Chapter 345: Fight In The Snow.

Chapter 345: Chapter 345: Fight In The Snow.

​It’s a pity that Khobi’s laughing too hard to catch it.

So he doesn’t see the change that comes over Loac’s face; doesn’t see the way his eyes crease secretive and soft, their enchanting blue dipped low and infinite.

It’s a look that Loac doesn’t even realise he’s wearing, and one that if Khobi had’ve seen, he might have recognised.

​But he doesn’t see, so he doesn’t know, and by the time he’s finished laughing his ass off, Loac’s back to looking hard done by, crossly dusting snow out of his hair.

Still chuckling even as he tries to catch his breath, Khobi takes advantage of the respite to haul himself up onto the rocky outcrop and throw himself down in the snow beside him.

He can feel Loac glaring into the side of his face but he’s in such a good mood that it bounces right off. His glares have been lacking heat, recently.

​(The rest of his looks, however.)

​Slowly, Khobi’s snickers start to fade and silence takes root around them once more; the mountains devoid of sound but for the wind whistling through bare branches.

It’s fucking freezing, and their breath fogs the instant it leaves their lungs, but the furs keep out the worst of the cold.

Khobi’s particularly glad for his gloves. Distantly, he wonders just how high up they are; how far from the plains they’ve come.

Why Loac brought him here in the first place.

​"...This place is cool," Khobi admits, offhandedly breaking the silence as he shakes away some of the snow that’s settled on him.

Despite his best efforts, a fair amount still made it down his shirt, and his cheek is smarting and red from having taken a direct hit. Not that anyone could tell; the rest of his face is just as red. Not that there’s anyone around to tell, anyways.

​"You should see it in summer," Loac tells him with a nostalgic sigh, stretching out and looking up at the waterfall, "It’s even better."

​"I bet," Khobi murmurs quietly. He believes him. "...How’d you find it?"

This doesn’t really seem like the sort of place they mark on maps. There didn’t even seem to be a trail leading here.

​"I came here a lot as a kid," Loac replies simply, and then after a beat adds, "...With my ma."

​"Oh," Khobi says, and when he glances across in Loac’s direction there’s just the faintest quirk to the corner of his lips; the kind of face a person wears when they’ve just remembered an old, happy memory.

It makes Khobi kind of want to smile, too.

"...Thanks for bringing me here," he finds himself adding, and really, honestly means it. He didn’t have to, after all.

​"...No problem," Loac mumbles, and if it weren’t for how cold it was, Khobi might have thought there was something else to the colour of his ears, "I...know it’s not the mountains or anything, but..." he trails off, and while where he was going with that is anyone’s guess, Khobi’s too busy on what he has said to worry at all about what he hasn’t.

​Because does that mean what he thinks it means?

​Struck speechless, his wide-eyed expression does the talking for him, and Loac sheepishly averts his gaze.

Which must mean that he’s right in thinking that he’d brought him here because of what he said.

​( Why ?)

​"...I listen," he mutters, looking mildly offended by Khobi’s shocked reaction, "...Sometimes." ℯ

​I miss the mountains .

​(Despite the frigid wind, Khobi’s face suddenly feels uncomfortably warm. Hot, even; like his cheeks are positively burning.)

​( What? )

​"Ah," he says, for lack of anything better to say.

"I..." Now it’s his turn to trail off, but his stomach suddenly rumbles; reminding him of why he’d come over here in the first place.

"...I’m hungry." For a second there Loac just gawks at him incredulously, but then his shoulders start quivering and a snort escapes him as his face cracks into a grin, and pretty soon he’s the one laughing so hard he’s shaking.

​"What?" Khobi glares defensively, caught off guard by the sudden swooping sensation that has his stomach feeling like it’s trying to escape out through his chest, "....I haven’t eaten since breakfast." Loac just snickers, rolling his eyes back to the bank where they’d left the horse to roam free.

"Huh, lucky you," he comments, gathering himself to his feet and brushing himself down, "He’s back."

He tells Khobi to wait, and while usually Khobi would argue with him on principle for trying to tell him what to do, for once he lets it slide because he wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

He’s perfectly happy right where he is. He’s not gone long, and while it’s only an apple that hits him in the back from behind, it’s better than nothing and Khobi promptly scoffs it all the way down to the stalk.

​But then, once he’s back standing up on that rocky outcrop with him once more, he tosses him something else.

Khobi reaches for it out of reflex, and it takes all of three seconds for him to realise that while it’s not lunch, it’s something so much better.

​It’s a sword. And not just any sword. It’s his sword; the one Montrel had given him back on that day, when he and Loac had crossed blades for the very first time.

Confused, Khobi stares at the sword in his hand, still resting peacefully in its scabbard the way he left it, and then back up at Loac.

​He’s holding one, too.

​And his isn’t sheathed.

​"You wanted a fight, right?" Loac reminds him, lips curled into one of those challenging smirks that never fails to spike Khobi’s temper. And his temperature. "...So let’s fight."

​Khobi grins, heart starting to race in the way it races whenever he and Loac face off against each other in the ring.

But then it jumps, striking up a different beat; something faster, and lighter and much less familiar.

Because while Loac had made it sound a lot like a spur of the moment decision to give his horse some run today before the weather turned, bringing Khobi along with him clearly wasn’t.

​He’d planned this right from the start. And while Khobi isn’t sure how he’s supposed to feel about that, the blinding, tenacious grin spanning the entirety of his face gives away exactly how he does.

​"Sounds good to me."