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Olruggio didn't understand. And for a mind as brilliant as his, he ought to have found the reason for his little issue by now.
Allergies? He'd already tried an air filtration bubble, the Seal kept in a pocket in his cloak. No difference.
An encroaching cold? No, normally his throat would start becoming sore as well.
Maybe it was a larger, more hidden health issue? But none of their visits with the doctors at the spire had indicated otherwise. "Other than Qifrey's recent twisted ankle, perfect health for the dynamic duo!" Sinocia would relay cheerfully, before launching into a scolding about being more careful on their adventures.
Besides, none of these potential reasons explained the connecting factor, the confounding factor.
Olruggio kept getting stuffy noses around Qifrey.
He hadn't noticed at first. In fact, he hadn't noticed at all until it was glaring at him in the face in the form of a handkerchief in Qifrey's outsretched hand.
"You keep sounding stuffy lately, so I bought you this. So you can clear your nose."
Olruggio had just taken the handkerchief with a befuddled, "Is it?" and pocketed it while Qifrey explained, "Yes, particularly when we study together. I think you may be becoming allergic to being smart."
Olruggio had to hit him back with "Maybe I'm just becoming allergic to all this time with you, daft sod!" To which Qifrey actually chuckled a bit, the brief laughter softening his usually chilly features.
And upon seeing the look in his turquoise eye as he smirked, "Maybe you are, Olly," Olruggio felt strangely warm.
Soon after, he had to excuse himself to blow his nose, returning to the table to see Qifrey smugly looking up with an unspoken "See? Told you so," written into his quirked lips. Olruggio'd intently shifted his focus to the Seals for the rest of their study session.
Later that night, Olruggio had mulled over the phenomenon, just as he did now, four months later, freshly-laundered handkerchief listlessly flopping this and that way in his idly swaying hand as he slumped onto the other over his floor-level workdesk, using this conundrum as an excuse to take a break from working on a new contraption. This bothersome stuffy nose curse had run on long enough, and he was determined to identify the cure tonight. Allergic to Qifrey, he had to ironically agree, was the best estimate of the truth. But how was that even possible?
He thought of Qifrey's white hair, somehow permanently tousled like a stray white dogtail he'd once seen during a Seal redrawing visit to the Outsiders' town across the river from Kalhn. Allergies to dogtail hair existed, he knew this; his father had it, so he'd never been able to have a childhood dogtail, a common family tradition back in Ghodrey. But human hair? He'd brought it up to Sinocia as a rhetorical question, to be sneaky, and she'd just looked at him funny. If he were allergic to human hair, he reasoned, wouldn't he have a stuffy nose all the time due to his own hairy head?
Perhaps the difference was that Qifrey's hair was entrenched in...Qifrey's smell. Not that Qifrey smelled, of course not! But he'd just last week overheard snickered and whispered talk among the other teenage witches that with puberty came these mysterious odors called pheromones, an emerging research field among a subset of doctors interested in the matters of animal and human behaviors. Of course, this information was never meant for the general public, and especially not for witches' ears, but secrets of such titillating nature could never be well kept, especially when they were about, well, becoming a grown-up, and even more specifically, sex.
Olruggio flopped his head all the way onto the desk, releasing the handkerchief to lay wilted a few centimeters from his nose. Sex seemed to be the only humorous topic in the world to the loudest and rowdiest boy witches. So much so, that Olruggio, tired of being subjected to whoops and jeers of naughty phrases frequently yelled at the baths, had altered his daily schedule to avoid the worst offenders. (Not that he needed to do so intentionally, anyways. His nights grew longer the more inventions he, young prodigy Olruggio of the Torch, was pressured to create for the peoples.) And word was always cyclically snaking through the Great Hall, tales of increasingly-worn booklets of illicit material slipped from cloak to cloak, slotted under doors in the dormitories, or even exposed to the humid air of the baths, eliciting sighs and clicked tongues from the adults who at most responded, "Of course. It's only natural, for the growing youth. Even if we confiscated it, more would make its way in again."
Olruggio had never felt strongly about the notorious week of sex education seminars that all Hall witch apprentices attended at age 14, whether before, during or after his turn to attend. It had been interesting, definitely; rarely, if ever, was a doctor from the healing spire invited to the main Hall outside of this one week every year. And it had been amusing to see some of the girls hide their faces behind their cloaks, and some of the boys heckle or recoil in apprehension, while the instructor unrolled embroidered tapestries of labeled diagrams and presented accurate-to-size wooden replicas, covering topics from anatomy to sexuality to pregnancy. He'd wanted to take it all in completely seriously, as if it were an achieve-able badge of demonstrated maturity, although he was guilty of sneaking a few glances at Qifrey to gauge his reactions. Qifrey had been stoic as ever, except for when he'd just so happened to look back: their eyes met, and all Olruggio now remembered is that he hurriedly re-directed his attention back to the instructor, who was still droning on about ways to copulate safely, consensually, and comfortably in the varied possible compositions of partners, and that he hadn't dared to look at Qifrey again.
These musings shocked Olruggio back to his original investigative line of thought. What was he even thinking about now? Smell? Growing up??? SEX???? What were the implications?! That Qifrey's smell was changing as he grew?!? Or that HIS nose could pick up on a type of newly discovered odors, but only those of his best friend, and then what. Trigger an immune reaction as a response?? Or was it. Oh no.
He felt as if a dark pit had opened in his abdomen and swallowed him whole.
Attraction.
That was the missing link in all this, and he'd been too blind to see it. Too blind, or perhaps in denial; it felt so wrong to feel this way about his best friend. It felt so wrong NOW, as he raced through his memories to pinpoint the inciting incident for his stuffy nose across every occurrence ever since that day with the handkerchief. The trigger wasn't time spent with Qifrey. It was his thoughts about time spent with Qifrey.
The first time after that day. When the two of them had finally resolved the temperature fluctuation issue in Olruggio's Stable Warmth Home Hearth, a fire that adjusted intensity based on the ambient temperature of a linked Seal. When that fire finally flared up and stayed flared when the other Seal was placed under a snow spell, Qifrey had tackled him in a hug, exclaiming "We did it, Olly!" before promptly releasing Olruggio, excusing himself and coughing, "It's more than halfway to dawn. Shall we try to catch a few winks of sleep?"
On his way back to his room, Olruggio hadn't stopped thinking about how Qifrey almost never hugged him, how it was usually the other way around. The hurried way Qifrey had readjusted himself post-hug, the excitement in his face forcibly morphed into the "I'm a grown and dignified witch" face that Qifrey now tried to wear even when Olruggio knew he was utterly delighted. The energy had still shown through with his wide sparkling eye and flashes of teeth when he spoke, his tone so much warmer and brighter than usual. Proud.
Fully back in his room, Olruggio had been hit with a sneezing fit. He'd steeped some animal tail tea and laid in bed waiting for his nose to clear, since it'd initially been too stuffy to breathe through. Then he'd fallen asleep still bothered by the fact that Qifrey's observation had proven true.
The second time. He and Qifrey had been sent to demolish an old building at the edge of an Outsiders' town, but a mistake with the signs had sent the dust from the bricks into their faces instead of condensed to a point. Still coughing and spluttering as the dust shed from their hair into their faces, they'd rushed to the baths, a tranquil place for just the two of them during midday.
While Qifrey washed his hair with his back turned, Olruggio's gaze had unintentionally landed on his shoulders and nape, and he'd felt that it looked awfully familiar. Then it'd struck him; a few years back, he'd received a fully colored men's attire catalog from a hawker on the street, who brandished it at him with a flourish and a "Only the finest clothes for a fine young man like you to grow into."
The booklet had illustrations of all sorts of wear on all manner of models, but what kept Olruggio's attention the longest was the picture for a sheer turquoise summer blouse, the model's back facing the viewer with his head turned to the left, showing a sharp green eye through platinum blonde bangs. The collar wide around his pale skin, shoulders defined by lean muscle. So striking was that print, that Olruggio still had the booklet buried somewhere in his desk's storage space. And that picture seemed to have leapt to life now, Qifrey being the bearer of shoulders no longer of a boy, but of a young adult man.
Then Qifrey had turned his head to the left, eyeing Olruggio with his own sharp turquoise eye, before remarking, "I think I can still see the red dust stuck on your nose hairs." Olruggio'd ducked his entire head underwater then, grateful for the excuse to avert his eyes, hide from any more of Qifrey's piercing glances, and blow his increasingly swollen nose into the waters.
Oh, the memories were really flooding in now. Like his nose was. Olruggio snatched the handkerchief and blew, hard, maddened by how the answer was so obvious and that he must be exceptionally daft, and more importantly, how it was so embarrassing that he was like this about his best friend! Hadn't he been through enough when he was teased relentlessly about the switched cap decorations? The ribbon that Qifrey had wanted for his own for inexplicable reasons years ago, the one he fiddled with often when they studied with their caps resting on the table. The black silk striking a stark contrast against his pale fingers, carefully wound and unwound in loops, the loose end tracing the edges of the current page he was reading, or which sometimes lightly landed on the back of Olruggio's hand... Oh no, he was doing it again, wasn't he? Indulging in imagery. Olruggio was struck by yet another sneezing fit.
Well, at least it seemed that no one else had made the connection between his reoccurring rhinitis and Qifrey, yet. So he was saved from the maelstrom of bullying, this time. But what no one could save him from, was the maelstrom of overwhelming emotion. His skin from the shoulders up was burning with heat, and he buried his entire face into the now damp handkerchief and curled onto the floor, breathing through his mouth and almost chuckling from the absurdity of it all. Sexually attracted to his childhood best friend? Like something out of a trashy youth romance novel? Was he the bumbling protagonist who finally realized his crush on the love interest, his childhood best friend who had coincidentally grown to be the most desired youth in the city?
And yes, Olruggio wasn't afraid to admit it. Qifrey was attractive. The taller he grew, (he was just slightly taller than Olruggio now, with more centimeters in store based on his growth rate in the recent months,) the more eyes and whispers followed them through the common areas, of how that mysterious witch with an Outsider past was always seen with He of the Torch, and oh! they're looking this way, and oooh, which would you prefer from the two, the dark fiery prince or the ethereal water spirit? and call me greedy, but I'd love both. Not even Qifrey's usual glare could silence the rabble, so they'd both learned to ignore the noise and look forward to when they could finally take the fourth test and leave the irritating environment of the Hall.
And Qifrey's looks. Beldaruit had called the two of them on a whim to have tea while he complained about how Qifrey barely even talked to him anymore, except on matters of testing and curriculum, and how he could only ever get updates on his troublemakers' lives through these forced parties. He'd even summoned smoke sculpture replicas of both visage and voice of he and his apprentice from years ago, still teaching and learning from the elementary books, and while Beldaruit sighed wistfully at the scene (and the real Qifrey sat very still and stiff) and Olruggio tried not to feel secondhand embarrassment, he couldn't help but notice how the chubbier cheeks of Qifrey's youth were now replaced with a chiseled jawline paired well with his round glasses. Not to mention his voice, which had descended the octaves into a pleasant, mellow baritone. Olruggio remembered that his nose had started to run while Beldaruit had Qifrey explain at length the composition of a complicated Seal, as practice for the future when he eventually took on apprentices.
Alright. So he had it bad. Real bad. There was no choice but to acknowledge it. But then, how could he achieve his original goal and prevent his stuffy nose from bothering him again? He certainly couldn't confess these feelings to Qifrey. It might ruin everything they had, and the quickening of his heartbeat and a sudden spell of vision-blackening dizziness were both screaming at him that it would end in utmost disaster. So he'd have to resolve it on his own. By simply not thinking of Qifrey that way. Suppression.
It certainly sounded easy. Right? Just don't think about Qifrey, while around Qifrey. Be the Olly you've always been to him. Reliable. Old friend. He lifted the handkerchief off his face and dug his thumbs into the shiny embroidery around its borders, feeling the stretch of cotton accommodate the pressure, a contrast to the rigidity of the tight metallic threads. It was a fun sensory experience he'd discovered a few weeks ago. Dainty silver outlines of leaves and branches occupied the space between the solid golden stars placed in the corners and middles of the four edges. It was the fanciest handkerchief he'd ever owned, and he liked that the color of the cotton matched perfectly with the blue of his cloak, like it was always meant to be a set of two. Like Qifrey had picked it out with him in mind. Or even custom-ordered it. Describing to the shop owner what he wanted, with the usual curled index finger raised to his lips whenever he gave his opinions, or with his hand placed on his chin as he mulled over the presented options.
No, no. No more of that line of thinking. Stars above, was he going to be having internal wars for the rest of his life? He almost wished that emotion erasure spells were permitted. Or at least arousal erasure.
...
There was arousal erasure. But it was less so accomplished with smarts, pen and ink, and more so with a lubricant and some physicality. An activity that Olruggio rarely humored, an activity that he associated with his earlier teenage years when erections seemingly appeared for no reason. A means to an end. An axe to the morning wood. In fact, it'd been so long since his last session that he was certain that if he did it now, he would be clumsy, uncertain. Pathetic. Revolting, how he yearned for the touch of slender fingers. To feel white hair tickling his stomach while his hands combed through it. To be kissed in ways and places and by lips entirely forbidden. To be pinned by the intensity of a piercing turquoise eye.
He was indulging in imagery again. All too naturally. The tightness returned fiercer than ever to his nostrils, but this time he also felt as if his blood was boiling, tightness in an entirely different region beginning to strain against cloth. Olruggio dragged himself toward his bedside table and fumbled around in the back of the lower drawer until he reached a small jar, then fumbled with his garments until he could apply its contents. He laid his head on the bed, legs bent beside him, mouth parted so he could breathe. The handkerchief, he gripped in his left hand with one corner resting on his lips, as he began to stroke with his right. If he had this bad habit for indulgence, he may as well savor it. Drown himself in it all at once, then flush it from his system. Build a new habit to encapsulate the old. A compartment for his desire.
It took a while to find his rhythm, to map out the most sensitive areas once again, both hands active to provide sensory input of differently satisfying natures. Wishing that the twisting threads could dance to life, then whisk him away to a warm summer night under a solitary tree in a verdant clearing. Lamplight illuminating a picnic dinner, a tryst where he could experience Qifrey the way he imagined him. Maybe in a sheer turquoise blouse wrapped low around his shoulders. Baritone voice breathily invoking his nickname, no longer Olruggio of the Torch, but Olly who could show him the stars. An intimate scene where Olruggio could trace all his threads, then unravel them. Soon, his breathing grew heavy, and the corner of the handkerchief began to flutter away and back again, teasing his lips with a whispery touch, until he finally clenched his fist tightly into the fabric and came into his palm.
After dazedly laundering his clothes and the handkerchief with the usual Repetition Seal, Olruggio clambered into bed and retired for the night, having long given up wrangling his scattered thoughts to return to work on the contraption. The morning would be like turning a new leaf, he thought. No more stuffy noses. New clarity on his feelings. A way forward, while still standing proud by Qifrey's side. He fell asleep that way, the handkerchief draped over his face like a funeral veil for a corpse. Resting peacefully under the stars. So that when the sun rose, something different could be born.
___
Several weeks later, the two of them were whipping up a few late night desserts when Qifrey spilled a spoonful of powdered spicebark and started coughing and sneezing violently. Olruggio offered him his handkerchief, which Qifrey accepted. But while spluttering into the white cloth, Qifrey said, "What happened to the one I gave you?"
Olruggio paused before shrugging. "Reckon it fell out my pocket when we were sorting out the rampaging rhinocerox? Sorry. Not been getting stuffy noses much anyway, so it's alright."
Qifrey blinked with an "Oh." Then they both continued with their cooking, as in, Olruggio did the finishing touches while Qifrey washed his face with a Vapor Bubble.
Olruggio hoped that Qifrey hadn't picked up on the lie, sneaking glances at him in between bites of his spicebark and sugar breadroll. In truth, the handkerchief now lay folded next to the small jar in his bedside table's upper drawer, a more fitting location for their more frequent use. After they finished cleanup and turned to head to their bedrooms, Qifrey stopped to ask, "So you figured out what was causing it? The rhinitis."
Olruggio grinned. "Aye, just the soap I was using. Got a new one now."
Qifrey merely cocked his head, then hummed before wishing him goodnight and proceeding to his corner of the wing.
Back in his room, Olruggio flopped on his bed, pulled the handkerchief over his head, and sighed. Sometimes in life, one just has to lie, to think of it as telling lies only a friend would make. And then he reached back into the drawer.