy only grunts, stiff from tension and cold on the porch steps. "You'll make yourself sick. Come inside."
Kayn grumbles unintelligibly, stuffing the unlit cig back into its box, box back into one jeans pocket, lighter into the other. He shuffles to his feet, brushing past Yone to push into the warm house. Yone catches him by the upper arm- "Kayn-" but Kayn only roughly shrugs him off and turns away, hiding his face.
"Don't want a lecture." His voice cracks, and Yone pretends it's from the smoke.
"I wasn't going to give you one," he says, as gently as he can, but he's not K'sante, he doesn't always know how. Doesn't know if delicacy is even what Kayn needs. Polite avoidance of whatever was happening between him and Ezreal didn't do anyone any good, evidently, and guilt whimpers and tugs at Yone's sleeves like an old, tired friend. Could he have stopped this? Is it worth it to even wonder? "I was only going to ask if there was- if-" It's hard . "Is there anything I can do for you?" Despite the moniker of "team mom," the nickname is more teasing than realistic. Emotional connection has never come easy- in all 40 years of his life, he's never really sought it out, and yet…
Kayn still doesn't look at him, and Yone wishes, more than anything, that he would.
"There's nothing you can do," Kayn mumbles. His hands are shoved into the pockets of his bomber jacket, and he trembles. Yone pretends it's from the cold. And then he thinks, maybe he shouldn't.
"I can listen," Yone says. Lets the offer hang in the space between them like the smell of smoke in Kayn's hair.
Kayn shifts from foot to foot. His head twitches like he wants to look back, but he doesn't. "There's nothing to say," he replies, halting, unsure.
Yone turns the decision over in his head before chancing a step closer. Kayn flinches, but stays put. He lays his hand on Kayn's arm again, and the boy doesn't move, just shivers, ducking his head. Small victories. "Are you sure, Kayn?"
Kayn takes a shuddering breath in, out, and whispers, "No." Then he's turning, cigarette smell flaring around them like his open jacket, folding himself small against Yone and wrapping his arms around his back, face to his chest, still hiding, still protecting himself, but now Yone is his shield and it's all Yone can do not to crumble to ash at the feeling that surges through him when he embraces Kayn in turn and the boy only whimpers and holds him tighter.
They stand quietly in the dark entrance to their home. There's activity in the kitchen, someone cooking dinner, the television in the living room is on and a pair of feet make their way across the hall upstairs. It all feels so far away. Yone's fingers slide through fuschia snarls as he murmurs soft placations against their crown. "I've got you," he says, and "It'll be alright," and "You can cry," when the breath against his chest begins to catch and stutter. Kayn doesn't cry, and they don't talk about anything more, but they sway in place, holding each other, for a long time.
When Kayn finally pulls away, Yone lets him. The mourning that swells in him for the loss of warmth is unexpected- he pushes it down, fighting against alarm. They walk together to the kitchen, and Yone makes sure Kayn has enough food on his plate before he slips up the stairs to eat alone in his room. Aphelios brings up a plate for both himself and Ezreal and doesn't return. The dinner table is only half as full as usual now, and Yone knows that Sett and K'sante are feeling that absence just as acutely. The pasta Sett made is good, but it tastes like nothing at all in Yone's dry mouth. Much as he doesn't want to be, his thoughts are still caught on that mourning feeling.
He realizes he doesn't remember the last time he hugged someone, much less like that . Like- he feels himself pale. No, not like that. Never like that.
…never?
He stares down at his plate still full of noodles and carefully sliced vegetables and doesn't want any of it. "I'm sorry," he says, sudden and mechanical, pushing up and away from the dinner table. "I don't have much of an appetite tonight." He flees before either of them can respond, and hides away in the pool house until well past midnight, where no one will come to ask him what he's running from.
When he finally returns to his bedroom and changes out of his clothes, near daybreak, they're still suffused with the smell of cheap cigarettes.