Work Text:
“You should go hang out with your dad,” Riz blurts out into the silence.
Fabian pauses, hands hovering over the careful folds of magic Elven blanket that he’s spent the last ten minutes swaddling Riz in. You need it more than me, he said when Riz started raising tired protests, and they have not exchanged words since. “He’ll be there in the morning,” he says, careful, hands twitching back to action as tucks the sheets careful over Riz’s torso.
It shouldn’t be a sentence that makes Riz feel ugly, but it does. Of course Bill Seacaster will still be there in the morning. Because Fabian’s dad is right there, and loves him so goddamn much, and that is – a good thing objectively but Riz’s stomach curdles with it, grip on the inside of the sheets going tight. “Right,” he mumbles, averting his eyes from Fabian’s soft, determined expression as he wraps Riz tight. “But – you have, you know, limited time. You should see him while you have the chance.”
Fabian doesn’t bother to respond to that one, which is good, because if Fabian left Riz to go hang out and share stories with Bill, Riz might actually fucking cry right there. “We have a while until we reach Dis,” Fabian murmurs. He’s finished wrapping Riz up, but his hands still linger, like he knows without asking that Riz needs Fabian’s grip keep himself together. “I can multitask.”
Riz looks away again – but this time, Fabian touches a finger to his chin. He looks up, sharp, eyes wide, to catch Fabian’s eye. “I believe in you,” Fabian says deliberately, nodding to himself like it’s some holy mantra. “Spring Break.”
The hand on Riz’s face drops when the Bardic Inspiration has passed through, fiery and calm and burning Riz up the way that Fabian’s Inspiration always does. Despite himself, Riz sways to follow the hand as it goes. At Fabian’s surprised look, Riz curses himself, teetering in a desperate attempt to stabilize himself, to not follow any touch that he can get like some fucking idiot.
“Fig and Ayda kissed,” Fabian blurts out in the midst of Riz’s angst.
“What?!”
“They super made out,” Fabian says, and his eyes are lit up at the chance to spread the gossip. He’s been standing, but he sits now, cross-legged on the cot that Bill assigned to Riz for the journey to Dis, leaning forward eagerly to share the hot gossip. “In a tree! When we were doing shrimp king.”
Riz’s mind whirs. “They weren’t doing shrimp lobster?”
“No! They were KISSING!” Fabian throws his hands up. Riz doesn’t even get the chance to ask for details before Fabian is rambling. “And, like, they weren’t even disguised! She did it as Fig! On purpose! And Ayda made out with her! They KISSED!” Fabian throws his hands up. “In a TREE!!”
Riz is not entirely certain how the tree factors in, but he has so many questions about the other stuff. He is opening his mouth, excited, to ask when everyone found out, whether they’d kissed before that or since then, if he’s really the last one to fucking know god dammit guys, how they’d learned –
Gotta find the clues, right? No matter what.
- it’s stupid, this is as far from life or death as a thing can get, but Riz falters, feels the paranoia seep in like a familiar old friend as his mind starts to race. Could Kalina use that against them? She already used Tracker to hurt Kristen, and Fig is – Fig. Was getting Fig and Ayda together part of Kalina’s plan, somehow, so that she had more material? Is she here, now, gathering information? What if Riz is hurting people with asking? What if he shouldn’t ask things?
He doesn’t realize he’s panicking until he feels Fabian’s hand on his shoulder. He jerks against it, but Fabian’s grip is strong, and when Riz manages to overcome the panic he notes concern. “I’m gonna be honest, I did not expect you to be so worried about Fig’s kissing.”
Riz laughs, startled, just a moment. “That’s not – “ he wriggles within the blankets, and feels his stomach drop when he thinks he’s probably ruining Fabian’s careful handiwork. “I think – Kalina. Hearing stuff. She could – she could use it against them. I shouldn’t…ask…”
Fabian’s gaze is careful and slow – gentle, in a way that Fabian wasn’t a week ago. Or, rather, in a way Fabian has always been, gentle and sweet and trying so hard to help, but didn’t show, not until he stayed up all night teaching himself to dance. “Riz,” Fabian says carefully, like he’s trying to avoid landmines. “You don’t gotta tell me, but. What…happened?”
Riz’s heart almost stops. Telling Fig was hard enough, and that only because he worried if he didn’t they might be in literal, physical danger, and he was so emotionally exhausted that he pushed himself through. But talking about it, for the sake of talking about it (when you and your friends went to that cemetery and your dad was 10 feet away, and you didn’t say anything?) – Riz doesn’t, he can’t, deal with it, he can’t just talk about it, he’s gotta, there has to be something else to focus on, because he (you will dig and dig until your hands are bleeding to distract yourself from the fact that he’s never coming back, kid) can’t think about, thinking about it means facing it, means taking the clues from his own mind, and there is a mystery he doesn’t want to solve, a mystery he can’t handle (you really think you could get sent to Hell just from being in a dragon’s mouth?), he cannot, he can’t –
Fabian is warm, and open, and even through the blankets his grip on Riz when he hugs is tight. “Hey,” he breathes, rocking them a little, the way that Riz watched Cathilda do for him in the midst of Leviathan, “I get it. You don’t have to talk. I know. I get it.”
He isn’t sure when he starts crying, just that he is. Riz hasn’t cried in years, years and years and years, not since his mother came out of the funeral home’s bathroom with red rimmed eyes and smiled and asked him what he wanted for dinner, and it’s like he’s been saving every tear from the last six years for this very moment, to sniffle into Fabian’s shoulder as Fabian rocks them, gentle.
“It’s okay,” Fabian soothes, voice still soft, grip still firm. “Let it out. Crying is a good thing. Overcome toxic masculinity.”
Riz chokes on a wet, sniffly laugh. “You sound like Ragh.”
“Hell yeah. Ragh’s cool.” Riz laughs again, hiding his face in Fabian’s shirt, because there’s no way he’s getting out of this without staining something Fabian owns and he’d rather it not be the magic blanket where his self-confidence rests.
More than anything, it’s time and hydration that cuts off Riz’s tears – he only has so much water in his body to cry. He feels exhausted as he comes down from it; at some point, he has reached through the blankets to cling to Fabian’s shirt, hands shaking. “Sorry,” he mutters, pulling back embarrassed.
Fabian catches the hands, shaking his head. “It’s okay.”
Riz shudders, finally, and lets the last of the day drop off him, swaying as the full tidal wave of emotion finally recedes, leaving him with Fabian and a huge stain on Fabian’s shirt and blankets that are comforting in their confinement. “Could you – “ Riz starts, and then cuts himself off, because he has taken so much from Fabian, and he doesn’t have the energy now too go through another crisis asking for more.
Fabian, luckily, doesn’t seem to need it. “I’m going to stay tonight,” he says, quiet. “And watch. If Kalina comes back, whatever she says – you wake me up, and we’ll figure it out. Okay?”
Riz nods easily against Fabian’s grip, furiously tight. “…okay,” he says, quietly relieved, thankful, too many things at once for his tired brain to process. “But…your dad – “
“I’m staying,” Fabian says again, brokering no room for argument.
They settle – the cot’s not built for two people, but Riz is small enough that he can curl himself up into a ball (har-de-har) and fit within the cavity of Fabian’s chest, where Fabian’s pulled his legs up to provide him the little snuggle cove. Riz wants to offer to give Fabian his fancy sheets back, but Fabian is already taking the shabby blanket provided with the cot, muttering something about ‘roughing it like a real pirate.’
Riz does not fall asleep for a while. Sleep doesn’t come easily to him – it’d be wild for tonight of all nights to change that. But watching Fabian flutter off, snoring softly into the pillow, his hand resting loose through the sheets over the tattoo on Riz’s arm of the word ‘Shadowcat’ – the wakefulness is not so terrible.