Morgana's Gift Pt. 21

Chapter Nine - Eight Days A Week

Kevin's life carried on for a while without much in the way of disruption, which was, in and of itself, something of a disruption. He began suspecting that Merlin's addition to Morgana's gift had gone into a form of seclusion, lying in wait for the moment he got complacent before springing into action again. But whatever Merlin had planned, it wasn't set up to appear monthly. It didn't even seem to be set to appear seasonally, as summer turned into autumn, and nothing happened. There weren't women chasing him like zombies. There weren't days where he woke up in places and didn't know how he got there. In fact, his life seemed to be quiet, stable and on track.

This was, of course, yet another way of Merlin fucking with his head, Kevin decided, and to let Merlin get to him would be letting the mage win, something he had resolved not to let Merlin do.

He'd be damned if some silly ass magician was going to get the better of him.

"The Desperate Disintegration," Alice Karteaux's movie that he had been working on for what felt like forever, had finally come out, and it had become a decent-sized hit. It wasn't the slam dunk the movie studio had been hoping it would be, at least not at launch, but the film had legs, and it stayed in the Top Five movies in theaters for nearly four months, never at number one, but never lower than number five. Critics had been incredibly kind to Kevin's score, and with the Robert Rodriguez project in the can, the Christy Zen album climbing up the charts, it felt like the demand for Kevin's time was skyrocketing faster than even Elizabeth could keep up with, and she'd hired an assistant.

Kevin had been delighted that the assistant was a dude, and not some additional woman a magician or sorceress was trying to foist upon him.

The decision had been made that Kevin could probably juggle around four projects at once without getting too overworked, with another two on deck. There could be two film scores in the works and one in negotiations, and the same was true for music projects, although when he was working on his own compositions with an eye for release, that would often eat up more of the time than he expected.

There was another Truth Knife album on the books for next year, but Kevin didn't want to rush it, and so he and Kerry were recording tracks here and there while he kept busy on other projects. Lots of people who he'd grown up being fans of were suddenly eager at the idea of working with him, and that meant every week held some new surprise meeting where he'd suddenly find himself in a room with the likes of Ridley Scott or Steven Spielberg, and by the end of the meeting, they'd be penciling in time on his incredibly booked schedule moving forward.

Kevin was starting to wonder if his next month off would really be in 2021, or if they were just overbooking in case projects inevitably fell through. As popular as he was, that still happened to him. There'd been talks about working with Jim Cameron on a movie, and he'd spent four different two-hour meetings talking with the man before Cameron suddenly pivoted and decided he wanted to try working on the sequel to Avatar again, a project he already very much had a composer attached to.

Keeping all his partners satisfied was also something of a juggling act, but one he'd gotten pretty good at. Everyone had different rhythms and tempos, different wants and needs, and staying one step ahead of them had been the bit of personal scheduling that he'd just taken to doing on his own, with his own notes and schedule in the Notes section of his iPhone.

Just like music, it was all about tempo, rhythm and harmony.

Set the beat.

Introduce the melody.

Keep all the various parts in harmony and rhythm.

Tempo tempo tempo.

But it mostly meant that Kevin didn't have a whole lot of awareness of what his upcoming days would look like before he got up in the morning and looked at his schedule for the day in question as it started. Sure, he could've tried reading a day ahead, but Elizabeth had learned how to keep key portions of his day off his schedule until the day of, so he didn't get too worried, too overly focused, too lost in thinking about the next day rather than the day in front of him.

As much as it could frustrate him from time to time, it was a very good system.

Any time Kevin set his sights on the horizon, he could lose focus on the here and now. "Stop thinking about the next song, and focus on what you're playing," Elizabeth had told him repeatedly. "Here and now. Leave tomorrow for tomorrow."

He'd liked that last line enough that he planned to steal it for a chorus of an upcoming Truth Knife song, assuming he could find the proper melodic thread to hang it on.

It might even be the title of the album.

"Leave Tomorrow For Tomorrow."

It had a great ring to it.

Because of how often Elizabeth over managed his schedule, he wasn't entirely surprised when he woke up and saw that his afternoon was booked for a meeting that was scheduled to run up until dinner, and it was given no details other than it was happening at the house.

He reached over and rubbed Fatima's belly that was just starting to swell. She was awake, naturally, but always made a point of letting Kevin sleep until he woke up or his alarm went off. This morning, he'd beaten the alarm by almost fifteen minutes, which meant he felt slightly out-of-tempo, like he was half a beat ahead of where the drummer wanted him.

"You know anything about this meeting I've got tonight, 'Tima?" he asked his wife, not entirely sure she would answer him, and even if she did, he wasn't certain it would be relevant information he could fully trust.

"I do," she said, and didn't elaborate, something Kevin had learned meant he could dig for more detail, but that it wouldn't be forthcoming easily.

"Anything I need to worry about?" he decided to ask, testing the waters just a little bit, as if he wanted to see what she would give him with just a little light prodding.

"Whatever you decide, I want you to know the whole house will be behind your decision," she said, her tone sounding almost amused that he'd been ballsy enough to just ask. "Either way is fine. Don't think you need to run anything by us. We trust you and love you."

"That sounds serious," Kevin said with a slight smile on his lips. He'd learned that his wife was much smarter than he was, and if she felt it was important for him to know that he had their support, it meant he was going to be left alone, to make whatever decision it was without any form of outside influence. He could make an educated guess what the meeting was about, then.

Elizabeth had found his seventh and final partner, possibly.

And everyone wanted him to decide just for himself.

He did his usual morning preparation, and by the time he was out of the shower, Miriam and Elizabeth were already prepping him on his day, both giving him the exact same caveat, that whatever he decided in the evening meeting was okay with the entire household. Instead of it being the sort of thing where there was always another opportunity around the corner, this one was unique, being that it was the final piece of the puzzle, the last addition to Kevin's life, barring whatever mischief Merlin still had cooked up for him.

While he knew it was normal to feel a bit of nervousness about reaching an ending, he couldn't help but feel like this one was going to be more significant, weightier somehow, for reasons he couldn't put his finger on.

Thinking about it in advance, however, would simply drive him up a wall, so he decided to do his best not to think about it, and went about his day, the meeting simply another blank spot on his calendar that he resolved to get to when he got to it.

The morning had plenty to keep his busy with anyway. His first meeting was about whether or not he wanted to add a month playing producer to one of his favorite bands from Japan called Dragon Ash. The main concern was that Kevin spoke no Japanese, and the band's English was... dicey at best. That said, Kevin had always loved their sound, and so he suggested that maybe they pencil in a week for a trial run, to get a single and a b-side together and see if there was a workable chemistry there between them as a group. The test run was agreed upon and was set up for a month in the future.

His second meeting of the day was to go over studio notes for a film he'd agreed to work on simply for the street cred, the fourth in the Final Mile movies. He was the second composer to come onto the project, and the score was literally all that was holding up the release of the movie, something that seemed to be a constant sore spot for the director, who was getting yelled at by the action star actor prima donna who seemed to have even more notes than the studio. But Kevin was a professional and had taken the notes in stride, hoping they'd be the last round of notes, when, of course, he'd felt that way about the previous round of notes.

Kevin, thankfully, had found himself so busy that he'd made it to the ride back to the house before he was thinking about the meeting. When he headed into the house, he was told by Elizabeth to head down to the lounge on the lower level. His appointment was already there, he was told.

"Anything I need to remember?" Kevin asked Elizabeth as he tried not to fidget.

"Well, remember that in addition to interviewing the person to be added to the family, you're also interviewing them to be your personal doctor, and the family doctor," Elizabeth said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "But we've done our homework, and we feel like that doctor part's probably a slam dunk. It's more a question of personality mix. But we all trust you. Just remember that!" She dusted his shoulders off, moved to kiss him on the cheek and pushed him on the ass, sending him towards the stairs leading down to the lounge.

"I wish people would stop saying that," he muttered to himself.

For the most part, he'd been pretty good about not getting nervous when being introduced to his last few partners, simply because they'd come at him quickly, or he hadn't been given much warning, but even with the half-days' notice, he'd been surprisingly good at keeping it out of his mind.

In retrospect, he'd realize that all the additional warnings and notifications had been given for a reason, but as he walked down into the lower lounge, he wasn't thinking about any of that, and just wondering who his potential last partner might be.

That was why her appearance hit him like a ton of bricks.

Sitting in his living room was a face he hadn't seen in over a dozen years, much more a woman now than the last time when he'd seen her as a girl barely old enough to drink. She'd left him sitting on the porch of his college house with little more than a goodbye and a kiss on the cheek.

This was the first love of his life.

The one that got away.

The first woman to break his heart.

Ruby Young.

"Heya Kev," she said to him, her smile far more nervous and vulnerable than he remembered her ever wearing, but the intervening years had been kind to her, far kinder than they had to him, he expected. "How've you been?"

"Ruby," Kevin said, as if giving voice to the name would make it more real, more concrete, rather than the sort of surreal moment that was playing in his head. "I... if... when... how are you... here?"

"Your executive secretary, Elizabeth, reached out to me, told me about your... family situation... said you were looking for a doctor, and if I wanted the opportunity, I could come interview for it," Ruby said, that nervous smile not diminishing one bit. "So here I am."

Ruby was of Scottish heritage, with bright coppery hair done up into two braids that were tied together at the back, making like a little crown of her radiant locks. Her skin was still as freckled as ever, and she hadn't lost a step in terms of fitness from her youth, although her attire was much more mature and restrained than the tattered jeans, ratty t-shirt and leather jacket she'd normally worn when they were together what felt like eons ago. Her face certainly showed hints of the years in between, tiny hints of frown lines carved into her porcelain skin, but those piercing green eyes of hers still looked like they could punch a hole right through to the back of him without even trying.

"You... you became a doctor?" Kevin asked with a slight laugh. "Whatever happened to Miss I Want To Go Out Into The World And Fight Against Dictators? She became a doctor?"

"She did the thing you always told her she needed to do, Kev," Ruby sighed, looking down at her hands, as if she had convinced herself she was already digging herself into a hole. "She grew up. I knew I could go into political science and then law enforcement or paramilitary work, or I could go into medicine and try and help people. The more I thought about it, the more I realized law enforcement meant a lot of other people telling me what was right and wrong, and I didn't want that. I wanted to do what was right, not just what was legal. Instead of becoming a cop, I graduated premed and went into med school right after that."

"What was your focus?"

"I decided just to become a general practitioner," she said to him, looking around the room nervously before her eyes returned to him once more. "I'm... I'm sorry at how we left it. I... I wasn't at my best back then."

"Wasn't at your best?" Kevin said with a slight frown. "You told me you thought I was a dreamer who was too caught up in what he wanted to create and didn't focus enough on how he was going to survive. You told me that even though you were hoping I'd make it, you were worried because I didn't have a backup plan. You told me the world is a harsh place for dreamers, and that I should be prepared to have my heart broken a few times along the way."

"Which I did, by breaking your heart right then and there, I know," she said, struggling to not break into tears. "This is going all wrong. Maybe this was a bad idea."

Kevin inhaled a deep breath and then slowly let it out again. "It's... it's just an old wound I wasn't expecting to have reopened today. And I shouldn't be so quick to rush to judgement. You've had time to think about it, so... why are you here? I know it's partially because we need a doctor, but why are you coming back to me? Now that I'm successful you want to be another person to jump onto the money train and see how long you can ride it?"

"No!" she said, reaching out to grab Kevin's hand with her own, the first moment they'd touched in decades, and he felt his pulse skip a few beats. "No, that's not it at all, Kevin. I'm... I wanted you to know how proud I am of you, of how impressed I am that you went against everyone's advice and just carved your own path. I know it hasn't been easy. I... I kept tabs on all your musical projects, and I came and saw Truth Knife a couple of times, but I... I just never had the courage to try and talk to you after the shows, so I sort of hid in the back where I knew you wouldn't be able to see me well enough to recognize me. But... but I was so in awe of seeing you in your element, performing songs you'd written in front of an audience that you built out of nowhere."

"Then why did you split from me way back when and tell me to get a day job?"

"No! That's not... I didn't mean it like that," she said, fumbling even harder to keep the waterworks in check. "I just wanted you to have a backup plan to make sure you weren't going homeless or without food. And I was terrible in how I said it, but I was young and scared, Kevin. And I screwed up, and then I doubled down on screwing up, by running away from you and hiding, doing everything I could not to hear you talk and explain your side of the story, because I'm pretty sure you'd have convinced me how wrong and silly I was being, and I... I just couldn't take another instance of me being wrong at that point in my life. I had... I had to be right about something, and I just chose the wrong one to take a stand on, because I found that the thing I was most wrong about and pretended that if I just thought I was right really hard that it would make it right. But that's stupid children's logic."

"And you're back here now because...?"

"Because I was hoping to get a second chance," she said, clinging to his hand like if he pulled it away, she might never get it back again. "I want to try and put things right between us. I loved you then, Kevin, and I still love you now. I tried to tell myself that you were bad for me, that getting involved with an artist would only result in heartbreak and a path of drugs and early death."

"Jesus, Ruby, I'm not fucking Kurt Cobain," he grumbled, letting her hold onto his hand, even if it was making him a little worried. "I never was. I was never into drugs. Even when I had bandmates who turned into junkies, I steered clear of all that shit, because I could see what a trap it was. And even when I was at my lowest point, I never once thought about suicide. I wouldn't stand for being that cliché. I'd have been more likely to rob a bank in broad daylight or do something far more visible than have a quiet death in some rundown corner somewhere. But even that? One way or another, Ruby, I'm a survivor. I had backup plans, but you just thought they weren't stable, even when I'd already done the groundwork for establishing them if things went south. I could've been a songwriter for other people. Hell, I'm doing that some now, but I could've gone full time with it. And I was never above waiting tables and serving drinks to drunk businessmen and the hookers bilking them."

"I thought I wanted a safe bet, Kevin, a sure thing," she said, the tears starting to break through. "Then a couple years ago, I realized there's no such thing as a sure thing, and that we should be precious with every bit of time we get."

"What happened?"

"Stone died," she said. "Heart attack. Congenital defect. Age 27. Left behind his wife and his newborn baby, only two months old."

Kevin flinched at that, letting out a deep sigh. Her younger brother, Stone, had been Ruby's rock in more ways than just name. He'd always been the wiser and smarter of the two siblings, despite his youth. He'd also been a calming influence on Ruby, her compass towards optimism and hope. He imagined the loss of him would've left her in a very dark place. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Ruby," he said quietly. "I'm sure that was... extremely hard on you."

"I cried for weeks straight," she said, her fingers trying to push to interlace with his. He eventually stopped fighting it and let her fold her fingertips into his. "But I had just found your album a few months earlier, and so I kept listening to it, specifically 'Battered Like The Mountain,' and that song, it spoke to me. I don't know what you were thinking about when you wrote it, but the lyrics were so relevant to me then and there. 'Whatever evils block my way/I shall endure/Battered like the mountain/My heart burns pure/Though I may falter/I will never fall/Battered like the mountain/I'll survive it all.' That song became my mantra, my oath I would recite every morning when I got up and every night before I laid my head down to sleep. He was the one who gave me the album. Stone. He remembered that we'd dated, and knew I'd sort of lost my way a bit, but he wanted me to know that you'd gotten past whatever stupid young girl shit I'd put into your head, and you'd turned all that emotion into creativity. He wanted me to understand that if you could do it, so could I. I didn't have to be weighed down by the mistakes I'd made when I was young and foolish. So, I wanted to honor all the good things he put into my life by trying to fix what we had and get a second chance. Is... is that foolish of me?"

"You've talked a lot about what you want and what you need, Ruby, but you haven't done a great job of selling me on what's in this second chance for me if I give it to you," Kevin said. One of the things his marriage with Fatima had been very good for was his ability to make sure his own interests were looked after. His wife had a strong personality, and she'd made it a point to cultivate a spark in him to fight back when he would be unhappy with something, to voice his opinions and not let himself get walked all over, a problem he'd had a lot when he was younger.

She nodded, stroking the back of his hand with her other hand, still unwilling to break contact with his skin. "Yes. Yes, that's absolutely fair. I want to be a good partner to you, supportive without doing so blindly. I want to be the kind of woman who makes you smile when you see her, rather than the kind that makes you frown. I want to help you savor the sunshine as much as the rain, and I want to love you with every inch of my body and my heart."

"And you know--"

"About your wife, about your other partners and about the magic, yes," she said, her head nodding so fast he was almost afraid it would roll off. "I do. And I don't care. I don't have to be your everything, Kevin, but I want to do everything in my power to matter to you, like you do to me."

"Jealousy used to be one of your defining features, Ruby, so how do I know--"

"You can bring in all of your partners in here and I will do what I can to convince you and them that I'll do whatever it takes to be a team," she said. "The last thing I want is for my hesitance with them to be taken as hesitance with you."

"You're not auditioning to be my wife, Ruby," Kevin said to her. "That job is already taken."

"I know," Ruby said, her thumb stroking his wrist. "Fatima's a remarkable woman. I'd be more than happy to be her doctor, and her partner, just like all your other partners, but I would, of course, always defer to her. Is a second chance so much to ask for?"

"It's more than just a second chance you're asking for, Ruby," Kevin said to her. "This is the final spot, which means I can't just give it away lightly."

"I understand that, Kevin, and I'm willing to sit here all night and talk to you, tell you whatever you need to know," she told him, her voice faltering just a little. "I want to put things right between us, Kevin, and I want to give you the support you should've always had. I don't regret what I said back then, but I definitely regret how I said it, because it wasn't meant to be mean - it was meant to help you see the bigger picture, and to just have something to fall back on, should things go south."

It was a lot to take in, and Kevin still wasn't sure what to make of any of it. Sure, he and Ruby had been quite the hot pair when they'd been together, but they'd also run like ice more than a few times, and when they fought, it tended to be the sort of knockdown drag out problem that resulted in him getting shouted at a lot.

Of course, that was what felt like lifetimes ago.

And she promised him that she'd changed.

Kevin was a big believer in second chances, and maybe it was time to forgive but not forget.

"Alright, Ruby, I'll tell you what I'm going to do..."

"Does that mean you're not turning me away?"

"I'm deferring my decision," he said. "I want to believe you, I very much do, but at this point, actions are going to speak a lot louder than words. I'm going to give a month's trial run here in the house, and if you pass, then I'll give you the last spot in the house. But, if at any point during that month you make me feel like shit, like you did in the old days--"

The smile that bloomed on Ruby's face could've powered a major metropolitan area for a year, it was so bright. "I won't! I won't say we won't ever fight, because you need someone to push back at you from time to time, but I'll do it respectfully, and I'll make sure you can understand where I'm coming from, and if it you still disagree at the end, well, I'll defer to you, unless I think it's something of such dire importance that I need to continue to make my case," she said, bringing his hand up to her lips, kissing it repeatedly. "I was so worried you were going to take one look at my face and throw me out on my ass."

"Well, it's still a good face, and it's always been too nice an ass for that," Kevin joked, which made Ruby blush and smile, squeezing his hand once more.

"They're both yours, if you want them," she said, licking her lips a little. "Can I kiss you now?"

"Of co--" He didn't even finish the second word before her lips were locked against his, and those tears that had been threatening an appearance for the better part of an hour finally arrived, tears of joy, however, and not the tears of regret she'd been worried they might be.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou," she said frantically in between kisses, holding onto him like he was a phantasm who might disappear if she looked away. She had crawled into his lap and was snuggling up against him, and in that moment, Kevin felt all the memories of the tough times melting away and the memories of all the good times bubbling back up to the surface.

Her body against his was comfortable, familiar, as she leaned into him, her hands starting to explore his body, reconnecting with the parts of him that she'd known long before now, as her fingertips peeled his shirt up and over his head and gasped a little, to his amusement. "It's a bit more ink thank you're probably remembering."

"I like it," she said to him. "It makes you look dangerous. Sells the rockstar mystique a bit more." Before either of them knew it, they had stripped each other of their clothes, and were a tangle of limbs, his hands cupping the breasts that had only grown larger in the intervening years, even if they were a touch saggier, hers stroking his cock that she'd clearly missed.

At some point, she slipped off his lap and down to her knees, and he found her sloppily running her tongue along his shaft before she started bobbing her head up and down with the enthusiasm of someone much younger, as if she was trying to make up for lost time. She had the skill of an older woman and there was something about her still desperate to prove she wasn't just talk. It wasn't the insane ferocity of youth like Megan or Ashley, but there was a definite connection, and she hadn't forgotten all the finer points of what she'd learned during their relationship in terms of silent cues.

They weren't building something new; they were simply repairing something lost.

She had come close to getting him off a few times, but had skillfully backed him away from that edge, enjoying keeping him worked up without letting him hit that big payday. The third time she'd done it, he realized he must've made some noise of annoyance, because she slipped back up into his lap and guided his cock inside of her slit, a groan of great relief escaping her chest, as she seemed to orgasm just from his entering her, her eyes still damp from the tears of earlier, as she leaned in and kissed him again as hard as she could. "You're a very good man, Kevin Bishop," she whispered to him. "Most men would've turned me away, letting their pride get the best of them."

"I refuse to be anybody but me, Ruby," he said to her, kissing her in between her posting motions, lifting herself up only to drop back down onto his lap, like he was a prize stallion, and she was riding in the Olympics. It wasn't as though Ruby's technique was all that different from his other partners, but it had the added benefit of legacy, of history, of previously established connection.

For the next few hours, they collided and separated in half a dozen different ways. Somewhere in the middle of it, Fatima slipped into the room and joined them, followed no more than ten minutes later by Natalie, both of whom were eager to lend a hand, a pair of lips or whatever. Elizabeth also snuck in and somehow got a picture of Ruby's orgasmic face without either of them noticing.

Towards the end, when Kevin was feeling as spent as he had within years, Fatima had saddled up alongside of him, snuggling in while Ruby was passed out, draped over his calves, her arms still wrapped around his legs, unwilling to move away from him until she felt like her position was secured, even if she didn't have an official pendant.

Yet.

"I'm glad you didn't turn her away, my love," Fatima said to him. "I didn't think you would, but you've dodged left a few times when we expected you to step right, if you know what I mean. She seems like a good person in need of redemption, and it warms my heart seeing you give it to her."

"Well, it's not settled officially yet, simply because I want her to have time prove she won't get jealous of the others..."

"The look on her face when she was suckling on your balls when you were hilt-deep inside of me said everything I think you needed to know, dear," Fatima replied with a smirk. "She's here for the long haul and the right reasons. You'll be sliding the pendant around her neck before you know it."

"And then that'll be it..."

"It?"

"The end of my gift from Morgana," Kevin said. "It's a little bittersweet, seeing the end of it. If it actually is the ending..."

"Why wouldn't it be?"

Kevin laughed throatily, laying back in his bed. "Magicians are never to be trusted."

It was a motto that would still serve Kevin well in the future.

But, for the moment being, he was happy, content and focused on the present and not the future.

NEXT: Epilogue!