Right Back After This

Season 2, Episode 14

Riz isn't sure what Kiel's looking at when his face falls like gravity's abandoned him. Kiel reaches up to his lips, touches them, pulls away with blood. Riz licks his own lips and tastes a touch of copper before he realises that must be his blood.

He looks down, and there's just the tiniest scratch or two, nothing Riz can even feel until he's looking at it. It doesn't hurt, not at all, but as his cock softens the blood begins to drip in tiny droplets down.

Riz giggles in contrast to Kiel's horrified face. "Are you okay?" Kiel asks again, immediately begs for reassurance. He's leaning down to look closer, looking around for something to fix it.

"God, yes, I'm amazing," Riz says. "You gave me marks in the one place you're allowed to."

Kiel doesn't look as happy about it as Riz feels. He scowls. "I want to leave marks intentionally, Izzy, not- not-"

He stops, covering his mouth with his hand, as if that will take his teeth away. After a moment, he sighs deeply, and his head hangs.

"Are you okay?" is what Riz finally, thank God, manages to make his mouth say. Kiel nods, but his body language is stiff. The second beep hasn't gone off, yet. Not quite yet.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Riz asks, cautiously feeling out with each word. "Because we don't have to, at least not yet. But I wanna talk about it sometime."

"That's not up to you," Kiel says- sad, not angry. He leans down, rests on Riz's chest for a moment. Riz listens to him breathe, is drawn closer like a moon to its planet. "But I guess I should talk about it," he mutters against Riz's heartbeat. "I don't know."

Riz gently pushes him up, forces him to sit, so they can look at each other. "You were perfect," Riz says, not sure why that's the instinct until he finishes his sentence. "I don't care about a tiny scratch I didn't even feel. It was amazing."

Kiel shrugs. "I have shark teeth, Riz. That's not the trauma."

"It's all the fucking trauma," Riz mutters, "but you didn't really hurt me, is all I'm saying."

Kiel covers his mouth, gaze distant. After a moment, he says, "y'know, when I'm thinking about why I was afraid to do that, the words I'm hearing in my head are-"

His words cut off as if his throat had been forcibly locked up. Riz puts a hand on his thigh. "It's okay," he mutters, uselessly. His own trauma was always too easy to talk about, at least to Kiel; but that's probably because there's no shame attached to it. There shouldn't be shame for Kiel, either, but Riz has felt something close enough- had to publicly perform it- and he can, at least, try to imagine it. He isn't so sure why Kiel isn't far more angry at him for what he did to Ares. After all, he appropriated the shake of Kiel's hands, the watering of his eyes. He's not just allowed, but required to feel the pain Kiel will never be allowed to express.

Kiel takes a deep breath. "Yeah, I think Jace made me believe- yeah. I don't know. He- he said," Kiel begins, and Riz immediately shuts up with what he was about to blurt out, "he said, 'I'm not going to fuck a spike trap', and I- I guess I've... I guess I've seen it like that since."

Riz suddenly sees with full clarity. It's been a while since he's felt rage, and it's an oddly clarifying emotion. "It was Jace?"

"He wasn't the first," Kiel mutters. "When I was fourteen, my manager, Alina. She was thirty-eight. That kept going until I got here, and then- I guess I didn't know how to turn him down. It's probably not his fault that-"

"No." Riz clutches onto Kiel's hands for dear life, tries to pull him back to his gravity, keep him in this greenhouse by his side. "You can't accidentally rape someone. He knew what he was doing."