#kotlc secret santa 2022

[camelspit]

@uni-seahorse-572 Hey! I was your secret santa, so heres some qpr finh! Merry Christmas (if you celebrate)! :)

@song-tam

[purplesoup-lad-le]

@devisayliyaa i was your secret santa! i couldn't see many kotlc posts on your blog, so i just drew keefe with nail polish (+biana proud of her work lol) I hope you like it! @song-tam

[bookwyrminspiration]

you were in the darkness too, so I stayed in the darkness with you (ao3 link)

guess what @solreefs, I was your secret santa and all those queer lines I was sharing were tiertice :) (thank you to @song-tam for organizing this! also I said more on ao3 so. read that)

summary: The Solreef family is having a rough night and ends up in pairs comforting each other after a series of nightmares, ending in a proposal that will change their family forever.

word count: 19.5k

warnings: canon-typical horrors (kidnapping, burning), all part of the nightmares, brief mention of scratching at skin

ao3 link above (recommended) or read below the cut! this is in multiple povs

There was space. A savage, bleeding space where he had been where he was supposed to be where he wasn’t.

She could see him, imagine him, feel the shape of his hand in hers as the world left them behind. He stood right in front of her, tugging at his bangs, footprints leaving marks in the wet sand.

And then he was gone and there was a space, a space she could not bridge, dripping and frothing and echoing so silent, so solemn.

The chasm opened and it thrust them apart, away away away as they’d never been and they were strangers and there was no one there to watch as it swallowed her whole, as it swallowed him alongside her.

It pulsed, pulsed, pulsed, washing against her feet in an ocean of space, twinkling as the footprints disappeared beneath their uncaring, vast sweep.

As though he’d never been there, as though it was only a memory and there’d never been anyone but her and an ocean storming her mind, swirling and begging and dancing and crying.

Please, no. Please, don’t leave.

She reached and reached and reached, the twinkling waves pulling and pulling and surging forward as she cried out silently, trying to draw him back together, as though it would make her brother reappear, as though she could save him.

But there was only water, washing in to fill the void he’d left, the dark.

The twinkling swelled, static in her fingers as the sand fell beneath and clung to her fingers and there was only space and space and--

[Paragraph break]

“Linh,” a firm voice said, and she gasped, jerking upright and away, a hand falling from her shoulder as she scrambled away, panting, not enough breath in the world for the way her lungs wanted.

Her fingers dug into her blankets, all twisted and damp around her, trapping her. All she could do was try and breathe, try and find herself.

“You’re fine,” Rayni--the voice, it was her voice--added, though she hadn’t reached out again, perched on the edge of the bed. “Probably.”

A noise she couldn’t describe, somewhere between a sob and a groan, escaped her throat as she swept her hands across her face, trying to wipe away every fragment and piece of the images clouding her eyes, flashing in her vision whenever she closed them.

Sand and beaches and waves winking like the night and space and space and--

Nightmare. That’s all it had been. A stupid dream trying to get under her skin. It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t.

Rayni made her own noise, and the bed shifted beneath Linh as she crawled over her legs. She sat still, rubbing at her eyes, trying to erase the feeling of that twinkling water from her mind. She was in control. Not the water, not her power. Her.

Maybe if she said it enough, she’d believe it.

A slight squeak sounded and cool air brushed against her burning skin, stirring strands of hair into her face and sticking to her lips.

When she looked up, the window stood open, Rayni peering into the night beyond, pursing her lips in thought. Her hair had been pulled back into a braid, though a few chaotic curls had slipped out. It suited the rumpled look of her pajamas, decorated with stars and constellations she didn’t know. Sophie probably did.

“Why are you…” Linh began, but trailed off, clearing her throat, rubbing at her arms as her body tried to adjust, an uncharacteristic dryness in the air. The night soothed the repugnant, stifling heat trapped in her blood, brushed it away, but the sweat on her skin made her shiver. Water loved to freeze.

Rayni lowered from the window, plopping back onto the bed. “Why am I here? How about are you trying to flood the house?”

“I--what?”

She gestured to her face, clearly wet, as though she’d stuck it in a puddle.

Linh frowned, reaching forward and twisting her fingers, opening her senses and focusing only on the water on her face, tuning out the rest of the world calling for her, drowning for her, pulling it off Rayni’s skin and dispersing it into the air.

“Why are you wet?” she asked.

“Your bubbles,” she explained very helpfully, rubbing at her now-dry face. “The ones made of water floating all through the house, apparently one was right next to my pillow and I rolled right into it and it popped all over me. Which is not a fun way to wake up, by the way.”

Linh started, pulling back the covers and shivering at the rush of air as she pushed out of bed, feet meeting the ground.

She froze right there, didn’t need to go any further.

All across the floor of her bedroom stood puddles of water, as though bubbles of it had fallen to the ground all at once, now a pockmarked safety hazard if you weren’t careful. A particularly dense patch had all melded together, giving the impression someone had poured an entire bathtub of water right onto her bedroom floor.

She was usually so careful, so in control, had spent years learning not to lose it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing a hand through her hair as she grimaced, reaching the other towards the marks on the floor. No wonder the air felt dry: she’d stolen all its moisture.

Rayni shrugged. “It’s not my problem. Though whatever’s going on with you…that might be a problem.”

Linh didn’t answer, too focused on the careful, deliberate expansion of her senses. She would only feel for the water in the house, the water on the floor, wouldn’t go any further. She wouldn’t feel the air, wouldn’t feel the dew on the grass outside, wouldn’t feel the clouds.

Just the puddles, just her mess.

Exhaling, she curled her hand, and in a sharp jerk, dispersed all the puddles, all the water she could feel. Concentrated around her room, they lessened the further she went, but still reached all down the hall, into Rayni’s room, into the bathroom, as though she’d drenched the second story. There was just one spot she could feel on the third floor, different than the other, but she didn’t pay it any mind.

Slumping back, she winced as the hand in her hair got caught, tugging on a tangle.

“Not to be rude, but you look like a mess,” Rayni said, tapping at her nails as she watched Linh dismiss the water, give it back to the air as the cool night pressed against her flushed skin. “I didn’t know your hair could get so…”

Linh gave her a look out of the corner of her eye.

“Alright, cool, cool, it’s totally fine. We’ll fix it.”

Before Linh could say anything in response, Rayni had hopped off the bed, clamoring back beside her and nearly tripping as she pushed to the floor, disappearing out the door on bare feet.

Running her fingers through her hair, she tried to smooth it down, but it wasn’t going very well. Even with all the practice she’d had in the neutral territories without access to toiletries, this was bad.

A thunk sounded a few rooms away, followed by sharp, muttered curses.

“Okay, here,” Rayni said, reappearing as she pushed the door open with her hip, hands full. One held a brush, the other a vial of spray, a few hair-ties dangling off her pinky finger as she hopped back into bed, dropping her haul.

Hands free, she rubbed at her thigh, wincing.

“...thanks,” she managed, grabbing the brush, which worked much better than her fingers. “Are you alright?”

Rayni nodded, glowering at her limbs. “Someone left the cabinet doors open, and those corners hurt.”

Linh said nothing, just humming in response. She and Rayni were still figuring things out, learning where they fell in each others’ worlds. She’d gotten past the worse of her anger, of her blame, of her jealousy. But that didn’t make conversation…easy.

Not that Rayni picked up on it.

Rayni didn’t care what anyone thought, what anyone else did. There was no hiding, no trying to please anyone else. She talked to Linh like she talked to anyone, even though Linh…couldn’t reciprocate.

But she was getting better. It was getting better. It was.

“So, you wanna talk about whatever it was that had you thrashing and making bubbles?” Rayni asked in the same way she’d ask about the weather as Linh tied her hair back, mimicking the braid across Rayni’s shoulder. She was too tired to think of any other style and needed something to do with her hands.

She tensed. “It’s nothing.”

“Yeah, right, it’s nothing,” she echoed, eyes on the open window, squinting at something beyond. “If you don’t want to talk, how about we do something else?”

“What do you mean?”

Rayni grinned, getting on her knees to push at the window screen. “Follow me.”

[paragraph break]

Hands on his wrists, blisters on his skin, and pain pain pain pain pain. Every inch of him a haze and oh so alive in all the wrong ways. Every piece of him lit up and dazzling and he wanted it off, wanted it gone, wanted everything to go dark.

He didn’t know what they wanted, didn’t know how to answer, didn’t have the answer but they didn’t believe him.

Again, the question.

Again, he didn’t know,

Again, the light.

Burning and burning and burning and they never slipped, never grew careless, never strayed from the jeering rigidity watching and watching and asking and hurting.

It hurt, more than he’d ever told.

The chair against his thighs the rope on his wrists the bubbles and boils and blisters on his skin and the light in his eyes the light the light the light.

He never wanted to see it again, to feel the heat, to touch it to know it. He wanted far away he wanted out he wanted it to be over.

They kept him conscious, kept him awake, never let the hurt give in to the dark.

He wanted it, so bad.

Please.

Let it wash over him let it take him let it drag him down never to return, he didn’t care, it didn’t matter so long as it was away from the light, from the burn, from the brightness on his skin with each snap, each press.

Darkness, please, someone give him--

[Paragraph break]

“Hey.” A voice called, quiet, gentle, low.

Wylie nearly screamed, every muscle in his body tensing, rigid.

There was a hand on his arm.

Tam drew back, glancing around the room, as though uncertain whether he should be there or not, and everything in him quieted.

“Hey,” he croaked back, absentmindedly pressing a hand to his chest, to the heart howling beneath.

Tam shifted away, tugging at his bangs as he shifted his weight. “I’m--sorry. To scare you. You were making noise and I--”

Wylie shook his head, pushing up from the bed, running a hand over his cropped hair, exhaling. “You’re alright. I’m sorry--for disturbing you.”

Rubbing at his eyes, spots danced in front of them as his body shivered against his will, his wrists aching, body trying to set itself alight.

He grimaced.

“Are you…alright?” Tam asked, hesitating. They never knew just quite how to act around each other. Were they friends? Acquaintances? Family? Strangers in the same house, sharing the same roof? Something entirely new?

Wylie nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry about me.”

I’m supposed to be the one worrying about you.

“I don’t believe you.” Tam’s eyes were on his wrists. He hadn’t realized he’d been rubbing at them, but the pain refused to leave, stuck to his skin the same as those blisters and welts had clung to him--or so he’d been told. He hadn’t been awake when Livvy had patched him up.

Wylie dropped his grip, but the light in his skin didn’t stop.

“I’ll be back,” Tam said, disappearing out the door, footsteps almost imperceptible against the floor as they faded.

Blinking, all he could do was wait, rubbing at each bit of skin burning even though he knew nothing was wrong.

About a minute later, the sound of someone coming down the stairs came from above, and Tam reappeared in the doorway a few moments after that, first aid kit in hand as he set it down on Wylie’s nightstand, immediately backing away.

Whatever Wylie’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“You got--I didn’t even hear the cabinet,” he startled. The emergency kit was kept under the sink in the bathroom on the second floor--the middle of the house--but the cabinet doors had been finicky for a while. No one cared enough to fix it, but--

Tam shrugged. “The doors are too loud, didn’t wanna wake anyone.”

“I guess we just have to hope no one runs into them, then,” he said, reaching for the kit, pushing the blankets off further. Not only were the doors loud enough to hear from his room a floor below if you weren’t being careful, one of them had a wicked sharp corner.

There was no use pretending he didn’t ache, not when it had been obvious enough Tam had gone to get their first aid, so he moved slow. Every shift, ever stretch of his skin reminded him of the light, the burn, the blisters.

The fire, melded into his skin and pressed into his bones. That’s what it was. He could call it a million different words, but that wouldn’t make it any less fire.

Popping the top off a painkiller--Elwin always made them a rich magenta color--he downed it as quick as he could, setting the bottle down next to the kit as he rubbed as his skin, waiting for it to kick in.

“Are you--do you…” Tam started, reminding Wylie he was still standing there, still watching. Too observant, nothing slipped past him, not the mindless circles he rubbed into his skin, not the bags under his eyes, not the slump to his posture. He hated knowing what, exactly, had forced him to be that way.

Wylie looked out the window, through the sliver of the curtains, wincing at the light he found there, dancing and curling through the air. Ever there, ever present, he couldn’t get away from it.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to sleep,” he admitted, trying to make it light. Tam wasn’t supposed to worry about him, take care of him like this. It was Wylie’s responsibility to take care of him, him and his sister and now Rayni, too.

Instead of lightening the mood, Tam nodded sagely. He glanced around the room, then said, “Snack?”

“Huh?”

“Midnight snack. It’s what I do when I can’t sleep.”

Wylie almost asked him what he’d been doing awake, but instead found himself nodding, “Sure. Snacks.”

[Paragraph break]]

Everything was glass shattering into sand in his hands, laughing as he tried desperately to fix the pieces. There was no fixing this.

All he could do was watch, watch as every piece, every memory disappeared and ground itself into dust scattered in the whirlwind of his mind, him screaming and begging it to stop, for him to come back.

His mind swallowed the screams like they swallowed everything else: whole and without remorse.

Could he even feel remorse anymore? Was there enough of him left to register, to understand, to feel? Or was he too far gone? Please, don’t let him be gone.

He hoped so, desperately, with everything he had left.

He hoped something could feel he hoped he could save something he hoped there was a world, a universe where they--he--didn’t need to be saved and everything was okay and he hope hope hoped every sick and twisted person who’d done this to them would rot, and burn, and suffer a thousand times over.

He didn't have a body, didn’t have eyes, but he could still see the way his mind sucked down down down, shatters of memory, of sanity, of a mind he had so loved, still did, vanished into itself, a black hole devouring, tearing itself to shreds.

It tried to take him, too, and he wanted to let it. He wanted it to consume them both, flesh and mind, leave nothing behind. No more pain, no more ache, no more echo where he’d used to be.

But could he give up the ache, the imprint left behind? Could he bring himself to destroy all he had left?

Glass shattered in his hands, pummeling itself into sand and brushing itself away, laughing as he tried desperately to think, to fix, to do something so he’d stop losing people and running his fingertips over the edges of the holes they’d left behind.

All he could do was watch, watch as every--

[Paragraph break]

“You’re dreaming,” a voice said, and Tiergan’s eyes flew open as he gasped, flinching, fingers clenching in the blankets as he took a breath, frantic gaze darting between the nightstand, the wall, the ceiling, his hand.

Groan muffled as he pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, he closed his eyes, breathing. In and out, in and out.

Dreaming.

In and out, in and out, a cycle. That’s what he’d taught Wylie, only months after he’d moved in with him. A middle of the night, a gentle cry waking him, tears as they both tried to figure out what to do, what was next.

“You’re alright. It’s alright.” Prentice. That was Prentice’s voice, and Tiergan opened his eyes again, rolling just enough to look over his shoulder in the dark.

Prentice rubbed under his eyes, squinting down at him from where he sat, clearly dazed, tired, exhausted. He’d propped himself up on his elbow beside him, hardly space between their faces. A few of his locs had fallen around him and he tucked them back in place, other hand squeezing in reassurance where it rested on Tiergan’s arm.

All he could do in response was shift further, half-turning and half-flopping back as he moved to face Prentice; he’d been sleeping with his back to him, but now lay on it looking up, eyes searching the face that searched him.

His hand covered Prentice’s on his arm as he let out a deep exhale, unable to take his eyes away.

“You’re trembling,” Prentice frowned, looking where their fingers intertwined.

“Am I?” His voice cracked, lips sticking to each other.

Tapping against his skin, he whispered, “Everything alright?”

No. Yes. Never. Always, when you’re here.

He didn’t say anything, all the words stuck in his throat as he stared into his eyes, as though he could see the mind beyond.

Was it glass shattering into sand, sifting away in his fingers as he tried to shovel it back, force it into pieces that made sense, that could be saved? Was there anything there, or was it imploding inside itself right before his eyes and he didn’t even know, only watched as his mind disappeared forever beneath the--

“Hey,” Prentice interrupted. “None of that. What’s going on? Bad dream?”

Eyes watering, Tiergan blinked hard, refusing to close them, in case when he opened them again, he’d be gone.

In case he’d be alone in their bed again, waking in the middle of the night with one side always too-cold, untouched, sacred.

“Tiergan, love, it’s okay. It was just a dream, alright? It wasn’t real. It’s alright, I’m here.”

I’m here I’m here I’m here I’m here.

“You’re here,” he whispered, lips trembling, biting his tongue as the tears welling in his eyes slipped out. “You’re really here.”

Prentice’s eyes, already creased with concern, softened further. Looking at their intertwined hands, he carefully, gently lifted them to his lips, pressing a kiss into the skin of Tiergan’s palm. “I am.”

He didn’t resist as Tiergan moved his hand from their laced hold to his face, thumb brushing against his cheek, needing to feel, needing to touch, needing proof this was real. That he wasn’t dreaming again.

Breath trembled in his lungs as he blinked, evidence of his distress falling silently down his face, no matter how much he tried to wipe the tears away. There was always another.

“Please. Keep talking,” he managed. Please. Be real.

Prentice only blinked once before nodding, hand coming to rest atop his own on his cheek. “Alright, love. One moment, I need to think of something to talk about.” His lips twisted in thought, eyes searching something he couldn’t see for a long few seconds. “How about this--do you remember, when we were young, all the things we used to do together?”

Tiergan paused. “Do you?” He’d thought everything was gone.

He winced. “Not truly. Everything is…well, that doesn’t matter. But even as my mind is now, there are still glimpses. Flashes of the past. And the more one thing happened and I interacted with it, the better chance it had of sticking, because it was in more memories, more places. Harder to destroy them all. How do you think I remembered Wylie? Or Cyrah? Or you? It’s because there is so much of you in my life that years of shattering couldn’t erase that, you were always in the pieces. The more one thing happened, the more I can remember.”

Tiergan waited, wiping at his eyes, unsure where this was going.

“I…don’t know how often we did it, or why, but I can see…” Prentice pressed his eyes shut, leaning into Tiergan’s hand, brow furrowing as he concentrated. He had the sudden urge to press his fingers to that crease between his brows, to smooth it away.

“What can you see?”

“A rooftop. Perhaps more than one. But we were…looking at the stars, I think. You’ve always loved them.” The tip of his tongue stuck between his lips in thought. “Kitchens, but it’s dark out. I can see the moonlight through the curtains, how it catches your hair, that ridiculous style you used to have. I think you were grabbing bowls.”

Nodding even though Prentice couldn’t see him, he brushed his thumb against his cheek again, new tears slipping where the others had dried.

Through the thickness in his throat, he explained, ignoring the comment about his old hair, “For midnight snacks.”

“Midnight snacks? That does sound like you.” Prentice smiled, eyes still closed in concentration, and Tiergan nearly burst with the light it lit in his skin, burning every doubt away. “There was…a library--no, it looks too small. But there were books all along the walls, and we must’ve been there often…”

“My family’s personal library,” Tiergan breathed, a laugh bubbling beneath.

“You really are a know-it-all.”

Prentice opened his eyes, blinking down at Tiergan, who couldn’t look away. Never, not in all his life, could he bear to look away.

Before he could think to stop himself, his other hand was reaching, cupping the other side of Prentice’s face, holding him in the palms of his hands, the space between them so small compared to the vast, eternal shattering sands they had endured.

Prentice’s breath caught, loud in the silence. “Better?” he asked, as though struggling to hold on to the words, dazed.

“Thank you,” he managed, taking a breath.

With his free hand, Prentice reached towards Tiergan’s face, thumb tracing through the tears, looking like he had something on his mind. Was thinking of leaning in closer.

“You should drink some water,” he murmured. Already, his attention was elsewhere, looking to the nightstand for a bottle of Youth. Instead, he frowned. “Wasn’t that full last night?”

Tiergan followed his gaze, humming in agreement at the empty bottle of Youth next to his bed. He’d grabbed a bottle before they’d gone to sleep, but had only taken a few sips.

Now, it sat on its side, barren of all water, cork nowhere to be found.

Oddest thing was, there was no puddle around it either. No sign that, even though it was on its side, it had spilled.

“Water does strange things in this house,” he said, offhanded, dropping one hand from Prentice’s face to wipe at the final tears drying to his skin.

“So do shadows, and light,” Prentice mused, gazing towards their balcony, the glass doors leading out into the night on the third story.

Tiergan followed his line of sight, and for a moment he could’ve sworn small flickers of color, of light scattered themselves through the air, barely perceptible, hanging in the air like stars.

Shaking his head, he dismissed the thought. He was seeing things, his rattled mind putting black holes and empty space where there were none.

Prentice thought for a moment longer, tapping absentmindedly against Tiergan’s face where his fingers rested. “It’s a good night to look at the stars.”

He pulled his eyes from the night and pushed from the bed, covers falling away as he pulled Tiergan after him, skin soft against his own.

“It would be,” he agreed, and he let all thought of the imagined light fall from his mind. He’d much rather think about Prentice, about the edge of his jaw in the soft dark, the tilt of his brow as he smiled, the warmth of his skin beside his own, his body in the same bed that had sat empty for so many years.

His mind. Awake. Alive. Intact.

“Come on, let’s get you a drink,” Prentice said, feet silent against the carpet, smiling down at him.

He couldn’t help but say yes.

[Paragraph break]

“This doesn’t feel safe,” Linh half-hissed, half-shouted, fingertips white as they clutched to the sides of the house.

Rayni turned to look at her from a little ways above her, feet braced on the edge of a windowsill on the third floor. “Well, first of all, you do unsafe things all the time. That’s kinda how your friend group works. And second of all, we’re levitating. It’s not like we’re gonna fall.”

Linh was, in fact, levitating. Her body floated weightless in the open air, anchoring herself to the house with her hands as they propelled themselves, controlled, along the wall. She had plenty of experience with the skill from the years she and her brother had spent banished in Exillium, so she wasn’t at any significant risk.

That didn’t mean she wanted to admit Rayni was right.

The window of her bedroom lay open beneath them, the screen pushed out, letting in all the cool air in the world as they made their way up.

Up, up, up, and away from all the people she cared about.

“You can push off here, at a slight angle, and that’ll get you to the edge of the roof,” Rayni was saying, drawing her attention back.

She watched as she demonstrated, grabbing at the top of the windowsill, leaning out from the wall slightly, tongue sticking out as she pushed off, hand extended before her to grab the lip of the roof. It stuck out a little ways over the wall, hence the angle needed to get over it. Otherwise, she’d either bash her head against the lip or go flying off into the free air.

Rayni neatly floated herself over the edge, body disappearing until she stuck her face back over, looking to Linh.

With only slight grumbling, she pulled herself to the same ledge Rayni’d stood on, heart pulsing harder than it should’ve considering how little danger she was in.

Maybe it was the height. Maybe it was the novelty. Maybe it was the lingering sandy beaches in her mind and vanishing shadows, people swept beneath her waves never to emerge again that had her pulse screaming so.

Maybe it was the fact she was following Rayni of all people.

Either way, she trembled as she let out a breath, eyeing the edge of the roof, sticking out a foot or so from the wall, Rayni ducking her head back out of the way to give her space with an encouraging Hurry up, will you?

“Okay, simple,” she told herself.

She pushed off, hands braced above her head for when she passed the edge, ready to grab.

Except she’d misjudged the angle she needed, Rayni’s nonchalant commentary urging her to act when she knew, she knew she should’ve been careful, should’ve waited, shouldn’t have sacrificed control for anything else. She’d learned that the hard way a long time ago, so why was it so easy to forget?

A small shriek escaped her as her body passed by the edge completely, into the open air and away from where she was trying to be.

Okay, I just need to--

Before she had the chance to correct her course, something she was entirely capable of doing, Rayni reached out and grabbed her, pulling her down to the roof where she already sat against its slant, nearly losing her balance as she tugged her next to her.

“I had it,” she frowned as she found her footing on the roof, fingers pressing into the slope as her bare feet slowly took on more of her weight as she stopped levitating. Rayni had already set herself down and was crawling ahead up the slope, towards a section of the roof that lay flat.

“Sure, but this was faster,” she called back as Linh found her footing, following after her, ignoring the grime that she could feel start to coat her soles, her palms, the knees of her pajamas--they were covered in cats, a gift from Tiergan when she’d gotten Princess Purryfins.

And now she was dirtying them. Roofs were not, generally speaking, clean places to be.

Rayni didn’t seem to care about the grime as she plopped herself down on a flat expanse of it--the space above Tiergan and Prentice’s room, where they’d be sleeping right below. She tried to be ginger and deliberate with her steps, to stay quiet, but she had no clue how well it worked.

Twisting her fingers, she drew some of the moisture from the air. “Why are we even up here? This is pointless.” She let the gathered water soak into a section of the roof across from where Rayni sat with her legs on either side of her, making a W with her body.

“If it’s pointless, why did you follow me?”

Linh quietly blasted the water off the roof, leaving one spot slightly cleaner than the rest, which she lowered herself down on, legs crossed. There was no way she was getting her body to bend like Rayni’s

Rubbing at her eyes, she tried again. “Fine. What’s the point of the roof?”

“Look.”

Dropping her eyes and blinking through the spots, she raised her gaze. Rayni had her hand pointed upwards, head tilted back and staring towards the sky.

Linh did the same.

“Oh.” She saw.

All the sudden, she was eleven, freshly banished, shivering against the chill of the earth and sweating inside her thick Exillium robes, too big for her tiny body, brother beside her as they looked up and up and up, the stars looking back.

No roof above their heads, they hadn’t found a place to stay, no gnomes to keep them company and tell them children’s stories as they shared their meals, not yet.

Only the two of them, a darkness, a weight she couldn’t fathom shadowing her brother's eyes as they watched the night twinkle, washing over itself in solemn silence, lulling them to sleep with indifference. It didn’t care what happened to them, wouldn’t notice if they disappeared.

And yet it offered them so much.

Comfort. Calm.

She’d forgotten how long it had been since she’d looked to the sky, wondered what was beyond it. How it would feel to drift among them, to see it all in person. To let it consume her and give it control, just as she wasn’t allowed to let the water do.

Planets of construct she could only imagine, cosmic events started long before her lifetime, that would take eons to complete, on a scale her small mind couldn’t begin to fathom, but would continue to try.

Wylie had told her of a trip beyond their world the day he’d become Lord Wylie, member of Team Valiant. Oh how she envied the opportunity.

To be there, to watch, to get away from it all, lessen the constant pull against her senses, even if she couldn’t escape it entirely.

Rayni made a noise. “Tam told me you’ve always loved the stars.”

“He did?” Her response hardly more than a whisper, she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

“He spoke of you more than anything else--when I could get him to talk, that is. He’s very stubborn.”

Something sour coiled in her stomach. “You mean when you were with the Neverseen.”

“Yeah, when we were in the Neverseen.” She said it so casually, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Linh said nothing, eyes above, trying to pretend she was alone, that it was her and Tam, side by side in the neutral territories, scared out of their minds but together.

Her eyes on the sky kept her from noticing Rayni’s eyes on her, the scrutiny as she looked her up and down, from the rumpled pajamas and the tackiness of her skin, not quite sweaty but not quite calm, either, the rushed braid they shared, the bags beneath her eyes as they longed for the night.

So when Rayni shook out her hands and snapped, it caught her entirely by surprise.

Specks of light winked into the air around them, twinkling in whites and blues and purples and reds, suspended in motion, drifting slightly. Pin pricks of color danced alongside milky clouds, puffing and swirling and ever changing, a gradual, private existence. Vast and unending, pouring from her fingertips into the world, lights crashing together, revolving and twirling into one. Flashing and pulsing, arranged in personal patterns and images, casting colored spots of light onto her hands, her face, the stretching cats on her scuffed pajamas. Different sizes, all scattered about with no real rhyme or reason, but she could still recognize it for what it was.

Rayni had brought the stars to them.

“He also told me you’d always wanted to go out there, to the stars,” she added,light flickering along her fingers and in her skin.

Finally, Linh looked down, stopped trying to ignore the girl sitting across from her on the roof, who’d dragged her out here in the middle of the night. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

“You had a nightmare.”

Linh, impatient, waved away the explanation. “But why do you care?”

Rayni’s hands lowered, falling into her lap, fiddling with her fingers, mirroring the way she shifted uneasily, uncomfortably. A frown pulled as her lips, brows puckering, the stars around them the loudest thing between them.

“I’m not the bad guy, you know.” She plucked at her pajama pants, the stars printed there. “I know you tolerate me, and we don’t fight anymore--at least not as much. But I know you still think of me like…the enemy, sometimes. And I’m not.”

“I don’t think you’re--”

“You do, Linh. You don’t have to try and hide it.” Reaching out, she let a flickering, dying star roll across her knuckles. “I see how you look at me. And I don’t know how to make you understand that the reason I joined the Neverseen wasn’t because I like them--I left, after all--or because I believe you need to hurt and destroy to change the world. It was because they were my only option; it was the kindest thing I could do for myself. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“I would never willingly join the Neverseen.”

Rayni made a noise, shaking her head. “You say that now, but think about it. Actually think about it. If someone found you and your brother in the neutral territories while you were shivering and starving on the ground, cursing the people who’d done this to you or mourning the life you’d lost. And they promised you a roof over your head, a meal, to take care of you, to acknowledge how fucked up the world was and what had happened to you--wouldn’t you say yes? No knowledge of what they’d done, all the people they’ve hurt, just someone saying they’re on your side and you aren’t alone anymore, do you honestly think you’d pass that up?”

Her mouth had been open, ready to argue, to deny anything that would tie her willingly to the people who had hurt her so.

But…

As much as she was loath to admit it, Rayni had a point.

“Hate me all you want, it’s nothing new. But don’t try to tell me that we’re so different. Tell me when I fuck up and I’ll fix it, but don’t blame me for saving myself. Especially not when you’d do the same. When you did the same. You were just lucky enough the Black Swan found you first.”

Linh pressed her hands to her face, rubbing hard like she could reset the world and do it all over again. Do it all right.

“You made your point. I get it. I’m too harsh and you’re throwing it back at me. But can you blame me? A complete stranger, working with the people who kidnapped my brother--who he hated--and then you’ve suddenly switched sides and he suddenly trusts you? My brother, who hardly trusts anyone?”

Rayni let the star drop from her knuckles and thought for a moment, conjuring a planet of rich, red light between her palms, shaping the colors and swirls, dim, dull lights casting her face into deep shadow.

“No, I can’t,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t believe my story either. Especially if my brother was involved.”

Linh stifled a yawn, the adrenaline from her nightmare and the climb to the roof starting to ebb, the weariness of that ending ocean settling into her bones. “And where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us…” she pondered for a moment, letting go of the planet, letting it join the medley suspended in the air, still drifting around them, all held in place by her control.

“It leaves us?”

“Even. It leaves us even.” Rayni finished.

The two of them sat, surrounded by faux stars on the roof, facing one another. A chill breeze pressed against their pajamas, blew stray strands of hair from their matching braids, cooling, calming. A universe between them, not separating them, but created in tandem. It watched over them, whispering and swirling and flashing.

They watched, eyes on the other, waiting, and waiting, and watching.

Then, Linh held out her hand. “Let’s start over then. Hi, I’m Linh.”

Rayni’s answering grin shone brighter than her stars. “Hey, Linh. I’m Rayni. Rayni Aria. It’s nice to meet you.”

Rayni’s hand was warm in hers, and she jolted slightly when she felt the chill of Linh’s skin, as most people did. Something about the water always dragged the heat out of her, no matter how hard she tried to hold it in place.

Making a face for a moment in deliberation, Rayni moved, half-crawling and half-scooting around on the roof to come closer, so they were more next to each other than facing one another, though not quite. It was as if they were in a group huddle, but the rest of their group had abandoned them, leaving only them on the roof.

“Since we’re friends now--or closer to it, yeah, I get it.” She waved away any objections Linh might’ve voice about taking their time. “But since we’re starting over, let me ask, as someone who cares at least a little bit about you--do you want to talk about that nightmare?”

She was tempted to say she’d almost forgotten about it up here, amongst the stars. But that was a complete and utter lie. Not a moment among the cosmos had she forgotten the twinkling of the beach of her mind, the person dragged under by her own waves.

“It’s…nothing. I’ve had nightmares before, I’ll be fine.”

“It was about Tam, wasn’t it?” More statement than question, Rayni picked at her fingernails, squinting at the light beneath her skin.

Linh started. “How did you…?”

“I…may have omitted some of my story,” she admitted, dropping her hands, sighing as she brushed a hand through the air, sending the stars swirling, drifting.

Linh squinted at her, ready to scoot away, but reminded herself they were even now. They were starting over. That she should listen before she did anything else.

Rayni didn’t look at her. “I wasn’t lying to you, if that’s what you’re making that face about. I did wake up to water in my face, and it was all over the house--I think I even saw some out the window. And that is why I came to find you. But…you weren’t just making little spheres of water all over the place.”

A myriad of older memories surged from the back of her mind. “My parents?” she guessed.

“Do you often make people out of water when you sleep?”

She shrugged. “Not as much as I used to. But I had nightmares about my parents a lot when we were…you know. Scared the shit out of Tam more than once.”

Rayni peered curiously over at her, her hands, as if imagining her molding those nightmares into waterlogged flesh. “It wasn’t your parents tonight.”

Linh shifted, quiet, even though she could guess what she’d say next.

“I woke up sputtering, and right next to my bed was Tam. At first I thought it was him--you know, because I was disoriented and sleepy and it made the most sense. But when I asked him what he was doing, he didn’t say anything, didn’t move, and then I realized I could see through him. Because he was made of water. He just stared at me until I got up to get you, and when I started moving he started following me. His steps sounded like splashes as he walked behind me to your room, and I swear even though he was made out of water he could see me. He collapsed into a puddle when I woke you up, but as soon as I got close to you he started reaching for me. He didn’t get the chance to touch me though, but I don’t know what he would’ve done. Has anyone ever told you your ability is seriously freaky?” she finished, nonchalant, brightly, as though she hadn’t recounted a horror tale.

“I’m…sorry,” she said lamely when Rayni didn’t continue. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Rayni waved her off. “It’s not like I was sleeping well anyways. But I’m guessing there’s a reason Tam showed up in my room tonight.”

They lapsed into silence for a moment, and a planet was about to bump into her head when Linh sighed, shifting. They were starting over even now, she didn’t want to hold back, to harbor grudges.

“I was dreaming about losing him,” she admitted.

“And your mind connected that to me.”

“Yeah. It did.”

Rayni said nothing for a moment, only pushing the impending planet away from Linh’s skull before it could crash.

“I know--I know you’ve told me, and Tam’s told me that that’s not what you were trying to do. And I’ve seen it in the months we’ve all been living together that you’re not trying to take him away from me and it’s a stupid fear, it was just a dumb nightmare. I don’t actually think you’re going to do anything. So.” Linh cut herself off, shivering as dew condensed on her arms, trying to brush it discreetly away.

“I get it,” Rayni said. “I can’t blame you, even if I don’t like it. But I’m used to it. But I guess now it’s out there and we both know. You still have trouble fully trusting me, and I understand why. But I can be patient,” she added. “Take your time. I won’t rush you--though I might have a problem if you keep waking me up with creepy water people.”

“I really can’t control that.”

“Well, we’re gonna have to, because seriously it’s terrifying.”

“...We?”

Rayni shrugged as if it was the most casual word in the world. “Unless you want someone else to help you deal with your issues trusting me. I don’t care who it is, I just want Water Tam to stay far away so I can sleep in peace.”

“So that’s your ulterior motive, why you dragged me up to the roof,” she squinted, a slight tease to her voice that surprised the both of them.

Exasperated but smiling, Rayni rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I took time out of my night to drag you onto the roof, my safe spot that I’m sharing with you, and show you that I’ve paid attention to you to try and get to know you--because, you know, we do live in the same house--and help calm you down after a nightmare all because I have a secret motive of wanting to sleep. You know, the thing I’m not doing right now.”

After a moment, Linh offered a small, “Thanks. For caring. Even though I’ve just been tolerating you.”

“Forget it,” Rayni told her. “We’re starting over even, remember? All that’s behind us.”

Linh opened her mouth to respond, to agree and remind herself where they were now, that it didn’t matter what had happened in the past, only what they were trying to do now.

Before she had the chance to, a crashing thud resounded through the house from below, cutting her off.

Rayni startled, all the stars falling out of the sky, the planets and galaxies crumbling into nothing as they both stared down, as though they could see through the roof to whatever that was.

“What was that?”

“We should probably…” Linh trailed off, Rayni already ahead of her, climbing towards the edge of the roof with her body weight lowered, ready to launch herself over the edge.

“You coming?”

Linh pushed to her feet. “I can’t believe you even have to ask.”

[Paragraph break]

Wylie had nearly debated himself completely in a circle over whether it was a good idea to make a small light to see by, or if he should surrender himself entirely to the bumbling darkness and avoid the light altogether, bumping into walls be damned. On the one hand, he was perfectly fine never thinking of or seeing light for the rest of his life, not when each thought of it reminded him of that blinding burn, the suns beneath his skin boiling and bubbling from the inside out.

On the other hand…how pathetic was it to be a flasher avoiding light?

Fortunately, before he got too circular in his reasoning, Tam solved the problem for him.

Moonlight spilled through the curtains as he pushed them open, soft, careful, cool. Nothing bright enough to burn, but enough to see by.

Wylie stopped in the entrance to the kitchen, standing awkwardly and rubbing at the almost completely faded aches in his wrists as Tam moved about with a practiced precision, pulling open cabinets and walking on the pads of his feet, minimizing the noise. His all-black pajamas only served to meld him further into the background, in sharp contrast to the bright patterns of his own, orange and yellow sunbursts repeated all down his pants.

He paused before the cupboards, however, hand halfway between the bowls and the plates. He glanced over his shoulder. “What do you want?”

“I don’t…” he started, dropping his hands when he noticed Tam’s eyes on them, always noticing. He didn’t want him to worry. “I don’t have a preference. I don’t usually do anything like this.”

Tam nodded, as though he expected that answer. “There’s leftover mallowmelt. That good?”

“...yes.”

Grabbing plates, Tam gingerly set them on the counter with only a slight clink. With clean movements, he withdrew the mallowmelt Edaline had been so kind to send back with the twins when they’d been over at Havenfield the other day, citing something about how she didn’t trust Tiergan in the kitchen and thought everyone could use a treat.

If he was unnerved by Wylie watching him as he cut two slices, plating them and grabbing forks from the silverware drawer as he returned the sweet to its place, he didn’t let it show, only quietly handed Wylie the plate with the bigger piece when he was done.

He took it in equal silence, wincing as the fork scraped when he shifted, so unlike the phantom Tam was as he leaned against the counter.

“Do you want to stay here, or…” Tam trailed off, looking him over.

“What do you usually do?” Maybe, if he was careful about it, he could learn something about this mysterious ghost of a kid who’d come into his life, who lived in the same house yet so far apart.

Tam gestured with his chin as he said, “I spend most of my time either in the living room out front or the side porch.”

“Great. Perfect. I’ll follow you,” Wylie offered with a flourish that didn’t ease the concern in Tam’s eyes, eyes far too young to have seen the things they had. If only he could’ve done something, but what? Been there to protect the twins? As if they’d even want him in their lives like that. Awfully presumptuous of him. But he couldn’t stop the thought.

Tam only nodded, oblivious to the storm of his mind trying to figure out what they were, if he was allowed to care as much as he suspected he did.

Wylie trailed behind as Tam brushed silently through doorways, Wylie trying to copy the way he moved, failing, but still trying, watching.

They passed through the living room, curtains pushed back just far enough to let a burst of gentle light onto the couch, where a book he didn’t recognize sat open on the cushions. Tam didn’t pay it any mind as he readjusted his hold on his plate to allow a free hand to unlock and open the door to the porch, the one practically invisible from the front due to the thick foliage on one side, wrapping around the side and open to the sky, dotted with stars oh so far away.

Wylie vaguely remembered Linh mentioning once that she loved the stars, the sky, everything oh so far away. He had half a mind to go get her so she could see, but figured it was better to let her rest. No need to bother her with his nightmares.

Tam fell into a seat with such casual grace he must’ve done it a thousand times before. Even though Wylie had lived here for years, he’d hardly used the porch, and certainly never at this time of night.

“How often do you do this?” Wylie asked, taking a bite from his mallowmelt now that they were settled. Any crumb, any inkling of information about this kid who wasn’t even a kid at heart anymore.

Tam shrugged through his own bite. “Whenever I can’t sleep.”

“Do you have trouble sleeping?” he frowned. He couldn’t blame him after all they’d been through, all the battles and close calls and kidnappings had left their mark, but Tam was so quiet about it. Everyone knew Sophie hardly slept, that Dex stayed up late working on his inventions and gadgets, that Marella needed a fireproof bedroom just in case.

But Tam never said anything about himself.

“Says the one who woke up crying from a nightmare,” Tam snorted, poking at his mallowmelt with his fork.

“Crying?”

Tam shifted. “I heard you. I was in the living room, and you were crying out, so I woke you up.” His face started to close off, as though bracing for something, so Wylie interrupted before he could.

“Thank you, I--I appreciate it. And for letting me intrude on your…” he gestured vaguely at everything, the porch and the mallowmelt and the sky and the chairs and the two of them.

“You’re not intruding.” Tam took another bite. “I offered.”

They lapsed into silence for a minute, content to enjoy the dark, everything outlined in white silver from the moon above, eating mallowmelt side by side as Wylie tried to let the shivers of light in his skin fade, the echo of those burns and binds pushed to the back of his mind.

But with each moment of silence, they started creeping, crawling back towards his mind with claws digging into the dirt, impossible to vanquish. Lights and burns and bubbles and cloying sweetness stuck to his lips, his skin.

“Do you need to talk about it?” Tam asked, shattering the silence like glass, catching Wylie’s attention. He hadn’t realized he’d started to drift, and saw Tam eyeing his hands suspiciously.

Glancing down, faint marks marred his skin where he'd been scratching, rubbing, trying to ease the feeling, already fading.

Wylie sighed, scratching at the back of his head self-consciously. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

“Maybe if it keeps happening that means you’re not dealing with it right.” Tam polished off the rest of his mallowmelt, setting the plate down on the small crystalline table between them, threaded through with sparkles of rainbow as though he hadn’t rocked Wylie’s mind to its core.

Was he dealing with it all wrong?

Whenever one of the nightmares came back to haunt him, kidnap him from rest and hold him hostage under the light, he’d try to breathe his heartbeat back into place. He’d wait, keep all the lights off to stay away from that burn, and hold himself close until it faded, until the phantom pains that he knew weren’t real stopped plaguing him. He’d stay quiet in the dark, and either fall back into fitful sleep or brave the morning with a smile he didn’t feel. He didn’t need anyone worrying about his stupid nightmares. He was an adult and there was so much else to deal with. His kidnapping had been over a year ago, there wasn’t time in the day to focus on what lingered.

But it wasn’t day.

“My kidnapping,” he found himself saying. “It comes back, sometimes. The memories, even as…hazy…as it was.” Because he was drugged. Because they hurt him. Things had gone fuzzy even before time had started to creep over, images blurring in his mind, leering faces fading away where they’d once haunted him, empty space he’d never fill.

But not the feelings.

Those were crystal clear.

The sear of fire against his skin, pushing through the layers until he screamed, held in front of his face and blinding him as question after question was asked. A question he didn’t know he had the answer to. Yellows and oranges and reds that turned blue and bored into the bones of his being.

“Hey,” Tam said, a hint of something sharp beneath the words. Nothing friendly, but stern. “You’re okay now. They can’t catch us off guard like that anymore, they can’t take you like that again.”

“They took you.”

They took you and you took Linh with you.

Tam might’ve paled, but he couldn't be sure in the washed out light. “That’s different.”

“How?”

Linh had turned into a ghost of herself, and nothing Tiergan tried could fix it, nothing Wylie tried. And then she, too, was gone. Back to her shitty parents because of a warning and it was just Tiergan and Wylie and sometimes his dad in a house too big, a house that’d used to hold so much more.

“I wasn’t…” he started, tugging at his bangs. “I wasn’t going into it blind. We knew something was happening, and we saw it all coming. I was already involved in everything at that point. You weren’t. You were collateral.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean it like--”

Wylie waved away Tam’s flushed corrections, smiling wryly. “I know. I’m just teasing you. I get what you mean, but you’re way underselling your own…whatever you wanna call it.”

“Why are we even talking about this?” he grumbled, sinking into his seat a little. “You’re the one with the kidnapping nightmares.”

“Yeah, I am,” he sighed, looking down at his wrists, turning his hands over and watching the twist of the smooth, unbroken skin, no sign of blister or light. If he pushed up the sleeve of his pajamas, he’d find the same, the same dark brown without a bubble in sight.

And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about…whatever it is that haunts you, too,” he added, looking back at Tam, who was looking at him.

Tam averted his eyes.

“I’m not haunted--”

“You couldn’t sleep. You don’t, regularly,” Wylie reminded him. And immediately wondered if he should have, if this was a boundary he was allowed to cross, or one he was supposed to remain firmly outside of. What was he allowed to do?

What was Tam to him?

“I’m a shade.”

“Is insomnia a symptom of shadehood?” “Maybe.”

Wylie nodded. “Uh-huh. Sure. That’s definitely what it is and not you having problems.”

“You have problems,” Tam shot back, making a face. Not an offended one, but rolled eyes, exasperation mixed with fondness. The kind Wylie often saw when he was bickering with his sister.

It was enough to stun him where he sat, mouth falling open, unable to decide whether to gasp or smile. His eyes stayed on Tam, heart panging away inside his chest.

What was he supposed to do with this kid?

“Wylie?” Tam waved his hand back and forth. “Hey, I was just teasing you. You thinking about the nightmare again?”

Wylie shook his head. “Ah, no. No, um…” he trailed off, unsure what to say next.

His nightmare, the light, it was the furthest thing from his mind at the moment. He’d actually forgotten that’s why they’d come out here. The conversation, the dark, it had distracted him.

Tam raised a brow at him, head tilting to the side in question.

Fuck it. “I was thinking about you,” Wylie sighed, sinking back in the chair, shifting to keep his limbs from tingling.

“Me? What about me?” Suspicion laced his voice thicker than Wylie thought possible.

“What to do with you.”

“Do with me?”

A nervous smile pulled at Wylie’s lips as he rubbed at the back of his neck. “You make it sound so much worse than it is. I meant…I don’t know where to fit you. In my life. Are you…are we friends? Friends who live in the same house? Are you Linh’s brother, and we’re polite with each other but not really friends? Are you…are you my…” he stopped, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it, it’s my thing to work through.”

Tam had gone quiet, not just in voice, but in every part of his being. His expression, his posture, all stood somehow silent. He couldn’t tell what was going on behind his eyes, the ones looking far away from Wylie, up towards the sky, arms crossed over his chest as he sought something out among the stars.

Wylie grimaced as the silence wore on, heart pounding in his chest. Maybe he should’ve just stayed quiet, worked it out on his own without telling anyone, let Tam do his own thing with the people he loved without interfering.

Finally, Tam asked, “What do you want to be?”

The words were small, almost lost as they fell from his lips, lips he bit at as he reached for his bangs, like he couldn’t help protecting himself against something, everything, someone.

Against Wylie.

Wylie’s heart calmed a touch. “I don’t know. I just…want you to know that I care. About you and your sister. And Rayni,” he added at the end. “She’s newer, but she’s important to you. So I’m…trying to understand better.”

Tam took a breath, and Wylie swore he could hear his heart hammering right alongside his as he said. “When we were…when I was a kid, I always wanted an older brother.”

Was his heart still beating?

Tam had practically sunk through the chair, pillows swallowing him whole as shadows bracketed his posture, trying to steal him into the night as he eyed Wylie out of the corner of his eye, watching and waiting with bated breath.

“You did?”

Tam nodded, opened his mouth, but closed it again, as though he couldn’t bring himself to say anything else yet. Not until he knew what Wylie would say.

“I’d like that. To be that,” he clarified, clearing his throat as he felt his face grow warm.

The shadows curling around Tam melted, fading into the wood of the deck and slithering off into the night, like he’d released a breath, a weight alongside Wylie’s words.

Maybe it was the night, maybe it was the comfort the darkness held that prompted them to speak, drew the secrets out of them, because a moment later, Tam opened his mouth again.

“When I was a kid, I always wanted an older brother so that it wouldn’t have to be me anymore. I know Linh and I are twins, but…I was the one who stepped up, because she got so in her head struggling with her ability, and our parents never cared. Not unless we were messing with their precious reputations. And I always wished…there was someone else who did care. So I wouldn’t have to be the responsible one anymore. I love Linh to death, don’t get me wrong, but…”

“But it’s a lot,” Wylie finished for him, nodding. “And it was too much to expect of someone as young as you were. Even if you don’t regret it and would do it all again, it’s still a lot.”

“Yeah.” Tam blew out a breath.

“I can’t…I can’t go back and fix it and be there for you and Linh when it was really bad,” Wylie said, looking off into the stars. “But I can be here now. If that’s worth anything to you.”

He glanced back down, watching Tam’s gaze flicker towards the windows, the second story windows where Linh and Rayni should be lying fast asleep, unaware of the movement of the house below. The nightmares and restless nights that had drawn the two of them out here. He was eternally grateful that at least the two of them were having a restful night.

“It is,” Tam said, quiet, drawing his attention back away from the window. “I…uh…appreciate it.”

Wylie nodded, unsure what to say next, savoring the ease in his heart as they sat in silence.

He could see what Tam liked about this, why he came out here when he couldn’t sleep. The world was quiet here, calm in a way he hadn’t felt in a long while. Soft gales rustled the grass, brushing patterns into the dewey blades, catching the silver light. Chill air rested against their skin, still but not stagnant, a blanket wrapped around them and holding them, a casual embrace. Nothing and no one expected anything from them, least of all themselves. They could sit and do nothing, fade into the background of the night and let the weight they carried so valiantly wash away in the silence, passed on to something infinitely larger than themselves.

A small pocket of time where the rest of life didn’t exist, that’s what this was.

“Thank you,” he said again. “For sharing this with me.”

Tam shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“That I can’t sleep sometimes? Yeah. Linh lived with me for years and Rayni…well, she found out. But that I come out here? No, that’s just you.”

Just him. Something melted inside him, but he couldn’t figure out what, searching the sky above them like they’d say something back, like the answer would be up there.

Maybe there was, because he could’ve sworn something about the sky looked different near the edge of the roof, like the specks were brighter, closer. Stars brought down to their level to live among them, but he knew that was absurd.

He turned to Tam, but before he could get any word out, a sudden, powerful thud sounded from inside the house, and those stars he thought he’d seen winked out of existence, like he’d imagined them the whole time.

Tam jerked up, fingers clenching in the pillows as his brow furrowed. “What the--”

Wylie was already on his feet, glancing back at him, as he moved to the door, pushing down the handle and pulling it open all in one movement.

All he could think was that there were people he cared about in this house, that he needed to find them, to protect them.

“It’ll be fine, it’s probably nothing,” he said, trying to be reassuring. Trying to convince himself as he took a breath, stepping over the threshold, searching for the source of that noise.

His little brother didn’t look entirely convinced, but he let him lead the way.

[Paragraph break]

The house sat silent as Tiergan let himself be pulled along, Prentice’s hand warm in his own, and he sent thanks somewhere in the world that at least the kids were having a peaceful night.

He tried to be gentle on the stairs, and Prentice did the same, each holding their breath and listening for any disturbance, letting out their worries when there were none.

“Ah, someone left the cabinet open again,” Prentice mumbled, pausing in the hall of the second floor.

He dropped Tiergan’s hand, ducking through the open door to push the sink’s cabinet doors closed, being oh so careful to stay quiet so they wouldn’t wake anyone. They’d been in need of fixing for a while and had a tendency to slam and thunk if you weren’t paying attention.

But Prentice was. As always.

“Sorry,” he smiled sheepishly, taking Tiergan’s hand again. “Don’t want anyone to run into them or anything. Those doors have sharp corners.”

Tiergan didn’t say anything, only squeezed his hand tightly in reassurance, following along as they passed through the rest of the hall to the stairs that would take them to the kitchen, the stairs that would wake Wylie if they weren’t careful; he’d learned that the hard way when they were still getting to know their new lives together.

Prentice led the way, face set, already thinking ahead. Tiergan almost interrupted as they passed by Linh’s room, remarking on a bit of a draft he felt under the doorway. Had she left her window open before she fell asleep? He remembered her mentioning how she’d liked to keep it open sometimes during the night, all the nights she’d spent in the outdoors in the neutral territories had acclimated her to the fresh air. If she closed the window it got stuffy, which she said made her more likely to be restless and have nightmares.

In that case, they could all deal with a bit of a draft if it eased her mind.

They both let out a sigh of relief as they successfully made it to the kitchen without disturbing anyone.

For the second time that night, Prentice dropped his hand, carefully opening the fridge and retrieving two bottles of Youth, shivering from the cold glass as he handed Tiergan one.

“Thank you,” he murmured, absentminded, having crossed to the other side of the kitchen to close the pantry door. He could’ve sworn he’d remembered to close it when cleaning up from dinner the night before. A small smile tugged at his lips as he got a glimpse of the mallowmelt Edaline had sent, and he made a mental note to send her a thank you with the kids whenever they went over next. Prentice had an excellent rosewater cookie recipe, perhaps that would work.

It couldn’t be from him, though. Baking was…interesting, when he tried it.

Pushing the door, it moved on silent hinges and closed with an empty thud, and as he looked at the mallowmelt disappearing from view he could’ve sworn a few more slices were missing.

He hummed in surprise as Prentice’s arms wrapped around him from behind, unconsciously leaning back into him as he toyed with the cork on his bottle.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, lips against his shoulder, locs falling forward and brushing his skin.

He couldn’t help himself. “You’re a telepath, Prentice.”

Fingertips pressed into his skin as Prentice pulled him closer. “I’d never read your mind without your permission, Tiergan.”

Oh.

“I was thinking,” he started, swallowing to clear the sudden thickness in his voice, “that I should ask Wylie to talk to Tam about whether he’s been taking some late night excursions. I only have suspicions, nothing concrete. But he’d respond to him better than to me.”

“He would? Why do you say that.”

Tiergan blew out a breath, and Prentice’s fingers brushed against him in response. “You’ve seen how the twins act around me. It’s like they’re always waiting for me to have enough of them and kick them out. If I started telling Tam I was worried about him because of whatever he does in the night, he’d stop. Pull back further into that shell of his.”

“But he wouldn’t if Wylie was asking about it.”

“Right.” Finally, he pulled the cork out of the bottle.

Prentice pulled back, arm dropping from where they’d held him, allowing Tiergan to turn to face him, to watch those dark eyes watch him back, a crease between their brow.

“What is it?” he asked, reaching out, pressing his fingertip to that worry mark and watching it disappear beneath his touch.

Prentice sighed, a smile pulling at his lips, lips his attention lingered on. “You’re the one having nightmares. I should be asking you that.”

A roiling, jolting wave crashed through him, alight with painful electricity at the reminder, a bucket of ice water dousing his system. His fingers tightened on the untouched bottle, his heart quickening.

Shattered glass into sand, sand trickling away through his fingers as he desperately, selfishly tried to hold it together, begging it to come back, to reform, to do anything but leave him alone--

“Hey, hey, come back to me,” Prentice soothed, and Tiergan took a gasp of a breath, shaky sight searching the room he hadn’t realized he’d left until it'd come crashing back.

When had they gotten so close?

One of Prentice’s hands held the opened bottle, easing it from his shaking fingers, setting it on the kitchen island behind him. The other held his face, thumb brushing against his cheek in slow, deliberate rhythm. They swayed slightly to a tune hummed under patient breath, a melody he faintly recognized but couldn’t place.

Bottle safely out of the way, Prentice’s other hand returned to his waist, fingers warm through the fabric of his night wear. They’d been a gift from Wylie once when he’d revealed his identity, he somber rock face embroidered like a patch on the front wasn’t his, but it was close enough. Prentice’s had a matching swan decal.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push. I thought the distraction and joking were working, meant you were alright. I didn’t realize it was still so sensitive. Please, forgive me,” he said, tucking an errant strand of hair behind his ear, watching the movement.

“No, it’s--” Tiergan cut off, clearing his throat, reaching up to wrap his fingers lightly around the wrist of the hand on his face. “I know. I didn’t either. It’s not you.”

Prentice said nothing for a moment. Then, gentle, “You’re lying.”

“I thought you weren’t reading my mind.”

“And you’re avoiding it.”

Tiergan’s fingers tightened on his wrist, eyes flitting away.

But he couldn’t keep them away.

What if, what if he looked away and when he looked back, it was all gone? What if this was nothing more than a brief reprieve, a dream come true of the desires he never let himself think about all those years alone, raising Wylie and pretending it didn’t ache as the way he quirked his brow reminded him so much of someone else. Someone gone.

If this was a dream, he hoped he never woke.

He hoped this moment stretched into eternity, as vast as the night sky, twinkling and burning and remaking itself over and over and over again.

“I…I can’t,” he whispered, closing his eyes, breath shaking. “Not yet. Give me time. I don’t…” the words stuck in his throat.

I don’t know how to tell you I can’t stop thinking I’m losing you.

“Okay, that’s okay, love,” Prentice assured him, and Tiergan could practically see him think, watching him wrack his memory. “How about we do what we used to do when we were young? Another distraction until you’re ready. Rooftop, snacks, or libraries. What would you like?”

What would he like?

You.

Taking a breath, letting it out slow, he looked around the kitchen for inspiration. Rooftop? The thought of climbing out there, sitting on the cold, hard tiles already had his back aching. Maybe another night, but not this one. Snacks? The idea of eating something turned his stomach, melting and molding it into sour sludge. Which left…

“Library,” he decided.

Prentice only nodded, turning to grab the cool bottle where he’d set it on the island, pressing it back into Tiergan’s hand, taking the other as he led the way once more.

When they were young and Prentice had been staying the night in Tiergan’s family home, they’d stay up late, then quietly make their way into his family’s personal library, trying to find the most ridiculous passages and lines in all the various books kept there. His mother’s interest in dwarven poetry had led to a few interesting ones, but the dwarves still had a measure of depth and importance even with the unfamiliar diction and structure. Prentice, however, always had a knack for finding the most pretentious sounding elven writers. Elves had a habit of thinking themself important, and it made them fools in their work and oblivious to their embarrassment.

Now, even though it had been centuries since he’d seen his family home, he couldn’t help thinking of all those nights as Prentice pushed open the door of their own family library, flicking on the warm yellow light. .

It’d originally been on the third floor, but soon after Wylie had moved in, he’d moved it to the first floor. The poor kid had been too nervous to run into him on his way to get a book, so he’d never take any despite how much comfort he found in them. So, after he’d realized, he’d put it on the same floor as his bedroom. Then, he’d have a much smaller chance of encountering him while they were still figuring out how to live together. Tiergan had always been in his life as a baby, but never the way he’d been after…everything had happened.

“I think this might be my favorite room in the house,” Prentice said, offhanded, turning to shut the door with a soft click behind them.

Tiergan hummed in agreement, reaching out a hand to run them along the spines of a nearby shelf, inset words delicate beneath his fingertips. One was missing that he didn’t remember taking down. Odd.

Split into two levels, shelves lined the walls on the left all the way to the ceiling well above their heads, so tall a sliding ladder hooked onto a railing at the top to be moved where needed. To the right, half of a second floor overlooked the first, like a mini balcony complete with twining railing to keep any particularly clumsy children from tipping right over the edge.

On the first level, under the balcony, sat a desk; it didn’t belong to anyone in particular, but he used it more than everyone else. And since a lot of that work was classified Black Swan work, the kids usually stayed out of it. They hadn’t at first, of course. But multiple attempts where they found only the most boring, in-depth reports on the most menial things possible had dissuaded them from ever trying to learn anything via the scrolls he left out again. Little did they know they’d left those ones there on purpose. What kind of rebellion member would he be if he left scrolls out? Did they think he was an amateur?

“You’re thinking again,” Prentice said, drawing him towards the stairs curling around the room, ending at that second half-level. The bottom was work oriented, but the top he’d furnished with plush couches and chairs, thick pillows and luxurious blankets with embroidered gnomish patterns telling stories across the fabric. An assortment of seating options perfect for reading, resting, or recovering.

“I do that sometimes.”

“Care to share?”

Tiergan hummed a smile. “Remembering when we tricked the kids into thinking we would leave important documents lying around, and that those documents were boring.”

Prentice grinned in return, huffing out a laugh as they climbed the stairs. “They’re brilliant kids. But so gullible sometimes.”

Cresting the top, Prentice clearly had his eyes set on the couch near the railing, not even glancing at the rest of the comforts as he settled into the forgiving cushions, adjusting as Tiergan followed in his stead.

Sinking into the softness, he let out a small noise of satisfaction, leaning back, savoring the released pressure from his joints. A night of restless sleep hadn’t been kind to his body.

Prentice moved in closer, their sides pressing together as he draped an arm over his shoulders, body heat shared wherever skin pressed together, even through their clothing. Prentice had always run hot, and Tiergan had always run cold. He’d made some joke once about them matching when they were young, but he was sure he couldn’t remember it.

“I remember…I remember the books, all the shelves, but I’m not sure what we used to do,” Prentice said faintly, his mind was elsewhere, and when Tiergan glanced at him he was squinting off into the distance.

Tiergan reached for his hand, ignoring the tremble in his fingers at the thought of all those lost memories, how he’d watched them slip away.

“We would look through all the pompous books my parents owned. Try and find the most ridiculous lines we could. We made a competition out of it.”

Prentice hummed to himself, blinking, eyes searching for something he couldn’t see.

Then, he shook himself off, abandoning the effort. “That sounds like something we’d do. Though I doubt our library will be as easy to find pompous lines in.”

It definitely wouldn’t be. The ridiculous lines had only worked because his parents had so many ridiculous books. He’d once found one theorizing about how elves should try harvesting starlight and consuming it. Something about how it would balance the body’s natural glow, because elves were made primarily of light. Despite nothing ever being found about elves made of light.

It had been over 800 pages long.

“How about a different category then,” he proposed, leaning into Prentice, settling against his chest to make room for the arm around his shoulders, savoring the feeling. There’d been a time he’d thought he’d lost this forever. That he’d never be allowed to have it.

Prentice’s fingers tapped mindless patterns against his arm, his other hand brushing his locs out of the way over his shoulder. “Well then, what books do we have? Lots of reports, lots of history books…I found some poetry the other day as well…”

Smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt, he proposed, “Most superfluous word use. Even if our books aren’t as pompous, some of the authors…like to get creative.”

“Perfect,” Prentice smiled, then stuck his tongue out between his teeth in concentration as he furrowed his brow, reaching his free hand forward to catch the book he’d telekineticked into his grasp.

It’d come from the history section below, and from the name of the author he knew Prentice already had a head start, so with only slightly childish motives, he slapped his hand over the book, holding it closed in Prentice’s lap as he reached out and grabbed his own book from the poetry section with his--admittedly rusty--telekinesis.

“I thought we were adults,” Prentice chastised, but he was laughing as he said it.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Tiergan told him as he flipped open his own book, a poetry anthology of various authors, the engravings on the exterior only slightly familiar.

Comfortably nestled in Prentice’s embrace, he skimmed through the words, hoping a particularly bold writer had left something that would work in his favor.

A few minutes later, Prentice exclaimed with delight, nudging him. “Look, here, second paragraph. They called the battle a hoplomachy. That must be worth a point--I’m assuming this is a point system at least.”

“It is,” Tiergan said, frowning. “How do you even find them so quickly?”

It was a few anticipatory minutes more of impatiently paging through poetry before Tiergan held up his own book in triumph. “Xertz. Fourth stanza. I believe that’s a point for me, my dear.”

Prentice squinted down at the page, sighing in acceptance. “That’s a point. Wait--did they rhyme xertz with hurts?”

“Rather disappointing, I know. You’d think for as creative a word as that, they’d come up with something better.”

“We’re tied now,” Prentice noted, floating another book towards him from the wall.

“I suppose we are. For now.”

He lost track of the time they spent searching through books, Prentice blissfully never asking what, exactly, had dragged him breathless and frantic from sleep, what had frozen him in place in the kitchen with only a thought. Even though he couldn’t quite forget it, not as every breath of a touch reminded him of all he could lose, had lost. He never knew how to think of it.

All he knew was he’d gotten two more points for miniaceous and paedonymic, but Prentice had found epalpebrate, quadragintireme, timenoguy, and quodlibetificate for four more.

He wasn’t actually sure what any of those words meant, but he knew it put him a solid two points in the lead.

“I was fighting a losing battle from the beginning,” he groaned, rubbing at his eyes as he let his current book--something about ogre-troll weaponry fusions in centuries past, which he wasn’t sure how he’d come to own--fall to the side of the couch.

“Are you forfeiting?” Prentice asked, all too sweet.

He set his own book down, shifting to rub soothing circles into his back, an affection Tiergan had never told him he enjoyed but Prentice had discovered made him melt all on his own. Even when he tried to hide it.

“Yes, I forfeit. You win, just like when we were young.”

Prentice’s hand faltered for a moment. “Did I win a lot? When we were kids?”

“Always,” he breathed, swallowing.

I never stood a chance against you.

Holding his breath, Tiergan turned, Prentice stilling beneath him as their eyes met.

Neither of them spoke, bated silence growing thick, heavy, that crease reappearing between Prentice’s brow. Their chests rose in tandem, breathing, waiting.

Prentice broke first. “You’re worrying me.” He spoke it like a confession, head tilting to the side, fingers fumbling in his lap as though they wanted to reach out.

“I’m sorry. For worrying you.”

“Please. Don’t be. It’s part of this, of us, for me to worry about you.”

Tiergan blinked. “This?”

Prentice offered a small smile. “You look so surprised. As if you aren’t the same. You are mine, Tiergan. The good,” he interlaced their hands, tracing the lines of his palm, “and the bad.”

He reached up, cupping Tiergan’s face, trailing his fingers across his forehead, a small frown marring his lips.

Tiergan wasn’t sure he was breathing anymore, didn’t dare do anything to break the moment, the faint echo of shattering glass playing back in his mind. All he could do was watch, helpless, as Prentice watched him back, eyes trailing over him from the tremble of his fingers to the pulse beneath his skin to his lips and finally, finally back to his eyes.

“You keep freezing when I touch you. Why? Should I stop?” He started pulling back.

“No,” he managed, voice suddenly hoarse. “No, please don’t.”

“Alright, love. I won’t.”

The books lay forgotten around them, piled erratically on the floor, poetry and history side by side, and for the life of him he couldn’t seem to care about how tedious it would be to find where they’d come from.

Prentice leaned back in, fingertips warm on his skin. “You’re always so cold,” he murmured, filling the silence for him.

“You’re always so warm,” Tiergan offered in return, playing along, both of them oh so aware they were only waiting, time ticking away between them, filling the space until he could speak. They both knew he was going to, it was only a matter of letting it happen, being there in the interim.

“We match, then.”

We match.

Each brush against his skin sent his heart thundering, a dizziness building in the back of his mind, cradling him from the shadows and their secrets as the seconds passed, until, with the comfort of a hand in his and the ease of the game, that nightmare no longer pounded against his conscious, threatened to tear him to pieces and scatter them in the night.

It burned in his throat, the words he’d shoved down that wanted out.

“You were right,” he admitted into the quiet, a salve against the ache.

Prentice only continued his touches as he spoke.

“You were right, it is you. Not in the way you thought. You haven’t done anything wrong; you’ve been…” he couldn’t find the words, and paused for a moment. “More than I could ever hope for. Whatever this is, whatever we are…I wouldn’t change a moment of it.”

He could’ve sworn there was a flicker of something on Prentice’s carefully impassive face, but he couldn’t place it. Fondness? Amusement? Worry?

He took a breath, averting his eyes, continuing. “But I worry sometimes. And sometimes, it haunts me at night.”

Raising his gaze from their interlaced fingers, he met Prentice’s eye, searching his face. “Sometimes, I dream I’m losing you again. Watching your mind, your memories fall apart and all I can do is stand there and watch. As you disappear and I can do nothing. And then I wake and you’re right there and I can’t stop myself from wondering if it’s real, or if this will be taken from me, too. If this is too good to be true and I’m dreaming again. If I’m fooling myself and you’re disappearing before my eyes, just like when--” he cut off, letting out a shaky breath.

“It’s okay, we’re okay,” Prentice soothed, squeezing his hand. “I’m real. I’m here.”

“You are.”

Prentice pressed his lips together, eyes a little glassy as he blinked. “I may not know what it was like for you, to lose me, and Cyrah, to raise Wylie on your own. I don’t know how the years have been. And I know you don’t like to talk about it. But I do know it’s all going to be okay in the end. I believe it will be.”

Tiergan couldn’t help a small, sad laugh. “Your optimism is incredible; I don’t know how you do it.”

He’d spent so many years in the dark, struggling day by day to get through the next, to just hold on, hold on a little longer, stay afloat. The storm would pass, they’d promised it would pass, it would end some day. He’d get him back.

Now that he had, he didn’t know how to stop trying to survive and starting trying to live.

“It’s a struggle, some days,” Prentice whispered, his hand falling from Tiergan’s face and settling in their laps. “You are not the only one who fears my mind will collapse again.”

Tiergan didn’t know what his face looked like, but it had Prentice smiling, a soft, sad thing.

“No need to look so shocked. I see how you all watch me, you and Wylie more than most. You tiptoe around me some days, like you’re waiting for me to shatter again. And I try to be patient, and show you that I’m here. I’m here. It helps you, I can see that. The tension eases in your shoulders and you smile more. But there are times it is…more difficult, because I’m trying to convince not just you, but myself that I’m here. That everything is okay.”

He was drowning. He sat on dry land with warm touches but there was no air and he couldn’t breathe and the water wanted to pull him under. It lurched and raced through him, whiting out everything and anything he’d ever thought before, wiping the slate clean and leaving him breathless, his heart pounding in his chest as everything in him shifted.

“Tiergan?” Prentice’s face, vulnerable, had drawn back, hardened, brows furrowed as he sat up straighter, hand hesitating between them. “Tiergan, what is it?”

A half-strangled noise escaped him, his lips, his tongue refusing to cooperate, his blanked out mind incapable of sentences or sense.

All he could do was surge forward, wrapping trembling arms tight around Prentice’s, pulling him close, books falling from the cushions to the floor with hardly noticed thunks as Prentice gasped out a small oh, hands landing light on his back.

After a frozen moment, Prentice moved, sighing into the embrace as he held him back, palms against his body, fingertips pressed hard against him, nearly digging in. His head rested against the crook of Tiergan’s neck, breath warm on his skin, unsteady but there there there.

“I…” Tiergan started, but his voice caught. “I didn’t know you worried, too. Oh, how many times have I made it worse for you with my fretting when I could’ve been helping, doing something, anything, I don’t know what. If I’d known--Why didn’t you tell me?” He spoke the words into Prentice’s hair, lips pressed near his ear, hushed tremors all too loud in this silent night.

Prentice’s heart thundered, the echo of the beat reverberating in his own chest, pressed as close as they were. “You were already so worried, I didn’t want to add to it. You do so much for so many people, for me. I want to help you, I want to ease that burden, not make it worse. I know I’m not what I once was, that I can’t help however I used to. But if I can help you even slightly, that’s enough. I’ll take that. And, if we’re being completely honest…I didn’t want to give my fears a voice.”

He cut off, letting out a shaky breath, arms tightening for a moment.

“Thank you. For telling me.” Tiergan’s hand came to rest atop Prentice’s head, nestled in his body as he was. “And for listening to me.”

He hadn’t realized how it had weighed on him, just how heavy the fear was, pent up, shoved to the back of his mind and molding under the neglect he treated it with. All the months he’d spent oh so aware of what he’d lost, what he’d been mercifully allowed to have back. All the months he’d kept quiet in front of the kids, telling them everything was okay when he, himself, harbored unspoken terrors tingeing every word.

And the facade hadn’t fooled Prentice for a moment.

“I told you, it’s part of the deal, part of what we are. I listen when you need me too, and you listen when I need you. Because we want to and care. I care. There’s nothing to thank me for.”

“There are a million things to thank you for.”

For being alive. For being here.

“Please,” Tiergan continued, “let me appreciate you..”

“I do. Every day. You’re quite ridiculous with it at times,” Prentice laughed, pressing a kiss into his neck. “The kids are always embarrassed by us because of you.”

“I won’t apologize for that.”

“I’d never ask you to.”

Something in his words, the tone, nestled heavy over them, hushing them into a poignant quiet, the seconds sneaking past until Prentice shifted in his arms, palms rested over Tiergan’s heart as he pulled back just enough to meet his gaze.

“So where does that leave us?”

Tiergan thought it over for a moment, bracing himself as he ran his mind over the edges of the worries, the blades of glass poking and prodding, nestled in deep by the years of darkness he’d survived.

They still stung, would bleed if he pushed too hard. One night of confessions wasn’t enough to undo more than a decade of panic, of grief, of waking alone in the night. Sharing their fears didn’t erase them. When the sun rose, he’d still wonder whether this was something that would truly last, or if it would crumble like sand in his hands, slipping out of his grasp and washing away.

But now he could run his fingertips over the blades, their sharpness dulled to an ache that wouldn’t break skin at the gentlest touch. Each breath came easier, and the glass breaking into sand stilled, calm, washed clean beneath the waves even if it was still there.

“Better,” he finally answered, shifting so his hands were between them, their palms pressed together. “It leaves us better.”

Prentice smiled at that, a soft, private thing. “Better. I like that.”

He traced his finger over the lines in Tiergan’s palm, light touch sending shivers across his skin as Prentice started trailing up his own fingers. Tiergan watched the movement in silence, content to just be for as long as they could be.

He paused on his ring finger, fingertip lingering over the empty skin.

“You said something earlier,” he started, his tone shifting, and he had the sense whatever they were about to discuss was entirely different. But he wasn’t sure what it was.

After a few moments, Tiergan prodded. “What did I say?”

Prentice hummed, tapping against his ring finger a few times. “You said, ‘whatever we are.’ What are we to you, Tiergan?”

“We are…” he stopped, blinking. No answer came to mind, nothing he could put to words. “I…don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I was too caught up in having you back to worry about it.”

He nodded, then asked, “And if you did think about it. What would you want us to be?”

Eternal.

The word popped, unsolicited, into his head. He’d hadn’t even tried to think of an answer, it had provided itself.

“You thought of something,” Prentice noted after a moment.

“It’s silly.”

“We were just playing a game from when we were young where the whole point is teasing ridiculous authors.”

Tiergan could hear the laugh in the words, and sighed. “You’re right, as usual. Alright. When you asked…I thought of a word.” He took a breath, his heart taking off. “I want us to be eternal. I don’t want this to be temporary. I don’t want to lose you. I want to be yours, whatever way you’ll have me, for as long as we’re here.”

“Eternal?” Prentice toyed with his fingers, his focus on the ring in particular. “Not forever?”

“Either. Both. Anything you’re willing to give, I’ll take. If you’ll have me.”

“If I’ll have you,” he repeated, quiet, as though tasting the words, their weight on his tongue. “You are…more important to me than I can ever say, Tiergan. Of course I’ll have you. All of you, the good and the bad. You’re not going to lose me.”

Tiergan couldn’t hold back his smile, didn’t want to, not as Prentice leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together, cradling his cheek in the palm of his hand.

“And you?” he breathed. “What are we to you? What do you want us to be?”

Prentice hummed, and Tiergan swore it was nervous. “Eternal would be nice. But I’ve been thinking recently, your finger looks awfully bare.”

“My finger?”

“What would you prefer: silver or gold? Though I suppose we don’t need to limit ourselves to two options. You’d look good with something copper, or something darker.”

Tiergan leaned back, searching Prentice’s face, his eyes, oh so observant, so loving, eyes he hoped would never leave him again. Eyes watching every minute reaction. “What are you saying?”

Prentice took his hand, trembling, raising it to his lip. “You can be so dense at times, it’s adorable. I’m saying, if you’ll let me, I’d like to put a ring on your finger.”

Tiergan stared, heart pounding.

“I’d like to marry you, Tiergan.”

He blinked, staring and staring and staring, a warmth blossoming in his chest, a buzz building in every nerve and iota of his being, whiting out anything and everything in its path.

Prentice shifted, head tilting to the side. “Are you alright?”

A worry crease formed between his brow, lips hinting the beginning of a frown, and he swore he could hear his heartbeat through the air, matching his own.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you’re alright? Or yes--oh,” he let out a soft gasp as Tiergan’s arms crashed around him once more, pressing their bodies tight together on that sofa.

“Yes, I’m alright, yes, I’ll marry you. I never thought--I didn’t know--” he stumbled over the words, trying to say a million different things at once. I never thought I could have you, I didn’t know you wanted the same things I did, after Cyrah, with Wylie--

Prentice was laughing, bright, relieved, pulling back out of his embrace and searching his face, cupping it in his face and leaning in close, eyes alive.

And then his lips were on his, warm as the rest of him, soft, tender, smiling, breathing a contented sigh against his mouth, knee bumping into his leg as he moved in closer, dropping a hand to his chest and pressing against his heart.

Tiergan’s arms fell slack, trailing against Prentice’s sides and holding to the fabric, trying to pull him closer, eyes fallen shut as bliss, golden and comforting, rushed through him, blooming from his chest and spreading to every nerve in his system at the unending, undoing touch.

He wanted to live in the moment, the two of them eternal side by side, sensitive kisses loving him breathless until the end of time as he surrendered his body and mind to the wonder of Prentice Endal.

Prentice seemed perfectly content to let him.

He could burst from the joy of it.

Without warning, a resounding, world-ending crash reverberated through the room, a cacophony akin to the house collapsing

They sprung apart, gasping for air as they sat up, eyes wide and searching searching searching for the source, minds reeling towards attacks and explosions and the kids--

“Huh,” Prentice breathed, eyes scanning the room as the echoes faded.

All around them, books sat scattered, flung across the floor, flipped open to random pages in their fall. Piling haphazardly over each other, pages overlapped, covers pressed against each other, words blending into each other as the wooden floors disappeared beneath it all.

“I don’t think there are any books left on the shelves,” Prentice observed, tension draining from his body in the silence, leaning subconsciously into Tiergan, who’d gone rigid, pulling him closer as though he could shield him, save him from whatever was happening and offer himself in his place.

Glancing over the railing, he scanned the shelves, coming to the same conclusion. “I don’t understand, what hap--ah,” he managed, faintly.

His rigid posture melted into swaying, the room spinning as he tried to breathe, hand grasping for the cushion to steady himself as the reverb hit him, unable to focus on anything as his body tried to compensate.

“Tiergan? Tiergan.” Prentice tapped on his shoulder, pressing a hand to his forehead, his pulse.

“I’m…alright.” He took another breath, and the dizziness eased further, enough for him to lift his head and watch the anxiety ease in Prentice’s eyes, though they still searched, frantic, over every inch of him, fingers trailing in search of an answer.

Prentice exhaled. “Was that you?”

“I believe it was,” he answered, a burning heat rushing through his skin. He knew he must be bright red, and cleared his throat. “It wasn’t intentional. I was…excited.”

Brushing his locs back, Prentice huffed a laugh, looking at the carnage in amazement.

“If I’d known how you’d react, I would’ve asked you sooner.”

“Have you been thinking about it? Us?”

“Every day.”

Tiergan faltered for a moment, caught between the fading adrenaline and the absolute wonder threatening to burst him apart at the seams.

There’d be more to say, more to talk about, questions to ask, confessions to make, decisions to debate. What to do, the next step, what to tell the kids, what this meant, and rings. Rings and vows and so much to consider.

All he could think to say was, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He reached out, squeezing his hand, one without a ring but with the promise of one.

And then the door burst open.

[paragraph break]

Of all the nights he’d spent lurking, wide awake as the rest of the house lay quiet in the dark, never before had Tam found his heart pounding as hard as it did as he followed Wylie.

Reeling from their conversation, brother brother brother echoing in his head, it took him a moment longer than normal to start his usual methodic breakdowns.

There’d been a noise, a crash, and it’d come from inside the house.

Was it the Neverseen? Had their home been attacked? Both Wylie and Prentice had been targets in the past, two of them in one location could’ve been too good an opportunity to pass up. But Wylie had been outside with him, a more vulnerable position than inside. It didn’t make sense for them to be inside the house.

Was it Linh? Things could happen with her in the night. He’d woken up screaming to their water parents more times than he could count. But water splashed, it didn’t crash like that.

Was it Rayni? He hadn’t spent as much time with her, but he wouldn’t put midnight mischief past her. But her ability wouldn’t crash either, and devices were Dex’s territory, not hers.

All those thoughts filtered through his mind in the seconds it took for Wylie to open the door, pushing through.

“It’ll be fine, it’s probably nothing,” he said, trying to be reassuring, but Tam didn’t believe him.

What, like something had crashed for a good reason? Yeah right.

Banging shut behind them, they paused in the living room, Tam’s book from before still laying out on the cushions, page marked with a scrap of paper he’d stolen from the desk in the library. He’d been reading it when he’d heard Wylie’s soft cries and hadn’t bothered to put it away yet.

Tiergan had mentioned it a while back, so he’d been borrowing it from the shelves at night, working his way through it.

“It came from that way, right?” Wylie asked, pointing down the hall, towards where his bedroom was, a few rooms beyond it.

“I think so.” Corners flowing with shadows called to him, quieting his steps and gathering at his wrists, his fingertips, staining his nails black as they started moving, past his door.

Wylie made a noise, pointing ahead. “See, the light!”

Before he could follow his direction, pounding footsteps above caught his attention, and he stepped back, pressing his body to the wall as he raised his arms, shadows curling.

Linh and Rayni stopped halfway down the steps, her mouth falling open in confusion as she saw the two of them.

Tam dropped his arms, but kept the shadows close.

“Was that super loud and disruptive crash you?” Rayni asked, then squinted, looking him over. “No, it wasn’t. You’re way too wound up.”

Wylie made another noise. “It came from the library.”

He was still pointing; Tam looked.

Under the door to the library, a sliver of warm yellow light sliced into the dark house. Someone was in the library.

A good someone?

Wylie glanced at him once, a strange expression on his face he tried--and failed-- to contain as he started forward first, Tam still following behind, now with Linh and Rayni bringing up the rear.

With a burst, he shoved the door open, other hand raised, light flickering beneath and over his skin in a rainbow of hues in preparation, just in case.

Tam couldn’t see into the room beyond, but he watched Wylie’s shoulders loosen, the light dismissed as he dropped his hand.

“Huh,” he said.

“What?” Rayni asked, impatient, the sound of her foot tapping against the floor filling the hallway.

Instead of answering, Wylie stepped through the door, eyes on the floor, leaving the rest of them to follow.

“What,” Tam started, “the fuck.”

He’d stepped through after Wylie, shadows ready, but there wasn’t a shadow in sight anymore, not as his arms hung loosely at his sides, turning in a slow circle, surveying the damage.

Books scattered across the floor, piling on top of each other, pages bent at odd angles Tiergan would bemoan later. He hated to crease things. He’d said as much when he offered Tam the suggestions he’d been working through.

“Oh, hi,” Linh said, and when he looked at her, she was looking up.

Tam looked up.

Tiergan and Prentice looked back.

Prentice watched them as they stopped moving. “Hello.” He frowned, looking them over. “Were you all awake?”

Tam didn’t answer, leaving it to someone else as his gaze slid to Tiergan beside him, who rubbed at his temples, an uncharacteristic flush across his cheeks Tam was sure he wanted to know nothing about.

“If I hadn’t been, that awful crashing would’ve woken me up for sure. Do you hate books that much?” Rayni asked, toeing at a nearby cover before squatting next to it and picking it up. “Advanced Social Theory of the 1300s: A Guide to Intuition and Anomie,” she read aloud, then made a noise of disgust. “Nevermind, I get it now.”

“Sorry about that,” Tiergan said, leaning forward alongside Prentice so he could look down at them, too.

It was odd, having a conversation between two different floors.

“I…why…?” was all Wylie could manage, gesturing helplessly at the room, then back to his dads.

Tiergan’s face reddened further, wincing as he looked around. “It was an accident, I was excited--hey, why are you two all dirty?” he interrupted himself, looking between Linh and Rayni.

They both immediately hid their hands behind their backs, but that did nothing to disguise the scuffed, blackened knees and feet, evidence of their…whatever they’d been doing. The matching braids only made the two look more similar standing there next to each other.

“Nothing, we were just,” Linh floundered, “hanging out. Stargazing.”

Together? Linh and Rayni had been doing something together? Alone? And were both alive to tell the tale?

Was he the one dreaming?

She noticed his attention, and made a face that said, Don’t be so suspicious.

You’re being suspicious, his said back.

She scrunched her nose at him, effectively ending the conversation none but the two of them were privy to.

Tiergan was going to say something else, but cut off with a noise as he gazed around. “Ah, sh--shoot. Those creases are never going to come out. They were some of my favorites.” His eyes rested on something Tam couldn’t see from the bottom level, but he could only assume it was another pile of books crammed together. He’d wrecked the entire place, afterall.

It was impressive, if he was being honest. Usually only Sophie could cause that much damage with her head. If she even bothered to use it, that was. Then again, if she used it, then he’d have so much less to tease her about, and where was the fun in that?

“It’s alright, we can salvage this,” Prentice assured him, hand lingering on his shoulder, the fondness in the gesture visible even from this distance. Apologetic, he looked back down at them as he stood from the couch, purpose in his posture. “Sorry for disturbing you all. Would you mind helping? Or do you have other things to do at…” he trailed off, looking around.

“One in the morning,” Tam supplied for him, giving a nod of acknowledgement when Prentice thanked him.

Wylie and Linh spoke in tandem. “Of course.”

“It’ll go faster with extra minds,” Linh added, smiling that smile he’d once thought had disappeared for good.

So he added, “Sure.”

“Well,” Rayni looked between them all, “now I gotta help or I’ll look like an asshole.”

“You’re welcome to go do something else--” Tiergan started, but she cut him off.

“No no, I can’t have you all being better people than me; I’m helping. Shush. I’m not listening to whatever else you have to say.”

Tiergan closed his mouth as she held out an outstretched palm, silencing him.

“Well,” Wylie scratched at the back of his head, “we’re never going to get anywhere if we keep standing here.”

“I bet I fix exploded libraries better than you,” Rayni said to no one in particular, reaching out a hand as a conduit, lifting the topmost dozen or so books from the nearest pile.

To his utter amazement, it was Linh who responded.

“You forget, I spent years skill training in Exillium. Your Neverseen time can’t compete with that.” With a smirk, she reached out her hands and lifted twice as many books, reorienting them so they sat the right way, spines facing out.

Tam traded a glance with his brother, who looked just as surprised as him. Had Linh just casually mentioned her time with the Neverseen? What had they been doing?

He deadpanned, “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister? Also, I spent just as long at Exillium, so good luck.”

He lifted another pile off the floor, matching Linh in number.

Then, he added one more, just to spite her.

Wylie sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, but it didn’t hide his smile.

When Tam looked up, Tiergan and Prentice leaned side by side over the banister, watching over the four of them with something like awe, though it mixed with a healthy dose of confusion.

“Don’t bother organizing,” Tiergan said, rolling his wrists, preparing himself. “The system was haphazard to begin with. This will just make trying to find anything…interesting, to say the least.”

That seemed to be the cue, the six of them falling into the task in tandem, working side by side and around each other to grab books, smooth out the creases they could--some were hardly noticeable, but others would be permanently scarred by this night; all they could do was keep it from worsening--and shoving them back on the extensive shelves wherever they’d fit.

Linh, Wylie, Tiergan, and Prentice were all methodical about it, going shelf by shelf, filling one before moving on to the next.

Rayni and Tam, however, had different ideas.

“Do you enjoy causing chaos?” Tiergan asked Rayni as she snuck a book from the bottom floor onto the second, right where he’d been about to put one.

She smiled. “I’m helping! You said not to bother organizing.”

“I did,” he admitted, a rueful look adults sometimes got when dealing with smartass kids gracing his features. “I can’t deny that. It was implied we’d generally keep things where they were supposed to be, but I can’t argue with you. Or you,” he added to Tam, who was putting books upside down and backwards on the shelves. Just for the hell of it.

Tam tried to shrug nonchalant, but a bit of a smirk shone through.

Though if he ever needed to find one of the books he’d left backwards, it’d really come back to bite him in the ass. That was a problem for Future Tam, though, not him.

Prentice shook his head, but didn’t do anything to stop them, indulging their antics. “What were you kids doing up this late? You didn’t look dazed at all when you burst in.”

“Responsible things,” Wylie told him, right as Rayni muttered something to herself he didn’t quite catch.

He could’ve sworn it had something to do with cabinets.

Tam frowned then, turning towards Tiergan and Prentice. “What were you doing up this late? That ended in,” he gestured wildly towards everything, “this.”

Tiergan went red again, glancing at the couch, fingers floundering as he pressed his lips shut tight. Was he trying to avoid looking at Prentice? Because if so, he was failing miserably.

It was embarrassing to be around them sometimes, he had to admit.

“I just had a sort of…proposal, you could say,” Prentice explained, looking far too amused as he watched Tiergan cough. “Since we couldn’t sleep, just like the rest of you.”

He didn’t explain further, leaving the four of them to look suspiciously between each other.

They were over halfway through the mess, but that didn’t mean they were done, so they let it slide, chalking it up to more of their quirks. Living with Tiergan and Prentice was…interesting, to say the least. Between the homely baking, loving bickering, and the way they always seemed to learn towards each other without knowing it, you’d never know there was a near decades long gap between the two of them, that they’d only had each other back for months, that they’d ever been apart at all.

He wasn’t sure how much everyone else noticed, how much they saw. Maybe it was another symptom of shadehood like the insomnia, or maybe it was just the way he was, but Tam saw more than anyone else ever had.

Shadows hid secrets, but uncovered them just as readily for those willing to look.

Either way, he couldn’t watch one of them without seeing the other, in their expressions, their mannerisms, the word choice. Prentice didn’t exist without Tiergan, Tiergan without Prentice. Maybe they never had.

But tonight there was something…different, between the two of them. He just didn’t know what.

Rayni slid next to him, shoving books on his shelves. “I know I’m newer here, but I can’t be the only one thinking something’s is going on.”

“Oh definitely,” Wylie agreed, passing behind them, pretending to be very focused on smoothing out a few folds in a book. “They’re terrible at hiding it. How they kept secret identities for years is a miracle.”

“This is the most obvious secret huddle I’ve ever seen,” Linh said, joining the very obvious secret huddle.

Above them, they heard Prentice comment on how they were practically done, Tiergan replying saying he’d finished his half of the upstairs. Downstairs they were about the same. Only a few dozen books remained, and Wylie’d pressed out their creases, making them ready for their chaotic storage.

Steps sounded on the stairs, and they tried to act inconspicuous--Tam had never seen anyone fail as spectacularly at is as they did--scattering back towards the shelves, Tam stepping back to let Linh and Rayni lift and put away the final books, looking almost as good as new. Some of the volumes looked out of order. Tiergan could deal.

“Thank you,” Tiergan said, “for the help.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Linh said, kind as always, fiddling with the end of her braid. “I’m just sorry so many of your books got bent.”

Sighing, he nodded in agreement, surveying the room. “It is…unfortunate. But they’re just books. Since you’ve been kind enough to lend me your time, is there anything I can do for the four of you in return? I know it’s late, but--”

Rayni’s hand shot into the air. “Yes! You can tell us why you lovebirds keep looking at each other like that. You’ve done a horrible job hiding it. Not to be rude,” she tacked on at the end, to little effect.

The four of them turned expectantly towards the two of them in silent expectation.

Tam raised a brow.

Tiergan had flushed again, floundering about for words, trying to find something to say.

Prentice laughed, laying a hand on his arm, quieting him. “I told you they’re brilliant kids. There was no hope keeping it secret.”

“You were trying to?” Wylie asked, teasing.

Prentice thought for a moment. “No, I wasn’t. I was occupied with the mess, that’s all.”

Tam huffed out an impatient sound. “Okay, we get it, you’ve got something to share. Will you get on with it?”

“Please,” Linh added for him, kicking him lightly in the leg and looking not at all remorseful when he yelped.

Tiergan and Prentice shared a look, the kind that spoke without words, and after a moment turned back to look at them.

“How do you feel about weddings?”

[corruption-exe]

@abubble125 , I'm your secret santa! merry Christmas!

thank you, @song-tam for hosting this year's secret santa!

tagging @xanadaus bc he was curious

[indigothemuse]

Lemongrass Tea and Other Small Things

hi!! here's my KOTLC secret santa!! for @novaliae!! thank you so much to @song-tam for hosting this event!! it was super fun and i hope everyone else had a good time!

you can read it here on my ao3!

oh my god, and, of course, thank you so so much to @wonder-womans-ex for being a FANTASTIC beta, and the reason why it's coherent (im so sorry i forgot to mention you the first time around)

Being part of the group to create the Black Swan felt natural. Tiergan had never felt as though he turned his back on the rest of the elves. Weren’t they trying to create a better world for themselves? He sighed. He’d never imagined that this would be the outcome. Prentice had been lost for so long, so to only now get him back…

But only to get him back, memories almost lost. And…Cyrah. Tiergan had loved Cyrah, and her death had almost broken him completely after Prentice called Swan Song and his mind breaking.

Prentice was slowly coming back. It was a process, he had to remind himself. Losing your mind and then regaining it was practically unheard of. (Never mind Alden.) And Sophie…he felt grief for her. She had lost her childhood, turned into a soldier by not only circumstance, but by them. By him.

“I can hear you brooding. You can’t solve anything by being miserable.” Prentice leaned against the railing beside him, holding out a mug of tea. At Tiergan’s look, he smiled softly. “Lemongrass. You used to drink it when your anxiety got worse.”

Tiergan’s mouth felt dry. He hadn’t drunk lemongrass tea (or mint—Prentice’s preference) since the mind break. It tasted like home. By his smile, Prentice knew it.

“Thank you, even if you’re going to act insufferable about it.”

“Me? Insufferable? Never!”

“Mhm.”

Tiergan broke first, laughing into his cup. Prentice grinned. He took another sip of tea. It tasted, well…like lemon. But it reminded him of home, of sitting in Cyrah and Prentice’s home, of playing with a young Wylie. Prentice smiled at him, and the two stood in silence.

The silence breaks, just a few minutes later as Wylie, Linh, and Tam come home. They look happy, and Tiergan greets them warmly. He’s glad that they’re happy.

Linh is beaming, teasing Tam about something. His son The boy is blushing furiously, much to her delight. There’s water droplets hovering around her, a sure sign of her joy.

Wylie has such a fond look on his face, and Tiergan wishes, oh so desperately, that he could preserve this moment, forever. Prentice is laughing at something Tam said, face transformed by joy. He’s so alive.

He takes a sip of his tea, relaxing into the comfort it gives. And he watches, surrounded by his family.

Tiergan is going into his final year of regular Foxfire, before the elite levels, surrounded by his family. Prentice is draped across his lap, feet in Cyrah’s. Livvy is there too, all on the floor of Cyrah’s room.

They’re dressed in finery, preparing for her Winnowing Gala. Her hair is pulled back in an elaborate updo, gold threaded through the red strands. She’s beautiful, he thinks, and reaches across to squeeze her hand. She gifts him with a bright smile, eyes twinkling.

“Cy, hold still. You’re going to make me mess up!” Livvy has a makeup brush clutched in her hand, dipped in fine gold powder.

“Liv, it doesn’t matter—”

“It matters to me, hold on.” Tongue poking out, she dusts the gold across her eyelids.

Prentice sighs, leaning back against him. “I think I could just fall asleep like this.”

“Do it.”

A soft laugh. “I need to finish getting ready too.”

“Mm. You look fine.” He punctuates this with a soft kiss to his cheek. He smiles, clearly pleased.

“You smell like lemongrass. Did you get perfume?”

“Mhm. Kesler.”

“Nice. Maybe I should ask him for some.”

“What? For your boring tea?”

Prentice twists, a look of pretend outrage. “Hey! Excuse you, I have great taste!”

Tiergan can’t help the fond smile. “Sure, love.”

He scrunches his nose. Cyrah, done, moves closer, resting her cheek against his shoulder.

“Gross,” Livvy calls, clearly unbothered.

“The polycule is open for you! As we’ve said many times!”

“I’m good. Now, finish getting ready so we can go wow everyone with our hot gayness.”

Tiergan snorts and lets Prentice pull him to his feet. “Okay, I’m thinking of eyeliner.”

“Are we trying to give Cy’s parents a heart attack?”

“Mhm! It’ll be fun, baby!”

“I agree. Can you imagine Mom’s look?” She presses a kiss to his cheek.

He rolls his eyes, but leans against her for a moment.

“Right!” Livvy claps her hands a few minutes later, resplendent in a bright red dress, gold beads in her hair. “We ready?”

“Yep!” Prentice has a gold bracelet on, matching Tiergan and Cyrah. The three of them look like a set, and makes something inside him warm. They’re both beautiful, each positively striking in their splendor. (He could look at them forever, and never grow bored.)

Tiergan and Prentice take one of her arms, and together they walk down the stairs into a dazzling ballroom. It’s filled with young men, all vying for her attention. She graces them with one last smile, before sweeping into the crowd. Tiergan dances with Livvy, and then Soheila, Cyrah’s younger sister. They talk amicably, before the song ends, and he’s left alone.

He spends two dances leaning against the wall, watching his friends. Cyrah is a sight to see on the dance floor, her blue dress easily more magnificent than anyone else's. It makes sense, seeing as she’s the star of the night. Still, she’s beautiful in her element, a specter of powder blue and gold and shining red. I love you, he will say that night, later, when all three of them are in comfortable clothes and her makeup is gone and her hair is down, and he will find her just as beautiful.

Prentice too, is alluring. He’s in dark blue pajamas, lounging back on her bed, eyes closed. Maybe he is foolish, he thinks, but he kisses his forehead anyway, pulling a blanket over him. I love you, he has whispered over and over, and it’s never felt as true as it does right now.

He hasn’t said I love you since Cyrah died. It’s as though his heart has closed off, unwilling to let anyone near. But this is Prentice, he reminds himself, as they sit on the couch. His feet are back in Tiergan’s lap, as they so often were Before. His hands are holding a book, balancing it upon his legs. Prentice is drinking a cup of tea, eyes almost shut. He laughs a little at that. Some things don’t change. He had always been an early sleeper, the first to fall asleep anywhere. He keeps reading, only reaching over to take the cup away to place on the low table.

“I love you,” Tiergan breathes, oh-so-quietly, hoping Prentice hears but also wishing desperately that he doesn’t.

He wakes up the next morning underneath a blanket and resting against him. He’s warm. It’s like being a student all over again—falling asleep on sofas together, waking up late for class.

He’s not quite sure what woke him up until he hears the kids frantically whispering.

“I said to be quiet! Not to bump into anything!”

“I didn’t do it intentionally!” Linh whispers back to him, and he can practically see the twins locked in their quiet debate.

Wylie laughs quietly. “I’m sure they’re still asleep. Dad can sleep through anything, and I’m pretty sure Tiergan can too. Trust me, we could set off alarms and they’d sleep through the night.”

He’s not…wrong, exactly. Cyrah had been the early riser of the three, and she would wake them up in the morning. Tiergan would be content to sleep through the day, but he has to teach.

Oh no. He has to teach; he has a job. But he’s warm…hm. Would Leto care if he called in sick? Wait, no, he has a meeting with Sophie. Hmm.

He waits for a few minutes until the kids leave, and carefully moves off of Prentice, fixing the blanket. Tiergan can’t resist, and presses a light kiss to his forehead. “Sleep well, love.” I love you. He goes to get ready for the day, leaving a short while later, brushing his hair back into a bun.

With a quick, “Foxfire!” he arrives on the campus, giving a quick greeting to some of the prodigies. At least he gets to skip orientation. In his office, he sits down, pulling out a folder.

He has to prepare for his first prodigy—a level 4 student named Sage Keyston. They’re working on better mental concentration, especially when it comes to transmitting.

It’s a good lesson, and Sage makes a lot of progress.

“Good job today, Sage. I’d recommend practicing with someone else too. If you’d like, I can send you a list.”

“Sure! That sounds awesome! Thanks, Tiergan!” Sage gives a cheerful wave and flounces out, going to their next class.

He only has a few moments before Sophie’s coming inside, giving him a nervous smile. Her hair’s been braided with small flowers, possibly courtesy of Biana. “Hey, Tiergan.”

“Sophie. Do you need something?” She’s not scheduled to come in until later, close to the end of the day.

“I had a question. It’s, uh, a little personal though.”

“Okay…why don’t you sit down? I have some tea, if you’d like it.” She’s trembling slightly, he notes as she sits down.

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Sophie is devoutly staring at her hands, and he turns to give her some privacy. He doesn’t have lemongrass here, but he does have rose tea. While he makes them each a cup, she starts talking. “I… being queer isn’t really accepted here, is it?”

Tiergan flinches, almost splashing himself. “Er, not really. Most younger elves are more accepting, but you know how traditional older elves can be.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask what brought this on?” He hands her the cup, and she hugs it to herself.

“It’s uh. I think I like Biana.”

“Ah. Any reason why you came to me?”

She peers at him from underneath her bangs. “You’re the only adult who wouldn’t be weird about this, or strange for me to talk to, especially without anyone listening.”

He nods, taking a seat. “I see. Well, I’m happy to help, if I can. As I said, most of the older elves aren’t quite as approving since it’s a “bad match”. However, I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me. Hell, I don’t think it even could.” He gives a soft smile, glancing at the photograph on his desk. It’s from when they graduated—the three of them, all smiling and pleased. Sophie is still clutching at the cup desperately, and he aches. He knows.

“I just…I know it’s natural, and normal, and perfectly fine. But that was back in the Forbidden Cities, with humans. And here…everything is so focused on getting a good match that even the idea of a bad match…”

“It was hard. But, Sophie, it gets better. Trust me on this one. It might hurt, and it might be difficult, but it’s worth it.”

And really, it is, isn’t it? He’s…he’s happy now. She smiles tentatively at him, and drinks some of the tea.

“Thanks, Tiergan. I think I’m gonna go to my next class. Can you write me a note?” “Of course, Sophie. Good luck.” He writes out a quick tardy pass and hands it to her. She grins, and leaves.

And there he is. Back in his office, on his own. He drains his tea, and glances down at his imparter.

Prentice: Tiergan, how important was the red vase to you?

Tiergan: What did you do.

Prentice: Absolutely nothing, I’m a perfect angel and you know it

Tiergan: Mhmm, sure. And to answer your question: No, I don’t care about the red vase. Please sweep up the glass so no one gets hurt.

Prentice: Sure thing! Have fun at work, love

His face warms, and he taps out a quick reply. I love you. He doesn’t send that, but the thought lingers throughout the day.

He goes home, bearing a message from the kids. Prentice is waiting for him on the sofa, reaching out to pull him into a hug.

“Good evening. How was work?”

“Not too bad. Sage made a lot of progress.”

“That’s excellent! I’m glad they’re improving.”

“Mhm. Also, the kids said they were going to go to Havenfield.”

“Sounds fun.” Tiergan adjusts to sit sideways on his lap, leaning his head against his shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hm?”

“Nothing important, love. Do you want me to read outloud?”

“Mhm.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

This time, it doesn’t have to just be in his thoughts. This time, he says it, soft as it may have been.

And so, the night draws to a close: the two tucked away in their own little world, reading. And he’s happy.

I love you.

--------------------

And that's that! thank you so much for reading, and i hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it <3

[cogaytes]

Family Remedy

here it is: my secret santa for @ahyesitsshmeegus :D thank you to @song-tam for organizing!

my prompt was to let keefe be happy for once, so here’s a little drabble for an au where elwin and keefe are half siblings. they’re brothers your honor :]

--

Elwin is too young to bear the weight of the world—the weight of his father's expectations—but he does so anyway. The Sencen name holds a certain weight to it, he's been assured, and his actions must reflect that. He mustn't be too loud, too foolish, too stupid. But he holds his head high, like his father, and he shows no weakness, and he gets through the day however he has to.

Elwin is still far too young when he rushes home from the Silver Tower to find his mother on her deathbed. He's by her side, too, when she succumbs three days later. It was a rare illness, the physician tells him, something whose cure was beyond the reach of even the best of elven medicine. Elwin decides from that moment that he will change this. Flashing—the last gift she gave him—makes him especially suited for being a physician, lending itself well to this personal quest. Leaping straight to Foxfire after her planting, he throws himself into the biological studies; he graduates from the elite levels with the promise of an internship under the best of elven physicians. It takes him ten years, but he does manage to find a cure for her illness. No more elven children will lose a parent.

What he does not manage to find a cure for, however, is his father's grief. It changes him. He's sharper, now. More quick to anger. He marries again within six years—a tall woman with a haughty tilt to her chin. The new stepmother, Lady Gisela, doesn't particularly care for Elwin. He doesn't particularly care for her either, and as glares from his father turn into screaming matches and broken vases, he gives up on tolerating either of them. The new house he builds for himself is called Splendor Plains, and it's strange in the most perfect, most Elwin way imaginable. His father will never visit him there.

***

Eighteen years later, Elwin sets foot in Candleshade for the first time in a decade. He takes a moment to adjust his appearance: his hair, tied back in a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. His tunic, the only one he owns without some sort of animal pattern, carefully selected to best adhere to his father's selective standards of grooming. This is not the time for starting a fight…not if he wants to meet his baby brother.

Keefe is a scrap of a thing, lanky for two years old, with a wide grin plastered across his face and limbs that always seem to end up in places he hadn't meant them to. His energy is boundless, and Elwin feels more than sees his father's frown as the two of them watch him bounce around the room. He doesn't let that stop him from dropping to one knee and meeting Keefe's eyes across the room. 

"Hey," he murmurs. Keefe seems suspicious of him, eyeing him warily as Elwin tries for a smile. "I'm Elwin. Your brother." Though Keefe shrinks away slightly as Elwin brings his arm out from behind his back, his eyes widen at the stuffed gulon. He toddles over and reaches for it. Elwin chuckles. "Like her?" Keefe's toothy smile is more than enough answer. He gently lifts the gulon from Elwin's outstretched hands and runs his stubby fingers over the soft plush. "You want to name her, then?"

Keefe pauses to consider. A wicked smirk slowly grows across his face, and he proclaims, "Mrs. Stinkbottom!" Elwin can't help but laugh, both at Keefe's self-assured declaration and the twin looks of horror on his father and Lady Gisela's faces.

"Absolutely not," Lord Cassius snarls. "Give me that." 

Elwin manages to intercept his father before he gets to Keefe. "Here, Keefe. Let me keep her safe for you." It's a struggle to keep tugging the newly christened Mrs. Stinkbottom from Keefe's grasp as his little brother's eyes fill with tears.

"No!" he yells, "I want her! Give her back!"

Elwin gives him the closest thing to a comforting smile he can manage. He feels a swell of rage rising in his stomach, and it's all he can do to tie it in a knot and shove it back down. Anger won't do him any good. Not in front of Keefe. Not right now.

"I'll take care of her for you," he says instead, "I promise." Keefe shoots him a glare full of spite and suffering. He storms from the room, and Elwin can hear his stomps echo as he unleashes the full force of his fury on every single stair in the place. For a moment, he and his father and his stepmother only stare at each other.

"What were you thinking? Bringing him foolish crap like that?" growls Lord Cassius at last.

Elwin takes another deep breath, and when he speaks again, it’s in the mildest tone he can muster. "Stuffed animals aren't foolish. I still carry mine around."

"And you shouldn't; it's improper—"

"Honestly, do you let the kid have any sort of—"

"Elwin Sencen," his father thunders.

When Elwin smiles, it's cold as ice. "It's Heslege now, actually."

Cassius Sencen is speechless. For once in his life. "What—since when?"

"Since I moved out." It's hard to keep satisfaction from bleeding through in the edges of his voice, so he gives in to the urges to gloat. "Now, it's been wonderful catching up with you, but I really must be off. I've been appointed Physician at Foxfire, you see, and it comes with all sorts of important duties. Gisela, you're a royal pain as always." With all the dignity he can muster, he sweeps from the room.

***

Elwin doesn't see Keefe again until he's a Level One. He barely recognizes his little brother when he bounds into the Healing Center, all wheeling arms and legs and self-assured smirks. But his energy slows to a dull murmur when he locks eyes with Elwin. 

"Oh," he mutters, staring at the ground, "it's you."

Elwin can't help but smile, despite the teen's sullen attitude. "Hey, Keefe." Keefe doesn't look up, so Elwin busies himself studying his brother's form for any sign of whatever injury's brought him here. He also can't help but check for bruises. Just in case. "So, what happened?"

"What?" Keefe finally raises his head, but still refuses to meet Elwin's gaze.

"To bring you here. You're injured, right?"

"Oh. That." Keefe shuffles his feet. "My Elven History session was really boring and I didn't want to go." And Elwin would hear the lie in his voice without noticing the way he hid his left hand behind his back.

"Show me." Keefe produces the offending hand grudgingly. Elwin whistles at the long, deep cut slicing across his palm. "How'd you manage that one?"

"Universe." Keefe's grunted answer is all Elwin needs; he's treated more than enough mishaps from that particular class. Bustling between shelves and cabinets, Elwin searches the racks for the particular ointment he likes to use for cuts from broken glass.  He stops to give Bullhorn a scratch under the chin before he returns to his patient.

"Oh, have you met Bullhorn?" he adds, hoping to distract Keefe as he applies the gooey purple paste to Keefe's cut. It's not enough, though, to prevent Keefe's subtle wince at the initial sting of the ointment. 

"Bullhorn?" asks Keefe, and the banshee yawns at the sound of his name. "Whoa, you've got a pet banshee? That's awesome!" And this, this is the bright Keefe Elwin knows and loves.

Elwin grins. "Right?"

"How long've you had him?" He reaches for Bullhorn, and to Elwin's shock, Bullhorn lets him pat his head.

"'Bout a year. He likes you, you know. Doesn't usually let anyone but me touch him."

Keefe rips his hand away as if he's been burned. "Oh."

"Say, Keefe, how're you—"

But Keefe is already getting up and backing towards the door. "Thanks for the stuff for my hand. See you." He turns and sprints from the room before he's even made it over the threshold.

***

Keefe doesn't come back to the Healing Center for the rest of the year, and all of Level Two. It's not till the beginning of Level Three that he comes in dragging Sophie Foster. Keefe with Sophie is the most comfortable Elwin's ever seen him in his own skin, and Elwin is grateful for her—both for that, and for bringing Keefe back into his life with her frequent Healing Center trips.

Midterms brings a more unpleasant family member back into his life: Cassius Sencen. He's just passing through the hallways when he overhears the elf. He's yelling—of course he's yelling—at Keefe, who stares at his shoes with hunched shoulders. He's not quite cowering, but he's not quite standing tall and defiant either. Gisela stands next to him, and Elwin can catch her murmuring something about "A 92 isn't so—" and "Let the boy be."

It's not even a conscious decision he makes to intervene. With three long strides, he's planted himself in between his father and his little brother. He's several inches shorter, but he'll be damned if he can't manage a threatening glare nonetheless. "Well, Father dearest. What's going on here, exactly?"

"These are Sencen matters," Cassius spits, and it's obviously meant to be some sort of great, crushing blow. Elwin brushes it off like nothing.

"You're screaming at my brother in the middle of the hallway." Elwin cocks his head, an unspoken challenge lingering in the air. "I'd like you to stop, please."

Cassius recoils at that last word, barbed as it was meant to be. "I can speak to my son any way I like."

Elwin keeps his voice soft. Dangerously so. "Allow me to rephrase that: Fuck. Off. You treat Keefe like shit, and you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as him, let alone speak to him that way. He will not be burdened by your presence any longer, as he and I are leaving. Goodbye." And before he can talk himself out of it, he grabs Keefe's arm and marches him off to the Healing Center, leaving Cassius and Gisela sputtering in their wake.

He knows he's done the right thing, though, when Keefe flips his parents the bird as they hurry away.

***

"Are you okay?" is the first question Elwin asks Keefe when they arrive at the Healing Center.

"Yeah," Keefe breathes, as if he can't believe what he just saw happen. "That was amazing."

Elwin chuckles. "It certainly felt good."

"The looks on their faces," Keefe crows, punching the air with both fists. He flops backwards onto a cot, staring dreamily at the ceiling.

"What was he so mad about?"

"Eh, my midterm grades. Got a 92 in Elven History."

Elwin shakes his head, burying his face in his hands. "That's an excellent grade."

"Not enough for Daddy dearest," Keefe mutters darkly. He tosses a pillow at the wall. Elwin catches it as it bounces off.

"Believe me, I know," he says gently. "I grew up with him, same as you." Keefe looks away. "I'm sorry, Keefe. I should have been there."

"Doesn't matter. He would've kicked you out anyway even if you'd tried to visit." But the hunch to his shoulders tells a different story. Elwin reaches for him.

"I should have been there anyway." Keefe freezes at his touch—doesn't pull away, but doesn't lean into it either. "I'd like to be there starting now, though, if that's okay."

His little brother lets out a breath, and then shifts on the cot, letting Elwin's hug take his weight for him. "Okay," he breathes, and wraps his arms around Elwin.

They sit there, for a moment, just enjoying getting to hug one another for the first time. Then Elwin gets up. "I have something for you."

"Is it a tunic that says Lord Awesomeness? Or a stink bomb? Or a—" His guesses are cut off by the sight of the green, sparkly gulon plushie Elwin pulls out of the cabinet. "No way—" he breathes.

"Remember Mrs. Stinkbottom?" 

Keefe reaches for her, and Elwin's heart warms watching his brother trace his fingers over her the way he had that first night. "You kept her?"

Elwin's mouth opens to reply, but the hot tears suddenly filling his eyes nearly prevent the words from getting out. "Of course. She's yours, now. Always was, always will be."

"Dad won't let me have her," Keefe mumbles.

"Keefe, you think I'm letting you go back there?" 

The other boy gapes at him. "He'll be mad, and—"

"I just told him to fuck off; he's already mad enough." Keefe manages a laugh at that reminder. "But it doesn't matter, Keefe. I don't want you in his home anymore." His brother mumbles something. "Sorry?"

"Haven't got anywhere else to go," Keefe repeats, louder this time, and Elwin's heart just about breaks.

"Move in with me," he begs fiercely, "come live with me at Splendor Plains. You and Mrs. Stinkbottom both." 

Keefe raises his eyes to meet Elwin's, filled with a fragile sort of hope. "Really?"

"Of course." Elwin pulls him into another hug and Keefe melts into the touch, resting his head on his brother's shoulder despite being the taller of the two, and after a moment Elwin feels tears soaking through his tunic. Mrs. Stinkbottom is still clutched tightly in Keefe's right hand. And Elwin holds him, content just to have his brother in his arms.

After a moment, Keefe giggles softly.

"What?" Elwin asks. 

A wicked grin spreads across Keefe’s face. "Let me be there when you tell Dad."

Elwin tries for a wry smile. "I can try to make that happen." Meeting Keefe's eyes, he ruffles his hair, and his brother yelps in mock-indignation.

"Hey, Elwin?" he asks after a second.

"Yeah?"

"Love you."

His smile is wet, but Elwin still manages, "Love you, too."

[squishmallow36]

You're My Aurora Borealis

@purplesoup-lad-le You were my Secret Santa! I tried to add as much Dizznee and Fedex as I possibly could in this thing. I don't think there was much more that could've been added. This fic takes place within the Keeper of the Lost Prepositions Universe, but it isn't necessary and the spoilers are very very light if you haven't finished it.

And @song-tam you suffered through my ramblings because I couldn't talk about my ideas with everybody!

Word Count: 5.4k

Tw: food, light swearing, Alden mentions, the end is probably really cheesy

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @kamikothe1and0lny @nyxpixels @florida-preposterously @poppinspop @uni-seahorse-572 @solreefs @theseasonismerrybutimnot @rusted-phone-calls @when-wax-wings-melt @ahyesitsshmeegus @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizzknees @abubble125 @hi-imgrapes @callum-hunt-is-bisexual @xanadaus @callas-pancake-tree @hi-my-name-is-awesome @katniss-elizabeth-chase @cherryys-stuff @arson-anarchy-death

On Ao3 or below the cut!

    Fitz shivers. 

    It might be the cold, it might be the gnawing pit of dread in his stomach, or it might be Dex’s hand clasped around his own. 

    A gust of wind rushes past, chilling Fitz’s already frozen fingers clasped around too many tubs of plastic containers filled with mallowmelt and other sugary goods. 

    Yeah, it’s probably the weather. 

   Rimeshire is pretty much always freezing--a byproduct of the latitude of the Gloaming Valley--despite Elvin thermoregulators. There’s even several centimeters of snow on the ground, filthy from the months the majority of it has spent there. 

    The last time the grass could be seen, Fitz was still speaking to his father. 

    His eyes flicker to the horizon, just beginning to turn orangish with a sunset, small stratus clouds reflecting the warm tones, making him want to sit here on the porch and watch it. 

    Instead, his stomach growls, making the fear he’s trying to ignore that much more apparent. And studying the fine silver details around Rimshire’s door is quickly becoming insufficient. 

    Fitz feels a soft squeeze on his hand, dragging him back to reality. And by reality he means Dex’s dimples. 

    That’s certainly one way to simultaneously calm him down and cause his chest to tighten at the same time. 

    “Hey,” Dex whispers, barely audible beneath the blood rushing through Fitz’s ears. 

    “Don’t give me that look,” Fitz snaps. 

    “I’m not giving you a look.” Dex closes xor eyes and faces the opposite direction just to prove his point. 

    Fitz rolls his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

    “Just--just think of it like a normal family dinner. You’ve suffered through several of those before.”

    Fitz forces himself to exhale. “Dex, I know you mean well, but don’t. You know as well as I do that trying to reason either of us off the edge doesn’t work.” 

    “That’s just because I’m good at arguing against you when I don’t want to do something.” 

    “Well, I graduated with Honors from the Keefe Hesledge University of Being a Tosser.”

    “You say that but then you don’t seem to use your degree.”

    Fitz absent-mindedly rolls his ankle. “That’s because I don’t enjoy using it, not because I failed most of my classes.”

    “You know, every time you bring this up I tell you to remind me to see the curriculum the next time we see Keefe, and yet that hasn’t happened yet. I need to see how it let you out.”

    Fitz stops. “...Are you trying to make me mad to distract me from the fact that I am currently standing outside my boyfriend’s house with a copious amount of stress-baked, questionably edible things?”

    Dex blushes. “Yes,” xe lies. At least he’s consistent. 

    “And how well did that plan work out for you?”

    “It was going pretty well, then someone had to figure out my master plan. That was very inconsiderate of you.”  

    Fitz takes a breath. “I apologize in advance for messing up your Gloamhenge. Whatever I inevitably do, I’m sorry.” 

    Fitz watches Dex as xe processes this, trying to find the best way to tell him to shut up without leaving himself open for counterarguments. “You’re gonna have to bring your A game, Fitzy. I have a feeling the Triplets will make it their personal mission to screw everything up the fastest.”

    Fitz decides to give him that. “Yeah, that sounds on brand.”

    “Okay. So we’re good? We’re fine? We’re mildly okayish enough to continue functioning for one evening?”

    Fitz has to hold back a smile. It’s the exact thing they’ve said to each other too many times to be healthy but now it’s lost most of its actual meaning because of semantic satiation--oh, Exile, is he actually learning things from Dex? This is terrifying. 

    “I’m not sure I’d go that far, but sure. It can’t go much worse than a certain dinner with someone.” 

    Dex looks just a little murderous at the reference to Alden. “Is it really necessary to bring that up every single time?”

    “Yes, because it was glorious and you should regret not being there.”

    “Oh, trust me, honey, it would’ve had the same outcome, just way faster.” Dex smiles. 

    Fitz’s heart still flutters a bit, even after however many months it’s been. “And there’s scary!Dex. Lovely. I always love being mildly afraid of you.” 

    “That’s exactly what I’m here for.”

    Fitz fakes a gasp. “Preposition.”

    “Oh, great. Don’t mind me as I pull a Henry David Thoreau.”

    Hey, I told xem about that. I do exist somewhere in his brain. I didn’t expect that. 

    Thoreau basically got angry at society--honestly, mood--so he went and lived in a cabin in the woods for like two years and wrote an infuriatingly dense book. And now he’s like human famous or something because of it. 

    “No, don’t do that! Don’t leave me alone with these people!” Fitz jokes. 

    Dex laughs, knocking on the door. 

    Juline opens it much too quickly to honestly believe she wasn’t eavesdropping, but at least it wasn’t Bex. And if that’s the bar, you know you’re in for a wild ride. 

    Oh, who am I kidding? These are the Dizznees. We knew that coming into this. 

    “Aw, Fitz, you didn’t have to bring anything. Come in, come in.” Juline exclaims, stealing his baked goods from him, probably never to be seen again. It won’t be the first time the Triplets have chewed their way through a plastic container. 

    Wait, no. That was the squirrels getting into the Everglen garbage can. 

    “I tried to stop him, trust me,” Dex says, deadpan. “Also trust me when I say he would be living in a cave on the coast of Lumenaria Island if he didn’t bake.” 

    “I am not as bad as Keefe,” Fitz argues, voice cracking embarrassingly, stripping him of any credibility he could’ve had. 

    “Aren’t you living at Candleshade in an attempt to avoid your father?” 

    “We do not acknowledge that wanker as being biologically related to me unless it’s for comedic purposes,” Fitz snaps.

    Before Dex can come up with a coherent response, the Triplets have seemingly sensed Fitz’s presence as they swarm him, nearly knocking him over. 

    His knee wails in protest at the attack of his ankles and--ow!

    “Did one of you just bite me?”

    The only response is unintelligible screaming. But wait--is Bex laughing harder than before? That little--.

    “I’m here to eat dinner, not to be dinner!”

    Dex turns away to hide the fact that xe’s laughing, but it doesn’t work when his shoulders shake that much, and Juline even has a hard smile. 

    “Speaking of dinner, it’s almost ready, so make yourself comfortable until then. I will be making sure Kesler hasn’t, in my absence, blown up the kitchen.” 

    “Hey, it’s been two whole weeks since then!” Kesler yells from the kitchen over the sound of the vent hood. 

    Juline turns and walks towards the kitchen, yelling, “You haven’t had many opportunities in those two weeks. I don’t trust you!” 

    Fitz smiles. “Hey, that kind of sounds like you after you found out about my relationship--or, more accurately, lack thereof--with recipes.” 

    Dex begins explaining, talking more with his hands than actually talking, “Baking is a chemical reaction, so that means it’s alchemy you can eat, and while you really shouldn’t eat anything in the lab because it all tastes bad anyway--don’t worry, I checked--it’s still a science and that means it needs exactness! Not just, oh, a little baking soda here and, yeah, a little flour there! No! You need order! And structure! Not this absolute madness!”

    “Don’t hurt yourself, love.” 

    The Triplets laugh. 

    “I’ll hurt myself if I want to hurt myself. You can’t tell me what to do,” pouts Dex.

    “You’re not smacking yourself in the eye again, Dex.”

    “That wasn’t my fault. You got me started on the types of Supernovae.” 

    “That was for my Universe final. What else was I supposed to do?”

    “I don’t know--Bex, why are you looking at me like that?”

    She only responds with indecipherable giggling, burying her face in Fitz’s jerkin instead of confronting reality. 

    “Exile, you’re insufferable,” Dex complains. 

    “That’s what I’m here for, Dear Brother,” replies a voice that’d probably be Bex if she wasn’t hiding. 

    Dex and Fitz lock eyes, simultaneously mouthing ‘preposition’ and collapsing into a fit of silent giggles. 

    “Can you maybe not sound like Biana?” Fitz asks the tumor that’s now permanently attached to his leg. 

    “No,” comes her muffled response. 

    “Is your stubbornness by chance genetic?” Fitz asks Dex.

    “Not to my knowledge. What on Earth would make you think that?” Dex asks, trying and failing to hold back a smile. 

    That adorable smile. How the Exile am I supposed to function with those dimples? It’s not fair. 

    Fitz shakes his head, shuffling over to the couch. It takes the same amount to get comfortable as for Juline to call, “Dinner’s ready!” causing a Triplet stampede as they rush to their seats. 

    There’s a lot of yelling, and several alleged thrown elbows. One would think they would have assigned seats by now, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. 

    “Don’t you, I don’t know, want to go reserve your seat?” Fitz asks, still trying to get off the couch. It’s like a black hole. Except it’s dark blue. 

    “I think I threatened them sufficiently this afternoon. It should be fine,” Dex replies.

    I don’t want to know what that means. 

    Fitz’s knee groans as he stands, finding two seats actually next to each other for once. Dex’s threats might have actually worked. That’s scarier than it should be.

    He plops himself down in the right seat so he doesn’t get elbowed by Dex and his left-handedness. 

    Looking around the table, Fitz sees a combination of normal foods and, for lack of a better word, Dizznee foods. 

    The glasses of Lushberry juice are standard enough, as are the mashed carnissa root and umber leaves. 

    But then there’s a solid, opaque pink dish that jiggles when it’s moved and tastes sweet, like fraiseberries, and doesn’t seem to belong on a dinner table. It seems more like a dessert, but then Fitz remembers his baked goods he brought. 

    Yeah, Juline was probably planning on that. 

    The Triplets inhale it like there’s no tomorrow, using butter knives as weapons to keep the others away from it. 

    Then there’s a casserole dish with grated breadfruit, covered in a creamy, stringy, delicious yellow substance that got slightly crunchy on the edges. 

    “Cloudberry?” Juline offers, holding out a bowl of golden-yellow berries. 

    Fitz takes one, ripping off a single drupelet and popping it into his mouth. It bursts with a light pressure, exploding sweet and sour flavours across his taste buds. 

    He’s going to be kidnapping that bowl later. Might eat the glass itself. 

    Fitz glances over to Dex to find xem watching him and smiling. For someone who isn’t a telepath, xe’s very good at knowing what he’s thinking. Annoyingly good. 

    Bex leans over her mountain of food, butter knife grasped in her hand. “So, Fitzy…”

    “Congratulations, I am already afraid.”

    “Is Biana by any chance of mercy single?”

    This is the third time you’ve asked this week. Do you think I wouldn’t keep you updated?

    “Before I answer that, you have to be aware of the fact that Bi doesn’t tell me anything. So, to my knowledge, yes. But my knowledge is pretty much zero.”

    Bex swears, stabbing her knife into the container of butter. “Any update on Amy?”

    “If there was, I would have held a whole press conference the millisecond I heard anything at all,” Dex answers tiredly. 

    “Nanosecond,” Bex corrects. 

    “Planck time,” counters Dex. 

    Bex considers that. “No physics allowed in this house.” 

    “Then have fun as all your atoms explode because the strong force isn’t holding your atomic nuclei together anymore.”

    “I will.” Bex crosses her arms, but only long enough to realise that prevents her from shoveling food in at light speed. 

    “No talk of exploding anyone at the dinner table!” Juline reprimands. “Not after last year!”

    Fitz leans over to Dex, whispering, “What happened last year?”

    “Just put that on the list of things I say I’ll explain and then never end up doing.”

    Fitz nods. “Gotcha.” 

    The room is oddly silent for a moment--the longest possible length of time in the Dizznee household it seems--before Kesler asks, “So, Fitz, are you ready for the Gloamhenge quiz tonight?”

    “There’s a quiz? Oh, what am I saying? Of course there’s a quiz. Where else would Dex get it from? Oh, great, preposition. But my point still stands.” 

    “At best, it sits,” Dex mumbles, and Fitz glares at xem. 

    Kesler laughs. “Relax, I’m just messing with you.”

    “...I should make that a thing next year though.” Fitz holds his head in his hands as Dex writes that down. 

    “Do you see what you’ve done? You’ve given him ideas. There’s nothing more dangerous,” Fitz grumbles. 

    “No, Dex. You would make all the questions incredibly specific and then you would cackle the entire time we were struggling to answer them,” Kesler predicts very accurately. 

    “No, I wouldn’t,” Dex argues. Some might even say whines. 

    “Yes, you would,” Rex states. “You’ve given me like ten programming pop quizzes and that’s exactly what you do.”

    Dex puts xor hands on xor hips. “Fine then. How about you make me a quiz. Show me how it’s done.”

    Fitz places a hand on Dex’s, gently tugging it away, quietly promising, “I’ll make you a quiz. I know you have a very unhealthy relationship with Kahoot and I will very much enable it to the best of my abilities.”

    “Thank you,” Dex says softly, smiling just enough to show a single dimple and laces their fingers together. 

    Fitz melts into a puddle of Fitz-goo. This is incredibly unfair and it should not be allowed. 

    “Hey, Dex! Did you tell him about the cinnamon competition?” One of the Triplets--probably Lex because they’re the one that hasn’t caused a catastrophe yet today--asks. 

    “I told you, I’m not adding that to the official Google Doc of festivities. It was a one time thing, and I’d like to keep it that way. Let it live in our memories in its true glory. Don’t spoil it with a sequel. You know those are never as good as the original.”

    “Except for Shrek,” Lex inconveniently points out. 

    “Shrek is an outlier and should not have been counted.” Dex looks at Fitz. “And, no. You don’t get to hear about it. I don’t want to think about it ever again.”

    “What’s so bad?” Lex asks. “I thought sugar and spice makes everything nice.”

    “So does crack though,” Rex chimes in, and Fitz gets the feeling that isn’t the first time that exact exchange of phrase has occurred. 

    “That’s why we host the cinnamon competition. Double the nice. Duh.”

    “Oh. That makes a lot of sense now.” Rex’s attention turns back to the mashed carnissa root on his plate. 

    “And that is why we have a lock on the spice cabinet.”

    “Come on, do you really think a little metal’s going to stop us?” Bex asks. 

    “No. You’d chew through the wood first,” Dex replies like xe’s thought about it at length. Which he probably has. 

    Lex argues, “I’d at least try to pick it.”

    Fitz expects Dex to pull out the good old Yoda quote, but instead xe says, “It’s not a Masterlock. It has to be at least marginally better than absolutely useless.”

    “I can handle it. I’m cool like that.” The moment Lex says that is also the moment that they take a sip of Lushberry juice and cough on it. 

    “Remind me to add that to the very long list of reasons why I’m never getting them a lockpicking kit,” Dex says, taking a bite of an umber leaf. 

    “Does that mean you’ve neglected to get me one for the,” Lex counts on their fingers, “twenty-seventh Gloamhenge in a row?”

    Dex nods as Fitz asks, “Wait, how do those maths work?”

    “Okay, first of all, getting things for other people isn’t even a part of the Gloamhenge tradition. You just want things so you try to add it every time. But, to answer your question, Fitz, there are two a year, one on the spring equinox, and one on the fall equinox. Am I really that bad of a teacher or were you not listening yesterday?”

     “...the latter,” Fitz admits begrudgingly. 

    It’s not my fault, it’s your dimples. I am a very weak man. 

    Dex sighs. “What am I going to do with you?” 

    “Tell me to take notes.” Fitz suggests. “Maybe I’ll be too busy doodling in the margins or maybe I’ll actually listen.” 

    “Or I could threaten a quiz at the end.”

    “Why are we back to this? I’m already under constant threat of pop quiz at any time you’re bored enough to make a Kahoot. Which is at all times!”

    “At least you’re aware of the danger. Not all are so lucky.”

    “You mean Sophie, don’t you?” Fitz guesses. 

    “Mmhmm, yes, exactly, correct, very good. One point of extra credit to be redeemed during the next pop quiz you inevitably fail.”

    “That’s not terrifying at all.” Fitz turns to Dex’s parents. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with him for so long.”

    Kesler is laughing, enjoying this almost as much as Bex is, which is saying something. 

    Juline, on the other hand, says, “Xe gets it from his father,” looking pointedly at Kesler. He stops laughing abruptly with a painful sound. 

    “I’m full,” Lex complains, leaning back in their chair. 

    At the same time, Dex and Kesler say, “Hi full, I’m Dad.” They look at each other for a moment before collapsing into a fit of giggles. 

    Juline takes that as an opportunity to start cleaning up the carnage that used to be dinner. And there weren’t any major injuries, so this was a wild success. 

    Fitz tries to stand to help, but gets pushed back down into his seat by Juline. 

    What the--how dare you not let me help? I want to be helpful. Let me be helpful. Anger. 

    Dex manages to pull him away back onto the couch with a disproportionate amount of groaning.

    They sit next to each other with the minimum amount of space between them to avoid Triplet teasing. 

    An alarm goes off, and Fitz checks behind the pillow he’s currently crushing to see if he caused it, but no. It was Dex. 

    “It’s 9:52, officially Nautical twilight. Got until 11:18 until astronomical twilight when we might be able to see something. Even with the new moon and forecast for tonight.”

    “What are you going on about with all these different twilights?” Bex asks from somewhere Fitz can’t see. “We collectively decided to block those.”

    “You’re thinking of the book and movie series with Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. Why do I know that? Scientific twilight definitions are civil twilight, which is still bright and immediately after sunset, nautical twilight, which is the pretty one with a dark sky and a bright orange ring near the horizon, and astronomical twilight, which is only slightly brighter than night,” Dex explains. 

    “Of course you know those. Was it on a Universe exam or does it just live in your brain for no good reason?”

    Dex smiles. “Take a wild guess.”

    Fitz sighs. “Why do I even ask anymore?”

    “I really don’t know, you should know better by now,” answers a mysterious voice Fitz is about seventy percent sure belongs to Lex.

    “Rude!” Fitz calls to the empty air. He doesn’t know where the Triplets have gone, and he’s not over excited to find out. 

    Juline comes back from the kitchen after loading all the dishes into the dishwasher, one of the few gadgets in the house that wasn’t built by Dex, sitting on the opposite end of the couch. 

    “How’s the sun’s activity doing? I know last fall wasn't a great show.” 

    “It’s doing its thing, exploding all over the place. As it does. Throwing particles everywhere. Looking pretty good.”

    What? It’s literally nighttime. Why do we need to monitor the sun?

    “Fitz, would you like an explanation?” Dex asks softly. 

    “Well, considering that you enjoy explaining things to me like I’m a five year old--which I am, more often than not-- so I’ll go with yes.”

    “You better take notes this time. I’m not going through my presentation again for at least six months. I will find other lecture topics if you need a condescending explanation before then.”

    Fitz pulls out the notes app on his Imparter without having to ask for a tutorial, a major accomplishment. 

    Dex begins, “Okay, so. Around the equinoxes, one of which is today if you weren’t aware, the Northern Lights are really bright. Do we know what those are?”

    “Are you going to go into extreme levels of detail regardless of my actual answer?” Fitz guesses. 

    “You betcha. How’d you know? Basically, the sun is a mass of incandescent gas that is just, like, constantly throwing a fit. Sometimes that fit is directed at the Earth--it’s actually really similar to pulsars and neutron stars now that I think about it--anyway, because the ionized particles are, well, ionized, they’re deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field into the atmosphere at the poles. Sometimes the sun throws a really big tantrum called a Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME, and then the humans have to deal with things like the Carrington Event.”

    “Hang on a second, I can only type so fast. I’m not good at typing like you.”

    “I’m not good at typing, just pretending that I am.” Dex pauses, waiting for Fitz’s thumbs to stop moving. “The Carrington Event is the name for this really strong CME like a hundred and fiftyish years ago and it messed up pretty much all much tech that existed at the time. There wasn’t much, but telegram lines weren’t pleased. And auroras were seen all the way to the Equator. That’s when you’re going to want to draw a giant arrow from aurora to the definition.”

    Fitz nods. 

    “In the northern hemisphere, it’s called the Aurora Borealis and in the southern hemisphere, it’s called the Aurora Australis because Latin is like that.”

    “Hang on, let me write that down. Spelling is difficult.”

    Especially when the keyboard switches to Latin letters like Human English uses instead of Elvin Runes in the middle of a sentence. But it’s not like I can ask for help. I’ll figure it out later. 

    “They translate to ‘north dawn’ and ‘south dawn’ but that’s not really important.”

    “And yet you still felt the need to tell me.”

    “What else did you expect from me, eh? Anyway, like I said, auroras tend to be most visible near the Equinoxes. You’d think they’d like the winter solstice, but I digress.”

    “Maybe the sun particles don’t like travelling the extra distance because the Earth goes like this,” Fitz holds his arm up at an angle that is most certainly not the angle of the Earth’s axial tilt, but it’s a good enough approximation.

    Dex points to xemself. “I don’t know, I’m not an astrophysicist.”

    “Why not? You should get to work on that.”

    “Go get your doctorate in Elvin History, and then we can talk…Are you literally writing that down?”

    “Yeah. Otherwise I’m going to forget.”

    Dex sighs, mooshing into Fitz’s shoulder. “From the Universe, you have a vague memory of the ecliptic, right? The imaginary line in the sky where the sun and moon and planets and human astrology constellations all fall?” 

    “I would have said no, but you just defined it for me, so it all worked out.”

    “On the Equinoxes, the ecliptic is perfectly East-West because it weeble-wobbles with the seasons. That fact is very helpful if one wants to make a calendar but one doesn’t have access to the internets. So you put up some giant rocks in a circle marking where the sun is and when it lines up again six months later, you know it’s an equinox and you can plan for the upcoming winter if you live in a temperate climate.”

    “I thought time was relative.”

    “Leave Einstein out of this conversation. We don’t talk about him.”

    “...okay.”

    “Did you just write down 'stop with the Einstein erasure’?”

    “Yeah.”

    “I--I don’t even know how to react to that. Moving on--”

    Fitz laughs. 

    “--If that circle rock thing I just described sounds familiar, that’s because there’s a big old monument in England that humans don’t entirely understand called Stonehenge and it’s like that. My bet is that it was an elf messing with them, but that’s just my opinion.”

      “Yeah that tracks.”

    “Your spelling is atrocious. Also, why are you in the Latin alphabet? I specifically disabled it. How did you manage to get it back?”

    Fitz shrugs, and Dex chooses to finish xor lecture before fixing the technology for whatever reason. 

    So close yet so far. I should figure out how to fix it myself…which is more likely to result in breaking the whole thing, but I’ll just buy a new one if I get desperate. 

    “Okay, we’re in the home stretch.” Dex promises, but Fitz doesn’t trust him that much. “The human city of Chicago--have you ever been there? Super mega tall building with a name nobody can agree upon, green river both literally and the carbonated beverage, says gym shoes instead of sneakers or whatever, putting ketchup on hotdogs is a punishable offence?”

    “If you think I could tell the difference between the human cities I visited, you’d be mistaken. Maybe pictures could feel vaguely familiar, but there were so many.”

    “Well, Chicago is on a grid system and a consequence of that is that on the equinoxes,  the sun can line up with the tall buildings and it’s called Chicagohenge and it’s supposed to be really pretty. Don’t ask me why I know that. If I knew, I would tell you. It just lives in my brain like that.”

    “Just like so many other things.” Fitz smiles softly, his boyfriend’s seemingly endless well of random knowledge always a source of happiness even when he’s tired. 

    It is decidedly past Fitz’s bedtime, and it’s still another who-knows-how-long before he’ll get to go to bed. Is this what he gets for being a morning person?

    “I know. I have a problem. You’re aware of this fact. I’ve given you many opportunities to run away. It’s not my fault you haven’t taken advantage of any of them.” 

    Fitz puts an arm around Dex, squeezing xem closer. “Stop trying to get rid of me. It hasn’t worked yet and I am progressively getting more stubborn every time you try.”

    “Oh, wow, I did not know that was even possible. Any more Gloamhenge questions before I go into a food coma or are we good?”

    Fitz yawns. “So you eat food then go watch the Northern Lights?”

    “Yeah.”

    “You could have just said that and I would have been fine.”

    “Fitz, how long have you known me? Have I ever explained anything in two sentences or less?”

    “Well, you have told me ‘just go google it, dumbass’ before. Which should still count as one sentence.” 

    “Yeah, that’s fair,” Dex concedes. 

    With that, Dex snuggles deeper into Fitz’s shoulder and Fitz opens up a crossword puzzle to keep xem entertained. 

    Three puzzles and about an hour later, Dex’s alarm goes off once again. 

    “Astronomical twilight! Time to migrate outside!”

    By ‘migrate outside,’ Dex means ‘take folding chairs into the cold outdoors and sit in them for hours on end until something interesting happens in the sky.’ 

    Even with temperature regulation and a blanket graciously donated by Juline, it’s kind of torturous. 

    “And now we wait,” Dex says, breath condensing in the freezing air and fogging up Fitz’s glasses. 

    “Now, one would think that if one was a telepath who lives in a very northern latitude, one would have invented seat warmers,” Fitz mumbles. 

    Dex instead scoots his chair closer to Fitz, lying xor head on his shoulder and twining their fingers together. “This close enough to a space heater for you?”

    Fitz smiles. “Yes, thank you. I am weak and pathetic in cold temperatures.”

    Dex’s brow furrows. “Then how did you go visit Fintan in his ice prison?”

    “Don’t try to logic your way out of this--”

    Dex laughs, a sound that never ceases to make Fitz’s heart flutter. 

    I am also weak and pathetic in the presence of Dex. This is unfair and I do not appreciate it. 

    “Do you have a gadget that’s going to tell me when the sky’s going to do the thing or am I just going to lose my toes?”

    “No, that’s why we all have to sit out here.”

    “You don’t have, like, a sunroom that would work?”

    “No, that’s why we all have to sit out here,” Dex repeats, more slowly this time.

    Fitz sighs, the giant cloud of water vapor obstructing his vision for a good five seconds. “I thought this was just for tradition reasons. Why must I suffer?”

    “That too. But I am lazy and I don’t want to wake you up at three in the morning to tell you there’s going to be a two second aurora.”

    Before Fitz can respond, he gets hit in the back of the head with the regrettably familiar coldness of a snowball.

    “Alright. Which one of you do I need to Exile?”

    Fitx glances back just long enough to find Bex pointing at Lex while Lex and Rex are pointing to Bex. As many disadvantages as there are to there being three of them, at least they’re all very willing to rat out the culprit at the slightest notice. 

    “Oh, come on, Rex, they’re a froster!” Bex complains. 

    Lex just gestures to the snow-covered ground to prove their point, and it’s a very valid point. 

    Fitz rolls his eyes, turning back to Dex. “I’m surprised you still have snow on the ground. Everglen only gets a little sprinkling once a year, if that, and it more often than not doesn’t even stick.”

    “Exile, that sounds nice. Most of the year, it’s actually too cold to snow but October hits that perfect sweet spot of complete nightmare. It’s like living in a snowglobe. At least March is drier so spring Gloamhenge doesn’t tend to snow. But the stuff on the ground,” Dex kicks a plume of it into the air, “is still leftover from snow season. We like to joke that we have two seasons: construction and snow.” 

    “Everglen has two similar seasons: construction and mosquito. Although those more often than not overlap.”

    Fitz yawns, letting his head rest on Dex’s. 

    “Wake me up if anything interesting happens.”

    “Promise you won’t bite me?” Dex asks. 

    “It’s not my fault I was arguing about something I don’t even remember in my sleep and you had to test whether or not I would bite your hand off and, not to mention, that was one time.”

    Sound really does travel farther in cold air, because Fitz can hear Kesler and Juline laughing from the spot where they decided to set up camp. 

    “Fine. I won’t bite you. I’m going to bed now.”

    “Did you know that sleeping makes you more susceptible to hypothermia?”

    “Well, I’ve got a personal space heater on my arm, so I should be fine.”

    Fitz doesn’t wait for Dex to reply before he lets his tired eyes close as he drifts off to sleep. 

    It’s some sort of magic how whenever he passes out--intentionally or accidentally--at Rimeshire, he doesn’t dream. Other than that one time. But that was an outlier so that doesn’t get to count. 

    A jostling on his shoulder brings an unwilling, groaning Fitz back to reality. 

    What century is it? 

    “Look up,” Dex whispers. 

    It takes a solid three seconds to process what that means, and when Fitz tilts his head up, he’s greeted by beautiful ribbons of greenish light dancing against the night sky. 

    It’s so much greener than he thought it would be. The sky isn’t usually green because of something, something, Rayleigh scattering. 

    A tickle of lavender occasionally flicks through, mostly on the edges. 

    It’s absolutely stunning. 

    Maybe not worth losing his toes, but stunning nonetheless. 

    Fitz’s lips pull into an involuntary smile. 

    This is exactly what a family should be. A group of people freezing to death while the Triplets are screaming in the background--how do they have so much energy?--together not just because it’s tradition but because they genuinely adore one another.  

    The green fades from the sky, and Fitz’s exhaustion returns. His brain probably just realised he’s awake in the middle of the night, and that’s not allowed. 

    “Okay, that was pretty. I’m going back to bed now.”

    Dex laughs, dimples showing. 

    And all Fitz’s sleep-added brain can think is, xe’s more stunning than the aurora. 

[axels-corner]

Meetings with Fintan

Notes: @gay-otlc I was your secret Santa! Thank you @song-tam for organizing this event!

characters: Marella, Fintan, Linh, Bronte

words: 1708

Fintan woke up slowly when he heard footsteps coming down the hallway of his icy prison. He listened for a moment before recognizing the footsteps of Bronte.

“So are you here to ask me more pointless questions about the Neverseen that I don't know?” Fintan asks without looking at Bronte, he clears his throat

“No, I'm here because the council has officially decided to grant your request to mentor Marella Redek. But the council will be monitoring your meetings and sending nobility members to question miss Redek after each session so don't get any ideas for recruiting her to the Neverseen, or teaching her to spark everblaze.” Fintan's eyebrows raise, he didn't expect them to come to a decision this quickly and if they did he thought it'd be denied. He puts his hand on his chest in mock offense

“Me? Recruit people or teach them everblaze, how preposterous. I've never done that in my life.”

“I don't believe that for a second considering what happened with Jolie Ruewen.” Fintan goes back to tracing patterns in the ice

“I assume that you voted against this?”

“I did, considering that when we had Sophie heal your mind you killed one of my colleagues, and friends-”

“Bronte has friends how shocking,” Bronte's voice cut off his sarcasm

“But the girl needs to learn proper control and restraint,” He heaves a sigh not looking at Fintan “and as much as I hate it you're the only pyrokinetic alive and willing, but that doesn't mean I won't be keeping a very close eye on you to make sure you're not doing anything like manipulating her.” and without waiting for his response he turns around and walks out of Fintan's prison. That didn't stop him from yelling back

“Oh, I would never my dear Bronte.”

He had his first ability session with the girl in about thirty minutes. Contrary to what Bronte probably thought considering his last words to him, he didn't have any plans to try to get the girl to spark everblaze or join the rebel group that failed him.

But the council wouldn't have to worry about the last one because thirty five minutes later the girl appeared outside his prison with a black swan necklace around her neck.

“So I see that you've sworn loyalty to the swan group miss,” he already knew the girls name but he would rather give her a chance to introduce herself.

“Marella Redek, and yeah, it's to assure Forkle that I won't be consumed by my craving for fire, plus it's probably smart to have them on my side if the council decides to come after me.” Fintan laughs a little

“Finten Pyren, though you already knew that. I would shake your hand but the ice wall prevents that.” He looks away from the ice wall meeting the girls eyes for the first time, the same blue as her mothers, “it appears that you and I have more in common then I thought, miss Redek.” and though he was a pyrokinetic he could feel how much colder the room got after that sentence, and how the goblin guards clutched the hilt of their swords, this was going to be interesting.

It was the day of Marella's weekly meetings, but instead of the usual hushed whispers between the guards he heard two voices, after a moment of listening he realized one belonged to his prodigy and the other to another girl. He didn't have to wait long for an answer. As they come into the view of his ice prison and the other girl had silver streaks in her hair, the girl of many floods. He coughs as he sits up

“Well if it isn't the girl of many floods, maybe Marella can melt the walls and you can flood this place.”

“My name is Linh Song.” She corrects him

“Yeah, and we would never help you escape.” Marella says

“And there's the council way of thinking, they and the blackswan have convinced you that I'm a bad guy.”

“Because you are,” Marella cuts him off before he can give them another speech, he waves his hands like he's fanning away the words.

“Never mind that, then why is she here?” He points at Linh with the last words.

“To make sure that no fire's get out of control, because you seem to have a history of that.” he scowls

“Fire and water can not work together they are opposites, like shades and flashers.”

“If that's true then why do elves need shades and flashers to work together to make illusions?” Linh asks

“Plus we're already working on combining our abilities.” Marella says crossing her arms with a smirk, Fintan rolls his eyes.

“Fine she can stay,”

“That's not your decision.” one of them interrupts.

“But,” He says ignoring them, pointing at Linh “do not interfere unless I tell you to.”

“she'll interfere if the flames get out of control.” Marella corrects, Fintan grit his teeth

“Fine, today we will be discussing balefire vs normal flames.” and the lesson began

“What would it take for me to convince you to open your cache?” Fintan sat up and stretched

“Hello miss Redek, how are you on this freezing day on the mountain.”

“Answer the question.”

“Freedom.” He told her tracing symbols shaped like fire into the frost on the floor

“That's not possible, and you know it.” She said crossing her arms, he rolled his eyes, she acted like he wanted to burn down the lost cities and dethrone the councilors for revenge of what they did to him. She was right but how dare she assume.

“Well it seems like my knowledge of how to open the cache is lost to my mind like my freedom is lost to this prison and your council.” He looked up at her hoping his eyes conveyed his hatred towards the council for keeping him here, for denying him his flames, his power. Branding him as a talentless.

“Even if I could get your freedom even though we both know the council will never agree especially after what happened to Kenric. I would never let you out because you would just burn everything to the ground.”

“And what ever gave you that idea?” he asks going back to the frost

“Uh, maybe because you caused the death of a councilor and burned a city.” he shrugged

“Sometimes things need to burn to come back better and stronger, like phoenixes, isn't the city much more beautiful now? Plus he was going to die eventually, after all the security there was murder.” He grins into the floor remembering saying the exact same thing at the peace summit to Oralie.

“How can you make jokes about the man you murdered?” Marella yells at him

“Because he ruined my life so I ruined his!” Marella shakes her head

“I would say I couldn't believe you but, this seems in character for you.” and without she walks out of the room

“Running back to your moonlark?” Fintan asks, the only response he got was her flipping him off.

“Would noxflares be enough to convince you to open your cache?” Marella asked in the middle of their ability session.

“Well that came out of left field.”

“That's not an answer.”

“No, it's not.” Fintan takes a breath “Do you have noxflares, better yet do you have my cache or the fake that the Sencen boy foolishly stole?”

“Yes to both your questions.” Marella says.

“Then I would except your deal.” Fintan tells her. After the noxflare was moved in Fintan held out his hand for the cache “I get to choose what memory I show you.”

“That wasn't part of the deal.” Fintan shrugged

“You also didn't say you got to choose which memory I showed you.”

“How do I know that you're not going to burn the cache the minute I give it to you?” She asks

“I guess you should've thought of that, you'll just have to trust me, clocks ticking.”

“What?” Marella asks

“Oh, I didn't tell you? This is a timed offer, fifty seconds left.” Fintan mimcks a ticking clock for about ten seconds when Marella gives him the cache

“Fine, but this better not be a waist of my time.”

“That depends on how much you pay attention.” Fintan tells her before whispering under his breath as he selects the memory “Here we go.”

“Hello Fintan.” Bronte's voice cuts through his sleep,

“What is it with you people and coming to talk when I'm finally asleep?” Fintan grumbles

“You opened your cache.” Fintan yawned

“Why is it your business?”

“Because I am a councilor and those where forbidden secrets, and you where supposed to open it for the council, not your prodigy.” Fintan sat up gathering his hair into a ponytail the motion muscle memory because he had done it so often.

“Why does it matter? She probably showed it to the moonlark and isn't she your regent? Or do you not trust her?” Bronte ran his fingers through his cropped hair, Fintan remembered when they where on the council together and Fintan would help him cut his hair despite the fact that Fintan would tell him that he looked good with curly hair.

“Fintan, are you even listening to me?” Bronte was snapping his fingers in front of Fintan's face, well as close to his face as he could get with the ice wall. “Did you even her what I just said? Sophie Foster, Keefe Sencen, Fitz Vacker, Maruca Chebota, and Marella Redek all went to Elysian with Vespera.” Fintan shrugs, and Bronte's mouth drops open “Do you not care?” Fintan sighs

“Bronte, those children have gotten me arrested multiple times, caused my mind to be broken once, and ensured that I will be stuck in this ice prison for the rest of my life. Plus there smart kids they'll get out of this alive, plus Vespera's with them which means they probably have an alliance I ensure you they will be fine. Relax, sit down do fancy paperwork, you're freaked out over nothing.” He heard Bronte's footsteps fade as he walks out, maybe Fintan will finally be able to get some sleep without people talking to him.

[occasionally-good-authoring]

skateboard stickers and a bright red guitar strap

@winterfireice i was your secret santa, i hope you enjoy this! @song-tam

summary: biana is just a barista at the coffee shop with the world’s most pride flags. sophie is the college kid who seems to only ever host his sessions at this shop. marella is the band member whose band seems to play only at this shop. but that can’t mean anything, right?

There is no reason why a sweaty college student with blond hair tied up into a failing ponytail should turn Biana fifty different shades of red. Sophie Foster doesn’t seem to think so, with her fingerless leather gloves and elbow pads. 

Honestly, who gave him the right to look so good? Was their goal to make Biana re-realize how gay ae is every time ae sees her? It sure as hell seems like. Sophie’s got his skateboard in his left hand, looking around before finding Tam in a chair and practically bouncing over to him. He throws her skateboard down next to Tam, where it lands upside down, showing off the five d20’s stickers and three pride flags plastered on it.

She tries for a side hug that Tam pushes off with a small smile. He throws her skateboard on the chair next to Tam, then does her adorable bouncing walk over to Biana at the cash register. 

Shit. Ae did not have enough time to prepare for an actual interaction with the girl who can pull of sweaty skater punk. Sophie smiles, his eyes crinkling with it. 

God, she smiles like the fucking sun, ae can’t stop aerself from thinking.

“Hey Biana! How’s it going?” It’s okay, Biana can do this. Ae can control aer hopeless woman loving for one moment and talk to Sophie.

“Pretty good, how about you?” 

“Same here.” Another smile. Biana can do this. Ae’s not that useless of a lesbian. 

“What can I get for you, and don’t chose something I don’t want to make or I’ll convince Fitz to join your DnD group,” Biana laughs. Sophie narrows her eyes in a playful glare.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“Unbelievable.” A beat of silence then a soft laugh Biana could get drunk on. Ae might just be able to if the way ae’s just a bit weak in the knees. “Can I get two large iced mochas with three shots of espresso?”

“Are you getting one for Mister-Black-Coffee or are you getting two coffees for yourself again?” Sophie smiles sheepishly.

“Now, why would you ever think that, Biana?”

“Oh I would never be able to give you a reason for that, Soph.” Sophie smiles. Biana turns away to make the coffees, wishing it was easier to keep aer brain to focus on working the espresso machine. Last time ae wasn’t focused ae burned aer hand. 

Somehow, with a beautiful girl watching aer, Biana makes the coffees without burning aer hand again. Ae doesn’t know how ae did it, but ae did. Biana might just be magical. 

“You’re great, Biana, a saint if I could say so. Which I can, and will.” Sophie’s smile could make the most emotionally stony person melt, and Biana’s not even close to stone. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.” 

.

As if one persistent crush of a friend wasn’t enough, Marella Redek refuses to give Biana’s heart a goddamn break. If there’s one thing that hits Biana harder than a girl with a skateboard, it’s a girl with a guitar.

And Marella’s got a guitar in her hands, the bright red shoulder strap catching some of cer gold streaked hair beneath it. Biana wants to wall over and free the strands, and maybe just brush aer fingers against Marella’s neck just to see what’ll happen. 

Ae busies aerself cleaning the counter, letting that idea be scrubbed out by the smell of bleach mixed with water. 

Marella’s band sets up for the nighttime show, the coffee shop practically empty before the flood of people Biana knows will come to watch them play. 

“Wait, where the hell is Keefe?” Stina says suddenly, stopping her messing with her keyboard. Linh looks up with a deceivingly innocent smile and Biana knows the answer long before Linh says a word. 

“With my brother, catching a ride.”

Maruca snorts. “Oh yeah? Did Tam get a skateboard big enough for the two of them?” 

“Unless he went to the store in the last hour, no, he didn’t.” 

Marella laughs and catches Biana’s eye from across the room, cer eyes reading Can you believe those two? plainly. Biana rolls her eyes and mouths a Nope, the shape of the word tarnished by the smile on her lips. But Marella seems to know the word well enough to smile a smile Biana swears contains the whole sun. 

Biana looks away before ce can see aer blush. The bell on the door dings and a yell of

“Took you long enough, Heslege!”

from Stina lets Biana know Keefe’s finally here, Tam most likely following in suit, ready for the shift he practically begged Jensi to let him trade. Jensi had smirked with all the smugness of a mob boss and said

“We can definitely trade shifts, Tam.”

Tam rushes to Biana near the counter, pointedly ignoring Keefe lean dramatically against Stina for a small jab from Marella. His cheeks are red, from the skateboard tucked under his arm or the blond warming up a few feet away, Biana can’t tell.

“Hey Loverboy, how was the ride over?” Biana asks quietly. Tam punches aer arm.

“Shut up.”

“Oh, that good?”

Tam glares at aer, to which Biana smiles sweetly. Tam eventually sighs and leans over to Biana.

“He caught me when I fell, Biana. In his arms. And he held me there for a second. I swear to god I almost fucking died.”

“God, Tam, it’s like you’re in a rom com. Next thing you know he’ll be dedicating his newest love song to you.” 

Tam rolls his eyes. “That’ll happen when pigs fly.”

“I can make that happen,” a new voice buts in. One with a smirk on cer lips and laughter in cer eyes. “Little glue and a crane or wires, I can make a pig fly.”

Both Biana and Tam turn red at Marella’s light voice, though for very different reasons. Biana laughs along, hoping Marella doesn’t notice the tint in aer cheeks. 

“Bit hot here, Biana?” Tam asks. Ae throws the rag at Tam, soaking wet rag smacking the middle of his shirt. 

“Dude!”

“I was just laughing at our friendly neighborhood hopeless romantic,” Biana laughs nervously. 

“Someone’s got to,” Marella laughs.

“I’m going to spit in your next coffee, Redek,” Tam warns, a laugh in his eyes with his cheeks red. 

“Be my guest, Tam, I’ll have Keefe try it first.” Marella laughs, then smacks the counter, leaning back off it. “I’d better get back there, band’s gotta practice and they’d fall apart without me, naturally.”

Ce winks at Biana before turning around, turning cer sun-smile back to the band, but with the way it changes, Biana can think just for a second, that ce had one just for aer. 

But no, that would be ridiculous. Marella smiles like that for everyone, minuscule changes or not.  

.

“Sophie, Sophie, please tell me that ae’ll realize soon. I winked at aer. I winked. Do you even know how stupid I felt? Tam saw! Tam was looking at me while I flirted with aer,” Marella rants into cer phone. 

Cer guitar is in it’s case, amp stuffed in a duffle bag hanging off Marella’s side. Ce tosses cer keys up and down, only a few blocks from cer apartment.

“I don’t know, ae’s worse than I was.”

“Now, I wouldn’t go that far, Soph. I had to ask to kiss you for you to go ‘Hey! Maybe Marella likes me!’.”

Marella fumbles with opening the door to cer apartment complex. 

“I’m not that bad!” A moment of paused, only Marella’s small laugh filling the space. “Okay, maybe I am.”

“Maybe?”

“Yeah, I’m that bad.”

.

Biana, like an idiot, had decided to come to the coffee shop on aer day off. While Marella’s playing and Sophie’s in the crowd, skateboard leaning on his chair and bandaids covering her arms and hands. 

“Sit next to Sophie,” Jensi says, a fond shake of his head. “She doesn’t bite, at least to my knowledge. Though, one can never be sure with blondes.”

“What do you have against blondes?” Biana laughs, aer face twisting into confusion. A look so serious it has to be a joke falls onto Jensi’s face.

“Nobody has hair that light naturally, I call witchcraft.” Jensi slides Biana’s coffee across the counter and shakes his head. “Now, go sit with him or I’ll pick you up and put you in his lap.”

“You can’t even pick me up!”

“Yeah, but Dex can and xe owes me for taking his shift so he could be annoying somewhere else.”

“Thanks for that, by the way. Xe came over and spent the night, xe and Fitz were the worst. It’s like they want to remind me how horribly single I am.”

“Go sit with Sophie and you won’t be.”

“Fuck you, Jensi.”

Ae goes to sit by Sophie anyway, gaining a soft punch from Sophie when she sits down. A smile too, bright and warm just like always. There’s not much speaking, not that Biana minds. 

It’s nice just sitting next to Sophie, watching Marella dance around the best ce can with a guitar. But then Marella takes the microphone from Keefe after a song, letting him wander off stage (probably towards Tam, Biana’s willing to bet). 

“Keefe bet me ten bucks I he would confess to his crush first, and I want a coffee tonight and only have ten bucks, so here we go.” Sophie’s smiling like a madman, elbowing Biana like he wants to make sure ae’s listening. “So, Biana, after way too much flirting, I would like to formally announce I like you and me and Sophie would like to take you on a date.”

“What.” The perfect thing for Biana to say in that moment.

“You suck! I didn’t bring money!” Keefe yells, in the middle of dramatically dipping down to his knee in front of time.

“Yeah, yeah, keep going Lover Boy. Now, what do you say Biana?”

There’s a lot of heartfelt things Biana could be saying in this moment, and probably a lot of things ae should say. Instead, ae yells:

“I want to choose the place!”

Sophie and Marella laugh, Sophie throwing an arm over Biana’s shoulder. 

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Bee,” they both say with a laugh. Keefe stays off stage for the next song, Marella taking over vocals with a voice that’s as rough as sandpaper in a lovely way.

“Ce wrote this one for you,” Sophie whispers.

Biana finds ae believes it.

[song-tam]

it’s officially secret santa week!! it’ll start today and run till the 30th!! please make sure to tag your posts with “kotlc secret santa 2022” and to tag both me and your giftee in your post. i can’t wait to see everything you guys create!!

(also as a note: im actually on vacation rn so i won’t be able to read everything till i get back, but i will be reblogging all fics and art, and reading through everything later)

[aphelea]

burning on (bronte & oralie)

Hello @axels-corner! I was your Secret Santa this year :) Happy holidays (if you celebrate any) and may your new year be filled with plenty of angsty Councillors!

I offer you some Councillor Bronte and Councillor Oralie friendship (and hurt/comfort), set just after the burning of Oblivimyre. Bronte and Fintan are brothers in this one because I couldn't resist.

Thank you to @song-tam for organizing this event!

Warnings: Discussions of death. (Kenric's and Fintan's)

Bronte locks himself in his castle the next day. 

The rest of the Council are drafting the announcement, a scroll to send to their concerned citizens. Members of the elves Nobility are invited to mourn; the rest, left to wonder about the state of their world in the chaos. 

He wants no part of it, the impersonal funeral or the whispers that are bound to follow all of them, but especially him and Oralie. 

After all, everybody knows who killed Kenric. 

Bronte wishes he didn’t. 

He doesn’t sleep the night after the incident. He only returns home at three in the morning, after all of the Everblaze has been put out and his glittering holy city is half-ashes. But even then, he doesn’t retire to his rooms—he can’t, not when they are ripe with memories of a man whom he should not grieve, with photos on the wall of a family that could never be satisfied. 

So Bronte spends the night pacing, and pointedly not thinking about what he has lost. He pushes away every memory of his friend, every gala spent dealing with Kenric and Oralie’s antics. He suppresses every stray thought of his childhood, of being twelve years old and Fintan fifteen, both unable to control the raging power within themselves. 

He drinks tea. It’s not what he needs to drink, but he figures that he ought to maintain some sense of decorum. 

(That feeling falls apart, come dawn. He needs the strongest medicine that his crystal castle can offer.) 

The next morning, when he knows that he’s expected to show up to the Council meeting, he can’t bring himself to get off of his couch. 

How unprofessional, the weak, rational part of himself says. 

But what is professionalism worth anymore, anyway? Miss Foster had only days ago proven with her Inflicting session that he is far beyond unfit for his position.

(Maybe that’s why he can’t stop grieving a murderer. Maybe the dark matter that controls his brain is making him evil, immoral.)

(Maybe villainy runs in the family.)

So Bronte skips the Council meeting, that day, and waits for someone to scold him. 

Nobody comes. 

He takes a nap on the floor of his kitchen. It’s not comfortable, but he doesn’t deserve comfort. He needs pain, to force him out of his grief. 

It doesn’t work, unsurprisingly. But the slumberberry tea does drown him in darkness. It’s made poorly, but he still manages to sleep an hour, dreamless. 

Until the shrill ringing of his doorbell wakes him, and he lies on the hard crystal tile for a moment, wondering why he ever chose to make his doorbell human music, of all things.

After about five minutes of pointless lying on the ground, he forces himself up and to the foyer. He expects that his colleagues have sent someone to retrieve him, likely believing that he’s overslept or some other, equally forgivable reason for missing work. 

When he opens the door, he finds Oralie, in the same, rumpled, ash-covered gown as yesterday afternoon. 

“Oralie?” Bronte asks. He’s tempted to slam the door in her face, because he can’t deal with her, not now. Not when he still can’t shake the grief and empathy for the man who killed her lover. 

…Almost lover. In everything but name. 

Oralie stares at him from the doorway. Her eyes are wide and red and Bronte can’t help but remember when she’d first been elected to the Council, how Kenric had sworn that she was unfit for the role. How the two of them had spent the next five years arguing over every little thing, firmly believing the other to be an incompetent fool. 

Look at them now, he thinks. So lost in each other’s eyes that they forget their surroundings, all too often. They had been one of Bronte’s few sources of entertainment during tedious meetings. 

“Bronte,” Oralie replies, after a long moment. Her voice is rough and broken, accompanied by a sniffle that she seems determined to hide. 

Bronte stares at her, wondering why she, of all people, would pay him a visit during the working day. “Did they send you here?” he asks. When she frowns, he clarifies, “To attempt to convince me to come to the meeting. I won’t, before you try.”

She laughs, though without any real amusement behind it. “I didn’t go,” she tells him frankly. “I have no use for their pity. They all know what he was to me, I don’t need to hear their condolences.”

Bronte can say mostly the same. But he doesn’t, because he doubts that much of the Council knows of his… unfortunate family relations. 

Though, with the fire went the last of his family, it seems. 

Now Bronte is officially alone. 

Alone, except for his best friend standing in his foyer with bloodshot eyes. The last remaining disgraces. 

“I understand,” he tells her. “And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

“It’s not worth shit,” she replies curtly. “You know that as well as I do.” 

Bronte stares at her, daring her to say more. “Do I, now?” he asks, as calmly as his voice can muster. 

She pauses. “Kenric was your friend as much as he was mine.” At his raised eyebrow, she amends, “Well, you were friends.” 

“Of a sort,” Bronte replies. “His death is tragic, of course, and I grieve his loss like all of us do.” Except you, he doesn’t say, because Oralie hardly needs a reminder of the love that she’s lost. 

Oralie glares at him. “I don’t need your press answer.”

“Then, pray tell, why are you here?” 

“You have the keys,” she tells him, and he’s not sure whether she’s being literal or metaphorical. 

“What?”

“The keys,” she repeats, “to Kenric’s castle. I need—” She stops, overcome with a heaving sigh. “I need to see it. One final time.” 

Bronte raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t leave any spare keys with you?” 

She snorts. “How do you think that would’ve looked, Kenric leaving me the keys to his private rooms? Especially with our feelings being so blatantly obvious.”

…She does have a point, Bronte has to concede that. They hardly need any more fuel for the wildfire of rumours that spread about them. 

He doubts that people will be kind enough to stop the rumours even now, when it is only Oralie left. They will scrutinise her appearance at the funeral, at the next crowning, at every occasion for years after today. 

Bronte’s sure of it. He’s seen this happen before. 

“Let me get them,” he says, and turns to retrieve the spare keys from his drawer. He and Kenric had exchanged spares, in case of emergency—although Bronte had never imagined that this would be the emergency. 

(To be honest, he’d always thought that he would die first, out of all of them. Murder, probably. Old family problems coming back to bite him.) 

He’s grateful, though, that Oralie isn’t pressing for an answer as to why he’s holed up in his castle, looking just as messy as she is. 

How can he face her and tell her the truth? That his brother, his blood, had committed such a dire act of treason that the entire elven world is teetering on the edge of chaos not seen since Atlantis?

When he finds the smooth crystal, he hands it to Oralie, who smiles gratefully. But her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and Bronte understands. 

Nothing can be happy, in the wake of everything. 

She reaches over to grab the keys from Bronte’s hand. As she does so, her fingers brush Bronte’s exposed wrist, and she immediately jumps back as if she’s been burned.  

“Oralie?” Bronte asks, stepping forward. He freezes as she scrambles back, staring at her fingers as if she’s grown a third thumb. 

Oralie is mumbling curses under her breath, he realises, and he wonders whether he should call a healer. Maybe the grief has finally gotten to her. 

(It’s only a matter of time before it gets to him, too.) 

Oralie finally looks up at him, after a moment, a deep fear in her eyes. “Guilt,” she murmurs, and his heart stops. 

Guilt. 

Oralie’s an Empath. She’d touched his arm. 

How could I be so stupid?

Oralie steps forward, back into his foyer with a firm expression. “Are you guilty, Bronte?” she asks, and her voice begins to waver. 

“I—I’m not—”

She continues forward, and Bronte has no choice but to back away lest he be trampled. Oralie’s determination has given away to anguish, and what seems to be anger directed towards him. “I’ve felt a broken man’s emotions before,” she says, “all those who have succumbed to the weight of their guilt. And what I just felt, Bronte…you’re far beyond them.” Quietly, she adds, “I don’t know how you’re still sane.”

“I don’t know, either,” he admits, but truthfully he has his suspicions. He can feel Miss Foster’s lingering positivity, in the corners of his mind, keeping his memories together like glue. Someday soon, it will fade, and his guilt over who he is will finally take him. 

He won’t tell that to Oralie, though. 

“I can’t lose both of the people closest to me,” she says, and her grief shines through her eyes once again. “One to a sick, twisted pyromaniac and the other to the weight of his own, misplaced guilt.” 

Sick, twisted pyromaniac. Is that the man he knew? The man he grieves, the man whom he had loved through all of his childhood?

Maybe evil is all that runs through the blood in their veins. Maybe he and Fintan were always destined to be sad, sad men. 

Oralie notices that her words have the opposite effect of what she’d intended, and she freezes. “What?” she says. “What did I say?”

“Nothing,” he tries to tell her, but she’s too quick. 

“Fintan,” she murmurs, eyes wide. “What, do you think it’s your fault?”

No. He knows it. 

He and Fintan had their arguments, as young men. None so bad as the one that drove Fintan out of their childhood home for good. 

And then the Everblaze had rained down, and Bronte knew that his brother was unsalvageable. 

“That’s…not quite it,” he replies. “But I guarantee you it’s nothing important. My mind will not break, Oralie. I have kept myself together for so many years yet.” 

“No,” she replies, steely. “No! You’re obviously locking yourself up in this castle for a reason, and you’re obviously beating yourself up over something and it’s killing you!” 

“I miss him,” Bronte blurts out, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

Oralie pauses, obviously waiting for him to clarify. 

“I miss Fintan,” he says, and it’s like a weight lifts off his shoulders. 

The words seem to confuse Oralie. “You…what?” There’s something akin to anger in her voice, and Bronte’s guilt returns at full force. 

“I wish I didn’t,” he tells her, pleading for forgiveness. “I thought I had resigned myself to his death, before. But he was the last of my family, and apparently I have yet to resolve myself from that attachment.”

Oralie’s eyes widen. “Family?” she repeats. 

He almost can’t say the words. “My brother.”

Bronte turns away, just as Oralie says, “And you’re afraid that you’re just like him.”

“What?”

She breathes in sharply. “Kenric told me what happened in Sophie’s session. You think you’re irredeemable.”

That’s exactly right. “No.”

She curses under her breath and steps into his line of sight once again. “Your guilt is going to crush you,” she tells him frankly. 

“I’m not guilty!” he proclaims, and sure, it isn’t true, but now certainly isn’t the time to work through millenia of unresolved family trauma. 

Oralie grabs his arm, and he expects her to jump away as she had done before. Instead, though, she only drags him to his couch, silent. As they pass the kitchen, she raises an eyebrow at the blanket on the tiled floor, but still says nothing. 

Finally, once Bronte is sufficiently confused, Oralie asks, “Did you actually sleep last night?”

“Did you?” he retorts. 

“No,” she replies, honestly. “I doubt any of us did. Watching him go up in flames….” She shudders. “Part of me wants to make the whole thing a Forgotten Secret.”

Bronte can’t disagree.

He wasn’t in the room, he didn’t have direct view of the healing like Oralie did. But the scent of Everblaze—the familiar scent—had reached him before any of the rest of the Councillors standing outside.

Bronte had known that Fintan was unstable, before. But there was a part of him—a part of him that still lingers—that genuinely believed his brother to be good. Perhaps it’s leftover from their mother’s endless, unfounded optimism, her firm belief that her sons were good men who would grow up to change the elven world.

And change the world, they certainly did. Just not for the better. 

So forgetting the fire, forgetting his brother’s entire existence….the idea sounds enticing. But Bronte has a duty to his people, to himself, that he cannot forget. 

And the only Telepath he would have trusted to wash his mind is dead, now, anyway. 

“You know,” Oralie says, after a long moment, “we’re quite similar people, the two of us.”

Bronte raises an eyebrow. “Don’t put yourself down like that.”

“Oh, please. I’m no saint, either,” she replies. “But what you’ve done and what I’ve done are no matter, now.” She looks away, pensive. “What I meant, before, is that we’re in similar situations here. Your brother. My…Kenric. No-one else here understands, not like we do.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Bronte concedes. “But Fintan—”

“—was only broken because of us,” Oralie interrupts. “It’s the actions of the Council, both past and present, that led to what happened yesterday. We’ve spent these years believing him to be a great man, until the blaze…but maybe that was just our own willful ignorance.”

“Careful,” Bronte says, an almost teasing lilt to his voice. “You almost sound like the rebels.”

Oralie freezes, for a moment, an action so small he almost misses it. “Very funny,” she says, but her joking tone falls flat. 

Bronte frowns. That’s mildly concerning, but he’s not going to waste time worrying about Oralie’s rebel sympathies. He certainly hasn’t spent his time as a Councillor only following the law. 

(Neither did Fintan. Or Fallon. Or anyone, honestly, other than poor Terik who very clearly does not want to be here.)

(Come to think of it, that does speak to the corruption in their system. But that hardly matters right now.)

“Look,” Oralie continues, clearly eager to shift focus from her previous slip-up, “what matters is that you’re obviously brimming with guilt and I…I don’t know what I’m feeling. I won’t judge you for your family connections anymore than I expect you to judge me for my romantic ones.”

“Thank you,” Bronte says, and it’s the most honest he’s been all morning.

Her hand brushes his wrist once again, and she sighs with obvious relief. “Don’t shatter on me,” she tells him. “Please. Promise me.”

The last thing he wants is to go out like his brother. 

“I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

[steal-nightmares-leave-dreams]

mermaid!sophie my beloved <3

this is for @amandayetagain! she asked for something from one of her fics so i drew mermaid!sophie from Weighed Down by a Corset and Silks (click for better quality)

@song-tam

[faggot-friday]

@an-ungraceful-swan I was your secret santa!! And I’m so so sorry for being late, I was planning on writing something but I had exactly zero inspiration, but then I remembered this song (which is a bit of a mid song tbh but I thought of it) and went: sophiana angst (it’s called arms, it’s the first result of you Google “arms lyrics”)

So once again, very very sorry for being late, I hope I can somehow make it up to you just name your price, and enjoy sophiana angst!

@song-tam

[keeper-of-the-lost-dadwin]

The pain of remembering is worth the danger of forgetting

@creetchure I was your secret Santa

Elwin was forgetful. He had been since he was born and would continue to be until his wanderling had sprouted. He could forget just about anything.

He would forget whether or not he had grabbed his schoolbooks. He could misplace things resting in his hand. He would repeat actions over and over again, caught in an endless cycle. He had tried to overcome it; little scribbled notes had once surrounded him. Alas, they weren’t much help when he ended up putting off and consequently forgetting to write down his reminders.

So, he went on being as forgetful as ever, gradually adjusting to it. He resolved to look on the bright side, there was no harm in double checking after all. He had an eternity to live, five minutes searching for a tunic was merely a blink of an eye.

When moving to splendor plains, it was easier to manage. His official doctor stuff was organized throughout the manor. His personal belongings were kept in a separated, homier wing. This meant nothing traveled too far.

One thing he still forgot about was food. He forgot to eat most nights, usually spent refining some remedy or other. This habit was quite enabled by the arrival of one Sophie foster. Even if he ate three meals a day, his food would spoil long before he had reached the end of it.

Food wasn’t sold to be eaten occasionally by questionably healthy bachelors. It was sold to be eaten by families with many stomachs to fill. So he let it rot, only getting rid of it once the odor became unbearable. As neglected as anything else in his home.

Then came a certain Keefe Sencen. He was just a kid, no more than a baby really. His seventeen years were nothing compared to Elwin’s centuries. Yet those 17 years had been filled with so much pain.

None of which he deserved. He was a great kid, as full of mischief as he was. He was kind and smart, despite what his parents had told him. He deserved the world, but Elwin couldn’t give him that, despite how much he wanted to. What Elwin could give him was a gentle, loving home.

And so he did. A home filled with soft words of praise, filled with love and safety. A home where Keefe wouldn’t need to worry about being good enough, where he could just be himself.

Part of that included giving him good food. Fresh fruits and pastries that would fill him up. There would be no more days of forgetting to eat, not with a kid to take care of.

He had come home early one evening, not having to tempt bullhorn from anyone that day. It was the least stressed he’d felt in a while, without the looming threat of death hanging over one of his kids.

He passed keefe getting a snack as he went to his room to change. He glanced at his plate and immediately knew something was off. He ignored it, thinking it was nothing urgent.

He took off his work clothes and put on comfy pajamas. He had no expectation of going to bed anytime soon but getting comfortable a bit early never hurt anyone.

He went to the kitchen to make himself a snack, willing to put off making dinner that much longer. He sat down with his food and greeted his son.

He took a better look at what he was eating. There were bits of mold on the edges of his food. Keefe wasn’t eating with his eyes closed, so he had to have known it was there.

Elwin felt queasy. How long had keefe been eating rotten food? How much had he eaten? Even if he hadn’t gotten sick didn’t mean there wasn’t a risk now. How horrible of a parent did he have to be not to notice it? Why would Keefe be eating rotten food even after Elwin had made sure there was always fresh food in the house?

He realized he had zoned out for too long. He shook himself out of his stupor to actually fix the problem. Worrying wouldn’t help Keefe, wouldn’t make him stop.

“There’s mold on that, darling,” Keefe finally looked up from his plate, startled by the sudden breaking of the comfortable silence. 

“You’ll get sick if you eat that”

He looked like a cornered animal, a guilty expression painted on his face. “I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to eat the rest of the food in the pantry. The kind that wasn’t rotten. I thought you would get mad,”. He looked sheepish, as if this was in any way his fault.

Elwin couldn’t believe it. Keefe thought that Elwin would get mad at him for eating. Eating the food Elwin had specifically gotten for him. How could Keefe believe that? Who had made him believe that taking care of himself was something bad? 

He knew the answer to that of course. He knew all too well how Keefe’s “parents” had treated him. It sickened him to even think of anyone willing to do that, especially to their own son. 

“Did Cassius and Gisela make you eat spoiled food?” He spat out the names, as if that would fix all that they’d done. 

“Yes,” Keefe whispered, as if to keep Elwin from hearing. He curled in on himself, as if trying to hide himself from Elwin’s fury. That only made him angrier, how could Keefe believe he was the one Elwin was mad at? As if Elwin could ever actually be mad at him.

“My dad made it clear that whenever I was grounded, I wasn’t allowed to take food from the pantry. I would keep a small stash of food hidden under my bed. I didn’t know if you would be okay with me taking your food, I figured you wouldn’t care about what you couldn’t eat.” 

Elwin was horrified. “Your parents let you starve?”

“Well, not really. I was smart enough to learn how to get food anyways. Besides, I was only ever grounded for a couple weeks at a time.” He blurted it out so quickly he almost tripped over his words. Whether he wanted to explain it to defend his parents, or just to make Elwin less angry, he didn’t know.

“That’s not okay honey, no matter how easily you were able to actually get food. Your parents can’t starve you. They can’t just not let you have food.”

Keefe nodded, apparently finally understanding. "I’m sorry for worrying you”. 

And back to square one. 

“You have nothing to be sorry about. I should have made it clear that you were welcome to everything in my house, what’s mine is yours.”

Elwin invited Keefe to join him on the couch to watch a cheesy human movie and eat some popcorn. Once the movie finished, they went to bed, having forgotten what had transpired just a few hours earlier. 

That was the end of their food struggles, they managed to fix one of the kinks that came with building your own family. And if Elwin made sure to throw out any food that had gone bad from then on, well, it never hurt anyone to be on the safe side.

@song-tam

[directlyat-thesun-moved]

The Saga of Dex’s Abilities

This is for the KOTLC 2022 Secret Santa set up by @song-tam, and written for @you-have-been-frizzled. Sorry it’s late, hope you enjoy!

——————

Juline walked down the stairs of Rimeshire with a huge grin on her face. “Babe,” she called down to Kesler, “I have amazing news.”

Kesler walked to the bottom of the staircase to greet her. “What is it, love?”

Juline hesitated, and Kesler could swear he could hear her heart pounding as she told him, “I’m pregnant.”

“That’s amazing!” Kesler cried, smiling as wide as his wife now. When he realized she didn’t share his enthusiasm, though, he paused and turned back towards her. “Why aren’t you as excited as me?”

She shrugged. “I’m worried, Kes. You’re talentless… what if this kid ends up talentless too?”

“They won’t,” he assured her. “Our child will be perfect and talented. I promise.”

Juline blinked back a tear. “You can’t promise that. And besides, we’re a bad match. If we have a talentless kid, people are going to blame it on us and continue to enforce the stupid matchmaking system.”

Kesler shook his head. “Jules-“

“And what about the kid?” She continued, not listening to her husband. “They’ll have such a hard time with us as parents. Even if they do manifest and get into Foxfire, their parents will still be a bad match. Their father will still work at Slurps and Burps and not in the government - no offense. They’ll probably have no friends, and be alienated, and-“

“Juline.” Kesler interrupted. “Stop.”

She stopped to turn and look at him, a few stray tears running down her face.

“No matter what, this child is going to have two parents who love them. This child will have two parents who support them. This child will have a wonderful mother who will help her child every step of the way, and that’s more than some people have. Do you understand?”

Juline nodded and hugged her husband tight. “I love you,” she muttered, her now-constant tears falling onto his tunic.

“I love you too,” Kesler replied, “and I love this kid. We are going to give them the best life possible.”

~~~~~

When Dex was born, Kesler and Juline took him to see Councillor Terik. "Is he too young?" Juline asked. "Can you see if he'll manifest?" Terik shrugged. "He's so young that I don't know what will happen, but I can try." The Councillor held the infant's hand and was silent for a while. Kesler and Juline sat there, gripping each other's hands in anticipation. Finally, Terik looked up at them. "It may be too early to tell, but he should manifest." The proud parents hugged each other. "Do you see what this means?" Kesler practically squealed. "Not just for us, but for society? If baby Dex manifests, that'll show the world that bad matches can still have successful kids!" Juline nodded, eyes wide. "We did it, babe. We made a little tiny elf of our own that'll probably manifest!" "Just remember," Terik warned, "There's no guarantee of anything."

~~~~~

"Still nothing?" Juline asked.

Dex shook his head, dropping his schoolbag on the floor. "We checked for frosting in ability detecting today. Guess I'm not like you." He walked upstairs to his bedroom, barely holding back tears.

"Jules," Kesler said gently, "Don't you think you're putting too much pressure on him to manifest? Look at him. He's up there crying in his room right now. I know you're worried, but you need to remind him that manifesting isn't the most important thing in the world."

She sighed. "You're right. It's just so stressful, with all of his friends manifesting while he's still stuck in ability detecting. The triplets relentlessly tease him about it now, and I think they don't realize how much it affects him. Can you get started on dinner while I talk to him?"

Kesler nodded. "Of course, babe."

Juline made her way upstairs to Dex's room and knocked on the door. "Dex? May I come in?"

A few seconds later, he appeared at the door, face stained by tears. "I'm sorry, Mom."

"Dex, baby, you have nothing to be sorry for," she assured him. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. I never meant to make you feel like you had to be like me or that you had to manifest. I don't say it enough, but abilities or no abilities, I love you just the way you are. You're perfect, okay?"

Dex nodded. "Love you."

"Love you too," Juline replied, smiling.

~~~~~

When Dex opened the door of Rimeshire, he was smiling wider than either Juline or Kesler had ever seen before.

"Dex?" Kesler asked. "What happened?"

"I manifested!" he exclaimed.

Juline's mouth dropped open. "What's your ability?"

"I'm a technopath!"

Both Juline and Kesler walked up and hugged their son. "I'm so proud of you," Juline said. "I'm so, so proud of you."

[uni-seahorse-572]

hey @squishmallow36! I was your secret santa, hope you enjoy :)

taglist: @song-tam @gay-otlc @florida-preposterously @xanadaus @kamikothe1and0lny