The rest of their night passed in a blur of entertaining games — to which they never won a prize for — and admiring the vibrant goods on display.
Finally, when the festival was drawing to a close, Raine and Nikolay joined the other visitors in vacating the premises. On their way back, the night had somehow gotten darker than when they’d first walked to the stalls. Looking up, Raine saw a large mass of dark clouds in place of the glittering stars from earlier.
“Ugh, we should get our flashlight out. And it looks like it’s going to rain.”
Nikolay went to search through his bag. After a few moments of rummaging, he pulled out a flashlight, but clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Shit, I left our raincoats in our room. We’d better hurry.”
Guided by the dim light of their torch, Raine and Nikolay made their way through the tall grass. Under the pressure of outrunning the impeding rain, the distance between them and the rickety cabin felt unreachable.
Just as Raine had suspected, the first drops of rain began falling far too soon. A single raindrop landed on his cheek and he swiped it away, thinking nothing of a light shower. At least they could bear with it until they reached the old man’s house.
Less than a few moments later, the intensity had ramped up to a strong downpour.
“Are you serious?!” Raine hissed, covering his face with his arms.
At that point, the race went from outpacing the rain to minimising the amount of time spent in it.
As their boots splashed through the quickly flooding grass fields, the unrelenting rain hounded their every step. Their already saturated clothes did little to protect them from the full assault of the heavy rainfall on their backs. Fighting against the howling winds and torrential shower, Raine and Nikolay tore through in pursuit of the cabin’s porch light, just barely visible through the thick sheets of rain pouring down.
Finally, they reached the old man’s cabin. Diving underneath the shelter of the outdoor porch, Raine frantically turned the knob on the front door. To his despair, the first try didn’t work. His wet hands slipped on the cold metal repeatedly as he tried gripping the handle.
After several unsuccessful attempts, he quickly realised that it wasn’t a problem on his end — the door was locked.
Nikolay cursed under his breath, trying the knob himself. “That old man probably forgot he had guests and locked the door at night. I suppose lock picking isn’t one of your hidden talents?”
“Nope,” Raine replied in defeat.
A sudden bang next to him caused Raine to jump away. Nikolay beat his fists against the surprisingly sturdy wooden door, causing the frame to shake from each impact.
“Old man! Wake up, you buffoon!” Nikolay shouted as loud as he could. “We’re still outside in the rain!”
Understanding Nikolay’s intentions, Raine quickly joined in. “Wake up! Your guests are still locked outside in the storm!”
They continued their cries for help until it became obvious that nothing was going to happen. For all their effort spent making noise, nobody opened the door for them. With their little energy spent, both Raine and Nikolay slumped against the still-locked door.
Their water-logged clothes felt ten times heavier than they usually were, and the oversaturation of their skin made it feel clammy. Not to mention, it was cold tonight, let alone the fact that they were soaked to the bone.
Raine leant his head back against the door, turning to face Nikolay.
For lack of a better word, Nikolay looked like a wet cat. A laugh pushed its way up Raine’s throat as he imagined the comical comparison, leaving him uncontrollably giggling.
“…What are you laughing at?” Nikolay frowned.
Raine waved away the other’s concerned gaze, trying his best to compose himself. “Nothing.”
Nikolay let out a heavy, long-drawn sigh. “At least one of us is having fun in this situation.”
He wouldn’t exactly call it ‘having fun’, but after looking at the gloomy expression on Nikolay’s face, Raine began to wonder…
“You know, that gives me an idea.”
“Please don’t,” Nikolay covered his face with his hands. “This isn’t the time.”
Raine stood up from where they’d been slumped against the door, and lightly tugged at Nikolay’s wrist. “Now is the perfect time, actually. Come on, we’re not going to achieve anything just by moping here.”
He managed to pull Nikolay partway out of the porch’s shelter, but the latter started resisting once he understood what was happening.
“Out into the rain again? Have you gone mad?”
“We’re already soaked from head to toe. What’s a little more water?” Raine laughed. “If you just let everything go, I promise you’ll enjoy yourself more.”
Swallowing his pride for the time being, Nikolay allowed himself to be dragged out into the rain again. Once they were a decent way away from the porch, he stood awkwardly in the grass.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Now what?” Nikolay asked bluntly.
Raine slipped an arm around the other’s waist and clasped their right hands together. “Have you ever tried ballroom dancing?”
“Yes, but-”
“Great. Shall we?”
Any protest of Nikolay’s quickly became swallowed by the sudden tugging of his body. Guided by Raine’s actions, they slowly moved in a substandard imitation of a typical waltz. The abruptness of the whole situation didn’t help things — Nikolay wasn’t good at this to begin with, let alone in the middle of heavy rain and with an unfamiliar partner.
“Loosen up a little, Kolya. You’re as stiff as a board,” Raine whispered in his ear.
After that, nothing more was said.
As time went on, the rain had become nothing but background noise to their dance. A silent melody played in their heads, each lull and accent following alongside every step. While they’d initially avoided each other’s gaze out of awkwardness, they both ended up staring into each other’s eyes.
When they realised this, the waltz came to a subconscious halt as their world narrowed down significantly. Nobody said a word, lest it broke the tension between them.
All it took was a brief flicker down to each other’s mouths, then back to their eyes in an implicit question.
At first, their lips met softly, hesitantly. Raine placed a shaking hand behind Nikolay’s head. A steady hand stabilised his own, a warm comfort against the coldness of their wet clothes.
The distinct tang of rainwater drowned out anything else in the kiss, flooding his senses with the taste. Trying to chase a single hint of Nikolay amidst the overpowering rain, Raine deepened the kiss. It felt as though both of them were trying to search for the other, despite their bodies being pressed as close as physically possible.
Reluctantly, their lips finally parted. Still buzzing from the kiss, Raine had to blink blankly several times before he could form a coherent sentence.
“Wow… that was great for our first time,” he muttered, swiping a hand over his mouth.
“First time? Ah, that’s right.”
“What?!” Raine exclaimed. “I knew something was up about that time we got drunk!”
“We should go inside,” came the quick response.
Nikolay pushed past Raine and walked to the front door, bracing a hand against the wood. A flash of blue light shot from his palm, and then the door swung open.
“I broke the lock,” Nikolay said, gesturing for Raine to follow him inside. “We can sort out reimbursement money later.”
Too tired to bother asking why Nikolay hadn’t done that in the first place, Raine simply trailed after him in silence.
—
Unfortunately, the catastrophe from last night didn’t suddenly disappear when they woke up the next morning.
To start with, Raine awoke with a throbbing headache that pulsed behind his eyes. He could barely lift his head, which felt like it was filled with heavy concrete. Groaning in annoyance, he finally opened his eyes and saw that it was already close to noon. The sun shone brightly through the window, though the heat still wasn’t strong enough to evaporate the puddles of water on their floor.
Looking over to the other side of the room, he saw Nikolay. Judging from the redness of his nose, he also caught a cold from being stranded in the rain.
“I feel like shit,” Raine simply said.
Nikolay crossed his arms resolutely. “You can’t be sick. The Japanese say that idiots can’t catch colds.”
“That folktale could be wrong. Or I could just not be an idiot.”
“Unlikely.”
“You’re clearly the idiot here,” Raine huffed, drawing the blanket over his head.
Nikolay gently tugged at the covers. “Come on, you won’t get better just by wrapping yourself in the blanket. You have to eat something. I’ll get breakfast. Or… I suppose it would be considered lunch at this time of day.”
His words seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the bundle of fabric stayed unmoving. Just as Nikolay was about to try again, Raine’s head peeked out.
“You’re sick too. If anything, you should be in here as well.”
Before Nikolay could protest, a hand grabbed his wrist and dragged him onto the bed. The blanket lifted to envelop both of them, trapping them in the dark cavern underneath.
“This doesn’t solve anything,” Nikolay said, sighing. “I’m leaving to make food.”
The blanket lifted once again, allowing the light to shine through. In a last-ditch attempt to keep Nikolay with him, Raine wrapped his arms around the other’s waist. Despite this, Nikolay still stood up from the bed, though with more difficulty than usual, owing to Raine clinging onto his side.
“Don’t go,” Raine whined. “Or else I’ll be bored and alone.”
As much as he was joking around, he couldn’t ignore the reality of his words. Ever since he witnessed the illusion of Nikolay burning his life out in front of him, Raine grew uneasy when they needed to be separated from each other.
“At least you won’t be hungry,” Nikolay replied, prying Raine’s arms off him.
From the beginning, he’d known that embarking on this journey wouldn’t be without its risks. They’d suffered kidnapping, saw death, almost bled themselves to death even — but losing Nikolay was such a world-shattering possibility that it hadn’t crossed his mind until recently.
Now that he knew either of them could disappear at any moment, there was no point in putting off the things he wanted to say. Especially after the kiss last night, he wanted to hold on to that tiny, small hope of having something between them.
“Wait, Kolya. Before you leave,” Raine said, suddenly serious.
This successfully stopped Nikolay in his tracks. “Yes?”
“If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve been too overwhelmed to do anything. I probably wouldn’t even have been able to step out of Marque. Losing you would mean losing my only tether.”
Nikolay stayed silent, sensing that something else was coming.
“So… just in case something happens, I wanted to tell you something.”
In anticipation, Raine took a deep breath to calm himself. In and out, just like Nikolay taught him all those months ago.
He opened his mouth to speak.
Something was wrong.
No, those words suggested that Raine didn’t know what was wrong. He knew exactly what was wrong.
‘Don’t look at me ever again, pervert. Who knows if you’ve ever thought about me in that way?’
If he confessed to Nikolay, there was the chance that Nikolay would never see him the same. Sure, Nikolay acted kind to him now, but that was under the impression that they were just friends. It was already enough that Nikolay accepted that he liked men. Raine didn’t want to abuse that trust by proving the suspicions right. The suspicion that Nikolay would become the target of his one-sided love, the love of a filthy gay man.
What would he even say, anyway? ‘I love you’? A bit cliché for his taste. He wouldn’t mind if somebody said it to him — that was optimistic of him to even think about, given that nobody would like him in the first place — but it just felt too simple for him to say.
In the end, Raine simply closed his mouth again.
“Don’t worry about it, Kolya. I changed my mind.”
Of course, Nikolay didn’t press him further. “If that’s what you want.”
Even with the pressing weight of his anxiety, he still couldn’t say his feelings out loud. Raine wanted nothing more than to tell somebody how much his heart tugged painfully at the mere thought of Nikolay. Somebody, anybody.
No matter how much he wanted to believe he’d changed from the weak, nervous wreck at the beginning of their journey, he was still the same coward deep inside. Would he ever have the courage to speak up about his feelings, or would everything end before he could truly be honest with Nikolay?