Chapter Text
"La-la-la-la-la-la-la," Wylan sang softly, scrubbing at a wobbly wooden table.
The station was almost entirely empty at dusk, the only people inside it being Wylan, Nina, and Matthias as they cleaned up for the night.
"You working on that song again, Wylan?" Matthias asked. He was over by the stage with his wife, Nina, the two of them wrapping up the microphone from the show Wylan had put on earlier that evening.
Wylan flushed; apparently he wasn't being as quiet as he thought. "Yeah. Haven't made any progress, though."
"You'll get it soon," Nina said, waving a hand dismissively. Wylan never understood how she was so confident in him, but it was appreciated nonetheless. "Your mama was a musician, wasn't she?"
Wylan nodded.
His mother was a pianist, and a popular one at that. She trained at the Music Academy of Belendt and had regular shows with some other musicians in the area, teaching Wylan how to make his fingers dance across the piano keys before he could even read.
Not that Wylan ever learned how to read, much to his father's endless disappointment and outrage.
When Wylan reached his breaking point with his father, sick of living in a house with a stepmother not much older than him and his entire life revolving around his father's whims, he packed as much as he could and fled the city, aiming for Belendt. He figured he would stay at a cheap boarding house for as long as he could and get some low-paying job until he could apply for the Music Academy.
While at the swapping trains at the station, placed in a small town right on the Kerch coast, Wylan got jumped. A group of men twice his size came after him and ransacked his bags. They didn't steal a thing - no, no, Jan Van Eck wouldn't stoop to hiring someone to rob his son. He simply hired them to beat Wylan up and destroy everything he owned so that he could never manage on his own without going back to Ketterdam, to his father, and begging for mercy.
At first, Wylan had assumed they were just ordinary criminals. Gang members, robbers, or other such things. He had heard enough horror stories growing up on the Geldstraat. But no.
Each one had crudely embroidered patterns on their shoulders of the Van Eck red laurel symbol, and as they ripped his clothes apart from the seams they taunted him for being daddy's little runaway brat, before leaving him there, crying on the ground and clutching at his newly-fractured ribs with the taste of metallic blood on his lips from where they were split open.
That's how Matthias had found him.
He had scooped up Wylan and carried him off to Nina, who was a Heartrender with a decent enough capability for healing to patch Wylan up. They let him stay, let him cry as he cradled his flute - the only thing of his that had managed to escape the whole fiasco unscratched.
In the only bit of luck Wylan had managed to find since leaving Ketterdam, Nina and Matthias happened to own the train station. And then, in all their Ghezen-blessed generosity, they had offered him a job. The station had a small restaurant attached to it, complete with a bar stocked with watered-down drinks and a tiny stage that overlooked the entire place. They had offered to let Wylan stay there until he had saved enough to continue his way to Belendt in exchange for him performing every so often and working as a waiter.
And the best part of all was that none of it was a con. Nina and Matthias were both ex-soldiers, from the Ravkan and Fjerdan armies respectively, and had started living in Kerch to get away from the politics of their home countries' series of wars. They had gotten married and found a joyous life out in the countryside, running a railroad station and helping down-on-their-luck runaways in their spare time.
To a certain extent, Wylan envied the couple. They were polar opposites: loud and quiet; chaotic and orderly; Ravkan and Fjerdan. And yet somehow they made it work. Whenever they looked at each other, Wylan could watch as their eyes became overwhelmed with the love in their hearts.
"Wylan," Matthias said, his accented voice low and soft in a way that juxtaposed his intimidating stature almost comically. "Can you play a double show tomorrow night? The people are getting twitchy."
"I'd love to," Wylan said.
"Good," Matthias said, nodding.
"Oooh, maybe you can use that melody you've been working on! Test it out on the crowd," Nina suggested.
He immediately shook his head. "It's not finished yet. I need it to be perfect."
Just then, the door creaked open. "Damn, the place isn't closed yet, is it?"
Wylan turned to face whoever it was that had come through the door, only to be stopped short and rendered speechless.
Oh wow. This guy is gorgeous, he thought, maybe a little deliriously. But who could blame him?
The man was tall and long-limbed, dark skin glowing in contrast to the sunset light pouring in from the windows and ringing him like a divine halo. He was dressed in a dozen different fabrics and patterns, cobbled together and stitched in a way that drew attention to how he was constantly in motion, hands flicking from the revolvers at his hips to the brimmed hat haphazardly plopped on his head and back again.
Wylan was struck by the sudden urge to fall to his knees and propose to this man. Instead, however, he simply stumbled and tripped over nothing, falling into the tables beside him like a baby deer taking its first steps. He ended up stubbing his toe and making a fool out of himself in front of the prettiest man he probably ever saw. Wonderful.
Luckily, Hot Tall Guy (as Wylan decided to call him in absence of a better name) didn't notice, caught up with Matthias telling him that they were closed. Wylan sighed, relieved that he hadn't humiliated himself, before turning back to his table and accidentally making eye contact with Nina.
Nina's mouth was wide open, face full of incredulous delight and starry eyes as she glanced back and forth between Wylan and Hot Tall Guy.
Well, shit.