After a while, Henrik found he did, in fact, desperately need someone to talk to.
“I said something hurtful to Elias that I didn’t mean,” he confessed, barely above a whisper.
Johan merely nodded in a way that suggested this was not new information to him.
“I was worried that Elias was only with me because we had been trapped together, but what I said made it sound instead like that was why I was with him. I doubt I will ever understand why Elias cares for me—”
Johan cut him off there with a derisive snort that Henrik chose to ignore.
“But Elias is easy to love. He’s like the sun in the sky, and I am the rain. The rain is wet and miserable. Nobody with any sense likes the rain,” Henrik said mournfully.
There was a beat of silence, and then Johan rasped, “Plants do.”
Henrik let out a wet laugh at that and wiped under his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re a good listener, thank you.”
Johan chuckled sardonically.
“I don’t mean because you hardly speak.” Henrik gave him a scornful look. “I mean, you are able to say a lot, even without your words. It’s a gift few men possess, in my experience. I can’t claim it’s a strength of either Elias or myself,” Henrik added dryly.
Johan’s smile was warm, and Henrik felt less like the miserable rain. He pondered that maybe Johan was an umbrella,well equipped for the relentless drizzle that poured from Henrik’s soul.
Standing, Johan reached out a hand for Henrik. Only, when Henrik stood, the blanket fell off him, leaving him naked. Johan stared for a moment at Henrik’s exposed body before blushing and quickly turning away. Henrik wasn’t ashamed of his body; there was no room to be shy of it working in the mill, but he was rather embarrassed when he remembered that his stomach and now-soft cock, still contained the evidence of his and Elias’ earlier release.
Henrik grabbed his nightclothes and hastily changed before wrapping the blanket back around himself and following Johan up the stairs.
Johan led the way into a sparsely decorated home, which was unsurprising to Henrik. The place had what Johan needed and was taken care of, though.
In the far corner of the room, Henrik could see a lump under a blanket, and he gulped. He was suddenly not so sure of how he was supposed to make things right with Elias, and waking him from his sleep didn’t seem like an excellent start, but Johan nudged him forward and indicated to Elias with his chin.
Henrik slowly approached the lump on the bed as if one wrong move might lead to him having a limb bitten off. He took a steadying breath before lying down on his side to face his love.
“Eli?” he whispered.
Fierce amber eyes shot open and glared back at him in the dim room. Henrik bit his lip.
“I’m sorry,” he began, but Elias stubbornly turned to face the other way.
Unsure of how to proceed, Henrik looked back over to where Johan stood, begging him with his eyes for help. Johan sighed but came over and gently shook Elias’ foot to get his attention.Once Elias glanced his way, Johan pointed at him, then tugged on his ear and then pointed at Henrik.
“No,” Elias replied before returning to his spot facing the wall. Henrik sighed in defeat, but Johan had clearly had enough of the elves’ antics that night and grabbed a damp washcloth from where it was drying on the back of a chair and—very accurately—launched the cloth at Elias’ face.
Elias sat up angrily at that, throwing the cloth onto the floor. “This is abuse,” he squawked indignantly. Johan just rolled his eyes before once more pointing at Elias, tugging his ear, then pointing at Henrik and making a talking motion with his hand. With that, Johan left them to it and busied himself over in the kitchen, clearly clattering around to give them the illusion of privacy.
Henrik tried again. “I didn’t mean what I said. I’m so sorry, Eli. I think there’s something wrong with me where I just spoil things. I’m like a poison, and you deserve better than me.” Henrik nervously worried his fingers.
Elias huffed. “Why did you say it, then?”
“I… I worried that was why you were with me. Like with everything else, you were stuck with me, so you made the best of it. And now that we could go our separate ways if we wanted to, I thought you might. Like… like if I pushed you away first, it might hurt less when you left me,” Henrik confessed with a degree of vulnerability he’d never before offered to a single soul in his life. But if anyone deserved the raw honesty, it was Eli.
“You are an imbecile,” Elias responded to Henrik, exposing his tattered heart.
“I am. But... I… I do love you, Elias. There is not a day of this life I don’t wish to spend with you, and that’s quite terrifying,” Henrik admitted.
At that, Elias finally turned to face him, and most of the anger had melted from his expression. “Do you really?”
“Love you?”
Elias nodded.
