The Rain Came Down

Kellan
         The rain came down and ruined what was left of the cake. The drops kept falling in my eyes, and I blinked them away as I lay there, on the ground, covered in dirt and bruises and blood and cake and staring up at the dark clouds that hung over us. It had started off a good morning. Elham and I hadn’t fought. It was almost like before. I had some cake Grandmother had given me the day before when Master and I had been up near her place and I asked Elham if he wanted to go have lunch under a tree, like we used to. He’d agreed, probably thinking along the same lines as I was. I shifted uncomfortably—there was a particularly painful root digging into my left shoulder blade.
         Now what had I said to set him off this time?

Elham
         Bastard. Ungrateful bastard is what he is. What am I? What’s the idea with the damn cake? Am I some kid? I don’t even like cake that much. Nineteen years of my life I dedicated to this guy. To watching over his sorry Kurai ass. To beating up all the close-minded Awai scum that refused to know him and tried to hurt him. I gave up a good job, good prospects, a peaceful life, to go gallivanting across the country with him. Because it’s what he wanted. Because he had a fucking feeling. Why’d I even come? Why’d I come on this stupid picnic? Why’d I come here to train with his pathetic Kurai ass and why, why, why had I left Linwood for this?
         “We should practice that lunging move Master taught you the other day,” he had said, “it’s still a little sloppy,” he had said, as if he knew anything about anything. And now we were lying, exhausted, at the roots of the great oak we’d set under for lunch, our chests rising and falling high and then deep, mine painfully, and our muscles protesting. The rain had started to fall sometime midway through our fight. It was really pouring now and was washing away the blood but not my anger.
         Why am I so angry? He hadn’t really said anything I should have gotten so worked up over, had he? I’m in the wrong here. And I’m not going to admit it. Because I’m as much a stubborn bastard as he is an ungrateful one. Damn it.

Kellan
         I really thought the cake would have done it. L loves cake. He lives for cake. And our travels hadn’t exactly afforded any of us too many opportunities to enjoy any luxuries like cake. And now Grandmother’s cake is splattered all over the ground and all over us and everything’s gone to hell and all I want… is some goddamn cake.

Elham
         What am I even saying? I love cake. And now it’s all gone. Well, I mean it’s still there, I suppose. It’s all over Kellan and all over me. And a sizable chunk by that root there. Pity, that. It looked pretty good. It’s that yellow kind I really like.
         “Kel?”
         Kel’s silent, but there’s expectation in it.
         “What are we doing, Kel?”
         Kel groans and I can hear him moving, lifting himself into a sitting position, his bruised arms angled back behind him for support.
         “It can’t be helped,” his voice sounds tired and I know it’s not from our fight.
         “We’re brothers.”
         “No, we’re not.” My eyes fly open, as I’d closed them against the rain that continued to fall. I turn my head to look at him. What is he going on about?
         “I don’t want to fight with you anymore. If we were brothers, you’d tell me what’s wrong. What the fuck did I even do this time, anyway?” he said without any real anger in his voice. What the fuck did you do this time? You looked down on me.
         “I don’t know.”
         “Then why are you so mad?”
         “I don’t know.”
         “Well, what do you know, L?” he says, like he’s asking a very dim child and not me, his oldest and best friend. What do I know? I know I miss your sorry Kurai ass. I miss your whimpering. I miss comforting you. I miss knowing you need me. I miss you looking up to me. I miss you looking at me. You’re not even looking at me. You haven’t looked at me in weeks.
         “Look at me,” I tell him, as I lift myself up to match his position, and wince as the pain in my ribs prickles. He sighs and slowly swings his head in my direction. His eyes hover over me for the briefest of moments and then they float up to look somewhere past my left shoulder. I feel a wild rage bristle within me.
         “I said look at me!” I holler. Without flinching, Kel’s eyes drift back down to my face. There. My cake-less stomach flips uncomfortably.
         “You don’t look at me anymore.”
         “Because every time I look at you, we somehow end up in much this very same position,” he says, bitterness flavoring his voice and I have nothing to say. “I’m tired of trying to understand you. Everything I do is the wrong thing to do. And I don’t know what to do anymore, L,” and I still can’t think of anything to say. His lips are turning blue. I realize it’s cold then and feel a shiver wrack me from head to toe. That’s such a strange color for lips.

Kellan
         I avert my eyes again, training my sight on a point somewhere above his left ear and can feel my eyes crossing as my focus blurs. I watch him push himself up into a full sitting position then onto his knees, his hands splashing on the soggy ground underneath us. On all fours, he crawls toward me. I don’t refocus on him, though, and I can feel myself going a little cross-eyed. He crawls up close to me then sits back on his knees, wiping his muddy hands on his pants. I refocus my eyes and lift them to his obscured face. He’s hanging his head and I can’t read his expression.
         “You know, I am proud of you. Even if I have a lousy way of showing it,” I still can’t see his expression but his voice is soft. It’s the L I used to know. The one that would chase away Dom and his rats then hover over me nervously as Ellah would worry all my injuries and clean me up. The one that would never have even considered lifting a hand against me. The one I worshipped as a god amongst men and dreamt that someday I could be like, if only marginally. But now I’d surpassed him.
         I don’t know what came over me.

Elham
         I’m startled by a touch. Kel’s fingers cup my chin and gently lift my face up to his then linger there. My stomach flips again and my breath catches and his lips are so blue and I can’t think. His eyes trap mine and I can’t look away even if I’d wanted to. Which I don’t.
         I know what’s coming. And my stomach does a third flip when I realize I want it. I want to be close without having to hit him. I want him to need me again because I need him.
         And then those blue lips are on mine and it’s wet because of the rain and warm because Kel is always warm, even when he’s cold, and there are fingers at my throat and more at the nape of my neck and my head is swimming and I realize that I was cold because suddenly, I’m not.
         It’s hesitant. He’s scared; as scared as I am. His stomach must be going absolutely hog-wild, tumbling about inside him, just like mine is.
         Just the way it started, abruptly, it’s over. He pulls back and looks away and I see him withdraw back into himself, the way he used to do before all of this and before he became Kellan and stopped being Kelly.
         No. No. This is right. This is so right. I won’t let you get away this time, Kellan.

Kellan
         I’ve really done it now. Fifteen years—going on sixteen, now—of something beyond friendship, something akin to brotherhood, lost. Washed away with the rain. For what? For a chaste kiss? I’m an idiot.
         I’m on my back now. I wince when my shoulder blade collides with that damn tree root again but my eyes fly wide open when I feel warm lips on mine again. L had knocked me back and had me straddled, one hand sunk and squelching into the mud on either side of my head. His long white-blond hair is drenched and it's bunched into dripping tendrils like ropes of spun gold and I see it, like a curtain hiding us away, through heavy-lidded eyes. I can’t decide if I’m breathless because that fucking tree root knocked the wind out of me or because of his mouth on mine, cutting off my air supply and making me feel so light. I can’t feel the wetness or hear the squelching of the mud under my back. Everything is warmth, everything is his skin on my skin, everything is Elham and everything is perfect and he’s lowering himself onto my chest and I’m engulfed and overwhelmed and I want it to last forever. I want to lie here with Elham’s long, elegant fingers tangled in my hair and caressing my jaw, and his wet hair falling all over my face, and his not-too-thin, not-too-wide chest pressed up against mine, only two thin, ratty, wet shirts coming between us.
         And as I’m settling into my new preferred position for eternity, tangling my own fingers in golden hair above me, Elham pulls away and I have an almost irresistible urge to whine and whimper in protest, but I control myself because I know what is coming next is important and if I do it right, it could result in more of the former and I really really wanted more of the former.
         Elham is looking down at me, eyes no longer half-shut and full of lust, but wide and expectant. He doesn’t say anything.

Elham
         Kellan looks up at me with something like confusion and wonder and doesn’t say anything.
         I can’t keep looking at him so I look at my hands, instead, which are gripping onto his shoulders. Then my eyes trail along his collar bone, which I can clearly see with his shirt sticking to him the way it is, and up to his neck, and I experience an (almost) irresistible desire to bite that neck because it is as much mine as it is Kel’s. I’ve seen that neck at its scrawniest, when the only thing coming between it and breaking was my heavy fist in Dom’s face. And I saw that neck when Kel started his apprenticeship at Hallborn’s smithy and how within a year, it was as thick as Hal’s forearm (a formidable forearm, indeed) and I’ve seen it expand outward through the years into the lovely, sinewy thing it is now. A swordsman’s neck. Kellan’s neck. Which I had loved in all its many forms.
         But this is important. I have to resist the neck.
         I look back up and wait.

Kellan
         "Huh," I say, lamely. Elham gives me a lethal look.
         "'Huh'? That's all you can think of to say?" His grip tightens on my shoulders and I wonder if he'll try to strangle me. Not that it would work, but he could certainly try.
         "Well, why don't you say something, then?" I counter, trying to keep any bite out of my tone. I haven't forgotten how we'd ended up bruised and bleeding in the mud in the first place and I'm not about to pull back after we'd made this much progress. His eyebrows stitch together and his pale eyes dart to my left. He looks uncomfortable but he remains silent.
         "It's not so much that there's nothing to say, you know. It's more like there's everything to say. Where do we even begin?" I raise my hand to touch his left cheek, just below a rapidly forming bruise. A formidable black eye. His eyes dart back to mine and his expression softens. My stomach does another little flip and I can hear my heartbeat, loud and fast, but slowing.

         He smiles then and it's as if the rain clouds above us have parted to reveal the heavens.