Work Text:
Kit had never considered himself to be a creep.
He was, however, beginning to question his own morality. He had never been one of those teenagers who watched every movement of his crush, who stared at them in hope that they would look back at him, who longed to touch the falling strands of dark black hair against milk white skin. Dru definitely didn’t agree. And if he were to be honest with himself, he had to admit she was right. But, in his defense, there had only ever been one person who made him want to act like a fool, who made him want to keep looking at them until he had committed to memory every single inch of their face, every fleck of light in their eyes. Also, he had never been a romantic. And he had never been heartbroken before, not about anyone that wasn’t his own father.
Not until Ty.
And after Ty, after he had left the first family that had ever considered him an essential part of them, after he had lost Livvy, he had never felt again as he had when he was fifteen.
Unless not about a different person. Because in his dreams, at night, when Mina finally got tired enough that she passed out on her bed and Tessa and Jem had already slightly opened the door to his room to whisper a lovely goodnight that warmed his heart, his mind betrayed him. He dreamt about LA, about golden beaches and sun kissed cheeks in Blackthorn skin. About dark locks moved by the wind and cloudy sad eyes. About words that brushed his heart and made him feel like home, and silence that understood, whispers that soothed and a presence that calmed. Ty had been his first friend, the first person who ever worried about him enough to spend nights sitting by his door just because that’s who he is, who he was. Kit did not who Ty was now. He had not known for years. Maybe he had never. He didn’t want to consider the possibility that he had never truly mattered to him enough for Ty to have shown who he really was.
He also wasn’t used to this new Ty that slept next him. And he was curious. Hence why he was a creep.
Oh, Dru would love this. He was never telling her about this moment, ever in his life. It was too embarrassing already that he had spent the last hour awake, when he was supposed to be resting so they would not die tomorrow, propped on his elbow and watching Ty sleep. At first, he wasn’t able to sleep because he was nervous. After all, it didn’t happen every day that you spend the night next to the first and only person you have ever been in love with, while in a foreign land where you could be caught at any moment. But then he had sat up, just to check that Ty was already asleep and that the sounds around him where just normal sounds when you had your eyes open. And he had not been able to look away from him.
Ty had not moved an inch, not even when Livvy had appeared behind Kit giggling like the fifteen-year-old she actually looked like. Not even when Kit had jumped so high, he had almost fallen on Ty. He was collecting a great deal of embarrassing moments in just one night, write that up in the list of things he was not telling Dru.
Livvy had disappeared a few minutes afterwards, wondering into the woods while her white dress flew around her like a halo of light. She looked like an angel. Kit had felt his throat closing with unshed tears, his chest contracting like she was never coming back, like he would never see her again. Someday, he wouldn’t.
He had gone back to staring at Ty after that. Shaking the image of a broken Ty kneeling in front of the ghost of his sister off his mind. He could not let his grief consume him while on mission. Not when he had sworn to himself to protect the boy lying next to him.
It was a good thing that Ty made him forget about anything else. Had he always had that little scar, like a scratch in the dorse of his right hand? Or had that been the result of adopting a cat? Someone had told Kit about Ty’s cat, he couldn’t remember who did. But he was pretty sure he would have known if Ty had ever had a scar there. If there was a part of Ty Kit had memorized, it was Ty’s hands. He had even wondered how it would feel like to paint them, to be able to catch his slender and pale fingers, his white knuckles and stretched skin in a painting, like Julian would have been able to. But then, how could he reflect their movement? Their fluttering, beautiful and expressive. Kit could always tell how Ty was feeling just by looking at his hands.
Those hands were now folded near his head, one nearly touching his hair. It had grown since the first time Ty had come to him, to ask for his help a few weeks ago. Then it had been short, centurion style, missing the soft curls Kit had always associated with him. It was longer now, locks touching the skin of his forehead delicately, like a caress. It looked soft, Kit longed to press his fingertips to the back of his neck, to touch him there, sure and comfortable like Ty preferred. He had once heard Julian say Ty was a like a cat when he had his hair petted, always curling towards the touch. He wondered if Ty would ever feel familiar enough around him to let him do it. They had been close once.
Besides, it had been Ty who reached out, who came to his house and demanded that Kit helped him. Well, he had not demanded, but it was easiest for Kit to pretend he had. To pretend he would not have followed Ty out that door no matter how he had asked for it. He felt less like a fool if he lied to himself during the day, when they walked side by side merely talking a few words every couple hours, if he told himself it didn’t matter that after all those years, all he needed was to hear his voice.
They hadn’t talked. Not really. Not about anything important. They had fought beside each other, saved each other’s lives even, but they had not pronounced any word that truly mattered. The first time Kit had seen Ty after running away from LA, soul shattered and heart wrecked, Ty had asked him how long it would take him to forgive him. Truth was, he had been mad before. Mad with grief for Livvy, for the Blackthorns, for Ty and for everything he lost when he left. And yet he resigned himself to the truth a few months later: Ty had never loved him, not like Kit did, and he would never do. Kit needed to let him go. He couldn’t, of course, and that only made him angrier. But the second he saw him, there wasn’t anger, only a white noise that filled his body inside out. It felt like a memory, but it tasted like tears. And oh, tears he shed when he collapsed into Jem’s arms that night.
From then on, he had imagined meeting Ty again in a thousand different scenarios. He had made up millions of conversations, of apologies, of truths finally acknowledged. That, of course, hadn’t happened. It wasn’t because Ty wasn’t trying. He had, in fact, tried to talk about that night in Idris, but Kit wasn’t prepared to hear him admit that he had heard Kit’s declaration of love and he had just ignored it. After all these years of hoping, it was himself who wasn’t ready.
He sucked in a breath when Ty opened his eyes, caught off guard. For just an instant, grey met blue and Kit’s heart pounded like it wanted to leave his chest, to go crawling to the boy beside him, to fall into his chest and curl there, where he had belonged to all these years. He looked away while Ty’s eyes focused in the mole near his eye.
“How long have you been awake?”
“I just woke up.” Kit released a shaky breath. It was embarrassing enough that Ty had caught him watching him sleep, he didn’t need to know it had been happening for an hour.
“Did you have a nightmare?” He also didn’t want to think about the softness in his own voice, but he was so tired that concealing his feelings when they were so close was posing more of a threat than he could fight.
Ty took a moment to answer, his right hand going to the necklace around his throat, holding it and pulling at it.
“No nightmares. Did you have one? Is that why you are awake?”
Kit tried to smile to reassure him. Ty didn’t need to know his nightmares were usually about leaving him and there, mere inches away from his body, his mind seemed to be at ease. No nightmares, reality was scarier. He might be with him physically, but they were so far apart in what truly mattered.
“I thought I heard something. It was just Livvy, she has gone into the woods. You can go back to sleep for a few hours.”
He didn’t think Ty was really listening to him. His eyes were locked on the trees, as in trying to see through them. He was frowning, Kit didn’t want to find it as endearing as he did.
“Did you know those trees only grow in this part of Faerie? Their leaves change colour throughout the day: dark blue at night, yellow during the afternoon and different tones of green in the morning.”
And, for a moment, Kit was fifteen. Sitting in the beach under an umbrella because Ty got burned easily, listening to him talking about sea stars, birds, turtles, fish. Any animal you could think of, Ty knew something about them. Kit would ask him questions for hours, while Livvy went swimming and there were just the two of them sitting on a towel in the warm sand.
“I didn’t. Know, I mean. I didn’t know.” He flushed at his stuttering. “Sounds like Kieran’s hair, changing colour depending on his mood. Are there any trees who do that?”
Ty smiled. And Kit would have died there, right in that moment, only to make sure that Ty would smile at him again like that. That he would never stop.
“Not trees. Not that I know of. But there are flowers that change their colour when you hold them, they adapt to your mood.”
“Mine’s would always be blue then.” He hadn’t meant for the joke to be self-deprecating, thought he saw Ty frown again.
“Blue’s a nice colour, actually. One of my favorites, I used to organize my books by colour. Blues were always on the top shelves.”
Ty didn’t seem to notice Kit flushing. He might not have meant it that way, he told himself. Though he could not help but feel the flutter of butterflies that took hold of his heart. He forced himself to look at Ty, but found him again focused on the trees.
“Are you sad now?” He continued as if he hadn’t just shattered Kit’s world and put it back together again with only a few meaningless words. Kit loved him for it.
“Not now, Ty. We should try and find some of those flowers while we’re here. They must be lovely.”
When Ty hummed, his eyes closing again and a soft smile adorning his lips, Kit knew he was wrong. They must have spent years apart, but Kit knew who Ty was. Kind-hearted, loyal, observant and beautiful Ty. He closed his eyes too after lying down, attuned his breathing to Ty’s and fought a smile thinking about what Dru would say when he called her to tell her that this last conversation had happened. Maybe, by the time they got out of Faerie, he could tell her much more. He took those slow steps towards getting their friendship back and let them fill him with hope, for the first time in years, that this could work. That he could have Ty back, no matter if he didn’t love him, he just wanted him.