[FIN][Yael] The Sound of Silence [Kal | Ko]

[MissMisnomer]

As Kaleth spat out his accusations and anger, visibly shaken as his hackles rose, all Ko could do was wince in distressed discomfort. He did not like conflict. He did not like arguments. He did not like disappointing people. And while it might have been beneficial to voice these concerns, as an answer in some form seemed to be something Kal was asking for, speaking was the last thing on Ko's mind at the moment.

All he could think about was how angry Kal was at him, and how much he did not want to be here.

Like a clam, he felt his throat closing up, choked out by equal parts guilt, distress, and fear of the unknown: what might happen next if things kept getting worse.

“I don't―” he began, voice escaping like a creaky hinge. “I don't think you're stu-I’m not trying to-you didn't do-” Any attempt to open his eyes and look at the disappointed expression on Kal's face only led him to look away quickly. “Y-you don't have to be around me anymore. If that's what-”

If he was bad at forming coherent thoughts regularly, now was an absolute disaster in comparison. A million and one things to say were all jamming themselves into the front of his mind, and none of them were getting out properly.

“I'm not acting-”

Like I want anything to do with you. Because I don't need to. I do like you.

“N-nothing happened-”

To make me upset. Except right now. And it's all my fault.  

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

Kaleth stared, watching the boy before him fold up like a startled sea anemone. And he was about as accomplished as one at conversation, it seemed, his words tripping out in stumbled, half-formed fragments as a person with drunk and numb limbs might proceed down dark and winding steps.

You don’t have to be around me anymore… was the single, full-fledged thought that Kaleth parsed from the rubble of unintelligible sentence pieces—and he wasn’t prepared for it to be as upsetting as it was. He had come in to be cross and get answers, but the tight, knotting pull somewhere beneath his ribcage was uncalled for, unpleasant, and unwanted as it was unexpected. He released a stiff breath, and then his grip.

“Fine.”

It felt, somehow, akin to where they had been at the end of that first conversation at the lunch table—yet somehow many times worse for all the revelations that had come along the way.

“I don’t know what it is…but I don’t care. If it’s not important enough for you to tell me the truth, I don’t have anything to say to you. So until you want to tell me what the f—k is up…you can stay out of my face.”

His gaze flicked over Ko’s narrow frame, clustered in on himself, and he had hoped that voicing his frustrations with conviction would ebb the clench in his chest. But still it sat there, unyielding—perhaps made worse even by fixing his attention on the source of it.

So, he turned, and began his retreat towards the bed.

Someone must have said something to him. Something that frightened him or otherwise put him off and now he was too anxious even to talk. Absurd as it was, Kaleth’s root thought was that it didn’t feel fair—he thought they had been getting on decently and now, somehow, an idea had been planted in Ko’s mind such that he couldn’t even trust him to speak to him earnestly.

And he had no idea how to get him speaking up again.

But if he was so detestable as to not even be worth a little truth, surely he had better things to do with his time than worry about it.  

[MissMisnomer]

Ko felt a weight released from around his chest as Kal in turn released his hold on him: at least his feet were firmly on the ground now. But what followed brought on a new kind of pain, the kind that left a dull ache in your bones instead.

Kal didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.

His hands moved to where the other boy’s had been but moments before, gripping over his heart as the adrenaline from earlier made his fingers shake. This isn’t what he had thought it would be like. This isn’t what he had planned.

It was all going horribly wrong.

“Kal…?”

But the larger boy had turned his back on him, and even Ko wasn’t dense enough to miss that clear, unspoken message: this conversation was over. There was a wall between them now. Had he gotten what he’d wanted from the start? The answer felt unarguably clear: no, this isn’t what he wanted. Even if the results were the same.

The room felt smaller than it had been at the start of the day, with little space for breathing, let alone existing in this cloud of negativity. Kal’s bed seemed to stretch across a continent. He gripped at his arms, hugging himself as he backed up, away from it all, until his back was touching the door to their room. He reached behind to feel for the handle, gratefully slipping through to escape the miasma that had filled the space.

“Sorry.” And closed the door.

Kal hated him now.  

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

Kal…?

Kaleth felt stiff, as though the breath in his lungs had gained substance and was pushing tight at his chest. Ko didn’t sound off-put by him so much as anxious—but perhaps that made sense. He was clearly inspired to avoid him for some reason and petrified of the consequences of crossing him. But Kal had made his invitation. All the other boy had to do was gather his wits and explain, once, the truth. Kal wanted it. He hardly cared at this point what it was so long as they got over this lump. And Ko had all the time he needed.

But instead, Ko was backing up. Retreating. Silent.

At the door.

The murmur of “sorry” was quiet, but it hardly registered regardless as, with the click of the door shutting in Ko’s wake, Kaleth’s frustrations returned to him two fold in a swell that crashed messily about him. Ko had left him. He had taken the invitation to speak the truth and resolve everything and walked out of the room.

Nothing would be resolved today.

Kaleth waited only long enough to hope the other boy was out of earshot before snarling into the empty space, voicing loud arguments with nothing as he left his bed, kicking a desk chair ‘out of his way’ though it hadn’t much been in it to begin with before stalking out of the room altogether. He needed to punch something, and confined spaces were not currently suiting him.

He headed for the nearest training hall.