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Chaghan knew his chances on the duel were pitiful at best long before it started, but having his fears sealed so early on was brutal.
It was the first day of their little field trip—just Altan and Chaghan, in a valley, free to fight as much as they wanted for the leadership of the Cike. It was really that simple, but to Chaghan, it proved soul-crashing about an hour in. Once they were settled, Altan spared him as much as a glance, and before he could hold back or think how much he loved having his whole body uncooked and in one piece, Chaghan was charging.
Somehow, Altan was more prepared for the incoming attack than Chaghan himself was, and with his advantage of half a foot in height, he decked him almost effortlessly.
Altan had something that Chaghan already knew he lacked, but it didn't make it much easier to deal with the unfairness of it: every time Altan was cornered, all he had to do was set himself aflame, and that alone forced his rival to back off. Unless Chaghan was okay with burning alive, his fighting capabilities were severely limited.
And to make matters worse, Altan rarely ever used the fire. It was his very last resort, only the two or three times that Chaghan managed to have the upper hand for a few seconds. Other than that, it was an easy fight for the Speerly, and when Chaghan collapsed in his tent that night, his entire body battered and bruised, he was consumed less by anger and more by dread.
Physically, he was far inferior to Altan. If he wanted to command the Cike, he'd have to rely on other skills. He knew these things already, but the intensity of his urge to punch the life out of Trengsin hadn’t left him much space for logical thinking. He was relying purely on his one absolute weakness against Altan, but if he didn’t retort with physical violence he’d lose his mind.
The clear, absolute stupidity of his acts didn't stop him, of course. He was far too persistent, and they had at least a couple of days left. Tyr had sent them off for at least three days, because he doubted they could take any less to solve their issues. None of them had disagreed.
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On the second day, Chaghan lost again, but he didn't care as much anymore.
The utter, complete defeat of the first day had left him scared, scarred and ashamed. He calculated his moves even less—he simply charged manically, desperate to fix what had already deemed itself unfixable: he was never going to be the leader of the Cike. Not as long as Altan was around. But there was something else, too—something that surged slowly whenever his eyes caught the crimson of Altan’s irises, and it crushed him down with every bruise, like waves during a storm.
Not even once did it occur to him to kill Altan. He never thought of it, he never planned it, he never even wanted to see him dead, let alone kill him himself. He did come close, though. Once. And he wished he’d never lived to see the consequences of it.
The sun was painting the sky orange as Chaghan's dagger unexpectedly found Altan's neck, and in a fit of panic Altan's whole body caught fire, flames exploding under very little control, and Chaghan pulled back with a scream and fell on the grass on his back, eyes blinded and wide with terror.
Altan's flames had burnt him.
Altan had burnt Chaghan.
It had been two days, two whole days , and to Chaghan’s utter frustration and surprise, Altan hadn't truly tried to injure him. He did the damage necessary when trying to defend himself, always deflecting the hits with equal amounts of force—rarely less, but never more. It did result in bruises and cuts and first-degree burns, but nothing Chaghan couldn’t handle. For someone who loved to fight, for someone that’d asked for this duel, Altan was being way too gentle, and it was only due to Chaghan's own aggressiveness that his body was bruised everywhere. He was trying so hard, way too hard, to force something out of Altan, anything—but Altan was simply fighting out of pure need, and it was driving Chaghan mad.
If Chaghan hadn’t been a bitch to him from the moment they first saw each other, Altan would’ve never requested Tyr for permission to duel against him. If Chaghan hadn’t attacked first, Altan would’ve never initiated the fight. If Chaghan hadn’t been so bitter and scared and embarrassed, Altan could, maybe, have even been his friend.
Now, he'd just burnt him.
Altan looked as surprised as Chaghan felt—eyes wide, lips parted, flames still dancing on his shoulders, casting peculiar shadows on his face; if he looked scary before, now he was equal parts horrifying and horrified. It hadn’t occurred to him either, it seemed, that there was even a slim chance this fight would turn deadly.
If he was going to say anything to Chaghan, he didn't (out of shock or guilt, he didn't know; it was hard to read Altan at that moment), and Chaghan stumbled back on his feet, his eyes never breaking away from Altan's stunned gaze, and he backtracked to the setting sun, too shocked to run at first. Then he ran, leaving their camp and the valley behind until his feet couldn't hold him any longer, and he collapsed on the grass with nothing but a lump in his throat, a fierce pain in hand, and the weight of a thousand unfiltered, wild thoughts behind his eyes.
Altan hadn't even burnt him that badly (his hand would heal, eventually, if he took proper care of it)—the deathblow was simply the fact that he'd burnt him, that he'd finally done it, he'd hurt Chaghan, he'd done the one thing Chaghan had been so desperate to force him to do, only to collapse when he finally got what he wanted.
Was it the expression on Altan's face when what he'd done hit him? Was it the dawning of the realisation that Altan had never intended to harm him in the first place, that he was only playing along to Chaghan's shenanigans? Or was it the gut-wrenching punch of an entirely unexplored emotion that took the worst toll on him and sent him spiralling?
It was something beyond self-pity, beyond embarrassment, beyond even guilt—newfound, crushing guilt, for the way he'd been treating Altan who had never actually done anything to him. Really, if Chaghan had to target someone, it should've been Tyr, the person who'd chosen to replace him at the last moment by switching his successor from the Seer to this newcomer from Sinegard that everyone worshipped. He'd made so many mistakes, he'd been so blinded by the sudden dread of what would come next if he lost the leadership and the desperation to keep it, that he'd blamed the one person that hasn't been at fault, ever.
And yet the punch on his stomach was none of these. It was a wound that had opened abruptly and wouldn't stop bleeding. It was a knife twisting again and again, deeper and deeper, cutting through his flesh and spilling his blood. It was a bruise that expanded on his skin, purple and messy and ugly.
He felt betrayed.
There was not a single excuse on earth for that. He had no reason to feel betrayed—not by Altan, at least. Maybe by Tyr, who had tossed him aside so easily the moment someone godlier appeared. But Chaghan was sure they weren't fighting for Tyr's favour anymore. He wasn't sure the fight had ever been for Tyr's favour to begin with.
It may have been the pretext of the leadership at first (pretext because, if Chaghan dared to be honest with himself for once, the leadership could’ve never been his to begin with; it was a miracle the Cike had accepted a foreigner as their member in the first place), but as Chaghan thought of Altan's shocked expression when he burnt him, he realised that for (at least) the past two days he'd been fighting his own self. He'd looked into Altan's eyes and seen what he feared the most: a growing affection mixed with desire, passion and lust all together, burning away with the flames that licked his shoulders.
He'd never experienced anything like this before, and it had scared him so deeply he'd decided he had to destroy it, beat it until it was nothing but a bleeding bruise, a body unable to hit back. And then he'd failed, and miserably so, because Altan wasn't the type of person you could beat physically in a fight, and Chaghan's feelings weren't something he could dispose of by punching and stabbing.
I have feelings for him.
His nails dug into the dirt beneath his hands—and then he was on the ground, his face buried in his arms, and he screamed until his throat hurt and he was in so much pain he couldn't feel anything else anymore.
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On the third day, Chaghan took his time to estimate the collateral damage of the last two days, and deemed it irreversible. Defeat tasted bitter, but shame was sultry.
He didn't see Altan until the afternoon. Dreading what he'd face when he got out of his tent, he didn't walk out until the pain of his untreated wounds and burns became unbearable and he started terrorising himself with the what-ifs of potential infections. He grabbed a clean cloth and stepped outside; the valley smelled of wet grass and soil, and the sky was hidden behind dark grey clouds, augury of an oncoming storm.
Altan was sitting by the river a few steps away, very near the spot where he'd burnt Chaghan the previous day. He glanced up when the other man approached, and Chaghan knew he was staring without even looking at him. He kept his eyes averted, too scared of himself to utter a word.
At last, it was Altan who broke the silence, which was a first. "You won't fight me today?"
It wasn’t ironic; it was a rather neutral statement with a hint of something Chaghan failed to pinpoint.
He didn't look at Altan. He sat down, drenched the cloth in the river and started cleaning the wounds on his arms. "No."
Silence again; Chaghan broke it this time, because he knew he had to. Aside from what was truly eating him on the inside, there was the other, obvious matter he had to address, even if it didn't matter at all to him anymore, and shouldn’t have mattered, ever.
"The leadership is yours," he said, eyes fixated on the fresh scars on his palm. Burn scars, he reminded himself. "I lost. You've won it fairly now."
Altan didn't respond immediately. "It's not only physical strength."
Yeah, it wasn't. Chaghan knew that.
Chaghan also didn't care.
"With all due respect, Trengsin, I don't give a fuck. It can be anything. Let it be. If Tyr wants you to be his successor, then there's nothing I can do anymore. Have it."
Altan was taking way too long to reply, and it was getting on Chaghan's nerves (which, in his state, didn't take tremendous effort anyway, but it was all starting to pile up dangerously).
"I'm sorry," he finally said, and it caught Chaghan so off-guard that he looked up, at last, directly into Altan's eyes. They were dark crimson as always, a sign of his heritage and all he was carrying with him.
Whatever he was meant to read in Altan's expression, Chaghan couldn't decode it, but in a twisted turn of events, his heart nearly stopped beating, because there was so much sincerity in Altan's voice, so much unexpected genuineness in the way he stared at Chaghan, as if he was waiting warily for his reaction, that his mind failed to process it and he was left there, staring back like a fool, searching for anything, anything in Altan's face that proved he was just fucking with him—only to meet an emotional wall that was just as scared of revealing anything as Chaghan was. Altan was sincerely, genuinely sorry.
They'd never really walked the same line until that moment, but still, something was missing.
"For what?"
He couldn't be referring to the fight. Surely Altan wouldn't apologise for a fair win.
"For your hand," he said. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I lost control. I'm sorry."
Chaghan shook his head. There was a pressure behind his eyes that he had to shake off before it materialised. "Don't be sorry."
A duel that I caused, because I'm a fool. Because I saw this coming, and instead of running away, I pushed myself as close as possible, and now I'm suffocating.
He could've said a lot of things. He didn't.
Altan stood up. "Well, you don't have to forgive me. Just know that I never intended to burn you."
And yet you did, Chaghan thought as he watched Altan head back to his tent. You burnt me down to ashes. And not in the way you think.
He assumed that Altan was gone and continued cleaning his wounds a little too violently, until he was done, and then he stared at his distorted reflection in the water.
He saw a blur of black hair (Altan had also burnt his hair…? He’d been so frantic he hadn't even noticed) and pale, bruised skin and a mess of a man that had been entirely consumed by flames and his own heart. He also saw Altan.
He hadn't heard the other approach; probably because he hadn't wanted him to hear. Now Altan sat next to him and offered one hand.
Chaghan gave in.
Altan bandaged his burnt hand in silence. His skin was hot and coarse, yet his touch was gentle, more than welcome to the other end, yet careful and reluctant on his side. Whatever Chaghan had expected, it wasn't this, and no matter how much he dreaded it, he wanted more.
When Altan was done, he let Chaghan's bandaged hand rest in his lap, and Chaghan didn't pull away. If this was the most he could ever have, he'd have it, and then once it was over, he'd kill this awful amalgam of tenderness and lust that had been building up inside of him, and he'd be free again.
"I'll need a lieutenant," Altan said quietly, his voice uncharacteristically soft, eyes absentmindedly gazing at the water. "The position is yours if you want it."
Chaghan blinked. "I spent the past two days trying to kill you."
It was an exaggeration, but in the context of the past three days, Altan’s words were nearing the definition of suicidal.
Altan shook his head. "You weren't trying to kill me. Hurt me, sure, but not kill me." He paused, eyes averting from the water to the clouds and, at last, to Chaghan's eyes. "I don't know what you wanted, if I'm honest."
Despite the lack of a question mark, it was still a question; Altan was clearly expecting an answer. Chaghan struggled to breathe, to bring his pulse back to normal. His hand was still in Altan's lap, and if there was anyone in the world who could probably sense something as ridiculously small as a pulse, that was Altan.
"I wanted to fight for the leadership," he said. "I'm not a fan of giving things I've rightfully earned away as if they mean nothing, you know."
"I didn't expect the opposite," Altan said, "and I admire that about you."
He could've set his fist on fire and punched Chaghan straight to the throat.
He pulled his hand away and almost immediately regretted it (how was he supposed to initiate physical contact again now?)—but his heart was racing, and his conflicting emotions were clashing, and he was burning from the inside out, coming undone under the unwavering gaze of the last person he ever wanted to come undone before.
It was hard to show that Altan's praise meant a lot to him, when he'd deflected it with insults and curses the few times he'd earned it. It was hard to keep pretending that every part of him wasn't longing to touch the other, no matter how destructive that would prove to be. It was hard to keep pretending he was okay with whatever was going on, that it wasn't completely, utterly wrecking him.
He was burning down, and all he could say was, "Thanks."
Altan studied him for such a long moment that it made him uncomfortable. It was as if Altan was trying to read him, and Chaghan was so distraught he couldn't conceal a single feeling or thought anymore. He knew his eyes were blank, white pools of nothing, but in that prolonged moment, he felt like all the secrets he'd ever kept were written there in lieu of irises, and Altan could translate them easily.
"You can think about it all you want," Altan said carefully, as if he was talking to a crying child, or handling an explosive mechanism that took one wrong word to blow up the whole world. "I won't need an answer for as long as Tyr is still around, and that seems to me like a long time. But if you want to be my lieutenant, it'll be an honour to have you by my side."
It sounded a little like a marriage proposal. Chaghan didn't know why he thought that, and he also didn’t know if he wanted to laugh hysterically or dig a hole in the ground and fucking die.
Instead he forced himself to stand up. "I'll think about it."
Altan nodded. "Please do." He sounded so heartbreakingly sincere that it wrecked Chaghan, like a ship in the mercy of a storm.
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By early evening they were ready to go. Chaghan couldn't think of anything he wanted less than going back, for many reasons. Partly because he'd have to face the ultimate consequences of his own actions. Partly because now he'd have to repress his feelings more than ever. Partly because a part of him still felt the urge to punch Altan, because hurting him seemed like a better prospect than not touching him at all.
He wanted to hit him and he wanted Altan to hit him in return until their bodies were both wrecked and his soul didn’t hurt so badly he couldn’t think of anything else.
Why the fuck did he have to bring me here?
Because I'm a fucking idiot, that's why.
"Ready?"
He turned. Altan stood by his side, the breeze gently pushing his dark hair away from his crimson eyes. He looked so beautiful then, so serene, all the violence and aggressiveness that had followed him from Speer to Sinegard to the Cike almost completely wiped off his face. He looked like a boy—a very beautiful boy that hadn't already been through hell and back in his twenty-or-so years of life.
Chaghan wasn't sure how many more punches he could take before he succumbed. He was already standing on the edge, toeing over the very thin line between admiration and love. If he miscalculated, if he crossed that line, it'd be nothing but a pitiful fall, and he’d be nothing but a woeful ruin.
His dignity could take only so many hits in three days. He had to preserve what he had left.
Altan was looking at him, waiting for an answer.
Chaghan didn't give it to him.
He wasn't ready, and he wasn't going to lie about it. After all, Altan seemed to read him more easily than anyone ever had. Not even Qara knew him so well, and she was an integral part of him.
He'd probably never again get to stand in a valley underneath the grey, clouded sky, with no one but Altan next to him, and he was going to make sure this moment engraved itself in his mind until it was safely with him eternally, however long that proved to be.
And then his heart stopped beating, because he'd felt something brush against his hand. Altan's hand, brushing against his.
It was as if the whole universe was holding its breath.
Chaghan didn't look at Altan; instead, he thought of his last chance. His last ever chance to be alone with Altan. His last ever chance to be vulnerable, to close the space between them, to open up his heart and then die in the shame that came with it—but peaceful, at last.
Slowly, dreadfully, he pressed his fingers through the gaps between Altan's fingers, and waited.
Every second felt like a century, and Chaghan would never be able to tell how much time passed before touching turned into holding, and he let out such a shaky breath that Altan chuckled beside him.
Altan. Chuckled.
What in the gods' name was even happening anymore.
Chaghan glanced at him, hardly keeping a straight face anymore (not that it served him at all when it came to Altan, but he felt better when he was feigning a lack of emotion). Altan was literally grinning now, the closest to smiling Chaghan had seen him thus far. Granted, they had known each other for such a short amount of time, but getting anything out of Altan without even trying felt huge.
"Do I get praise for breaking your brick wall of a face, too?" He didn't think of a single word before uttering it. His mind was spinning around, he had zero control of himself anymore. Whatever happened next, he couldn't be blamed. He was free of any charge, and it was entirely up to Altan's mercy what he was going to do with the puppet he'd made of the other.
What Altan did was smile a little, eyes lowering to Chaghan's lips—and then he leaned in, and his palm was cupping Chaghan's cheek, and before Chaghan could process what was happening, Altan was kissing him.
It was disputable if Altan had kissed anyone before, and it was even more disputable if he had the slightest idea of how kissing was supposed to work, but at least he'd gone for it, at last. It was awkward, hesitant, not as emotional as one would've expected from such a heated relationship—and Chaghan didn't care at all.
He held Altan's rough palm tighter and he kissed him back, and for once, he didn't care about a single thing in the world.
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As they made their way back, Chaghan could swear that Altan was lingering.
He could neither complain nor blame him. He was also longing to stay a little longer.
They were crossing the mountains, the view below nothing but darkness occasionally broken by the moonlight, when Chaghan stopped and said, "I accept your offer."
Altan turned around, a question briefly crossing his eyes before he understood what this was about. "You'll be my lieutenant?"
"I'm the Seer of the Cike. You'll need me."
"I know."
Chaghan knew he was referring to the second half of his statement, and it filled him with pride.
Altan sat on the pediment, and patted the spot next to him. Chaghan sat beside him and, without thinking about it much, let his head rest on Altan's shoulder. Altan stiffened, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he brushed a strand of burnt hair off of Chaghan's eyes before leaning in to kiss his forehead.
Chaghan closed his eyes and wondered how long this could ever last. He also wondered if there was any worth in deliberating what this was.
"Just so you know," Altan whispered, as if he were reading his mind, "if you're hoping to be loved, you won't… I can’t do that."
Chaghan knew this. He knew how much hatred Altan had in his heart, and he thought it was perfectly reasonable. He knew what had happened in Speer, and he knew that he'd be even more hateful than Altan, had he been in his place.
"I'm not hoping for anything," he said, and it was true. He'd long grown accustomed to the idea of them ending up in a mess that was too complicated to name—too confined to be love, too intense to be affinity; too passionate to be affection, too tender to be violence. It was chaos in chaos, and it would never be more than what they'd managed to make out of it during the past three days.
By daylight, they'd be back, and Chaghan would have a tonne of newborn problems to unpack and a cyclone of consequences to face. But right now, with Altan's rough knuckles on the back of his palm and his neck this close to his face, he couldn't care about the morning.
Chaghan kissed him first, and this time it was rougher, less of an experiment and more of an acknowledgement that they didn't have enough time left before they crashed hard back into reality, into who they were supposed to be against who they were. Chaghan leaned back, pulling Altan with him, and he held him there until the other's body was nothing but a familiar, welcome weight on him, and he could survive the rest of the night with no more.
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Chaghan didn't see anyone until the afternoon. He was still exhausted after walking all night, and sleeping through the morning didn't help much.
The rest of the Cike greeted him with raised eyebrows.
"For someone who lost leadership and was mauled for three days in a row, you look great," Qara said.
"I wasn't mauled," Chaghan protested, hiding his face in his palms in exaggerated tiredness before anything in his face gave him away.
"I would fucking know," Qara muttered, stretching her arms.
"Whatever," he groaned.
"So…" Baji said carefully, "Altan is going to be commander after Tyr?"
"Yes," a voice sounded behind them, "and for the record, I've also already picked my lieutenant."
Chaghan looked up; there was Altan, looking like he'd never left, not a single bruise on his body. Their conditions were severely incomparable, making it quite clear who had won the fight, as if anyone had ever doubted it. Except Chaghan knew that, in a sense, he hadn't really lost anything.
Altan rested his hand on Chaghan's shoulder, and the rest of the Cike stared at them, jaws hanging.
"Won't you cut that off?" Qara asked Chaghan, pointing at Altan's hand.
"Nah, I think a commander with two hands could be practical."
His mind wandered back to the previous night. In more ways than one, he thought, and then he had to kick his own foot to come back to his senses.
Altan nodded in agreement. "That's why I picked him for my lieutenant. You don't find this much wisdom everywhere." He let the back of his fingers brush against Chaghan's neck discreetly, then walked away, leaving the rest of the Cike open-mouthed.
"You go away for three days and Altan comes back joking?" Baji finally asked. "What the hell happened out there?"
Chaghan glanced at Altan where he stood a few metres away, talking to Tyr. Altan was probably informing him briefly of what had gone down, because Tyr occasionally looked at his direction. He hardly seemed to believe Altan's words.
Fair enough. Until three days ago, Chaghan would've punched anyone who even dared to imply that he'd ever accept to be Altan Trengsin's lieutenant willingly, or obey him under any circumstances. Things changed, though. Chaghan found it hard to even feel ashamed now. He'd acceded on his own terms, and he could live with that.
Baji was shaking his head in disbelief. "You're a completely different person. Did Trengsin fry your brain as well as your hair?"
"Keep talking and I'll break your brain into pieces," Chaghan warned. He could do that, at least.
He wouldn't. But he could.
"Please don't kill my team," Altan said as he passed from behind them again.
"Not yours yet," Chaghan called back, but it wasn’t the nasty remark he’d normally send his way. He wasn't aiming to be rude, and Altan knew it, because he glanced back briefly, and Chaghan didn’t miss the upwards tug of his lips, or the faint glimpse in his eyes.
Gods, he'd be honoured to serve as Trengsin's lieutenant.