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When Kai's eyes finally opened to the soft glow of the light rune beside his bed, it was already dark outside.
He felt as though he were underwater; the distant sounds of people moving and talking downstairs, muffled and indistinct. But one voice beside him cut through the sleepy haze with perfect clarity.
"How are you feeling?" Rami asked, his warm hand briefly touching his forehead to remove a cold, damp towel he had placed there.
He swiftly brushed a few wet strands of hair away as though he were hesitant to make contact with his skin and Kai peered over at him groggily.
"I'm fine. Just - tired." He lied, groaning at the ache in his muscles when he tried to sit up against his bed.
He didn't know how long he'd been asleep but it didn't feel anywhere close to enough, maybe just a few short hours; he just didn't want to feel those nightmares any longer.
The Epi was clearly enjoying the new memories that it had to play with, plaguing his sleep with malicious spectral whispers, and Demons with elongated spidery legs and warped, humanoid faces.
The whispering was the worst part of this, replaying every word that had almost driven him into the water on repeat. And one of the subjects of those whispers was sitting beside him on the bed, still littered with his own, untreated, injuries.
His gaze travelled down to his injured shoulder, now wrapped in a fresh bandage and smelling faintly of medicinal balm.
Rameses caught the direction of his eyes and offered an unprompted explanation, "You should hide that if you want to. Your dad wanted to take you from me when we arrived, but I convinced him to let me keep an eye on you while you rested. I thought you might not want him to see it."
Kai nodded slowly, careful not to trouble the pounding in his head.
"Thanks...and Aida?" He asked, hesitantly.
Rami placed the towel down on his nightstand and gave him an indecipherable expression that still somehow held a multitude of unspoken accusations, "Why didn't you tell me the plan instead? It wasn't fair to put the responsibility of covering for you onto her. She's barely fifteen."
Kai frowned back at him, "Because I didn't want you to follow me - clearly."
"And...it was only an absolute last resort. I really didn't expect to be out there that long." He added, guiltily.
Although Rami's accusations were threatening to spark a flare of anger inside him, he couldn't deny that, underneath it all - he was right.
Aida had been through enough. Kai knew that all too well.
Rameses didn't answer him, watching the expressions shifting across Kai's face quietly, and without comment.
He thought about the voice on the marsh. He didn't want to, but from the moment he'd woken inside of Neave's hut, he had pushed it all to the back of his mind.
As usual, Kai had barrelled ahead, jumping from one task to the next without allowing himself a moment to sit inside of his own thoughts.
Well, he had a moment now.
As he thought of everything Rami had done, keeping his father from joining the search parties in the forest, locating Kai on his own at great personal risk, shielding his injuries from his family, tending to his wounds...
'...I resented you for treating me like an outsider...like your fucking pet. You never treated me the same as them. I was always left on the outside looking in.'
Was that true?
If Kai was truly honest with himself, it wasn't a complete lie.
He certainly didn't feel as though he had treated Rami like a pet in his first life, but had he inadvertently treated him like an outsider?
From the day he had brought a ten year old Rameses home with him after discovering the small child sitting alone by the fountain in the middle of the market square; weak, hungry and with a blank, vacant look in his dark eyes, Kai had thought he was a little odd.
He never thought that he was odd in a bad way. Not like the other children who, after dragging Rameses to school with him, would often attempt to bully and torment him for his strange demeanour. Kai did not stand for this of course, and often placed himself between them, defending Rami's apparent lack of understanding of social cues or the way his face never seemed to change for anyone except Kai.
Later, this extended to Aida too and Kai thought that in time, he would adapt and grow comfortable enough to leave them. Strike out on his own.
But he never had.
And he never told Kai what had happened during those first years of his life before they met.
And so, even if he might have felt the same level of attachment towards him that he refused to name; in his first life, Kai had let it be.
He had ignored the way Rameses looked at him, deliberately placing him inside a box marked, 'Do not touch', and filed his own feelings inside another bigger box, wrapped in iron chains and padlocked shut, marked, 'Never open'.
Because if he named it, then something might happen.
And if something happened, they would have to open boxes neither of them had acknowledged with each other before. And for him, the thought of Rami discovering that Kai was just as broken as the home he'd likely run away from in the first place was a dark, slimy something, always hiding just out of reach, watching and waiting for Kai to crack apart.
What would he have thought when he realised that past all of Kai's sardonic humour and carefree attitude, there was just the same weak, tired child with vacant eyes that had seen far too much.
'You fashioned yourself as a God in my eyes, my perfect saviour.'
Kai scoffed internally, 'Yeah, sure...what a fucking joke.'
He still believed that, even if this was true, even if Rami had truly grown to resent him over the following five years, that it caused him to betray him so utterly, it still didn't justify what he had done.
But maybe it was enough for him to rethink his dying declaration, his call for Rami's immediate death.
Maybe.
And maybe it was enough for this at least...
Kai picked up the wet towel from the night stand, his hand hovering above the barely healed cut on Rami's head.
Rameses looked a little bewildered by this. A subtle flicker across his face that only Kai and perhaps Aida would have noticed from the years they had spent with him, but would have looked like blank indifference to anybody else.
Kai's lips twitched at the corners as he slowly and carefully began to dab at the wound and wiped the dried blood from his black curls.
"You need a bath after this, Hadiyyah. You smell like shit." He teased.
And then a small, rare smirk crept onto Rami's face, "You don't smell like flowers either, Seraphall."
"I had to run away from a Demon, got poisoned, trudged through a marsh and then met a couple of creepy Witches. What's your excuse?"
Rami suddenly grabbed his wrist, his eyes sweeping over his face and body again in that probing way that made Kai's skin prickle.
"Why didn't you let me go with you? I could have helped you. I can see through the marsh, I can see the safe routes better than anyone. And what's with - him?" Rami hesitated around the last word, inclining his head towards the door.
Kai assumed he was referring to Uriel of course and peered closely at the way Rameses had stiffened ever so slightly, his grip on his wrist a little tighter than necessary.
"Rami...are you jealous?" He asked, his tone light and taunting.
Rameses simply blinked back at him, and he thought he could almost see his brain running behind his eyes as if he were mentally weighing up Kai's words.
But, after a few seconds, he simply let go of his wrist and took the towel from his hand, brushing it over his wound himself before dumping it into the bowl of water without a word.
"Rami?" Kai frowned in confusion.
Bright blue eyes scanned over his face briefly, "He's downstairs charming your family. You don't need me anymore, right? I'll go take a shower at my place."
He got up to leave, making his way towards the door without looking back, but before his hand touched the handle, Kai called out to him, "Wait! Rami - I...I know it's confusing, the way I've been acting around you lately. I've been weird as fuck. And, I meant what I said before, I don't owe you an explanation for that and I'm not going to apologise for it. But...I will explain...eventually. I'll tell you everything. Just, not yet."
Rameses looked back at him briefly, the subtle smirk creeping back onto his face, "Ok." He replied, flatly.
Kai smiled hesitantly. Nothing too familiar or warm, but enough to show he was no longer planning on creeping into his room at night to hit him over the head with a wrench.
Suddenly, Rami's gaze dipped, settling on Kai's toned stomach.
He bit his lip.
"Abs look hot on you, Seraphall."
Rameses swiftly opened the door and ducked out of the room as the clay bowl of bloody water came hurtling towards him and a stream of curses fell from Kai's lips, his ears burning hot.
'Shit! He undressed me as well, didn't he? Damned pervert!'
**