***** [^.^]****
The apartment was too quiet. It was a sterile, organized silence that Kaelan had cultivated over five years to drown out the echoes of a week he still couldn't fully reconcile. Tonight, the rain was tapping against the glass,a rhythmic, irritating sound that made the small bump beneath his ribs pulse with a strange, localized heat.
Kaelan sat on the edge of his bed, his hand resting almost unconsciously over the curve of his stomach. He felt the weird white fluid dampening his undershirt again,a biological mockery of a life he wasn't sure he wanted.
"You're being very loud tonight," Kaelan whispered into the empty room. He felt the seed roll beneath his palm, a heavy, golden movement that felt like a secret. "I hope you know your father is a narcissistic, scaly disaster. If you come out looking like him, I'm putting you up for adoption. Or selling you to a museum. I hope you like being a fossil."
He paused, a jagged, jaded laugh escaping his lips. "I'm talking to a magical tumor. I've officially lost it. I hope the asylum has better coffee than this office."
He shook his head, trying to laugh it off, but the vague sense of loss in his chest wouldn't quit. He felt like a compass pointing toward a North Pole that had been erased from the map.
Meanwhile, in the celestial heights, the Arbiter of Heavens stood before the Deep Wells. Two hundred and eighty four years remained on the sentence, but the universe was tilting. The Solar King's absence had caused the stars to dim,the balance was failing.
"Release him," the Arbiter commanded. "But strip the transition. Let him feel the weight of his crimes."
They didn't give Ignis a royal escort. They didn't return him to his throne. They threw him into the dark, narrow hallway between Kaelan's apartment building and the neighboring brick structure. He hit the wet pavement with a sickening thud, the chains of light shattering only as he touched the mortal soil.
His power was a sluggish, dying ember. The divinity that should have healed his broken arm and closed his unhealed wounds was coming back with agonizing slowness. He lay there in the trash and the rain, a fallen god covered in the blood of the Deep Wells.
*
*
*
Kaelan was coming home late. The elevator was broken,as it usually was on the days he felt most exhausted and he was taking the service stairs that let out into the side hallway.
He heard it then. A heavy, wet movement. A rasping breath that sounded like grinding stones.
"If that's a mugger, I have a very heavy briefcase and a short temper," Kaelan muttered, his black panther ears snapping out of hiding, swiveling toward the shadows.
He rounded the corner and stopped.
There, slumped against the brick, was a man. His clothes were rags, his crimson hair matted with grime and dried gold. His left arm was bent at an angle that made Kaelan's stomach churn, and his skin was a map of bruises and jagged, raw scars.
The moment Kaelan's eyes landed on the man, the seal on his memory didn't just crack,it disintegrated.
The mist in his mind vanished. He remembered the grove. He remembered the twelve hours of desperate, pained mating. He remembered the look on Ignis's face as the Arbiter dragged him away. He remembered that this monster,this arrogant, predatory lizard ,had traded three centuries of divinity for the life of one cynical panther.
Tears welled in Kaelan's eyes, hot and stinging. The seed in his belly reacted with a violent, joyful surge, the golden heat making Kaelan's breath hitch.
But his legs wouldn't move. He stood ten feet away, frozen in a cocktail of livid fury and soul crushing relief. This man was his nightmare. This man was the reason he had spent five years feeling like a broken vessel.
"You... you idiotic, suicidal fool," Kaelan whispered, his voice breaking into a sob he tried to swallow. He finally forced his legs to move, his steps heavy and uneven as he approached the fallen King. "Look at you. You're a mess. You look like you've been through a meat grinder. How could you be so... so stupid?"
Ignis's head rolled back against the wall. His golden eyes flickered open,dim, bloodshot, but still burning with that same obsession. He saw Kaelan. He saw the small bump beneath the trench coat. He saw the tears.
"Kaelan..." Ignis rasped, his voice a dry, pained rattle.
"Don't 'Kaelan' me!" Kaelan cried, kneeling in the dirt beside him, his hands shaking as he reached for Ignis's face. "You could have been killed! You went to that hole... you let them break you... for what? For me? I'm a jaded analyst who hates your realm! You're a King! You don't trade a throne for a cat!"
Kaelan was crying now, the tears dripping onto Ignis's scarred chest. "I hate you. I want you dead. I hope you get a permanent cold. But not like this... gods, not like this..."
Ignis didn't answer with words. With a groan of immense effort, he lifted his one good arm. He didn't reach for Kaelan's throat or his waist. He wrapped his arm around Kaelan, his fingers digging into the fabric of the graduation,turned office coat, and pulled him into a tight, desperate hug.
Kaelan collapsed against him, burying his face in Ignis's blood stained shoulder. He muffled his sniffles against the man's neck, his hands clutching the rags of Ignis's shirt.
The scent was still there. Under the blood and the prison grime, there was the smell of the sun and the mountain.
"You're late," Kaelan sobbed into his neck, his panther tail lashing the wet pavement in a rhythm of agony and love. "You're two hundred and eighty four years early... and you're still... a scaly, narcissistic prick."
Ignis held him tighter, his chin resting on Kaelan's head. He didn't have the strength to heal his own arm yet, but as he felt the seed pulsing against his chest through Kaelan's skin, a smug, broken smile touched his lips.
"I missed... the noise," Ignis whispered into Kaelan's ear, his voice trembling with a returned excitement. "Tell me more... about how much... you hate me, Kaelan. I've been... waiting to hear it."
Kaelan just cried harder, clutching the monster who had become his savior, while the rain washed away the blood of the Deep Wells.
"You dumbass!" Kaela mutters ,sniffling out .