Understanding - Repkyle

five

Song: Lovely
By Billie Eilish (originally)
Harp by Ariana Worthen
____________________________

Kyle's POV

"What is it? What do they mean?"

I say in panic, pacing the floor of our bedroom and biting my nails. My fingers feel raw, but so keep on gnawing away in worry. Rogelio flips the crystal around in his hands and looks at me with a concerned expression. He says something but I can't understand him. Why can't I understand him?

"I-I don't know what you're s-saying!"

I stutter, still pacing. He frowns and reaches out to me, obviously to take my hand, but for some reason I flinch and pull away. He raises his eyebrows and I feel all the guilt in the world piling onto my shoulders. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm such a mess.

'Try to relax.'

Ro says, and this time I can hear him, only now I wish I couldn't.

"Relax? First Catra finds a crystal telling us that somebody is coming for us, and now we find another one that probably says something worse? And in the Crimson Waste, our home? How am I meant to relax?!"

I'm a bit taken aback by my outburst but Rogelio looks calm.

I stop my obsessive pacing and hold my hand out to him, which he instantly takes. When he smiles I almost forget about the potentially life-threatening message in his other hand.

"Sorry."

I whisper. He shakes his head and pulls me closer to him so that we're only inches apart.

'You don't have to be sorry.'

Maybe that's all I needed to hear right now, or maybe he's the only one I needed to be with right now, but either way I feel a little lighter. I sit beside him and take the crystal into my own hands, letting it rest in my palms.

"I guess we should tell Adora about this."

Rogelio nods and closes my fingers around the crystal, the ominous message etched into it's side now hidden beneath my touch. My skin feels hot where he touched me, like those first times we held hands, and I feel even calmer yet again. Oh, Rogelio. You've got such a strong effect on me that you could breathe around me and my world would stop spinning. Do you even know that?

'I'll let her know.'

Rogelio says, reaching out for his soldier communicator. As cadets we all got one each, and we use them for emergencies. We don't like to spend too much time looking at devices that brought us so much pain as children.

Watching him type a message into the small piece of technology brings back a flood of memories that I never expected to be brought back.

~

I was in the bottom bunk, with Lonnie sleeping just above me. Adora was sleeping with Catra at her feet to my right, and Rogelio was to my left. I lay facing him with a smile.

We were only fifteen then, way younger and way wilder than I would ever imagine being now. Ro had opened his mouth to day something, but knew that I couldn't understand him so smiled back at me instead.

I stretched my arm out towards him and let it rest on the cold floor between us. He did the same, and our hands were joined together for a moment before footsteps echoed out in the corridor and our hands broke apart in an instant. Then I had an idea.

I took out my communicator and began to type. Rogelio watched in amusement as I did so. We were very close at fifteen, and being as hormonal as we were even the slightest of actions could end catastrophically.

'I wish I could lie with you'

I sent the message with a tugging feeling in my stomach. He took out his communicator and read it with a smile, his face illuminated from the soft light of the screen and making him look even more perfect than I had previously perceived him as.

'someday u can, I promise'

~

"Remember when we used to send messages to each other at night time with those?"

I ask, snapping out of my trance and slowly adjusting back to reality. Rogelio switches off the small device, obviously after sending the message, and smiles at me.

'Of course I remember.'

He growls. I let out a shaky sigh.

"We could have done it. You and me, we could have shared the bed."

My words are quiet but linger in the air. Ro lifts his hand to stroke my cheek and his eyes flit over everything from my hair to my nose, staring longest at my lips.

'We were young, and...'

I don't understand the last word he says, but I don't think I need to. I tilt my head upwards and kiss him gently, to which he smiles and embraces me in a tight hug.

"Look, this whole crystal thing could be dangerous. We're going to work it out together, right?"

I ask. Rogelio rests his chin on the top of my head.

'Me and you together. That's never going to change.'

We hear a knock on the door and seconds later Glimmer is calling out to us.

"Kyle? Rogelio? It's Glimmer!"

We both answer the door and she hastily grabs us by our hands. Her palms are sweaty in what looks like stress, and her hair is styled to look how it used to before she became queen.

"No time to lose. The more crystals we have, the more answers we can find."

She pants between breaths. She notices the crystal in Rogelio's free hand and tilts her head to the side.

"Everybody's at the castle."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I hope you enjoyed that chapter! I love writing flashbacks and memories and stuff so this chapter was really fun to write!

-Rose 💗

Published: 2/06/2020