Disclaimer: I do not own the original characters and I don't make money with this.
Confession Complications
Tala knew he was in love with Kai. Always had been, always would be.
He had long accepted the fact that he was gay.
All he needed to do was confess his feelings to Kai.
But this was easier said than done.
Tala had had plans. Many plans. Good plans! But they had all one thing in common: they had failed.
His first plan had been to take Kai to a haunted house, so he would become all scared and cling to Tala's arm. Tala then would have heroically protected Kai, who would have fallen madly in love with him. Problem was it had been Kai who had scared the haunted house's employees. Really, Tala should have known better.
Next he had planned to take Kai to an ice cream parlor to share an 'Armor's ice cream cup' over which Tala would confess his love to Kai. Turned out Kai was lactose intolerant.
Getting desperate, Tala had decided to go with the all-time-classic and strategically place an arm around Kai in the movie theater. His arm wasn't even half-way across Kai's shoulder when the guy behind them went into allergic shock because of the peanuts Kai just had opened. Kai of course had felt obligated to give first aid. Just why did someone go to the movies, who was this allergic to peanuts?
This time, however, Tala's plan was waterproof!
Tala had invited Kai over to his place to watch a ball game together. Kai really liked watching those. Tala would cook a nice meal for them to enjoy during the game. After the game Kai would be overjoyed with his teams' victory – there was no way they could lose this game. And that was going to be Tala's moment. Really, it was so simple and yet a completely brilliant plan.
If Kai was gay, that is.
But Tala was optimistic. Kai never had had a girlfriend and as far as Tala knew Kai hadn't laid one finger on Hilary, who had been living in one house with the Bladebreakers for ages and had offered more than one time. Also, Kai liked Céline Dion.
A day before the game, Tala set his plan in motion and invited Kai over to his place to watch the game. Kai agreed. Of course he did - Tala had a comfy couch, a huge flat screen and there was no Tyson at his apartment.
Step one: invite Kai – check!
Step two: plan the meal and buy groceries. Also… clean the apartment.
Now it was getting tricky. In theory, cooking a nice meal was easy. In reality, not quite so. Tala had many abilities, but cooking clearly wasn't one of them. The only meals he felt comfortable making were scrambled eggs and oatmeal. But Tala wasn't going to let this minor issue get him down. There had to be something even he could do.
Tala went online to check various websites for suitable recipes.
Half an hour later, he was devastated. Everything that sounded like it would make an impression on Kai was way beyond his cooking abilities.
Okay, enough with the fancy hobby-chef-websites. What Tala needed was cooking for dummies. He punched that into his search engine. Much better. Tala decided to go with a simple pasta dish. He opened his fridge to see which of the ingredients needed he already had. None. It wasn't like Tala's fridge was empty. On the contrary, it was well stacked. Just not with food. More like liquids.
So, Tala wrote down everything he needed and went grocery shopping.
The day of the game dawned and Tala felt awful. He had tossed and turned all night, too nervous to fall asleep. Tala dragged himself out of bed and scuffled over to his coffee machine.
With a steaming cup of coffee his hand, Tala felt his spirits revived. He could do this! Today was the day! He would take a shower, have some breakfast, and do some serious cleaning up in his apartment. Afterwards he'd have plenty of time to cook the best pasta dish Kai had ever tasted.
A word and a blow!
Later that day the apartment was all clean and shiny and Tala went to the kitchen to get started with his masterpiece.
All he had to do was cut onions and other vegetables, make a pasta sauce, cook some pasta, throw it all together and grate some cheese over it. Cheese was good. Cheese made everything better. This didn't sound so hard...
Long story short, it was a nightmare. Tala's eyes teared so much from cutting the onions that he couldn't see clearly and thus cut his finger instead. After this was taken care of, he tried his luck with some tomatoes. The little suckers apparently didn't want to be cut in pieces. The result didn't look like diced tomatoes, but more like pulp. With all of his attention focused on the tomatoes, Tala forgot to drain the pasta. So that looked like pulp, too. To top all of this, Tala discovered he didn't own a cheese grater.
Fine. No nice home-cooked meal then. Tala dumped everything.
It was time for plan B. Plan B was to set out nacho chips with guacamole and order pizza. This was way better anyway, wasn't it? Pizza and sports games were like vodka and martini - they just worked well together.
So now that this was settled, all Tala had to do was clean up the mess he had made and rid his apartment of that nasty onion smell.
Kai arrived shortly before game time. Tala had spent the last half hour pacing around his apartment, double checking his outfit, his hair, his breath (who knew, right?) and just about everything else.
When Kai finally arrived Tala was a nervous wreck. Luckily, Kai didn't seem to notice. After greeting Tala he went straight for the couch and got himself into a comfortable position for the game.
"Kai, what kind of pizza do you want? Pepperoni?" Tala asked.
"Yup," Kai replied. "Ou, nice, peanuts!"
Earlier that day while Tala was out buying nacho chips and dips he'd figured he could get some peanuts as well. Kai loved those, as he'd learned from their movie-theatre-fiasco.
Tala ordered pizza, got a beer for Kai and himself and joined Kai on the couch.
While Kai was happy with his pizza and the way his team was playing, Tala wasn't able to swallow a single bite or focus on the game. For all he knew, Kai could have switched to a soap opera.
Only a little longer Tala, he said to himself. Just wait 'til after the game. You can do this!
The referees whistle for half-time jolted Tala out of his thoughts. He grabbed the remote control to turn the volume down for half-time.
Meanwhile, Kai sat up and said flat out, "Tala, I'm gay."
Tala was still busy turning the volume down and only listening with half an ear. He wasn't the multi‑tasking kind of guy.
"That's nice," he said.
Then Tala froze mid-motion, his finger hovering over the remote control. What the…!
"Wait, what? What did you just say?" He turned to look at Kai. Was his mind playing a trick on him? Could this really be happening?
Kai looked him straight in the eye and repeated, "I'm gay. Also, I'm in love with you Tala."
"You're…gay," Tala mumbled.
"Yup."
"And… you're… in love… with me?"
"Yeah. I think we should go out."
Tala looked like he'd been struck by lightning.
"Tala? Hello?" Kai waved his hand in front of Tala's face. "You don't look too happy. A lot of people would be really happy when being offered all of this." He gestured up and down his body.
Somehow this brought Tala back to life. He could feel a big grin spread on his face.
So, Kai had once again managed to ruin Tala's confession. But who was he to complain?
Tala leaned over to Kai and sealed his lips with a kiss in response.
The End
Author's note
Thanks for reading. I hope you liked it- If you did, I'd love to hear from you in a review.
Until next time, NoEarlyBird
