WHO: Kai Bennett & TJ Edwards (NPC) WHAT: Comforting one another! Cute cuddling ensues. WHEN: March 25th - 2 hours after this. WHERE: Kai’s tent - Maverick Studios. RATING: Low. Mentions of injury, feelings of guilt and anxiety.
Kai had spent the past two hours in Emi’s tent with her and Sable, where they sought comfort and companionship from one another in the form of a cuddle pile. He still hadn’t let loose anything that he was feeling in an external way. There had yet to be any tears and he hadn’t verbalized anything either.
When a text came through on his phone, he twitched in surprise before pulling his phone out and reading it. TJ wanted to check on him. He texted back that he was in Emi’s tent and leaned his head back against her shoulder while he waited.
He gave Emi and Sable hugs once he got another text that TJ was there, silently thanking them before coming out from underneath the warmth of the blanket. Outside, he blinked up at TJ. He was a reassuring presence but Kai couldn’t figure out what to say to him, either, so he reached for TJ’s arm and gave it one tug before dropping his hand and leading him toward his tent.
Kai had yet to invite anyone into his tent, mostly because he thought it would be embarrassing. There were two areas set up. One was clearly meant for a horse, with cushy straw strewn on the ground and a stock of five hay bales sitting in a corner. It was obvious that he sometimes went to his tent to temporarily simplify his life by becoming a horse. The other half of it was a traditional no-maj pillow fort, though Kai had used magic to make it more structurally sound. The whole thing was cushy pillows and blankets with comfort items like books and newly acquired necessities for teamaking. It was a tent within a tent. Childish, sure, but at the end of the day, it helped his anxiety.
The intervening hours between the incident and being released had been spent answering so many questions, many of which were all variations of the same thing, like they were trying to trip him up in some kind of non-existent lie. TJ's throat was dry and ached, and he felt like maybe there were dummies for experimental quod testing that had come out of their gauntlet a little less battered than he did. He'd barely gotten his phone back in his hand before he texted Kai. It was probably a little weird that he was his first contact, but he hadn't been able to shake the pale, wide-eyed shock on the other's face.
After texting a couple of times back and forth, TJ had gone back to his workshop, but he was no more than two steps in before his stomach turned and he had to summon his bag rather than going any further inside. It was a weird twist of misplaced guilt, like he'd been betrayed by the thing he loved doing the most. The soundstage was eerily quiet now, and he hurried away from it to find Raven's tent, and texted again when it was close. There were a string of questions in his head for Kai, but they all died when he emerged, just as pale and non-verbal as before. He, too, remained silent as he was led to the actor's tent. The implications of the tent were clear as he let his gaze wandering over it before looking over at Kai. "Which one do you want to be?" His voice was this ragged sort of echo of what it normally was. "Either way, I'll be here."
The length of time that TJ had been gone spoke volumes. Kai knew that he had probably spent all of that time in questioning or waiting to be questioned, the first of the blame immediately coming to rest on his shoulders as the most obvious suspect. He knew that TJ didn’t have it in him to do anything like that. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body, even though he looked like he could crush Kai under his thumb.
Any embarrassment about showing TJ his tent that he felt underneath the numbness that had yet to lift disappeared as soon as the other man broke the silence hanging between them by telling him he could be whatever part of himself that he wanted to be, go to the part of his tent that best suited him. It was tempting to change but he thought that doing that would only be better for him, not for TJ, who must have had a far more difficult past two hours than he had. He turned away from his two choices of where to go within the tent, looking up at TJ before he slipped his arms around him in a hug and nuzzled his face against his shirt in what was actually a very equine show of affection.
It had been a matter of psyching himself up to whatever Kai was about to choose, but even he couldn't lie to himself about how relieved he was when the younger man chose to stay in a shape that TJ could actually hang on to. He wrapped his arms around Kai's back and held him close. His heart rate slowed with each breath. They had barely done this on their date, because it had been very clear to him that it was the other's first time. The last thing he'd wanted to do was make thing weird or awkward. After a few moments, he slowly moved a hand up the back of his neck and into his unruly curls. "Are you okay?"
Any other time, Kai’s mind might have been working on overdrive, trying to figure out what his feelings toward TJ were and why he was starting to feel as attracted to him as he was toward women. At the moment, though, all he wanted to do was cling to him as much for TJ’s comfort as for his own. Above all, it felt safe there. They were both okay. Hopefully, Rafe was okay. And Tony, who had to be feeling awful. TJ’s hand against his neck was shockingly intimate, though not in a bad way. It felt like it was leaving behind little sparks, a tingly sensation, as his hand worked its way up into his hair. Kai kept his face buried against TJ’s chest as he uttered his first words in hours. “I don’t know.” It was true, he didn’t. “Are you in trouble?” he asked, his voice muffled.
A heavy breath left him that might have started out life as a laugh, but it changed into something silent and sad after it passed through his tight throat. It kind of hurt to hear Kai's response, like it had hit something jarring and dischordent deep inside of him, but TJ knew that a lie on his behalf would have hurt far more. "I—" The questions of the past couple of hours were a blur in his head, but the accusation in their eyes was what lingered now. "No, I don't think so. I have to make myself available for Auror questions for the next few days, but I get to go home. They… They went through my workshop a little, but they said they wanted the offices cleared out before they did a thorough examination. I might not be able to get back in there until the middle of the week, but they assured the execs that it wouldn't disrupt the production schedule too much."
It was just things, but it felt like such a violation. He shuddered before he could stop himself. "I don't know what happened. I have no idea how the swords got switched. It shouldn't have happened. I don't think I did anything wrong, but what if…?"
With his head still against TJ’s chest, he could feel the words as well as hear them. As he suspected, it sounded like such an awful ordeal to have to go through right after seeing what they all had seen. He listened quietly until he felt TJ shudder. Lifting his head, he pulled back just enough so that he could look TJ in the eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He was sure of it. Sure enough to put it into words, to say it aloud. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Kai nodded toward the fort made of pillows and blankets. “Come on. I’ll make you some tea. I have learned that it helps.” Emi and Sable had taken care of him. Now it was his turn to take care of someone else. Selfishly, it could also be distracting, stopping his anxious mind from going down a million different rabbit holes. He pulled away, ducking into the tent, taking out his wand to make the interior a bit bigger, enough to accommodate them both.
"It's—" It was kind of bad how much it to took to keep TJ from refusing this little comfort. Guilt was this awful, gnawing thing, however much he didn't deserve it. But more than his desire for self-castigation was wanting to be in the company of a guy he liked at time when he was feeling pretty damned down on himself and the world in general. "Yeah, okay." He gave Kai a halting nod and made his way into the charming pillow fort and onto a ridiculously comfortable pillow.
It didn't take long before he went from sitting to laying back, and he pushed his knuckles into his eyes until he saw stars. He was glad that Kai didn't think this snafu was down to him, but he himself wasn't sure he quite believed it just yet. It was his prop, after all, and he always triple-checked anything that went out on the soundstage. Everything was warded and marked. It shouldn't have happened. He scraped his hands through his hair and sighed, waiting for the other man's return and stewing on all the things that had gone wrong that day.
Going through the motions of making the tea gave him some time to think. He had gotten onto loose leaf tea and had a bag of chamomile that he opened and scooped out a teaspoon into two cups that he had dropped infusers into. The process could be expedited by using a spell to instantly heat up the water to a perfect temperature but he liked to let it infuse naturally. That gave him three minutes to sit there and stew, something that he didn’t particularly enjoy, but it had given him that time to think.
He ducked into the tent with two steaming mugs of chamomile to find TJ lying on his back on the pillows. “Hey,” he said gently. “Tea?” Kai held one of the mugs out to him. “Don’t worry about spilling. I can just make more pillows and blankets. Most of this stuff is really other stuff. Transfigurations.” He shrugged. Everyone knew that was his thing. “You know, I got the wrong script once this season. It wasn’t my fault but everyone was sure it was, but I know deep down now that it wasn’t. You will get there too. In your gut, you may already know. It just takes a while for the rest of you to catch up.” Sage advice for one so young, but he had experience in it.
It wasn't true at all that he'd relaxed in any way that was actually helpful while Kai had been gone, but he also didn't startle upright like he might have done before he first sat down. Instead, he eased himself into a sitting position and accepted the warmed mug with the gratitude it was due. TJ felt his lips quirk and may have actually felt it a little too. "You're good at that," he halfway mumbled, because he was learning that there were a lot of things the man was good at. Hidden talents. Unappreciated talents. Depths that drove him to want to know more. He went quiet when the other continued and frowned by the end of it, mulling things over and watching Kai through the steam of his tea. "Did you see Sol's note while you were in with your friends? You need to tell him about your suspicions. Maybe it's not related, but if you think it was something deliberate…"
TJ shrugged and gave a careful sip. The jolt of heat gave his thoughts just the touch of clarity he'd been needing. He sent him another smile, this one as honest as it was grateful. "Thanks for this." And then he was frowning again and dropping his gaze back to contents of his mug. "I feel like maybe I set you up for a lifetime of nightmares, playing around in the shop that day, and then what happened to Brightstar—to Rafe. I'm so sorry, Kai. God, I just—I'm so sorry."
While TJ got comfortable with his mug, Kai settled nearby against some brightly patterned cushions. He summoned a blanket next, covering himself before offering a corner to TJ if he wanted to get under too. “Transfigurations are the one thing I’m confident in,” he admitted. He felt most at home performing those types of spells. “I don’t think the script thing was deliberate. I think it was someone else’s honest mistake somewhere down the line. How many hands must the scripts pass through before they get to the actors?” He shrugged, sinking back against the cushions and taking a sip of his tea.
Kai’s attention shifted to TJ as he began to apologize to him. His heart ached for him. It felt like someone was squeezing it a little too hard. He wished he could find whoever had done this and turn them into some awful creature no one would ever want to be. Ideally something very low on the food chain. “Hey, hey.” He put his free hand against TJ’s forearm. “If I have nightmares, it won’t be your fault. I won’t blame you for them.” He was slipping back into his natural southern accent, no longer expending the effort to cover it up. Kai was too worried about TJ to bother with sounding Californian. “I’m not angry at you, I’m not afraid of you, I’m not going to stay away from your shop now. You didn’t do anything to break me, I promise.” He considered himself already broken, but that had happened long before he found out about magic at all.
Even though he'd waved off the first offer of blanket, somehow, while they'd been talking, TJ had moved in closer. His shoulder was almost flush with Kai's, so he felt every movement and gesture. He still had a fair share of misgivings about the script swap, but the last thing he wanted was to pressure his new(ish) friend into anything. It was a running theme. Instead, he tried to focus more on the words meant to assuage a guilt he couldn't quite bring himself to give up just yet, and less on the long fingered hand against his arm. But maybe he should have been paying more attention, because his own hand moved to hold it his arm. Granted, he would release it at the first sign of comfort, but for now he enjoyed the small comfort.
He used their closeness to nudge him with his shoulder and gave Kai a tremulous smile. "I really thought I might be the one who could swing by and see if you were okay. I swear that's what I had in mind when I texted you." Something a little sad filtered into TJ's smile, and he sighed quietly. "I wish I could promise you that I'd never break you, but I try not to make promises on general principle if I can help it. At least not about the things that really count. It's like inviting the universe to find some way to make a liar out of you. So maybe you'd accept it for what it's worth when I say I'll try my best not be someone who widens your cracks." He watched the other for a moment, in profile, and rubbed a thumb against the edge of his hand. There was a story there, unless he was reading the whole thing wrong. "Kinda feel like I keep coming apart around you, but I suppose you won't let me be sorry about that either."
Kai didn’t remove his hand from TJ’s arm. It was something he had done without really thinking about it as if his heart was ten steps ahead of his mind when it came to what he wanted. His thoughts were still too distracted by the events of the day, his numbness, the current process of coming up out of said numbness and starting to speak again, putting a little bit of voice to his feelings. He didn’t try to move his hand when TJ put his hand over his own. Kai was the sort to thrive on physical attention so it was just as much a comfort to him as he sipped his tea, listening to what he had to say.
“I know it was,” Kai replied honestly. He knew that had been TJ’s intention, but he wasn’t mad that it ended up being the other way around, with Kai comforting him instead. “And I know you can’t make a promise like that. Still, it doesn’t change much. No one can make that kind of promise and if we all couldn’t accept that, no one would trust each other and that’s no way to live.” He didn’t know if he was making any sense or if he was nonsensically rambling. It had been a difficult few hours, he could always blame it on that. Kai drained the rest of his tea and set the mug aside before turning toward TJ to burrow up against him, his head on his shoulder. “And nope, I’m not letting you be sorry for anything today.”
His tea was set aside right as Kai moved in closer, like he was anticipating it rather than simply wanting it, and his arms circled around him. TJ forced the thought out of his head about how perfect it felt. Time and place. He seemed to be functioning entirely on instinct. Without much input from his head, which was proving to be entirely unreliable anyway, he started drawing small circles where his hands had settled against Kai's side. The feel of expanding of his ribs as he breathed in and out was almost hypnotic, and some of the lingering tension between TJ's shoulder blades began to ease. They'd talked a little about Kai's home life on a night where the conversation had ranged all over the place on their one and date, but he wanted to know more. "Tell me your favorite story from back home? I know it's a distraction, but maybe we both need it."
He settled against TJ, willing his tense muscles to relax, something that was made easier as soon as TJ began to get into a rhythm of tracing circles against his side. It had an immediate effect on soothing him. Kai took a deep breath, exhaled, slipped his arm loosely around TJ’s middle, and allowed some of his tension to be eased away. The question about his home surprised him, but TJ was right. It was a distraction that they both needed. “I liked going to the beach when I was a kid. There was this one time I made friends with a dolphin. Dolphins are on the Georgia coast a lot. I think it might’ve been magic related. I was doing something I didn’t understand or something. But I spent hours swimming with this dolphin one day until one of my sisters ruined it and scared it away.” He sighed. “Never saw it again but that was a special afternoon. Okay, your turn!”
A day spent hanging out with a dolphin sounded far more charming than his own story, but TJ didn't mind. He smiled, despite the fact that Kai's face was tucked away from him, warmed like himself had been on a beach down south. "I used to spend most of the summer with my Great Aunt Trudy. She was a blacksmith, had her own forge. Kind of the opposite of your story. Not a single drop of magic, even though every one of us have had it, stretching back a few generations. But she wasn't about to let that stop her from making things right along with the rest of us. Crafting is pretty much a family tradition, but no one really seemed to want to hang out with her and watch her put in all that hard work. I was fascinated, however.
"As soon as I found out, I started begging my mom and dad to let me go for a visit—which was in nowhere Alaska, I should probably point out—and then I was there for months at a time. She was incredible. Could swing around hammers that were easily three or four times her size without batting an eyelash, but turn out the most delicately worked things you've ever seen. Someone else bought the forge after she passed away, and I was too young to even think about buying it. But she had a lot of friends in the trade along the Pacific Northwest, so I managed to find place over in Oregon—a tiny community college—where I take a couple of classes on various things and teach metalworking during the show breaks." He paused for a moment, feeling heat crawl up his neck. "That was a long way of saying I'm not just into magical things."
Kai wasn’t sure if his story had magic in it or not. There were other incidents with stranger happenings that in hindsight were clearly magic, but the dolphin experience could have been totally organic. He had no way of knowing for sure. As a child, he had thought of that afternoon as magical, not in the way he thought about magic now, but in the way that all no-maj thought about it. A little spark of something incredible and once in a lifetime. For a little while, he had a friend, and those had been hard for him to come by in childhood as the weird, often neglected youngest child out of six who was very often mistaken for being a little girl.
He listened to TJ’s story without interrupting, smiling to himself at intervals. Great Aunt Trudy sounded like a female version of TJ. What caught him off guard was the confession at the end. He had never heard a wizard say anything like that. They were always so proud of their heritages, those such as himself with no magical blood in their families looked upon as lesser in a lot of circles. “That’s nice,” he murmured. “I’ve spent most of my life living the no-maj way in the no-maj world. It still can take me a moment to remember that I even have a wand I can reach for to do magic with at all and I’m really, really awful at flying on a broom.” He sighed, eyes half-lidded. “I like that you do things the no-maj way too.”
Shifting just a little, TJ pulled him even closer. He kept his closest arm around Kai, but the other was freed so he could put it against the side of the other's neck. The tips of his fingers just barely brushed against the ends of his hair, and something in the whole thing made him sigh with pretty much his entire body. "Unpopular opinion, but magic is a tool. It's a great thing to have, but I know way too many people who are entirely reliant on it. I would never dream of walking into a workshop and expect to find only a hammer, nor do I think it's reasonable to know how to use just that one piece of equipment. You have to diversify if you want to get the most out of life. What happens if you get stuck somewhere you can't use magic, or you can't reasonably get to your wand?" He was quiet for a second or two. "Like today. If I could've gotten on to the set, I would've ripped the sword right out of Tony's hand or thrown something to knock it out or something."
His lips pressed tightly together as another wave of frustrated impotence rolled over him. TJ thought he'd been doing so well, but he suspected it would be like this for a few days at least. "But most people don't account much for what could be, just what's normal, what's convenient. It's the old adage of having all your eggs in one basket." He chuckled. "That was another thing Aunt Trudy was really good at teaching me: different ways of looking at the world. Just because I see things one way doesn't mean someone else has the same view. No two eyes are the same."
He allowed TJ to pull him in closer. Kai continued to use his broad shoulder as a pillow, feeling TJ’s sigh through his own body due to their close proximity. “Wizards could certainly use a bit more no-maj ingenuity and inventiveness, and survival skills too. Maybe we have a leg up that way, being good with both.” He hadn’t realized TJ’s views on no-maj, it was new information for him, and it made him even more grateful to have him as a friend. TJ got it, he understood and worked to have a balance between the two lifestyles.
Kai gave TJ’s side a gentle squeeze where his hand was resting. “Hey. No more talk about today. No more could haves and should haves.” He turned his head just enough to give him a little nuzzle where his shoulder met his neck before going back to leaning against his shoulder. “I wish I got to meet Aunt Trudy, I really like the sound of her.”
It was just a brief, but sharp exhalation of breath and a slight jerk of his spine which could have been easily dismissed as an oddly timed cold chill, but TJ felt completely betrayed by his instinctual reaction to Kai's display of innocent comfort. He willed his shoulders to go back to their relaxed position. There didn't seem to be a damned thing he could do about the slight rumble in his tone, however. "Gotta live in the moment." A low, wry sound left him that could have been a chuckle, but his smile—though unseen—was genuine. "And I like this moment. Also, Aunt Trudy would have adored you. She would have been endlessly fascinated by your animagus ability."
All in all, Kai had very little experience with sexual and/or romantic relationships so the quick shudder that TJ gave was something that he misinterpreted for TJ being cold. That made him snuggle closer, securing the blanket a little better. “I like it too.” He wriggled a little more, finding himself a good place to rest his head again, this time a little lower, where TJ’s shoulder met his chest. TJ was so much bigger than he was, his muscles so much more prominent. It just gave him that much more to curl up against. He couldn’t say he’d ever cuddled with another man like this and so far, he had no complaints. “Would she have? It is rather neat. The spell took me ages.” He felt like he wanted to rest his eyes for a moment, which he knew wasn’t the best idea but he felt so tired all of a sudden, with the last of the shock wearing off. Blinking hard, he resisted the urge.
His thumb slid to the nape of Kai's neck when the other moved down to get more comfortable. TJ caught himself rubbing his thumb against soft skin and the fine hairs just there, but couldn't be bothered to stop. Nor could he stop his own slide back into the pillows like he'd been before, carried by the very slight weight in his arms. It was all so gradual anyway that he hardly even realized it was happening until he was horizontal again. "Just means your brilliant, of course. Aunt Trudy liked smart people, but really just the ones who were grounded. Like you. I think—" TJ sighed quietly, pushing out the last of his anxiety with a concerted effort. "I think we might be okay, you and I."
There was no objection from him as TJ began to rub the back of his neck, causing the tiny hairs to stand on end. Kai was hyperaware of what it felt like for a few moments before he lapsed back into sleepiness as he was lowered into a position that saw them lying flat against the cushions. He draped one of his arms around TJ’s middle, the other tucked underneath himself. His hand was resting on his stomach and he could feel the rise and fall of the other man’s belly as he breathed. It was all very soothing, making it that much more difficult to keep his eyes open. His focus went blurry and he vaguely remembered uttering a simple “Mmm” sound of agreement before he drifted off into an exhausted sleep.