Work Text:
There was a stark difference between absentmindedness and obliviousness, and Alador knew himself to be the former, not the latter.
Absentmindedness was forgetting to eat lunch because he’d gotten so absorbed in sketching out his latest construct. Absentmindedness was forgetting to brush his hair most mornings before he left the house. Obliviousness, on the other hand, would have been failing to notice when Odalia Blight had started to look at him with a more appraising eye than usual–which he hadn’t. Or missing when she’d started dropping hints about how much her parents would be thrilled to meet an up-and-coming innovator like himself.
And he certainly didn’t miss the way that Darius had been glaring daggers at the back of his head all through class today until the dismissal bell screamed through the halls. It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever done—certainly most of their interactions these days were characterized by varying degrees of animosity—but the fact that Darius was actually acknowledging his existence instead of doing his best to pretend that Alador was not and had not ever been a presence in his life was… different.
And he had a creeping suspicion he’d be learning the reason for that change sooner rather than later.
Alador had stayed late after school again— again, as if he ever did anything else with his time after school —and was now elbow-deep in goop, standing over a workspace in the homeroom of the Abomination track. He had worked out a deal with Professor Hermonculus at the start of the term: the professor got someone to grade all the quizzes he didn’t want to bother with, and in return, Alador could use whatever after school time that remained to set up his own little workshop and conduct tests for a couple of hours. It was a veritable wealth of space compared to what he had at home. No annoying siblings or impatient parents or nosy neighbors to distract him from his work. He could tinker in his own private paradise and bask in the bliss of utter silence, save for the soft burbling of chemicals in vials and the occasional squelch of abomination goo slipping through his gloves. No worries, no supervision, no disturbances…
“Alador.”
Well. Almost no disturbances.
That cool voice cut through his concentration as cleanly as a scalpel through flesh. He hunched his shoulders against it, letting a quiet breath out through his nose.
Sooner than later.
“Go away, Darius. I’m busy.”
“Oh, you’re always busy with something.” Darius’s nonchalant dismissal was not unexpected, but it was still irksome. Alador studiously ignored him even as he tracked him out of the corner of his eye. Darius swanned across the room—Darius didn’t know how to enter a room if it didn’t involve some kind of pomp—and perched himself on the edge of Hermonculus’s desk, adopting a posture of casual grace as he rested elbow on knee, chin on fist, and stared at Alador.
Of course he would choose to sit on the teacher’s desk—something Alador would never in a hundred years have the audacity to do, despite the fact that there was no one around to see it. It outlined the differences between them so starkly it made him want to scream. Darius—imperious, aristocratic, bold Darius, in a pressed uniform that was nothing short of impeccable. Alador—weak-willed, rule-following-to-a-fault, keep-your-head-down Alador, spattered all over with the residue of his latest failing experiment.
And of course, there was no way for Alador to remove Darius from his sightline short of uprooting the entire contents of his work desk and moving to a different part of the room, and Darius knew it. He was grinning like a cat.
“Do you want to explain to me what this morning’s announcement was about?”
“Really, Darius, I didn’t think I’d have to parse out such a simple sentence for you, particularly one that included your own name, but if I must, in the name of public service… You see, ‘Grom’ is short for Gromethe—”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”
The tiniest waver in Darius’s typical composure was enough to draw Alador’s gaze away from his work, if only for a second. Even by the time he looked up, that momentary slip had been smoothed over, replaced with an arched eyebrow and a downturned mouth.
Alador dropped his gaze again, back to the purple slush that was almost-but-not-quite-an-abomination on the workbench in front of him. “I don’t see what there is to explain. I’d have thought you would be overjoyed to be named Grom King, recognized as the bravest and most capable young witch at Hexside, et cetera, et cetera. Feeling scared, are we?”
“The question at hand here is not my capability, Alador.”
He said it with such disdain it almost made Alador laugh—as if Darius had ever once stopped to question his own capabilities. And of course it wasn’t the question at hand—everyone at Hexside, including Alador, knew Darius was more than powerful enough to contend with the demon imprisoned beneath the school.
No, it was all just pointless deflection, Alador’s vain attempt to distract from the real reason he knew Darius was here.
“The question, Alador, is why you turned it down.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie didn’t sound convincing even to his own ears.
“Oh please.” Darius rolled his eyes, and Alador was glad for even that brief moment of respite from his scrutiny. “You act like I haven’t known you for a decade. Do you honestly think I don’t know that you were Bump’s first choice?”
Briefly, Alador considered doubling down on the lie. He decided it was more prudent to appeal to Darius’s ego instead.
“You’re clearly the better choice, Darius. No one wants a Grom champion who’s so…” He twisted his goop-covered hand in the air, searching for the right word. “…distractable.”
“Oh, is that what it is?” Darius gave a contemptuous snort, sliding off the edge of the desk and walking over to inspect the project spread over the workspace. Alador had to resist the urge to sweep the whole thing, proto-abomination and tools and all, right off the table, if only so that Darius would stop inspecting it. Pretty soon he’d be pointing out design flaws. “Because I’ve seen what you can do when you’re really focused on something. How long have you been working on this?” Darius gestured at the various parts scattered across the table. “A week? And you have maybe a few more hours of work until it’s functional? This would’ve taken most of our peers several months, if not longer.”
“Actually, it’s only been since Monday,” Alador corrected under his breath. The idea had started with a feverish 3am stroke of inspiration the previous weekend, but he’d had to wait until school started back up again to commence his work. There wasn’t enough space—or enough resources—at home.
Darius circled the table, inspecting the construct from every angle until he was standing at Alador’s side, mere feet away. Alador felt his gaze drawn upward again. Darius stared at him, those bright green eyes piercing. He had always found that gaze unnerving and alluring in equal parts. He could only hold it for a few seconds before he cast his eyes down again, heat creeping along the bridge of his nose and the back of his neck. He resumed his tinkering, trying to ignore the calculations running in the back of his head about his exact distance from Darius.
“You could face Grom if you wanted to.” Darius said. “I saw you take down your opponents at the Brawl like it was nothing. But instead you’re running away. Why?”
The Bonesborough Brawl? The mention of it surprised him into stillness. He’d seen Darius there, but it had been weeks after their fight and Darius had stopped speaking to him. Alador had just assumed he had been dragged there by one of his many other friends from Hexside. He hadn’t imagined that Darius had been there to… watch him? Perhaps, in some small way, still root for him?
It put him in mind, too, of the first Brawl they had attended, the first one they were eligible for. He hadn’t won that year and he’d been bruised all to hell for weeks afterward, but he still remembered it with fondness. Back when he had been able to look out into the crowd and see Darius cheering him on, rather than waiting for him to fail. When he’d wanted nothing more than to get Darius’s opinion on the new technique he was using to get more articulated movement in the joints or his sympathy when he’d been knocked out in the semifinal. Back before Alador had messed everything up so—
He shook his head. He was slipping away from pragmatism and into sentimentality, and that was always dangerous. He needed to course correct. “Why does it even matter to you, Darius? You should be happy about this. You get to be the hero. Isn’t that what you want?”
“What I want—” Darius took a sudden step closer to him, and Alador startled, knocking into something behind him. He mumbled an abrupt “sorry”, as though he had bumped into a person, even as he reached out with one arm to catch himself against what turned out to be the back of a chair. Even then, he barely kept himself from falling over. “—is for you to be honest.”
Close as they were, Alador could not help but meet Darius’s eyes now, and he could feel his heart in his throat, the blood pounding in his temples. For an instant, they stood like that, frozen, and Alador was put in mind of another moment, months ago, where they’d shouted at one another across this very classroom. Where he’d tried to explain the reasons he felt Odalia might be a good match, how he could be an asset to her family’s business. Where Darius had accused him of being a sellout and a hack, and told him that there were other ways–better ways–to put his gifts to use. The final shattering of their friendship. A different argument, but wasn’t it really all the same?
As if plucking the memory from his thoughts, Darius’s expression curled into one of utter contempt and, behind it, just the faintest glimmer of hurt.
“And does Odalia know that you refused?”
Alador swallowed, his mouth gone suddenly dry, but he was proud of himself for not looking away. “No. She doesn’t.”
Something unreadable passed over Darius’s face. He took a step back, breaking the moment of tension with the abruptness of a snapped twig. “Oh.”
Alador let the muscles in his arm go slack, dropping gracelessly to the floor, even with the chair mere inches away. He felt wrung out, like he had just chased down a runaway abomination. The silence, which had been such a comfort to him so many times before, now felt stifling.
Absentmindedly, he began to trace nonsensical little doodles on the stone floor, bits of goo sloughing off his gloved fingers. Anything to keep from looking at Darius. Anything to avoid seeing whether he wore that same wounded visage from all those months ago, the one that made Alador feel like his heart was in a vice grip.
“I didn’t think she needed to know.” Alador continued. “And I didn’t imagine she would ever guess that I’d been asked unless I said something.” Unlike you. The unspoken words hung in the air as clearly as if he had voiced them.
“I suppose you still won’t tell me why you refused.” Darius’s voice was faint, all the anger and suspicion leached away until nothing remained but a strange, hollow distance.
“Why do you want to know, Darius?” Alador ran a hand compulsively through his hair, heedless of the mess it created. He would only become aware of it hours later, when he finally took a look at himself in the mirror of the boys’ bathroom and found his hair spiked with a streak of purple.
“Call it… professional curiosity.”
Those two words produced an unexpected sting. Once, Darius wouldn’t have needed such a formal reason, and Alador would never have asked him for one. They had been friends before they became rivals. They had been… something, to each other. Something Alador had shut the door on before he’d had the chance to get his hopes dashed. Before everything had splintered.
Before Alador had messed everything up.
“I… I just can’t, alright?”
“You can’t.” Darius echoed flatly.
“I…”
All the words he wanted to say, all the explanations he wanted to give, piled up in his throat. He felt suddenly like he was on the verge of tears.
Alador had been so careful. He hadn’t even scheduled a meeting with Bump ahead of time—just showed up in his office early in the morning last week, metaphorical hat in hand. He hadn’t even waited for the principal to ask what was wrong—just launched into an abrupt and roundabout explanation of how he knew that Bump was going to announce this year’s Grom King next week and how he was flattered and honored that the faculty of Hexside would even consider him for such a momentous task and how he hoped that Principal Bump wouldn’t take this as some kind of rebelliousness or insubordination, but could he very kindly request that he be removed from consideration?
Bump had just stared at him for a few moments, mouth agape, before gathering his composure to ask “are you quite sure?”
And Alador was sure. He was completely, irrevocably, wholeheartedly sure that this was a thing he could not do. He had looked at the problem from every angle, weighed every variable, considered every possible outcome.
In every single eventuality, Alador was sure that he could not— could not —allow his greatest fears to be broadcast before the entirety of Hexside.
And, too, he knew who the other obvious candidate was. Who the better choice was. A young man who had no failings to hide, who didn’t jump at the sight of his own shadow or shy away from recognition. Darius was everything Alador could not and would never be—capable and confident. Resilient. He would never allow his ego to be bruised so easily. Would not balk at the idea of his innermost thoughts being exposed to everyone he knew if it meant he could help people.
The words were so soft he almost wasn’t sure whether he’d spoken or just thought them.
“I’m too afraid.”
“Of Grometheus?” Again, that note of skepticism—of patent disbelief—laced through Darius’s words.
“Of…” Of losing everything I’m working so hard to build. Of losing my chance at a career I can be proud of, at the resources I could never have dreamed of. Of alienating Odalia as well as you.
Of you discovering that one of my worst fears—losing you—has already happened.
“Of everything.”
Darius looked at him, and for a moment, Alador saw something in his face soften. Like he might walk back over, offer Alador a hand up and a shoulder to rest on and a reassurance that everything might turn out right after all. That what had been broken between them could still be mended.
But that brief window slammed shut.
“I suppose you have proven that you prefer the coward’s way out.”
Alador felt every one of those words like a knife between his ribs.
“See you at the dance, Alador.”
Alador remained on the floor long after the sound of footfalls had faded out of the classroom and down the hallway.