Archive of Our Own

It only really happens because there is absolutely nothing to do in Uganda.

Kevin Price learns that within two weeks.

That first week - it’s great. He drinks his body weight in coffee and gives himself heart palpitations for the trouble. He swears like a fucking sailor and each and every time feels a quiet kind of thrill shudder up his body because he could do that now even if he still felt in the very back of his mind like maybe he couldn’t. But he can and he does because there’s no rules that can bend him back now, there’s just him and the skull-thudding dullness of Uganda and the Mission Hut and the hot hot sun.

There’s also words to shape from Arnold’s over-active imagination, letters to streamline onto paper. Really, there’s a whole religion to invent. What a fucking weird concept, Kevin thinks. They came here with absolutely nothing, just the clothes on their backs and quickly stolen bags and they’re going to be leaving as prophets, Gods in their own right. It still feels mildly sacrilegious. That’s something he doubts he’ll ever shake, that feeling. 

He wonders what his parents would think of this, if he ever told them. He wonders if they’d be more surprised about the religion invention or the fact that it’s not his to run, that he’s just going along with someone else’s idea. Because he’s never been a follower before, not ever, and the experience of being one feels weird and wrong but also somehow right. Weight off his back. It feels the same way as a breeze in the humid heat of Northern Uganda, the same way as driftwood on a beach.

The main thing is – for the first time in his life, he can just be himself. He’s not having to shove himself into the careful cookie-cutter mould of Kevin Price, not having to be a boy who reads scripture before bed in the hopes that maybe that’ll make God overlook his dozen and one other shortcomings, not having to be somebody who puts every fraction of their self-worth in what other people think of him. (He still cares about that, of course, but it’s less about other people looking at him and going, hey, there’s Elder Price, he’s gonna be something incredible, and more, yeah, Kevin isn’t half bad.)

He can be himself. He can just be Kevin - mildly selfish, catty, argumentive Kevin - and he loves it. He hates that he loves it, too, because thinking of himself and breaking the rules again and again and again goes against everything he’s been brought up to be. But he doesn’t hate it enough to squeeze himself back into that mould. 

The first week is spent like that – discovering who he is without the backdrop of the church and the Mission and the Book of Mormon’s crisp white pages defining his every move and tilt of his smile and wave of his hand. He discovers that he likes his coffee black with one sugar whenever he can get it. He discovers that he hates ties and the way they stretch around his neck so he stops wearing them. That draws startled little gasps from the other Elders the first time they see him sans tie. He discovers that the moment he stops being frustrated at Arnold for not being quite-as-great as him that he actually fucking loves Arnold. He’s so weird but it matches Kevin’s weird in a way that shouldn’t make sense but it does. 

Then the first week fades away. They finish their negotiations with the Mission President; they can finish their mission, two years, and then that’s it. The thrill of swearing and coffee doesn’t fade but it certainly dulls. Quite suddenly he has nothing to do. There’s the chore chart and Uno, and that’s about it. He’s bored out of his skull; there are only so many times he can skim pebbles on the small pond by the mission hut or swing his head into the office to bother Elder McKinley, and he thinks he’s exhausted his license to get away with doing the latter. 

For a while, he debates picking up some kind of hobby but as it turns out there’s very little you can do in rural Uganda without requiring some sort of other resources or materials. He picks up sketching lazily for a handful of days, scribbling little doodles of interesting-looking birds on the backs of napkins. He’s terrible at it in a way he’s never allowed himself to be and being terrible at something still makes him feel skin-crawlingly anxious in a way he doubts he’ll ever be able shake so he drops it almost as soon as he picks it up. 

So then he thinks about knitting but that requires way way too much yarn so it’s out almost as soon as he thinks of it. As is any kind of sport - it’s too hot for it - and reading - they only have the Book of Mormon and now the Book of Arnold, Kevin guesses, but it’s not finished so it doesn’t count - and photography. The photography idea lasts for the longest amount of time – Elder Church picks up an old Polaroid camera from the market and Kevin pretty much demands it from him as part of his getting-a-hobby revelation but it turns out that he can’t really bring himself to care about photography.

He takes a few good snapshots. They wind up pinned to the chore board and someone - most likely Elder McKinley, he doesn’t know anyone else with a glitter gel pen - doodles little stars on them. He likes them, but they’re not amazing or incredible so that hobby dies too.

After his final venture in discovering a hobby (his standards are impossibly high, that’s his main issue - he wants to be good at something even before starting with it) he gives up. Boredom, he thinks, is probably penance for the whole going-off-and-starting-a-cult thing. Divine retribution or something. Whatever it is, it’s a better punishment than the hell dreams (the jury’s still out on if they’ll end up in eternal damnation as well) so for the time being being bored is fine. It really is.

The other Elders all seem content to be bored. He doesn’t get it. Apparently they’re just ‘keeping themselves busy’ but Kevin has no idea what they’re actually doing to stay busy because there is literally nothing to do.  

He asks Elder McKinley about it one day - the dealing-with-being-bored thing - and Elder McKinley had just shrugged at him and waved flippantly towards the door. “Get out and about, Elder Price!” he’d said, “You’re bored because you’re all cramped up in here. Stretch your legs a little. Speak to the locals.”

And Kevin had bitten his tongue because the last time he’d gotten out and about he’d – well. 

He’s not thinking about that. Not consciously, at the least. It slips into his mind subconsciously whenever he’s not busy - which is all the time. And it doesn’t fucking leave and sometimes it’s all he can think about it and that makes him feel sick sick and then that feeling doesn’t leave until the end of the day and it winds right into his sleep and -

This is why he needs a hobby. Or something to do.

So because of that he takes Elder McKinley up on his advice, though – after a few days of out-of-his-mind boredom, he wanders through the village to visit Nabulungi. There’s technically a purpose behind his visit, because her typewriter had been playing up - something to do with the N key - so he’d offered to come along and see if he could fix it. He doesn’t have too much hope in his abilities (which is a weird feeling, honestly, because there had once been a time where he would have been utterly convinced he’d be able to fix it, despite not having an ounce of experience in doing so) but - he can probably get somewhere. Also, he just wants to see her. She’s kind and sweet and he loves Arnold in a way that’s probably a little too intense and fierce (that’s who he is now) but sometimes he needs to talk to someone who doesn’t communicate with 50% Star Wars references. 

“Elder Price!” She greets him warmly as he arrives at the door. He ducks his head and tries to smile back at her - his proper smile, the one with probably more teeth than most folks would find attractive. 

“Hey,” he says, and lets himself in without waiting. He just doesn’t like being out in the open; being inside is safe, he thinks. “Where’s your-”

“Oh, it is on the side, Kevin,” she says - she flips between names for him gracefully and easily but it gives him whiplash sometimes, “Do not stress if you can’t fix it, there is a man in the next village over who might be able to. But he’ll make me pay.”

“And I won’t?” He jokes, and heads over to look at the typewriter. Upon first inspection he has no idea how to go about fixing it - the ‘N’ key had come unstuck completely.

“No, you will not,” Nabulungi says, “Because the Book of Arnold tells us to be generous and good towards our friends.”

“Well, I won’t charge you then,” he says, knowing full well he would have never done so anyway. He hunches over the typewriter and makes a show of fiddling with the knobs and the buttons — it does nothing to fix the thing he can see is obviously broken, but it makes him feel like he’s doing something. “I don’t know if I can fix this.” He says after a moment.

He feels inadequate for saying so, but he can’t fix it. 

“That’s okay, Kevin. Thank you for looking at it,” Naba says, and then tilts her head to the side. “Do you want to help me with dinner?”

“Oh, I can’t-” he glances to the side, “I can’t really cook.”

“Nonsense,” she says, “Everybody can cook.”

“I really can’t,” he says, which pains him to admit because he’s Kevin Price and admitting he sucks at something makes his head hurt, but it’s the truth. He can’t. He’s on the chore sheet for cooking once a week, and he manages to burn rice. “I mean it.”

“Well,” she says and folds her arms neatly over her chest, “I will teach you to cook.”

He’s about to protest because he spends most of the day feeling pretty much inadequate and he doesn’t need a refresher course in how much his cooking skills suck, but Nabulungi has a look in her gaze like frosted steel and he knows he can’t get out of this. So he sighs, and lets her drag him into the kitchen.

A couple of hours later, she’s pressing a handful of tupperware containers into his hands and sending him back off to the Mission Hut. They’d wound up making a spicy goat stew - he’d been told the name but he can’t remember it for the life of him - and they’d made far far too much so he’s been left with leftovers.

He’d actually ended up making most of it. As it turns out, with clear instructions and a good teacher, he’s not actually the Worst at cooking. He hadn’t burnt anything. Which was a massive improvement, as far as Kevin’s concerned.

When he gets back it’s just about dinnertime. Arnold’s in the kitchen already - it’s his turn to cook. He hasn’t actually started yet, and Kevin has a brief moment of hesitation – he hasn’t actually tried the stew yet himself so– it could be completely inedible, he has no idea. Then he reminds himself that he’d had Naba hovering over his shoulder the entire time and if he’d done something truly awful she would have just stopped him.

Arnold honest-to-God yelps at him when he steps into the kitchen and rushes forward to hug him. Kevin groans a little, but it’s fond, and hugs him right back. “Where have you been, buddy?” Arnold asks. “You’ve been gone for hours! That’s like! Way too long.”

Kevin shrugs him off. “Visiting Naba,” he says, and holds out the tupperware, “She showed me how to cook.”

It’s a testament to Arnold as a person and a best friend that he doesn’t say anything or make any sighs of jealousy about Kevin spending half the day with his girlfriend - he just grins right back at him. “Does that mean I don’t have to cook?”

“Maybe just some rice,” Kevin says, “Or we can make this stretch. I don’t know. There’s a lot.”

“What is it?” Arnold asks, and takes the tupperware from him. Without any kind of preamble, he opens the lid and dives in with a spoon. Kevin stares at him. “Oh my gosh. This is so good. I’ve had this before, actually, but I think it’s better this time ‘cause you made it! It’s spicy as heck , though.”

Kevin frowns. “She said it wasn’t that spicy.” He can deal with spice - some of the other Elders can’t. 

“It’s fine,” Arnold reassures him, “C’mon, help me put the rice on. Maybe you won’t burn it this time! I’ve got faith, you’ve been - educated, and all.”

Kevin smiles down faintly at his shoes and goes to fill a pot with water.

He burns the rice, somehow.

But the Elders eat every bite of the stew and he gets a wide smile from a very red-faced Elder McKinley (who can’t deal with spice, apparently, but finished his plate anyway) who tells him that it was, “Delicious,” and then says “Isn’t it so nice to have a proper meal, boys? Thank you for being so helpful, Elder Price.”

So all in all, it’s a good day.

The thing is, he’s still bored.

So cooking becomes a thing for him. 

It’s hard at first. They don’t have any recipe books, so whenever he gets a hankering to be busy with his hands and make something out of the meagre food supplies they get from the market, he has to find Naba and bug her into teaching him something. For the first couple of weeks, he can only cook when he has her hovering behind him, passing little comments about the amount of seasoning or how long he needs to brown off chicken before it can go into a pot. 

Then he slowly gets used to it. And he gets good at it, too, and that’s the main thing.

Because it’s been so long since he was good at something. He was a good Mormon, sure, he was one of the best - we’ve heard so much about you, Elder Price - but he hasn’t been a good Mormon in a very long time nor has he had cause to do so. Besides, when he looks back on it - maybe he wasn’t that good of a Mormon anyway. He crumpled into temptation the moment it appealed to him. He thinks back to those long days preparing for his Mission and feels like maybe the whole time it was a bit of a performance. Puppet on strings. He’d practised a fake shining smile until his gums had bled and his mouth didn’t feel like his own and he’d stretched out prayers until the words blurred together and his head throbbed. That wasn’t being a good Mormon. That was faking it until you made it and he’d thought for a handful of dazzling seconds maybe he could make it on luck alone but life doesn’t turn you out that way.

So cooking becomes a refuge of sorts. 

It makes him feel useful. That’s the main thing.

He likes it. He likes heading into the kitchen and having the other Elders disappear because they trust him with it now - trust him even with not burning the rice - and he likes the sense of responsibility. He manages to wrangle the chore chart so he can cook six days a week, and he loves that it’s something that’s his, wholly his, and his alone. And somewhere along the way he gets mildly neurotic about the kitchen. It’s not like he thinks it’s his kitchen because it isn’t, but it feels like it on days when it’s just him, alone, and the steam from stew and rice fogs up the already clouded windows. 

It’s a little weird when somebody steps into his space when it’s his. That’s all.

Most of the Elders learn pretty early on that when he’s in the kitchen he doesn’t really like to be distrubed so they steer way clear of it. Arnold doesn’t, but Kevin’s mostly accepted that Arnold has no concept of personal bounderies so he lets it go. Besides, all Arnold does is sit on the cramped little dining table and ask him questions about how he should phase certain sections of scripture in the Book, which doesn’t distract him that much.

Arnold doesn’t, but Elder McKinley doesn’t, either.

At first Kevin thinks it’s because he wants to learn how to cook, too. There’s no other explanation, really, for the way that he watches him hunched over the stove, gaze carefully tracking every single motion of Kevin’s wrist as he tips in crushed chillis and garlic to a pot. But then one day Kevin, despite his misgivings (this is his thing, after all, and he’s selfish - he doesn’t like to share) mumbles something like ‘I can teach you how to make this, if you want’ and McKinley had shaken his head.

So it’s not that. 

Kevin’s decided that instead it’s just retribution for the weeks he’d spent bothering Elder McKinley when he’d been filing financial reports and writing letters to the Mission President. Which is - it’s fine. 

It mostly just means that Kevin spends a significant amount of time talking to McKinley. 

Most days, it goes like this: Kevin siddles into the kitchen at some point before 6pm to start preparing things for dinner, and McKinley creeps in after him. He hops up onto the countertop, Kevin squarks at him about being unsanitary! Gross! and McKinley frowns and moves to a stool. Then McKinley watches him cook and passes the occasional comment about making things too spicy, nothing personal.

Today, it’s weird.

Mostly, it’s McKinley’s fault. Kevin’s always been a little bit weird during conversations that verge too personal; he doesn’t know how to deal with it without saying something stiff, odd, and awkward. He comes in, looks at the spread of ingredients Kevin’s already finished preparing, and goes, “Is that French onion soup?”

Kevin looks up from where he’d chopping onions - there’s tears beading cautiously in his eyes already - and nods. “Yeah,” he says, and then, “Sort of. There’s no cheese, I couldn’t get any at the market. But it should hopefully taste just about the same.” He’s eyeballing this particular recipe; he’d gone about the previous day and asked the other Elders if they knew how to make it, and from that information, he’s just about cobbled together a recipe. It would help, he thinks, if he had a physical binder of the things he knows how to make but paper is heavily scarce so he’s just gotta trust his memory.

“Oooo, gosh,” McKinley steps closer, “I’m sure it’ll still taste amazing. Really, we should have put you on cooking duty long ago, Elder Price!”

“I was burning pasta up until a month ago,” Kevin murmurs, but still sounds quietly pleased. 

McKinley lets him cook in silence right up until the soup is starting to bubble on the stove. Then he goes, softly, “I think this might be my favourite meal yet. Smells like home.”

“Does it?” Kevin asks, and wrinkles his nose, “Smells like onions to me.”

It’s not a joke, or at least he isn’t trying to make it one, but Elder McKinley laughs anyway. It’s soft, sad kind of laugh. Melancholy.

“We used to have it allll the time during the winter,” says McKinley, “The worst trouble I’ve ever gotten in was because of this soup.”

Okay, Kevin is going to ask about that because he can’t imagine prim, staunch, rule-following Elder McKinley breaking any rules. (Aside from the obvious one, but was it really rule-breaking if you tried to turn it off with every second racing thought?)

“You got into trouble?”

“The worst,” he says, “There was a big old batch of the stuff in the slow cooker - we were having a party or something, I was twelve, I can’t remember - and I went at it with a spoon when the door was closed. My mother was so mad. Connor McKinley I did not raise you to be a soup-stealer, so help me-“ He breaks off. “You get the idea.”

He’d known, logically, that Elder McKinley had a first name, plus it was plastered on the chore chart somewhere, but it’s one thing to know it and another to hear it out loud. Kevin takes it as blanket permission for him to do the same.

It’s also the first personal anecdote he’s really heard from Connor. He never talks about family, never talks about home, not when the rest of the Elders gather around the table and reminisce about the things from home they miss the most. So it throws him for a moment but he shrugs through it.

“You better not steal mine,” he says, nonchalantly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Elder Price,” Connor says, “I can wait for dinner, don’t you worry.”

Kevin hums and turns back to the soup but for some reason, he carries the conversation with him well past dinner and through to the evening.

After that, whenever he cooks, Connor McKinley is there, for whatever reason. 

Kevin gets used to it but it always always makes him feel a little bit on edge. Not in a bad way, necessarily. Somehow, he thinks he and Connor have become friends. Which is weird because Connor still refuses to call him by his first name and flinches whenever he swears and also still follows mostly all of the rules in the Book but not all of them. 

“ I’m trying not to follow them,” Connor had said, once. Kevin had been attempting mac and cheese, but failing, mostly because all of the other Elders he’d asked had only ever made it out of the box before and had no idea how to put together a cheese sauce. “ Consciously, I mean. I guess I’m just used to doing it unconsciously that I don’t have the foggiest idea how to stop.”

It’s a weird concept to grasp for Kevin, who had repeated the rules he’d have to know until he was red in the face and the words streamed together. He’d always done things entirely consciously, exactly aware of the cadence of his words and how he was sounding them out, and if him doing certain things would make him seem like a good Mormon, a better Mormon. If stopping to help Ms Rigly cross the road would help him out in the eyes of God even if it made him late to church. If standing up for a kid in his class who was getting bullied for being gay would be good or bad because  - hey, God didn’t like bullies, but He also didn’t like gays, so which one was worse? 

The idea of doing all of those things without a second thought, the idea of actively having to unlearn all of those things is strange, because his years upon years of carefully stitching his messy blemished untied corners together into some semblance of Godly and Holy and good had come unravelling and undone the moment he’d - well.

So Kevin had just gone, “ Just drink some coffee, Elder, and say fuck every once in a while. Works for me.”

And Connor had frowned at him all seriously, and Kevin had just laughed. Then he’d made him a cup of tea because try as he might he cannot get him to take a single sip of coffee. Still sinful, somehow, but less bitter.

But yes – whenever he’s in the kitchen, Connor is, too.

Kevin walks in one day after getting back from Naba’s with the memory of a recipe swirling around his head, holding one hand in front of him as he mimes out knife-strokes, eyes half closed. It only takes ten minutes for Connor to pad in after him - at this point, he’s almost finished preparing the vegetables.

Connor takes a seat and Kevin allows them to sit in quiet comfortable silence before going, “Elder McKinley,” waiting a beat, and saying, “Is there a reason you watch me cook?”

It comes out blunter than he would have liked. Connor blushes.

“I’m not watching you, Elder Price,” he says.

“Really.”

“I’m not!” Connor protests, and Kevin is suddenly reminded that maybe accusing Connor of watching him may not have been the smartest idea. Connor is - well, he’d made some kind of bold statement after they’d decided to commit to the whole running-off-to-start-a-new-religion thing, where he’d decided he wasn’t going to hide anymore, and there would be no more turning it off, but every since then he hasn’t bought it up. No matter what Connor had said, Kevin thinks, he figures he probably doesn’t want to be accused of watching other men. Even if it’s just the way he slices onions.

“Right,” Kevin says, a beat too late, “You just come in here whenever I’m in here.”

“I’m…” Connor worries at his lip with his teeth, gaze darting to the side, “I’m homesick. That’s all.” He says, eventually. “Me and - my family used to watch cooking shows. It just reminds me of that. That’s all.”

“Cute,” says Kevin before he can help himself and that doesn’t help matters at all really but he doesn’t mean it like that , it’s just the idea of an identical little family of McKinleys watching, like – he’s never actually watched any cooking shows so he doesn’t have an example on the tip of his tongue but it’s still a funny little mental image. “Is that the only reason?”

Connor frowns at him, and then nods. “Yes,” he says, and then almost feverishly changes the subject, “Anyways. Enough about me! What’s on the menu today?”

Kevin decides to drop it because he feels bad (he wouldn’t, usually, otherwise, he usually took awkward subjects and refused to let go, like a dog with a bone) and jabs at the pile of peppers on the cutting board with his knife. “Something Naba showed me. It was tasty when she made it.”

“It’ll be good when you make it, then, too.” Connor says, and something warm and pleased runs up Kevin’s spine.

“Connor,” says Kevin, a few days later. His limbs feel nice and neat and loose; Elder Neeley had come back from the market with a pilfered bottle of whiskey and they’d all drank it down way too quickly and way too early in the day. Kevin had probably had the most because - well, fuck the rules, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d then started wondering what he could cook with whiskey which had led to him taking command of the kitchen hazy with drink and a half-remembered recipe floating in the back of his head. “Pass me the salt.”

Connor looks at him, and pokes his tongue out. “You know,” he says, “You don’t just get to boss people around, Elder Price. You may be the - chef - but I’m still the district - whatsit.”

Connor had also had rather a lot of whiskey. It’s made his cheeks go bright red. Kevin likes that look on him a whole lot and woah woah woah he definitely has had way too much to drink.

“If you want,” he frowns at the pot on the stove - there’s some kind of bird he’d gotten from the market simmering away - and back up at Connor, “This - you need to pass me the salt.”

Connor tilts his head to the side. “How’d you make that?” He asks, and usually Kevin wouldn’t properly explain but he’s so loose from the drink the words come tumbling out unbidden.

“It’s just a lot of stewing,” he says, “I browned it off in a pan first and then - added herbs, and stuff, and - yeah.” 

“It smells good,” Connor says, “Has it got a name?”

“Nope,” Kevin replies cheerfully.

“Is it going to taste good?”

“Oh, it will,” says Kevin, faux-confident. 

“I’m sure,” Connor says. He steps a little bit closer. Almost hazily, he verges softly into Kevin’s space and into his kitchen. Kevin breathes in and out, and at the sharp intake of his breathing, Connor flinches and startles backwards.

Kevin thinks that if he was sober he would carefully pick apart the motion, decode his movements with a steady analytic eye. But he’s not so instead he just rolls back his shoulders and pokes at the poultry - a grouse, maybe - with a wooden spoon. He shakes the salt into the dish and nods at Connor. “Thank you,” he says and it still seems like an odd, ungainly thing to say, like it doesn’t match his voice. “Put this back.”

“A please would not go amiss, Elder Prince.”

“You sound like my mom,” says Kevin, his voice whiny, high-pitched, “Also, you can call me Kevin, you know. Everybody else does.”

“I’m still your district leader,” Connor says. “That means I have to have standards.”

“Calling me by my actual name is - you know, manners. Manners fits your standards.”

Connor fiddles with his hands, lacing them together, and unlacing them. “Fine,” he says, eventually, “Kevin. Mind your Ps and Qs.”

“ Please put the salt back,” Kevin says, but he sticks out his tongue at the end of the sentence so it’s probably not entirely what Connor wants from him. Still, Connor slots the salt back into the (sparsely populated, Kevin’s working on it) spice cabinet. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Connor murmurs, “I’ll leave you to your cooking. Heaven knows the other boys are probably causing some mischief right now. I should not have left them with that whiskey.”

“You can stay,” Kevin says before he thinks more of it, “If you want.”

Connor narrows his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t mind the company,” Kevin blurts out. (Lie, mostly: he doesn’t mind it but he prefers to be alone.) “So you can, uh, stay.”

For a moment Kevin thinks Connor is going to up and leave but he doesn’t; he takes his usual spot on the clear countertop Kevin only uses to dish out on, legs swinging down past the cabinet. Kevin doesn’t do his usual off! now! like Connor is a feral cat intruding. He just nods and turns back to his cooking.

The meal he serves up later that night tastes like the best damn (ha, fuck you, rules) best thing he’s ever put in his mouth and Connor and Arnold both agree with him. In the morning, when he draws the leftovers out of the fridge and reheats them on the stove, he doesn’t quite echo the same sentiment but he wishes he had some way of remembering how he cobbled the drunkenish meal together. 

He doesn’t, though, so he just mournfully accepts he’ll never make it the same way again.

The next day, Arnold looks at him funny. “What’s going on with you and Elder McKinley?” He asks, in a way that makes Kevin feel like he’s being deskinned.

“Nothing’s going on,” says Kevin. He believes himself. Because there isn’t. There really isn’t. He’s not – he’s not. Connor might be, but he isn’t. 

“It would be fine if there was, buddy,” Arnold says, “You know what the parable of-“

“Yeah, I know,” Kevin speaks quickly. There’s nothing going on. There really isn’t. “But there’s nothing going on.”

The next day, Connor beams at him and asks him if he could try and make rolex again, a kind of eggy omelette wrapped with chapati. Kevin frowns at him and says he’ll do his best. He’s mostly forgotten how to make chapati though so he has to leave and talk to Naba and then head back to the hut chanting the measurements for flour in his head.

This would be far easier, he thinks, if he had a recipe book, and he says as much to Connor when he gets back. Connor blinks at him. “You could always write it down,” he suggests, and Kevin shrugs.

“I don’t want to waste paper.” He says.

“It’s not a waste,” Connor tells him, “Besides, maybe some of the other Elders might cook sometime, then, hmm?”

Kevin frowns. “But I don’t want them to.”

He doesn’t. This is his thing, now, his way of being useful, his way of gleaning some flickering praise from his peers. 

Connor just narrows his eyes. “You make sure you’re not overworking yourself, Elder Price.”

“I’m not,” Kevin says, and then tilts his head to the side, “I could say the same to you. How long were you in the office for yesterday?” 

“I was busy.”

“You were there for hours,” Kevin says. He wasn’t counting. 

“There was a lot to be done,” Connor stretches, holding his hands over his head as he leans elegantly to the side. Kevin wonders if he’s going to practice his dancing, later. He only does it occasionally but Kevin’s come to recognise the click-clack sound of the shoes and the humming that carries even through the walls. 

Kevin is about to say something more but Arnold comes barrelling into the kitchen. He goes straight up to the peppers Kevin’s carefully slicing, and goes, “What’s cooking, good lookin’,” in an awful accent that Kevin needs to replicate immediately so their conversation gets interrupted.

After a bit of back-and-forth, Kevin turns his focus back to cooking and definitely doesn’t watch Connor stretch out of the corner of his eye. 

He’s lying in bed later that night when Arnold clears his throat.

“Still nothing going on?” He asks, and Kevin sighs.

“Nothing at all,” he says, and he finds his voice comes out vaguely melancholy. He rolls over and screws his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to think about why.

There are certain meals he likes putting together more than others.

Stew is easy. It was the first thing he learned how to make, so he tends to stick to the same recipe, with variants on the protein occasionally. (Whenever they can get something from the market.) He also likes pasta. It’s not that he doesn’t like making the more complicated dishes, it’s just that they don’t stick in his head half as easily as the things he can guess at. And he doesn’t like not being good at things, so he doesn’t practice them as much as he should. But that feels weird, too, because he’s Kevin Price and there’s no challenge he hasn’t managed to overcome, so he keeps at it even if the memory of Naba showing him exactly how to slice things fades to the very back of his mind.

It’s also hard to make most things from home because a) he has no recipe and Naba shrugs cluelessly when he mentions chicken tenders or sweet potato casserole and b) he doesn’t have half the ingredients anyway. 

Sometimes, it stresses him out. And hobbies, he thinks, shouldn’t do that, so on days when stepping into the kitchen makes something itch and buzz beneath his skin like restless ants on the grass, he turns around and walks right out again. Sometimes, instead, he sits on the edge of his bed and stares at the wall and thinks about going home. Sometimes, he skims rocks on the pond.

And sometimes, he can’t drag himself out of his own head so he gives into something that feels utterly unlike himself and allows someone else to do it for him.

Often, that duty falls on Arnold, who usually just rambles at him about Star Trek versus Star Wars until his chest feels less tight. 

Today, it settles squarely on Connor’s shoulders - Arnold is out, and Kevin isn’t going to bother any of the other Elders when he’s like this. He can be more annoying than usual, more antsy, more likely to say something barbed and sharp and unkind. 

They’re not in the kitchen because that makes Kevin feel like he should be doing something if he’s in there, so instead they’re sat in the living quarters, Kevin’s long legs hitched up on the couch like an ungainly calf. He’s set up a trash basket in front of them on the floor, and is methodically tossing screwed-up pages of the Book of Mormon into it. Connor is looking at him, frowning, but he hasn’t said anything, not yet.

Kevin actually wants to stop, because even though he’s probably the furthest thing from a good Mormon he’s ever been this still feels like horrible horrible blasphemy. He started doing it, though, to prove a point - only he’s unsure what the point was. Something to do with breaking the rules and how you can only do it if you actually do something but he honestly doesn’t know.

He can’t stop because he’s started, though, so he tears out another crisp white page and sends it sailing into the bin.

Connor’s mouth is completely downturned. He opens it and Kevin’s sure he’s finally going to say something about what he’s doing, but he doesn’t, not at all. Instead, he goes, “What are you doing for your birthday, Kevin?”

Kevin blinks at him, slow, like molasses. “What,” is what he ends up saying, because he’d mostly forgotten it was his birthday soon. 

“Your birthday,” Connor says, “It’s next week.”

“I know that,” replies Kevin even if the thought had only just occurred to him now, “I don’t know. I wasn’t going to do anything.”

“Now, that I cannot allow,” Connor says, smiling slightly, “You’re the first one of us to have a birthday since the, ah, incident, and - well. Now we can have a proper party, I think we should.”

“I don’t want to cause a fuss,” Kevin murmurs, and Connor gives him a long long look.

“Kevin Price,” he says, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kevin replies even though he knows he isn’t. Not today, not really. It’s not even about the cooking. It’s about – he knows damn well what it’s about and his fists clench in the clean pristine pages of the book even tighter. The ball he’s keeping in his hand scrunches so very tight. 

“That can’t be true,” Connor tilts his head to the side, “You always want to cause a fuss.”

That forces a startled chuckle out of Kevin. “Maybe I don’t this time around,” he says.

“Well,” Connor adjusts his position on the couch carefully - seating himself slopingly upwards, “Let us make a fuss for you, then. Come on. If Arnold finds out that your birthday has been and gone without a single candle – he’ll… Heavens, I don’t even want to think of it.”

Kevin smiles a small lopsided smile. “Fine,” he says eventually.

Connor beams at him, and claps his hands together. “Oh, wonderful! We can have a proper party. Outside, maybe. Oooo, we can invite the whole village – maybe we could… hmm, that might be too complicated, but - I’d like to see if it works, and-”

Kevin listens to him talk without absorbing much of it. He likes the flow of Connor’s words, though, the slight lilt of his voice, and the vague nudge of their knees together. He focuses on that. Contact sometimes freaks him out; especially unknown, surprising contact, but this is fine. It feels safe. 

At the tail-end of Connor’s little spiel (Kevin only takes in about half of it) he goes, “Maybe I have a surprise or two of my own, Kevin, you’ll have to see. It’s only once a boy turns twenty, after all!”

Kevin startles himself out of staring at the crinkled pages of the Book to look up at that. “You do?” He says.

“Oh, yes,” Connor is slightly flushed.

“Can I know what it is?”

“That’ll spoil the surprise,” says Connor, “Patience is a virtue.”

“I’m plenty virtuous,” says Kevin just because he knows it’ll make Connor laugh. Which it does, bright and cheerful, like the ringing of a bell.

“Lying is a sin, Elder Price,” Connor tells him, in his Elder McKinley v oice. Then he ducks his head and the smile that had been tugging on the corner of his lips downturns into a disgruntled-looking frown. Kevin balls up another page and tosses it into the trashcan.

“So’s drinking,” says Kevin because he’s certain Connor’s thinking of the other things that he’s done (well, not done, because - y’know, turn it off, but thought about) and he thinks there’s only enough room on this couch for one person being sadly pensive about religion, thanks.

“Doesn’t stop either of us,” Connor tilts his head to the side and smiles slightly but Kevin can still tell he’s thinking about other things, “Oh, I’ll make sure there’s drink of some kind next week. Pull some strings, mmm?”

“You mean ask Elder Neeley nicely, don’t you.”

“A gentleman never reveals his secrets,” Connor says lightly, and stretches, “Are you feeling up to sticking to the chore chart tonight, or shall I cook?”

Kevin purses his lips. Then he nods. “It won’t be amazing,” he says, “But I can probably pull something together.”

“That chicken dish you made the other week was nice, if you’re open to suggestions,” Connor says, and flushes slightly, “With the, ah, lemon.”

Kevin frowns before remembering what he’s talking about. He hadn’t thought that Connor had been paying much attention to what he’d been cooking that day; he’d spent the whole time hunched over some papers, writing. 

“If we’ve got lemon, I’ll make it,” he promises, and Connor smiles at him.

The night before he turns twenty, he has a hell dream.

It’s as terrifying and as all-consuming as every other time that he has them. He wakes up with his vision red and blurry and his breath caught in his throat. He hiccups, once, and Arnold shoots up like a bolt.

“Buddy,” he says, feeling for his nightlight, “Are you okay? Do you-”

“I’m fine,” Kevin hurridly lies, still trying to catch his breath, “I’m - I’m… go back to sleep, bud. Big day tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Go to sleep,” he says again, firmer this time, “I’m going back to bed.”

He rolls over and closes his eyes but he knows already there’s no hope of getting back to sleep. His vision is still spotted with red flickering flames and there’s a low kind of cackling in the back of his mind. With his eyes closed too long, he swears he can feel hands on his back and when a ghostly fingertip traces trails up his spine he judders into opening his eyes again.

He crawls out of bed as quietly as he can manage. The small bed shudders beneath his weight and creeks ominously but Arnold sleeps like a rock so he stays snoring. Kevin creeps from their room to the living room.

He sits there for a moment, before yawning loudly, and standing up again. He wants to be busy with his hands but he’s not about to start cooking because it’s - like, 2am or something, and the oven makes truly horrendous noises if the temperature goes beyond a certain heat.

Instead, he boils the kettle. One of the Elders (Poptarts, he thinks) had been sent hot chocolate powder as part of a care package for Christmas - before the Incident, of course - and he ladles it carefully into a mug. The kettle quietly comes to a boil and he pours the scalding liquid on top of the power, and stirs.

When he comes back into the living room, mug in hand, it isn’t empty. Connor’s sat on the couch, in a tight huddled position, his shoulders hunched and hands knitted tight together. Kevin clears his throat and Connor looks up. His eyes are red-rimmed, like he’s being crying, but he gives Kevin a tired little smile.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” He asks, and Kevin firmly shakes his head.

“No,” he says, “You didn’t.”

“Good,” Connor murmurs, “Sorry. Gosh, it’s late. Why aren’t you asleep? Oh, wait,” even obviously exhausted, Connor’s faint smile manages to stretch into a grin, “Happy birthday! Oh my goodness, was I the first to wish you a happy birthday? Arnold’s going to be furious with me.” Connor looks quietly delighted at the idea.

Kevin nods, once. “You are,” he says, “Thank you. You’re right, though, I might have to lie to him. Save his feelings being hurt.”

“He’ll be devastated otherwise.” Connor agrees. “And we can’t be having that.”

“No,” says Kevin, “That’ll ruin my birthday.”

Connor gives an amused kind of hum, and then looks back up again. “What’ve you got there?”

Kevin looks down at the mug he’s holding, and then back up again. “Hot chocolate,” he says, “I can make you some.” He’s feeling oddly generous. It’s a weird feeling; being kind and good without trying so so hard to be. He wants to be nice to Connor, because he’s his friend. 

(No other reason.)

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“Connor,” says Kevin, blunt, “It’s hot water and powder. I’m not going out of my way.”

“That’d be nice, then,” Connor says softly, and Kevin floats off to fix him the hot chocolate. He comes back with a mug and passes it to Connor, who blows on it gently. “Thank you,” he says.

“Don’t mention it,” Kevin settles back onto the couch, “Anyways. Do you want to talk about why you’re up before dawn, or…” He trails off because he can suddenly hazard a guess as to why - I have it nightly, that was what he’d said, once, wasn’t it? 

Connor takes a sip of the hot chocolate, and smiles a thin, grim smile. “Not really,” he murmurs, “Same old, same old.”

“Is it the same?” Kevin blurts. 

Connor looks like maybe he doesn’t want to answer him but he takes another sip of the drink and goes for it anyways. “Mostly,” he says, “There’s some - variety. In - well.” Then he flushes a bright and furious pink. Kevin isn’t awake enough to even start to work that out. “But it’s mostly the same.”

“Oh,” says Kevin, “Huh.”

“Why are you up?” Connor asks him. It’s clearly a deflection, wanting to take the attention off himself, but Kevin doesn’t mind. He doesn’t much want to talk about his own dreams for - well. Ahem. Obvious reasons. But - he can admit why he’s here.

“Same as you,” he says, in a tone that aims for nonchalant and comes out deflated.

“Oh?” Connor raises a brow. “I didn’t think you’d-”

“Have the hell dreams?” Kevin finishes his sentence. “Not very often. I think that they’re more nightmares, than anything. But, yeah.”

Connor looks vaguely puzzled, like he wants to ask more, but stops himself. “A boy shouldn’t have hell dreams the night before he turns twenty,” he says, eventually, “Or - heck, at all. But especially tonight.”

“Tell that to-” Kevin had been about to say God but he knows it’s not God, not really. Or - well. He mostly does. Somewhere in the back of his mind he still thinks that it is, that it’s - punishment or penance for fuck the mission president and everything else he’d said and done since then. But the other part of his mind, the sensible part, the part that likes hot bitter expresso and the way his mouth curls around the harsh chirps of cuss words, knows it’s just his subconscious driving him mad when he crosses into sleep. “My mind, then.”

Connor wrinkles his nose and takes another sip of his drink. “They get better,” he says, eventually, almost earnestly.

“Have you-” Kevin frowns, “Have you stopped having them, then?”

Connor gestures to the room around them, the curve of the couch. “No,” he says, and Kevin feels a tad stupid, “They’re just not as bad.”

“Since leaving the church?” Kevin asks.

“Since telling myself that maybe, maybe - I’m not…” Connor stares down at his hands. “You know.”

“I actually don’t,” Kevin says, because it’s 3am, and Connor seems to be talking in riddles.

Connor sighs. “That it’s… you know. Okay.”

Ah. 

Kevin hadn’t-

He hadn’t realised that Connor was - that he’d stopped trying to turn it off. If that’s even what he means.

“Well,” he says, because fuck the rules meant fuck those particular rules, too. Kevin still wasn’t having gay thoughts (lie) like he’d said all those months ago but he’d also never really properly understood that part of the Book of Mormon anyway. It was an easy enough part to forget. “It is. Part of the Book of the Arnold, now, isn’t it? Chapter - uh, five, I think.”

“Is it?” Connor looks up.

“Some district leader,” Kevin says softly, “Not even knowing the parable of Kirk and Spock.”

“Hush, Elder Price,” Connor’s smiling a thin-lipped smile, “That book changes on the daily.”

“That chapter hasn’t,” Kevin stretches, “It’s right, though. You shouldn’t - it’s okay. Not turning it off.”

Connor sighs. He’s curved fully into the couch, now, in a way that doesn’t look comfortable on his spine. He doesn’t say anything, not for a long moment. Then, eventually, “I’m trying to think that,” he says so quietly that Kevin doesn’t hear him at first. Kevin guesses it’s a hard admission to make; to spend half your life struggling too hard to press down a key facet of your being and then one day waking up in Uganda with the religion you’ve known all your life reinventing itself in the most confusing way possible and being told that it’s okay, it’s fine to keep that light switched firmly on. 

He doesn’t know, though. How that might feel. Honestly.

“Good,” Kevin says, and yawns. He’s tired. He could just doze off here, and he probably will - if he goes back to his room, he’ll wake up Arnold, and he doesn’t want to do that. He’ll be full of questions - where he was, what he was doing. Arnold means well, he knows that more than anything, but he can also be - a lot. 

“You should go back to sleep,” Connor says suddenly, “Busy, busy day tomorrow.”

“Nah,” Kevin replies, “Can’t. I’ll wake up Arnold.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“I’ll feel bad,” Kevin says, sinking further into the couch cushions. “I might just sleep here.”

“You’ll hurt your back,” says Connor, “And I don’t know where the nearest chiropractor is.”

Kevin laughs softly at his joke. Then he nestles even deeper into the cushions. “I think being twenty is all about making risky decisions.”

“I don’t think people say that about sleeping on cruddy couches when you’ve got a perfectly good bed in the next room.”

“They might,” Kevin punches halfheartedly at one of the cushions. He draws himself up further so he can sink properly into the soft fabric, curled in, like a semi-colon. “You don’t know.” 

When he’s tired enough – which is often, there’s a reason he functions on coffee, after all - he gets more snarky than usual, which is why he’s dragging this out. It’s mostly nonsensical which Connor knows as well as he does because he firmly shoves him by the shoulder, sending him thudding backwards. “Go to sleep, Kevin,” Connor says lightly.

“Are you gonna?” Kevin asks, looking up at him.

Connor’s hands close lightly over his mug, and he brings it up to his lips. “Maybe,” he says, which is good enough for Kevin. He closes his eyes and drifts off quickly. When he dreams, he thinks about blueish-green eyes and tap shoes.

When he wakes up, he’s twenty. His first thought is that twenty feels awfully similar to nineteen, his second is that Connor might have been right because his spine seems to have misaligned during the night, and his third is that somewhere in the hut, somebody is burning pancakes.

He sits up so suddenly that his neck makes an odd click noise, which might just be his spine aligning back in place. He’s not sure.

He goes storming into the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. There, his fourth thought of the day shapes into wow why does Connor look weirdly good in an apron and thought five is I didn’t even know we had aprons. Then his thoughts jumble together into such a mess he can’t be bothered to pick through them, because - why is he thinking that and then that pancake is on fire.

“Connor!” He shouts, and Connor turns to look at him, his eyes wide and sheepish. There’s a bowl of batter on the counter next to him, and a plate of various misshapen lumps that Kevin uses context clues to decipher as pancakes. “That is on fire.”

Connor stares at it, and hits it halfheartedly with a spatula. Kevin decides that the kitchen burning down around him is actually ranked at the very bottom of things he wants for his birthday. He picks up the frying pan, turns on the taps and dunks it under cold water. The pancake hisses pathetically and finally splutters out.

“You weren’t supposed to wake up yet!” Connor says, which is hardly the biggest issue here, but Kevin’s figured out by now that Connor’s list of priorities can be somewhat skewed.

“What are you doing?” He asks.

Connor gestures wildly towards the plate of pancakes. “What does it look like?” He says. “Birthday pancakes.”

“I could have made those,” Kevin says, “And not burned them.”

“I wouldn’t have served you the burned ones,” Connor tells him, “I was getting better.”

“Who would you have given the burned ones to?” Kevin asks, narrow-eyed.

Connor just shrugs at him. “I would have eaten them,” he says, “Waste not, want not.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means,” Kevin eyes the stack of pancakes. Most of them are unburnt. 

“You can have one, if you want,” says Connor, following his gaze, “I was going to make you wait for the other Elders, but they’re for you, really.”

Something settles in the pit of Kevin’s stomach, warm and flighty. He doesn’t know what to do with it – with what it means, if he should shove it away and cramp it into a tight little box, or if he should let it breathe. He decides, quietly, to let it breathe. 

“Thank you,” he says, and sets a pancake down on a plate.

He pretends to be surprised when Connor leads him out to the yard, covering his eyes with a makeshift blindfold and then withdrawing the tie when Arnold yells, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEST FRIEND,” at the top of his lungs. 

“Wow,” he says, taking in the surprise party, the banner strewn over the tree that shelters the mission hut, the balloons that must have been purchased when they’d last gone to the market, “Is this all for me?”

“Who else is it going to be for?” Arnold says, beaming at him. “Of course it’s for you! You’re twenty! Which is like - the best age to be.”

“I still can’t legally drink in America,” says Kevin, almost mournfully.

“You can here, though!” Arnold says gleefully. 

“Technically, I’ve been able to do that this whole time-” Kevin starts, and then stops, because being snarky to planners of surprise-ish birthday parties did not a good best friend make.

Arnold starts rambling about the itinerary for the day and Kevin listens carefully and attentively. Apparently, it’s swimming first and then there’s going to be dancing and then-

Everything turns out to be so carefully packed together that it’s almost evening by the time Kevin’s able to get away from the hustle and bustle of the party. He goes to the first place he thinks of that might be quiet enough - the kitchen.

It’s not empty. Connor’s sat where he usually sits, perched on the counter, feet swinging. He hasn’t drunk at all so Kevin knows he’s sober at the least, which makes a welcome change from the rest of the Elders - Elder Church was leading a conga line, last he saw.

Kevin’s had a couple of sips of gin which he’d almost spat out, screwing his face up as he’d swallowed the liquor down. Not enough, he thinks, to want to join in with the conga line.

“Elder Price,” says Connor, which is weird, but hey, he’s used to that from Connor by now, “Having a good birthday?”

Kevin gives him a wry kind of grin. “Oh, the best,” he says, and finds he actually halfway means it. It’s not the worst of birthdays. He’s surrounded by his friends, and most of all, he feels happy in a way he hasn’t since he was a kid.  There’s no crushing weight of expectation sitting heavy and low on his back; there’s just him, the burning Ugandan sky, and packet-mix birthday cake.

“Good,” Connor shifts where he’s sitting. Then he hops down, crossing the room in a couple of gliding steps. “I’ve got a, ah, present for you. I was going to give it to you later, but – well. You know.”

Kevin doesn’t know, but he nods anyway. “You didn’t need to give me a present,” he says, because it seems like the right thing to say.

“Well,” Connor smiles back at him, head tilted to the side, “I did. Wait here, hmm?” 

Kevin stretches where he’s sitting in the handful of moments that Connor’s out of the room. He wonders, idly, what Connor might have gotten him. Nothing worth much monetary value, of course, but he doesn’t expect that.

He’s just – whatever it is, it’s something. It shows that someone has thought of him enough and that he’s remained conscious in someone else’s mind. And maybe he feels a little rubbed raw because - well. He’s had nothing from his parents and maybe it’s early in the day still and maybe the post is late but he somehow doesn’t quite think that’s the truth.

So it’s nice, he guesses. To be thought of.

He shifts on his heels and looks up with a small smile when Connor brushes back into the room. He’s holding something wrapped in brown paper, the kind that their vegetables come wrapped in.

“It’s not a lot,” he says, passing the wrapped gift to Kevin. Kevin feels the weight of it in his hands, feels the crinkled wrapping paper beneath his palm and his fingertips. He looks back up at Connor. He’s blushing in a way that makes his hair look even redder than normal, the light bouncing off it as it streams languidly through the window. 

Kevin swallows.

“It’s…” he says, and trails off. His throat feels oddly dry. “Thank you.”

Connor’s still watching him. Their gazes lock for a single fragmented moment; Kevin drags his away so he can focus on unpicking the sellotape.

He unpeels the wrapping as carefully as when he unpeels an eggshell for egg rolls; fingers delicate. He knows that the wrapping paper isn’t hard to come by but he wants to preserve it all the same.

Beneath the wrapping, there’s a bound book. The binding is leather; thick, and supple. There’s no title. He opens the book, and tilts it under the light.

It’s a recipe.

A recipe for the first stew he’d made for everyone, he realises. It’s printed neatly in typewriter font, but there’s little scribbles in the margins, Connor’s neat loopy handwriting. Add more salt than this!! it says on one page. He turns the next, and reads the words cook for an extra five minutes if chicken.

“Connor,” he whispers, “This is-”

“Sorry,” says Connor, for some reason, “I just - you always complain you can’t quite remember stuff, so - I started - you know, and… yeah.”

He has no idea what Connor’s talking about.

Then the penny drops and he frowns.

“Wait,” he says, “Is this why you’re always in the kitchen?”

Connor flushes again, that same furious red. “It became apparent you weren’t ever going to make notes for yourself, so someone else had to,” which is a weak explanation for the nicest thing Kevin thinks anyone’s ever done for him.

“You-” Kevin stares at him. His heart is thrumming solidly in his chest. “Why?”

“Well,” Connor shifts his weight from one foot to the other slowly, “You’ve - you’ve been awfully helpful cooking for all of us, and you’ve, you know - changed an awful lot. You’re not the same Elder Price who arrived here those months ago, so - well.”

Now, Kevin is many things. He cowrote a new religion, he’s selfish and has to force himself to be kind in a needlessly complicated manner, a present decision. He likes black coffee in the morning. He thinks, if tested, he could probably sing every song from the Lion King with tuneless efficiency. He’s halfway aware that he’s deeply traumatised but he doesn’t want to unpick it any more than vaguely acknowledging it in the back of his mind.

He is not oblivious enough to see through Connor’s weak explanation.

His eyes narrow. Connor is – that can’t be the only reason he’d do something so unfailingly nice and kind and thoughtful for him. So there must be another reason. 

He tilts his head to the side. The reason creeps into his mind with a quiet kind of certainty – it doesn’t start off hopeful, when he first considers it something akin to dread sets into his stomach but as he turns it over and over again it butterflies into something entirely different. At first it’s because - well, he’s not vain exactly but it’s always nice to be liked and admired and then it’s because -

Hmm. He might have lied to Arnold. 

Maybe there was something going on.

He feels pleasantly warm right down to the tips of his toes because he thinks that just maybe Connor McKinley likes him. Likes him enough to bother him every night whilst he’s cooking, likes him enough to peer over his shoulder at the chopping board and scrawl down the exact quantities of peppers and garlic and onions, likes him enough to bind everything up in a pretty leather book and hand it to him like it meant something less than what Kevin’s beginning to piece together.

Connor likes him and he doesn’t recognise the feeling that thwacks him right in the solar plexus, a suckerpunch right to his gut until it truly sinks in. Connor likes him, and maybe Kevin likes him right back.

Which is an awful lot of emotions to process in around thirty seconds so instead of saying anything else Kevin grabs the book, stares wide-eyed at Connor for a beat too long, and leaves the kitchen without saying another word.

Connor appears in his doorway after ten minutes.

Kevin’s sat on his bed, staring at the wall. He can hear the sounds of the party dimly through the thin walls, and the low beat of music almost taunts him.

“Kevin,” says Connor, lightly, but almost skitterish. Like he’s afraid Kevin might bolt again. “You ran off.”

“I know,” Kevin says, staring down at the book. He skimread the whole thing in those ten minutes. Every last recipe. Every last detail. 

“Do you want to talk about why?” Connor asks awkwardly, still hovering in the doorframe. “Not that you have to. I just - as your district leader, I think I should-”

Kevin sighs, heavily. 

Ten minutes is a long time. It’s nothing. It’s everything.

It’s a short amount of time to deconstruct your entire worldview. It’s a short amount of time to pick apart every single interaction he’s ever had with Connor, and place them back together again in the context of what he knows now. It feels like a lifetime as he looks back over everything he’s ever known and everything he’s been taught and every time he’s been urged to shove his feelings into a tight tiny little box and to tuck them far away. It’s a lifetime and it’s a flicker of a heartbeat all at once.

In those ten minutes, he’d been able to come to three conclusions.

One: Connor must like him. Kevin’s not stupid – well. He is. But he can put things together and he can see a wider picture and he can also see that Arnold must have been coming from somewhere, because Arnold isn’t stupid either. Connor must like him, because he watched him cook every single night for three months and scribbled down exactly what Kevin was doing, watched the arch of his hands as he sliced onions and garlic and mixed spices. Connor must like him, because he did all this and bound it in the prettiest book Kevin’s ever seen. 

Two: Connor likes him, and Kevin is okay with that. He feels like maybe if he was a better Mormon he’d feel a trace of disgust at this fact, something sick twisted in his gut, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t exactly feel nothing, which leads him to conclusion three.

Three: Kevin is okay with that because he likes him back.

Which feels, quite frankly, like something he should have maybe realised three months ago, but - well, Uganda is not the best place to explore your sexuality as a ex-Mormon boy, so beyond Arnold’s occasional comments he hadn’t even begun to consider it. 

Uganda is still not the best place to explore his sexuality, but Kevin’s always made potentially-terrible impulsive decisions. So he swallows, looks up at Connor, smiles a crooked lopsided grin, and goes, “There’s easier ways to ask a boy out, Elder McKinley.”

Connor laughs at first, like maybe he’s making a joke. Kevin isn’t. His crooked smile remains, though.

“I’m not-” Connor starts to say, and then sighs. “I did try,” he says, in the softest smallest voice Kevin’s ever heard.

“Try what?” Kevin asks, his mouth dry.

“To turn it off,” Connor says, in a rush, in that same sad little voice. Kevin blinks at him slowly. “I- couldn’t.”

“I don’t want you to,” Kevin murmurs. He’s looking at Connor in a way that somebody else would probably describe as intense. Kevin is singleminded about things when he decides on them, and when he realises that he wants something - well. He usually tends to get it.

“You don’t?” Connor asks. He swallows, deeply - Kevin sees the jut of it in his throat.

“No,” Kevin says, and he sounds sure of himself in a way he hasn’t in months. He stands up. Straightens. He’s still holding the book, clasped gently in his grasp. “I don’t.”

“Oh?” Connor’s still standing in the doorway, but something about his posture is tense, held like the coil of a snake. “I mean – it’s - it’s a part of the Book now, I guess. That’s-”

“Connor,” Kevin starts to walk towards them. He crosses the tiny room in two, three steps. He’s standing in front of Connor now. His eyes are very, very blue. It’s an observation he can only make because Connor is that close, and his eyes are that wide, unblinking. “Can I-” he’d been going to say can I thank you for my present properly but he falters at the last moment – he’s never been smooth, anyway.

“Can you…?” Connor looks at him, and his gaze slips down to Kevin’s mouth. It’s the only thing Kevin needs, he thinks, to give him the courage to fumble forward and kiss Connor.

It’s a messy, awkward thing - one of Kevin’s hands slips to Connor’s cheekbone, glancing over it gently, and the other is still carefully clutching the book. Connor doesn’t seem to know what to do with his own hands, and there’s a horrible moment where Kevin’s sure he misjudged things because Connor seems to jerk his head to the side for a moment, before he gives the softest breath and kisses Kevin right back.

“You said,” Connor says, once they break apart, “You said you weren’t having gay thoughts.”

Kevin squints at him. “That was months ago.”

“You came in like a picture-perfect Mormon poster boy, don’t blame me for going off what you said , Elder Price,” Connor says, and flicks him square in the chest. He’s still flushed, though, and Kevin feels quietly pleased with himself.

“I think you can call me Kevin, now,” Kevin says, even though Connor has been for the last few months. Then he pauses, and looks back down at the book in his hands. “How long have you…?” He doesn’t finish his sentance but Connor seems to know what he’s getting at because his eyebrows knit together.

“Oh,” Connor stares down at his hands, “Months.”

Kevin tilts his head to the side. “Like, from when we-”

A little amused smile plays over Connor’s features. “Not from when you first got here,” then, “The month or so after. When you stopped being so - well. You know. The way you were when you first got here.”

“I don’t think I’ve changed that much,” says Kevin.

“Oh, you have,” Connor murmurs, “Like - how long have you…?”

“About ten minutes,” Kevin admits sheepishly, “Since I realised.”

Connor hums at that, and there’s a few scattered moments of peaceful silence. Kevin thinks they’re both trying to process everything. It’s an awful lot to process, for him – he knows, he knows deep down that there had been something building for months and months, but it’s one thing to know that in the back of your mind (and have your best friend question you endlessly about it) and it’s another for that realisation to backhand you full across the face. Butterflies skitter about his stomach. 

Connor glances over at him. “What are you thinking about?” He asks, worrying at the skin of his lip with his teeth. 

Kevin swallows. “You,” he says, honestly, and then, “And - just. I don’t know. Everything. It’s a lot to think about.”

Connor nudges him in the shoulder. It’s a casual touch, the kind that before now he would have barely registered, but now it sends sparks hurtling around his body. “Hey,” he says, “One day at a time. We can work out that everything together, can’t we?”

It’s the most casual Kevin’s ever heard Connor McKinley. Which is startlingly ironic – of all things to be relaxed about, it would be this.

“Yeah,” Kevin says, feeling like he’s gotten himself in for something. He doesn’t mind whatever that something might be too much at all. The future is usually terrifying to him; the unknown of it all, but he feels like maybe this unknown might just be worth exploring. "We can."