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The boy’s gaze never moves from his hand as Olruggio bandages the cut. He’s an odd one, a quiet washed-out slip of a kid, nothing like the other apprentices their age running around the Hall. He never talks, never does anything but stare intently through his spectacles at his books, drafting primer spell after primer spell.
Olruggio likes him immensely.
“You have to watch at that corner,” Olruggio says cheerfully, tying off the bandage and packing the medical kit back up. “It’s easy to catch your hand on that pointy bit.”
Everyone knows about the statue near the dining hall, the ill-placed decoration just waiting for a wayward apprentice to grab in a rush to lessons. But Qifrey has barely been here a month, hasn’t heard about all of the Hall’s small secrets yet. No one would’ve told him, maybe – he’s barely spoken to anyone, the solemn shadow in the corner.
“Thank you.”
It’s almost a whisper and Qifrey doesn’t lift his gaze to Olruggio’s face, but there’s a sudden blossoming of warmth in Olruggio’s stomach all the same.
“It’s just a bandage,” he says, jostling Qifrey lightly with his shoulder. The other boy finally looks up, his expression shy. And it’s the first time Olruggio sees him smile.
.
Years later, there’s a broken tree and two apprentices more than old enough to know better sprawled flat on the ground, twigs scattered all around them.
“Ugh, I think there’s bark in this. What were you thinking, Qifrey?”
Olruggio dabs gently at his scraped-up knee. He should’ve known better than to listen to Qifrey about how great that big golden spineback tree would be to climb, not when the leaves were missing from the biggest limb. His knee stings from the fall, from landing on top of the broken rotted-out limb.
Next to him, Qifrey is rummaging through his pack. He hadn’t asked why the other boy had brought it along on their jaunt, had learned in the handful of years they’d been friends that Qifrey kept even the most mundane things secret, but when Qifrey pulls out a small bottle of salve and a bundle of bandages, he’s just happy that someone had thought ahead.
“Sorry, Olly. I didn’t think it’d break,” Qifrey says. He nudges Olruggio’s hand away from his knee and brushes the remaining bark away gently. The salve is cool against Olruggio’s skin as Qifrey slathers it on, and he winds the bandage around Olruggio’s knee expertly.
“I scraped up my hand too,” Olruggio says gruffly, snagging the salve for himself. He’s so intent on cleaning up the wound that at first he doesn’t notice Qifrey watching him, but soon enough he feels the weight of a bespectacled gaze on him.
“What?”
Qifrey watches him for a few heartbeats longer, just long enough for a blush to start to rise on Olruggio’s cheeks, and –
“I need the salve back,” Qifrey says calmly, extending his own injured hand towards Olruggio. It’s nothing much, the same minor scrapes that mar Olruggio’s hand, but a zing of protectiveness zips through Olruggio all the same.
“I’ll do it,” he says, voice even more gruff than before, pulling Qifrey’s hand to him. He cleans the wound the same way Qifrey had done for him, carefully layers on the salve, but when he looks up again, Qifrey’s eyes are wide behind his spectacles, a blush of his own dusting his cheeks.
“I don’t need a bandage,” Qifrey says hastily, his hand sliding from Olruggio’s grasp and snatching up the bottle of salve with unexpected speed. “It’s just a scrape after all.”
There’s a long pause, the blush on Qifrey’s face growing ever brighter, before he looks up at the sun low in the sky and announces that Beldaruit would surely be looking for him by now, so they’d better get back to the Hall. Olruggio hurriedly agrees, dusting the last of the tree bark from his cloak as he stands.
If Qifrey feels Olruggio’s hand brushing against his a bit more often than usual on their walk home, he doesn’t say anything.
.
Olruggio had been making contraptions for two years before he has his first major accident.
He isn’t sure what happens, just that his pen slips at an unfortunate time and closes the circle on an unfinished, unbalanced spell. There’s a sudden blaze of light and his eyes close reflexively just in time for a wave of pressure to break across his face, leaving a sharp sting on his cheek in its wake.
“Olly!”
Qifrey is there at his shoulder, pulling pen from his hand and quickly dousing his wayward spell. As Olruggio blinks the light from his eyes, Qifrey gently touches his face, grazing over his skin and checking for damage. Qifrey’s touch is so delicate that Olruggio doesn’t notice that his hands are shaking, ever so slightly, until Qifrey is dabbing blood away from the small cut on his cheek.
He grabs Qifrey’s hand and grasps it close, holding on until the tremor stops.
Neither of them say anything when Qifrey resumes cleaning Olruggio’s face, his hand steadier.
Soon after that, Qifrey asks if Olruggio will come with him to his new atelier, equipped with a workshop within shouting distance of his study.
.
It isn’t unusual for strange smells to appear in the atelier, Olruggio knows. A handful of apprentice witches practicing spells, a teacher eager to use hands-on methods, and an inventor running through contraption prototypes can make for a strange mix even before the building’s old stone walls join the fray.
But there is a strong damp smell in the atelier that wasn’t there the day before.
Olruggio watches Qifrey closely as he makes breakfast for the girls. He moves like he should, hands deftly chopping ingredients and feet gliding between counter and stove, and there’s no bandages visible, yet Olruggio can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right with him.
“Tea, Olly?”
A faint frown line between Qifrey’s eyes is all too visible as he places the steaming mug next to Olruggio, a sure sign of sleep deprivation, but his smile is as warm and gentle as always.
Olruggio doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he decides then that his snugstones are ready to share.
.
He can still feel the weight of Qifrey’s suddenly unconscious body slipping from his arms long after he leaves the man safe with Sinocia and the rest of the Hall’s doctors.
Olruggio doesn’t want to be here in the Hall with the Knights, constantly talking his way around a disaster he still doesn’t really understand. He doesn’t want to be the responsible adult stepping in to shepherd a herd of apprentices facing one of Beldaruit’s cursed tests. He only wants to sit by Qifrey’s side and wait for the man’s eyes to blink open, healed enough to return home to their atelier far away.
But he only allows himself to indulge that impulse at night, long after the girls have drifted to sleep and he can set aside his responsibilities for a little while.
The bandages wrapped around Qifrey’s chest and shoulder are far neater than anything he could’ve managed to do, tidy lines of unblemished white that rise and fall with the man’s steady breathing. Olruggio can’t see the blood, can’t see the stitches knitting Qifrey’s terrifying wound back together, but his eyes still linger on his shoulder.
He slides closer to Qifrey on the bed, careful not to jostle him, and rests his hand gently on the other man’s.
“You aren’t allowed to do this again, you know,” Olruggio says, his voice matter of fact. He thinks, for just a fraction of a moment, that he hears Qifrey’s soft laugh.
The next morning he wakes cramped, curled in tightly, his hand clutching the blankets next to Qifrey’s.