One by one, the girls doze off around the fireplace. The thick, fluffy carpet Olly had brought from his latest journey was an instant hit; Qifrey would be sprawled over it himself if there were room, despite the unsettling pattern of a handsome young Silverwood tree, woven in stark white and sparkling silver over a background of deep teal. The strange, cylindrical cushions cradling their heads are also bounty from Olly’s travels, as is the sweet duskbramble berry wine they shared over dinner, and the spice mixture that made the simple meal of grilled fish and carapace yam croquettes taste exotic and exciting. The atelier is every bit Olly as it is Qifrey, a tangible account of their life together.
Their life. Together.
Qifrey’s tired eye searches for his cap, and the ribbon on it. He would very much like to touch it right now. Press to it his forehead and cheek and lips in unspeakable gratitude. For all the contentment of a restful evening, it’s been more difficult than usual to keep the cheer up. The kitchen gets small with all six of them in it, and Olly never misses a chance to steal a plausibly deniable touch: a brush of the shoulders, a feather-light hand on the waist, a resolute thumb wiping off the sauce smeared on the corner of Qifrey’s lips—and then, as if all that wasn’t too much already, Olly went and sucked it clean, staring the whole while in Qifrey’s eye.
Even now, as they sit in silence, each on his own side of the ornate little coffee table (it too is a souvenir, dating back to Olly’s first big commission), Qifrey feels Olly’s proximity more keenly than the warmth of the fireplace. It takes his full focus, all his willpower, to resist the none too gentle pull of its gravity.
Qifrey chances a glance up. It looks like Olly has dozed off as well, and who could blame him? Everyone had a bit too much to eat, and Olly, as usual, had a bit too much to drink. Three glasses of the home-brewed mountain apple cider that Qifrey won’t touch because it’s too sweet and too strong, two pints of ale, and half a bottle of regular wine on top of the blackberry wine, which he declared to really be just juice. Not that Qifrey’s been counting.
On closer look, no. Olly’s still awake, if only barely. Slumped like a sack of grain, he looks a decade older than his twenty-seven years. They both wear masks for the children: Qifrey one of unflappable optimism, Olly one of grumbling patience, like a great hound quietly suffering all manner of small indignities: having its tail and ears pulled, having its belly tickled and its lips lifted to unveil the long canines beneath, rendered harmless by unconditional love. Obviously, they are both different men when the masks fall off. But with each year, the gap between the masked and unmasked versions of Olly yawns wider and darker. Even his appearance shifts when he drops the act. Out of nowhere, frown marks sprout between his brows even when his face is slack, and crow feet spread from the corners of his eyes. His skin, crumpled by the hand he leans on, is thin, flaky and spotted. Several days’ worth of dark stubble rasp as his head sinks deeper into his palm. There’s silver glinting from his unkempt hair. Only a few isolated strands, but the contrast is so stark that Qifrey’s eye is drawn to them every time he allows himself to look. Olly’s shirt is stained with ink, and sauce, and ash from the hearth, and sweat under his arms, and yellow grease where the collar chafes against the tanned back of his neck. Long overdue for laundering. If he sniffs, Qifrey’s sure he’ll pick up the stale scent of it, and of the body beneath, long overdue for a bath.
He doesn’t mind. Given half a chance, he would bury his nose in it—the shirt, the skin, all of it, all of him—and pull it into his lungs in great, starved gulps, over and over till he’s dizzy.
But he wouldn’t want the girls to notice.
“Speak,” says Olly, and though his voice is soft, it gives Qifrey a start. He didn’t realize he’d been caught staring. As heat blooms in his cheeks, Olly turns an accusatory eye on him without moving any other part of his body. “I know what you’re thinking. Might as well say it out loud.”
“What am I thinking?”
“That I’m drinking too much, again. That it’s turning into a problem.”
“I wasn’t thinking that… exactly.”
Olly’s gaze drifts away. “What, then.”
Here’s what Qifrey’s supposed to do: shrug and shake his head, pat his friend’s back in goodnight, and retreat to his chambers. Honesty is dangerous. Intimacy is dangerous. The last thing he needs is to be forced to do the foul deed again. The premature silver in Olly’s hair, the lines on his handsome face—not to mention his growing collection of bad habits, from the drinking to the slouching to the completely random sleeping schedule and endless cycles of manic creativity inevitably followed by burnout—it’s all because of repeated tampering with his mind. Qifrey knows this.
But he has also had a bit too much to drink, and the anguish churning in his chest makes him think it’s safe.
“You’re unhappy,” he says.
And here’s what Olly’s supposed to do: raise his eyebrows, pretending to be surprised, then laugh it off as nonsense. Or frown, pretending to take it in serious consideration, then deny it. Or divert the conversation to his frustration of the week, be it a research project, a tricky commission, or the latest call for assistance from one of the nearby hamlets. Yes, he might say, as he has done countless times before when Qifrey dared express concern. I’m unhappy because such and such wants me to do one impossible thing or another by the laughably unreasonable deadline. You’d be unhappy, too!
Not tonight, though. His eyes, inscrutable in the dancing firelight, find Qifrey again and rest on him a long moment before they relent and release him. He says nothing. It’s the closest he has ever come to admitting it.
And Qifrey regrets saying it, now. An evasive Olly is a familiar Olly. A hopeful Olly, who might not believe himself to be unhappy. A silent Olly, on the other hand…
Qifrey swallows, fear stirring. “You do know that—” He runs out of breath. Ridiculous! Yet he must gasp for air and hide it by clearing his throat. “That I would not begrudge you if—” And again. His heart’s hammering. “If you decided to leave. Have a life of your own. Find someone who—” Qifrey realizes he has lifted a hand to his throat and forces it back down onto his lap. “Start a family,” he finishes lamely.
The whole time, he’s been staring ahead. At his cap and the ribbon, at the cushions, the carpet, the girls. But the lack of immediate response eventually makes him glance across the ornate little table.
Olly has finally moved. He’s sitting almost straight now, arms crossed, and there’s the frown. “My family’s right here,” he says.
Tremulous and heated, the words warm Qifrey through to the very core of his being. No, he thinks, closing his eye and willing the eager tendrils of the curse to retreat. Not now. I won’t have it!
“You know what I mean,” he says, and lets the guilt at dismissing that beautiful, dreamlike confession, stem the tide.
But Olly merely snorts. “You think married life would truly be so different from this?” He juts his chin at their sleeping apprentices.
“Not this part, perhaps,” Qifrey concedes. “But there are other parts.”
And there’s the laugh, now. “Why don’t you take a spouse, then? There’s no shortage of interest.”
The only answer Qifrey deigns to give is a huff of old, worn-out annoyance.
After a moment, Olly sighs. “Qifrey,” he says. “My friend.” And to make double sure of Qifrey’s full attention, he pinches the hem of Qifrey’s skintight undershirt where it flares open ever so slightly at the wrist, careful not to touch, now. “Might you, by any chance, be under the illusion that I am kept here against my will?”
Qifrey blinks. It might’ve been a full decade since they last spoke so openly with one another without the curse looming over them. “More like, against your better judgment.”
Affection softens Olly’s features. “There is not, and has never been, a single grain of good judgment in me,” he says, and has he, too, gone breathless? Because he seems to gasp before adding, “When it comes to you.”
The roots swell with life and love within Qifrey’s chest, arresting his heartbeat. It only lasts a moment. It won’t kill him. Probably. But it still frightens him, a bucket of iced water on the treacherous heat that’s been building at the base of his spine. He pulls his hand to him—out of reach of Olly’s long, hard fingers, away from even that sad and distant substitute for touch, from the comfort he craves so much, he’s long been prepared to die for it—and stiffens in a gesture Olly has been trained by a lifetime of rejections to recognize, and flinch from, at once.
“It’s my life,” Olly says. “If it’s a mistake, it’s my mistake to make. I have no regrets.”
Yet, Qifrey thinks, but with the horror of the curse freshly imprinted on him, he finds it no longer difficult to keep his big mouth shut.
“This is my home, and there’s no other place I’d rather be,” Olly concludes. “Unless you want me to go?”
“No,” Qifrey exhales. “Never. This is—you are—we are family. I just… I just want what’s best for you.” He draws a shaky breath. “I want you to be happy.”
“I know,” Olly murmurs.
Qifrey nods, staring at the ribbon. He doesn’t dare look at his friend, because he knows what he’ll see. More than tenderness. More than affection. He’ll see love, and he’s not sure he can take it. It’s hard to breathe as is. If the tears pooling in his eye fall, there may be leaves, too. And he can’t have that. He can’t do that to Olly, not so soon after the last time.
“And I will be,” Olly says. “As soon as I’m done with this bloody commission.” He yawns and stretches, both gestures jerky and entirely performative, though no one but Qifrey would ever be able to tell. “I’ve been staring at those godsdamn blueprints so much, I now see them in my dreams. You think you know what the workshop looks like when I make a mess of it? You should see it now. It’s mythopoeic chaos in there, no exaggeration. And, well.” There’s a pause. He too is staring straight ahead, perhaps at his own cap, resting next to Qifrey’s, and the tassel on it. “I suppose the drinking doesn’t help. I’ll uh…” He nods, then straightens his spine and leans on his knees, the picture of resolve. “I won’t let it turn into a problem.”
It’s all Qifrey can do to keep from sobbing. He knows what this is. With his uncanny, peculiar perception, Olly has sensed the danger. A part of him knows—some part of him must know, must retain the memory—of the fear if not of the reason for it—Qifrey’s sure of it, has been sure of it and has been dreading it, since the very first time. And so he pretends, dear Olly, he holds the torch through wind and hail and bitter snow—and through some sunny days, too, there have been some sunny days, too—for Qifrey to hang onto, the flicker of light through the crack between the boards of the casket. That’s what this is.
Something tickles Qifrey’s hand, the one that’s been clutching his skirts in his lap. Tears wet his lashes as he looks down. He blinks.
No. He brushes the tiny silver leaf away, crushing it under his heel. No, no, NO.
“You should get some sleep,” he says, making his voice cold and hard, because that’s his part of the bargain. “And take a bath, and shave, and wear a fresh shirt tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Sounding stunned, Olly lifts his arm and sniffs under it. “Oh. Sorry about that.”
Don’t apologize, Qifrey wants to scream. I’m the one who should apologize. It’s all my fucking fault!
Though it isn’t. The rational part of him knows it isn’t, and the only way to punish those whose whose fault it is, the only hope there is of ever finding a cure, is to survive, survive, and keep hurting the one he loves.
Silent, he nods.