Searching for Understanding



Rise was confused.

Eli was not one for early mornings. He was never awake for them, unless he had never gone to sleep the night before. Rise had lived in this house with him for long enough now to know that pretty reliably. He was always in bed, burrowed under the covers, back to the door, when he came in around the early afternoon to bring him breakfast in bed.

But this morning he wasn’t there. The sheets were rumpled in the weak early morning sunlight and the bed was empty. Biting his lip, Rise looked down at the cup of tea in his hand, a drink he always brought in for Eli before he woke up. It glistened a warm amber as he looked into it, considering whether he should simply leave it there or look for Eli. On the nightstand, as Rise stood in consideration, Eli’s phone buzzed; which meant that he wouldn’t be far, and that made up his mind for him. Lifting his head with renewed determination. He could do this! He could find his Master, and fulfill his offering he owed in exchange for the safety of being allowed in this home–

Next to the phone, he noticed something else. Shimmering pristinely in the light sat the little heart-shaped crystal that Stelle had given them on the day of their reading. The one that Rise had thought Eli had thrown away. But no, there it was… Right beside his bed, and it made Rise’s heart swell to see it.

Maybe there had been some truth to their prediction after all?

Turning on his heel, Rise padded, light of foot, away from the bedroom into the house, hands curled tightly and with purpose around the cup.

He knew that Eli couldn’t have gone far, but he didn’t expect what he did find.

Eli was standing in the kitchen, wearing nothing more than a sloppily tied robe, his hair a mussed mess from bed. Though the door into the kitchen entered alongside Eli, and he ordinarily would have been alerted at the movement in his peripheral vision, his eyes were closed. He was standing in the frame of the only window that opened up directly toward the sun as it rose, its rays cascading through the glass and lighting his dirty blond hair to something more golden. The lashes that brushed his cheeks were the same kind of delicate, shimmery spun sugar.

Rise felt a blush rise on his cheeks. In this early sunlight, Eli looked more kind, open, and innocent than any way he had seen him so far over the past months. It was refreshing but… More than that? He could remember his own words to Eli, telling him how it felt to love someone.

Like basking in the sunlight.

Biting his lip to hold back a giddy smile, trying not to assume too much but unable to repress the hope, Rise backed away quietly. He would leave Eli be; he knew he would only be embarrassed and abandon this pursuit if he was caught in the act. So he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t catch him. Rise would let him have his moment, let him try to connect to his own understanding to what love was. Meanwhile, he would go, make Eli’s bed, leave the tea on his nightstand, and go back to his own room.

And if he pressed a little kiss to the charm on his nightstand on his way out… Only he would know.