dipenates

Title: New Horizons
Fandom: Brothers and Sisters
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Length: ~15,000
Characters: Justin, Kitty, Kevin, Sarah, Nora, and Tommy
Icon: danielle_nahimi
Warning: Contains references to sexual abuse and rape.
Summary: In which Justin leaves rehab, and the family struggles to deal as something disturbing comes to light.

Chapter Five

In which Kevin and Sarah talk and eat affogato

Kevin watched Sarah speak to the hostess and then turn her head to follow the hostess’s finger, which was pointed in his direction. He had spent the time since this morning’s phone call, in which Sarah had reluctantly agreed to leave Ojai in the middle of the day to have lunch at Mancini, trying to decide what to tell his elder sister.

He still hadn’t worked it out, but he felt a rush of affection for Sarah as she picked her way across the patio in her dark, elegant suit. She had no doubt left a full in tray to come and meet him, and he felt reassured by the simple fact that she was here.

“You’re buying,” she said, sitting down across from him and snapping the white linen napkin across her knees. “I had to basically lie to get away without telling Tommy who I was meeting. He’s probably phoning Mom right now to discuss the possibility of me having an affair.” She sipped the water Kevin had poured in anticipation, and smirked at him.

“What disastrous boy scenario have you involved yourself in that meant I had to skip out of finance meeting prep? Do you literally have some poor guy chained to a headboard somewhere? Did you accidentally bang one of the new intake at the firm a la Lawyer McDreamy?”

“No, Sarah!” Kevin’s voice was crisp. “But thanks for the deluge of stereotypes about gay male sexuality.”

“Then what is it?” Sarah asked, picking up the menu and flipping the pages. “Don’t tell me that Justin has fallen off the wagon already?”

“Sarah!”

“Well, as much as I find Tommy’s take on things obnoxious, you have to admit that we’re all kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“It’s not Justin."

“So, are you going to tell me what it is or are we playing twenty questions?” Sarah asked, still scanning through the menu.

“For God’s sake, Sarah,” Kevin snapped. “We both know that you’re having the baby squid appetiser and affogato, so could you just focus on the conversation in hand?”

Sarah placed her menu on the table, cover closed. She looked at Kevin, face impassive.

“Yes?” The waiter appeared at the side of the table, notepad poised.

“Two baby squids,” Kevin said.

“Of course,” the waiter responded. “Anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Kevin replied. The waiter retreated.

Sarah raised one eyebrow. “Kevin, you hate squid. You always say it reminds you of the erasers on the end of pencils.”

“Whatever.” He suddenly felt exhausted.

“And now you’re channelling a sulky teenager. Did you invite me here as some special cosmic punishment for an act of meanness that I’m not aware of? Did you get tired of tormenting your secretary and decide that you needed to share the misery?”

“Kitty was raped.”

The words hung in the air. Sarah sat completely still. Kevin was astounded that he could hear odd snatches of conversations from other tables over the buzzing in his ears.

“When?” Her tone was clinical.

“First year of college. Some guy Tommy knew from school. Brent Wallace.”

“And you know this how?”

Kevin sighed. “It was a stupid, throwaway remark. I was telling Kitty about Brent going out with one of Tommy’s ex-girlfriends, about whom he had nothing nice to say, and mentioned that boys with that overdeveloped sense of machismo often turn out to be trying to hide their gayness from themselves or the world.”

“And?” Sarah’s voice was brittle.

“She said that they had a ‘bad date’, in her first year at college, which left her having had sex with him after trying to fight him off so vigorously she ended up with bruises.” Kevin trailed off miserably.

“She just blurted all of this out to you?”

Kevin felt his irritation rising. “Is there something wrong with that?”

Sarah sat forward in her chair and leaned her elbows on the table.

“Of course not. I’m sorry.” She rubbed her right arm with her left hand, as if to warm herself up despite the heat of the lunchtime sun.

“I just feel a little bit hurt that she didn’t come to me, her sister, who trained to be a rape counsellor in college and could have empathised with what she’s going through. I mean, I have spoken to a whole bunch of other women about this and could have supported her from a position of knowing something about it.”

She caught Kevin’s frown.

“Not, of course, that you’re not sympathetic. Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Sarah, I understand exactly what you mean. It’s like Kitty asking you for legal advice instead of me. But I don’t think it’s like you’re imagining. Kitty didn’t say she was raped; I did. She basically threw me out of her room as soon as the words were out of my mouth.”

Kevin paused as the waiter appeared and placed their squid in front of them. They smiled their thanks.

Sarah’s was gone from her face before the waiter had even turned back towards the door to the patio area. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. I assumed that I was the last to know, and that she had told you and Mom, but she said she hadn’t because it was just a ‘bad date’. I said it was more than that, it was rape and she totally lost it.” Kevin sighed. “I think she has this idea that she doesn’t want to be a victim.”

“Which is totally reasonable.”

Kevin raised his eyebrows. “You don’t mean that you agree with her diatribe yesterday about women talking responsibility for being raped?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sarah sipped her water. “It’s just that it’s a hard thing to fully accept the notion that rapists aren’t all balaclava-wearing, gun-toting strangers, but that they look like every other man and you can’t tell who they are. No one wants to feel like they’re vulnerable to assault by their friends or their colleagues or their family, even if it is the reality.”

Kevin looked sick. “So what do we do? Should I speak to Kitty about it again.”

Sarah sipped her water again, thinking. “I think that you need to play this by ear. Kitty’s obviously functioning perfectly well, although it’s hard to separate out her Republican ideology from her denial. It’s not like she’s in crisis, so there’s no need for any kind of dramatic Walker intervention. I would just wait for an appropriate time and bring it up really carefully. Take the lead from her. You don’t want to overwhelm her, but it’s also important to acknowledge what happened between you guys.”

Sarah’s voice cracked and she wiped away a tear. Kevin grabbed her hand, and held onto it tight.

“It’s so stupid,” said Sarah. “Even though I know all the statistics and counselled so many women, it’s still a shock for it to be my baby sister that we’re talking about. And I’m really ashamed that my second emotion was petty jealousy because she discussed it with you before she discussed it with me.”

Kevin patted her hand. “I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you.” His face was scrunched up in concern. “Do you want me to phone Ojai and tell Tommy you need the afternoon off?”

“I’m fine.” Sarah squared her shoulders. “Kitty is really strong and I have every faith in her capacity to deal with this.”

She squeezed Kevin’s hand.

“And yours. You really are a pretty terrific brother, you know?”

“Back atcha.” He surveyed their untouched squid. “Affogato?”

“Damn straight.”

(Part six)