Here we go, I managed it despite three power cuts! A ... well, drabble, kind of, for Vampirycent on his 22nd birthday!! Happy birthday, Kit!! I hope you have a great day!!
Enjoy my first Kai/Ray offering for far too long!
Rain threatened in every aspect of the huge garden in which Ray stood, staring upwards like a statue, morbidly thrilled with the dark, menacing atmosphere. Rain-smell, a thick, fetid stench reminiscent of drains and rotting vegetation. The heavy black clouds that hung above him, dark even against the night sky and full to bursting with water. Even the very air was empty and deathly still, a vacuum waiting to be filled with a rush of liquid.
Ray felt as though he could reach out and touch the objects of his fascination - soft, fluffy white clouds, streaked with pink and encircled by their dangerous brothers. He felt as though he was standing in the eye of a storm.
"Ray!" A silhouette appeared in the squat rectangle of yellow light that was the patio door.
"What?" Ray answered in a hoarse whisper. Clearing his throat, he tried again, "What is it?"
"Did you go on another neat-freak jaunt today?" If by that, Kai, you mean picked up your odd socks and boxers from their festering piles on the floor of virtually every one of twenty rooms, then, yes, Ray thought, though he said none of it.
"Yeah, why?" he called back instead.
"Where the hell are all my socks?"
Where they should be! "In the top drawer in our room."
"What're they doing there?"
"Growing? Eating? Exhibiting other signs of life? They should be, given the state they were in when I picked them up!" Ray bit his lip, he hadn't meant for his sarcasm to emerge out loud.
"You should be worried then, you're showing less life than a sock." Ray's lips twitched and he glanced over at the shadow in the doorway, who continued, "Come in."
"Why?"
"'Cause moping around out here won't help anything-"
"Like you'd know? When you're moping, the world and his dog knows!"
"- and it's about to rain and I don't want a wet mattress tonight, ok?"
"I could always sleep on the sofa." The second that the words were out of his mouth, Ray longed to take them back, for the television to suddenly blast on, for their cat to start yowling a lonely mating call, for Kai to be struck deaf, anything but for those words to be heard. They had slept in the same bed from the moment they had moved in together a year ago, and even after their frequent (and getting more so) arguments, the big bed, late at night, was where they cuddled and made up in any number of ways. They prided themselves on never extending a period of sulky separation for long after their heads had hit the pillow.
Ray's carelessly spoken words, created from an irritation that had been stewing inside him all day and triggered by Kai's apparent lack of concern or even curiosity about his state of mind, said, "Leave me alone!" clearer than the words themselves would have, and Kai said nothing in return. Slowly, his features still hidden from Ray's anxious craning by the bright light, he stepped back and shut the door with more force than was necessary. Ray opened his mouth to cry out something, anything, but closed it again wordlessly.
They had made their points, both of them.
You made your bed, now lie in it. Tipping his head skywards again, he caught his breath and held it as the rain began to fall. Droplets splashed onto his face, He blinked, blinked again, and two slow tears rolled down his cheeks, indistinguishable from the rain that soon clung to his face and hair like a second skin.
The white clouds had gone, replacing by the swirling purple mass that disgorged rain, rain, and more rain onto the silent neko-jin and pattered against the windows of an unnoticed approaching car. The storm was here.
----
Kai let go of Ray's newly-washed robe as soon as he heard footsteps, and rapidly uncurled himself. He didn't even need to ask who had invaded his home, his bedroom.
"Tala, why the hell are you here?" Tala shrugged.
"Why not?"
"It's late, it's pissing it down, and it's my house, my room."
"Mine? Not "ours" tonight? Trouble in paradise?" They stared at each other, Tala meeting Kai's angry eyes blankly. "Where's Ray?"
"Outside." Tala pulled a face.
"Get him in." It was an order, and Kai bristled accordingly.
"Not if he doesn't want to." Throwing the curtains back, Tala flattened his angular face to the window in an effort to see their current topic of conversation through the torrential rain. Behind his back, Kai managed a half-hearted snigger. "Tala, you won't get him in unless he wants to come in."
"Whoever said anything about me doing the dirty work?" Kai folded his arms and looked in the opposite direction, only to receive a sharp rabbit-punch to the shoulder. "Ray will be ill if you leave him out there, if he's not already. That's what you want? We both know he won't come in of his own accord."
"… He said I was an attention seeker …."
"You are. So move your lazy arse from this bed and go and seek his attention!" After many sour looks and muttered comparisons of Tala to various animals, vegetables and inanimate objects, Kai got up.
---
"Hey?" Ray just about managed to turn his head and to reply, through chattering teeth,
"Straw?"
"You bastard, you're freezing!" Ray shivered involuntarily at the change in temperature as Kai's arms closed around him, and felt Kai's grip slacken. He stayed carefully motionless, neither hugging him, nor stepping away. They stayed like that, pressed tightly together in a very one-sided embrace, for a long time. Kai's clothes, hair and skin became wet and he too started to shiver. Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime, he asked softly, "Do you still want to sleep on the sofa?" Ray let out a long-held breath and hugged his incorrigible boyfriend right back, with a tired whisper,
"Of course not."
---
Bryan looked up as Tala threw himself back into the car, dripping all over his nice dry seats. He wrinkled his nose, but said nothing.
"Crisis averted?"
"Of course." Bryan smirked.
"Tal, I know it's been very useful for your paranoid tendencies, but don't you think - "
"No! Where would they be without it?"
"- that it's time to take the CCTV camera out of their garden?" Tala shook his head mutely. Chuckling, Bryan started the engine and they drove away with a throaty purring sound.
Have no idea where the ending came from. Sorry for any mistakes, I kinda shoulda been in bed three hours ago ... (And yes, I have checked it this morning, but I'm not good at checking my own work)
Hope 'twas liked! R&R and I'll luv ya! xD
xIlbx