Archive of Our Own

Olruggio doesn't actually remember when he first began drawing spells. He was too young to retain the memory of gripping a pen and of when scribbles took on the form of circles and sigils.  His parents often mentioned it to others, almost prideful in the fact that their son’s first words came long after his first roughshod seals. They thought he might never speak, but at least he made a damn good pyreball to warm the hearth.

He just always remembers understanding the language of magic. It translates in his mind the same way music must do for the conductor. When he's sent to present his magic for the youth exhibition, he takes home a prize and suddenly masters are showing up at his home making their case as to why he should study at their branch in the Great Hall, or their atelier, or wherever.  Allegedly, some of them are quite respectable in their field, but Olly has been doing just fine at home in Ghodrey, he likes it here, and he's able to work here and help the people he cares about, and why would he want to leave yet? Why would he want to be stuck under the sea, when he could be free to learn in the field? He tells them as much.

Well.. it would be such a waste of talent. Ghodrey is..a lovely place.. but you’ve outgrown what it can provide, as far as your education goes. Why don't you try passing the first test so you can at least consider the options!

This irked Olruggio because he'd been teaching himself many things just fine, and there was always someone there if he needed to ask a question. He thanked the masters and said he'd consider their offers, and he did. For the few minutes it took to decide he wasn't interested.

The north was his home.

Until it stopped feeling like a home. And suddenly Olruggio didn't know how to feel safe anymore.

The witches of Ghodrey had journeyed to Nauz to help make repairs before the worst of winter settled in. Repetition magic was important in the north, it kept people fed when the roads became impassable, it kept fires burning when the winds blew.

No one expected the blizzard. It swept in without warning in the middle of the night and struck them down. Not all the witches had been together during the storm, so it had just been Olruggio and two others huddled together, using stone to fortify the wooden walls of their quarters as it began to blow apart. When they broke free, the immediate toll of the disaster was clear.

Many were buried under the snow, trapped in their homes, or had simply died outside from exposure. How they came to be that way, Olruggio doesn't know– until he does know. The further the rescue operation went into the heart of the village, the carnage became clear. The blizzard had brought with it ravenous beasts, the kind bred from dark magic, before the Reckoning. They slipped in unheeded, herded by the weather. The wards had failed and they had made Nauz their hunting ground.

He can't forget those sounds– just how loud a thing can scream when they're terrified and in pain and how it echoed out into the stark expanse of ice and snow– then how very silent it was when the screaming stopped.

There was a moment when one of those beasts had sniffed out Olly who had been trying to melt his way through to a cellar, hoping he might find someone who had taken refuge there. He barely remembers running into the thicket of trees nearby, how his cloak became hung up on something, doesn't know what, and the moment of panicked survival which pushed his hand to complete a circle. A torrent of fire erupted, instantly engulfing the beast in flame.

As it writhed there, its screams sounded hardly any different than the ones issued from the mouths of humans. It was that moment in which Olly realised this was the first time he had ever truly caused something pain with his own hands, using magic. He had been so surrounded by death in Nauz, that the suffocating weight of guilt refused to make any distinction between the humans he failed to save, and the creature suffering in front of him.

Olly had felt then the full weight of his limitations, of everything he had yet to learn, and how when you have the ability to help–and fail to do so–the consequences become your responsibility. He might have helped save two souls in Nauz, but there had been so many more who perished waiting for aid that never came.

When the elders came to trade him off to the Assembly like unmatured livestock in exchange for older, more experienced witches, he said nothing and allowed it to happen. The guilt and shame haunted him, the people he had called his neighbors looked at him differently–a mix of pity for what his young eyes had seen, and scepticism, wondering why so few had been saved. Of course they never would say such things out loud to a child, but Olly said it to himself so why shouldn't they feel the same. Perhaps he was projecting it upon them. It didn't matter. The home where he had felt safe and cherished had stopped feeling any way at all. It had become another place. Or Olly had become a different person, and the home that once existed in his heart had ceased to be there anymore. He stopped feeling much at all.

And then Qifrey happens.

He blows across Olly's line of sight like a sudden flurry, and when Olly pries him out from those freezing waters, somewhere, the part of Olruggio that had forgotten how, feels warmth again.

—

Olruggio isn’t allowed to touch Qifrey too often.  Not on purpose, at least. It’s always been that way though, since Olruggio plucked him from his death through the sea window, any contact is fleeting. It's confusing, this avoidance– the way Qifrey seems to like it and loathe it at the same time. The moment Olruggio forgets himself and slings a companionable arm around Qifrey's shoulders, the boy melts into it, but seconds later breath hisses between his teeth as it causes him pain and he flinches away.

Olruggio tries not to question Qifrey’s incongruity anymore. He isn’t even certain what first made him so determined to get through to the other side of all of those walls Qifrey has put up to keep everyone out. Perhaps it is because he was the first person Olruggio met in this place and whether Qifrey liked it or not, the bond of a saved life made Olruggio feel invested in some way. Or it could be that the bright of his hair reminded Olruggio of the north and the snow and the home he'd left behind– the beauty it once had, before everything went wrong.

Most likely, it was always going to be this way, and Olruggio was just meant for him. People are like that, sometimes. They go better together, than apart. With any luck, he'll manage to convince Qifrey of it one day. Maybe then he'll stop trying to run off.  It took months of stubborn persistence to get this close, and even longer for Qifrey to actually open up to him.

 There are times when Olly thinks it might have been better not knowing how Qifrey came to be at the Assembly. Not for any other reason, but for the knot of sympathetic grief and anger it has left him with to know what was done to his friend. The cruelty of it– the random moments when Olruggio’s thoughts unravel out into what would have happened if Qifrey had not been dug out of that dark, flooded, coffin– and who could do such a thing to a child–and why was there no one to protect him? Who could blame him for being afraid of something as simple as an embrace, when his memories begin with the sort of violence and violation that can only be wrought by a pair of human hands.

“Stop thinking so hard,” Qifrey’s voice cuts through Olruggio’s contemplation.

“I’m not–”

“You get a wrinkle right here when you’re busy–” he walks over to Olruggio’s desk, presses the tip of his finger between his eyebrows, the finger tracks to the center of Olruggio’s forehead and thump! “--up there.”

This is allowed, Olruggio has noticed, as long as the touching is on Qifrey’s terms it seems less complicated for him.

“Oi!” Heat creeps up the back of Olruggio’s neck, steals into his cheeks. It’s been happening more often when Qifrey gets close, this inexplicable feeling of embarrassment.

“Go to your room if you’re done practicing for the night.”

“It’s already this late,” Olruggio whines, rubs at the spot on his forehead, and casts his gaze back to Qifrey who has sat back down at his workspace. “Just let me stay here again. Besides you've this room all to yourself and I'm in mine with four other apprentices! You wouldn't believe the sounds I hear coming out of them in the night!” He watches a small vortex of water spin into existence above a completed casting seal in front of Qifrey, before it shifts nto the shape of a rose. It rotates slowly in place.  

“C’mon, say yes,” he entreats, flashing Qifrey his nicest smile, “promise I'll be quiet.”

Qifrey grimaces at his creation. The advice Olruggio had given him to focus on the kind of magic he dislikes most seems to have struck a chord, and like it or not, he is more talented than others at it. Witches are taught from the moment they’re able to draw to keep a steady hand, and some find it difficult to master the less geometrical lines that are required for water magic. Qifrey came here as a blank slate of potential, and it is less so for him.

“Why a flower?” Olruggio sets his chin against his knuckles.

“The dragon kept–” Qifrey’s fingertips curve together to form a bubble, before he lengthens them and makes a pshh! sound with his mouth, “--and getting all over me. I was just trying something else for a moment. It’s not useful. It’s nothing..” His pen moves to destroy the seal.

“Wait! Don't destroy a perfectly good spell! Here, watch this,” Olruggio tells him, drawing and walking at the same time over to Qifrey’s tidy workspace. “Have you ever merged spells with someone before? It’s really neat if you can do it right.”

He kneels alongside Qifrey with the palm quire and completes the circle. Light flickers into existence, before it redirects and infuses itself into the rosebud. Slowly, the glowing petals unfurl– the light cocooned and refracted by the water. “Magic doesn’t always have to do a task. See? Sometimes it can just be nice.”

Olruggio steals a glance at Qifrey. His lips have parted slightly and his sight is focused awe-like on the glittering rose, now in full bloom. The spell’s radiance casts itself against Qifrey’s skin and shades him golden and warm, the way he never is. It makes Olly beam another smile at him. “What d’ya think? Pretty, right?”

Qifrey reaches a hand toward the flower, catches himself before he touches it. “That’s both of us?” he asks, his voice quiet and wondering, and Olruggio is struck with the thought that if he were to lean over right now, Qifrey might allow their shoulders to touch.

“‘Course it is! But hey, don’t go around combining spells with just anyone. Not everyone’s magic is compatible and you don’t wanna go makin’ a mess!”

Qifrey’s expression darkens. “You merge spells with other people often, then.”

“Well, I–” Olruggio gets the impression that there might be a wrong answer to this question. “I wouldn’t say often. Just, back home.. a few times. If necessary. Or if I was curious about somethin’ and there was a witch willing to teach me.”

“But not since you came here,” Qifrey confirms, “with any of the other apprentices.”

Ah. Olruggio giggles, sets his elbow on the desk and props his cheek against his fist to stare over at Qifrey. He’s jealous, he thinks, how cute.  “No, I haven’t.” He leans forward a bit and whispers like a secret, “D’ya like it that much?”

Qifrey shifts infinitesimally closer. “Ours is, though? Compatible.. I mean.”

Olruggio observes the steadiness of the rose, the way the light hasn’t dimmed at all inside of it. If left undisturbed, it would probably linger through the night. “It’s holding together just fine. Aye, I'd say so. Never had one work this well if I'm bein’ honest.”

Qifrey nods but a smirk has set into the corner of his mouth, and it looks a bit smug to Olruggio's eyes.

“I like it,” Qifrey says.

------

This year they’ve been assigned a doubles room rather than the suite bunking of Olly's year prior, and Qifrey rooming by himself. Neither of them are ignorant, they’re both aware that the Knights of Moralis are keen on keeping tabs where Qifrey is concerned. The intelligence attachés for the Assembly are frequently seen hovering nearby, looking at Qifrey with the type of detached suspicion that raises Olruggio’s hackles. Clearly Olly has been selected as some kind of unadvised informant, but it also seems Master Beldaruit was a part of whatever decision that put him there. If it was a spy they wanted, Olly should have been dead last in the selection pool. 

“I’m no rat,” Olly had blurted in the middle of having Master Beldaruit overview a contraption application, “just so y’know.”

“Good observation! Rats are far smaller and generally have more fur, and I’ve yet to see one draw an instantly dry-warm towel spell this well. You should come up with a better name. What inspired this, by the way? Or should I ask, who? All creatives must have a muse! You seem awfully preoccupied lately with this combination.”

Olly could feel the blood rise in his cheeks and hunched up his shoulders in an effort to hide it. “...you know what I mean.”

Qifrey's master laughed, said, “Just do as you’ve always done, as you're doing now with this bit of magic. Simply.. take care of one another,” and he disappeared in his characteristically enigmatic puff of smoke. 

They were already in each other’s space so much before– well, mostly Olly bullying his way into Qifrey's– that it isn’t much of a change to become roommates. Last year, Olly fell asleep with fair regularity while studying in Qifrey’s room, so much so that he had begun keeping extra bedding to make a pallet on the floor next to the other’s bed. They already know each other's less appealing habits. Olly’s side of the room might look a bit chaotic, but there's a method to the organisation, and it's not so much messy as it is busy. Qifrey, on the other hand, is fairly tidy, no argument there. He's got a properly grim sense of direction though, and would benefit from carrying around a guidance orb everywhere if it wouldn't look so bloody embarrassing.

Their personalities don't clash too much, though. Qifrey is still standoffish a lot, but he isn't as quick to raise his hackles at Olly anymore. Olly can be loud, and has been told by a couple masters that he lacks tact and finesse, but people from the north aren't raised to use a dozen fancy words where two will do. As an understandably wary person, Qifrey seems to appreciate that quality about him. Olly says what he means, and it reduces Qifrey's guardedness that they aren't locked in a battle of passive aggressive subtext.

Plus, Qifrey is smart and it's fun to argue with him even when they do find themselves at odds. 

The problem is their sleep habits. Olly has been nurturing some insomniac tendencies for a few years now. Qifrey doesn't like the dark. He hates the sound of the water outside. Olly can fix both of those with contraptions, but there's no way to completely banish a nightmare. Eventually they will unfold in the mind, regardless of what either of them do to reduce the frequency. 

They both have them. Qifrey’s emerge with more regularity, the awful kind that jolts Olly awake because Qifrey is gasping and crying out and thrashing and clearly struggling against something, and whatever is happening in the dream, it's hurting him. All Olly can do is say his name over and over, because touching him makes it worse. He learns this the hard way by trying to pin down Qifrey’s wrists to keep him from injuring himself, and Olly ends up with an elbow lamping him right in the face instead, bloodying his nose. Whatever sound of pained shock he emits, is enough to rouse Qifrey into consciousness.

“Olly?” he rasps, voice rough from sleep and crying out, his disorientation so clear that it breaks Olly’s heart to hear it. “What–what happened? Why.. are you on my bed?”

The floatglow that Olruggio manufactured to provide him with a nightlight makes it impossible to hide the blood trickling down Olly’s chin, the soft pat pat pat as it drips onto the white knuckled tops of Qifrey’s hands still clutched in his sheets.

Absently, head still sluggish from the walloping he just took, Olly notices that Qifrey is drenched in sweat, it's matted his hair to his forehead in places and sticks up wildly in the back, and now he's gotten blood on him as well. I need to dry him off before he gets uncomfortable, Olly thinks over the shrill hum in his ears.

As for that, Qifrey seems to have come around, and looks with uncertainty at the drops of red now sliding down his wrists. He touches the place where his right eye ought to be, realises the blood doesn't belong to him, and then fixes his gaze on Olruggio.

“I'm sorry,” he gasps, and turns into a flurry of snow white hair and sheets and limbs as he panics and uses the bedding to staunch the blood. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Olly! I didn't mean to–”

“Calm down,” Olly manages, voice a little choked and nasally from the flash of pain that comes with pressure against his nose. “S’alright, it was an accident. Seriously, it doesn't even hurt!”

“...such a bad liar,” Qifrey admonishes even though he's clearly fighting back tears.  

Olly smiles at that, says, “Ow, ugh,” when the muscle movement pulls something and he feels a fresh trickle of blood.  Qifrey clicks his tongue and reaches for something on his bedside table. He draws for a moment, then there's the quick flash of the spell activating, and suddenly Olly has an ice compress against his nose rather than wadded up sheets.

He closes his eyes, sighs when Qifrey clasps a hand over his ear to hold him steady and keep pressure on the injury. “That’s nice,” he tells him, leaning into Qifrey's palm.

“We should go to the infirmary, what if it’s broken.”

“You’re givin’ yourself a little too much credit, don’t you think? Don’t fuss over it. What were you dreaming about anyway?” Olruggio can feel him going tense all over. “Y’don’t hafta tell me. Sometimes it helps to talk about it, that's all.”

Qifrey worries at the corner of his bottom lip with his teeth. “...I don't remember.”

“Huh? Seemed pretty serious to not–”

“I don't remember,” he repeats, voice soft, “...I never remember. I wake up screaming, and afraid, and it slips back down to whatever part it's locked away in as soon as I wake up. And it's waiting for me there again, when I close my eyes. Like a monster in the shadows, ready to eat me up.”  

Olruggio wishes he could hug him. “That's awful..”

“Sh, now. No more questions,” Qifrey murmurs and presses his thumb behind the shell of Olly’s ear.

Other times, it's Olly’s nightmare. It isn't like Qifrey's– purposefully distorted and hidden away once he comes back to consciousness– because Olly's is the same one every time. He's lived this dream, walked around inside of it, he knows what is coming and is never able to change the outcome no matter how much he attempts to assert his will.

When he tries warning the villagers of Nauz to go, to leave this place– his voice cuts off as soon as it leaves his lips, or is stifled by some invisible barrier between Olruggio and everyone else. His arms and legs never do as he bids them, and what comes next is always the same.

He wakes up shaking as if the cold has followed him out into the real world, tears on his cheeks, the screams, the unilateral blame that came after, all still brutally loud and replaying in his ears.

The first couple times Qifrey had been present in the room, he seemed frightened by it, unsure– never asking questions beyond a gentle assessment if Olly was okay or not, did he need anything.  He seemed so hesitant, almost like he was afraid to ask what Olly dreamed, because if Olly knew, then it would prove yet another unspoken truth.. that even Qifrey's nightmares had been stolen, and he had genuinely been left with nothing.

Qifrey brought willow-grape tea the third time and acted like it was coincidental, which Olly found cute and endearing, and it did calm him down long enough to drink it, but not enough to fall back asleep.

The fourth time, Olly wakes up with Qifrey wrapped around him– his head tucked up under Olly's chin, their legs twined together, Qifrey's arms thrown about his middle with his hands clasped behind Olly's back. He's being held so tight that it's actually a little hard to breathe.

“Ah, Qifrey,” Olly rasps, moving to push him away but instead succeeds in wrapping his arms around Qifrey the same way. “Are ya trying to hug me or pop me in half? Ease up a bit!”

“You wouldn't stop shivering. I tried calling your name, but I couldn't wake you up, and you felt so cold when I touched your hand and– why wouldn't you wake up? I didn't know what else to do..”

Olly has more than a few warming spells on hand, and even more contraptions he's made for that purpose strewn about. Qifrey could have pinched one of them. Instead he chose to share his own warmth. He isn't cringing away, and it's so rare and special that Olly feels frantic to commit the sensation to memory.

“I'm fine,” Olly tries to assure him.

“You say that a lot and it's rarely ever true,” Qifrey challenges back. “Tell me the truth. Don't lie for my benefit. I don't need you to do that. Don't treat me as if I'm fragile.”

“I–,” Olly starts, stops, tips his nose down against the wisps of pale hair and murmurs against it, “I don't think you're fragile, Qifrey.” You're probably the strongest person I know, he thinks but doesn't say because he knows it's hard to be told that when you feel powerless.

“You can tell me... if you want. You don't have to.”

Olly considers it, and for the first time since Nauz, yes, Olly feels desperate to talk about it, safe enough to say it all out loud, like he was just biding time in silence for this exact moment.

Olruggio begins to tell Qifrey all of it. From the very beginning. He tells Qifrey about the night and the blizzard, how the howling winds masked what had begun to happen outside. He tells him of standing alone at the edge of the village and how all he saw was white, until he saw red. He tells him of the growls of the beasts in the night, the ripping and the tearing and the not knowing if you were next, and the toll come morning. He tells him of the awful, piercing silence that follows when something can't scream anymore– and of the fear and helplessness he felt. The guilt.

And Qifrey stays silent and listens through it all, until Olly has nothing left to say. The adrenalin of the nightmare and its retelling has faded, leaving Olly drained of energy and heavy all over.

Qifrey doesn't offer platitudes or pity because he knows better than anyone how achingly empty those words measure against reality, and Olruggio is grateful for it.

After what feels like a long time, Qifrey begins to ease himself out of the bed and before Olly can stop himself, he's tightening his arms around Qifrey holding him there. “Can't you stay? Just until I fall back asleep.”

There's another long moment. Olly is about to apologise and let him go, but then Qifrey nods and says, “I'll try,” and rearranges himself again so they're chest to chest, foreheads touching, their hands clasped together between their bodies.

Perhaps it's there, in the lowlight and the quiet and the great knowing between them, that something inside of Olly picks up its head, and takes notice of a shift that has occurred. He's still trying to figure out what it is when he falls asleep, and when he wakes up the next morning, Olly's arms are empty again.

—

It happens in a blur, and it happens with acute, gruesome clarity.

Shock is like that.

Olruggio is inside the Tower of Tomes and he’s wet, dirty and singed in areas, ink is embedded in the beds of his nails–and he can barely remember how any of that came to pass. He knows he took on the librarian's challenge, but it all happened so quickly that his accounting for time has gone funny and all he can think about is whether his pyreball is still burning. Is Qifrey still awake and watching it and wondering what’s taking him so long? Or has he already–

No. He can’t have those thoughts right now. He needs to focus. A witch, one of the library staff approaches Olly to explain how to use the facility but Olly has already read about that. He might even have hurriedly told them them to fuck off and get out of his way, or thinks it to himself, because he’s run off and alone again and knows that wherever he goes he’ll find what he’s looking for. That’s how it works.

 When he finds it, he knows this is the best chance Qifrey has to live. He doesn’t think about the cost to either of them, or walk himself through the future and how this will play out as they grow up, what it might change between them. Erasing the memory will restore Qifrey’s life, but Olly is also aware that there is selfishness in this plan. He’s asking Qifrey to live in pain, in fear, to stand in unremitting mental anguish, and to bear it all in silence for a future that is wrapped in uncertainty– and knows he’ll do it because it’s Olly that’s asking him to.

And he’s furious. Olly can’t understand how he can feel so angry, and so sad, and so afraid, and how all of that can exist inside of him at once right now? How can it share space with this massive knot of feeling he has for Qifrey that he hasn’t even named yet, how can that find room to breathe alongside the ugliness of this moment?

Over and over again, Qifrey had said. This had been done to him over and over again– his memories erased, his body reset. If only Olly had more time to think, they might be able to figure something else out– but Qifrey has run out of time, and so it has to be this.

Qifrey is still there, right where Olruggio left him, and he’s begging, sobbing in a way Olly has never seen him do before and he tries to comfort him, tries to tell him it will be okay. He wishes he could push away those silver branches and hold Qifrey the way he did that one night, protect him from what was done to him, the way someone should have. Just how many people are going to fail him? Enough that Olly refuses to be counted in their numbers. Isn’t it someone else’s turn to suffer? Why must it always be Qifrey?  

Olly doesn't mean to but he snaps at one point, shouts at Qifrey in a way he's never done because he just won't stop being so determined to sacrifice his life– and can't he see how desperate Olly is right now? They’re too young, they have an entire life ahead– experiences and potential and a thousand possibilities– children should be afraid to die. Was that taken from him, too?

The memory spell is dried and complete. He hasn’t even used it yet and Qifrey’s branches are already starting to recoil as Olly holds the spell up to his forehead.

With this, Olly is binding them together. He knows it– knows that if he doesn't lock down this promise between them, it’ll leave an opening from which Qifrey might escape. Maybe he’ll give up and let the Silverwood take him, to prevent this same scenario from occurring. And then Olly would be alone.

He words the promise in such a way that gives Qifrey the least amount of room to leave Olly's side, even if one day it is only obligation that keeps him there. He tries to cover up all his frenzied uncertainty by putting on a smile, laughing so Qifrey won't be more afraid than he already is. There's something else on the tip of his tongue, something else he wants to say to Qifrey before he forgets, but—

—

There's something wrong with Qifrey– something more than the troubled look he gets sometimes when he's been allowed to sit alone and become mired in dark thoughts.

At first Olly thought it was the fallout to the abrupt end of his pursuit to uncover his stolen memories, a reckoning of something so ingrained in the identity he managed to paste together from disparate bits. Washing his hands of it has to be easier said than done.

But then why is he crying all alone when he thinks Olly isn't watching, and why has he gone so silent, and why– when he finally turns his sight toward Olly– does his gaze hold such wretched guilt?

—

“How long has it been?” Olruggio demands, mind confused and reeling. “How long have you known?”

He brought Qifrey back out to the old shepherd’s hut in Naakiwon Downs because it's one of the few places that Qifrey lets down his guard. Olly couldn't stand waiting any longer. He was keeping something important to himself, suffering from it, and Olly couldn't bear to have a first row seat to watch.

He didn't expect this.

Qifrey confesses, choking back tears and apologies, he goes through the sequence of events from start to finish– the Tower, what he discovered about his past, how Olly came to him after, the relief Qifrey felt to lay it out in the open and how immediately it caused the Silverwood parasite to take root. He explains Olly's actions in the aftermath, the memory spell, the bottle of ink mixed with Qifrey's tears, the promises they made to one another, and all Olly can do is feel a wave of odd familiarity. He realises of course– of course that's what he did. It makes complete sense. So he tells Qifrey that it's okay, just like the him from the past knew he would do if they ever found themselves in this position again, then Olly watches in abject horror as a miserable sound is yanked from Qifrey's throat and he doubles over. Roots begin to spread. Silver leaves sprout, branches and roots erupt and begin winding around Qifrey.

“The spell!” Olly shouts, “do you have it? I don't think I remember it!” He climbs up into Qifrey's branches and grabs him by the cheeks. “FOCUS! Hey! I take it back, I really won't forgive you if you give up right now!”

“I– the one you left for me to memorize–” his voice is weak, detached, like it's taking everything out of him to respond. “I copied it. It's in my palm quire.”

“The hell, Qifrey!” Olly grouses, scrambling back down into the grass to check the pockets where Qifrey discarded his cloak and hat, probably in anticipation of this happening. “You get caught with that, it's all over anyways! At least figure out a better place to hide the damn thing.”

Qifrey laughs weakly. “I didn't think you’d choose this again.”

“That's because it's all just snowflakes floatin’ about up here,” he taps Qifrey's forehead. “Or do you think I treat my promises so lightly? Look, you even think I'm getting close to figuring it out in the future, just use the spell. You don't need to go through this every time. I won't know the difference.”

“But I will! I know what it's like, not being able to choose what happens to your memories! I can't do that you…”

Olly has found the spell and the phial of ink that looks unfamiliar and familiar all at once. “I've told you, I've already made my choice.” He slips his pen from its pouch on his hip and points it at Qifrey. “You have my permission. None of the self-sacrificing stuff! Don't you think it hurts me too, to watch you go through this? Could you, if it was me? If it was someone you–” he stops himself and doesn't finish that sentence. “We can skip it. We don't need to make it to this part every time,” he mutters, dipping the pen in the ink bottle, and corking it again.

He climbs back up to Qifrey. “Look at me,” Olly tells him, catches his gaze and smiles at him. “How long did we make it before I got you sorted out here?”

Qifrey grimaces. “A week and a half..”

“A week?”

“And a half!”

Olly laughs and pats the top of Qifrey's head where the Silverwood leaves have yet to sprout. “You really need to get better at hidin’ things from me. For both our sake. Just do whatever you do to keep the adults from asking you questions, you’re good at that.”

Qifrey sputters, “I just ignore them– I can't do that with you! We wouldn't be here now if I could.. am I supposed to ignore you? Do you.. Do you want me to?”

“Are you mental? Of course not!” Well, he could, Olly supposes, but it would really hurt the feelings of the version of Olly that is ignorant to all of this, and he's selfish enough to not encourage the tactic.  “Ugh, whatever. Just, y’know, use your face,” Olly averts his gaze and blushes. “Everyone gets distracted by pretty things. Smile a little bit and–”

“...what?”

“Ok, get ready–” His pen moves.

—

Things have been different between them since Qifrey completed his challenge at the Tower of Tomes. Olly can’t exactly call the change negative. From the perspective of most residents of the Assembly, they would say it seems Qifrey’s temperament has undergone an adjustment for the better. He was never overtly rude– well, maybe on occasion– but unless Olly was there, he was just generally withdrawn and unresponsive to any advances. It wouldn’t matter if someone approached with friendly intentions or otherwise, all received the same tepid treatment. People knew if they wanted to ask Qifrey something, they would receive a reply faster if they directed it through Olly first. Sage Beldaruit was a frequent customer in this respect, and because Qifrey confided very little, Olly had found himself in the position more than a few times as intermediary for the master's gentle probing over Qifrey’s current state of wellbeing.

It sort of made Olly feel special that everyone saw them as a package deal, and he liked Qifrey's wordless acceptance of it. Now it feels like this dynamic might be changing, and it's making something twinge in Olly's chest every time there's proof of it.

Perhaps Olruggio is making too big a deal over something trivial. It isn’t as if Qifrey’s personality has changed drastically, but he seems to be putting more thought into the fact that he is an uncomfortable presence for others, whereas he didn’t give a damn before. He has been the subject of gossip and rumors since the day he set foot in the Assembly. Between his mysterious origins, the loss of his eye, his reputation for being cold and standoffish, having been caught running away multiple times– it did nothing to disabuse their peers of the notion that Qifrey was a troublemaker.

Olly had gotten into countless arguments throughout the years when other apprentices felt a little too comfortable in expressing their sympathies that he was “stuck” with the responsibility of being Qifrey’s minder. He’d tell them to get their facts straight, he was at Qifrey’s side because that’s where he wanted to be, and if they knew him the way Olruggio knew him, they wouldn’t say such things.

It irked Olly that they didn't know that once you got past the layer of ice and thorns Qifrey put up, you’d realise it had only ever been there to protect him. With all the cruelty Qifrey had suffered, for all the lack of accountability for it, no one could possibly find it incomprehensible if he became the type of person who was also indifferent to the suffering of others. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. At his core, Qifrey is a gentle person, but he’s also curious and passionate and fiercely intelligent, and has little problem asserting his point of view once you get him talking. Olruggio had felt sorry that others missed all the good within Qifrey, but now that they were beginning to take notice, it was becoming a bit more complicated.

Qifrey smiles more now. He already looks..like that.. so a little amiability on Qifrey's behalf seems to go a long way. He no longer ignores their questions, and doesn’t outright get up to leave if he catches someone approaching from across the room. They take him for being shy and introverted– but in reality he could probably go months without proper socialization and be perfectly chuffed over it. He enjoys helping people, he just happens to enjoy the people aspect significantly less than the helping part. Unless you're his junior. Kids get all of his genuine forbearance, while everyone else takes the scraps.

He’s gotten less conspicuous about the way he keeps people at arm's length, is all. His pretty smile doesn’t raise as many questions, or start as many arguments, as his scowls had done. What troubles Olruggio, is that lately he feels as if Qifrey has established some sort of new boundary between them as well, which wasn't there before. He knows Qifrey too well to not notice that the smiles he deploys are placating, disarming– and not authentic. They’re a distraction from what he’s actually thinking and feeling. There has not been a need for such pretenses between them before, so what has suddenly changed?

“If it's bothering you, go over there.”

Olruggio startles momentarily, remembers he and Alaira were on their assigned work duty reshelving the books, and hurries back to the task. “Who’s bothered,” he grumbles, wrenching out a misfiled tome with more zeal than necessary, on applications of culinary magic.

“He’s quite popular with the girls nowadays.”

“Yeah,” is all Olruggio has to say about it. Qifrey hit a growth spurt not long after taking on the Tower. He’s already let down the hems in his garments twice since, to account for his height. A sense of anxiety ricochets about in Olruggio’s chest when he looks at Qifrey, and realises he’s starting to look less boyish and more like the man he’ll one day grow into. To add insult, he’s going about it a lot more gracefully than Olruggio, whose voice cracks damn near every sentence, is probably destined to be short if his parents are anything to go by, and is regularly misidentified for at least two years younger than his actual age.

“You don’t need to worry, though,” Alaira explains, her voice cheerful, “they hover over there next to him because he doesn’t bother them like the other boys do. He’s polite and quiet and doesn't pull their hair for attention. They know he isn’t interested. Well, most of them at least.”

“Girls are better judges of character than boys.”

Alaira laughs. “Glad you know it. The women in Ghodrey must’ve raised you well.” She’s one of the few that had made efforts over the years to befriend Qifrey– mostly in that Alaira is naturally confident and lively, and feels no need to suppress others in order to feel superior.

Something Alaira just said clicks in Olly's brain. “Wait.. most of them? So which one–”

“The one on the left that keeps trying to touch above his collar.” She clicks her tongue. “He’s looking uncomfortable, are you sure you don’t want to g–”

Olruggio is already gone, crossing the room, and tossing down the cookbook in front of Qifrey with enough force that a few papers are sent fluttering off the desk. Qifrey blinks up at him, bewildered, he looks down to the book, then back up at Olly. A few of the girls take it as their queue to leave.

“You need to study this now.”

“Now?” Qifrey’s brow furrows, he opens up to a random page. “Repetition Magic for the Home Chef? This is a recipe for starspice souffle.”

“Exactly,” Olly has no idea what he just said. The girl at his left narrows her eyes, then begins packing her things to leave.

“Al..right. So you want me to–”

“Mhhm! When we’re out there under your stars, leagues away from the nearest market and tavern, we’re going to need to know this stuff! Do you know how hard it is to make it through a winter when you live somewhere remote? Or do you plan on starving me?”

“Oh, I see.” Qifrey opens his mouth to say something else, but then his cheeks turn pink and he begins fiddling with the blunt edges of the book’s cover. “I’ll study well, then.”

Isn’t he being a little too obedient, Olruggio thinks to himself. He expected Qifrey to begin a line of questioning as to why Olruggio assumes they’ll be living out there together, and maybe let Olly do a little convincing. In one way it’s a relief he’s folding like this, but it’s also suspicious. He’s going along with everything Olly says these days, almost like he feels bad for something, and letting Olly have his way for everything is how he is making up for it.

“Hey,” he says, once the last girl has sauntered away, “Are you–are we okay? Is there something wrong?”

Qifrey’s expression turns sharp. “What makes you ask that?”

“You’ve been acting weird.”

“No I haven’t!”

“Oh, okay then,” Olly deadpans, then leans his elbows onto the table and points his steepled fingers at  Qifrey’s face. “I don’t know what it is that you’ve done, but stop trying to make it up to me. I’m not dense, y’know. I know when I’m not getting your real thoughts.” Qifrey’s continued look of guilt and the ensuing silence tells Olruggio he isn’t dragging whatever it is from the boy right now, so he sighs and leans back in the chair. “You could save us both a bit of time and come clean with whatever is, but have it your way.”

“..are you cross with me?”

Olly is accustomed to Qifrey going through periods of brooding, and he's never quick to expose vulnerability when he’s all twisted up in dark thoughts. He's too good at running away and really bad at asking for help. Olly can't help but worry.

 “Cross? Not really. Just don’t do that… what you do with the others. I don’t need to be coddled. It doesn’t feel good when friends do that. And y’know, I wasn’t being serious about moving out together when it’s time–well, maybe a little serious–you just looked like you needed some space from your admirers. Just move away or something, you never had trouble with it before. It’s their problem if they’re disappointed. Hahh,” he breathes, leaning back in his seat and shaking his head, hyper-aware that he’s making the conversation more awkward, “you really keep me talking forever.”

Qifrey has the audacity to look confused. He glances off in the general direction some of the girls went.

“What did I just say– if you make eye contact and bring them back over here, you’ll get their hopes up!”

“For what?”

“For you!” Olly says, and realises it was too loud and now people are looking over at them. He looks down at the table, heart beating around in his chest in a way that makes him feel strange and exposed. “Don’t let people touch you if you don’t want them doing it. I just don't– I just–ah– nevermind,” and Olly pushes back the chair without looking up, and takes off out the library.

—

They’re in the field a great deal these days in preparation for the fourth trial, even if they aren’t quite aged into the standard window for it to be administered. Olly has been working in practicality since he was a child, even after transferring to the Assembly. He might have been late undergoing the Consent of the Crown, but once he’d come back from the Dadah Range, there was barely a month's gap between it and the challenge at Serpentback Cave. Boredom had been a problem when he advanced through the guides and basic testing that went with them with too much expediency, and Sage Beldaruit was not one for adhering to arbitrary standards if a student’s learning capacity was outpacing the traditional framework.  He completed the third trial the same year as Qifrey, but had declined to take up the key to the Tower until he truly had in mind the knowledge he wanted to seek there. Qifrey, of course, underwent the Librarian’s trial as soon as he succeeded in the third challenge– only to come back with a sudden sense of benign resignation for his past.

It was enough to put Olly off if Qifrey, whose obsession was frighteningly present, was unable to find any answers in a place designed to give them to you.

It's Olly’s favorite when they're sent to do practical work together, because then he gets to watch Qifrey at his best. It's clear that he doesn't belong down there in the Great Hall, it's like keeping a creature meant for the sky locked in a dark cage. He’s meant for the open air, and the sunlight, and the freedom to move in spaces where his past is the least conspicuous part of his life.

Olly is repairing a minor infrastructure issue on the outgoing bridge from the village, and Qifrey must have finished his duties already because when Olly hears laughing, he turns around to see Qifrey hovering around a rooftop.  The children of the village are tittering about below on the ground, and Olly has no idea what to make of the scene, until he watches Qifrey break the slyph seal and land gracefully at the lip of a chimney. He reaches down into it, rummages for a moment, then lifts up a rather sooty cat from the cap.

He glides back down to the small crowd below, and the kids are immediately talking his ear off, grabbing his hands and his hems and leading him off to whatever it is they want him for next. He smiles and is responsive to all their questions, and lets himself be led.

“You're good with children,” Olly tells him later, when they're back at the traveler accommodations and taking their supper in the tavern below.

“Is it surprising to you?” Qifrey tilts his head.

“‘Am just saying.” He reaches across the table and scoops half of Qifrey's fermented wilderbeans onto his own plate, and Qifrey reaches over and takes some of Olly's boiled greens. Together they make quick work of the other’s least favorite portions. “Sometimes people who didn't like being a child become people who don't want to be around them when they're grown up.”

Qifrey swallows a bite of wilted veg. “Aren’t we still children?”

“We're closer to being adults than kids at this point though, aren't we? A few more winters and we'll be considered age of majority.”

“Could be less for me. No way to actually know, technically.” He smiles. “I'm probably older than you.”

“No way you're older, my voice is deeper. Plus, you–”

“I’m taller.”

“--can’t even grow a beard.”

“Mmmhh… is that what we're calling it?”

Olly forgets himself and snatches up Qifrey's hand, the one not currently holding a fork, holds it up to his jaw and rubs up against it like a scalewolf trying to shed its outer coat. “Well, what would you call it!”

I've messed up, he realizes. Qifrey's knuckles feel tense and Olly loosens his grip immediately, an apology or abrupt change in subject– he hasn't decided which– at the tip of his tongue.

Instead, Qifrey's hand stills, and opens. He cups Olly's cheek and rubs his fingers against the line of Olly’s jaw, thumb stroking just below his lips. It's so rare, these fleeting points of contact, that all Olly can do is lean into the touch, his own fingers looping around the column of Qifrey's wrist. Not holding him in place, just holding him.

Qifrey makes a small, tight sound, removes the hand back to his side of the table, rubs them over the tops of his thighs, and Olly’s face burns unaccountably.

Qifrey clears his throat. “It's not whether I enjoy being around children or not. I respect them a great deal. It's hard to be a child, and you don't have much of a choice in it either, do you? You're treated a certain way, adults take it personally when you don't feel or think the way they expect you to feel or think..” He looks down at his plate, absently pushing around the food there.  “It seems like a terrible idea– being responsible for one, I mean. All it takes is one wrong choice, one mistake, and you've changed the entire trajectory of their lives. How can adults go about it so idly?”

“I don't know,” Olly replies after some consideration. Still mostly lost in the moment before this one.

“Me neither,” Qifrey shrugs and turns back to his meal. “But I like how curious they are, all the questions, and how eager they are to find the answers– before the world tells them to stop asking. I think that's amazing.”

Olly can't help but quirk a grin at him. “You sound like your master.” Qifrey groans and rolls his eye. “Ya do! C’mon now, it's a compliment. You should think about taking on an apprentice of your own one day.”

Qifrey looks down into his cup. “I don't think I'm fit for that sort of thing.”

—

Olly is losing his mind.

He wonders if that's what's wrong with Qifrey lately, as well. Perhaps they're both just at that part of life where reason and order evaporates and leaves you with a thick, consuming sludge that infects every sense.

It's not just Olly, it's pretty much everyone their age. No, Olly thinks, everyone is much worse about it– they should at least be shy about what they get up to in any slightly darkened corner! You can't enter a room without walking in on a couple with their hands and lips fastened to each other.  Everyone is flirting about, finding excuses to be far too wedged into each other's space. Every conversation turns back to the subject of each other in a very specific sense, and while Olly can't necessarily relate to them, he does feel.. something.

“It's natural for people our age, why’re you acting so prim over a bit of–” Alaira raises a suggestive brow. “I really thought by now you and.. you know…” she looks up at the tassel on Olly's cap.

“What?” he asks, shaking his head a bit in case the ornament has gone askew.

She sits back in her seat, raises her hands up in a shrug. “Ooh, I see. You’re putting all that famed cleverness of yours straight back into magic. You’re a bit oblivious when it comes to this sort of thing, aren't you.”

“Oblivi– to what?”

“Or perhaps you're just a late bloomer,”  she says with a smile that reeks of sympathy.

Nearly three years ago, the infirmary workers were the ones tasked with this kind of education, and went about the topic of coming of age with the sort of clinical detachment one might have talking about what to cook for dinner. All of the apprentices in their age bracket were grouped together in one of the assembly spaces– the boys mostly giggled and larked their way through it, until finally one of the sterner nurses shut it down. The girls were better behaved, whispering to one another during the more graphic bits, then grimacing their way through the lunar cycle of reproduction.

Qifrey had been late to file into the assembly, and as such, was seated further back. Olly had been doing his best to sit there and remain impassive, despite feeling embarrassed by the whole procedure. He wondered if Qifrey felt the same way. Everything they said kept rattling around in his head like it was hedging around something more critical. Olly made the error of glancing over his shoulder, only to find Qifrey already staring back at him just as intently.

At the moment of eye-contact, Qifrey blinked, then his face went flush, and he immediately turned his sight down to his hands fidgeting in his lap. Olly felt an inexplicable aggression in that moment, an urge to grab Qifrey by the shoulders, shake him up, and ask what the hell was that look about.

Something about that expression made Olly feel anxious, like his insides were too much for his outsides. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling where Qifrey was concerned, but now it was as if something that had been politely knocking in the back of his mind, was now beating down the door to be noticed.

After that, it kept happening– that feeling of urgency, the loaded glances they catch one another in, a sense of tension when they're too close or alone together.

For some reason, it seems vital to their relationship that no one dares to bring it up

Olly has just managed to key in on a train of thought, and then Qifrey enters the room and he's there with all his little mannerisms, and his soft, pretty, voice, and his too-long legs, and has he always smelled that good?? And Olly forgets what he's supposed to be doing. He completes a casting seal, poorly, his hand still idly possessed of his original process– and Olly promptly burns himself. Ridiculously, the pain doesn't register before Qifrey's voice shouting his name.

“Olly–!” Qifrey is across the room in a second, pen ripping a line through the spell and nullifying its effects. “Get up, we're going to the infirmary!”

“..Why?” Qifrey's holding him by the wrist with one hand, drawing with the other, and then Olly’s right arm is ensconced in cool water up to the elbow.  “Ah,” Olly says, wincing when the pain finally flares.

He's burned himself a lot over the years, and has had singed hairs and various scars to show for it. Heat is a tricky balancing act, and Olly has adapted various tools to protect himself from too much of it. This is definitely one of the burns that requires more than allowing it to blister up and keeping it clean until it fades.

He lets Qifrey lead him through the halls, arm still floating in its own little lagoon of water. They catch a few raised-brow stares on their way, and Olly doesn't know if it's because of the arm, or because Qifrey is holding his other hand and leading them forward with the type of determination usually reserved for marching into a battle.

Within minutes of entering through the infirmary doors, the water is dispelled in exchange for various ointments and bandaging. Qifrey is whisked out of the room and told to wait in the common area if he plans to stick around. The medics fuss about children playing with fire, and it's nothing Olly hasn't heard before, so he apologises and answers whether or not the bandaging feels secure, and whether he needs medicine for pain.

Olly grits his teeth through the worst of it, tries to protest when they decide to keep him there overnight to administer medicine to keep any infection at bay. Burns are prone to festering, he knows, but it's still embarrassing to be a victim of your own accidents. Gossip travels fast in the Great Hall, and Olly has unintentionally offended more than a few egos in his time here.  There are many who'll enjoy whispering about how Olruggio: Star of Ghodrey failed at something. As if Olly asked for that moniker, or reputation, and has only ever wanted to do what is asked of him as a witch.

Jealousy is a sure destroyer of innovation, and if some witches spent as much time focusing on the greater objective of helping others, as they did lusting after power and recognition, the world would be better off for it.

At the moment, he's more worried Qifrey will catch their attention. The same sort of person who is eager to find reason to disparage others in order to satisfy their own envy, wouldn't think twice about starting rumors about Qifrey. If there is ever an accident, and Qifrey is even remotely present, blame and suspicion loose down upon him like arrows. If for nothing else, than for bearing a scar, and still being bright and talented and high-achieving in spite of it.

The tea they gave him for pain does help however, and sends Olly into a strange, meandering sleep. The dreams he has seem shrouded in a hazy gauze, all the shapes softened and distorted. Qifrey is standing there, but he's… not right. His body is there, then fades away, and he's saying something to Olly but Olly can't understand what he's saying. It's like all the words are playing backward, or perhaps Olly is the one going in reverse– and then there's a tree where Qifrey had just stood. Olly’s hands are tangled around the roots as they grow and spread, and there's an awareness that this shouldn't be happening, but Olly isn't afraid because he can fix it.

He doesn't know why that should make any sense at all.

Olly awakens abruptly into the silence of the infirmary room. There's only the weak, watery light that streams from behind the curtained window, the occasional brisk footsteps beyond the door. The arm feels much better, the dry gauze has been changed in his sleep and whatever tinctures they use to aid the healing process have already begun to work. There's a heaviness at his left side that can't be attributed to any of the blankets, and Olly props himself up on an elbow to have a look.

Ah. It's just Qifrey. He must've convinced the nurses into letting him stay.

If Olly hadn't still been a touch dazed from the tea he'd drunk for the pain, he would have recognized it without needing to check. He watches the soft in and out of Qifrey's breath– it's rare to see him like this anymore, subdued by sleep and without the well-mannered vigilance that possesses him in his waking hours. His cheek is cushioned by his arms, but the rest of his head is pillowed against Olly’s hip, his hair shockingly white against the dull fabric of Olly’s sleeping garment. Without considering it, Olly reaches down and touches one of those wisps. He expects Qifrey to startle awake– he's always been a light sleeper– but he continues to breathe deeply.

Heart beginning to flutter in his chest, Olly strokes the hair over his ear. It's soft against his fingertips, and Qifrey still isn't moving, so Olly bites his lip to keep himself from breathing too loud, and gently runs his fingers through the hair framing his face. The scar where his right eye once was has healed well enough. It's hard to look at, though. Not because of what it is, but because of what it represents. It just that Olly feels, very much, that Qifrey is his to care for and protect, and it's hard to imagine now a time where that had not been the case. He can't begin to comprehend no one being there for Qifrey, in the moment he needed help the most. That scar is an indictment of someone's failure.

Qifrey twitches and Olly nearly wrenches his hand away, feeling guilty for touching him when he knows Qifrey can be avoidant– but his hand doesn't listen to the rest of him.  Qifrey doesn't awaken though, he only readjusts his folded arms and snuffles down more tightly against Olly’s side. The shift presses the nape of Qifrey’s neck, just above his collar, into Olly’s palm.

There isn't much skin uncovered between where the plaiting of his shirt begins and the line of his hair ends, but it feels cool to the touch– fragile and exposed– and Olly wonders what the skin below the collar feels like. Which leads to wondering how Qifrey would look with that layer peeled away for any other reason than a mundane purpose.

Then, most damning, Olly wonders how it would feel if his own hands were the cause of this undoing.

The idea is there before Olly is able to snatch it back, and all he can do is look down at Qifrey as it uncoils in brutal clarity at the forefront of Olly’s mind– he wants Qifrey exactly where he is right now. He wants him under his hands. He wants to be touching him.

And with those thoughts, arrive all the implications of what they mean.

Olly balls up his free hand into a fist and holds it against his chest, feels his pulse ricocheting from wrist to heart.

He heaves a silent, rueful laugh. Damn it. He stares up blankly at the ceiling and finds no answers there.

---

There's something wrong with Qifrey.

—

Olly doesn't know how many times this has happened. Enough that Qifrey still doesn't seem accustomed to it. Enough that his reaction is something Olruggio is desperate to forget as soon as possible. It's horrible, watching Qifrey go through this, and Olly’s initial response left a lot to be desired. The look on his face must've been a bad one, judging from the way Qifrey recoiled slightly and wouldn't look Olly in the eyes anymore as he launched into a full confession.

It all feels familiar, in a strange sense– going through this chain of events of a past that has been extracted– the same way a path you seldom traveled as a child feels navigable and untrodden all at once when you find yourself there again as an adult.

They've come to the worst part, now. The part where Olly can feel that it's almost time to have his memories of all of this dissolved again. Qifrey is shouting, sobbing, his hands gripping into hair over his ears as he collapses to his knees on the ground.

“No! I want to stop! I don’t want to do this anymore! I can't. You don't know what it's like!”

“You have to,” Olly tells him, “y–you said it– you said we promised!”

“Please don't make me.. every time I do this, it takes something from me, from you..”

“It won't be forever.. we'll get better at this. You will.. We'll pass our last test, we'll grow up and I'll be distracted with my magic and you will be too, and there won't be time for me to just.. think about you all the time!”

“You don't know that!” He's having trouble breathing, and Olly doesn't know if it's because the Silverwood is taking space in his lungs now, or if it's panic. He's in such a state that he's almost… blurring at the edges.. caught between two shapes.

“This is really vexing you.”

Qifrey looks up at Olly, incredulous.

“That means this plan is still working. We just need…more time, we'll figure it out.” Even as he says it, it sounds hollow.

They won't be figuring out anything. Everything Olly knows right now, will be gone in moments, which means everything, all of it, rests entirely on Qifrey's shoulders. Olly came up with this plan and expected what? Were they just supposed to live this way indefinitely? Did he even consider the cost– the toll it would take on Qifrey? Qifrey, who makes little flurries for Olly in their room during the winter when he misses the north the most, whose nature is gentle and kind when the world isn't trying to tear the life right out of his body.  He's being forced into a mould that doesn't suit him in the least. It would shatter anyone, given enough time.

But he's making the mistake of giving Olly a choice, and it's not even a question in Olly's mind, he's going to do it again right now. The truth is, he's selfish where Qifrey is concerned. He has no intention of letting him give up, even if the idea of it becomes a relief to Qifrey, not even if he asks, because it isn't fair that fate would give them each other only to snatch them apart like this.

“... It hurts,” Qifrey murmurs, his gaze going distant and unfocused. An unshed tear frees itself and winds a slow path down his cheek, and Olly doesn't know if he means the transformation itself, or the loop they're being forced to repeat.

Right now, all Olly knows is that he's losing Qifrey.

“Look at me,” Olruggio grits his teeth together, “Don't get lost in your head, hold on to that feeling, Qifrey. You need to do the spell. I’d do it myself but, you see, I forgot that I went to the tower, didn't I. What if I do it wrong? I’d make a mess.” He tries to laugh, but it comes out brittle.

It’s not like Olruggio lacks a healthy amount of trepidation in his heart, either. He trusts Qifrey to draw the seal, but it’s still difficult to wrap his head around it all. Memory magic isn't supposed to be used like this over and over and over on the same person. Olly isn't eager to end up a ward of Adanlee, but the risk is clearly heavier for Qifrey and that makes the decision easy.

He gazes at Qifrey’s tear stained face in this moment like he might burn it into his mind the way his pen burns through solid mass, and keep the image in some recess that he might find in his dreams.

“C’mon,” Olly shakes him by the shoulders, and gets Qifrey's eye centered back on him. “Do as I say. This was my idea, after all. By taking all the responsibility for it, you're not giving me credit for my genius strategic planning. Bit unfair, don't you think? Enough tears, ‘Frey. You know I can't bear to–ah–please stop crying.” Olly grabs Qifrey by the front of his cloak and pulls their foreheads together. The tips of their noses touch and he can feel the damp of Qifrey’s tears there, the brush of his silver-white leaves. “It’s fine. It's fine..”

“You always say that– it’s not!”

“If it's my forgiveness you need, you have it. But if you’re looking for blame, or guilt, or someone to tell you to surrender– I won’t give that to you.” Olruggio covers Qifrey’s hand, feels the vines crawling under his skin, and holds their fists clasped between their chests. “Don't break your promise to me.”

“It’s not fine,” Qifrey repeats, his voice weak this time, and Olly knows he's accepted what's about to happen. Olruggio smears a tear away with his knuckles, brackets Qifrey's face with his open hands and closes his eyes.

“Alright, alright. It’s not, but if it makes you feel any better, I’ll also forget how ugly you are when you cry.” He jokes. Lies. It really hurts Olly’s feelings that he’s so lovely–never gets a damn break from the sight of it. The whole situation is a total shambles, and the best thing Olly can do to help Qifrey right now, is forget all about it. It goes against every instinct he has as a witch, a friend, as more.  

“See you in a bit,” Olly whispers into the small space left between them. Unconsciousness seems like a welcome reprieve, if it weren’t for, well, everything.

—-

One of the adverse effects of being tagged as “gifted,” is always being saddled with responsibilities you never even volunteered for, and don't care about. You get sent on long, boring errands, or continuously get called upon to answer questions, or– if you're Olly– you’re tasked as the librarian assistant from day one. Mostly he's less than a glorified room monitor and book sorter, occasionally fetching materials and filing paperwork.

The masters might have first observed Olly’s pitifully arbitrary attention span before saddling him with this soul sucking work. His own master seems to be priming him to become a librarian at the Tower of Tomes. All masters push their most capable students toward prestigious outcomes, as it is also a reflection of the work produced under their guidance. Olly would rather jump into the unremitting oblivion of a void toilet. He wouldn't last a week at that job. He hasn't the focus duration for a life of quiet research. 

On the other hand, the Wise of Principles has also gone about with poorly concealed recruitment efforts to switch over under her mentorship. Fire is excellent defensive magic, and Olly’s expertise with it is no guarded secret.  But he has no desire to specialise in combat. Honestly, the thought of it repulses him– using his magic to inflict damage, rather than improve lives. Besides, after witnessing the consequences of memory erasure, he doesn't want a part of that either. He's certain Qifrey might never speak to him again if he became a Knight Moralis. Apprentices under the Knights have rarely treated him well. 

Really, most of Olly's giftedness is just a component of his tendency to fixate to the exclusion of all else, a good head for problem solving, a fairly photographic memory, and a sense of chronic guilt that he isn't helping enough.

It probably isn't healthy for him. But what's he supposed to do about it? 

He doesn't do well with too much structure and procrastinates menial tasks. Qifrey has to remind him to do simple things a lot– like drinking water, or just sleeping– minutiae that Olly forgets when something else has managed to catch his full attention.

He does the work that is asked of him in the library, but he'd rather be doing almost anything else, and Qifrey isn't even here so there's not even anything nice for Olly to look at, and there's a group of boys being loud in the magic of physical matter section–

“Be,” Olly grumbles, coming over to their table to grouse at their spectacle, “a little more fuckin’ quiet, please.”

They're all acquaintances at this point, it's hard not to be. The world of witches is small, and the apprentices of the Assembly commingle throughout their education. The loudest boy at the center of the disruption has his friends grouped about his shoulders, all snickering and whispering down at a book he's holding. Olly is motioned closer while all the other boys look at each other conspiratorially.

Upon first glance at the page they've turned to, it's obviously not related to physical matter whatsoever. At least not in the way one would expect from a student's library on magic. Olly sighs. “What makes you think I want to see this? What's it even doing here?”

The ringleader snorts. “Got it from the village during our last field training. Nice, innit?”

Olly grimaces down at multiple illustrations of people engaged in various acts of intercourse. Poorly drawn, at that. “No,” he says, toneless, “get it out of here, already. What if one of your juniors walks by. And what the hell is this–,” he flings his arm out toward the lot of them in an encompassing motion, “why is this a group activity, all of you here lookin’ at somethin’ like that together. Go study something useful.”

“This is useful!” One boy protests, snickering, still not properly ashamed. “Are people from the north all this uptight?”

“It’s cos’ they're all bundled up in coats all the time. It's probably the first time he's seen a naked body,” another chimes in.

Olly raises an eyebrow. “We have communal baths. I've seen your naked body more times than I can count. Nothing impressive. What are you even talking about.” Olly snatches the book away and shoves it back in his face, finger pointing to a position that looks like it requires actual body contortion to achieve. “You can't even draw a proper vapor bubble, what makes you think you can do this?”

“What's one have to do with the other!”

“Look, I've asked nicely–”

“Nicely? What's the problem? You're gonna snitch to the masters, huh?” He laughs. “What’re you gonna tell them, exactly? Wouldn't that be a little too embarrassing?”

The one at the middle who started the whole thing pats his friend on the shoulder and stands, whispers something in his ear while his eyes stay focused on Olly. What's his name? Trivir? Totonne? Surely not fucking Tortoise? Whatever the name, he was the one who, years ago, said Qifrey wouldn't be long for the Great Hall due to his missing eye, and Olly has held a grudge ever since.

Whatever the boy whispered to the other is immediately passed around the group until they're all elbowing each other and laughing again. The boy pushes the book back until it touches the center of Olly’s chest, then reaches up and flicks the tassel atop Olly’s cap. 

“You keep it. There might be something in there more to your interests, Star of Ghodrey.” He signals his friends with a whistle and cocks his head toward the exit of the library.  Olly narrows his eyes at them and hides the book in his robes to discard later.

Except that never happens.

Olly and Qifrey are sitting together at a table they'd dragged from storage and into their quarters since they often take their meals in residence rather than the dining hall. It's also a place where they practice tandem magic, and it's scored with the various dents, stains, and scorch marks accumulated over the years.

He’d forgotten that he'd even confiscated that lewd book and stowed it away for destruction. As soon as it had left his hands, it left his mind, and it doesn't register again until it's tumbling out of the overstuffed pockets of his robes and onto the floor, right between himself and Qifrey.

It doesn't register as it falls to the rug with a dull phwump and stirring of pages, and it doesn't register as Qifrey leans over to pick it up, and when Olly finally does recall just what the hell he had stowed away in there– Qifrey is already picking it up.

“Wait–!” Olly nearly unseats himself in the effort to lean over and prevent that damn book from ever making it to the surface of the table. He manages to grip Qifrey's forearm. “That's not mine!” He blurts. It's not a lie, but the anxious urgency he can't keep out of his voice makes it sound like one.

Qifrey huffs a laugh, clearly not yet realising the gravity of the situation. “What on earth are you trying to hide from me? C’mon, let's have a look.” He wrestles backward a bit and Olly, distracted by his smile, loses grip of the slippery material of his shirt.

“Seriously, wait–!” Olly reaches out again, desperately, and this time manages to pin Qifrey's wrists to the table in some effort to prevent him from rifling through the pages, but it's too late. It falls open into the space between them.

“Olly..?” Qifrey asks, and nothing else.The smile has left Qifrey’s face, and now his expression is unreadable. His lips part slightly on an inhale. Qifrey looks at the pictures for a long, inscrutable moment, then slowly steers his pale gaze to lock with Olly’s.

The moment of eye contact arrives with a fresh wave of embarrassment and Olruggio immediately averts his sight to the table, the disrupted grain of the wood, the tether of his palms holding Qifrey in place.

Olly thinks he should try and laugh like their peers had done, to tease out a joke and then use it to diffuse the awkwardness of the situation and explain what really happened– but the moment to do so comes and goes, and leaves behind an anxious, fraught silence. He forces himself to look up from where his hands are shackling Qifrey to the table.

Qifrey says nothing, gives nothing away as to what his thoughts might be. Olly feels his fingers convulse over the delicate column of Qifrey's wrist, and he doesn't mean to, he means to let go of him, but Olly is squeezing him more tightly and Qifrey doesn't even try to escape.

“Do you,” Qifrey asks, voice quiet and even, but not quite gentle, “want to do those things?”

Olly’s eyes avert down over the drawings. He hadn't given them much scrutiny before, but now he can clearly see that there are more than just men and women depicted within. The page the book is opened to displays two men wrapped around each other in an intimate display. Was this what that bastard had meant when he said there might be something of interest Olly?

...are his thoughts of Qifrey so obvious?  

Olly screws his eyes shut and shakes his head. “No! No, I just–” his breath is coming faster.

“That’s a lie.” Qifrey interrupts, the corner of his mouth quirking briefly when Olruggio heaves a sigh and gives him a desperate look of frustration for not allowing him this one lie, this one time. “Sorry.. you do it so infrequently that it's easy to tell. Do you?” His eyes flick down at the pictures, back up.

“I don't know..”

Qifrey bites the corner of his bottom lip and Olly watches, helplessly, at the way the sharp point of a canine slides against the pink skin there.

“Do you want to do those things,” he rephrases, this time the words arrive cautious and unsteady, “..with me?”

“Qifrey..” Olly warns, apprehensive and cornered by the question. What do you want me to say, he thinks, why ask when you seem to already know the answer. He didn't want Qifrey to find out this way. Honestly, Olly was considering taking these feelings to the grave rather than risk changing things between them.

It just happened so fast.

Color steals into the pale of Qifrey’s cheeks, his hands twitch, fingers curling and nails scraping against the wood. They’re just sitting here, but from the unsteadiness of their breaths, the rapid rise and fall of their chests, the mounting pressure to do something, makes it seem like they've both sprinted leagues.

After a long moment in which Olly feels like that thread of tension might finally pull him asunder, Qifrey murmurs, “You shouldn't..”

The response is perplexing enough that his grip on Qifrey loosens. He doesn't even have a chance to respond before Qifrey takes advantage of this and pushes away from the table, rises out of his chair, and rapidly exits the room. 

The following hours are a daze of trepidation and embarrassment and Olly stares at the wall unable to think about it any longer. Every scenario becomes a worst case as soon as it spins out in his mind. It's not helping anything, and gods only know what Qifrey is out there thinking.

Except it never becomes as complicated as Olly dreaded.

Later on, when Olly is lying sleepless in his bed, after Qifrey has returned and acted so normal that it was painfully clear that they were simply going to act like it never happened, Olly is replaying those words in his head. Over and over.

Shouldn't

Not can't, not don't– but shouldn't. He's struck by the selective vocabulary, as if there are implications and possibilities when it's framed as a piece of advice instead of an imperative.

Of course that could just be Olly overanalyzing and reading into something that wasn't intended in the way his mind hopes to twist it.

He looks over at Qifrey through the dilute light of their room, and watches as the shadows cast from the floatglow stroke possessively against Qifrey's skin– until Olly can no longer bear to see it and shuts his eyes.

—

It’s becoming progressively more difficult to be around Qifrey. Honestly, the least of it is the fact Olly feels like he's been set on fire anytime Qifrey is within sight. Outside of that predicament, they're both busy all of the time.

Beldaruit has doubled in on his cherished apprentice ever since Qifrey expressed even the slightest interest in undergoing the fifth trial. He's setting him up to be able to opt into the challenge soon after succeeding the fourth. Qifrey helps out a lot with the younger apprentices these days– tutoring, interacting. He can't even tell if Qifrey is enjoying it or not, but he does come back to their room nearly every day and writes notes and plans and carefully sets aside the little pictures and lopsided spells the juniors draw for him. Olly wonders if the rush is because Qifrey has run away a lot over the years, and Beldaruit is afraid if he's left a gap of independence, he'll use it immediately and never come back. It wouldn't be an unfounded assumption. Qifrey has gotten better at cooperating within the control structure of the Assembly, but it is clear he wants to leave. While many witches remain for reasons of convenience and safety, that's never been an association Qifrey has made with the place. 

He's quite like Sage Beldaruit, to be honest– not so much in the sense that Qifrey shares the same easygoing nature, although he has learned how to present that way if it suits him– but in his creativity and compassion and holistic approach to learning. Qifrey challenges Beldaruit like no other student dares, has tragically little respect for authority, and Olruggio suspects this has actually enabled more of a parental bond between them than that of master and apprentice. Qifrey would never cop to that, of course, and regardless of any affection, he still chafes under the authority that Beldaruit represents.

Olly, on the other hand, is always beset with tasks because somehow he has built a client list over the years. The Assembly keeps getting requests where his name is specifically mentioned. While there’s still a little more than two month’s time before he’s scheduled to take the fourth test to be licensed as an independent witch, the masters sort of…just let him go off into the field without much supervision. He checks in with the master of any atelier nearby who is assigned to him for propriety’s sake, but then he’s busy off on his own until the job is finished. It’s a bit lonely though, leaving too much time to think, which leads to thoughts of Qifrey, and then a deliberate effort to think of anything else.  He has to keep his mind and hands busy, so he ends up with an immense cache of spells to have on-hand, and comes up with a lot of new designs for helpful contraptions. Sometimes people will catch him testing the contraptions, and commission him for one–which he mostly rejects because he’s too busy to go back to get approval. However, every once in a while he accepts the request, usually only doing so if he truly believes it to be of help, and also if he is needing the commission in order to pursue a project of his own–which is how he ends up with his link rings after hiring a metalsmith during his most recent travels.

It’s quite late. He’s just gotten back to the Great Hall and unpacked his bags, when Qifrey walks through the door, startling when he notices Olly is there as well.

“Olly– I didn't think you'd be back yet.” He’s dressed down in the loose clothes he wears for sleep, his throat exposed the way it rarely is. White hair is darkened slightly by water and he's still dripping wet, making the fabric covering his shoulders all soggy like he made no effort whatsoever to pat himself off. He’s visibly uncomfortable, Olly doesn't understand why he's putting up with it.  

It's hard to see him like this much anymore, usually Qifrey bathes late at night when most people have already gone to bed, and rises early in the morning. They used to go to the baths together as boys, and Olly would bring a drying spell with them since Qifrey always radiated anxiety when he was immersed in water.

Around the age of thirteen, sometime after the third challenge, Qifrey changed the way they did things and Olly didn’t think there was a good way to protest it. It would have come across poorly to demand they continue to bathe together, even if Olly felt strangely rejected and disappointed. He had been nearly five years younger but thankfully had the wherewithal to know it would sound a bit not on to tell someone that you look forward to drying them off.

It’s just that Qifrey always seemed to appreciate it so much, and Olly likes to please him. And on good days, he would tell Olly that his magic felt nice.

He should have realized then how that sense of frustration and desire would bleed together, and in which direction it would one day bear.

“Ah, perfect timing!” Olruggio digs through the small satchet he'd tossed onto his workspace, and fishes out the link rings. “Sit down. I want to try something.”

“Wait– hold on I'm still w–”

“Exactly,” Olruggio is too eager to show off his work, and crowds Qifrey toward the edge of his bed until it hits the back of his knees and causes him to sit.

“Do I need to do anything?” Qifrey has acted as test subject to enough of Olly's prototypes at this point, that there must be some tone he uses that signals Qifrey without Olly needing to inform him first.

“Just sit there and hold still.” He slips the link rings onto his thumbs. “Um. Please,” he adds as an afterthought. His master keeps telling him to work on his professional demeanour and that he comes off a bit gruff. It must not sound natural because Qifrey does a poor job of suppressing a laugh. “Oi! I said keep still– the spell is small so the range is limited!”

“Sorry,” Qifrey schools his face back to his default mild expression which gives away nothing of his inner thoughts. “Go ahead.”

“My tolerance for heat is pretty high so I just need to know if I should adjust the warming aspect.” His fingers fan out loosely, and he connects the glyphs.

There's a burst of air, maybe too much because it makes Qifrey flinch in surprise. He'll rearrange the air glyph next time–but it settles quickly. The warmth activates and Qifrey's pale face is haloed in the radiance that accompanies variants of fire magic. Droplets of water retreat from his body, evaporating back into the atmosphere bit by bit. His hair that had been darkened and slicked silver by the moisture, begins to brighten and feather out as it dries.

Olly is too immersed in analyzing the effective radius of the spell– better than his initial estimates– that he forgets to check in with Qifrey.

“Funny. Y’know, this is close to the first spell I ever used on you. I like to think it's improved since then,” he says distractedly, squinting into the negative space that perimeters Qifrey's frame. He needs to make sure the droplets are truly dispersed and not just recondensing as mist to rain back down as soon as they pass the spell's limits. It takes a second to recognise that Qifrey isn't responding. “Does it feel good? I'm not hurting you, am I?”

He fixes his gaze back to Qifrey– and tries, desperately, to remember how to breathe.

Qifrey's gaze has gone drowsy, his head is tipped heavily to one side and he blinks slowly up at Olly. Gone is his perfect posture, leaving him slouched– like the spell has removed the tension that pins him together at the seams and it's all he can do not lean into Olly for support.

The line of his throat is exposed, and Olly wonders, deliriously, what it would feel like if he put his mouth just there– right at the slope of his shoulder– and how would Qifrey respond. What would it feel like to gather him in his arms, and push him down against the blankets, pull their bodies flush together and overcome the aching distance that has been maintained between them across the years.

The thought is vivid, loud in his mind and enough to distract him from keeping his hands steady. The spell stops, but Qifrey still seems lost to the sensation of it.

The same hands he uses to draw neat lines, callused and blotted by ink, they aren't steady now. Instead, they tremble and move of their own accord, two fingertips sliding under Qifrey's chin to tip his face up as Olly leans down. By some miracle, neither of them pull away. Their noses brush together and Olly can feel Qifrey's breath against his jaw.

There's still enough time to stop this, the more sensible bit of Olly's brain shouts. Don't do something that can't be taken back, something that would leave no plausible deniability after.

Olly closes his eyes, feels the furrow between his brows where their foreheads are pressed together. “...Qifrey,” he murmurs, panicked, hoping Qifrey will find sense and put an end to it because Olly can't.

Instead, Qifrey angles into that remaining space and– softly, with only the barest hint of pressure– brushes their lips together.

Anything Olly had been capable of contemplating, is lost and silenced back into the great cacophony of thought that will come later, because right now he needs to let himself feel this. Whatever this is. Olly releases the kiss once, the fingers under Qifrey’s chin slide to cup the base of his throat, thumb brushing into the hollow under his jaw, and he brings their lips back together with greater force. Qifrey lets out a breathy slip of sound, and presses back

By no means is it the frenzied thing they've had the misfortune of walking in on between other apprentices. Whatever this is– it's tender, chaste, more a sharing of breath and proximity than a prelude to something else.

But then Qifrey’s body jerks, breath hissing between clenched teeth as he fists his hands in the front of Olly's tunic and shoves him back. He's panting, all the color drained from his face like he's in pain.

It's as if the sea window has opened and doused Olly in freezing water.

“I'm sorry,” Olly breathes out in an urgent rush, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to–”

“No–! Olly, that's not what – don't apologize. I– I thought it might be okay because I'm– you make me nervous, and I thought it might be enough to–”

Olly rubs his hands over his face, guilt dropping as a stone into the pit of his stomach. “I know…I know that you don't like t–touching. I didn't mean to make you nervous. I wasn't thinking–”

“That's not it either! Ah, you misunderstand– it's just– me.” He swallows thickly, hands loosening from Olly’s tunic and sliding away back into Qifrey's lap where he clenches them once more. “It's always me. Every time.” It's said with such self-contempt that Olly actually has to suppress a wave of anger, as if he's caught someone else entirely speaking ill of the person he cares for most.

Qifrey's head drops into his hands and he grabs at his hair, wisps stick out between his clenched fingers. “I should take this one away,” he says. Or perhaps not. Olly can't parse it because Qifrey is muttering to himself, like it isn't meant for Olly to hear. “...am I not allowed one thing? Not even this one thing? Is it not enough you'd take so much, and want everything too? How can it not be enough?”

Olly takes a moment to gather his faculties. He's known since the beginning that Qifrey has involuntary reactions to physical contact. At least that has been the case between them. And right now, it seems like Olly needs to push aside his own tangle of feelings, because as confused as he is, Qifrey seems worse. More than that, he seems to be angry at something that has little to do with Olly, and it's clear he isn't in a condition to talk about it.

Olly takes a deep breath, and kneels down on the floor to get a line at eye level. “Hey.. we can leave behind what happened right here. Just think of it as..a conversation.”

“....”

He rubs the back of his neck and diverts his gaze to the ground. “I mean.. conversations are interrupted all the time. Sometimes you pick them up later.. or you don't. And it's alright in either case.”

“It doesn't feel alright. It feels like I ruined something and you're going to leave.”

“Is that what you want?” Olly asks, carefully.

“No! …Is that what you want?”

“Do you think I'd abandon you over–” a little mistake comes to mind, and Olly banishes it. If he gives Qifrey that word, he might think Olly means it.  “..that?” He finishes, lamely.  

“People don't like rejection.”

“I've asked for nothing. What is there to reject?”

“They drift apart when it happens.”

“Who?”

Finally, Qifrey looks up from the floor.

“See, you can't even give me an example. Look, I knew when I reached for you, no good could come of it.. ach, wait. What I mean is, it was just a moment. Friends..do that.. sometimes. It happens. And now we can set that aside for later.. Or never, even. Qifrey,” Olly pleads, his face on fire with awkwardness and embarrassment, "just come off it. Change the subject. Ask me about the weather in the south.” Olruggio beats a hasty retreat to his workspace.

“...you didn't reach for me, I reached for you. I was the one who kissed you.”

Olly wheels back around, completely appalled that Qifrey would opt to continue bringing attention to it when Olly set him up so nicely not to do so!

 “Aye! So it was! Now hush about it, or I'll come over there and start the conversation myself this time, and I don't think you're angling for that right now! So.. do you want to talk about the weather, or do you want me to see how far I can get your back against the sheets before we wind back ‘round to this same argument!’

He didn't mean that the way it sounded. Shit.

Regardless, this seems to get the point across because Qifrey's face does that thing where he looks bewildered and speechless and curious all at once and he's fucking blushing again which isn't fair at all. Olly emits some sort of guttural noise of  frustration and turns away from the sight of it– mostly to hide the fact that it's triggered the same rush of color to his face and it's excruciating to have his feelings painted so clearly, when the situation isn't clear at all. It's a never-ending feedback loop between the both of them. Maybe if one person had been more experienced than the other, it wouldn't feel so remarkable to have kissed another person for the first time– much less the subject of all of Olly's errant affections.

“Olly, I–” it's a false start, he clears his throat and tries again. “I heard it rains a lot in the south this time of year.”

Olly lets out a sigh of relief, and turns back to unpacking. “It does, you'd hate it there right now.”

They can do this, it's fine. Olly can set aside these feelings and the impulses that accompany them, and be the friend Qifrey needs. As long as Qifrey stays where he can see him, these other feelings will temper back into the place from which they originated and become quiet like a habit.

Olly absolutely will not think about how soft his lips felt, or the small sound he made when Olly’s fingertips pressed against his skin, and how for a moment the world clicked into place.

—

They're sent out for the fourth challenge on the same day, though Qifrey returns to the Assembly quite a bit later. It's not a sign of anything, and more likely that Qifrey– as is typical of him– simply made no effort to expedite his route back. Either that, or he got lost and is coming back the most bloodyminded route possible. His sense of direction hasn't improved since the day they met and he tried exiting directly into the sea. It's rather comforting that he has normal imperfections like these. Nature has already gifted Qifrey both beauty and brains, at least it should leave some competencies for others.

Olly overhears the masters talking amongst themselves about the returning apprentices– well, more than that now, the ones able to complete the task are now fully considered independent. It feels less monumental than what Olly thought it might, knowing he could walk out of any windowway in the Great Hall and no one would bar his path. With all the furtive running around he and Qifrey have gotten up to over the years, now there is just a bit of parchment and an official seal saying that it's allowed. It won't feel significant until it's a moment he can share with Qifrey.

Qifrey's name is mentioned among the list of students having returned to the Great Hall, and Olly immediately turns on his heels to find him. It takes a bit of searching, he isn't in their quarters or the common areas, which must mean he was summoned immediately to Beldaruit's side.  There's an open door policy where the sage is concerned, at least anywhere else aside from his inner chambers, and Olly is mostly allowed in there too because of Qifrey. When Olly lets himself into the study and finds it empty, he descends the stairs that will take him out in the Silverwood groves below.  

It's there that he finds Qifrey, standing passively in front of one of the larger Silverwood trees with his hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted to one side– the posture Qifrey takes when he's adrift in his thoughts.

A feeling of panic with no warning and no sensible origin, rips its way through Olly’s chest at the sight of it.

“Qifrey!” Olly shouts, unnecessarily loud, the dread must be obvious and present in his voice because Qifrey whips around to look back at him. When he recognises who has called for him, he visibly relaxes, a hand comes out from his robes where he must've reached instinctively for his pen and parchment, and he places it over his heart. Qifrey turns his gaze skyward and exhales in relief.

“Why on earth are you shouting like that, my heart nearly burst!  I thought a herd of feral liongoats must've been taking siege to the Great Hall..”

“S–sorry. I don't know why I–” Olly blinks at Qifrey, then at the tree he's standing near, at the ground, then back at Qifrey. “Hey.. come away from there.” He still has a distinct feeling of unease and thinks it might get better if Qifrey were within touching distance.

Qifrey looks back at the tree again, then turns around and paces over to Olly.

“Is it the grove,” he asks, voice tentative. “I know they can be.. unsettling, considering. If you look long enough, the thought of it stops being too scary.. knowing they were once alive as something else.” He makes it over to Olly. “At least their final thoughts were content, which is a better fate than most.”

“..what?” Olly asks. The statement does nothing to alleviate his anxiety, even if he was making sense.

Qifrey’s expression shifts rapidly from one of troubled rumination, to something Olly recognises as his calm facade. He uses it on everyone, and Olly has long since stopped taking offence to it. It's enough that he knows when, and when not to challenge him on it.

“Apologies, my mind was elsewhere. Now, what's your reason for nearly giving me sudden apoplexy?”

“Dunno,” Olly murmurs, the sensation of having forgotten something important prickles at the edges of his mind, and refuses resolution. He gives his head a small shake and tries smiling at Qifrey. “Suppose I'm just tired. Didn't sleep much after getting back, seeing as how you took your sweet time returning. I was startin’ to get nervous, thought maybe you didn't pass.”

“Yes.. about that.. I have to tell you something.”

“Hold on– don't tell me you really didn't–”

“No! I mean yes, I passed,” then, a little huffy and  offended, “of course I passed, what exactly do you take me for? Honestly.” He's cute when he's like this, and Olly’s nerves are instantly diffused. He steps a little closer into Qifrey's space. “I was just going to tell you… I've decided to take on the fifth challenge, as well.”

Olly breathes out a sigh of relief, laughs and pushes Qifrey's shoulder. “Why'd ya have to make it sound so scary for, then! We'll need to put in for the adult quarters, tomorrow. Makes more sense to stay on at the Great Hall while you're preparing. Now that we've settled that– can we just be happy for one bloody minute that we're allowed to come and go as we please, without masters over our shoulders?”

“You’re…” Qifrey awkwardly pulls at the cuffs of his sleeves, “assuming we'll stay together?”

“Wait.. you were assuming we weren't?”

Now that Olly thinks about it, one of these scenarios might be the natural process of independence, and one isn't, and Olly honestly isn't certain which is which. This is his first time being considered a grown up and has only ever really experienced communal living arrangements, even in the north. Naturally he thought they'd stay together, because who else would want to live under a roof with either one of them? Olly isn't the neatest roommate and has poor sleeping habits. Qifrey is a source of constant, unremitting sexual frustration for anyone with a pulse. Terrible roommates for anyone besides each other.

But Olly never considered until now that Qifrey, often prone to solitary ways, might want to be alone.

“...can we?” Qifrey asks a moment later, like he needs permission, and Olly’s heart pulses with relief. He doesn't know what methods he might have resorted to if he had to convince Qifrey.

Olly grins. He’s happy today. He's really happy. He knocks up against Qifrey's shoulders, and Qifrey must be feeling generous because he doesn't avoid it and lets himself be jostled. “Of course you won't be rid of me so easily. I'll just do as I've been doing until you're finished.”

 He'll need a Watchful Eye one day, but Olly keeps talk of that to himself because one step at a time, no need to risk Qifrey getting skittish when he's already under pressure. They'll make a home out there under that immense expanse of sky that Qifrey loves, nothing but the wind rattling their hinges at night, and far away from the muted churn of the tide that brings with it Qifrey's nightmares.

Perhaps there, with a life Qifrey can choose and build and grasp with his own two hands, he might one day feel safe enough to love Olly back.

—

Life is not terribly different now as independent witches, than from how they lived as apprentices. Technically Qifrey is still in an apprenticeship, but only in matters related to becoming a master preparing to take on his own students. Otherwise he has his freedom. He studies and assists with the juniors as he did when he was apprentice, but  Beldaruit tries not to linger over his shoulder so much anymore. Some things Qifrey goes out of his way to learn on his own about how to adequately take care of children.

Witches are taught to obfuscate from the moment they’re able to understand anything at all, and are restricted by an unmalleable set of rules. As such, their childhood becomes noticeably more disrupted than their outsider counterparts. But they are born into this contract, and much of it is normalised and unnoticeable until a contrast is set before you.

This was not Qifrey's experience though. He was thrust into this world even after it had stolen away his childhood, and made to grow up all at once. It is understandable that he would feel compelled to learn what is normal and what isn't. He has compared his own experiences and found them to be a wildly unreliable account to hold up as an example.

After all, children need more than just be fed and clothed and housed.

“It's not as common sense as people think,” Qifrey told him while complaining about the dearth of literature on healthy childhood development, and whether it counts as breaking the rules on witches and medicine. “It's important to look out for these things. Did you know,” he absently touched the bridge of his new spectacles, “that a child with a tendency to walk on their toes might require different learning modalities than ones who don't? The caretakers in the children's home in Ezrest told me. They're making quite the advances in observing the human mind.”

“Hm,” Olly replied because he didn’t understand how that works at all but was glad Qifrey found it so fascinating. He finished burning a light glyph into a carved out bit of stepping stone and tapped the end of his pen against his lips. “Y’know, I could read and draw spells before I spoke. My mam thought I was born mute. Hah. Had trouble getting me to pipe down once I finally did sort it out.”

“Oh?” Qifrey looked at him very closely then, intrigued, and Olly preened a bit to be the center of his attention for a second. Then he said, “Actually that explains quite a bit,” in the tone of voice that sounded like the equivalent of a wince, didn't elaborate, and Olly wasn't sure if he was supposed to be offended or not.

When Olly isn't traveling for formal commissions, or rounding on the villages that have requested witchly maintenance, he's back at the Assembly and working on his own pursuits in their quarters.  They've started taking the windowway out to Naakiwon Downs, back out to the old, long abandoned Shepherd's cottage, and have begun repairing it with spells and their own two hands. Mostly spells, though. Qifrey is a wonder in the kitchen, or out in the garden he's made, but he’s rubbish with a chisel and gouge. However, Olly is rather good with his hands and putting things together, so when something requires a more human approach, rather than magic, he's usually able to suss it out. They balance each other other out this way.

Piece by piece, each beam erected and stones cobbled together, it begins to look like something that could be an atelier.

An shelter.

A home.

---

“Ugh,” Qifrey stumbles on the last step into their rooms, and grabs hold to Olly's upper arm for support. “I don't understand how anyone enjoys doing this to themselves. I really don't.”

Olly laughs, not quite sober himself, but definitely better off than Qifrey at present. “You're not supposed to down spirits straight like that, ya numpty. Well, not that fast, at least. Usually you don't take more than a couple cups of wine or cidre, what's gotten into you tonight? Bit strange, this turnabout.” It's a role reversal, for sure. Olly rather looks forward to those bleary moments of Qifrey propping him up on the walk home. He's good at taking care of Olly–  always giving him a tonic before bed so his head won't be splitting in the morning, and helping him out of his belt and cloak. He cools the room with one of his spells since Olly tends to overheat, especially after drinking.

It's the least Olly can do to return the favor.

Qifrey’s grumblings sound distinctly petulant in tone, and he spins on his heels, bumping chest to chest with Olly. His fingers fumble with the plaiting at his throat. “Olly, help me with this.” He has a solid few centimetres of height on Olruggio, but Qifrey's drunken posture isn't as impeccable as it is when he's sober, and he's real messy about their spacing. It's doing things to Olly’s pulse that aren't fair.

“Mmf.. you’re always so warm,” Qifrey sighs and drops his head to Olly’s shoulder. “You feel nice.”

“Geez,” Olly tamps down viciously on the spillover of arousal into his inebriated, and less regulated, state of being. He gets a hand into Qifrey's hair and tugs his head back up. 

“Ouch,” Qifrey whines, and bites his bottom lip. 

“Please. I didn't even pull hard,” Olly mutters, a little desperate for air right about now. He works at Qifrey's collar, sliding his fingers between the weaves of fabric to loosen them, before slipping them free from the interlocking pattern. Knuckles bump their way down Qifrey's neck until Olly flips free the last plait. For a moment, his thumb lingers at the pale hallow where Qifrey’s collarbones meet– but he gets ahold of himself and thumps him in the same spot. “Get your arse in bed. You've got lessons in the morning ya drunkard. Not very master’ly of ya, this,” he teases, and begins helping Qifrey backward toward his bed.

Qifrey ignores him, but lets himself be guided as if they're lock-step in a very clumsy waltz. He reaches up and swats the golden tassel ornament atop Olly’s cap.  “You’ve kept it.”

“Plain cap would look a bit incomplete, wouldn't it? People might think I'm a fraud. Why? Ready to return my ribbon, finally?”

“No, I'm not allowed.”

“Allowed?” Olly laughs. “Who says? You?”

“No,” Qifrey touches the tip of Olly’s nose with his forefinger, “you.” He tilts his head.“If you ever did take it off, would that mean the promise is voided? Or does it still count, since I'll have yours, and you don't know why it's anything that matters at all.”

“Huh?” Olly pauses in their path across the room. It feels like he should understand what Qifrey is talking about, but he just can't bring up any frame of reference that would make it so.

“I'm not making sense to you, am I. It's too soon and you don't know. We aren't to that part yet.” He narrows his eye and knocks the cap straight off Olly’s head and onto the floor, then sticks his hands into Olly’s hair, mussing it up.

“No, you're not–ah,” he grabs Qifrey's wrists and pulls them away, “making sense. Sit,” Olly commands and Qifrey sits down at the edge of the bed. It barely takes a push to get him to lie down and Olly stoops to remove his boots. He wrestles off the second one and tosses it aside before he leans over Qifrey's legs and places his hands on either side of Qifrey's shoulders for balance. “Now, what is it that I’m supposed to know?”

“Your hair is soft. And you smell good.”

“O..kay. Don't think that's what you meant, but thanks. I guess. Care to try telling me for real this time?’

“Did you want to kiss that woman?”

“Woman?” Olly reels back a little at the abrupt change in subject.

 There had, indeed, been a woman, and she had taken a liking to Olly. He thought it had been friendly conversation, but somewhere around the third drink she’d swept him into a corner, put her hands against his chest, and gone up on her toes to whisper an offer into his ear. It’s nice, sometimes, being wanted, but all of Olly’s devotion flows in one direction when it comes to these things. He tends to be oblivious to others, because of it. Around the time Olly was removing her hands from his body and awkwardly–too awkwardly–stammering a rejection, he’d looked across the room for Qifrey. 

There he was, glowering at Olly from their table with an empty glass and a bottle of amber coloured spirits that he’d produced from gods know where. A man, larger than Qifrey, the look of a witch passing through the Great Hall on business, was next to him and steadfastly being ignored. Olly suspected that the bottle belonged to him– and this had not been its intended purpose. It looked like his efforts to chat Qifrey up had not gone as he'd hoped. Sure, he’d succeeded in getting Qifrey drunk– but it wasn’t a happy, pliable drunk he received. Qifrey looked like he was about to draw a spell rank enough to flood the tavern. The bloke must’ve said something pretty egregious to set off Qifrey’s temper, and Olly didn’t like him looking at Qifrey as if he was something he wanted to conquer, so he’d gone over and snatched Qifrey out of the seat.

Honestly, he’d forgotten the woman. There might as well not have been anyone else there.

It takes a second of embarrassed sputtering before Olly manages a, “I’d barely even met her! Can't even remember her name!”

“From what I've seen, that doesn't matter as much as you think it might. She barely knew you and tried.”

“Aannnd,” Olly says, slow and drawn out so Qifrey can stop using that sceptical tone on him, “as you might have noticed, I wasn't exactly keen.”

“And if you had been?”

“I wasn't.”

“You travel for work alone. You have admirers everywhere. You're smart. Maybe too smart. You do come off cranky at first, and a bit frank, and you tend to fixate on something to the exclusion of everything else, including yourself. It shows in your attention span. Your hair is messy. It looks like you didn't comb it.”

“Oi! I thought I was being complimented? And my hair was fine before you got your mits in it!”

“But also you're gentle, and honest… and treat others with respect. Sure, a lot of people say that they care, that they want to help and serve others, but they don't mean it. Not really. They just want the least amount of work for the most amount of credit.” He's just babbling on now, and it's cute, he's a talkative drunk, but it makes Olly feel a little bad to hear the thoughts he would, most likely, otherwise keep to himself.

“Aren't you a little too articulate for a drunk?” Olly deflects. It's difficult to take compliments from Qifrey because it makes him feel all bashful and blushing. “Stop thinking so much.”

“But you do. You genuinely want to be a person that helps.  It means a lot to you, doesn't it? You're so completely… yourself. As if you always understood who you were becoming, and never needed to interrogate the path because you felt in your heart it was right. I've always wondered what that must be like– to have that kind of certainty.” 

This is starting to make Olly sad, now. When Qifrey says things like that it might sound like praise, but what’s underneath it is Qifrey's unshakeable belief that there is something inherently wrong with himself as a person. As if he is performing a life instead of living one. And no matter what Olly does, he hasn't been able to convince Qifrey otherwise in all their years together.

"No, actually,” Qifrey interjects, grabbing Olly by the collar like he owes him money, “do you know how exhausting it is sometimes, living with your intuition? You should take some responsibility for this mess. I never know when you're going to–” he sighs and crosses his arms over his eyes. “I'm going to stop talking now.”

Olly swallows, his heart nothing but fluttering wings in his chest. “Aye, probably for the–”

“You’re handsome.”

“--best. Oh?” That one shocks him more than anything else, really. Qifrey has never directly alluded to having any preferences for Olly’s appearance. It's the first time he's expressed that Olly looks anything other than some state-of-being unrelated to comeliness– more like, tired, and cross, and dehydrated. Whereas Olly can't go five seconds without remembering that Qifrey is beautiful, or worse– his mind unhelpfully suggesting to imagine him without any clothes at all.

“Other people think so too. If you wanted to, you could… be keen. You have opportunities. Sometimes you come back and there's the scent of other people on your clothes when I wash them. I thought you might have.”

“My clothes?” Olly furrows his brow, confused, casts his gaze over his shoulder, as if a bundle of shirts might be piled up behind him for the sniffing. The more he elaborates, the less Olly takes it to heart. It still kind of sounds like he's making objective observations, after all. Either that, or he's jealous, which seems unlikely. “Right, so because I'm– by your words– not bad to look at, treat people well, and have the time and therefore the opportunity– you think I'm doing what, exactly? Slagging my way across the continent?” Olly snorts. “I don't treat people that well.”

Qifrey looks convinced of whatever theory he's made up in his own head. “You’re too kind for your own good. You like making people happy. You like touching. Being close.. Why wouldn't you take a lover?” He fiddles with one of the leather ties Olly uses to bind back his sleeves, and looks to the side.

Olly is postured over him, their bodies barely touching– but looking at Qifrey underneath him is wreaking havoc on Olly’s ability to compartmentalise his longing. It isn't simple kindness that has kept him sticking to Qifrey’s side all these years. If he knew the way Olruggio felt, the fantasies spent at his hand under the cover of darkness, if he knew of all the wanting…

Olruggio sighs. “I’m not nearly as good as you think.”

“You are,” Qifrey says, eye cutting sharply to look back up at him. He says it with a tone of finality laced with irritation that brokers no dissent. For a moment he sounds like his younger self, when he was still sharp at the edges, stubborn, and hadn't yet figured out to instead use his charm like a weapon.

“Sure. Go asleep, now.”

“So stop saying that.”

Stop? It's such a small comment, when has he ever said it to begin with? “You’re so confusin’ sometimes,” Olly pinches a wisp of his hair, “fine, just…calm down.” Qifrey laughs at that, rueful, not the gentle, musical thing that typically fills his mouth and makes Olruggio's heart soar. “Qifrey… are y’alright?”

“Do you want to kiss me?’

“Fucking, what–” the question is shocking enough to sober Olly up the rest of the way, and he moves to put some distance between them, but Qifrey's hands go flat against his chest. Not pushing him away, not pulling him in, just resting there, like the woman had done earlier in the night– but this time Olly is weak to the touch. Qifrey might as well have snatched him up by the collar by the way it stills him. “Agh, Qifrey, give over now.. You’re just a bit ganted, I'll get you some water and–”

“I know– the room spins when I try to blink. My head hurts and I can't think in a straight line– it's not nice at all. That's why I think it might work.” His fingers curl into the flare of Olly's collar, pulling him closer– chin tipping up to graze their noses together before pulling Olly's forehead against his own.

“Is it because of me?” he whispers. “Am I the reason that you're here in my bed right now, and not someone else's?" His voice is timid, almost like he's afraid of the answer, but the language of his body is bold and at odds with the rest of him. “I know it's selfish.. I know you don't understand.. I just.. I still want it to be me.”

There's something wrong with Qifrey.

Something beyond the pain and trauma Olly is familiar with, and of which Qifrey has carried on his shoulders since he was a child. This sounds like despair, and guilt, and for the life in him, Olly can't imagine what Qifrey could have possibly done to hold the weight of such feelings in his heart.

But whatever it is, is a conversation for later, when Qifrey is vulnerable by choice and not circumstance.

Olly sighs. With a tremendous degree of difficulty, he pulls away from the temptation of Qifrey's mouth. He smooths back the hair covering his forehead and presses a kiss there instead, then lower, where the starburst of scarring over his right eye stops short of his brow.

“Ask me when you're feeling better. You probably won't even remember this in the morning.”

“That’s usually my line,” Qifrey slurs. His eye is closed now, breaths coming quiet and even. “I’m so sorry, Olly,” he murmurs, and drifts off.

If he remembers anything the following day, it's brought up nonspecifically on either of their behalf. Qifrey only looks terribly embarrassed and nervous and asks, “I didn't say anything strange, did I?”

And Olly tells him, “Bit strange, yeah,” because he's bad at lying, but decent at omitting, and follows it up with, “but am gonna act like you didn’t, in reparation for all the times you've had to drag m’arse back back here while listening to me give a drunken treatise on the structural integrity of lava.”

Qifrey practically sags with relief and hurries out the door, and the vague sense of having forgotten something and not knowing what, stays behind.

—-

“You said I didn't say anything! You said you wouldn't say anything!”

“No, I didn't! Well, I said you did, and I was going to act like you didn't! But I couldn't, could I?” The wind whips across the vale with such ferocity that it makes Olly's ears hurt. “I knew you were keeping something from me.. I just– I didn't expect it to be this. How many times has it been? How many times have we done this?”

“Too many…you've asked me this question almost every time. It happened a lot at the beginning, when it was new and I was young. I couldn't control myself well and you'd suspect much sooner. It's not as often now..”

“I suppose it should be a comfort that you've gotten better at lying to me.” Olly doesn't mean for it to come out so sharp, he doesn't, and it breaks his heart when Qifrey flinches and looks down at his feet. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I swear. It's just– ” Olly apologises immediately, “it’s happening all at once for me– years of history that I can't remember and it's just doing my head in a bit. I'm not mad at you, how could I be? It isn't your fault.”

“It doesn't matter if it is or isn't. I'm the crime committed, I'm the scene of it, I’m the criminal. It all feels the same.” 

“That's not true,” Olly tries to reach out for Qifrey's hand but he pulls it away and backs up a few steps. Olly tries again, and Qifrey dodges again. “Qifrey…”

“Don't– I can feel it starting to sprout and you shouldn't be near me when it happens.”

“Wh–but–then don't let it happen!” Olly sputters. “Get the damn spell out already!”

Qifrey’s lips tremble, and he looks out at the valleys and hills and the great green sweep of earth before them– then over toward their nearly completed atelier below. Olly was just there, building Qifrey a brick oven outside for all his baking. How did it come to this, when a moment ago they only had thoughts of the future?

“Perhaps.. it would be a relief.." Qifrey says, his words nearly carried off by the wind. “Something occurred to me after the last time: I can't.. really..  remember what it's like to be at peace. Or to know comfort without fear. I don't think those feelings exist naturally in me anymore, the way they do for other people– but it takes so little when it comes from you.”

A small shoot of silverleaf blooms over his scarred eye.

 “I can't leave you and put an end to the cycle, the relief of sparing you is too great, and it grows. I can't stay and tell you the truth because the relief of sharing the burden makes it grow. Either way I'm damned. I’ve made my promises, but I've plucked yours from your memory over and over.  It's alright Olly.. you don't have to hold on to me. There is no obligation. We're both adults now, and I won't hold you to a child's oath. I’ve come to terms with my fate, whether it's now, or later– this is, eventually, coming for me. Perhaps it's better now, before I form any more attachments." He tries to smile.  “It was never meant to be permanent. You can stop and–”

Olly doesn't allow him to pull away this time, he grabs hold of Qifrey's forearms and wrenches him around until they're face to face. Qifrey squirms in alarm as thin, viny, tendrils begin weaving their way down his arms, creeping toward Olly’s hands.

“Obligation?” Olly hisses out, “You really think it's obligation that brings me back here? You think it's obligation that keeps me fixed in your path? You can't be that dense. You must know–” he shakes his head. “You’re telling me not to give you anything worth living for. I don't accept that. Promise me again. Promise you won't run from me. That you won't go and do something drastic and leave me here alone.”

“I’ve already promised.”

“Do it. Again.” The vines are tickling over the tops of his hands now, but Olly holds that much tighter. His throat feels choked with panic and sadness. He tries to laugh, but it comes out thin and shaky. “For heaven’s sake man, I just built you a brick sodding oven down there, you think I'll let you die on this hill after I went through the trouble of stacking all those bricks! I didn't even use a spell! Are you really going to do this here, Qifrey? It's not even a nice hilltop! Even the grass is–” Olly looks out at the rolling, verdant, hillocks, the wildflowers shivering in the breeze, the landscape dappled by sun and shadow from the vast expanse of sky, “just pure mingin’. You can't be serious.”  He blathers himself into a stunned and nasty silence.

Qifrey obviously didn't anticipate the oven being used as blackmail, because he nearly laughs and gives Olly an exasperated look. “You are..ridiculous.”

“Aye, and so are you for even thinking I'd let you off the hook so soon. Give me your word, and do the spell.”

Qifrey pauses for one final moment, and with a tremendous amount of effort, because it seems he isn't totally in control of his arms anymore, he reaches for his cap and moves to place it atop Olly's head.

“You'll need to do better than my ribbon, we already–”

Qifrey leans in and the rest of the sentence is muffled and silenced by the press of his lips.

Distantly, Olly registers that he's cold to the touch, and the realisation of why occurs a moment later– Qifrey really is dying. His life is being drained away to nourish that seed wedged inside of his body.

Urgency becomes a jagged mess in the pit of Olly’s stomach and he reaches to bracket Qifrey’s cheeks with his hands, pulls him closer. Kisses him harder. Tries to force warmth back into him. It's not even about being allowed to kiss Qifrey.

Qifrey breaks the kiss with gasp, and avoids when Olly unthinkingly tries to press closer, so desperate to drive the heat out of his body and into Qifrey's.

“Stop.. please… you'll get hurt,” Qifrey soothes Olly backward with fingertips against his lips. It's enough for Olly to regain a foothold over the panic, and he sees that there's far more silver blooming up and down Qifrey's body now than a mere five seconds ago. Little leaves of silver unfurl over the tops of his hands.

“Go on,” Olly commands, voice rough, “make me forget.”

Qifrey nods, his hands busy with unpinning the small triangle of fabric at the front of the cap, now fully situated atop Olly's head.

“Listen to me..” Qifrey murmurs. “Earlier, when you said that you’re the one caught in my path. That isn't true.” The fabric loosens, falling down and obscuring Olly’s sight. “It's the other way around, you see.” His thumb settles at the center of the cap.  “It's me that's fastened into yours. I can't leave you. I can't join you. I'm the one in orbit. You're the one holding the center, and you always have been. From the very beginning. It’s since then that I've loved you.”

Olly’s entire being narrows down into one word, trying to bear it into clarity amidst the cacophony of anxiety. “Qifrey, wait, I–”

“I'm sorry, Olly.”

“No, wait–!”

It's a strange feeling, to have a memory destroyed. It doesn't hurt, the way Olly thought it might when he feels the spell begin to work, but it isn't comfortable either. It's like a wall of darkness rising over the senses as a great wave rushing toward you from a distance, and then it is upon you. Crushing down. It isn't natural, and whatever sense of self remains in that space instinctively tries to hold on to whatever is being pried forth. It feels familiar though, probably because Olly has done this before and his subconscious knows to let it happen. The memory separates itself from the rest, fracturing into shards before it shatters like so much glass across Olruggio's mind, and then—

—