AN: I couldn't figure out which couple to write this about. In the end, I fell back to my old ways. Sort of Sculptor adjacent (chapters 26-27). Also, this is sad, because I'm feeling all kinds of fallout from another fandom. #BenSoloDeservesBetter
And now I wish we never met
'Cause you're too hard to forget
While I'm cleaning up your mess
I know he's taking off your dress
And I know that you don't
But if I ask you if you love me
I hope you li-li-li-lie
Lie to me.
Lie to Me, Five Seconds of Summer
Kevin wishes she had never got on the plane. Never said goodbye. Never accepted the role. That he had done more to convince her to stay. He told himself it was because he didn't want to hold her back, that their age difference was something she would regret, but now that Mina is gone, returned to New York and far from the wild coasts of the Pacific Northwest, he's only left with regret. Their relationship had been purely physical from the start, but Kevin dared believed the language of their bodies had spoken at something more - some permanent future, some feelings that wouldn't remain contained.
Instead, she seems to have gone directly into the arms of a collector, Ace. Some rich Wall Street type. (Who the fuck named their kid Ace, anyway? He probably gave himself the moniker.)
Not for the first time since she left - days, hours? - ago, he finds some other item that Mina left, abandoned in her haste to pack. What was he to do with the detritus of their precious weeks together?
A woolen sock, part of a pair (which she wore with a tiny t-shirt, underwear, and nothing else).
Hairbands...how could there be this much elastic in the world? Similar to bobby pins, which only seemed to have multiplied in her absence.
A mostly used bottle of Coco Mademoiselle.
A paperback novel, half-finished - bookmarked with a movie stub from the night they got handsy in the back row of some popcorn film.
And for the life of him, he couldn't find his favorite button-down Oxford.
His hands remain empty.
His motivation is at an all-time low.
He has deadlines looming. Collectors who expect work on the same caliber as Venus Felix. They can go fuck themselves.
His agent rings again, but he ignores the calls.
Every time he closes his eyes, he pictures Mina with Ace and his stomach turns, acid burning in his stomach. He picks up the phone to call her, to text, to communicate some part of the depth of his feelings, but always comes up short.