Chapter 428: Truth From Within.

Chapter 428: Chapter 428: Truth From Within.

It’s hard to tell how long they stay there like that, Khobi holding Loac tight against him and being held back just as tightly, but eventually the spinning in his head begins to slow, and his lungs stop burning, and it no longer feels like the world will end if he closes his eyes or lets him go for too long.

Loac seems reluctant to let him go, but his hands obligingly drop away as Khobi makes to withdraw. "...Seriously. What was that?"

​Khobi just shakes his head, swallowing heavily to try and catch his breath.

He can hear himself breathing now, can hear each laboured intake of breath and each shaking exhale, and when he tries to speak, finds that he remembers how to do that, too.

​"I...just a dream," he pants, dragging both hands down his face in an effort to stop them from shaking again. Gods, he’s sweating so badly, it takes three sweeps to stop it from dripping in his eyes, and even then his palms still feel so clammy.

But he’d rather they were clammy than drenched in Loac’s blood. "...Just dreamed something bad happened...is all."

​To you .

​I dreamed that something bad happened to you .

​And I couldn’t stop it.

​And it hurt. So badly.

​Worse than he thought possible.

​"...Briyagi?" Loac inquires lowly, and Khobi tries not to think of spiders and red.

​"Yeah." It comes out as a whisper. It’s not even a lie. Not really.

​I thought I’d lost you .

​He’d forgotten what it was like to feel fear like that. Fear for someone else. And even though it was just a dream , the panic that had erupted in his chest at seeing Loac mortally wounded, and the anguish he had felt at watching the light fade from Loac’s eyes had felt so real .

So real that even just thinking back to it; his face wracked with pain and the way his fingers had fallen from his face fills him with dread. More than it should. More than Khobi thought possible.

Those most dearest to him had already been torn from him; he’d never imagined there would be anyone else that he could be just as devastated to have taken from him.

Someone that he’d rather give up a piece of himself than lose.

​Apparently there is.

Grimacing, Khobi reaches up to pass a hand under his eyes.

In his dream he’d been crying, and while he doesn’t think the tears had fallen for real, the skin there is clammy and sticky enough with sweat that it feels like they could have.

And while the nightmare had ended before those final words could leave his lips, Khobi knows instinctively what they would have been; what he’d been trying so desperately to tell Loac before the light left his eyes forever.

Even now, they still hang there on the tip of his tongue like if he’s not careful they’ll come spilling out whether he means for them to or not.

​Whether he means them, or not.

​(He doesn’t, right ? Mean them, that is. Surely he doesn’t.)

​But if he doesn’t mean them, why would he have said them? He’s never said the words without meaning them before; why would he start now?

​If he doesn’t mean them, why did it hurt so much?

​Why does it still hurt so much? He knows it won’t do anything to soothe the ache in his chest but Khobi curls a fist into his shirt over his heart regardless.

His breathing has evened out some but his heart hasn’t yet settled; still battering around against his ribs and under his skin like it wants to abandon him and beat for Loac instead.

And in his dream he’d wanted it to; probably would’ve carved it out of his chest himself and offered it up to the gods in exchange for bringing back his thousand shades of blue.

​In fact, fuck a thousand.

He would have given it up for just one. He’s not sure which one; whether he has the power to choose only a single one when Loac is capable of so many.

The first one that entranced him, maybe; sparks illuminating a dark sky. Midnight, maybe; the kind that feels like staring into the wilderness and having it stare right back.

Or perhaps the blue of that summer sky shimmering in his eyes as he’d reached out and asked him to dance.

It feels selfish to want to keep the one that’s just for him, but if the gods had granted him a single blue, he probably would have wanted it to be that.

​(It was just a dream , right?)

​But dream or not, when it really comes down to it, Khobi doesn’t want to lose him. Not like that. Not any way, maybe.

Just thinking about it brings the taste of bile to his lips and he automatically reaches out to curl his fingers in Loac’s shirt; clinging just a little tighter.

​He’s safe . That’s all that matters.

​He’s so glad he’s safe, and there’s no escaping that it means something, that he is.

Loac’s hand comes up to cradle his face then, tender and strong.

And when he tips Khobi’s chin so that they’re eye to eye, Khobi feels the storm brewing beyond that blue horizon, coming in off the sea with all the fury of a tempest bent on breaking the world.

It promises desolation and devastation the likes of which even the gods themselves would quake to bear witness. Another blue, still.

​(Frost, Khobi suddenly realises. Before, he called me Frost.)

​"...They’re not gonna hurt you," Loac tells him vehemently; the hardness in his voice at odds with the softness of this time of night and the lightness of his touch, " Never again . You hear me?"

​This, Loac promises him, and then seals it with a kiss hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that even in his deepest nightmares Khobi will never forget this weight and heat of his lips, and deep and possessive, like the storm waiting to wreck the world belongs to him.

And somehow, over the abrupt crescendo rising up in his chest, Khobi hears.

Possibly more than Loac intended for him to, because in the same way that some things need not be seen to be felt, some things need not be said to be understood.

After all, Mozry never needed to say the words themselves for Khojin Frost to know they were in her heart.

​I will do anything for you .

​In that moment he doesn’t need to look up into Loac’s face to know what he’ll find there, sparking fierce and true behind turbulent blue eyes.

He can feel it in the vehemence in his voice and in the way Loac’s hands clutch him close and in the passion with which he kisses him in that moment, and all the moments that follow.

It bores into him from all around, like suddenly whatever walls Loac has been hiding it behind have burst and it’s just come spilling out from within him, and Khobi comes to understand that he hadn’t been imagining things after all.

​Loac’s in love with him.

​As for Khobi, well.

​Khobi kisses him back like his very life depends on it; wraps his arms around Loac’s neck and runs his hands through his hair and along his skin, fingers tracing along the lines he’s long since grown intimately familiar with.

There’s no blood, no wound, just old scars and warm, warm skin, and just when his heart had settled it strikes up a new song in his chest, and begins to dance.

​Because he’d lied to Xena earlier, hadn’t he? He knew the moment the words fell off his tongue that they were a lie.

Because he knew, didn’t he? He’s known for a while now; just hadn’t been able to bring himself to say it aloud, because that would feel akin to yielding to the whims of kings.

It would feel like accepting these walls, and his fate to remain within them.

But under different circumstances? In a different timeline; if it weren’t for those walls? If he could have it all; Loac, and his family, and all the wilderness in the world, what then? Would the idea of marrying him be so terrible?

​(No. His real answer was no.)

​Once upon a time he hated Loac Trent. He thought there was a lot to hate, but it turns out that he was wrong. In reality, it was quite the opposite.

Now look at him.

​...

​– I love you.