Sorry for the continued delay. I was involved in several things this past week that prevented me from having any significant writing time. Thanks to the continued comments and support!

AS THE WORLD TURNS

"The Luke and Kevin Story" part 10

"So, should you say something, or should I?" Luke asked with some snark as Holden started up the car and they set off on their journey to the pharmacy for his asthma medicine. He knew that Holden was just dying to know what was going on with Kevin, and frankly, Luke was rather annoyed with it. Did he constantly ask his parents about their love life?

Holden took a quick glance at him, to see his expression, but not long enough to accidentally run off of the road. "I don't mean to get on your bad side, Luke," he said. "I was just a little curious in your situation with Kevin."

Luke took a deep breath. Kevin said it himself, he didn't care who knew anymore. But was he in his right mind then? He had to be completely out of it to suggest something like that. "Kevin's gay," Luke suddenly found himself saying. He wanted to kick himself for even uttering the words.

"Okay..." Holden said, soaking it in. He didn't want to believe that his son was truly in love with that guy. Sure, he had grown to accept Kevin as one of Luke's friends again, but as a lover would be stretching it. Like Lily, he still found it a tad bit hard to forget all of the trouble Kevin had gotten his son into.

"And we're going to be together," Luke said, defensively, "whether you like it or not. We don't care what other people think about us, and if you don't want me to see him again, I'll just move out. Grandma would love to have me."

"Slow down, son," Holden responded. "Nobody's going to kick you out and we're not going to make you stop seeing Kevin. Of course, if he gets you in to drinking and drugs again, though..."

"Drugs!? What the...Kevin doesn't do drugs! He's never given me drugs!"

"I know!" Holden exclaimed. When he mentioned the drugs, he realized how big of a mistake that was and hoped that Luke wouldn't say anything about it, but he did, and that made Holden just a bit mad at himself. "But the drinking is bad enough."

"Well, we've both stopped drinking. There's nothing to worry about there."

"Your mom and I just want to look out for you. Are you sure you're ready for a relationship?"

Luke was disgusted. "Come on, Dad, be for real. If I was straight and Kevin was a girl, you wouldn't even think of asking me that question."

"You're right," Holden said, "I wouldn't. You do realize that if you have a relationship with Kevin, if the two of you want to be truly happy, you have to be open to everyone. A lot of people aren't going to take so well to the thought of two guys being together."

"I don't need those people. They won't mean a thing to me twenty years from now, but Kevin will."

"Well...I hope things turn out well for the both of you."

~~~~~~~~~

"What happened!?" Kevin asked frantically to the many firefighters and policemen camped out around his home. The house itself was now rid of fire, but the damage was done. All of the windows were busted, and the front door was nowhere to be found. Inside, there was still smoke and soot everywhere. "Where's my father!?"

Suddenly, he saw his mother standing by an ambulance and ran to her. "Mom!" he called out. "What did they do with Dad!?"

Sheryl Davis stood at about 5 foot 4 and had an average build. She was a walking cliche for the abused woman: her eyes were dark from years of crying, her hair was always desheveled. She held out her thin arms to hug her son. She rubbed her hands through his hair. "Sweetheart," she said. "Your daddy didn't make it."

Kevin quickly broke the hug. "What?" he asked flatly. "What are you trying to say!?"

"Kevin!" Sheryl exclaimed. "He's gone!"

"What the hell happened!?" he asked loudly, walking around in circle because he did not understand what was going on. "What is going on!?"

Nora asked Sheryl those same questions, but in a more civil way. "Aunt Sheryl," she asked, "what went on? How did the fire start?"

Sheryl turned slowly to her niece. "The neighbors say that they saw Sean come home today with a jug of gas. The police are thinking he set the fire himself."

"Hey, my father's in there!" Kevin said to the paramedics as they began to load up the ambulance to leave for Oakdale Memorial.

"Son," the paramedic said, "your father is no longer living."

Kevin watched without words as the ambulance drove away. The sirens did not blare for his father and the lights did not flash. Mr. Davis was dead, and there was no need to rush him to the hospital. Kevin just stood, not being able to digest all that was around him.

"Kid," Nora said as she quietly came behind him. "They're saying that your room wasn't hurt much, but they don't think it's safe for anybody to be up there on the second floor. They'll find a way to get all of your things down, though."

Kevin turned and looked at her. "I don't care about those things, Nora! I could only pray that my stuff had been burned up and that my father lived!"

He broke down in tears and immediately went to Nora's shoulder as she started to pat his back.

How could you feel anything for him? This man who abused you verbally for years and treating your mother like a punching bag. This man who drank gin more than he drank water. This man who would never, ever accept his son being gay.

How did this happen? What drove a man to do something so desperate? It was the money, Kevin thought as he remembered the conversation he had on the phone with his father the night before at the hospital. The insurance money. Money seemed so damn insignificant to him now. He needed someone blame. He ached for someone to blame! His mother? No, not her. She had no idea. Nora? No, Nora was there for everyone and hated no one. Himself? Or maybe Lucinda?

At that moment, Kevin wanted nothing more than to weep his cares away into Nora's shoulder as she whispered phrases of enlightenment in his ear. "Everything turns out fine in the end," she said. "The world will always turn, that's something you can be sure of."

~~~~~~~~~

"You have something to do with this, don't you?" Lily asked her mother as Lucinda poured them both a cup of tea in the living room of her home.

"Something to do with what, dear?" Lucinda asked, trying to evade the question. Damn right I have something to do with it, she thought.

"This thing with Luke and that kid Kevin Davis. You know something that I don't know and you're going to tell me."

"Dear, dear, have you not learned anything over the last, what, 35 years? Nobody makes Lucinda Walsh - or Mary Ellen Walters, for that matter - do anything she doesn't feel she has to do."

Lily let out a dry laugh. She was right. Lucinda was not one to be pushed around, ever, and this was no exception. Lily knew that it would take a more than just her wanting to know for Lucinda to spill the beans. "Well, I don't trust Kevin, so if you know anything, you really should tell me."

"Honey, please. I didn't trust Holden or any of those Snyders when you first started running around with him, but that turned out fine...for the most part, didn't it?"

"So, you're saying that Luke is 'running around' with Kevin? I knew it!" She instantly flashed back to the hospital when Kevin said things that only lovers said. The thought crossed her mind then, but now that she had been thinking about it for a while, it couldn't be denied. "My son loves the guy who almost got him killed."

"Oh, come on, Lily, Kevin didn't try to get Luke killed. Luke chose to go out drinking with him all of those times."

"Yeah, but that would not have been an option if Kevin hadn't been there around the corner everytime Luke got into it with me or Holden. Every single time, Luke'd get a phone call and out the door he'd go, and when he came back, he'd go straight up to his room, all without a word."

Lucinda frowned. "He's a teenager! A teenager! He's not going to want to tell you everything he does, no matter how much you want him to."

"But he's just - "

"Just your little boy still? Honey, I've said it already. He's a teenager. He knows how to handle things and, if he's anything like his mother, he has a very good head on his shoulders. Misguided at times? Yes, but overall very good."

Lily looked at her mother. Rarely did Lucinda say such mushy things, but it was understood mutually how deeply they appreciated each other. When Lucinda did say it out loud how she proud she was, however, Lily couldn't help but feel sentimental. "Thanks," she said, hugging her mother.

Just then, the telephone rang. Lucinda went to answer it, and once the person on the other end said what they had to say, a look of guilty relief came across her face. "What is it?" Lily asked.

Lucinda slowly hang up the phone. "One of my employees, Sean Davis, one of those who were going to sue me...he just died in a house fire."

Lily instantly recognized the name. "Sean Davis?" she asked, almost cutting Lucinda off. "That's Kevin's father!"

That couldn't register in Lucinda's mind. "What? Kevin? You mean Luke's Kevin?"

"Yes! As a matter of fact, I remember Luke once telling me that Kevin's father worked at Worldwide!"

Lucinda couldn't help but laugh at the irony. "Would you believe it? The man who was going to sue me is the father of my grandson's boyfriend. And now he's dead. Only in America, I swear. Wait, no, scratch that. Only in Oakdale!"

~~~~~~~~~

After dropping Luke off at home, Holden went for the drive out to Luther's Corners to visit his own mother, Emma Snyder. Emma was a milk-and-cookies kind of mother and was always able to help solve whatever problems her children were having in their lives. Seldom did her own life become the source of melodrama, so it excited her, the thrill of being involved in the development of people and relationships.

"Luke...has a boyfriend," Holden said when Emma sat him down at the kitchen table. "You know, no matter how much I tell myself that everything's going to be okay, I can't help but think otherwise."

"It's that old feeling of 'what if?' I think," Emma graciously commented.

"May be. But there's something inside me that tells me that this all wrong."

"Well, maybe you can tell me the whole story so I can understand it more clearly," Emma said as she poured her son another glass of milk. "You know, it feels like twenty years ago when you were a teenager dealing with your own problems."

Holden nodded. "But that's the thing, Mama. The problems I had are worlds apart different from what the problems Luke's going through. I had it easy. I did what was expected of me. I chased skirts around and - "

"Luke prefers to chase tight jeans?"

"That's a colorful way to put it."

"Forgive me," Emma said light-heartedly.

"Luke's been best friends with this kid Kevin for years, literally. They practically grew up together, and Luke...well Luke started to trust him, I guess. It's so hard to explain."

Emma looked her son in the eye and saw that he was in agony. He couldn't help it. He was so scared that Luke would get hurt, by Kevin or someone who wouldn't be as accepting of his sexuality. He knew that if Kevin broke his son's heart, he'd find him and follow through on the threats he made months ago.

"No matter how much I try to understand it, I just can't. And it's not so much the gay part anymore but the fact that over the last year, Kevin's been such a bad influence, and Luke usually knows how to choose his friends in a good way. I mean, Kevin knew all about his kidney, but still had him drinking all night long."

"People do strange things for love," Emma said. "What happened when Luke told Kevin how he felt?"

"Luke won't exactly tell me what happened, but, from what I gather, things turned out in his favor. Last night when he had the asthma attack, Kevin was the one who was there with him out on Comet's Trail. He knew what to do and he made sure Luke was taken care of until the paramedics got there. And Luke says that he stopped drinking."

"Then what's the problem?" Emma asked. As far as she could see, Kevin passed the right tests. He seemed loyal to Luke and that's all that mattered. "He seems like a good young man."

Holden caught Emma's eyes, smiled, and started to shake his head 'no.' "You always make everything seem so easy," he said. "Everything that I think about for hours and hours, you just solve in no time. What's your secret?"

"No secret," Emma revealed. "I just have more years of wisdom than you do."

She started to clear the kitchen table. Holden continued to tell her what was going on. "I don't want Luke to get all hung up on this guy and then it turns out he was just using Luke as some kind of experiment to find out who he is."

"If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that people always know who they are. It's just a matter of whether they want to admit who they are or not. How does Lily feel about all this?"

Holden groaned. "She doesn't know what to do with anything. She's got our marriage to think about, she's got Luke, she's got Faith and Natalie, she's got to make sure her mother doesn't try to take over the world, and she has a new baby to think about. I want to tell her to let me handle it all, but she knows I can't, so she tries to help out, and with Luke, that only makes it worse."

Emma went to her son and put her arm around him. "And when it all looks like it won't work out the way you want it to, and when you just need to sit down and not think about a thing, you know where to go, don't you?"

"Home," he said.

And with that, Emma gave him a quick peck on the forehead.

~~~~~~~~~

As soon as Luke got home, he got into his own car and drove out to one of the most serene places in Oakdale: a quiet, quaint, cozy clearing that surrounded a small foot bridge. Ever since he was old enough to venture out on his own, it was somewhat of a home away from home for him. It was where he could go to air out.

While leaning on the railing of the foot bridge, he was joined by a long time friend, Will Munson. Will was a year older than Luke, but had always been a good person to talk to. After all, Will's half-sister was now engaged to Luke's aunt's ex-boyfriend. With a strong family bond like that, they couldn't help but be friends. "What's up, man?" Will greeted when he walked up onto the bridge.

"Nothing much," Luke said as he dropped a stone into the water below. Wanting someone to turn to, he just went for it. "Guess who found himself a boyfriend."

"No way!" Will exclaimed. "Who's the lucky guy?"

Luke smiled because he was glad to see that Will was happy for him. The "lucky guy" comment didn't exactly hurt his ego, either. "Well, I'm not sure he wants me to tell anyone...but, you know what? Just yesterday he told me that he doesn't care anymore what people think and that he wants the whole world to know."

"Sounds like a keeper," Will said. "Is he someone I know?"

"Kevin Davis," Luke announced.

Will started to laugh. "Kevin Davis!? Well, we all have our crushes. Mine's on Jessica Simpson, but..."

"Hey, what is that supposed to mean?" Luke asked.

Will contained his laughter. "I'm sorry, it's just that Kevin Davis isn't exactly the guy you'd expect to be gay. Not to mention the fact that he's basically Oakdale Latin's resident male slut."

Luke became defensive. "Well, there's two things that I can say to that. Looks can be decieving, and don't always believe what you hear."

Will could sense that Luke wasn't being serious and that he wasn't looking for jokes. "Hey, I'm sorry, really," he said, putting his hand on Luke's back. "How did you and Kevin come to be...a couple?"

Interesting question, Luke thought. Now that he knew that Kevin wanted him for a while, and he had his own feelings for Kevin for a while, could that be interpreted as them becoming a couple the instant they both fell in love with each other, even though both were afraid to say anything? Of course not, Luke said to himself.

"I started to trust him," he said to a attentive Will. "Kevin was there for me. And last year, when both my parents were out acting like crazy teenagers with their new boyfriend and girlfriend, Kevin was the only constant, I guess you can say. When that Keith creep got between my and mom and I was mad at Holden for letting her be with Keith, Kevin was the only one I could talk to about anything. He was kinda like a drug."

Will couldn't believe that he was here to hear this. This was some deep, serious stuff, probably something that Luke had been wanting to say to someone for a while now. Will thanked God for giving him the opportunity to witness such a life-affirming moment. "Well...if you ever need anything, I hope you know that I'm always here for you."

"Yes, I know," Luke replied. "Thank you. If it weren't for you, I don't know if I would have ever gotten the courage to come out to my parents in the first place. I'm glad I finally did."

"Don't thank me," Will said. "You convinced yourself. It's all you. Your life's what you make of it."

Luke thought about that for a second and agreed. "Yeah," he said, with a smiling developing on his mouth. "You're right."

Luke wanted a hug. Maybe it was all of the hugs that happened betwen he and Lucinda, he and Lily, he and Holden, and he and Emma over the last week that made him a sucker for them. All he knew was that he couldn't end the conversation without giving one to Will.

Will sensed this and spread open his arms. "Come here," he said.

It was a male-bonding hug, nothing more than that, but Luke still found himself enjoying the fragrance that was in Will's shirt and on his pale skin. He had always had a schoolboy crush on the older teen, but it never went more than that. Will was a friend, a true blue friend, and Luke was thankful to have him.

TO BE CONTINUED...