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Vancha squinted down at the ground, watching with blurry vision as small droplets of rain hit the grass, turning the dirt below him into a softer mud. The sun was due to arise hours ago, yet the weather was causing the day to appear seemingly dark, possibly even safe enough to travel in.
Normally around this time, Vancha would be thinking about how he was going to miss his daily battle with the sun, however his mind had been distant recent days, rather than focused on a specific task is often wandered to a certain vampire.
He wondered after all this time, why? Why come back to me now, after everything that has happened? Do you still think of me the same? Do you still.. There were so many questions he wished to ask, so many he wanted answers to, but he was scared. The responses to those questions worried him, although very little things ever did.
A familiar voice shook Vancha out of his trance, causing him to jump slightly and immediately stop the thought process he had been on. He quickly squeezed his eyes shut, praying he had not been caught awake, rolling over onto his back and faking a snore.
"Has something worried you, sire?" Larten approached quietly, crouching down next to the troubled prince. He glanced down at Vancha, who had been lying down curled up on the floor under his makeshift cape, reaching down and placing a hand on his head, using his thumb to brush away a few wild hairs that had got onto his face.
Larten spoke calmly, careful not to 'wake' his supposedly sleeping friend. Over the past few days he had seen a difference in Vancha's usual bubbly attitude, he had been a lot less willing to duel with Darren and he almost always had to have questions repeated to him at least twice before he responded. "I hope nothing I have done has troubled you, I feel my being here has already had a bad impact on you." Larten mumbled, quiet enough that even Vancha struggled to catch what he said.
Larten took one last glance at Vancha, smiling slightly at how peaceful he looked asleep, before rising and turning to walk back to the other side of the fire where he had originally been sat against a tree near Darren.
'Y'know' A voice inside his head suddenly called, causing him to turn on the spot, 'I never knew you were such a sap.' Vancha rolled over, trying to hold back his smirk as he sent the message to Larten telepathically. Vancha braced himself, ready to be shaken awake my Larten, only to instead hear a welcome chuckle coming from the other vampire.
He sat up swiftly, not wanting to miss it, seeing Larten smiling at him as he laughed at his friend's antics and slightly blushing from the fact he had just been caught red handed trying to be affectionate.
"Vancha, you never do grow up, do you?" Larten quickly calmed himself, placing one hand on his face to hide his expression. "Once a child, always a child, aye?"
"Aye." Vancha finally spoke, throwing his cape to one side and jumping to his feet almost effortlessly. As he stood, he brushed the mud from the rain off his hides then ran his hands through his hair as to clean them of the dirt.
He glanced up, making eye contact with the orange-haired vampire before adding,
"So Destiny really wanted us to meet again, huh?"
"It seems so, sire." Larten offered his hand to the newly awoken vampire, "will you take a walk with me?" Vancha over-flamboyantly took Larten's hand, muttering a sarcastic comment along the lines of him being "such a gentlemen".
Larten led the way, heading away from the clearing where they had made camp with Harkat and Darren before sunrise. The two walked slowly and carefully as to not wake up the others who were sleeping in camp with any loud noises.
Neither bombarded each other with questions, instead Larten telling quiet stories about his travels with Darren over the past few years as they walked as to try and fill the gap of time they missed being away from one another. Every now and then Vancha would laugh at the occasional joke the other slid into the stories he told, or quickly pull Larten to the side as he got too into a story and forgot to look out for branches on the path they were walking on in the forest.
Eventually the two stopped at a large tree which stood in the middle of a crop of smaller, younger trees. A few branches hung down low while a few stood up high, their leaves blocking the rain and sunlight from the cautious vampires.
Larten finished telling his current story and released the prince's hand, which he had started rubbing small circles on quite a while ago without realising while they were talking to one another.
"Oh no. Don't tell me you're going to-" Vancha quickly realised the other vampire's plan, shaking his head in disappointment at Larten's antics. Larten laughed like a child being told off by a parent,
"You know me too well sire, you can tell exactly what I'm up to." He sighed sarcastically, pouting as if he'd been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing.
He grasped one of the lower branches firmly, pushing his body onto the branch and swinging himself onto it, grabbing a higher branch for stability while he locked his legs around the first, smaller of the two branches.
"You're an idiot Larten, you're going to break your leg one of these days falling." Vancha huffed, finding the whole situation actually quite funny overall.
Larten pushed his arms away from the second, forcing him into an upside down hanging position next to the prince,
"You do realise you are the most idiotic person I have ever met, right sire?" He chuckled, not hiding his smile this time. His face was hanging slightly below Vancha's, causing the prince to have to look down to make eye contact with him. This was one of the very few times Vancha was the taller of the two, so he tried to savour every moment of looking down at Larten,
"Says the one who is hanging upside down like a monkey right now. You're not exactly one to talk now, are you?"
"I have my reasons," Larten smiled, looking up at the prince while he awkwardly wobbled upside down, trying to reach his arm up to place on the prince for support. After seeing the former struggle for a moment, Vancha grabbed his hand, quickly raising it to his mouth and putting a small kiss on his palm, before grabbing both of his arms and wrapping them around his neck to stop Larten from falling.
Larten froze for a second, almost falling from the branch as it creaked with his weight, wrapping his arms tighter around Vancha as a last line of support, "Forgive me if this is a bit too close for comfort sire." After moving closer, the two were practically face to face, the small height difference - to Vancha's misfortune - had disappeared as Larten's face hung mere centimetres away from him.
"If anything I'd say it's not close enough." Vancha spoke quickly, placing one of his hands on Larten's scar and breaking the distance, kissing him quickly on the lips, rain still pattering down on the two of them together for the first time in decades. After realising what was happening, Vancha swiftly pulled away, turning to look at the floor without warning.
The branch Larten had been hanging from shook violently as he lost grip of Vancha's shoulders, causing the vampire to fall onto a heap on the now mud-covered forest floor.
"You could've warned me, sire!" Larten growled, half annoyed and half amused at his current predicament. His red clothes had practically turned brown in a matter of seconds and his bright hair was matted with more dirt than even the prince's.
"Could have," Vancha corrected, shaking himself out of the thought process he had been in, "And forgive me, I caught myself off guard."
"Aye, you caught me off guard aswell!" Larten reached up and grabbed the prince by the hides bound around his chest, pulling myself to his feet and quickly trying to wipe himself down before realising his mission was futile, instead whispering a small curse under his breath. Vancha managed a small laugh at his troubled partner, finally looking away from the ground and walking over to the latter, reaching up to Larten's head to brush out the dirt that had stuck itself to his hair.
The two worked in a comfortable silence for a few minutes while they worked together to try and clean the mess Vancha had caused, finally managing to get the worst off the mud out of Larten's hair and off his clothes - unfortunately, not out of his shoes.
"You were... worried, were you not?" Larten finally broke the silence, the prince had been walking silently beside him for a few minutes now as they trod their way back through the mud to where they had made camp earlier, and he felt it was the right time to bring up the reason for their adventure out from the camp sight.
Something Larten said must have triggered something inside Vancha, because at that question he started walking faster, his calm appearance suddenly disappearing and the happy mood from earlier shattering in a second. Larten panicked, unsure of what to do he reached out for his shoulder, hoping to get him to stop.
Vancha pivoted on the spot, snatching away Larten's hand quickly,
"Am I not allowed to be scared?" He whispered, suprisingly quietly for his stance and current appearance, "I haven't seen you in decades and suddenly you come along and I don't know one clue about how you feel anymore." The prince glanced up quickly, the whites of his eyes were a dark pink and a single tear looked to be building up in one eye, "Do you understand how terrifying that is? Do you have any idea?"
"I had no clue. None. I didn't know if you had moved or not because you never talked. Ever. You sent me off with that message years ago and never turned back, how do you expect me to know how to-" Vancha trailed off, not finishing his sentence. His heart was pounding a speed he had never felt before and his head was screaming to him to stop talking, he felt as if walls were pushing against him and the insides of him felt as if they were tightening into small, disformed shapes. It hurts.
The thought of finally admitting all the pain he had been worrying about over the past few days ate away at him, he felt claustrophobic and his head was shouting, commanding, yelling at him to shut up. He couldn't hear anything, only the sound of himself.
Vancha, in reality had froze, his eyes had went large like he was seeing something horrifying play out in front of him and his breathing had become erratic. After calling for him for a while, Larten had quickly realised words were futile to whatever Vancha was doing through in his head. He placed his hands on either of Vancha's temples and placed his forehead against the other's, trying to get a strong telepathic connection with the prince.
"Vancha."
That one word. That one word snapped him back to reality.
Larten moved his hands down, using one to raise Vancha's chin up to look at his face. Tears were streaked down his face and his eyes were practically red at this point, sore from tears and also staring at the floor without blinking.
He looked at the prince seriously, "I cannot pretend to know what you are going through, but I would never think of you differently, Vancha." Larten tried to comfortingly smile, although it was clearly fake.
The moment they enjoyed minutes before was merely the calm before the storm. When Larten awoke early this morning he knew he would have to deal with the troubles Vancha had been facing and now was the time to do so.
Larten swallowed deeply, preparing himself to say the words he had not spoken in over a decade,
"I love you." He whispered, barely audible but Vancha heard it. His eyes dashed up quickly to make eye contact with the taller vampire, he tried to form a response but his throat hurt too much to talk.
The stress he had felt not even moments ago suddenly lifted, his body felt as though someone had lifted a huge weight off it and it was suddenly free to move. Why come back to me now, after everything that has happened? Do you still think of me the same? Do you still love me? The answers to the questions he so dreaded were suddenly right in front of him, offering themselves to him like words of an open book. Fresh tears pricked at the sides of his eyes, only this time they were tears of relief. Happiness.
Vancha had slowly been preparing himself for Larten to have moved on ever since he had encountered him yet again earlier this week, he had never thought twice about the opposite being true. For a second Vancha thought he may have been dreaming, reaching up and placing his hand on the side of Larten's face to see if he was real, if this was real.
When it finally hit him that this was actually happening, that his worry had been for nothing and that destiny wasn't so cruel after all he genuinely smiled, laughed and responded,
"I love you too."