MHA #1, Saturday Morning

[napking]

Gray had woken up that morning in his dorm room, stretched, and reached out mentally for the orange thread of his connection to Raiden to see if he was up yet and willing to make him waffles, only to find a second thread, a second brother nearby...and this thread was so dark a grey it was nearly black.

He had then gone tearing out of the dorm without so much as bothering to put on shoes, and a few minutes later he barged into Raiden's apartment to find him working away in the kitchen, chattering as he attempted to update their visitor on the last several centuries of family events, and--

"Kallias!"

Comments

[notmelloncollie]

"Gradyn!" Kallias exclaimed as he rose from his chair at the kitchen table. "You--didn't get bigger." Somehow he had expected his littlest brother to be not quite so little any more.

[carbsliftthespirit]

"Ah, shit," Raiden said as he realized he'd neglected to fill Kallias in on one very important development. "Sorry, Smalls." He told Kallias, "It's just Gray now. And, yeah, turns out he was too lazy to finish growing."

[napking]

"Yeah, I don't--I don't use that name any more," Gray confirmed, and as Kallias's face fell he quickly assured him, "No, no, it's fine! You didn't know! And you're--you're here! This is amazing!" He flung his arms around Kallias like a very enthusiastic limpet.

[notmelloncollie]

"I'm only here for a little while," Kallias cautioned him even as he hugged him back. "Just a visit."

[napking]

Gray gasped and pulled back as he realized, "We've gotta call the others!"

[carbsliftthespirit]

"We already did," Raiden assured him. "While you were asleep. They've got...some stuff goin' on. It doesn't sound like they'll be able to make it out here in the next couple of days." As he continued to build the beehive cake that had been Kallias's absolute favorite food in life--and to really hope the recipe hadn't drifted so much over the centuries that it would be a disappointment now--he might have muttered, "Daman's going to be insufferable." Good thing there was a continent in between them and Envy.

[notmelloncollie]

"We did something called a 'video call,'" Kallias confirmed. "You live in an age of wonders! Raiden gave me a drink called coffee. It was delicious." He might have had a little too much coffee, in fact. He was talking kind of fast.

[carbsliftthespirit]

"He liked the coffee better than the pizza," Raiden reported, sounding not at all wounded by this fact, no sirree, people were allowed to like what they liked. It was fine.

[napking]

Gray was starting to realize that Kallias and Raiden had spent quite a bit of time together--hours, it sounded like--while he was asleep and oblivious, and while that was just sort of...his life, sometimes it sucked. Still, he had this time, which the others weren't going to get, so he'd make the most of it while he was conscious. "Oh, and you've gotta try waffles! Ray, you've gotta make us--Kallias, I mean--some waffles!"

[carbsliftthespirit]

"Yeah, Smalls," Raiden agreed, "I'll whip us up some waffles while the cake's in the oven." Waffles, followed by cake? Sounded like a perfectly reasonable meal plan to Raiden, and also to his sugar gremlin baby brother. Kallias, who might have liked to eat a vegetable at some point, didn't know enough about what was going on to have any input.

At least, despite being a Spartan, he wasn't likely to put in a vote for black broth.

"It sucks that you can't stay long," he said to Kallias as he and Gray settled down at the table, "but I guess you'll want to get back to Elasus anyway, huh?"

[notmelloncollie]

The aura of generalized sadness emanating from Kallias--both his brothers had sort of forgotten about that over the years--seemed to deepen at Raiden's words. "Elasus," he said quietly, looking down at his hands on the tabletop. "Yes, I would like to see Elasus again. But I can wait...I can wait a little longer."

[napking]

Okay, that was...a little weird. But Kallias had always been, at best, very serious. He wasn't built for 'happy,' after all. Still...

Gray chanced a look at Raiden, but he didn't seem concerned with anything but the cake he was working on. Probably the best approach. He'd worry about it later, if it turned out to be something to worry about.