Chapter Text
Kirol didn’t want to stop kissing Lluwen. It was really, really fun. What the elf seemed to lack in experience—and Kirol could tell he didn’t have a lot of experience—he made up for in enthusiasm and creativity. Lluwen’s mouth roamed around Kirol’s chin, neck, even once their ears to trace the length of them with kisses. And in return, Kirol would give Lluwen appreciative gasps, their hands finding his own or his thigh. At this point, they were undoubtedly just making out on a bench in a graveyard.
It was Lluwen who eventually put a stop to it, his hand resting on Kirol’s chest.
“I think you need to get back to yer teammates,” Lluwen said, his breath on Kirol’s lips. Kirol couldn’t help themself, pushing against Lluwen’s hand to lean forward for one more kiss. Lluwen obliged, then pushed back again before standing up, his body turned away from Kirol. He looked out over the field of flowers. They’d lost some of their majesty as the sun continued its climb, the shining jewels now only a painted field.
“Yeah, I really should.” Kirol stood, standing next to Lluwen. They tentatively brushed Lluwen’s hand with their pinky, and the elf found it with his own, hooking them together.
“Come on,” Kirol said, pulling Lluwen by the pinky. They knew the fastest route out of the cemetery and back to the small parking lot where the elf’s hastily borrowed sedan waited for them, but they also knew a path that took a little longer. That’s the path they took, leading Lluwen past tombs covered in kudzu vines and muddy patches of leaves that obscured flat headstones.
It was easier not to talk, Kirol realized. Every question they wanted to ask or thought they wanted to share felt like pressing against a bruise. Will I ever see you again? had possible answers that Kirol didn’t want to hear. Will you be okay at home? seemed to have an obvious answer that, again, Kirol didn’t want to hear. Can I get your phone number? held the chance of a rejection that would answer the other questions they were too scared to ask.
Lluwen didn’t talk, either. He kept his pinky hooked around Kirol’s as they walked, occasionally squeezing it as a quiet reminder of his presence. But as the gates of the cemetery appeared ahead of them, he slipped his hand away and into his pockets. Kirol breathed in as deep as they could, then, to try and capture his smell. It felt like walking to an executioner’s block. Once they were through that gate, it really would be the end of this morning, wouldn’t it?
The feeling was only exacerbated when the two of them stepped out and saw a sheriff’s patrol car parked next to the sedan. A tall elf leaned against the hood of Lluwen’s mother’s car. He was dressed in a typical sheriff’s uniform, with the khaki short-sleeved shirt and dark pants. He had long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and eyes that looked just like Lluwen’s, but older. What stood out the most to Kirol, though, was his horns. Or, more accurately, his horn. One horn curved away from his head with small thorns dotted along it, while the other horn had been shaved down to the stump.
Lluwen stopped when he saw the other elf, and Kirol stopped just behind him. The older elf just regarded the younger with a nod, but he didn’t move otherwise, his posture relaxed and confident.
——————————————————————————
“I heard yer mama’s car had been spotted headin’ this way,” Uncle Rhys said, and Lluwen felt his stomach twist into knots, “So I reckoned y’all’d’ve headed to the school. But somethin’ didn’ sit right with me, so I thought to check the cemetery here. Sure ‘nough, here’s yer momma’s car.”
Uncle Rhys finally stood up tall—and he was tall, even taller than Lluwen. He was the most imposing man in the Lysalana family line, even with one horn missing. He’d lost it in an accident when he was just a teen, splintering it at a party where some goblins were trying to set off homemade fireworks. The damage was enough that the only solution was to shave it down, leaving Rhys with just one magnificent horn and a reputation within his family for spending time around the wrong type of people. After he’d grown and married that elf from Atlanta, he lost his last name, too. Elf names were matrilineal, so he became Rhys Mornsong. And that’s when he’d all but disappeared from the family estate.
Here he was now, though, the Sheriff standing in front of a car that could be called stolen, and Lluwen understood that meant he was in real deep shit. If his mother called her ostracized brother for a favor, she had to be incandescent with rage at her son.
“I’m going to bring it back,” Lluwen offered, pulling out the keys to the sedan.
“No shit,” Rhys quipped back, “First, though, we gotta talk.” He stepped around to the side of his patrol car, looking back at Lluwen.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Kirol spoke up from behind Lluwen. They stepped forward, their voice confident and direct. “He helped me in the woods, sir, and he was just taking me home.”
“Son, I think you—”
“Don’t call me son,” Kirol interrupted.
“Well, whoever you are—”
“Their name is Kirol,” Lluwen interrupted.
“If you’d let me just talk for a second,” Rhys sounded exasperated, “I was saying they need to be quiet. I’ll talk to them in a bit. Lluwen, come here.”
Lluwen looked at the vampire and nodded. Kirol mouthed something that Lluwen couldn’t hear. He just shook his head and whispered to him to wait. He approached his uncle, putting the two cars between him and Kirol.
“Look, you can’t arrest them,” Lluwen whispered, his voice low and urgent, “I asked them to bite me. This is all my fault, whatever mom said to you—”
“Lluwen, you’d do well to keep quiet, too,” Rhys interrupted, his own voice quiet, “Yer mama is pissed. Pissed enough to call the cops on that vampire. Yer lucky as hell I got the call, else y’all’d both be in the back of a patrol car.”
Lluwen swallowed, turning to look back at Kirol, who was watching intently. He stood straight, trying to project as much confidence as he could given the situation.
“Yer gonna take the car back to yer mama,” Rhys continued, his eyes fixed on Lluwen.
“She’s going to kill me.”
“Yer gonna be alright, ‘cause yer gonna tell yer mama sorry. And yer gonna mean it. No matter what she said or did, she’s yer mama, and you still live in her house.”
Lluwen tried to keep his face from showing the fear he felt. If he looked scared he feared Kirol might try to intervene again, to try and throw themself in the way of the inevitable. He really would have to live the life his mother wanted for him, as long as he wanted any kind of life at all. He couldn’t fight it. He had no real schooling, no job, no car. He’d had Kirol for just a moment, and now he would suffer under his mother’s thumb for the rest of his life.
Rhys’ face softened. He put a hand on Lluwen’s shoulder, causing Lluwen to pull back from him fast. Rhys sighed, his hand moving down to his hip instead. When he spoke, his voice was hardly a whisper, too quiet for Kirol to hear even with their vampire ears.
“Just fer now, all right? I know yer mama is a right terror. I grew up with her. I know how she feels about people like them. If you wanna ever see them again it’s gonna have to start with takin’ that car home and sayin’ sorry to yer mama. As long as you live in that house, yer gonna have to follow her rules.”
Lluwen clenched his fists. He didn’t want to say sorry. She wasn’t owed an apology. She wasn’t owed her son’s love or respect, not anymore. But his uncle had suggested something powerful. Beneath the shame, rage, and fear that was all bundled up with the love of his mom, there could be a little hope.
He stomped his hooves to the door of his mother’s car, pulling it open and slamming it shut behind him.
——————————————————————————
Lluwen didn’t even look at them from the car as he drove off, leaving Kirol alone with the sheriff-uncle-elf in the parking lot of the cemetery.
The sheriff stepped to the passenger side door of his patrol car and opened it. “I’m Sheriff Rhys. I’m gonna give you a ride back to yer dorm, Kirol. Did I say that right?”
Kirol stared at the open door. Even if their ankle wasn’t twisted, it would be an incredibly stupid decision to try and outrun Rhys and his patrol car. And where would they even run? Right to the school where they’d be easy to find? So they quietly acquiesced and limped to the car. It was probably a good sign that they were sitting in the passenger’s seat and not the back, right? They’d never been put in any kind of cop car before, but you’d never put someone you were going to arrest—or worse—in the passenger seat.
They sat down and instinctively clicked the seatbelt over their waist. The sheriff got into the driver’s seat, his one horn thankfully sticking out of the open window instead of into Kirol’s face. He turned the key in the ignition, but he left the car in park, staring into the rearview mirror, likely to make sure Lluwen had truly left and wasn’t just waiting with the car around the corner.
“Yer not in any trouble,” the sheriff offered, “But I do wanna know the truth about that bite.”
Kirol sighed. “I tried to tell you earlier,” they explained, “I was hurt and Lluwen helped me. I lost a lot of blood. Lluwen offered and... and I took it. I’ve never done it before and I won’t do it again.”
The sheriff nodded and tapped the top of the steering wheel. He put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot slowly, headed down the dead-end road and back to the school.
“I figured as much,” he said, “Since his mama told me you attacked him, I knew that meant you hadn’t. There’s a lot of folks like that up here, you know. Get away from the city and you’ll find a lot of people who aren’t very friendly to folks like you.”
Kirol’s body tensed. “Vampires?”
Rhys sighed. “Yeah, folks like that. And other kinds of folks. Folks like Lluwen. You know he’s... he’s not like his mama or brothers. He’s a sweet kid. Yer lucky he found you out in the woods and not one of the other ones.”
Kirol nodded.
“You just gotta be careful, with him.”
Kirol nodded again. They really didn’t know what was going on, but they wanted so desperately for this ride to be over and to be back at campus that they would have agreed with anything the sheriff said.
The patrol car pulled through the campus gates. Kirol pointed down the drive that would take them to their dorm building—Lorehold Hall. It was still early enough in the morning that there weren’t many students out walking on the campus, which saved Kirol the embarrassment of being seen limping away from the sheriff and into the dorm. Once inside, they turned and saw the patrol car pulling away. There was a phone on the first floor by the door, one Kirol could use to call the coach’s office to let them know where they were.
Standing in the lobby, the car’s engine fading away from them fast and the phone on the wall right ahead, Kirol realized it was the first time they’d been alone since they’d fallen in the woods. Lluwen was gone. That was it. The morning had come to its end, Kirol was at home, and Lluwen was gone.
They called the coach’s office, got in touch with the secretary, and told her they’d fallen in the woods but got a ride home, not to worry. She didn’t even know they’d been missing.
——————————————————————————
Lluwen felt Kirol’s absence driving back home. The car was silent in the wrong way. It wasn’t the kind of silence he’d shared with the vampire earlier, when the air was thick with the words they weren’t saying. It was a dead silence.
He’d known Kirol for only a smattering of hours, but for the first time in his life he had actually felt comfortable in the presence of another person. This was the kind of realization he couldn’t have had while he was with Kirol. He had to see the moment in the past to measure the stark contrast between his life before this morning, his life for the last several hours, and his life now, alone in the car, driving back to his mother’s estate.
At the estate, his mother waited for him. And he played his part. He handed her the keys directly, said sorry, nodded when she called him reckless, said yes ma’am and no ma’am when necessary. She told him how worried she’d been, seeing her baby hurt like that, seeing that he’d been out alone in the woods with a vampire, then disappearing off to who knows where. Did he know he could have been killed? Yes ma’am. Did he want to give his mama a heart attack? No ma’am.
She told him under no circumstances could he use her car, that when his father was home they would sit down and have a talk about this and whether or not Lluwen needed to go stay with his aunt for a while, to learn some discipline on her farm. Eventually she grew tired of talking at him, said she was exhausted and needed to rest, and asked him to wake her up at lunch. Yes ma’am.
He sat in silence in the family room of the house while she slept. He stared at the spot on the floor where Kirol had been only hours ago. And then when it was time for lunch, he woke up his mother. He made her a sandwich. He sat with her while she worked on a calendar plan for the upcoming holiday season. He listened to her calls with various catering companies and event spaces. He fetched her water when she asked for it. The day slipped by. His brothers came home. He helped them, too, carrying in bags and tools. He helped make dinner. He watched TV when the family watched TV. He went to bed. He heard his mother speaking in hushed tones to Nath about what he’d done that day, heard his brother’s disgust.
He couldn’t sleep. He laid awake, imagining a massive chasm in the woods, running from the spot where he’d nearly shot Kirol, swallowing up the cabin where they’d kissed, bisecting the estate and excising his bedroom from the rest of the house. His bed didn’t feel like his own. The walls of his bedroom, decorated with old hunting trip photos and posters from bands he no longer listened to, felt like they belonged to someone else. This morning’s light had revealed a new Lluwen, a Lluwen who was wholly incompatible with the life he’d been living before.
He couldn’t sleep, but he did dream.
——————————————————————————
The sense of being alone didn’t leave Kirol all day, no matter how many classmates were packed around them in their History lecture or the dining hall at lunch. When they joined their teammates at a crowded dining hall table, they explained that they’d gotten lost in the woods, tripped, and stumbled their way to the road to flag down a sheriff’s deputy who gave them a ride home. None of their teammates seemed to notice the tenderly applied bandage or the ankle brace. And when Kirol did, eventually, go see the football team’s dedicated nurse, he didn’t ask how they’d been taken care of.
They weren’t cleared to practice, and playing that weekend was almost certainly out of the question. Even though they healed fast, the coach wouldn’t take any chances at exacerbating their injuries. The general lack of concern signaled to Kirol that no one on the coaching staff was too worried about the game with Kirol being benched. So when they watched practice from the bench, they closed their eyes and dreamed of fields of jewels and soft, white fur.
It wasn’t until after dark when Kirol’s roommate came home and was the first person to express any genuine interest in what happened to them that day.
“You run in the woods?” Sanar, a goblin theatre major, asked with some amount of alarm. Kirol was sitting at their desk, staring blankly at their algebra textbook. Most everyone else on the team roomed with a teammate. The school tried to pair up athletes so that their schedules wouldn’t clash with other students who usually wanted to sleep past 4am. Kirol had met Sanar at an orientation event, though, and the goblin had insisted they be roommates. They hardly ever saw each other, since the theatre students and student athletes tended to have opposite schedules.
“Yeah, we do a morning run in the woods,” Kirol answered, certain they’d explained this to Sanar before.
“And you got lost? In the woods?”
“Yes, I got lost in the woods. It happens all the time.”
“They shouldn’t have you running in the woods, then!”
That was hard to argue against, so Kirol just shrugged and went back to trying to make sense of the numbers and letters and other symbols peppering their textbook.
“How’d you hurt yourself?” Sanar continued, fixated on Kirol, standing on his bed to get a better look at the vampire.
“I tripped,” they answered.
“Where’d you get the bandage? Did you carry one with you to the woods?”
Kirol froze. Of course they’d thought of lies to tell, ways to deflect this question. What happened between getting lost in the woods and walking back into Lorehold this morning was supposed to be private, something Kirol didn’t want to share with anyone. But lying to Sanar felt wrong. They weren’t friends, not really, but Sanar would never stop asking questions until he was satisfied. This was true in every aspect of his life, as far as Kirol could tell. So telling a lie meant having to continue a lie, and continuing a lie meant more opportunities for a mistake, which would mean more questions and more lies.
They sighed, resigned to the fact that Sanar would have to know some amount of truth.
“There was someone in the woods who found me and helped me out.”
“Who?”
“An elf who lives nearby. He had a bandaid and a brace, and he pointed me in the right direction.”
“An elf just carrying around a first-aid kit in the middle of the woods?” Sanar asked, clearly without any accusation but with some amount of bewilderment. Goblins and elves, historically, did not think highly of each other. On behalf of the slavery. And killing. While most of that was in the past, it didn’t take a history major to understand why a goblin might be confused by the idea of an elf who just waits around in the woods for the opportunity to save a life.
Kirol shrugged. “He was nice, I guess.”
Talking about Lluwen had raised the color in Kirol’s cheeks again, leaving them tinged pink. Sanar undoubtedly noticed, but they hoped the goblin would have more decorum than to probe any further.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed about getting help from an elf, you know,” Sanar said, rummaging through his drawers to find clean pajamas. Because the goblin couldn’t reach the shelves easily, the roommates had agreed to split the room horizontally. Sanar got the drawers, while the shelves were all Kirol’s. This led to remarkably tidy shelves for anyone who looked into the room and a total mess hidden away in the drawers.
“I’m not embarrassed,” Kirol said, their cheeks now solidly red.
“You look embarrassed,” Sanar stated, fishing out a pair of shorts that he’d wear like pants.
“But I’m not! I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“That means I want to know everything. Was the elf old? Was he mean? Could you make out a word he said? I never can.”
Kirol sighed. They closed their textbook and moved from the desk to their bed to bury their face in a pillow.
“Was he weird about stuff?” Sanar continued, now trying to shove clothes back into the drawer in a way that would let it close. “Sometimes elves say the weirdest stuff to me. I can tell some of them just don’t like seeing goblins. I told one that I was a theatre major once and he got all twisted up and said ‘I’ve never seen a goblin on stage before’ like it was such a scary thought. And I’m like, ‘I’m a designer!” but actually I just told him he needs to get his eyes checked because there was a goblin at the Tonys last year.”
Kirol smiled into their pillow, knowing full well that there was no way that elf was watching the Tonys, especially if it was one of those country elves. And then they thought about Lluwen watching the Tonys, and then they stopped smiling.
“I know you’re a vampire and a lot of people don’t like that,” Sanar kept talking, more to himself than Kirol at this point, “but a lot of people don’t like goblins, too, so I know what it’s like. So if that elf was weird to you, you can tell me. If he, like, hurt your or something and you didn’t actually fall we don’t even have to get the cops involved or the school or anything, I’ll just get some nails from the scene shop and we can go find him and—”
“He didn’t do anything weird, Sanar. It’s okay.” Kirol turned over in the bed to look at the goblin who had somehow managed to empty all of the drawers onto his bed and was sorting out different shades of paint-stained black shirts and pants.
“You were embarrassed so I just thought—”
“I wasn’t embarrassed,” Kirol said, a slight smile forming, “I just... it’s just been a long day. Thank you, though.”
“For what?” Sanar stopped, staring at Kirol.
“For being so worried about me. I appreciate it. But I promise you, it’s all okay. He was very nice.”
Sanar squinted at Kirol. Kirol turned over and faced the wall, putting their back to the goblin.
Eventually, the lights went out in the room and Sanar started to snore. Kirol didn’t sleep, but they did dream.
——————————————————————————
When Lluwen left the house at 4:30am, everyone else was still asleep. This wasn’t unheard of, but it was still unusual. His brothers, especially, were usually up at this hour, but he confirmed all their cars were still parked outside. He’d wrapped an old, torn t-shirt around his hooves to keep from making noise on the wood and tile floors and left the side door slightly ajar to avoid the sound of a latch catching in the doorframe. He didn’t bring anything with him, afraid the sound of rummaging through his closet would be enough to alert one of his brothers. And besides, he wasn’t even sure where he was going or for how long. He just knew he had to leave, and he didn’t want to be heard.
The soft light of early morning was barely penetrating the tree cover, but he didn’t need much light. He knew the woods like he knew his own body. He’d spent most of his life out here, familiarizing himself with every possible path, learning each tree and their roots, discovering where it was safe to plant his hooves and where they would sink too far into the soft earth. Until yesterday, he was sure he knew everything possible to know about these woods.
When he reached the cabin, he stopped for the first time and waited. If anyone was looking for him, this is the first place they’d look. His bow and quiver were still there, and empty bags of trail mix sat on the couch, pressed into the cushions. Lluwen watched time pass on the radio’s battery-powered clock.
No one had arrived by the time he decided he had to leave. The next half an hour passed easily, but then the path became less familiar. As sure as he was of the woods, this wasn’t territory he’d really explored before. He followed the angle of the rising sun, knowing exactly which direction he needed to go, even if he didn’t know exactly how to get there.
They’d come in through the main gates yesterday morning, but the woods butted up against the cemetery on the opposite side. It took Lluwen a while to find his bearings among the headstones and tombs and moss-covered statues. It made no sense to think that anyone else would be here, not this early in the morning, but he felt eyes everywhere on him. Rhys could be here, he thought. Or Nath could have tracked him and was hiding behind one of the crypts. His mother could be waiting to grab his ankle as he passed by an open grave.
He wandered the cemetery, searching for the path they’d taken yesterday, his heart racing and eyes darting to any sign of movement—a squirrel hopping from tree to tree or a breeze bending a silk flower arrangement. He wanted to stay in movement, because movement meant he didn’t have to think about what he was doing. He was an adult, Lluwen reminded himself, and he was free to leave his house if he wanted to. If he wanted to walk for an hour to a cemetery to... do something, he could do that.
When he found the path they took out of the cemetery yesterday, he followed it backwards. The destination was pulling him forward and he wanted to run, to see what he wanted to see, but his hooves felt like gravestones.
When he finally saw the bench, it was empty. It was ridiculous to think it wouldn’t be empty, he realized. He should have listened to uncle Rhys, stayed home and made his mother happy, played the role he was given. He’d done it all day yesterday after he got home, and it was no different than every other day of his life before yesterday morning.
The bench was wet with morning dew. He sat and put both hands on the cold stone to try and steady himself. He could feel the way the bench had worn over the years, a dip in towards the center where the stone is worn smooth. The sun wasn’t quite right, and the view of the field ahead was dull. He tried to find the color that was there yesterday, but it wouldn’t come out. Panic set in and he realized this was all a mistake. No one was here. He’d run away to a cemetery in the early, early hours of the morning to see... something. And that something had turned out to be nothing.
Lluwen knew he didn’t fit in with his family or in this place where he’d lived his whole life. He knew he was different and always had, from a very young age. He couldn’t keep up with the casual cruelty of his older brothers or his mother’s and father’s obsessions with tradition. He knew he didn’t want to go to work on a farm, marry an elf girl, make more elf babies and pass on the Lysalana genes. He didn’t even want the Lysalana name and all of the weight it carried. The discomfort of it all made him twist and turn, show the side of himself that people wanted to see and hide the other from the sun. Inevitably he’d worn a little groove into his life where he would fit. It was a life he thought he was happy with.
——————————————————————————
Kirol showed up to run and was told absolutely no, they weren’t cleared to run no matter how much better their ankle felt. They argued that they were a vampire, and they healed fast, and they just wanted to participate, but nothing moved their captain, and coach Plargg stood unified in sending Kirol back to their dorm. Kirol took a shower, then sat on their bed and listened to Sanar’s snores for as long as they could stand before they had to leave again. The dining hall didn’t open until 7:00am, which was a perfectly reasonable hour for people who weren’t student athletes, so Kirol wandered campus instead, letting their feet carry them wherever they could.
It was true that their ankle did feel better. They could feel the ache from yesterday, like when you can feel a small rock that’s slipped into your shoe during a run. There was something there that still demanded to be felt, but it didn’t hurt. So, just to be sure, they still wore the ankle brace. They’d taken off the bandage before getting in the shower and discovered that whatever wound had been there was closed. This was the life of a vampire. All it took was one good meal and you’d stitch back up, and yesterday’s meal was particularly good.
Their feet carried them around the campus, past Prismari Hall where Sanar’s theatre classes met and performed, past the Firejolt Cafe (which Sanar complained should open earlier than the dining hall, but didn’t), through the Archway Commons, and to the gates of campus. Down the street, down another drive, no cars on the road this early in the morning. Even the commuter students wouldn’t be filling up the parking lots for another hour and a half, at the earliest. It was incredibly quiet, and the morning light made the dew on the street sparkle.
There were no cars in the parking lot of the cemetery. Kirol still stopped to look at the empty spaces where the black sedan had been joined by the sheriff’s patrol car yesterday. Lluwen had left without saying goodbye. There wasn’t anything he could have said, and Kirol accepted this, that would have helped the situation. They both left the cemetery parking lot yesterday morning knowing that was the end. Why would they expect anything different? Lluwen would be home, back to his life, and Kirol would be back at school, and their adventure—there had to be a better word, but Kirol wasn’t much of a writer—was finished.
They walked the path the two of them had walked together yesterday morning. Kirol knew the stones well enough to walk it with their eyes closed, and they did. This way, if they tried, they could feel the way they felt yesterday, with Lluwen’s pinky hooked in their own, without the reality of the situation asserting itself. To live in the past came naturally to Kirol. They’d often wondered if that’s what compelled them towards a study of history.
When they opened their eyes, though, someone was sitting on the bench. Someone with beautiful white hair pulled into a ponytail and long, elegant, imperfect horns. It didn’t make any sense, but it was also the only thing that made any sense. Of course.
——————————————————————————
“Lluwen.”
The elf turned to see Kirol there, just down the path. They moved so quietly, he hadn’t heard them coming at all. Just suddenly they were there, the sun starting to rise behind them.
“Kirol?”
“Lluwen,” they said and Lluwen stood to face them.
“I was— I didn’t think— I thought—”
“Good morning to you, too,” Kirol smiled. Lluwen smiled back. Everything felt suddenly lighter, easier. Kirol’s presence was a portal to another world, a different life, one that Lluwen never wanted to leave. He forgot everything about that other life the moment Kirol’s golden eyes met his.
“Did you run this morning?” Lluwen asked as Kirol moved closer.
“Are you kidding? Plargg would kill me if he knew I’d even walked this far from campus,” Kirol laughed.
“I would kill Plargg if he killed you, whoever Plargg is,” Lluwen joked back. Or, mostly joked.
“Why’s that? Do you think it’s your job to kill me?”
Lluwen smiled, then reached out and pulled Kirol in for a hug. In all the time they’d spent together yesterday morning, they’d never embraced like this. Lluwen had been a support for Kirol while they walked, had touched their face while they kissed, had held their hand and washed their hair, but this was different. Lluwen felt the real mass of Kirol in their arms, the undeniability of the reality of this person who had come here to see him.
Kirol returned the hug, their thick arms wrapped around Lluwen’s trim waist. Their height difference was apparent, Lluwen’s chin resting on top of Kirol’s straight black hair. There was no bandage anymore, and no sign of any kind of wound. Lluwen felt pride in knowing he’d helped, and a different feeling, much like pride but deeper in his chest, when he considered that it had been his blood that had played such a part in helping revitalize the wounded vampire. He’d give Kirol as much blood as they needed if it meant they would look like this, healthy and whole.
“Is this okay?” Kirol asked, their face against Lluwen’s chest.
“Of course this is okay. This is wonderful,” he whispered back.
“I meant with your... with your family. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
Surprising himself, Lluwen didn’t hesitate to answer. “I don’t care,” he said, smelling the shampoo in Kirol’s hair, “I don’t need my family’s permission to...”
“To what?” Kirol asked, turning their face up to look into Lluwen’s eyes.
Lluwen kissed them, causing Kirol’s arms to squeeze harder around the elf and pull them closer together.
“Hey,” Lluwen pulled his face away to see Kirol smiling up at him, “Do you want to—”
“Yes.”
“—sit down?”
Kirol blushed and moved with Lluwen to sit on the stone bench, touching side to side, hands grasped together. The sun reached the perfect angle and the field of flowers was washed in a sea of vibrancy, colors shining like jewels. Magic wasn’t real, as far as Lluwen knew, but this was close enough.