"Alright, what the fuck is your problem?" This time, it was Yuze who followed Kai Low back to his rooms and stormed inside before the other man could close the door on him.
Kai Low scowled and tried to close the door anyway, but Yuze had recovered enough strength to knock it back long enough to step inside.
It slammed behind him with enough force that it bounced right back open, and Yuze closed it himself while Kai Low let out an inarticulate sound of rage.
"Calm down." He snapped, which only seemed to send Kai Low even higher until he was nearly vibrating off the floor in rage.
For some reason, the angrier he got, the more relaxed Yuze was. A small, but not insignificant, petty part of him reveled in the victory. Kai Low had been lording his emotional superiority over Yuze since he'd arrived at the Camelia, making snide comments and judgments that Yuze couldn't respond to without proving him right.
Now Kai Low was the one on the defense, and Yuze had to fight down the urge to smirk and lord it over him.
Kai Low seemed to know it too, because he was practically spitting fire when he told Yuze to get the hell out.
"No. Not until you tell me what's wrong with you." Yuze refused. "Eirian clearly noticed something was wrong. So did the Valients and who knows how many others. If you can't keep your personal life out of the public eye, then you can't expect people to ignore it."
Kai Low hissed, and all Yuze could think of was an angry kitten. His wild hair didn't help the image, and a smile broke out.
"What are you smiling about?" Kai Low shrieked.
"You look like an angry kitten." Stress and exhaustion were clearly making Yuze fearless. He wasn't sure he was healed enough to beat Kai Low in a fight, but he didn't care.
And apparently, that made Kai Low so angry he lost the ability to speak, but at least he didn't physically attack. He had better self-control than that.
"What is wrong?" Yuze pushed and tried to sound less amused and more welcoming. Chenzhou and Eirian had too much on their plate to add handling the ambassador to that.
"You! You-" Kai Low broke off with a groan, walked a tight circle, trying to burn off the excess energy supplied by his anger.
"Me what?" Yuze sighed and tried to be patient. Something about Kai Low always made him edgy, like his skin was suddenly too tight and it kept getting tighter until it felt like it was going to start tearing itself apart, and he was going to bleed out all over himself.
Abruptly, Kai Low's demeanor changed. Something left him, and he almost seemed to shrink in front of Yuze's eyes.
Some of Yuze's sense of victory left him. He didn't even like Kai Low, but seeing the vibrant warrior sunk in on himself was not pleasing.
Kai Low scowled and then finally, "Did it mean so little?"
Yuze blinked, confused. "What?"
Kai Low shrank further, and Yuze had to resist the urge to reach out to him. "I suppose that's an answer."
"An answer to what?" Yuze demanded, frustrated. Something was happening in Kai Low's mind that Yuze had no knowledge of, and he was being accused of something that the other man wouldn't explain. That was insulting and infuriating.
"Forget it. It's not important. You can leave now." Kai Low turned away, fussing with his things.
Yuze finally glanced around and realized that Kai Low had barely brought anything with him. Everything he had was in a small pile next to a not much bigger pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. This wasn't even the bedroom of the apartments Chenzhou had given him. It was the smallest of the set, the living area, and there were three other rooms that connected to it. Why was he sleeping here?
And on the floor?
Even the tribes used rudimentary mattresses stuffed with dried wheat that was surprisingly soft for what it was, but it might as well have been hard-packed dirt compared to the feather and moss-stuffed mattresses used at the Camelia. Rock's sake, even Kai Low had admitted Yuze's mattress was the best he'd ever slept on.
….
Wait.
Was that what Kai Low was upset about?
Yuze couldn't help it. He laughed. It was the wrong thing to do it, but he couldn't stop.
Kai Low didn't turn, but his shoulders stiffened and went tight. He froze and then started moving again, but his movements were jerky and uncoordinated. And he refused to turn around.
A hard knot formed in Yuze's stomach. "Did it mean something to you?" Kai Low ignored him, so Yuze continued. "Because we were both…angry. It was impulsive. I didn't think…" What had he thought?
They'd been in the middle of an argument that had been building for days. They'd been screaming at each other. At an impasse because neither of them could see a way forward.
Yuze didn't even remember who'd moved first, just that they'd come together in a fury of lips, grief, and want. Yuze had never let himself imagine that with Fox, and it felt strange to acknowledge that he'd actually gone that far with his brother.
Well, the man Yuze knew was his brother, but the man himself had never acknowledged it.
And Yuze had slept with him.
The first person he'd shared something so intimate with since Akari.
And it was with Kai Low of all people.
Well, he shouldn't think of it like that. That was insulting to Yuze and to Kai Low. They were simply two people who'd gotten caught up in an emotional moment, both of them suffering significant, troubling losses that neither of them were ready to talk about.
Kai Low refused to turn around, pointlessly shuffling his things around, before finally straightening. "It's fine. You can go."
He sounded like a wounded maiden, not an adult who was just as capable and responsible for the situation as Yuze.
Yuze surprised them both with his answer. "No."
~ tbc