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The sun was beginning to set when Leona’s stomach rumbled, shaking him out of concentration from the books before him. With a glance he spares a look to the large floor-length window of the lodging that housed him, watches orange light start to brew. Apartment , he remembers from the words he had poured over, texts inscribed with innovations and inventions he had never heard before, could barely have comprehended even with all the resources he could have gathered in the palm of his hands back then. Trains and traffic and technology so small yet powerful enough to rival magic. Words cold and foreign to him. How fascinating, how futile. None of this would have mattered enough to alter the tides in his favour even if he had the knowledge before any inklings of his exile.
Yet still he devours, stubborn, clinging. It was all he had left. The plush softness of his chair tips him further into awareness, stirs away the lazy late afternoon haze. Soft carpeted floor, warm toned furniture, bright spools of colour a mismatched disarray across the counter and dining table. Everywhere he looked he was reminded of his wrongness, a stiffened hunch of a man within this realm of warmth.
Still, he devours.
Apartment , Leona ponders, mouths the shape of it as the weight of imposing settles deep in his gut, stakes a claim. Home, Kalim had mentioned as he invited him in those many days ago, all gentle kindness as he laughed and showered hospitality that Leona shielded away from. His hair had bounced with the softest shade of moonlight, and for a moment Leona had been brought back to desolate summer nights staring out into the vast plains alone.
No chiming peals resound now, the apartment shrouded only with the vestiges of living shadows and his own breaths.
Kalim was late.
It wouldn’t have mattered, but the man had mentioned he was bringing dinner home that day after getting off work, trustingly leaving Leona to his devices when it was apparent he had not been interested in playing companion. His behaviour had been incredulous at first, tugged at the part of Leona’s villainy that wished to mock. Entirely too gullible, too nice, dripping sweet in all his naivety. Leona had devoured those attentions even as his mockery grew razor thin. Now it cuts at himself, turns sharper at the slowing realisation that he did not mind.
His stomach growls.
Leona snaps the book he was reading shut, runs a hand through his hair as he stretches. His fingers curl over the top of his head in reflex, twitch over empty air and brown mane before he forces himself to relax. Even now, the shape of his human ears unnerves him, a perpetual reminder of his punishment. Resentment bites as he hides them under brown locks, loathed as he was to the unfamiliar dullness of noises heard.
The clock by the wall ticks. His eyes keep drifting to the direction of the apartment door.
Outside, the clouds were turning a bright gold, bleeding the blue from the sky. Lingering heat seeps through the window, warms the apartment in a manner he can hardly feel. There was a knot in his gut, twisting deeper as the sky blooms into the reddish sands of his homeland, turns darker. Hunger gnaws at him, takes the form of a sneer. Instantly Leona pushes it away, snarls at the haunted semblance of inky blackness that stares at him boldly from the edges of his sight.
As if on cue, he hears the front door click open, the sound loud enough to be jarring. He will not put stock into his sensitive ears or the idea that he had been…biding time. A glance at his back sees the shadow already gone; a malignant dream, a manifestation of past cruelty. It had no place here, now that Kalim was back. Relief loosens the knot that plagues him even though Leona cannot comprehend why. He stops his pacing anyway, saunters over towards the sounds of shifting and keys, feels lips pulling up into an easy smirk. The gall of Kalim, to make him wait. Hadn’t he mentioned before, that patience was not one of his virtues?
His smile falls at the sight of his host’s shaken expression.
“Oh, Leona. I’m home.” Kalim smiles, flimsy warmness at odds with the trembling of his shoulders and pressed lips. Gone was the man who had wished him a wonderful day that morning, who had grinned brilliantly with all the gentle fervour of glittering stars. His eyes blink up at Leona, wine-red and shiny in the lights, before looking away. It churns something unpleasant within him.
“You look like shit.”
That tears a laugh and flinch out of him, finally, but Leona bites his tongue as the guise of Kalim’s cheerful demeanour falls. He hadn’t meant that, not in the way that led the man to shrink into himself. For the first time Leona notices the bouquet he was clutching to his chest, brightly coloured flowers wrapped with rich maroon silk; dahlias, gerberas, orchids, desert roses. All the favourite colours of a supposed beloved. It brings to mind the way Kalim had murmured their meanings lovingly as though trying to recall, of the tiny yellow dandelion he had tucked into Leona’s vest pocket during their adventure in the park, now pressed delicately between the covers of well-worn books in his room.
It should not have mattered, but the sight of these pristine blooms made Leona wither, made him wish he had thrown away the weed he had kept on a whim. It was just like him to be self-serving.
“Hehe… Things didn't go well today,” Kalim’s fingers were trembling. “I’m sorry, I forgot dinner. I-”
A pause, as more tears fill his eyes, threaten to brim and overflow. That look of pained vulnerability claws at Leona enough to merit a frown.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Nothing, it's just, Jamil and I…” Kalim swallows, looks meekly at the flowers in his hands. Leona wishes, with a pang, that he would look up at him instead. “I’m trying, I really am, but I don’t know why things keep going so wrong.”
His voice was scantly a whisper, brittle enough that he had to lean forward to hear, loosened braids swaying with the motion. Leona was all too aware of the thudding of his own heart, a different sort of disquiet taking precedence over hunger.
“Kalim,” he says, softer than he would have liked, hesitant in everything else.
It was enough to drive the man before him past the edge of tears. Wetness spills down his cheeks, startling them both. The bouquet slips to the floor, forgotten.
“Kalim, you-”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Kalim gasps, presses his hands over his face as he turns away. His voice catches behind the flimsy cover, laced with mortification and shame. “I didn’t want you to see me like this-”
“Its-” Leona wills down the sudden lump in his throat, finds the thudding in his heart grow painful as Kalim continues to weep.
Villains do not cry. Someone like Leona, with all the weight of his sins shackling him down, does not cry. It is weakness, it is unsightly, it was an unbearable reminder of failure and pain that no one had deigned to help him with. Villains don’t grieve in fairytales either. Leona never got to grief properly, to bemoan something other than cruelty. But Kalim, Kalim is different, loud and weak and trusting and good . If it is Kalim, who was undoubtedly loved, then-
“I won’t look.” Leona casts his eyes to the side, stares at the trinkets that littered the countertop, each piece a memory that was gifted and treasured dearly. “I won’t look if that’s what you want. So it’s fine. You can, you should.”
Cry . Cry and be numb after. Better this way so he can get better, rather than repress it and be warped by pain. Leona would know.
But when Kalim bursts into shaky sobs, loud and painful enough to startle him out of his reverie, Leona cannot resist glancing back. In the hushed silence of the apartment, Kalim looked so small, curled into himself with shaking shoulders belaying a fragility that would topple at the smallest breeze. A stab of worry runs through him, the sensation uncomfortable and queasy. Leona cannot deny it away, even as he bites back a hiss and resists the phantom pains of a thrashing tail.
Villains do not comfort, never needed to learn how to. Why should they, cold and malignant as they are, their only purpose to oppose heroes and disappear after the story’s ending? Leona does not know how to comfort, does not remember the last time someone had tried for him, if at all. Perhaps no one ever had; superficial touches and token words dissipating within gaping rooms and shadowy hallways, yet something in him twists in discomfort at the sight of Kalim desperately stifling his sobs.
Hesitantly he comes closer; one step, two, until his shadow looms over the hunched body of the only person that ever really gave him the time of day since his banishment to this terribly strange land, close enough to touch. When Kalim lifts his head to peek from behind damp hands, Leona dares to pry them from his face, bare fingers brushing the tears off his cheeks.
He hears the softest hitch of breath as the backs of his fingers brush fluttering eyelashes, but Kalim does not pull away. “You said you wouldn’t look.” Kalim’s voice, small like a bird, warbles and shakes with each clumsy swipe under his eyes. Any moment now Leona expects him to flinch away, to reject his touch. His tears keep falling.
“I changed my mind.” He does not know what prompted this, movements stilted, fingers clammy and unsure. The knotted heaviness in him swells with self-conscious loathing, grows taut with helplessness, makes him cringe at himself. If only he were better at this. Heroes and champion knights always had a kind word to offer in dire times, soft handkerchiefs to press into trembling hands and soothe weeping hearts. All Leona had were his own two hands; somehow that cognisance makes him feel his attempts are worth even less.
Kalim huffs, a choked sound, leans into his warmth with a shuddery breath. His tears don’t stop no matter how much Leona dries their tracks, a constant waterfall of sorrow, until even Leona’s fingers aren’t enough to wipe them away. They had been grativating closer, all the while. When Kalim leans into his shoulder, tears soaking the fabric of his shirt, Leona lets him, stands stiff with an arm pressed gingerly around his trembling side. Only to hold him steady, only because Kalim would collapse otherwise.
His heartbeat pounds, anxious and unsure. Leona clenches his palms, sticky with the residue of tears. He doesn’t, he does not know what to do next. A bottomless ache spreads through his gut, not quite hunger nor unease, tempts him to embrace the man clinging to him. He could, he knows he could, tensed with a revelation he was on the verge of unravelling. Instead the strangled gasp of Kalim’s hiccups rouses him out of distraction, and he finds his eyes darting around frantically, spots the box of tissues by the table with his books.
When he pulls away, Kalim follows.
“Leona?” His rasp was a whispery rattle, edges scraped raw.
“Right here.” He shoves a tissue into Kalim’s face with unceremonious gentleness, pretends not to notice outstretched hands fold back to clutch at it. If he were anyone else, he could almost believe they had been reaching for him. “Your nose is running,” he says quietly. “Come on, blow.”
“Thank you.” A shaky cough as Kalim rubs at his tear-stained face. His arm quivers, bare feet wobbling. Leona curls a hand over his elbow, pulls him closer into the warmth of the apartment.
Thank you, Kalim says again once the bulk of his tears have dried and all that remained were occasional hiccups. His face was flushed, eyes swollen and half-lidded. Leona tugs him to the couch before he can fall over, tightens his grip as the latter stumbles after him.
“Stupid, don’t thank me.” The twisting in his gut claws upward, burns restlessly. He had not done anything, no matter what Kalim said, movements clumsy and weak, terrible at comforting, illy behoved to what he will always be.
“Leona?” Fingers curl back over the arm holding him, wrinkled by tears. Leona looks down, gazes into dazed garnets etched with concern, swallows his own vexed frustration. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Even now, his host was too kind for his own good.
The sun had long since disappeared from the horizon, golden hour fleetingly quick. Now only the last streaks of colour endure in the sky, fading as dusk settles. Leona presses Kalim into the couch, gets him water, orders take-out while fumbling with an unfamiliar phone. The fallen bouquet he discards when Kalim’s head turns, crushing fragrant flowers beneath his limbs to satiate bottomless hunger until the apartment no longer smelt of them. Free at last, he hovers by the door, dithers. He doesn’t know if he should leave. He remembers past outbursts leaving him wanting and empty, alone but bereft of peace. Would Kalim like that, he wonders. Leona thinks to give him space when their delivery arrives.
The food comes, but a tug at his shirt makes him pause from slinking back to his room. Kalim stares at his shoulder, chapped lips pursed and hesitant.
“...Stay, please?”
“...If that’s what you want.”
They eat in gentle silence as night covers the cityscape outside the window, the darkness throwing their shadows into fuzzy circles against the carpet. Leona shoots Kalim idle glimpses all the while, watches the light return slowly to his eyes in their shared space. Dim, but doubtlessly there. The tension within him uncoils, simmers to a gentle boil. When Kalim catches him looking, the tired smile that blooms on his face was soft but sincere.
His heart thuds, relieved despite his instinctual reaction to scoff. Leona will welcome this normalcy, if only to have the Kalim he knows back.
“Leona is a really kind person.” Kalim says before he can collect the dishes, gazes at him with an emotion he cannot read. Gratitude perhaps. The mere thought of it was enough to make him laugh.
If only he knew the extent of what he had done.
“I’m the furthest thing from that, Kalim.” Teeth clench as Leona tilts his head to the side. The warm light of the room gleams in his eye, refracts the visages of fangs. “You know this.”
Leona is many things, but kindness is not one of them. It had been wholly why he ended up here, thrown away to rot and fester. An awful person blighted by his own ambitions and self loathing, fallen gracelessly from the light of day, haunted by blot.
“No, you are. I know you are.” Gentle eyes find his own, Kalim having clambered across the couch to close the distance between them. At the last minute he seems to catch himself, and Leona watches him huff and settle his legs down to touch the carpet with no small amount of amusement. Kalim was being surprisingly insistent, mouth pursed in determined fashion. Unwavering belief shines brightly through the sunsets of his eyes, an expression Leona drinks in greedily past his own aged cynicism. Like this, the sight was almost enough to make him fond.
“Oh?” Leona raises an eyebrow, meets that fervent gaze with his own simper. “Would you still think that if l said I wanted to accompany you to your office tomorrow?”
“You would?” The quiet delight in Kalim’s voice is quickly replaced by perplexity. “What for? I thought you didn’t like it there.”
“There is a certain snak- someone I would very much want to have a chat with.”
When Kalim recoils, laughing with startled surprise, Leona allows a frown to curl at the edges of his lips, feels the simmering tension within him smoothen into a dormant reminder, tucks it away as the man beside him giggles, smiles wanly with tired melancholy. “Please don’t! Jamil's my best friend! We'll figure something out. We, we always do…”
“Is it worth it? If you always end up crying?”
A pause, as a myriad of emotions cross Kalim’s face. It is the first time Leona has seen him look so unsure. In the quiet, it was easy to notice the shifting of bodies, the restless thrums of fidgety hands. Leona digs his fingers deeper into plush leather, wills himself to wait, to study the way Kalim’s stunned expression melts into something mild and sweet.
“You really are kind, Leona. You have always been so good to me.” He looks up at him then, really looks at him, smiling with so much fondness his own breath hitches. “I’m, I'm so thankful to have met you. Thank you for listening to me, for being my friend. I-” Kalim ducks his head shyly, cheeks flushed with an embarrassment Leona cannot comprehend. ”I’m glad we met.”
It hits him with clarity at present, the epiphany. Leona feels his own miserable heart clench in the warm softness of this glass garden. How risible, to finally realise it now. This man who looks at him with all the trusting goodness the world could offer and breathes compassionate gentleness was truly foolish, guileless, the closest thing to any of the many heroes and damsels in his previous world that embodied good. Kalim with all his nauseating generosity and hopeful belief, who in this moment looks so very unattainable. Leona had always wanted to know what it would have been like; to reach and touch and be those people, to bask proudly in the sun with all his thousand dreams and own happy ending. Even now, in this land cursed with none of it, the ache of his heart hurts with desire, resigned as he were. But Kalim was not of his world, not unreachable. He could touch him here, if he wanted to. Reach for those gentle hands and-
When Leona reaches out, it is to pinch and tug at one side of Kalim’s cheek gently.
His eyes flicker with playful mirth at the latter’s squeak of surprise, the shyness of his gaze melting into giggling protests as two sets of fingers curl over his own.
“Leona! Stop!”
“Only if you ask nicely.”
Leona won’t get a happier ending. He knows this, as surely as the sun rises each day in the sky. But Kalim with all his goodness and gentle moonlight deserves one; deserves to smile without bemoaning a broken heart in his trials for a happily ever after. Leona wants to help him clinch it, even if it means doing better, even if it means becoming an obstacle. Villains never prevail, but in this land that does not subscribe to those fairytale confines Leona would take that chance. Why wouldn’t he, when he has nothing left to lose. It is the least he could do, benevolently maligned as he was to repay the one that housed him safely.
“You look sad. Is something wrong?” Kalim’s voice, soft in the blanket of night, was a balm to the ugly pulsing of his heart. Leona does not tell him this, taps the flushed skin of his pinched cheek and stands up instead.
“It’s getting late,” he says, swallows his sudden throatiness down as he clears the table and blinks back a yawn. “Go to sleep, Kalim.”
“I- ...Okay. Goodnight Leona, sweet dreams.”
Leona doubts they will be, even as a part his mind curls over those words in tender contemplation as he clicks the door to his room shut after watching Kalim enter his. Alone, his thoughts race, drifts to memories both past and present, of the pressed flower that meant nothing more than a trifle token.
A sigh curls over Leona’s lips, razes away the passing thought of picking it up. How foolish. It didn’t matter. It was just a weed. He drops onto the bed, lets the creaking springs echo as he stares at the shadows in the corners of the room with slitted eyes, finds no blot monster gloating at him tonight. Satisfied, he turns into his pillow, vaguely remembers he had forgotten to close the curtains as sleep takes him away.
That night, Leona dreams of running across sprawling deserts and wide plains, heart lighter than a feather. When he roars, the savanna resounds with the echoes of a bygone yearning.
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