Chapter Text
Rutile sat on the edge of the fountain, flipping through his papers. With the way Riquet was progressing, he would be able to start learning from a textbook soon. Mitile, too, was learning just as quickly as ever, maybe even more so with the extra attention in class and his enthusiasm being sparked by the wizards around him. Rutile fixed up their material for the day, then held the papers to his chest as he looked around the courtyard. It was always beautiful, but today the light breeze and the bright sun called for extra appreciation in the form of outdoor lessons.
The courtyard was quiet. People usually cleared out for lessons, but none of the usual bystanders seemed to want to hang out today, either. That was just as well, though, it was always nice to have minimal distraction. He watched the rays of the sun flicker through the gently swaying tree, wondering for a brief moment how the kids back home were faring today.
Before the thought could invoke in him the loneliness of a quiet classroom, he heard faint giggles, and surely enough, Mitile and Riquet came into view, running over hand in hand. Excitedly, they took their seats on the concrete, and Rutile joined them to start their lesson.
-✦-
As his pupils ran away with their backs to the afternoon sun, Rutile gathered up and looked over all of their work. Riquet had surpassed expectations yet again, and Mitile was starting to grasp a concept that he found difficult no matter how many times Rutile reworded it. He smiled to himself, a sense of pride and satisfaction filling his chest, and stood up to begin the leisurely stroll back to his room, but paused in his tracks as he heard a nearby rustling. Had someone been watching them? Surely they would have made themself known.
Edging closer, a voice came into earshot.
"Did you finally get rid of all that dead weight?"
A voice he vaguely recognized but couldn't immediately place. A meow.
"For now. Ahaha, they look just like you."
Behind a tree, in a clearing, stood a big, fat cat, eating away happily at a bowl of food, and Owen, a powerful wizard from the North, cross-legged on the ground beside her, playing gently with a pair of kittens. His smile flashed for a second in Rutile's sight before fading.
"I'll have to go," he said, just loudly enough to be heard by any eavesdroppers. "I'm being followed." His head turned just enough for his golden eye to look directly at Rutile for less than a second before he vanished into a cloud of smoke. Thoroughly flustered, Rutile leaned down to give the cat a quick pet before hurrying back to his room.
-✦-
He had seen Owen before, and aside from having to keep him from bothering Mitile a handful of times, he generally heeded the advice that being alone with him was a death wish - not that there was ever the opportunity, with how elusive he was.
That being so, he realized he hardly knew anything about Owen that wasn't based off of rumors or passing interactions. He hadn't known that he could talk to animals, and he hadn't known that there was a tenderness in his touch reserved for playing with kittens. He hadn't at all considered that there was a person beneath all the malice, and now that he'd gotten a glimpse of that person, he wanted to know more - after all, if he loved animals, he couldn't be that bad.
-✦-
Akira cautioned him that becoming friends with Owen would be difficult, if even possible, and he quickly understood why. He didn't go out of his way to interact with Rutile on the best of days, and if he was approached with any topic he disliked, he would be gone in a flash. It left Rutile at a loss, until Akira mentioned offhandedly that Owen loved sweet things to the point of distraction.
Rutile found himself spending a lot of time in the kitchen after that. Initially he attempted to make sweets from scratch, resulting in a rescue mission from Nero and the inheritance of some recipes that he resolved to perfect before attempting anything on his own. Although, he quickly stopped being alone, as word spread that he was following in his mother's footsteps. Mitile frequently joined him, excitedly stirring bowls or fetching ingredients, and various others came in and out, attempting to win the favor of someone who had taken up the habit of making far more delicious sweets than he could eat by helping to varying degrees. Each time, though, he set aside a large portion of it to be delivered to Owen's doorstep. It became such a habit that he had nearly forgotten his original intentions, and when he turned around to find someone eating out of his bowl of frosting, he barely registered who it was.
"Hey, don't just-!" His attempt to pull the bowl away faltered as it was yanked back out of his hands, and his heart skipped a beat as he was met with an icy glare, although it quickly melted into a contented smile when Owen continued shoveling frosting into his mouth. Even though his presence struck fear into most people, when he was like this, the only word that came to Rutile's mind was "cute". He let out a sigh.
"I wouldn't have gone to all the effort of making cupcakes to put the frosting on if I'd known you were just going to eat it by itself," he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice.
Owen let a long silence fall between them, punctuated only by the clicking of the spoon against the bowl, before responding. "The cupcakes need more sugar."
"Is that so? I tend to cut back on the sugar, just so they're not as unhealthy, but I can put more in." He closed some space between the two, sitting across from Owen at the table.
"One day, you'll be taking your last breaths, and no one will be there for you. You'll be alone and cold, and when all you have is your failure to reflect on, you'll wish you had eaten unhealthy cupcakes."
"I," Rutile started, lost for words at his thought process. "I just don't like super sweet things."
"So you made them to your own preferences, then dumped the leftovers on me out of pity." His eyes narrowed, and his familiar shallow grin made its way onto his face. "What would you have done if it worked, and I fell in love with you? Would you laugh in my face? How awful, pretending to be so kind and then playing with people's hearts for your own desires."
"No? No, it's nothing like that!" His change in demeanor was dizzying, but Rutile had to catch himself. "I just wanted to get to know you, but you always disappear so quickly, so I thought I'd reach out in another way."
"And then what? You'd make yourself feel better with a shallow, meaningless friendship?"
"I would hope it wouldn't be, though?"
"Then hold on to that hope. The stronger it is, the more fun it will be to watch it crumble." He took four of the unfrosted cupcakes in his hands and vanished, leaving Rutile with the ghost of those words.
He sat down at the table with a huff, then turned it into a deep breath. Owen had come to see Rutile, and left with the same cupcakes he complained about in hand. And yet, he tried to push Rutile away. How rarely did people reach out to him for friendship in his life that he was so hesitant to accept it? The thought made Rutile's heart sink, as he went to replace the bowl that once held frosting.