Chapter Text
Granted, Simon argued as he rubbed at his heavy head, he shouldn’t have taken the pills the night before. Was it cheating if he used his leftover meds from a prescription dating years back, when he had gotten slightly concussed after banging his head against hard asphalt? He’d still been in high school at the time, and the doctor had prescribed the painkillers because Simon complained he couldn’t sleep from the throbbing in his skull.
Simon had never thrown them away. He probably should’ve. At least so that he wouldn’t abuse them like this. With a grimace he nodded against the pillow, as if in agreement with someone who wasn’t there and had spoken the words, ‘Simon, you fucking idiot.’
He glared against the harsh light peeking in past the thick curtains. A strip of light shone on the parquet. The pills should’ve kept him under for a few hours more, he reasoned, but it was still day outside.
Behind him, he heard Raphael stir. He became shock still and attempted to be as quiet as possible. Now wasn’t the time for a confrontation.
He tried to recall the events of the previous night, and gathered some details and vivid images with a faint gasp that brought back the thrilling shock of the night before. Oh– he really had touched Raphael without any restraint or decency –and he really had uttered those words, now fixed and irreversible –ugh, oh, god, he had spoken of twisted fate and karma –Simon felt bright red and mortified at being so greedy and eager with someone else.
But why?
Right when Simon contemplated whether or not jumping off a cliff was an appropriate response – damn it all to hell, something was wrong with him – Raphael sighed deeply and groused, ‘What now?’
‘Nothing!’
Raphael dug himself into his cushion and mmh’ed. Their sheets – his sheets, Simon corrected – were soft and matched the dark, sombre walls of the room. Green.
Simon wondered who had lived in this room before him and if they had seen colours, too. From the looks of it, they had. The room was shockingly well-decorated and followed a distinct colour scheme. A dark and maudlin one, but one nonetheless.
To take his mind off last night’s bleary yet admittedly –and he was scared to admit it – honest declarations towards Raphael, Simon started babbling.
‘I’m thinking of painting the room.’
‘Hum?’
‘The room. The walls. They’re so dark. I mean I know I’m a vampire, but why give in to stereotype if you can help it? Not everything has to be so murdery and gloomy and vampiry in this hotel, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Like, it’s so morbid, don’t you think? It’s bad enough we can’t go out in the sun, but we’re literally blocking out all light! Lightness. Brightness. It’s just all so dull and c-,’ he hesitated and almost turned away to face the wall instead of Raphael. ‘Colourless. Too much grey here.’
Raphael blinked an eye open and raised his brows. He cleared his raspy voice and said, ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you’ve even remotely acknowledged what it happening.’
Gathering his courage, and with a clear head for once, Simon replied, ‘Well. Maybe it was overdue.’
Raphael took pity on him, miraculously, and sat up in the bed against the headboard. After a moment’s thought, he bent over and took his jacket from the floor. He took out a small glass figure and set it on the mattress.
‘What’s that?’ asked Simon.
‘It’s a prism.’
Simon held back from shoving him and griped, ‘I know it’s a prism, Sherlock. What are you doing walking around with a prism in your breast pocket for?’
Raphael didn’t answer at first and glared at the prism as if it would speak for them.
Eventually he said, ‘I brought it back with me.’
Simon tried to ignore the hurt when he remembered Raphael had basically disappeared for almost a month after they’d fought.
‘From Amsterdam,’ Raphael offered. ‘That’s where I’ve been.’
‘What on earth were you doing there? Did you enjoy their lax drug laws?’
Raphael rolled his eyes. ‘No, of course not. I just visited some old acquaintances.’
‘And you bought a prism.’
‘And I bought a prism.’
Raphael stepped out of bed and waited for Simon to get up as well with an impatient wave of the hand. He wore his boxer briefs and had pulled on a shirt.
Simon, however, was still stark naked, and he dressed quickly.
When he was done, Raphael took his arm and led him to one of the windows. He pushed Simon behind his back and pulled on the curtain to let in a small ray of light.
Simon had never read or heard about this. He had no idea what happened when you put a prism in front of a light beam. He didn’t know how it refracted light. How the light shone on the triangle and dispersed, went through and came out, created wave lengths of light and —
‘Oh, my god.’
Simon was speechless. This was the first time in his life he’d ever seen something like this.
Raphael explained, ‘It breaks the light. Each colour is a frequency, which is why they bend at different angles. White light contains the whole spectrum. Beyond that,’ he gestured to the upper red ray, ‘is infrared, which we can’t perceive with the naked eye, and,’ he gestured to the blue ray, ‘ultraviolet.’
Simon gripped Raphael’s arm but didn’t take his eyes off the prism.
‘And apparently,’ he continued, ‘you can find it in nature as well. It’s called a rainbow. When it rains and there’s sunshine, it produces the same effect, or something similar to it. There’s an enormous band of colours in the sky, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other.’
Simon was almost sure he had never heard Raphael speak this much. Who knew he was interested in optics?
Simon leaned forward into Raphael’s shoulder. He put his hand forward and moved his index finger along the coloured ray of light, his skin smoking only slightly. Raphael smacked his hand away harshly. ‘Idiota. Stop that.’
Simon didn’t react to it. Instead he repeated wondrously, ‘A rainbow.’ Then he snorted. Human language was predictable at times, utterly confusing at other times. ‘A bow of colour in the rain.’
Raphael mmhed again and said, ‘According to an old legend one can find a pot of gold at the beginning and the end of the rainbow. The Irish believe the gold is guarded by a leprechaun. But it’s a myth, because the light moves along with the observer.’
The gesture proved much heavier than a few simple scientific factoids or folklore mentions.
Simon’s voice cracked when he said, ‘Thank you’, and he grew embarrassed again.
Raphael drew back the prism and pressed it into Simon’s hands. He turned around and walked to the en-suite bathroom.
Simon was left adrift.