Neither of them counted how long they were standing in each other's arms and neither of them cared enough to even concern themself with such questions. Their paths have finally crossed, bodies pressed against each other like two puzzle pieces that perfectly fit together. 

 

Kai’s dispersed thoughts were slowly being tamed by the calming sound of Lay’s beating heart that was slowly rocking all the voices in his head to sleep. He still couldn't believe how little it took for him to feel whole again as if all the hurt and suffering didn’t mean anything now that his heart could feel the warmth of Lay’s love. He wanted to stubbornly defy the feeling of comfort and safety, arguing that his pain was worth more than one simple hug. Yet there he was. Quietly inhaling Lay’s familiar scent that dulled his senses. 

 

Without pulling away, Lay took a breath to say something when a knock on the door startled both of them. 

 

“Caelum?”

 

Kai glanced towards the door with a panicked expression. 

 

“That’s Ryan,” he said in a hushed tone. 

 

“I still can’t get used to that name,” Lay noted, not phased at all.

 

“You need to hide,” Kai insisted and pulled away from him. 

 

But Lay just grabbed him by the waist with a disapproving grunt and brought him closer again.

 

“Lay, I am serious. He can’t see you here,” Kai hissed, glaring at him anxiously. 

 

“Am I your secret lover or what? Why do you have to hide me from him, hm?” Lay frowned, stubbornly holding onto Kai.

 

       “Do you really need me to list all the reasons why?? Can you-“

“Caelum are you okay?” Ryan’s worried voice came from the other side of the door.

 

“You really need to hide.”

 

“Why would I?” Lay still refused to let go and when Kai tried to push him away, he tightened his grasp on Kai’s hips, making the younger man in his arms wince as his face twisted in pain. He immediately frowned when he noticed that something was wrong. “What’s going on?”

 

“Nothing,” Kai shook his head and took the opportunity to finally free himself. “Go and hide.” He quickly collected the parts of his disassembled gun and hid it away, before he again turned to glare to Lay who still stood in the middle of the room.

 

“Where?”

 

“Aren’t you an expert in being all sneaky? Find a way! Quickly,”  Kai ordered as he made his way towards the door. “I am coming,” he announced to his bodyguard to keep him from entering without permission. He quickly glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Lay was hidden, rolling his eyes as he spotted the man crawling under his bed. But there was no time for him to persuade him to find a different hiding spot. 

 

“What do you need?” Kai asked as he opened the door, revealing Ryan who was waiting for him anxiously. 

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I am. Is that all?” Kai retorted coldly. 

 

“No,” Ryan shook his head. “May I come in?”

 

“Are you seriously asking to enter my room?” Kai furrowed his eyebrows, slowly starting to feel irritated. 

 

“Caelum, please,” Ryan looked at him with pleading eyes. “I just want to make sure you’re alright.”

 

“Can’t you take my word for it?” The younger man tried to argue because he didn’t want to risk Lay being discovered. Especially when that idiot chose such an obvious place to hide.

 

“You know Grey will kick my ass if he finds out that you got injured under my watch and I didn’t take care of you.” Ryan made a good point. If Grey would know about what happened, Ryan would be a victim of a nasty scolding and right after Kai would have to sit through a whole lecture about being too difficult and letting his unstable emotions put him at risk. 

 

Kai let out a defeated sigh and stepped out of the way, gesturing for Ryan to enter. “Come in.”

 

Ryan’s lips twitched in a grateful smile before he stepped inside the room, warily looking around which caused Kai to nervously check whether Lay was still hiding. To his relief, it seemed that they were safe for now.

 

“Can I see it?” Ryan turned to Kai. 

 

Deciding to obey for now, Kai nodded and lifted up his shirt,  revealing his bruised side. “It’s nothing. I’ve been through worse.”

 

“That doesn’t excuse the fact that you still got hurt,” Ryan protested and pulled something out of his pocket. “I brought ointment for the bruises.”

 

“I hope you don’t expect me to let you apply it for me.” Kai immediately took a step back when he saw through Ryan’s intentions. 

 

“Well… Will you be able to do it yourself?” Ryan asked carefully. “I think it’s better if you let me do it for you.”

 

“I’ll manage,” Kai replied sternly as he reached out his hand. “Give it to me.”

 

“Caelum,” Ryan sighed, but still listened to his order. “Can we please talk? We need to resolve this.”

 

“What do you mean by this?” Kai folded his arms. He needed to get Ryan out of there as soon as possible so why did he choose to pick a fight with him right at that moment? Can’t anything go his way? It was only a matter of time until Lay under his bed would run out of patience and decided to join the conversation and Kai didn’t even want to imagine what would follow. 

 

“I mean our relationship,” Ryan explained, clearly refusing to move until he gets to talk it out with Kai. 

 

Lay, who was hiding under the bed, furrowed his eyebrows in bewilderment when he heard the word relationship used in connection with Kai. His Kai. 

 

“Is there any relationship to begin with?” Kai raised an eyebrow. 

 

“At least there used to be,” Ryan objected. 

 

“Right. ‘Used to’ to is the right term,” Kai nodded, emphasizing that the friendship they used to have was long gone. 

 

“But I don’t want it to be like that.”

 

“You should’ve thought about that sooner,” Kai replied sharply, trying to keep his composure before he blows up again. He already got to punch someone today, he didn’t need to add another strike. 

 

Running his hand through his hair, Ryan groaned in frustration. “But weren’t you the one who ruined it all? Why are you blaming me??” He snapped but his eyes were immediately filled with regret when he realized what he just said. 

 

Kai was left staring at him in astonishment, mouth agape with his words stuck in his throat. This time it was him who felt as if he got punched in the face. It wasn’t like he wasn’t aware that he was partially to blame for the demise of their relationship and he would never dare to blame it all on Ryan, but right at that moment the chains that were keeping all his anger tied up, snapped. 

 

“Me? You wanna say it’s my fault?”

 

“Isn’t it though? Or you wanna tell me your conscience is clear?” Ryan decided to counterattack in order to protect his pride. 

 

When he heard the allegations Ryan raised against him, Kai could no longer hold back. No longer caring whether Lay would hear them, he took a step closer to Ryan, looking him straight in the eye and said:

 

“Yes, Ryan. It is my fault for recklessly confessing my feelings to you. And it is my fault that I thought that you would be brave enough to at least tell me that our friendship is over!” His raising voice was slightly trembling in anger, but it still didn’t keep him from finally saying everything that he kept buried deep inside all these years.  “I would be fine if you just rejected me and we would move on, believe it or not! I would be willing to continue with our friendship. But the fact that you turned your back on me and left without even saying goodbye made me second guess literally every aspect of our friendship. So don’t you fucking dare to stand here and blame me for not wanting to talk to you cause guess what! You had your chance, Ryan and YOU chose to leave me behind.” Kai mercilessly pointed his finger at Ryan and buried it deep into his chest, not bothering to care whether it hurts him or not. 

 

Ryan’s eyes were filled with tears. The force of Kai’s words combined with the way he glared at him, with eyes filled with resentment and fury, caused him even greater pain than if he got stabbed in the heart. 

 

Was it true? 

 

Was he really the one who burned the bridges first? 

 

Whenever he reminisced over how their last meeting turned out, some selfish part of him cowardly whispered to him that it was Kai who chose to put their friendship at stake first. If it wasn’t for his confession, Ryan didn’t have to avoid him until the very last day at the boarding school. 

 

As if Kai was able to read his thoughts, he sneered and shook his head. “You’re such a coward,” he noted as he took a step back. 

 

“I-“

 

“Let me tell you one last thing,” Kai cut him off. “The only person you were protecting by choosing to leave like that was you. I didn’t need you to spare my feelings when you still chose to shatter my heart. Leaving me like that was way worse than any kind of rejection. So yes… I am to blame for falling for you back then and putting our friendship at risk. But I never treated you any different from how a normal friend would treat you and I just chose to be honest with you. But to expect the same from you was a grave mistake.”

 

“But I didn’t want to reject you!” Ryan objected after he seemed to struggle to get something off his chest. “I chose to do that because…” but he swallowed his words as he ran his hands through his hair, pulling at it in frustration. 

 

“Because?” Kai raised his eyebrows in anticipation. 

 

“Because I thought it was better that way,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact. 

 

“The fuck are you talking about, Ryan??” 

 

“I liked you!” Ryan finally revealed the secret that has been suffocating him for years. “I liked you,” he repeated in case Kai didn’t hear him the first time. 

 

“What?”

 

“I really did! Way before you even confessed to me. But it all happened so fast and I was about to go home and I didn’t want to leave you hoping that there was a future for us,” he tried to explain with hopeless expression. 

 

“So you rather chose to lie to me and hurt my feelings like that?” Kai couldn’t believe what he just heard. “Bullshit.”

 

“I swear it’s true! Back then I really thought that was the best solution. I would rather for you to hate me for rejecting you than giving you false hope that we could be together because it just wasn’t possible at that time. I was a kid, Caelum. A stupid kid who didn’t know anything about love.”

 

Kai took a shaky breath as he slowly made his way towards his bed where he sat down, feeling like his body weighed a ton. At that moment he almost forgot that Lay have witnessed their whole conversation and as he realized that he will have a shit ton of explaining to do, he shut his eyes closed.

 

“Caelum … please look at me,” Ryan exhaled pleadingly, his chest feeling a bit lighter after he got to give Kai his explanation even though it was still tough to bear the consequences of his past decision. 

 

After hesitating for a moment, Kai’s stormy pale eyes looked up at him. 

 

“I am sorry.” 

 

Those words were the only thing Kai yearned to hear all those years. The feelings he harboured for Ryan were already long gone, chased away by the resentment that grew like a weed inside of him that would grow back no matter how many times he tried to cut it down. The only way how to get rid of it is to dig deep all the way to the roots and tear it out, but that task wasn’t up to him. 

 

But all it took were those three simple words. 

 

I am sorry. 

 

Kai sniffled and averted his gaze when he felt his eyes were filling with tears. He was cursing himself for being so emotional today because despite thinking he had no tears left to cry, more were coming. 

 

Taking a shaky breath, Kai nodded and spoke with quivering voice, “I accept your apology.”

 

“Really?” Ryan blinked in surprise. 

 

“But that doesn’t mean that we will continue where we left off,” Kai noted when he noticed Ryan’s hopeful eyes light up. 

 

“I understand,” he nodded, willing to accept any conditions. All he wished for was for Kai to forgive him. 

 

“We will work together and we need to cooperate in order to find my brother. So I agree that we should no longer let our past get in the way,” Kai tried to be reasonable. “So let’s try to keep our relationship civil without anthing left hanging in the air.”

 

“I agree,” Ryan accepted and his lips curved in a satisfied smile. “Thank you.”

 

“Don’t,” Kai shook his head and rubbed his face, trying to somehow calm down his raging emotions. “I am still not going to let you apply the ointment though,” he quickly pointed out when he remembered what was the original purpose of Ryan’s visit. 

 

 

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?” Ryan wanted to make sure. 

 

“Yes. You may leave,” Kai gestured towards the door, making himself clear that it’s time for him to go. 

 

“As you wish, boss,” Ryan exhaled in defeat and gave Kai one last glance before he left the room.

 

Kai let out a long sigh as he laid down onto the bed, spreading his tired arms that felt sore from the exercise and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for Lay to come out. 

 

 

“I swear your family would be a great concept for a tragicomedy,” Lay commented as soon as he crawled from under the bed, dusting himself off. 

 

“Can you not?” Kai looked up at him with exhausted expression. 

 

Lay stood over him with folded arms and shook his head in amusement. Thousands of questions floated in his confused mind but there was his top priority that held them all on a tight leash. 

 

“So where does it hurt?” 

 

“What?” Kai raised his head from the mattress. 

 

“You hurt yourself, didn’t you? And I am not even goint to try to find out whether it was his fault or not,” Lay declared and took the ointment from the nightstand where Kai have previsouly put it during his conversation with Ryan. 

 

“What do you think you’re doing?” The younger man sat up on the bed but as soon as his core had to tighten in order to pull up his upper body from the mattress, he hissed in pain and laid back down. Who would’ve thought that bruised side would be as painful as if he actually broke a bone. 

 

“I am going to apply the ointment of course.” 

 

“I didn’t let Ryan do it, what makes you think that I will let you?” Kai mumbled and closed his eyes that were growing tired. 

 

“Because I am not him,” Lay announced, his voice filled with pride.

 

“Yet your actions are similar to his.” Needless to say, Kai still held a grudge.

 

Frowning, Lay wanted to object but as he thought it through, he couldn’t deny that what he did to Kai wasn’t any less hurtful than what Ryan did and nothing could be more damaging to his pride than being put in the same sort with that man. 

 

He let out a long sigh and slowly sat down onto the bed next to Kai who was laying down with closed eyes, his expression peaceful as if he was really asleep. 

 

“I owe you an apology,” Lay started, his voice hesitant. 

 

“No shit,” Kai sneered as he looked up at him. 

 

Lay clicked his tongue in annoyance, but it was quite refreshing to him having to deal with Kai’s difficult personality again after such a long time. 

 

“I am sorry,”  he finally breathed out, fidgeting with his hands nervously. “I promise I had my reasons and it wasn’t easy for me to be this far away from you for so long. I know I fucked up when I left like that and never  gave you a proper explanation. I am sorry it took me so long to come back.”

 

“Come back? It was me who had to come here to be able to meet you,” Kai objected with an irritated expression. He didn’t care if he was needlessly picking apart details that may not matter but they were important for him. Because in those  details laid the truth about how much he had gone through. 

 

“I actually did go back,” Lay admitted.

 

“What? When?” Kai’s stomach twisted in anticipation. The thought of Lay coming to the island to see him was the last drop of water for his dried out soul and there was nothing more he prayed for this whole time. So how come he had no idea that he was there?

 

“Couple days back. But I suppose you were already here, that’s why I wasn’t able to find you,” Lay explained with a disappointed expression. “And I guess I didn’t have the guts to ask Ash where you are.”

 

“Well… it took you a whole year until you came back. It would be no surprise if Ash would’ve drowned your ass in the sea,” Kai smirked, thinking about his friend who became practically allergic to any kind of mention of Lay’s name. 

 

“I know,” Lay exhaled heavily and hesitated for a moment before he reached out his hand to hold onto Kai’s, fearing if the young man would accept his hopeful gesture to get closer to him again. 

 

To his surprise, Kai didn’t pull away his hand and let him intertwine their fingers, feeling the tingling sensation rushing through his veins as if it was for the first time. 

“I am sorry, Kai for making you wait for so long,” Lay mumbled his apology as his eyes admired their connected hands. The soft touch of Kai’s cold skin against the rough surface of his palm was a healing potion for his troubled mind, chasing away the dark shadows clouding his thoughts. 

 

“What happened?” Kai questioned when he finally got the courage to ask for an explanation. 

 

“The situation after I disappeared for those two months only got worse. My sister eventually found out about my whereabouts and sent someone to bring me back, threatening to reveal my identity in order to chase you away from me,” Lay started explaining with a dark expression on his face. “So I heeded her order to come back and continued my work as the second leader of the family. The whole time I was just waiting for the right moment when the situation would settle and I could come back to you. But that chance never came all the way until Cassius disappeared and our whole world was turned upside down… and you know the rest of the story.”

 

“You know I was aware of your background the whole time? I know that the fact that I wouldn’t really mind if your identity was revealed to me probably wasn’t enough to keep you by my side, but I’d just like to point out that you’re horrible at keeping secrets,” a soft chuckle escaped Kai’s mouth as he spoke. 

 

“How did you figure it out?” Lay asked curiously, although he wasn’t surprised that Kai managed to connect the dots, he’s already noticed how sharp he is. 

 

“The most important sign was the ring,” Kai remarked and raised their holding hands to show off the ring on Lay’s index finger. He then proceeded to show him his other hand that wore a similar ring, signaling that both of them were leaders of their families.

 

Lay inspected his ring for a moment with a fond expression on his face until he gently grabbed Kai’s hand and placed a soft kiss on the knuckle of the finger that was decorated with the ring. 

 

“Then there was more but that’s not important,” Kai shrugged and turned his face away to hide how flustered he was with the intimate gesture. 

 

“I think I finally understand why you were so compassionate of my situation and agreed to keep my secrets,” Lay thought out loud as he stared into space, pondering over how Kai never once pried into his privacy or the reason for his appearance on the island. 

 

“Well at first I was trying to hide you away to protect myself,” Kai admitted. “You know I didn’t want any unwanted attention since I was still in hiding back then. But later when I got to know you I wanted to protect you as well.”

 

“You wanted to protect me?” Lay tilted his head, his lips curving into a pleased smile. 

 

Kai just nodded and averted his gaze, uncomfortable with how intimate and raw the atmosphere felt to him. It was unusual yet so familiar to him how fast he was willing to open up to Lay. 

 

“Kai?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I am sorry,” Lay said those words again since he didn’t feel like the weight was completely lifted off of his shoulder. “And thank you.”

 

Biting his lip, Kai wondered how to take those words in and how to navigate his feelings around the person who still held his hands as if they were the most precious treasure. As if his hands held the whole world for Lay. 

 

A moment later, Lay let go of one of Kai’s hands to be able to gently turn Kai’s face by putting a finger under his chin, forcing him to look at him. He watched him with the most loving and caring gaze, almost causing Kai’s heart to melt. 

 

Without fully realizing it, Kai found his face only inches apart from Lay’s whose breath tickled his flushed skin.

 

“I will never let you down again,” Lay whispered his promise, remaining at the same distance, giving Kai a chance to back away at any time. He would understand if the younger man would not be able to forgive him just yet but he was determined to stand his ground and keep fighting even if it meant he’d have to make Kai fall in love with him all over again.

 

However to his surprise, Kai just nodded, his eyes hypnotizing Lay’s lips that curved into a soft smile once he noticed the way Kai was staring at him. Maybe reaching his goal won’t be so hard after all. 

 

And so he dared to close the distance and after what felt like eternity he tasted Kai’s lips. Despite them being dry and chopped, they felt like a dream as they brushed against his lips that were warm and wet in a tender yet sensual kiss that blew away all the dust that had set on the way they used to long for each other. It was the kind of kiss that reminded a person what they’ve been fighting for the whole time, uncovering the long forgotten hope that after all they have something to yearn for. Something that brings them peace and warmth, shedding a light into the darkest corners of their pained heart.