Smoke Signals • EarthMix AU

CHAPTER 12: Ablaze

[ very VERY long update ahead. thought about dividing it into 2 separate updates but i didn't really want to batch it up again. i've probably overcompensated for being gone for almost 4 mos. ✌🏻 ]

🎶

• zack tabudlo - heart can't lose

• billie marten - live

• luca fogale - villains

• dre'es, mia - warm

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Earth swipes harshly at his shoulders all the way home. He struggles to walk the remaining steps to his condo and wants nothing but to get under the covers and surrender to the warmth it could offer his trembling body.

But oddly enough, Earth remains awake long after plopping himself down his bed. He feels that he'd be for a few hours more. Compared to Mix, whom he supposes—who Earth hopes—is now getting his rest after a very overwhelming start of the day, Earth is wide awake. His senses are heightened, ready to welcome a foreign warmth that has yet to spread to his whole body; one that is nonetheless searing inside of him.

By now, he knows that there is always a better alternative to lashing out. A more sensible reaction to feelings he's beginning to harbor but one he cannot name just yet.

But old habits die hard. Especially ones that have made themselves comfortable in his bones; bones that he wants to bend and break so he could create a ditch where he can place him in. Fill it with all that warmth. All that fire waiting—begging—to be set ablaze.

So until he knows, until he really knows that he's ready, Earth doesn't tell the other anything yet.

Not that morning, when they stopped at a convenience store on the way home from Podd's—Podd's & Khaotung's now, it would seem—and got themselves warm cups of coffee from the vending machine.

Probably not the most ideal place for reconciliation, Earth thinks in retrospect.

He remembers Mix sniffling. Instead of sitting down, the other preferred to stand up as his eyes surveyed the street in front of them. Mix needed something to reel him in; needed to feel that he could stop worrying about Khaotung from now on.

'He'd be okay,' Mix thought then, mind still with his best friend. 'He's safe at home.'

Mix felt something on his shoulders and saw that Earth draped his jacket on him.

"You're cold," Earth has said then, hands careful not to linger on the other. As if on cue, Mix shuddered, only realizing the fact after Earth mentioned it. But he's not very cold; he could wager that Earth was feeling the effect of the weather worse than him.

The younger man didn't spare him a glance but said: "It's fine, I already have a jacket on."

"Well, one more wouldn't hurt," Earth muttered, voice so small and soothing, carrying with it a softness that Mix has missed hearing.

It was impossible not to look at him then.

Mix felt like he didn't have the strength to untangle the mess between them yet. At least, not this morning, when he's still reeling from what happened to Khaotung. But he wants to see how this would play out—being here with Earth. Having coffee like old friends. Acting as if everything's okay between them.