Archive of Our Own ^beta

     Vijou found him just at the edge of the cliff, which was lucky, because shockingly , after being taken on a whirlwind, no-holds-barred tour of the Mandeville sewers by a naga of all things, Dezhraen wasn’t exactly looking forward to the trek back into town. But Vier and Ari were facing the Lamia alone, their only backup that incompetent embarrassment of a law officer and his spineless minions.

     And that sixth sense, that strange, new place in the back of his mind that seemed far too in tune with the feel of Vier, of warm sun and road dust and the first peach of summer, warm and ripe, the juices spurting free to dribble down his chin, had been quiet for far too long.

     He rode hell for leather, Vijou swift as nightfall in winter as he silently picked up on Dezzy’s urgency, that sneaking, creeping fear that something Just Was Not Right.

     The town gates caught them both off guard, open and unmanned for the first time in their stay, all attention diverted to the square, a great, jostling mass of shouts and bodies.

     What…

     “Did you hear?”

     “Miss Emily! Some kind of monster!”

     “Welcome to the party.” Dezzy thought dryly, dismounting to lead Vijou through the crush as quickly as possible

     His heart stopped when he saw the militia outside the inn, the Sheriff issuing brisk orders in his shirt, the whole thing stained a violent, uncompromising red.

     “Son…” He breathed, catching sight of Dezzy.

     “What did you do?” Dezhrean demanded, passing Vijou off to one of the inn’s hostlers as he took in the blood, the chaos, the total absence of his would-be elementalist. 

     “Son, calm down.” The Sheriff murmured, reaching for him, hands red and flaking and the blood, so, much, blood.

     “Where is he?!” Dezzy bellowed, shoving hands and bodies aside to fly across the threshold, a hundred thousand aches and pains forgotten in the face of Vier wounded, Vier in pain, Vier-

     His eyes chose the wrong time to light on the dark, foreboding drips on the staircase, the lurid red smear of a hand, an arm on the plaster as a maid hustled up the steps with hot water and bandages.

     To heal? Or-

     “Vier!?” Dezzy shouted, dodging the maid on the rickety steps an afterthought, less than nothing in the face of Vier, hurt and bleeding, Vier, so warm and confidant this morning, dragging him in and pressing them close, his hands and mouth and everything right there, and doing the most delicious things-

     It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

     And now-

     “Vi’ye!” He thundered, mangling the syllables, making them more Elvish than Common, more his than anything else as he tore down the hall.

     “Dezzy, in here!” Ariadne’s voice pealed from their room, strident and strained and stretching over a chaos Dezzy didn’t want to think about.

     He tore across the threshold and nearly dropped at the sight of Vier, stripped to the waist, pale and insensate on the bed, their bed, as storm of physicians and assistants and bodies whose purpose Dezhrean didn’t know, didn’t care to know, swirled around him.

     “Vi’ye…” He breathed, lost in an exhale as Ariadne left her place at Vier’s side to touch his shoulder with a worried hand.

     “The Lamia got a hit in, before he got her.” The girl breathed. “They think…. they said…”

     “You idiot!” Dezzy burst out, startling the entire room as he fair to leapt over Ariadne and the empty bed to his elemancer’s side, carding bruised, bloody fingers through tangled, sweaty hair and pressing fierce, panting kisses to too-cool skin and too-closed lids.

     “Stupid, reckless, cocky, awful,” He swore, pressing their foreheads together and shoving aside the hands that kept trying to pull them apart.

     “Friend… hurt? …Go ple-ase?” One of them insisted, mangling the Elvish and it is very likely in all this that Dezzy has been neglecting his Common in a way that would have Mae’ye chiding him, but he has not a single fuck to give on that front, because Vier is an IDIOT who gave him one of the most sinful goodbye hugs in HISTORY and then went and got himself savaged by a LAMIA.

     “Fuck off.” He snarled, elbows caging Vier and fingers never leaving his hair, soothing and steady as the dark haired boy was for him when the Lamia’s venom had raged through his veins.

     “Come on, Dezzy,” Ariadne soothes, tugging at a sleeve, “the doctors need to work.”

     “Let them.” He bites out, Common words grating and unnatural as he toes off his boots and plants himself on the bed, exactly where Vier had sat vigil for him just this morning.

     “I’m not moving.”

     He doesn’t, letting the harsh Common for ‘laceration’, ‘internal bleeding’, ‘infection’ flow in, out, and around him as he knots himself into the space beside Vier’s pillow, sponging off sweat and grime, carding the tangles from his Forthalian’s hair as the doctors do what they can, and then make a doomed attempt to see to Dezzy’s own scrapes and bruises.

     The one brave enough to attempt speaking Elvish to him inhales, then freezes on Dezhrean’s glare, withers into a stammering Common recitation of Vier’s prognosis, his care, that they’ll be back to check on him tomorrow, and to send the innkeeper or his wife if the boy worsens.

     Dezzy’s ‘thank you’ is less than polite as he snatches up the flannel left by one of the assistants, sets to the dirt under his elemancer’s nails they had missed in their ablutions.

     “Dezzy?” Ariadne ventures, soft and timid in the hush of the room. “Dezzy are you sure you don’t want them to take care of you? You look pretty beat up…”

     “I could try…” she offers, trailing off. “Maybe get you something to eat?”

     “Dezzy…” the younger girl sighs, and its wet and helpless, and something twists inside him.

     He squeezes his eyes shut to her attempts to- help? Do something? Break him out of this, whatever it is?

     But he is not having it. She can do what she will.

     His task is before him.

     By the time he is satisfied that Vier is as clean and comfortable as he can reasonably be with an enormous fucking gash in his side, Ari has long since given up, left bread and broth and more substantial fare she knows he won’t touch on the table and made herself scarce.

     Dezzy only has eyes for Vier, pale and still under the blankets as the Elven boy rushes through scrubbing the filth of the sewer from himself, carding the day from his hair and hastily piling the whole damp silver mess up and away, so as not to tangle in the blankets.

    “There are no words, in your language or mine,” he begins into the hush, drawing the blankets up at a corner to slip in close to the sleeping Forthalian boy, curling close and secret into the creeping chill of dusk. “That express how supremely angry I am at you right now.”

     “You go and convince me you’re all competent and sexy and have this whole 'fighting monsters’ business under control, twice,” he murmurs tangling their fingers together and laying a kiss across the back of Vier’s hand.

     “Enough to send me off to fight a giant snake solo, as the easy task.” He continues on a grumble, shifting crossly under the blankets at a sore spot that’s going to be a bruise tomorrow, “Only to have a sudden attack of normal humani idiocy and get filleted by a Lamia disguised as a nanny.”

     “Which,” he breathes into the too-chilled skin of his bedmate’s shoulder, “I hope you know I’ll be mocking you about for all eternity.”

     His voice thickens on the end, entirely against his will, enough so that he rises over the unconscious elemancer, blankets following like a downy, quilted cloak.

     “Which you had best wake up and begin apologizing for right now, understand me?” He murmurs into the shell of Vier’s ear, the curve of his neck, the words tumbling out like water, like rainfall.

     Like cherry blossoms in the first wind of spring.

     “Because I’m here,” He breathes into the notch of Vier’s jaw like a revelation, a promise, “and waiting, and I am never leaving you again.”

     “D’zy…” Dezzy feels more than hears, more an exhalation than words, but the best sound in the word as it brushes the sensitive tip of his ear, ruffles the few silver strands that have escaped his hasty updo. “C’mmon.”

     “You’re awake!” He laughs in disbelief, jerking back to look at his beautiful idiot of an elemancer, and then forward again, to press a kiss to his cheeks, his forehead, the bright flush creeping up from the neck of that deeply unfortunate stickball garb.

     “Oh goddess you’re awake and wonderful and I’m so mad at you, you stupid idiot but none of that matters right now, none of it because I am never letting you out of my sight again.” Dezzy swears in a rush, framing Vier’s face with his hands and melting, more than a little, when the other boy gives a sleepy smile and nuzzles in to the contact.

     “Still Elv’sh…” Vier murmurs, tilting his head to press an absent kiss to Dezzy’s palm before groping clumsily at the prince’s shoulder, tugging sleepily until they’re both cuddled close on the pillows again. “But s’nice…”

     “I love you and hate you and am very mad at you for scaring me.” Dezzy manages in Common, getting as close as he dares with Vier’s side as it is. “Don’t do that again. Ever.”

     “’S our job, D’zzy.” Is his mumbled reply, even as dusky hands wind their way through silver strands, like they’ve been doing just that for a thousand years, like its the only home they’ve ever known… “Gotta help…”

     “Not. Alone.” Dez grinds out, giving his elemancer the ghost of a shake. “No more sending me off alone. You said it yourself, its too dangerous. They’re too strong to risk it.”

     And something in his voice must penetrate the haze of pain and drugs and exhaustion clouding Vier right now, because he blinks awake at that.

     “You’wer alone- Th’ snake- D’z, D’zzy… ” He attempts to tug Dezhrean back by his hair so he can see him, and sometime, when they’re both rested and awake and not nursing wounds from massive fucking reptiles, they’re going to revisit the exact effect that has on him, but in the meantime…

     “Hush, I’m fine.” Dezzy soothes before the idiot can hurt himself, again, getting enough distance between them that Vier can see for himself the clean bandages and whole skin, a new scrape here or there and one massive black eye, but other than that, nothing exceptional. “Just bumps and bruises.”

     “Unlike someone-” He grouches, sliding back in and cuddling close once more, “I dodge when ancient snake horrors attack me.”

     “Your eye…”

     “I will be just fine.” Dez grumbles, nosing deeper into Vier’s collar when he attempts to tug him free for a second time. “Now sleep, before I decide you’re well enough to give you the haranguing you so richly deserve.”

     “Y’re okay?” Vier mumbles into the crown of his head, holding Dezzy tight as injury and bone-deep exhaustion will allow.

     “Fine.” Dezhrean breathes again, swallowing a smile as he nips gently at Vier’s collarbone, “now sleep.”

     “Sp’k El’vsh fr’ me?” Vier asks, already drifting of as his thumb lazily traces the tip of Dezzy’s ear which, who, who taught him that? Did they tell them how good it feels?? “S’nice.”

     “I want to walk the world with you.” Dev murmurs, secret and safe in the dark from names and history and prophecy as he presses close to the one he loves. “I want to know you in every minute of every hour of every season, to twine our lives so completely that your breath is my breath, your heart is my heart, that my eyes close as you fall asleep.”

     Vier, for his part, is silent, his chest rising and falling in the rhythm of much needed sleep as the elven boy’s eyes fall shut.

     A wish, minuscule in scope but massive in magnitude fulfilled as, even now, two stars move infinitesimally closer in the sky.