Kell Maresh (antari) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-08-28 21:48:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !network post, kell maresh, rhy maresh |
WHO: Rhy & Kell Maresh
WHAT: Rhy shares his magic and engagement plans with Kell. Kell is moody.
WHEN: Backdated to the first week of August, before Alucard's birthday
WHERE: Maresh Palace
WARNINGS: Abandonment issues & feels.
Rhy was pleased that Kell had offered to help with the party. He knew Kell was mainly doing it for his sake, not Alucard’s, but perhaps a little bit for Alucard’s sake as well. However much that was, Rhy would take it. He could tell they were trying to get along, and succeeding at least to some extent. Eventually, he hoped, it would be easier for both of them. As it was, it was already easier on Rhy, having to do less navigating and peacekeeping between the two of them.
But he was still aware that the subject he wanted to broach might not be the happiest of news for Kell, although he hoped Kell could be happy for him, at least. He had invited Kell over in the morning while Alucard was at work, to begin what preparations they could for the party. Mainly, though, as he’d said to Kell already, there was something he wanted to show his brother, and also something they needed to talk about.
They had finished shopping for the list of ingredients and other supplies needed for the food and cake at the party, including candles. Rhy finished checking the list for at least the tenth time, set it down, and then picked up the box of candles, pretty gold ones that he had specially ordered. He pulled one out of the box, held it between two fingers, and said quietly to Kell, “This is what I wanted to show you.”
With a soft murmur of Arnesian, he lit the candle with his magic. It was a small flame, but completely controlled, and he had not needed to use a firestarter to create it. Fire came at his command now, without too much difficulty, although it wavered a little when he looked back up at Kell, waiting for his brother’s reaction.
--
Kell was trying to make peace with Alucard, precisely because he knew how much the other man meant to his brother. It wasn’t easy for Kell, because there were few people that Kell did easily get along with, and he and Alucard had so much unpleasant history.
As it was, Kell thought they were doing okay. He figured a birthday was a good place to make that extra effort, and he knew that he was likely going to have to get a thoughtful gift too. That he was still at a loss for.
He turned at the sound of Rhy saying that he wanted to show him something.
He paused, watching quietly. He’d felt the pulls as Rhy had practiced his magic lately, but since Rhy hadn’t mentioned it, Kell had let it be for the time being.
He thrilled at the sight of his brother so effortlessly calling forth a little bit of fire, though, because he knew how much that meant to Rhy -- and it was so much better when it wasn’t something that Rhy was completely measuring himself by.
“Look at you,” Kell said, certain that his pride was beaming through over their connection.
...
Rhy felt the pride -- real, genuine pride, nothing else -- and he couldn’t help but grin. The little flame grew stronger and brighter, too.
“Fire likes me now,” he said with a small smile. “I just had to be a little nicer to it. And to myself.” It was more complicated than that, or at least the process by which he’d gotten to that point had been more complicated, but that was ultimately what it boiled down to. “And to do that, I needed a little advice from someone who isn’t from our world. It’s not your fault, though,” he added, just to make sure Kell knew that. Private lessons with Kell were about all Rhy had been able to tolerate for a while, and he really had tried, but Kell didn’t know how to work with magic that didn’t come easily. There was no way for him to truly know what kind of advice Rhy needed. “I know you already knew. I just needed more practice before I could show it to you.”
--
Kell had been hurt beyond measure when Alucard had snapped at him about not being able to help Rhy with his magic, but perhaps it had always been a difficult set-up for Kell to teach Rhy magic. Kell didn’t have any memories of not being at ease with magic and, moreover, likely training with him had been a continued reminder for Rhy that no matter how hard he practiced he wasn’t going to hold a candle to Kell’s range of magic.
“I’m glad you found someone who was able to help you,” Kell said.
…
“I was just getting in my own way,” Rhy said with a shrug. “I needed to talk to someone who’d also had that problem.” He murmured to the flame, and it went out. He looked back up at Kell. “I really do appreciate how hard you tried to teach me. I know I wasn’t an easy student.”
It was getting easier and easier to show people his magic. If he could show it to Kell, he could show it to almost anyone. Except perhaps his father or Tieren, but neither of them were here.
--
“You know you weren’t a bad student except when you wanted to be,” Kell answered, a bit dryly, hoping to infuse some levity back into the conversation. It hadn’t been either of their faults, and they had tried to the best of their abilities.
But there was also no mistaking the way that Rhy had, occasionally, decided to turn up hungover to lessons.
…
Rhy grinned. There was certainly some truth to it. The deeper truth was that he had been in a poor emotional state about his lessons long before beginning private lessons with Kell, and when even that had not worked, it was easier to act like he didn’t care, to show up hungover so he could blame his failure on that. But he let Kell have this one. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He returned his attention to the food preparation, sorting through the supplies and ingredients he’d just purchased. He handed a few things to Kell that were meant to go into the coldbox, including the meat and fish. “I have one other piece of news as well.”
--
Kell, older now and more in tune with his brother’s insecurities, understood well enough what Rhy had been doing: playing a part. His brother was quite good at that, and Kell could only hope that he wouldn’t have to do it again anytime soon.
He accepted the items that Rhy handed him, turning to put them in their proper place.
“What’s that” Kell asked.
…
The showing of magic had been the harder part for Rhy to get through, for all that he had expected it to be well-received. This part was going to be much easier for him, even though he was not sure how it would be taken. He certainly didn’t expect the same kind of overwhelming pride and joy, but given the way Kell had responded to the announcement about the party -- offering to help without even being asked -- Rhy wasn’t expecting the worst from him, either.
If there was any discontent, he actually expected it to have more to do with what it meant for their future here than with Alucard himself. But he also wasn’t entirely sure how Kell felt about this place, in general.
“I have decided,” he said easily, “To ask Alucard to marry me, while we’re here. As well as at home.”
--
Kell was certainly not prepared for that.
It took him several seconds to fully process the words, because the last time this topic had been broached, Rhy had said that he didn’t know how he felt about marrying Alucard. And even then, the fact that marriage had crossed Rhy’s mind as a topic had shocked Kell. And now Rhy was saying not only that he wanted to but that he was going to be the one to propose.
He desperately wished that he could have some privacy in his reactions.
He couldn’t say it came out of nowhere, but it felt abrupt, even if Kell and Alucard had been working on what constituted a relationship for them.
But as had always been his fear, he felt increasingly on the outside of Rhy’s life rather than one of the people at the center of it. He felt foolish over this fear of abandonment, but it was there all the same.
“Oh,” Kell said, inelegantly.
…
Rhy felt the shock, and closely on its heels, the fear. Neither truly surprised him, though the fear worried him the most. He had not talked to Kell very much about Alucard, mainly because it was a sore subject. The last thing he remembered saying was that he loved Alucard, and that it wasn’t going to change. Before that… he couldn’t even recall.
He kept his eyes and hands focused on what he was doing, offering Kell what privacy he could to compose himself. It wasn’t much, he knew. But he couldn’t help the fact that their emotions were not private; the only thing he could do was not start to pry immediately, to pretend - at least for the moment - that he had nothing to work with besides what he could see and hear of Kell’s reactions.
“I know it’s a surprise,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s taken me some time to decide, and a lot has happened between us, mainly conversations, that I haven’t… talked to you about, not because I want to keep any secrets from you, but…” He didn’t, truthfully, have a real explanation. “I suppose in part I didn’t want to make you feel even more pressured to get along with him, or think about… us. And the other part of it is that I haven’t been thinking about any kind of future here until recently, and was avoiding thinking about it, because…” He was getting into dicey territory here, opening up a whole other conversation, one that he had been intending to avoid. He tried to phrase it in a way that could prevent it from derailing the conversation he did want to have. “Because it makes me feel guilty about not being home, not working on rebuilding our city. I still don’t know how to feel about that, but we’re here now, but that… doesn’t matter, because there isn’t a choice in it. Just the choices of what we do with the time we have.”
He paused and looked up at Kell. “But I know you’ve been able to tell that the way I feel about him has changed. Or maybe you’ve been purposefully shutting that out. I…” He didn’t know where he was going with that sentence either. He turned to face his brother fully, and spread his hands in front of him, palm up, in a gesture of something like helplessness. “I love him. I’ve always loved him, it just got… complicated. I had to learn to trust him again, and trust myself with him, and now I do. And that’s something I want to keep.”
--
Kell knew full well that Rhy wouldn’t try to keep secrets from him on the important things -- but it was simply fact that Kell was not privy, nor should he be privy to, all the inner machinations of Rhy and Alucard’s relationship.
It would be more of this after they got married, especially back at home.
Kell knew he was being hypocritical. Rhy was granting him so much freedom back home -- the possibility to travel with Lila, to not be tied in serve to the crown. Kell’s life didn’t have to always be tied to the Maresh line’s, which is what he had been asking for. But he still wanted his life to be tied to Rhy’s, he found.
And, of course, Kell knew that Rhy loved Alucard and that he had always loved Alucard. There had never been anyone who had come as close to his brother as Alucard Emery had, much as Kell had always hated that.
He still didn’t know what he was supposed to be saying to this.
“When are you going to ask?” Kell asked.
…
So they weren’t going to address anything that Kell felt about it. Rhy tried not to feel hurt, but it was hard. He wished, not for the first time, that Kell would just express himself in words. It had been different, before, when they were both holding each other at arm’s length. And it wasn’t fair to compare his relationship with Kell to the one with Alucard, but the way he was able to talk to Alucard - and the way Alucard talked to him - was incredible. Now that he knew what that kind of emotional openness felt like, he desperately wanted it with his brother.
It should have been easier, because of the bond that allowed them to feel each other’s strong emotions. But instead that only seemed to make it harder, because it only made Kell more determined to hold the boundary of his privacy. But he couldn’t stop Rhy from knowing what he was feeling, and so Rhy knew exactly how much distance there was between them, how far Kell was holding him away.
But in fairness to him, he was Rhy’s brother. He could hold Rhy at a distance for however long he wanted, and Rhy would still be here. If Alucard had done the same, Rhy would have left.
So he kept his composure, even though his heart hurt, strong enough that he knew Kell could feel it.
“At the end of the month,” he said simply, offering only the answer to the question, and nothing else.
--
He had upset Rhy in some way. He could feel it bleeding off Rhy in waves, the frustration intermingled. He didn’t know exactly why -- well, he did know that Rhy likely wanted him to be excited for him, but he certainly couldn’t have been expecting that, Kell thought.
And it wasn’t the crushing disappointment and anger that Kell would have felt weeks ago, either. This news would have crushed him earlier. But now it was a neutral sort of worry, a certain kind of flowering fear. He and Alucard were getting along better, and he suspected that would continue -- and either way, he was fairly certain that Rhy would not simply abandon their relationship because he and Alucard were getting married. They were too much for that.
“What?” Kell asked, referencing Rhy’s emotion, not his response.
…
Rhy raised his eyebrows. “What?” he echoed.
He had a feeling he knew what Kell was asking, and was severely tempted to say something snippy, along the lines of, oh, are we talking about how we feel now? But he knew better than to do that. He knew better than to be the one who brought it up at all; it had never gone well. Kell had to come to him.
--
Kell scowled.
“Why are you frustrated with me right now?” Kell asked, trying not to make his voice too short. He didn’t know if he succeeded. He knew this was a risky conversation to have -- was afraid that Rhy might say out loud that he expected Kell to be happy for him in this moment. It wasn’t that he wasn’t. It was merely that his feelings were never that simple, and Rhy had to have known that.
…
Rhy couldn’t help himself. “Oh, are we talking about our feelings now?”
But the words came out without any venom. He sounded a little frustrated, but mostly he just sounded sad. He lifted a hand and rubbed his fingertips along the edge of his jaw.
The retort had been an answer in itself, but he wasn’t sure Kell would understand that it was one, so he tried to pull his thoughts together to give a real explanation. “I know you have… reservations about the proposal, or about me and Alucard in general. I didn’t expect anything else. I just wish you’d tell me what they are.”
He dragged in a breath that was shakier than he expected. “I wish you’d talk to me, in general. I know you want me to respect your privacy, and I am trying. I just…” He tried to figure out how to finish that sentence, and then gave up and shook his head. “Whenever you’re ready to talk to me, about anything at all, I’ll be here. That’s all.”
--
Kell bristled at Rhy’s response, even though it wasn’t truly a barb.
He struggled with so many aspects of their new connection, and this was one of them. To Kell, it had always felt like he was entirely open with Rhy. Rhy had known when he was smuggling items out of other worlds, for saint’s sake. But now that Rhy could feel his emotions, he so often called out moments when Kell wasn’t sure -- when Kell wouldn’t have even thought to share.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” Kell said sharply. “You’ve just told me everything I think about this situation, so what more is there?” He didn’t for Alucard, but he was trying to be better about that -- which Rhy knew.
…
No matter what he did, no matter how he came at this conversation, he always managed to put Kell on the defensive, even when he was trying his damnedest not to. Admittedly, he had known better than to retort that way, even if his tone wasn’t behind it. Rhy put both his hands on the edge of the kitchen counter and leaned on them, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to pull his thoughts together, to put his hurt aside.
He couldn’t push. Kell was already defensive, it would feel like an invasion of privacy or an interrogation.
“This isn’t about how you feel right now,” he said finally, his voice quiet. “Or any of the other… emotions I’ve picked up on that you’d rather I didn’t know about. I just…” His jaw tensed with the effort of keeping emotion back. “I’m making big decisions about my future, and I want to talk to my brother about it. But every time I try to talk to you lately, I feel like you’re holding me at a distance. We’re so closely connected, but there’s none of that in the way you talk to me.” He dragged in a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to share your every little feeling, I just wish there was a way you could meet me even a little closer to halfway. On your terms.”
--
Kell smarted with hurt and indignation as he watched Rhy lean forward. He had clearly disappointed Rhy in his reaction, but it was in a way he didn’t fully understand, which frustrated him. He did share things with Rhy -- things that he didn’t share with anyone else, and he didn’t know how to be any more open with his feelings than he already was.
He wanted to say that he only ever disappointed Rhy when it came to Alucard -- because he didn’t like him, and so he couldn’t share that emotion, and then he got pinged for not liking him. And Kell was working so hard on that. But he knew that this was about more than Alucard and to narrow it down to him was a dangerous mistake.
Kell ground a palm against his forehead.
“Rhy,” Kell said, strained. “I am being as open with you as I can be. You can’t just tell me to do more and expect me to know what to do with that.”
…
“Whenever I ask you directly for what I want, it’s something you don’t want to give,” Rhy said, frustrated. “Right now, I want to know why you felt scared, so that I can tell you there’s no reason to be. But you already hate that I know what you felt, and I know you don’t want me to ask. But when I’m hurt, you directly ask me what’s wrong. You don’t see how there’s a difference there?”
He drew in a breath. “I don’t mind that you ask. I’m happy to tell you every little thing. But it feels wrong for that to be one-sided. So I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, either. I know how I want it to go, which is for us to be closer, and comfortable with sharing anything that our bond might reveal to the other. But I don’t know how to make that happen, or if it’s even something you want. I don’t want to keep pushing you for something you’ll never want to give. So you need to figure that out. You don’t have to have an answer for me right this moment, just tell me that you’ll think about it.”
—
In turn, Kell was mortified that Rhy had picked up on that undercurrent of fear -- and was only further frustrated, because he knew that Rhy would know that he was embarrassed right now too.
“You’re right,” Kell snapped. “I don’t want you to feel that fear, and I can’t explain it to you because I don’t know what it means, but I do know that it will go away. So what is the point, Rhy, in bringing further attention to it, especially when I know it’s just going to make you feel bad, and I’m trying to be more understanding about your relationship with Alucard? Why is picking at that helpful?”
…
“I just think,” Rhy said quietly, “That if you say it aloud, it will go away faster for being acknowledged. You don’t have to be able to explain it.” He let out a breath. “If you just said, ‘I’m afraid, I don’t know why’, I’d say, ‘I know’, and then I’ll hug you and tell you that it’ll be okay, and that’s the end of it. We move on.”
He looked at his brother. “Would it really be so awful if we did that, instead of arguing about this over and over again?”
It still hurt that Kell didn’t want him to be able to feel it at all. He understood, but he loved their bond; he found it reassuring that he could always feel Kell with him, especially because he knew their lives were going to take them on separate paths.
—
“It’s not a conscious decision, Rhy,” Kell said, suddenly tired. He didn’t want to fight over this anymore, and he wished it was a simple as just deciding to do something for Rhy. But it wasn’t. Rhy was asking him to change something that was in his nature, and it wasn’t that easy for Kell.
…
“Okay, okay,” Rhy said. He lifted his hands and scrubbed them over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired of… not being able to say anything for fear of overstepping your boundaries and getting my head bitten off.”
He took a deep breath. “Can I skip over the asking about it and just hug you when I can tell you’re afraid, or worried, or hurt? Is that an acceptable compromise?”
--
Kell breathed out. He also was tired of fighting over this, and he didn’t know what the right way to strike a balance was. He wished that he could tell Rhy that it was okay to ask, but that he was still going to bite his head off sometimes.
“All right,” Kell agreed. “I’ll tell you what’s happening then if I can, all right?”
…
“Okay,” Rhy agreed. Relief had flooded through him when Kell agreed, strong enough that he knew Kell would feel it. He pushed away from the counter and moved forward to hug his brother, wrapping his arms around Kell’s shoulders. He pressed the lower half of his face into Kell’s shoulder. Voice muffled, he added, “It’s alright if you can’t. I’m just sorry that it bothers you so much.”
--
Kell wrapped his arms back around Rhy, glad that Rhy felt relieved when if Kell wasn’t 100 percent sure they had found a tenable solution. He supposed he just hadn’t realized how much he still kept to himself. But he still felt there were so many things that just needed to be shared, because they didn’t help the situation anyway.
He supposed they would figure it out.
“I didn’t mean to steal your moment,” Kell said quietly. He felt bad that Rhy’s announcement of a proposal had somehow devolved into a discussion of his feelings.
…
“You didn’t,” Rhy assured him. He gave Kell a gentle squeeze, and then let him go, offering him a smile. “I mean, you’re coming to the wedding, right?”
He knew Kell would; he wouldn’t miss something so important. “I was also hoping you’d be a part of it in some way, if you were willing.” He didn’t have a particular idea of what that would be. This world had a concept of ‘best men’, but it might feel strange to have one of those if Alucard didn’t. They needed an officiant, but he suspected Kell would hate playing that role. Regardless, they would find something.
--
“Of course,” Kell said warmly. He might have had mixed feelings about Alucard Emery and a fear that Rhy was rushing into things too soon or setting himself up for hurt, but he would be there for his brother all the same.
And, he really hoped, able to appreciate with more sincerity that that was something that was going to make his brother happy. He was working on that.
...