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Every time Fili leaves the room Kili feels his heart being dragged behind him, his spine no longer strong enough to support the weight of himself.
“Listen, Kee, it’s a really great program, better than what we have here.”
“I always thought that we were going to go to university together.” He’s being petulant, he knows it but he can’t seem to stop the anger snaking it’s way through him.
“Did you really think that we were always going to be together?” Fili’s words are quiet. He’s pushing, pushing Kili away as much as he can. Everything he does it to make sure that it’s the best decision for Kili and if putting an ocean between them is the answer then that’s what he has to do.
He can’t tell Kili that at night his fingertips till smell like Kili’s skin and how he presses them softly to his own lips.
He never thought that they would be a part from each other, but Fili goes away to “study abroad” or whatever bullshit line he fed to Kili, he puts distance between them. There’s geography, there’s a forest, towns, endless blue waters, there’s miles that stretch like his fingers reaching for one last touch.
Kili spends his nights with alcohol in his veins, with music so loud he can feel it under his feet. He touches, touches as many people as he can. He lets them run their hands along his body and imagines they are someone else's. He looks for him in places he knows he won't be, looks for him at the bottom of bottles, in ash trays and lungs that choke out smoke.
If he goes home with blonde hair and blue eyes he tells himself it doesn’t mean anything.
He doesn’t realize how he’s always searching.
Maybe all he wants is reassurance, maybe that’s what they both want. For someone to say, ‘it’s ok if you love him a little differently.’
Fili doesn’t get used to it, the quiet. There is no sound equivalent to Kili’s voice, to his booming laughter. He spends his days missing it. He lets echo in his mind, clings onto it. Every boy with shoulder length brown hair is him and Fili knows that even distance can’t change the want thriving inside of him.
Even when Kili wakes up with a hangover, with his head feeling like a knife were splitting it open, it still felt like love, it still held Fili’s name in every part of it.
“What’s your problem? You’ve been giving me a bad attitude all night.” Fili cracks over the computer screen.
Kili wants to scream, wants to tell Fili it's because he deserves better, they both do. That they deserve something happier than this pretending they’ve built between them.
Instead he takes a breath and formulates his words. “Sorry, had a long day is all. Didn’t mean to be a dick.” He’s worried that if he lets his anger out every time they speak that Fili will either figure out why he’s so upset or want to stop talking to him all together for his words that hit like boomerangs against his teeth.
Kili calls him drunk one night.
"I can't believe you left me," his words slur.
Fili holds the phone tightly to his ear, clenches his fingers tightly around it until his knuckles turn white.
"Kee,"
"No, don't you do this to me. I didn't deserve this. Fuck," there's silence, static breaking through,
"Kili, are you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here. I'm always here." There is a brokenness to his words and instantly Fili feels like he understands the meaning behind them.
Fili realizes the flaw in his plan, how this was never going to work. Not when he can imagine himself standing there with Kili's alcohol breath so close he can feel it.
“You should come visit me,” Fili pushes his hair out of his face as he smiles at Kili over Skype.
Kili looks off to the side before looking back at his brother. Even with all of this space between them he can’t find himself able to look Fili in his eyes.
“I don’t know Fee.”
“Please, it would make me really happy.”
That’s all it takes, the mention of his happiness. Kili knows that he would rip out his still beating heart, break his ribs to get it out, if it meant that Fili was happy.
“Yeah, alright.”
“Great, I already got you a plane ticket.”
Fili knows it isn’t a good idea but he can’t take the ache that has settled into his bones, carved itself into his spine and rooted it’s way into his heart. He doesn’t want to love him like that, with a gnawing hunger, with sharp teeth and clawing hands.
When his plane lands it's a little bit rough, shaking just like his bones. He thinks that it lands the way that they always do, that maybe they never have soft landings.
Something awakens inside of Kili when he sees Fili standing in the crowded airport among people and luggage carousels.
His grip tightens on his bag slung over his shoulder as his feet move faster, as his shoulders push past countless people. He doesn’t know how any of this began, this unwavering love, but he hopes that this is how it ends, with their bodies pressed tight.
Kili’s laugh is like a punch to his throat, suffocating and welcoming all at once. He thinks that if he could just listen to it every day for the rest of his life then all of the ache will be worth it.
“I’ve missed you,” it comes out like a crescendo, like the calm before the storm.
It’s slow, deliberate. Kili knows it’s coming but he doesn’t move. His heart pounds against his ribs the way a bird's wings hit a cage and he thinks this is what will free him.
Fili’s lips rest against his, soft and gentle.
Everything goes silent as they stay motionless and Kili wonders to himself if stars have to watch themselves die and he wonders if it looks something similar to this.
Fili breaks away, his eyes filled with something similar to horror at his own actions. He doesn’t speak and Kili doesn’t know if he should say anything.
It’s everything they’ve both ever wanted but didn’t know how to ask for. Fili wants to say ‘when I’m with you I don’t feel alone,’ and Kili wants to say ‘when I’m with you, I’m home.’
Instead they look at each other, their eyes searching.
If Fili thought he knew was silence felt like it is nothing compared to this moment, to the graveyard manifesting between them, ghosts of them haunting the room.
Kili leans forward and kisses him, and it’s the floodgates, its hundreds of yesterdays and all the times this should have happened.
Their hands trace patterns of let me have you, fingers interlock like old gates, years and years of practice and locking the same way.
It fits, them, how they know everything about each other. How Fili got the scar underneath his chin and how he like to have stubble to try to cover it up. Fili knows the exact lines of Kili’s lips when he’s frowning and he wants to learn the weight of his hips.
Their bodies speak, ‘my hands were never my own.’
He loves their life, the one with the broken handle tea cups, with the coffee stain on the counter, wrinkled curtains and Kili’s shoelaces that always seem to come untied. He loves all of these things, catalogs them away and lets them sink into the walls of his skin, wallpapered flesh colored in shades of his brother.
“Have I told you I love you?” Fili asks as he leans across the island in the kitchen, watching Kili hurriedly try to pour himself a bowl of cereal before he has to go to class.
Kili sets the box down and turns around quickly. He puts his hands against the island and looks down at Fili who is smiling up at him.
“Not since last night, you can tell me again though in the bedroom.” He leans down slotting their lips together.
Fili pulls away, “I don’t want you to be late for class.”
“You do realize that you’re talking about me right? I’m late for everything.” Kili grabs a spoon out of the drawer and waves it around in front of his face.
“You’re never late for me, in fact, you’ve been early quite a few times.”
Kili turns around again, this time with his eyes narrowed. “Bet you think you’re real funny.”
Fili leans back on the stool he’s sitting on and smirks at Kili. He knows he's antagonizing him and he knows exactly what he’s going to get out of it.
“You know what, now I have to be late, Get up, we’re going to the bedroom, I can’t even believe you just said that to me,” Kili’s voice carries off as he walks down the hall to their bedroom, still talking about how offended he is at his brothers joke.
Fili takes every syllable, every note and fluctuation in Kili’s voice and holds them close, lets them play like music and tells himself he’ll never let their lives be silent again.