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“The very first leg of our journey, and we decide to go to a frozen wasteland.”
“That sounds like us,” Ike said as he crouched beside the fire. Soren prodded the smoldering logs with a long twig as if they had wronged him. Indeed they had for not filling the length of the cavern with warmth yet. Only their echoes did. “I’m sorry for underestimating the distance to the next town. We could be sleeping in an inn right now.”
“We never do,” Soren responded to Ike’s fifth apology since entering the gaping maw. Keeping tabs was still a hobby of his, vestiges of his tactician career. Sleeping on the ground was just as familiar as Ike’s battered red cloak, not the blue of his short-lived lordship. He has rescinded it as well as his entire reputation now. “There are other people in an inn.”
(You are so… cold. It’s like you’re cloaked in frost.)
“You don’t mean that.” Chuckling, Ike held up his hands to the flames. Shadowed was every callus that Soren had ever memorized.
Soren shoved the logs around again, embers flying. “Do I not?”
“You interrupted our supply run at the last town,” Ike countered, “just to teach the shopkeeper’s children how to play chess.”
“Their strategy was bothering me.” Soren’s mask slipped into a multilayered smile, thinking of the shopkeeper back in Tellius. He had made his peace with Aimee, since she had lost the most important battle.
Looking up from his work, Soren noticed the other man’s expression. Ike gave Soren his undivided attention, now and forever. “Either way, it gave me the time to talk to the man. He said this amount of snow was unusual.”
Soren leaned back from their makeshift bonfire. Setting his long twig aside, he accepted the fact that there was nothing more he could do—an indulgence he would have never allowed himself on campaign. Even after Soren dried the snow-burdened wood with wind magic, the lovers had the goddess’s luck that they caught fire at all.
“Hm.” He turned his scarlet eyes to the blizzard raging just outside, biting white and flying too fast to even see. They were also blessed that Ike had found the cave in time. Still, Soren said, “Perhaps our presence is an ill omen.”
“Oh, come off it.” Ike shuffled to Soren’s side of the blaze. When he raised his eyebrows, Soren nodded—as if his answer now could ever be no. But it could have been in the years before, when his scars followed him around instead of learning their place on his body after Ike kissed them. His hands being the warmest part of him, Ike easily enveloped the other’s.
Directing his gaze to his bony fingers coddled in Ike’s palms, Soren huffed, “It was just a joke.”
“You tell great jokes. No one ever heard them but Aimee that one time.” The swordsman could not help but lift their conjoined hands to smile into Soren’s knuckles at the memory. “That wasn’t one of them.”
The movement brought Soren’s eyes up to meet Ike’s. He saw that Ike’s brows remained in a grave furrow.
“What’s on your mind, Soren?”
(Your heart is frozen, but I feel a warm core trying to melt through that ice.)
Soren could never deny Ike’s eyes anything, from the left’s tired twitches, to the fact that a blue never had the right to be so warm. “Do you think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks of bringing me on your journey?”
“It’s our journey,” Ike insisted, squeezing Soren’s porcelain fingers with all of their faded paper cuts from tome pages. “I didn’t bring you anywhere. I’m pretty sure you would have found me, even if I left Tellius alone.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” the mage mumbled.
“Of course not.” Using their conjoined hands, Soren felt himself propelled forward for a chaste kiss on his brand. “Anyway, what could possibly be a drawback?”
Soren spared a glance for the cave ceiling. Now, the fire roared loud enough to give the storm a run for its money. A glowing red seemed to bloom on the hard rock’s surface. “For one, I don’t have any special dragon warmth powers.”
“You don’t have to.” As Soren stared up, that old red cloak made itself at home around his shoulders, as Ike did in his heart. “Soren, your presence is worth more than all of the gold we made as mercenaries.”
The tactician opened his mouth, but Ike pressed a callused finger to it.
“Don’t say it. I know you know exactly how much that was.”
“Yes, but I was actually going to say,” Soren continued, “that was the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”
“...You know, I might’ve been practicing that one.” His radiant smile blinded the other as fingers brushed through Soren’s down-soft hair with a surprising grace. Thank Ashera the strands had thawed.
To share the heat equally, Soren drew up his knees and folded the frayed hem back over Ike. Both men were encompassed in the best blanket they could ever ask for. “When did you find the time, Ikey-poo?”
“You were helping those kids for an awful long while.” Soren knew Ike had been watching him. He had a sense for when Ike’s bright blue eyes were on him.
And they always were.
Before Soren could defend himself, a droplet fell directly onto the white tip of his nose. His own eyes closed in surprise, but he knew the familiar motion of Ike reaching for his sword.
“Relax.” It was Soren’s turn to chuckle. Other soft drips interrupted the crackling of the flames. “The stalactites are just heating up.”
“Funny you should say that to me.” Using the rough pad of his thumb, Ike flicked away the rest of the gelid water.
His cheeks threatened to match his scarlet eyes. “I suppose so.”
The lovers sat entangled as one, if just for a little while. The lull in conversation allowed for the haunted howling of the wind to take hold in their ears.
“It’s a mess out there,” Ike finally murmured.
Soren followed the other’s gaze. They could not see but a league past the cave’s entrance before the polar vortex turned to pure white. “Almost like the one we left behind.”
“That’s not true.” His hand ran through Soren’s locks again. “We fixed Tellius together.”
“Yes, but for how long?” Soren asked simply. He thought of the first time they saved Tellius, and how it was merely a stepping stone for more problems to arise. If Soren never saw another senate in his life, it would be too soon.
“For good. I believe it.” If he did, then Soren did. Sometimes—most of the time, admittedly—Ike’s confidence was all the company operated on. It was not confidence in himself, but in the world, for he inspired the feeling in others as well. “If the world has no use for gods, then next, they’ll have no use for heroes.”
Soren had been the last to be stricken with the saccharine affliction, to no fault of Ike’s. Some fronts were just more frozen than others. Now, he could turn to Ike and murmur, “But I always will.”
“Soren…” It was Ike’s turn to try to avert his eyes around the cave. After swallowing, he returned the sentiment with a smile. “You might as well be the world.”
That did not sound very practiced.
“It would be a little self-centered of us to go that far.” Now, Soren’s cheeks did flush sanguine.
“So?” the warrior shrugged. “Even with the others around, we always ended up alone together. I need you, too. Always have.”
Alone together. A delightful oxymoron. Perhaps Ike really had picked up some intelligence on their journey. Though, it would unfair to say he never had any of his own special wisdom, thrust into leadership at the ripe young age of 17.
They were acting right fools, but no Shinons existed here to tell them to stop. So, Soren pinched the other’s nose. “And I need my human furnace.”
Ike laughed loud enough to rattle the stalactites. Soren welcomed the cold rain.
“No, really. I am sweating. Are we sure you’re not the dragon?” he continued through his own chortles.
“I eat enough for one.” Wrapping a hand around Soren’s wrist, Ike placed the fingers over his heart. “But I don’t purr.”
As their laughs subsided, Soren realized the rumble in the cavern did not. The traitorous source hid deep in his own chest. He felt a pang of guilt at his own contentment before he remembered that it was just Ike. His shoulders slumped.
Soren purred louder, even as he huffed, “You come off it.”
“Here,” Ike sighed, “I know a better position.”
The purring halted. “Not in this weath—”
“Hm?”
Soren waited as Ike plastered himself against the warmed stone wall and pulled Soren to settle between his legs. His back to Ike’s chest, Ike covered the pair in his red cloak once more.
The mage mumbled, “...Nevermind.”
It could have been any possible time in the world outside, but the battling snowstorm would never allow them to see. Soren was certain that they had entered the cave around sundown. Either way, they had cooked dinner, and Ike always at least napped after a meal.
“Sleeping while sitting up is terrible for you,” Soren chided. “We have perfectly a perfectly good bedroll.”
“Just for one night.” After a powerful yawn, Ike set his chin on the top of Soren’s head. Soren felt the other man nuzzle into his hair and hold onto his draconic humming.
Then, Ike was out like a light.
Soren gripped at the cloak’s well-loved edges and brought the fabric tighter about himself. He would stay awake to see their bonfire go out, if it ever did. To himself and his distant echoes, Soren whispered through a smile, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
(I see… You have someone you cherish very much. Someone you rely on.)
Obvious to all, his greatest strength was also his greatest weakness. Soren had always hated the fact that Micaiah was right.
Until he realized that the feeling was mutual.