The End Where I Begin

“Hey, how are you? How was the tour?” Kevin asks once he’s over the threshold of Mike’s apartment. He leans forward to kiss him, face flushed and eyes bright, but Mike turns his head and it lands on his cheek instead.

“Fine.” Mike shrugs, stepping aside to let his boyfriend in before shutting the front door behind him. “You know. The usual.”

Kevin nods and they lapse into silence, neither of them looking at each other. (They used to be able to just be together and not speak for hours without feeling awkward or uncomfortable. Mike wonders fleetingly what changed, and when, and why it’s taken him so long to notice.)

They sit on Mike’s sofa, still not looking at each other. There’s a cushion-sized space between them and Mike aches to just shift down so they’re actually sitting side by side, knees touching. But he can’t, he knows he can’t and he knows why he can’t, and he knows there’s no point putting this off any longer than he already has.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.” Mike swallows, hard, and looks up at Kevin. “Something important.”

Kevin looks worried as he reaches out to touch Mike’s arm just like he used to, before things went and fucked themselves up. Before they went and fucked things up. “Okay. What is it?”

“It’s just- we’re not- this isn’t-” Mike flails a little, wishing it wasn’t so hard for him to just say what he needs to say so he can just get this ordeal over with.

But Kevin’s more astute than people give him credit for and he says, “Mike,” his teeth digging into his lower lip, “you aren’t breaking up with me, are you?”

“No. Yes. Maybe?” Mike glances away, unable to meet Kevin’s eyes. “Yes,” he says quietly. “Yeah, I am.”

Kevin sucks in a breath through his teeth. All the colour’s drained out of his cheeks and his face is horribly, unnaturally pale. “Why?”

“Come on, Kevin.” Mike’s laugh is bitter and hollow and broken, just like he feels. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.”

“Actually,” Kevin says, his voice even except for a tiny tremor in the middle, “I can. And I didn’t. I don’t get it, Mike, I love you. I thought... I thought you loved me too.”

Mike rakes a hand back through his hair, frustrated. “So did I. It’s just- we never see each other any more, Kevin,” he says, but the speech he practised for hours beforehand doesn’t sound quite so reasonable now it’s tumbling out of his mouth. “Our tours are at different times, in completely different places. We can’t be seen in public too often or people get suspicious. The last time I talked to you was a five minute conversation over the phone three weeks ago. We never see each other. It just... it just isn’t working.”

“But we’ve been coping,” Kevin says, sounding so hurt it physically pains Mike to hear him speak. “You said you could do this, Mike. Remember? You said we’d be okay, you said.”

Mike forces himself to look up at Kevin, at the wetness pooling in his impossibly wide eyes, at his quivering lower lip that he kind of wants to press his mouth to, just to make it stop. “I don’t think I can any more, Kev.” You deserve better, he doesn’t say. You deserve someone who can.

“Is it that you can’t do it,” Kevin says, so quietly Mike can barely hear him, “or that you don’t want to?”

Mike doesn’t answer, can’t, but his silence answers for him and Kevin exhales slowly before speaking again.

“Is there someone else? Is that why you’re-”

“No,” Mike says, more vehemently than is perhaps necessary. “No, Kevin, it’s not like that, Jesus. I wouldn’t- I couldn’t do that to you.”

Kevin nods, but it’s more a listless jerk of his head than anything else. “Okay,” he says, quietly, “okay.”

Mike’s eyes widen, his mouth parted in surprise. He’s not sure why but he was expecting Kevin to put up more of a fight than that, to beg Mike not to leave him, to care enough to not just let him go. He doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean, but he doesn’t think he wants to.

“Okay,” he repeats, hoping his brusque tone veils the way his voice is shaking, and just like that they’re over, eighteen months of memories falling to ruin right in front of their eyes.

(It’s too easy to break something, Mike thinks. Too easy to pull something apart or smash it into pieces or just let it waste away. Destruction is a doddle, it’s creation that’s the challenge.)

Kevin shifts and for a wild, crazy second, Mike thinks he’s going to lean over and hug him. He jerks away instinctively because the moment Kevin touches him, Mike knows his resolve would dry up and there would be no way, no way in hell, that he could go through this.

But Kevin only gets to his feet, brushing himself down, and gives Mike a tiny smile that doesn’t look quite right perched on his lips. Mike tries to smile back, but his face is frozen in place, cold and blank and devoid of emotion.

“Goodbye Mike,” Kevin says, softly, and it doesn’t sound like forever but Mike knows that it is.

Mike opens his mouth to- to say goodbye, to tell Kevin he’s changed his mind, to beg him not to leave, something. But the words die in his throat and all that comes out is a faint, croaky moan that makes Kevin’s lip twitch into a not-quite-smile that doesn’t touch his eyes.

And then Kevin walks out of the apartment, out of Mike’s life, the front door shutting with a gentle click behind him. Mike clasps his hands behind his neck and squeezes his elbows around the sides of his head in a mostly futile attempt to crush the voices that are telling him what a stupid, stupid mistake he’s made.

He swallows, hard, past the knot in his throat and the sudden hollowness in his chest. He did the right thing. He did.

(He just wishes doing the right thing didn’t hurt so fucking much.)

***

Joe comes over the next day to pick up all of Kevin’s stuff that’s managed to accumulate in Mike’s apartment since they got together. It’s nothing much, just a few changes of clothes and a couple of books and DVDs, but as Mike’s gathering the detritus to put into boxes, the finality of the situation hits him like a ton of bricks. He has to sit down for a few moments to just breathe, deep, gulping breaths over and over and over, before he can go on.

When Joe turns up on his doorstep, the first thing he does is punch Mike in the face. Mike reels back with a gasped, “Motherfucker,” because who knew a Jonas Brother could have such a mean right hook? His natural instinct is, of course, to hit back, harder, but he doesn’t. He knows he deserves it. He deserves worse.

“You broke his heart, you know,” Joe says, flatly, massaging his knuckle with the hand he didn’t use to try and break Mike’s nose.

Mike glances at the floor, toeing the carpet with a sneakered foot. “He’ll get over me,” he says, head bobbing violently as if that’ll somehow make him sound more convincing.

Joe’s gaze is steely and unwavering and more serious than Mike’s ever seen it when he says, “Maybe. Probably. One day. Question is, will you get over him?”

Mike doesn’t know how to answer that, so he only shrugs and hands Joe the two small cardboard boxes of Kevin’s stuff. “Tell him I miss him,” he says quickly, like he doesn’t think he’ll get the words out otherwise.

Joe’s eyes, warm and brown and so much like Kevin’s, narrow to slits. “Tell him yourself.”

And then he’s gone, taking the last of Kevin with him, and the hollowness in the pit of Mike’s stomach grows until he feels almost entirely empty.

He did the right thing. He did.

***

The thing is, and this is a very important thing, Kevin will get over him. He’ll find a nice, beautiful Christian girl and they’ll get married and settle down and have one point eight equally beautiful children and they’ll live in a perfect house with the white picket fence and everything, and Kevin won’t even remember that he was once in love with a scruffy boy in a band with nothing to offer but his heart.

He deserves it. He can do so much better than Mike. Mike knows this, has known it since he met Kevin, even if it took him a little while to accept it.

He did the right thing. He did.

(One day, one day, Mike thinks he might actually be able to believe himself.)

***

He calls Bill a few days later even though they usually give each other a wide berth for a couple of weeks after they finish a tour to make sure they don’t get completely and utterly sick of each others’ faces. He needs to talk to someone, someone who isn’t his reflection, staring accusingly back at him from the other side of a mirror.

“Hey,” Mike says, when Bill picks up the phone.

There’s silence on the other end for a few moments before Bill says, carefully, “You did it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Mike mumbles, blinking hard a few times. “I did it.”

Bill is going to tell him he’s an idiot. “You’re an idiot,” he says, and Mike laughs. It scrapes his throat a little on the way out of his mouth but it’s a laugh, a real, genuine laugh, his first since he watched Kevin leave.

“No, I’m a genius,” he says, only half-joking, “because I knew you were going to say that.”

“Nah, you’re still an idiot,” Bill says decisively, “because the only reason you knew I was going to say it is you already know it’s true.”

“Fuck you, okay,” Mike mumbles, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I did the right thing here.”

“For who?” Bill asks, incredulous. “Because from where I’m standing, this is shit for both of you.”

Mike scowls at the wall in front of him where Bill would be if they were talking face-to-face. “It was the right thing to do,” he repeats, sounding no more convinced this time around. “He deserved more, you know?”

“No, Mike, I don’t know,” Bill says stubbornly. “Enlighten me. What more does Kevin need, exactly?”

Mike’s scowl deepens, and he knows he shouldn’t but he rises to Bill’s bait and responds. “He needs someone he doesn’t have to hide from the whole fucking world,” he snaps, grip tightening on his phone. “He needs someone who doesn’t mind spending weeks and weeks apart and doesn’t get jealous when he hangs out with pretty girls. He needs someone who wants the same things as him, who wants to get married and have kids and settle down and have the perfect fucking life with him. He needs-” Mike’s voice catches and he hates himself, hates that he can’t hold onto the rage that’s slowly seeping out of his veins. “He needs someone who isn’t me,” he finishes, quiet and miserable and utterly resigned.

Bill doesn’t say anything for so long Mike thinks he’s hung up on him. Mike wouldn’t blame him. Mike would probably hang up if he called himself. But then there’s a crackle of static like the other man’s sighing down the phone and Bill says, “You know, it’s really sad that you believe that. I seriously have no idea why, because you’re monumentally stupid and kind of a dick sometimes, but it’s obvious to anyone who spends five minutes with the two of you that Kevin adores the shit out of you.”

“It isn’t enough, Bill,” Mike says flatly. “I can’t give him what he needs.”

“But you can give him what he wants,” Bill insists, “and that’s more important. Fuck, Mike, cut the self-sacrificial bullshit and just answer me one question. Be honest. Do you still love him?”

One of Mike’s shoulders hitches up in a shrug, even though Bill can’t see it. “I miss him,” he says eventually, and it’s the most honest answer he’s prepared to give.

“You’re an idiot,” Bill repeats, matter-of-fact, and Mike just sighs.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah, I know.”

“You will regret this,” Bill informs him. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday you will wake up and realise what an awful mistake you’ve made but by that point, it’ll be too fucking late to make things right. You’ll regret this, Mike. One day.”

“Bill,” Mike says, exhaling sharply, “I already do.”

He hangs up and closes his eyes, the mantra echoing around his brain. He did the right thing. He did.

***

Mike moves on with his life, if not leaving his apartment for a full week and spending the entire time watching soppy rom-coms and eating his weight in chocolate like the thirteen-year-old girl with a broken heart he secretly is inside can be considered moving on with his life. He doesn’t think about Kevin at all, though.

Well. He thinks about him once, maybe twice, when he watches The Notebook, but that’s inevitable because it’s one of Kevin’s favourite films. All in all, he thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of moving on with his life, even if he’s switched off his cell and unplugged his phone from the wall and refuses to answer the door when the bell rings.

But then the Butcher lets himself in with the spare key Mike forgot he gave him in case of an emergency and plants himself on Mike’s sofa and refuses to move even when Mike stands there with his stoniest face on and tells him to get the fuck out of his apartment. Butcher is a stubborn little bastard.

“Here,” he says, pulling out a slightly crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, “I drew this for you. It’s a visual representation of your deep inner man-pain.”

Mike takes the drawing, frowning. It’s a picture of him kneeling on the ground, face tilted to the sky with an over-exaggerated expression of anguish. There’s a speech bubble next to his mouth and it reads, “WHY DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND MY DEEP INNER MAN-PAIN?!”

The corner of Mike’s lips twitches. The Butcher beams at him, claps him on the shoulder and tells him to stop being such a pussy before sauntering back out of Mike’s apartment.

It’s Sisky and Chislett next, armed with a stack of the manliest, goriest, most action-packed DVDs they could get their hands on, apparently. Mike’s sort of impressed, and he makes sure to nudge his own stack of viewing material out of view. He’s not exactly subtle about it, though, and Sisky catches him at it and shakes his head with a mournful expression on his face.

“About a Boy, Mike? Seriously? Seems like we got here just in time, Chiz,” he declares, grinning at Mike, who only rolls his eyes in response and settles back down into his sofa to watch the first Saw film.

Bill’s the last one to turn up on Mike’s doorstep, half an hour or so after the other two have left, and he smiles innocently when Mike asks him why he’s here.

“You told the guys to come over,” Mike says, eyes narrowed with suspicion, “didn’t you?”

Bill shrugs. “I didn’t have to.”

Mike tosses a half-hearted scowl over his shoulder as he turns and trudges back into his apartment, not even bothering to motion for Bill to follow him ‘cause he knows he will anyway. Mike kind of loves his band. Sometimes. (Most of the time.)

“We’re leaving this apartment,” Bill announces, when he’s curled up on Mike’s sofa, lounging like a cat, “and don’t even think about saying no, Carden. This is not up for discussion.”

Mike just shrugs. He doesn’t really want to go anywhere, but he thinks he’s probably exhausted his hermit allowance for the foreseeable future. He’s getting a little bit sick of being stuck between the same four walls all day, too, so he just shrugs.

Bill sighs then and Mike looks up, catching him staring at him with a strange expression on his face, like he’s searching Mike for something, trying to put the pieces together into something that makes sense. Mike frowns and Bill sighs again before rising to his feet and enveloping Mike in a hug. Mike doesn’t cling to him exactly, but he holds on tight and doesn’t let go for a very, very long time.

“Come on,” Bill says when he pulls away, “let’s get out of here.”

Bill takes him to a club on the edge of the city and all but shoves him towards the bar. He doesn’t have to force Mike to drink his beer, though. Or the vodka and tonic he orders a millisecond after he’s drained his pint. Or the shots he downs after that.

“Whoa,” Bill says when Mike slams the glass onto the counter, his eyes wide with alarm. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea for you to drink so much so quickly.”

Mike laughs, but it isn’t a very nice sound. “Like you can say anything to anyone about drinking too much,” he says evenly, already motioning to the bartender for another drink.

Bill grabs his hand and pulls it back, glaring at Mike. “You’re being an asshole,” he tells him, with more patience than Mike deserves, and Mike knows he’s right but he’s not in the mood to be reasonable right now.

Wrenching his hand free, he leans over the bar and yells for more alcohol. Bill looks disapproving, but he relents a little when Mike buys him a drink and pushes it across the bar to him.

Mike doesn’t know how long they stay there, drinking and laughing and talking about nothing because everything else is a little too much to deal with right now, but it feels like five minutes and five hours at the same time when he puts down his empty glass and blinks a few times, shaking his head a little because his vision’s starting to spin.

“I need to piss,” he announces when the world’s mostly horizontal again. “Back in a sec.”

Pivoting slowly so as not to disorient himself, he heads in the vague direction of the toilets, but he hasn’t taken two steps before he freezes on the spot.

There’s a guy leaning against a wall opposite him, a guy with dark hair that curls to just below his chin and greeny-brown eyes set in a pale face, and he looks so much like Kevin that Mike can’t breathe for a second, his heart thudding in his chest.

But then the guy turns to look at him, confused, because Mike is still just staring at him, and he looks nothing like Kevin, his eyes too dark, his features too sharp. Mike exhales slowly, out of relief or disappointment he doesn’t know.

“Sorry,” he manages, turning away, “I’m sorry, I didn’t- I wasn’t- I’m sorry.”

“Mike?” Bill’s hand is holding his upper arm, tight and concerned like the tone of his voice. “You okay?”

“I think,” Mike mumbles, swallowing hard, “I think I’m gonna puke.”

He tugs his arm free of Bill’s grip and stumbles past the guy who is not Kevin Jonas towards the toilets. He lets the door slam shut behind him before he makes for the nearest cubicle and sinks back against the locked door. He still feels kind of like he might throw up, but the air’s clearer in here, free of the pervading stench of smoke and sweat and spunk, and the world isn’t spinning so uncontrollably any more. He can just about hear the music through the door but it’s muted by the wood, more a dull thrum than a sharp buzz, and it’s almost calming.

Closing his eyes, he rests his head back against the door and stretches out his legs. He just sits there for a few moments, mind mercifully blank and devoid of treacherous thoughts of exes and their pretty smiles, but it doesn’t take long for them to start slipping back in through the cracks.

Mike sighs, kneading the heel of his hand into his eyes. And then, just because he can’t really think of a good reason not to, he pulls out his phone and presses the first number on his speed-dial.

His hand is shaking as he brings his phone to his ear, and it only rings three times before he hears Kevin’s voice saying, uncertainly, “Mike?”

“Kevin, hi, Kev, how’ve you been, I miss you,” Mike says, blinking away the blurriness of his vision. It’s the alcohol, he tells himself, as decisively as he can manage, it’s all the alcohol flowing through his bloodstream. It’s not tears. Certainly not tears. Mike Carden does not cry.

“You’re drunk.” Kevin’s voice is tight and shaking like it always is when he’s angry, but there’s an edge to it that sounds almost... sad. “You’re drunk, Mike, and it’s two o’clock in the morning. Why are you calling me?”

“Because I miss you,” Mike repeats, blinking hard. This is important, even his alcohol-addled brain knows that. “I love you.”

Kevin hisses, a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. “Don’t say that,” he says fiercely. “Don’t you dare. You can’t just say stuff like that if you don’t mean it. You broke up with me.”

Mike gulps. “I didn’t want to give you the chance to break up with me instead.”

“Why would I do that, Mike?” Kevin sounds bleak and miserable and so, so tired it makes something in Mike’s chest twinge. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Because,” Mike insists, suddenly feeling a lot more sober than he’d like to be, “because you’re Kevin Jonas. You’re awesome, you’re so, so awesome, and I’ve always been so out of your league. It was only a matter of time before you- before you realised that and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t cope with it when you did, when you left me for someone else.”

There’s silence on the other end for a long, long time until Kevin says, his voice breaking into tiny little pieces, “And you thought I could if you did?”

“I haven’t- there isn’t- I told you it wasn’t like that,” Mike says dumbly, because it wasn’t.

(It’s not like he hasn’t had the chance to fuck other people, he just never wanted to, even on tour when the loneliness got so bad he hid in his bunk and played back the voice-mail messages Kevin’d left him just to hear his voice.

There were techs and there were groupies and there were nameless, faceless girls and boys in every city they ever visited but none of them, none of them, could ever have come anywhere near close to filling the Kevin-shaped hole in his chest. None of them would be worth leaving him for. Mike’s not quite sure anyone would.)

“What was it like, then?” Kevin says tiredly. “Because I still don’t understand, Mike. I thought you just didn’t care any more but now you’re calling me in the middle of the night and telling me you- telling me you still love me and I don’t- I don’t know what to think, I don’t know what I’m supposed to think. I don’t know what you want from me, Mike.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says suddenly. He’s not sure what he’s apologising for: calling so late, hurting Kevin, breaking up with him in the first place... maybe all of the above. Maybe none of them. Maybe he’s just apologising for his own existence. He’s in that sort of a mood. “I shouldn’t have called. I’ll leave you alone now.”

“No, Mike, don’t-”

But Mike’s already hung up on him, phone slipping out of his grasp to slide into his lap. His vision is blurring again and his shoulders are shaking and there’s an awful catch in his throat that he can’t swallow past but he doesn’t cry, he refuses to cry, because he is Mike Carden and he does not cry. If his cheeks are wet when he emerges from the toilets a few minutes later, it’s because he washed his face in the sink and not because of anything else.

He did the right thing. He did.

(And maybe Mike will get over Kevin. Maybe Kevin will get over Mike. Maybe. Probably. One day.

But neither of them will forget that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a scruffy boy in a band with nothing to offer but his heart was enough.)