Chapter Text
Qifrey is next to him on the couch, his long fingers endlessly twining and smoothing Olruggio’s black ribbon and Olly can’t stop watching.
He thinks that most days he handles this better. It’s hardly the first, or even hundredth time, that he’s seen the white haired witch run his hand over the silk. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes clearly while he’s lost in thought as he peers at a particularly complicated spell as if it’ll suddenly snap into place if he just imparts the right energy into the very air around himself. Who knows, maybe that is how Qifrey’s magic works.
Olly’s own magic is usually wrung from a combination of sleep deprivation and deadlines. It’s his blind dedication to find something, anything, that will work, damn it. If he stays at it long enough, it usually does.
The only magic that ever came easily to him are his warming and drying spells. Something about that first time watching Qifrey’s white hair and smoke robes float around him, like he was thawing and relaxing because of Olruggio, stuck in his mind and just won’t come loose.
So now Olly finds himself inventing more spells to make Qifrey feel like that again without even realizing that’s what his mind is doing. Like the snugstones he made for Qifrey, though he’s very glad the girls like them too. He was three days deep on a commission and ready to tear his hair out when Qifrey had dropped off a sweetened thornbark tea in Olly’s favorite mug. An hour later he was holding the first snugstone in his hand with scarcely an idea of how they came to be.
Qifrey had an odd way of making things either monumentally easier or harder than they usually were. Or, rather, than they seem to be for everyone else.
Olly still isn’t sure what happened earlier, with Coco between them on the couch.
Well, he understands the Coco part. She has a crush. She asked Tartah out and got turned down. It was so normal, so predictable that he had even thought about it back before shit hit the wall on Silver Eve.
He’d had a premonition of Coco teary and Qifrey’s gentle arms around her while Olly tried to find the right words because he knew Qifrey would be useless when it came to a crush. It was why he had practically cornered the man into not saying anything about the girl’s matching bracelets with Tartah in the first place.
He had been so sure the Qifrey didn’t notice crushes because he had seen Alaira and Beldaruit’s insinuations, really the whole gossip of the Great Hall, and his own timid attempts at flirting fly right over Qifrey’s head for all of their teenage years.
And then, just an hour ago, on this same couch, when Olly had implied he had, himself, experienced rejection, he watched Qifrey’s face fall in a way that Olly closely associated with terrifying water magic and the smell of blood. While Coco had been attempting to soothe the ego of a much younger man, Qifrey’s gaze had been miles away. His eye flicking between unseen items and Olly wasn’t so sure anymore.
And then, just a few minutes ago, Qifrey had asked who Olly had been talking about. As if it wasn’t the easiest question in the world. As if there weren’t books worth of evidence that almost any witch with a passing knowledge of Olruggio and Qifrey could point at to say “well, who knows why but clearly Olruggio fell in love with Qifrey the moment they met.” Which wasn’t quite true, it took a few rounds of meeting. And anyone who couldn’t see why Olly loved Qifrey was blind and should get out of their lives immediately anyways.
When they were twelve, Olly had started bringing Qifrey trinkets and contraptions that got carefully arranged in the other witch’s quarters, with a small pleased smile that made Olly feel cherished. But the gifts never seemed to register as signs of shared affection. He knew some of them still sat in Qifrey’s room - not even the useful items, just decorative ones that held no real value anymore.
So in their late teenage years, he had started appearing with Qifrey’s favorite desserts. He was rewarded with Qifrey’s sincere eye contact as he thanked Olly while licking quartz crystal from his fingers with a pleased grin. He remembered feeling his own face flush a hot red as he tried, unsuccessfully, to forget the image and stammered through a faint “you’re welcome”.
Just last year, he had brought home Qifrey’s favorite willowgrape tea, the Twin Dragons blend, and a new book so Qifrey could relax on the couch while Olly napped or started on his next contraption. Instead, he watched the other witch bustle about the kitchen to make Olly’s favorite midnight snack in repayment, muttering under his breath about how Olly was too good for him. It didn’t seem like it ever occurred to Qifrey that Olly wanted to spoil him, to make him feel cherished and thought of and good.
God, what he would give to make Qifrey feel good.
Olly swallowed, suppressing the familiar daydream of Qifrey making the same expression up at Olly that he had over the quartz sugar, although in a very different context. He couldn’t handle that right now.
Not with Qifrey suspiciously contemplative and actively trying to figure out who a teenage-Olruggio might have had a crush on.
He had been so relieved, for the past few years, that Qifrey seemed to walk around blissfully confident that they were loving best friends platonically raising four young witches in the countryside atelier that they rebuilt from scratch. That his secret had survived two decades of friendship. Because it meant nothing had to change.
He could sit here, sipping on the ever-warm mug of tea Qifrey brewed for him and watch him absently play with what Olly knows is a physical embodiment of his love, of his being so deeply in love with Qifrey that he doesn’t even have to remember the exchange to know, in his bones, why he gave the other man his tassel, and maybe get to do this every night until he dies. Hopefully happily in his sleep with a stomach full of Qifrey’s cooking.
But he knows how Qifrey’s brain works. He knows the look earlier and the fidgeting now and the question a few minutes ago all mean one thing. His clock is running out. Now Olly had to decide if he was going to lie, attempt to redirect, or come clean.
It definitely wouldn’t be the last option.
His stomach sinks and jumps at the same time. Because the idea of anything changing is terrifying, but another part of him wants to lean over the foot between them, grip Qifrey’s pointy chin in his hand and kiss him. Just to see what would happen. Just to stop imagining and know, for once, what those lips actually feel like against his own.
But that wouldn’t be tonight. Hopefully Qifrey doesn’t reach any conclusions and magically lets the topic drop, like he has done with nothing else in his life. They can continue to run their atelier, content, and Olruggio can die happy with his heart full of love, his stomach full of homemade food, and his mind full of fantasies.
Or maybe, maybe some other day in the future he will forget himself and crush the most precious relationship in his life under the weight of his own selfish wants.
And maybe, even in that, Qifrey will have the perfect answer and side-step Olly’s fumble by pressing a cool hand against his forehead and worrying over a fever or joke about having had too many glasses of silvernector wine.
The one time Olly kissed Qifrey’s hand, drunkenly at a Silver’s Eve many years past, that was exactly what happened. But Olly cherishes the memory of the pink blush that had bloomed across high cheekbones and the way Qifrey’s throat had worked against his woven turtleneck as he swallowed. His one pupil had blown so wide that Olly’s favorite blue was just a thin ring. Then Qifrey had blinked rapidly a couple of times, cleared his throat, and insisted they go home so he could treat whatever illness had overcome Olruggio.
See, if Olly does kiss Qifrey, and Qifrey doesn’t kiss him back with the same passion he dreams about every night and, instead, gently excuses them both with a flourish of his hand, then he might have to go hunt down the Knights and steal one of their memory spells. He isn’t sure if he would use it on himself, or Qifrey, or both.
Because if he ruins this relationship that badly then someone has to take the hit. Because they have to be okay. They have to survive. Qifrey has to survive.
He had imagined a future without his friend, while sitting next to his bedside in the medical spire, and it was not one he was interested in.
Sure, he would have the girls for a few years - obviously he would try to do Qifrey’s professorship justice by filling in and keeping his memory alive - and that would be nice. But eventually they would move on, as they were supposed to, and Olly would be left in the home he designed and built for and with Qifrey. He would end up pitching himself off a cliff without his sylph shoes rather than walk by Qifrey’s un-touched room for the thousandth lonely time.
In hindsight, he is rather lucky Qifrey woke up when he did because Olly had been getting a bit tearful about his lonely future and wasn’t sure he could stand up to Sinocia’s pressed questioning if she had appeared. He was pretty sure they wouldn’t let him be Qifrey’s Watchful Eye if he admitted that was the only way he saw a future without his partner.
So, now, he sits by the fire and sips tea and watches Qifrey run his alluring hands over Olruggio’s ribbon and actively shuts down the images his brain conjures.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a crush,” Qifrey finally says and Olly feels his hopes deflate at the same time that a vicious voice in the back of his head says Ha! “They always sound nice. It sounds like Tetia’s cloud spell. Sweet and gentle and quick. I didn’t think they were supposed to hurt like that… and so suppose I didn’t think they were real.”
Olly turns to see Qifrey frowning into his cup, his fingers stalled and pinching the slip of silk. He needs to wipe that look off his face, the expression that says there is yet another part of being a witch that Qifrey didn’t know about and has just learned a new way in which he is massively different and a failure.
Olly decides maybe he is willing to risk something tonight and reaches over to rest his hand on Qifrey’s thigh.
Qifrey’s gaze immediately zeros in on Olly’s hand and Olly regrets everything he’s ever done so he pats Qifrey’s thigh and chuckles and takes his hand back.
He tells himself he won’t remember the muscle hidden under those skirts or imagine the way it would feel to run his hand up Qifrey’s leg with no fabric between them when he finally turns in later tonight.
“Well that’s no surprise, I could have guessed you never noticed anyone all these years,” he smiles in what he hopes in a reassuring way even though Qifrey is still staring at the spot on his leg where Olruggio’s hand was.
“What do you mean?” Qifrey asks, unblinking and so somehow winning the staring contest with his leg.
“Only that you never seemed to have a crush. You never brought anyone candies, worried over your outfit, talked about someone too much, or anything like that. And that’s fine. Plenty of witches never have a crush,” he tries to connect the dots of what a crush is, how silly and juvenile, and how much Qifrey has missed out on exactly nothing.
Except the possibility of that crush growing into agonizing soul-splitting want and love.
“No, I don’t suppose I did any of that,” Qifrey presses his lips together and Olly feels relief bloom in his chest for all of two seconds before it’s seized by a wave of freezing water. “I do understand her hurt, though.”
The frozen water is immediately replaced by fire. Whoever hurt Qifrey, whoever looked at the most gorgeous, talented, and caring witch Olruggio has ever met and decided they weren’t interested in whatever Qifrey was graciously willing to give them…
Olly didn’t think he was particularly murderous or jealous but he’s suddenly wrestling with both of those emotions and losing rather spectacularly.
“I know how it hurts to feel rejected and on the outside,” the fingers that were holding Olly’s ribbon are now brushing gently across his skirt and Olly no longer knows what is happening in his body, “but I also know Coco will be fine. She has the other girls, just like I have you. They’ll never let her feel alone.”
Oh.
All of a sudden the swirling mess inside Olly settles. The ground becomes steady under his feet again, and the only change is the sparks lighting up his side from where Qifrey’s hand is still gently resting against the fabric of his skirt.
Qifrey was never in love, or rejected. He’s talking about the same hurt Olly has known about since practically the moment they met.
Qifrey doesn’t know that Olly is embarrassingly head over heels for him. Their friendship is safe.
Olruggio doesn’t have to rebuild his life from scratch, somehow without Qifrey in it.
“She’ll be okay. And the other girls will be better because they have her too,” Olly looks up to find Qifrey gazing at him with such a soft look of affection it steals his breath. “We don’t need to worry about her, I think. Just be around in case any of them need a little pick-me-up.”
“Mmhmm,” Olly agrees before taking the last sip of his tea and trying to hide his empty mug. Qifrey clearly notices as he immediately drains his own, then gathers the cups and heads into the kitchen to wash them.
“Well I think that was enough adventure for one night,” his voice trails behind him and Olruggio follows, as always.
He pulls a drying spell from his palm quire and offers it to Qifrey. He watches Qifrey flick his pen to close the circle and aim it at their mugs for a moment before putting them away on their shelf.
Olly is exhausted and thinks he can hardly be blamed when he lets his gaze linger on the narrow slip of Qifrey’s waist, the long lines of muscle in his back and arms. He thinks of the way his thigh felt under his hand earlier, the way Qifrey’s brushed gently against his skirt. He remembers Qifrey gazing up at him over sugar-dusted fingers, his tongue licking a long line up his index finger.
“Are you off to bed?” Qifrey asks as he rocks back onto his feet. Olly briefly imagines they are going together, that Qifrey is asking him to join him, rather than mildly scolding him for so many late nights.
“I am. Do you want help with breakfast in the morning?” He asks instead.
“No, no need, I’ve got it,” Qifrey closes the glow lantern and plunges the room into dusk. The glow of the last of the fire in the living room provides just enough light for Olly to see, but he knows Qifrey must be totally blind now. So Olly makes noise as he shuffles to the stairs, Qifrey moving in synch until they reach the turn off for Olruggio’s workshop and bedroom.
“Sweet dreams,” Qifrey offers and Olly resists the urge to sigh. Because he thinks he will have sweet dreams, too sweet.
“You too,” he answers instead and wishes for just a moment that Qifrey dreamed of him in the same way. That there was any hope of one of his fantasies coming to life - even the most domestic one where he wakes up and kisses Qifrey good morning.
Instead, he will have to be satisfied with his late-night imaginings. Just as he has since these feelings could have been called a crush.