if you’re still taking new sensory prompts, 8 (light on the bottom of a clear pool) for succession please and thank you
HELLO, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEG!!!
This is a very belated prompt fill, but perfectly on time for a birthday fill, so hopefully that's a point in my favour, haha. Ily, I hope your day is magic, here's some pre-canon, Roy-sib, Kendall x Stewy UST.
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Thing about Stewy is he doesn’t really swim.
Not can’t, not like Dad, but - -
Doesn’t.
And maybe it never would’ve even been on Kendall’s radar if it wasn’t for the fact that Stewy liked any excuse to lounge around a pool, spa, lake, beach, fucking - - fucking yacht in the middle of the Pacific, shirt off and shoulders golden, legs long in that way they’ve been since he had that growth spurt four years ago and calves defined since he started working out last fall, and okay, y’know what, that’s not the point.
The point is Kendall swims. Kendall’s swimming right now, in the pool at Connor’s new place in Medina, the sun freckling his pale back and the water slipping around his wrists, stomach, throat in tendrils, or not like - - not tendrils, he doesn’t mean - - it’s just like - - it does kind of feel like it’s climbing him, the water, or he’s climbing it - - whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Kendall’s diving deeper, deeper, until the pressure pops in his ears and his fingers brush the tiles on the bottom of the pool. Until he can flatten his palms against it, legs hanging loose above him, soles of his feet turned up towards the warmer surface, sun prickling the skin there, until his chest aches with holding his breath and he opens his mouth enough to feel the release, air rising up around him until the bubbles surge against his cheeks, and then it’s up, up, break the surface, take a breath, feel the mild heat of Seattle’s summer against his wet skin.
“Y’know,” Stewy says. “If you were down there much longer, I was gonna call your bro, bro. Get him out here showing off all those survive-and-resus skills he’s learning at his who-cares school for understudy-sons.”
It’s enough to make Kendall huff out a laugh, to make him tread water instead of diving back under, and he trains his attention inside to where Roman’s talking Connor’s ear off in the kitchen about knives and all the different ways he’s learning to use them at St. Andrew’s.
(“That’s swell, Rome, you wanna go find Shivy? I got this great tape on the Siege of Toulon – y’know, we’re talking early Napoleon, so if you want knives, you’re in for a treat.”)
“Shiv said the other day that Buckley was one of those,” Kendall says, more to himself than anything, but he feels it, the way Stewy’s focus snaps back to him, sunglasses pushed low enough he can peer over the top of them, cool and easy, because Stewy’s always cool and easy. “That Buckley’s for guys who can’t get into Trinity-Pawling or Collegiate.”
“Isn’t she fucking around with that T-P guy - - what’s his name - - dad’s a total Bank of America hack?”
“Aaron Peterson, yeah, but - - no. Not - - she’s fourteen, dude.”
Stewy rolls his eyes.
“Fine, holding hands with him in the library, whatever you need to tell yourself, bro. Point is, your sister’ll parrot any bullshit she hears if it gets her a treat and pisses you off, like, come on, how do you not know this already?”
And he did really, does, but there’s something in the way Shiv had said it at breakfast the other day, before Connor had dragged them out to pick Roman up from the airport, her nose in the air and the set to her face a little smug as she’d stabbed a piece of cantaloupe with her fork.
The water laps, and Kendall glances back towards the house, and they’re all in the sunroom now. Connor and Roman and Shiv too, and he watches as Roman jabs a finger into Shiv’s pale cheek, and Kendall drops his face, hides his grin in the water when Shiv aims a knee (badly) for his crotch in retaliation. One of the nanny’s darts forwards in response, but Connor waves her off, pushing between the two of them instead, head swinging as he tells them if they want him to let them watch an R-rated movie later, they’re going to have to get along.
And also pay attention to the Napoleon documentary, because there will be a pop quiz.
(“A little thing I like to call the Napole-Con Quiz,” he enthuses loudly, and it’s Shiv’s strained voice to Roman that says: “Please make him stop.”)
Which figures, Kendall thinks, and he glances back at Stewy, who’s not watching Shiv and Roman fight in the sunroom, but instead watching him watch them, his gaze hot and a little focused, and the thought leaves Kendall dark and prickling, and bright and preening, that weird, conflicting feeling he gets whenever he notices someone watching him, but - -
Yeah.
Okay.
Especially Stewy.
Kendall drops beneath the water, lets it swallow him up for a minute, ears popping, eyes burning as the chlorine washes into him, and his head feels so heavy. Full. Thoughts slow and sticking like taffy, like gum to the bottom of a shoe, and yeah, okay, he’s a little hungover. Stewy has to be too after last night, and Kendall knows Connor wasn’t happy about it, was waiting up for them when they got home from the party (some girl Stewy knew – a friend of his cousin’s, whatever, it didn’t matter. There was Grey Goose and pills), but he hadn’t said anything as he’d sent them to bed, just told them to page him next time if they were going to be late, and Kendall hadn’t entirely known what to do with that or the look of his brother, who if he didn’t know any better almost looked relieved, sitting awkwardly at the dining room table.
Kendall still didn’t, and he thinks maybe that’s why he’s still at Con’s. Why he hasn’t peeled out again to another party, another bar or club that won’t see his age after they see his name, and it was like maybe Stewy had known something Kendall didn’t, because he hasn’t pushed it either. Had just said Seattle’s summers are embarrassing, I can’t believe we’re here instead of in like, fucking Greece as he sprawled out on the banana lounge and sipped coconut water out of a curly straw.
Kendall’s chest aches.
He’s held his breath too long again, he realises, and he sinks again before kicking off the bottom of the pool floor, water parting around him, streaming down his body as he cracks the surface and gasps.
The air is warm, easy, and he pushes a hand up to shove his wet hair back, and when he glances over, Stewy’s still watching him, or at least, watching the water, and Kendall swallows, and, before he can think better of it, swims over to the side of the pool to clamber out.
Thing is, they weren’t supposed to be here.
They were supposed to be staying in Manhattan; they had plans.
After all, it was one of the first summers him and Stewy were going to both be staying for the break – Stewy wasn’t going back to Iran to see family since he’d gone back for Eid al-Fitr in May instead, and Kendall, Roman and Shiv weren’t going to stay at Mom’s since she was renovating and didn’t want them underfoot.
Plus Dad was going to DC for a few weeks, and Kendall was knocking on the door of 18, and somehow managed to convince Dad that they didn’t need a nanny for it. God, he was almost a senior, he could take care of Rome and Shiv, and Dad agreed eventually, he did, only - - okay. Maybe (not maybe) he’d fucked that up by getting, well, a little too fucked up and crashing the Lexus into a tree the last week of Junior year, and it wasn’t like anyone got hurt (at least not beyond Kendall’s bruised jaw from where it hit the steering wheel), they were just - - y’know - - letting loose or whatever, but the next thing Kendall knew, Connor had flown in and Dad had their bags packed, and Kendall figured at least the nannies weren’t coming with them, only then two of them did, and the thought still left the heat skimming just beneath the surface of his skin, because it wasn’t just that he still got the babysitter, it was just like - - this reminder too.
That Kendall wasn’t actually the oldest. Wasn’t necessarily the heir.
That for dad, Connor was always just a phone call away.
(Understudy son, that’s what Stewy had just called Roman, and that was the thing right - - as first born, was Kendall the understudy? Or was Connor? Yeah, fuck, just - - things made more sense when Mom and Dad were still together.)
Whatever.
Point is Stewy told him fuck it. They’d planned their summer together, and the city was just the set-dressing, right?
Kendall hadn’t been dumb enough to ask Dad, but Stewy had family everywhere, and it was easy for him to find a cousin in Seattle who he could pretend to want to see. Did want to see, Stewy had stressed, “Unlike you, I like my family.”
Which, y’know, wasn’t true.
Kendall liked his family, he did, just they also were - -
“Hey, fuckwads, if you’ve finished sucking each other off, we’re watching a movie!”
Roman yells it like they can’t hear him perfectly well, his voice cracking through the quiet of the afternoon, and Kendall glances back as he pushes out of the pool, Roman thrusting a tongue into his cheek and moving it in time with his fucking - - fucking jerk off gesture with the other hand, and Kendall can feel the heat in his chest rise, but when he looks back at Stewy again, Stewy’s kind of grinning, his lips twitching up like anything about Roman, ever, is funny.
“Kinda weird how you say that like you want to watch your brother blow me, man,” Stewy calls, and Roman sneers a little, flips him off with the hand (still) doing the jerk off motion, and Kendall gives Stewy a sharp look when he hears Connor call Roman back inside.
“Can you like, not fucking encourage him?”
Stewy looks back at him, all eyelashes over the rim of his sunglasses.
“Can you like, not fucking chill?” Stewy says, voice low, imitating, and then he shrugs, sitting up in the banana lounge while Kendall towels off by the edge of the pool, and he can feel Stewy’s gaze fixing somewhere around his chest, and it’s that feeling again – prickling, preening. “It’s just shit-talking, dude.”
“Obviously,” Kendall replies, swallowing thickly, and Stewy gives him an odd look, but stands up all the same, running a hand back through his hair and adjusting his thin, white linen shirt, and Kendall looks away.
Focuses on the feel of the towel against his skin, on the sounds of the pool filter, on Shiv and Connor and Roman only a few feet away through open doors, bickering about movie snacks and then the movie, and he’s so fixed on it, he doesn’t know Stewy’s beside him until their shoulders bump together.
“Hey,” he says, voice warm, shoulder warm through the fabric of his shirt, and something in Kendall sparks.
“Okay, so the Battle of Toulon is Napoleon’s first real military victory,” Connor rambles from the sunroom, voice loud, bright, or maybe just loud to Kendall, right now, right here, with Stewy so close he can smell the sunscreen on him. “But one of the reasons it’s so interesting is that they caught and took over the harbor, which is really what forced the city to surrender.”
“Who cares what fucking Roman thinks, dude,” Stewy says, and his fingers are suddenly on Kendall’s back, tracing across his still damp skin, thumbing a freckle, then a little lower – to where a scar sits, something old enough Kendall doesn’t quite remember the origins of it (he wonders if Stewy does, thinks, maybe, he would. He’d found it so easy.) “No offense, but your brother has like. No friends.”
“All the while, the Anglo’s just retreated. It’s like this masterclass of military strategy, right, masterful in its simplicity,” Connor continues. “If you take out an exit strategy, the strongest of armies will cave.”
Kendall needs to go back inside.
He needs to sit between Connor and Shiv and let Roman and Stewy shit talk on the floor or whatever. Needs to get far away from Stewy’s hand on his back, fingers somehow awakening nerve endings Kendall didn’t know he had, which is stupid, because Kendall’s not exactly chaste, and he’s slept with a lot of girls – okay, two, but it never quite felt - -
Maybe he’s still fucked up.
Maybe there’s still something in his system.
Maybe the too-careful, too-easy weight of Stewy’s hand, now a hairsbreadth from the small of his back, is just - -
“Yeah,” Kendall agrees suddenly, blinking a little rapidly, gaze fixed on the pool. “Like, we’re friends, and he doesn’t like - - he doesn’t get that.”
And it was the right answer or the wrong one, Kendall’s not sure, but whatever it is, it’s enough for Stewy to drop his hand, even if he doesn’t step back.
“Totally. Hey, I think the Con-man might actually force us to watch this thing regardless, so let’s just do it now. Your sister might actually die of boredom, so that could be fun.”
And it’s then Stewy steps back. Then that he strides ahead, his posture just ever so slightly stiff in a way Kendall doesn’t know what to do with, but he finds himself watching the lines of his friend’s broad shoulders and his strong back and his tapered waist, and Kendall’s mouth feels dry, and he thinks you can’t ever want this, but he sees Stewy lift his hand, fingers damp from trailing through the water still clinging to Kendall’s back, and he thinks at least wanting without receipt is something he knows.
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