The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

Mel didn’t like being here. Enor’s ship was making him nervous just by existing, let alone being directly inside of it. It couldn’t ruin his mood completely, though. Not by a long shot. He was with Kaleth and there was no looming, world-ending threat anymore, and that was enough to make Mel ecstatic.

Though Kaleth seemed to now be insanely powerful, and that worried Mel a little. Before then, Kaleth had been a little stronger than Relioth, which was a lot by itself, but now…. He’d stopped all those aircrafts as if it had been nothing and didn’t seem at all tired afterward. Mel would just have to keep an eye on him, he supposed. Not that he wouldn’t otherwise. Kaleth was hard not to stare at.

“Are you all right, love?”

Mel blinked, blushing when he realized that he hadn’t been listening to Kaleth talk for a while now. In fact, he’d been staring at his hair for what felt like the whole time.

“Uh-huh.”

Kaleth raised an eyebrow at him, probably due to the strained tone Mel had used, but he was smiling. He was so beautiful when he smiled.

Mel cleared his throat, still blushing. “So, what are we gonna do with this ship?”

“Bringing it to orbit might be a good first move. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.”

Kaleth sighed, leaning back in his chair. They were sitting in the large control room on top of the ship, which had a gorgeous view of the ocean they were currently hovering over. But the enjoyment from it was ruined by the fact that this was Enor’s creation, made for killing.

Kaleth had told him what Enor had been planning all along, and it had shook Mel to his core. The idea of using everyone on this planet to kill countless others.... Mel hadn’t really even thought much about life on other planets until now, but the universe was big, right? So how many people were there? How many had Enor wanted to kill?

And for what? Sure, Mel had spent the majority of the last century alone and miserable, but even then he’d had a few happy experiences that made it worth it. Not to mention meeting Kaleth at the end of that, which made it all more than worth it in retrospect.

So no, no matter how much Enor would have tried to moralize his actions, it wouldn’t help anyone.

“Enor told me his whole research was within this ship’s databanks,” Kaleth continued, tapping the table they were sitting at, which brought up a display on the metal surface of it. Mel wondered if Mereria had taken this technology from Enor. It looked almost identical.

“You’re scared of what you’ll find.”

Kaleth let out an amused huff, smiling at Mel softly. Since he’d killed Enor, Kaleth had been letting him in much more, and it warmed Mel’s heart. Kaleth tended to close his emotions off from everyone, and before now even when Mel could feel some of them, he was pretty sure it hadn’t been intentional for the most part. But that had definitely changed.

“I’m...concerned, yes.”

Kaleth let out a deep breath, pressing a button on the table, making the screen show a huge number of folders. At least Mel assumed those were folders. He hadn’t actually had the chance to use any of the Eternal technology other than the pin that disguised his identity.

Mel frowned down at the folders. What was that text? He couldn’t read it even though it looked similar to the script Eternals used.

“You can’t read this, can you?” Kaleth asked without looking up from the screen. Mel shook his head, swallowing. He didn’t like how this was making him feel. “I don’t think I would be able to either if I hadn’t absorbed Enor. I don’t think it’s actually a language that was ever used by enough else.”

Mel frowned at him, feeling dread enter his heart. “How do you know that?”

Kaleth looked up, giving him another smile. “Don’t worry, love. I’m not going to turn into him.”

Mel’s shoulders slumped as Kaleth kissed his cheek. Right, of course not. Enor was gone. It was silly to think he might somehow come back through Kaleth. Realistically, no one had actually seen Kaleth kill him, but instinctively Mel knew this was just him. He could see it every time he looked at him.

But still, there was always an immediate urge to panic when Kaleth even hinted at knowing more because of Enor.

He watched as Kaleth’s eyes scanned over the files, his brow furrowing. Mel was about to ask what he was seeing when Kaleth spoke in a mocking tone.

“‘The Cure for Death’.”

Mel lowered his gaze. There were so many Eternals out in the world now. And Mereria and the others were already taking the first steps in trying to handle that. They were all so hurt and confused, and Mel would be too if he were in their place.

“No one can ever know how to do this.” Kaleth shook his head. “I need to delete it. All of it.”

Mel lowered his gaze. He almost wanted to argue that Eternals weren’t all bad. After all, if Mel hadn’t been immortal, they’d never meet. But he knew that was entirely selfish. The Eternals were dangerous, just because of the power they possessed.

But even beyond that…. Everyone was supposed to die. It was easy for him to say that given that both he and Kaleth would never die of old age or any illness, but it was still true.

“Enor talked about the natural balance of things and how we break that balance, and yet he created the only thing that could break it completely.” Kaleth shot the screen a glare, his finger hovering over one of the folders. It wasn’t the one containing the secrets to immortality, as far as Mel could tell.

“What’s that?”

“The Aperios.” Kaleth shook his head again, pressing a few buttons and deleting two of the folders. He breathed out, immediately looking less tense.

Mel agreed with this. It was probably better to get rid of all of this, even though there could have been things to help people in there. And it was especially a good idea because he could tell how horribly curious Kaleth was about it. Especially the parts about what he was.

“We’ll need to destroy every single one of his labs,” Kaleth said, running a hand through his hair as he frowned in thought. “Or at least monitor them, actually. Opening them might disturb them, and I don’t feel like fighting him all over again.”

Oh. Mel hadn’t even considered that the way Enor had come back might very well repeat itself. But before he could get overwhelmed by anxiety, Kaleth put his arm around his shoulders.

“It’s all right. We have a database of all of his notes. I can probably check this here.” Then he smiled again. “And I highly doubt he’d made any plans like this. He wanted me to kill him.”

Mel still didn’t understand that much, but he had just accepted that he wouldn’t get it. Enor was just outside of his reasoning, and probably outside most people’s.

Kaleth proceeded to look through the database, muttering something about experiments with Eternal energy under his breath. It sent a shiver down Mel’s back. Whatever those experiments were, he already knew they would be bad, and most likely horrifying.

“Ah, here we are. Contingency plans,” Kaleth said, raising his eyebrows presumably at how many there were. It looked like a lot. “Dozens of these are titled ‘Tharos betrayal’.”

Mel shocked himself when he let out a snort. He wasn’t one to laugh when one of the most powerful Eternals was talked about, but there was something funny about Enor being so suspicious of Relioth that he had so many plans to counter his possible plots.

Kaleth actually full on grinned at him then, and Mel felt his heart skip a beat. Had he ever seen him smile like this? A grin made its way onto Mel’s face as well, and before he knew it, their lips were touching. Mel found himself deepening the kiss almost immediately, burying his hands in Kaleth soft, soft hair. His heart was going so fast.

He couldn’t stop smiling after they separated, especially with how adorable now Kaleth looked, clearly a little out of breath with his hair a little messed up, and his cheeks flushed. For an embarrassingly long time Mel had actually completely forgotten that they were still indeed on Enor’s ship.

Mel wished they could go somewhere else, but he also realized that was a completely selfish wish, and that they had things to deal with. At least Kaleth did. Mel was here for no real reason, aside from the fact that Kaleth wanted to spend time with him, but as far as Mel was concerned, that was a great reason.

Kaleth tapped the screen twice, making the table surface turn back to reflective metal. He drew Mel into a hug, burying his head in Mel’s shoulder. Mel hugged him back, still smiling.

“I still can’t believe it’s over,” Kaleth muttered, propping his chin on Mel’s shoulder. He sighed, a hint of annoyance suddenly joining his other emotions. “I shouldn’t force you to sit here while I read through who knows how many files.”

Mel pulled away a bit, looking Kaleth right in the eyes. “No, no, that’s perfectly okay, Kally. This is more important.”

“Nothing like this could ever be more important.”

Mel was completely taken aback by the absolute tone Kaleth had used. Was he serious? But this was potentially a danger to the whole world. Mel wasn’t more important than that.

“But—”

“You just helped save the world, Mel. You are entitled to get something nice in return for that.”

Mel didn’t miss a beat. “I already did.”

Kaleth frowned and opened his mouth to most likely ask what Mel had meant before his eyes widened and his cheeks turned pink again. Mel grinned at him.

“That, uh….” Kaleth cleared his throat, still blushing as he flashed Mel a shy smile. “Right. Well, that isn’t what I meant.”

Mel smiled. “Where do you wanna go, then?”

Kaleth put his hands on Mel’s shoulders and shook his head at him. “No, not me. You. Where do you want to go? What would you like to do?”

Despite feeling his eyes fill with tears, Mel wanted to force out some kind of answer. But he couldn’t do it. He sniffed, only continuing to stare at Kaleth, who now looked very concerned and somewhat confused.

“Oh no, what did I say?”

Mel shook his head, sniffling again and wiping at his eyes. “S-sorry. I just got emotional.” He smiled again, finally getting a hold of himself. “A-and I dunno. I mean, I did hear about this place with a huge number of lakes on the TV? I can’t remember what it’s called, but there was this red dirt, and trees, and the lakes looked almost green? It looked really nice.”

Kaleth’s gaze softened with fondness. He offered Mel his hand, which Mel took without thinking, and the next thing he knew they were in the exact place he’d just described. He gaped at the lake, whose shore they were standing on.

It was so crystal clear that he could almost see the bottom. And there seemed to be a lot of colorful fish in it. He had definitely seen those before—Enoria had a lot of colorful fish everywhere—but he’d never seen them in water this clear.

He found himself stretching his consciousness towards them, showing that he and Kaleth weren’t threats, and the fish slowly and hesitantly made their way towards them, swirling around the edge of the lake.

He wished he had something to feed them.

Next to him, Kaleth let out a small laugh. There was so much love and fondness in his gaze it was almost staggering. He raised his index finger before disappearing with a flash of golden light. The sight of it still unnerved Mel just a little, but now that Enor was gone, he associated the light more with Kaleth than Enor.

Kaleth reappeared a couple minutes later, holding a cylindrical box in his hand. “I went to my apartment to see if there was some stale bread, but then I realized we probably shouldn’t feed them that so I got proper fish food, which, uh, I may have stolen.” Then he proceeded to sneeze. He blinked in the most adorable way before scowling. “My place is very dusty.”

Mel clutched his heart, incredibly touched by all of this. He hugged Kaleth tightly, kissing his forehead as he pulled away again.

“Thank you so much,” he said, grinning happily as Kaleth gave him the fish feed. He immediately poured a little bit of it to the fish who began fighting over it the moment it hit the surface of the water.

“Of course, love.”

They watched the fish eat for a little while in silence before a question entered Mel’s mind. “Wait, hasn’t it been months? How do you still have an apartment?”

Kaleth chuckled. “I own it. They can’t just evict me.”

Oh. Mel hadn’t been aware that it was possible to buy an apartment. He probably wasn’t aware of a lot of things in general. “I’ll help you clean it, if you want.”

Kaleth blushed a bit, avoiding Mel’s gaze. “Well, I was sort of thinking that maybe we could do more than that.”

For once Mel understood immediately what Kaleth had meant. He wanted them to live together. Mel had never lived with anyone, so the full idea was a bit hard for him to grasp, but he knew he absolutely wanted to. “Yes, I’d love to.”