Page 60 of Under The Twilight Rainfall
It’s Valen I’m worried about, though.
He’s quiet. So unusually quiet with his head hung back in the dingy plastic chair, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling with his arms crossed in a gesture that looks like he’s seeking comfort from himself.
Keeping his broken pieces together.
It’s a feeling I know all too well.
He’s been unresponsive to my own offers of comfort, not brushing me off but not accepting either. It hurts—an ache deep in my soul—to see all the pain I know he’s pushing down and hiding inside. It sucks that I can’t ease it, that he won’t lean on me when he’s hurting like this.
Not that I’ve ever given him reason to think he could.
In the end, I sit beside him in the heavy silence, scrolling through comments on my blog and making notes of all the admin work piling up. Work I would normally do sitting in my hotel room in between shoots.
Instead, I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room with my heart in my throat because the man I’ve come to care deeply for has his life falling apart around him.
Family is everything to Valen. It always has been. If he loves you, if he considers you one of his own, he’ll give his everything to make you happy, to keep you safe, to make you feel like you are every bit as loved as you are.
I was his brother once in a weird sort of way. Like brothers-in-arms. Two people with different traumas that somehow found solace in each other. He cares for me and has shown that he does every moment that he’s been with me.
I want to give that back to him. To let him know that I see him, that his pain resonates in my chest until all I want is to pull him into my arms and promise that everything will be okay.
I can’t promise that.
Something warm brushes my hand, and I look over to find Valen rubbing the pads of his fingers over my knuckles, his eyes pools of sadness that are trained on me.
“Hey,” I rasp, clear my throat, then turn my hand so I can capture his palm in mine.
I watch his throat bob as he swallows, watch the pink of his tongue peek out to soothe at the lip he’s been chewing, and I watch his weariness grow as he tightens his fingers around mine.
“You don’t have to stay,” he says, and I know he means it. I know if I stood and walked away now, he’d let me. Just like he let me before.
Because not even Valen thinks his pain is a priority.
Fuck that.
“You need me.” I echo the words he told me that day at the waterfall.
He nods and doesn’t hide the appreciation as he pulls our joined hands to his lips. “I do. Thank you,mahal ko.”
Tears spring to life in his eyes, and when he goes to turn away, I catch his chin between my thumb and forefinger and hold him still. I slide my hand up to cup his cheek, pulling our joined ones to rest over my heart.
It’s only a soft brush at first, my lips on his, but when he leans in—mouth open like he needs me inside—I tilt his face so I can deepen it, sweep my tongue inside and taste everything that makes him Valen.
He tastes like bubblegum and sprite.
Wetness streaks past my thumb, and I kiss him through the sobs that start to rise in his throat. I hold him close and let every cry he’s held back pour from his body to mine.
If he needs steady, if he needs sturdy, I’ll give that to him.
I’ll be the rock when I’m usually the current that tries to sweep them away.
He breaks from my mouth to bury his eyes in my shoulder, and I pretend not to notice the hitch in his breath or the way his nails dig into my skin through the fabric of my shirt.
I soothe a hand over his back, amazed that my ever present need to flee isn’t kicking into high gear.
“Mahal ko,“ he breathes into my neck, holding tighter as his tears soak through to my skin. “Mahal ko.”
When his breathing finally seems to settle, when the tears are nothing more than damp tracks on his cheeks, Valen raises his head and presses his cheek to mine. His arms around me are solid, urgent like how one would hold a rope dangling above a pit of lava.
