[Content warning: depiction of an emotional breakdown]

Whether it was the nerves, or an alcohol-induced mini-coma, I wouldn’t know. The only thing that I remember is foreign words echoing through the vehicle-- I don’t even remember what Ke’lan’s cousin even looks like, only the chauffeur.

As they likely wanted.

I wake up when we get to my apartment, because I feel the brakes slam me awake. Ke’tlan has my head in his lap, and was probably stroking my hair since before I passed out. “Here’s your stop,” Kam’rin announces. “I need to get me some gas, so hurry it up.”

Ke’lan gently taps me on the shoulder until I sit up, and when I slip out of the vehicle we start walking shoulder-to-shoulder. The chauffeur immediately drives off once we step a few feet from the car.

In a rush, are they.

Step by step, we slowly make it to the top floor, and with a fumbling of keys, I-- rather, we-- manage to get inside of the apartment. I kick my shoes off in the shoe caddy and toss the flannel into the corner. Ke’lan shuts the door as I lie face-first into my bed.

I can hear him locking the door behind him, kicking his shoes off at the front door, placing his clutch on the kitchenette countertop. His footsteps are fairly hushed, but I can feel him sit slowly at the edge of my bed. I roll onto my back, and see him look at me with concern.

“I am sorry if Kam’rin and I made you feel uncomfortable,” he whispers softly. “I did not think that they would act so unruly, and I did not want you to walk home in your current state.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to carry me into the car, though.”

He looks towards the balcony, cheeks pinkening with embarrassment. The gentle moonlight dances every so gently on his porcelain skin; the glistening pores and soft shadows on his androgynous face… it gives him an other-worldly beauty that I’ve never seen before.

I can’t help but feel my own cheeks warming from the sight. I flip onto my side with my back towards him, and, with a sigh, add: “not that I minded. It just caught me off-guard.”

I could feel his gaze land on me once again, and I tense up. I spent all of this week thinking about him, feeling miserable at work, only for him to spend time with me… being miserable still? Only this time I am hushed, and he looks down on me, vulnerable.

I must make a pitiful sight.

And yet, instead of leaving me to sulk alone, he patiently waits for me to give him my piece, to cast him away like a bad catch. He could have simply dropped me off and gone back to hang with Kat, and yet…--

I feel a gentle palm rub my back, and like the weakest link that I am, the tension breaks and unleashes a stream of uncontrollable, intense emotion. It’s gross, and loud, and yet…

The rubbing does not stagger one bit.

The silence was broken by my unhinged waterworks, and the sheer embarrassment of it all makes it that much harder to control, to stop. I have not known this person for too long, and yet this is the second-- third impression that they have of me.

Soon, my wails become paired with a soft humming, from the master of the palms. Then, my wails become more hushed as the humming intensifies, into lulls, and then words… words that I do not understand, but likely hold great meaning to him.

Words sung from the heart:

Et zilmidi kimilne. Kimilne il minte kim.
Kimeno el, kilmine dust.
Ecom rofen “met kimbat,
“Kin ic kimchamen hela,
“Valis kurtin ic spiget, spiget Kimvakul?”
Kilmine spotim, “dakfo met, bat el netkalum,
“Ec spiget Kimvakul”, kin icen spiget.
“Swi’tchi’tchi’, swi’tchi’tchi’,
“Kimbat ol kalum,
“Swi’tchi’tchi, swi’tchi’tchi’,
“Kimbat ol kalum.”

The words are sung with the gentlest highs, and the softest lows. A solemn tone, I would guess, as the lullaby is sung in a definite minor key. As the lyrics progress, I feel Ke’lan lean further into the bed, forehead pressing into the back of mine; the back rub shifts into a shoulder rub, and the singing sounds more and more pained.

When I lean over to face him, his face pulls away, and we meet eyes, I see my own sadness reflected back to me through his own. The bright blues I am used to have become grey. As he descends into what sounds like bird calls, his eyes shut. When his lips stop moving, and his voice devolves into hums once more, I close my own in kind.

We sit in silence, motionless, for what feels like hours. My tears have finally ceased, and all my worries for the moment have all but melted away.

When my eyes finally open, I ask him, “What’s that song about?”

Ke’lan opens his eyes, and they look blue once more. “It is a bedtime song about a bird and its reason for singing. The bird’s child is ill, so the bird sings for them to get better.” He gives me a gentle smile and chuckle. “My caretaker used to sing it to me when I was unwell. She sang it to me recently as well, while I was recovering from my illness. I guess that is why I felt so compelled to sing it to you, because you were hurting--” he places a finger on my chest “--on the inside. I would say it is a greater hurt than any outside injury, as it tends to linger.”

Arm leaned behind me, it only felt right to lean into him a bit. It only felt justified to reveal to him, in this moment, the true reasoning of my grievances: “I miss my dad.”

I turn away from him after saying those words. These words are ones I wear on my sleeves when it comes to Kat and Skye, but for Ke’lan… he likely knows nothing about it, even with Katarina’s indirect “hints” about it back at the bar. Skye wouldn’t tell a soul about it either, in contrast, though he’s always been the sort of man who understands the point of secrecy.

I can feel him sit up behind me, likely to not intrude. His hands glide through my hair, in slow, smooth strokes. I don’t know if he is doing it to calm me, or calm himself. When I slowly turn my gaze back up at him, I feel his hand retreat. When I look up at him, his face is still.

He puts his hands in front of himself, and the way he has his arms and legs positioned make him look like an angel without wings… or that dainty little halo classical art gives them.

He takes the chance I am giving him to pry a bit further, to peel off another part of my mask. “Why is it that you miss him so?” he asks, a head tilt cascading long strands of hair in front of his face. I smirk at his brilliance being displaced by gravity, but he doesn’t really show much disappointment in it. Instead, he glides his hair backwards, behind a pointed ear pierced with a single heart-shaped stud.

He clearly wants his curiosity sated.

I lie onto my back, arms tucked behind my hand, and cave in with a sigh: “He was a good man. We didn’t live the most… prosperous life together, but the time that we did have, the company that we shared with one another…” I look back over to him, face a bit more solemn than it was. I smile, to try to keep him at ease.

“Well… those times were something magical. He didn’t ever let me get away with murder, but he never held me back from doing the things that I wanted to do. Learning from doing, and failing, is a far more effective teaching method than anything else out there.” I sigh again. “It’s a damn shame that I’ll never get to experience this life of riches with him.”

Looking back at him, he is still sitting in that upright position; looks uncomfortable. I pull an arm from behind my head and pat the bed beside me. Slowly, he takes the hint, and lies into my bed, bent arm holding him up to my eye level. “How was it spending time with him?” he asks after shifting into a comfortable enough lying position.

“Always loud,” I chuckle with a smirk. “You wouldn’t think it now, but when I was younger, I was a loud and rowdy sort of kid; my dad made it a mission to get as much of that energy out of me as humanly possible. Tickle fights, hide-and-seek, shouting competitions… heck, he was even adamant about teaching me self defense when I got older, too.”

“Was he able to?”

I feel my apathetic high drop as my body starts to tense up again. The memories of the past try to overflow my brain once again, try to overwhelm me to the point of breaking once more. I try to shrug off some of the tension with a deep sigh: “Just barely. We got a few lessons in, before things… got considerably worse for the two of us.”

Ke’lan shifts from curled up fist to up-facing palm, and as if reading my mind he attempts to pull me in with a free hand; I lift off of the pillow and shift closer to him, ear inches away from his chest. Is he going to ask me how, or will he allow me to segue the conversation?

His silence seems to be the latter option. I look up at him, but for some reason giving him direct eye contact seems impossible. Time for some relevant small-talk, I guess. “How is your relationship with your parents?”

“I only have the one,” he smiles gently, “but my relationship with Father, hm…” He looks away for a moment, eyes half-lidded.

Is this a painful subject for him? I didn’t even consider it.

“It is strong,” he continues, looking back at me, “but recently we haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye. I was mostly raised by… the caretakers that Father employed, so our relationship has always felt relatively distant. The closest person that I have to a maternal figure, she has taken care of me and my late sibling.”

He sighs, tucking his hair behind the other ear, partially obscured by the bang that rests on the side of his face. “Although we are very close, I feel like I have been taking her, and the others, for granted. Only now am I learning about her culture, even.” He smiles once more. “I lived a life of privilege for so long, and only now I am realizing it.

“Though, how did things get worse for you?” he asks, the question I wish he avoided, but seemed to be inevitable. I can feel the tension start to spread once more, and with it his face starts to look apologetic. “If you would like to answer that question; I am fine if you refuse.”

No, I feel obligated to say so now. “My sire,” I say, the trembling of nerves starting to reverberate throughout my body, intensifying with every word. “If you recall what Kat said about my ‘womb father’, that is my real dad; the man who took care of me until he couldn’t do it anymore. It was my sire that could not take the truth that came out, and made us pay for it.”

“You do not need to continue,” he whispers, petting my head once more, “I understand.”

Do you really? The nerves continue to devour me from the inside. I can’t think straight. The emotions are coming back harder, stronger. I can feel them ooze from every pore.

I am back to sobbing. “If I didn’t keep my mouth shut my dad could still be alive today!”

Immediately, I feel myself push into his chest as I ashamedly break once again, and with no hesitation, I am pulled into a tight hug. Gently, he tilts my head to the side so my breath would not stagger, and so I could listen to his heartbeat. He does not attempt to shush me, only curl around me. I feel his chin atop my head, his breathing tickling my scalp from his nose.

No words, only sounds.

My focus slowly shifts back to myself: my own heart beat, my own steadying breaths. They slowly, but surely, start to interconnect with his, and within minutes, they sync.

Gods, did I not get all of this tension out the first time?

Ke’lan can feel my jaw move to speak, and he interrupts, “please, no more negativity. Your body is aching enough as it is.” His grip lessens, and I take the release to look up at him. His eyes glisten, and seem a bit reddened by sadness. “I can only imagine the horrors you were put through, and more, but please… take care of yourself. I understand your pain.”

I sigh, and look away from him, “in short, we lost more than what we already had, and things got worse. I have far more now than I had then, but… why do I feel so miserable?”

He lets go of me completely, and we both sit up. “Look within your current ties to find that out. There may be a few that have come undone, without you knowing.”

Before I could process his statements, Ke’lan’s phone ends up vibrating through the bed. Slipping out of the bed, he pulls out his phone and quickly answers it in his native tongue. He keeps eye contact with me, even as he walks over to the more open area of the kitchen. His glare feels intense, as if I’ve frustrated him, though his vocal inflections say otherwise.

Probably talking to that chauffeur person.

“Val”, he calls over to me, “do you want me to stay the night, or leave?”

His tone is sharp and punctual. I honestly do not know him well enough to let him stay the night, plus I have things to get done before bed; wouldn’t want to be an improper guest.

“You can leave,” I roll myself to the edge of the bed and stand up. “Wouldn’t want you to keep them waiting. Have a few things I want to get done before bed, anyways.”

He puts the phone to his chest. “Do not allow them to impact your decision, Val.”

I grab his clutch from the table and give him a gentle cheek kiss. “Wouldn’t allow that asshole to impact my decision--” I slap the clutch into his free hand, his face pink in surprise-- “and I do have to get things done. Wouldn’t want you to be in the way.”

Slowly, the phone goes back to his ear, and he continues his conversation. I pick up all of the filthy clothes strewn about my apartment and manage to toss them in the basket before he hangs up the phone, face redder than it initially was.

“I swear I am going to kill them when I see them.”

“Honestly,” I say, pulling the broom out from the closet, “prank them when they’re least expecting it. Fake serpents in their shoes, baby oil on door handles, replace their toothpaste with hot sauce, or simply misplace their car keys. Give ‘em a little taste of torment.”

“I just might do that.”

I unlock the door and we both walk outside the apartment for a moment. “Thanks for the pep talk and company”, I say, sweeping the entranceway, “I needed it. Kind of feel bad for taking you away from Kat, but I have the right to be selfish once in a while.”

“If she needs company I can call her,” Ke’lan waves his phone in the air, “but you are welcome. Make sure you think about what I had said, though. Find out what is causing you trouble, and try to find a way to fix it.

“And, by the way…” I look away from my sweeping to get a faceful of unexpected lip and camera flash. Now my face is red, and Ke’lan is chuckling like a child. I can’t help but to snicker myself: all it is is payback for pulling a fast one on him.

I hear him typing away on his phone.

“Wait… are you sending that to someone?”

He smiles, and only answers me when I hear the sent notification. That insidious smile. “It was per Kat’s request. She wanted a candid photo of you for once.”

I sweep at Ke’lan’s ankles. “Fraternizing with the enemy,” I say in jest, “away with you!”

He waves me farewell and skips to the stairs.

I am going to kick Kat’s ass.