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It was Friday, and Friday afternoons were time for the Big Four to train together.
All four had pretty tight schedules the rest of the week, leaving them with little free time to see each other. They had agreed to reserve Fridays to reunite, hoping it would help them keep the habit of group training.
It was an important day for them; it meant catching up on each other and doing their best effort while training to not completely embarrass themselves in front of each other.
They all had permission for this, of course. The King not only had allowed it, he encouraged them to never miss a week. They were expected to relieve from their duties on Friday earlier than they usually did, by orders of the King.
What they did in these weekly reunions varied. Sometimes they went training at the forest, sometimes they trained at the courtyard (to the delight of everyone watching there), sometimes they just sat down to chat and arm-wrestle (Domas being the eternal loser there).
Most of the time though, their Friday training reunions were mostly an excuse to have some Guy Time together, where after some light training and chatting they closed the night by going for a drink.
It was sort of an open secret in the castle that their training reunions were mostly as an excuse to go drinking, but no one minded them for that. Who was going to oppose them for having a breather moment once a week?
This Friday though, they had decided to be more serious than usual and go wrestle at the forest. Apeas complained that it had been too long since the last time they had done any actual sparring, and he was eager to compare his own improvement.
“Let's wrestle. No weapons: Only pure muscle strength to take down one another.”
The other three nodded in agreement.
Dorshe enjoyed fighting, but he always had to make sure to hold back during training. He was well-aware that he was stronger than every other soldier in the castle and always tried to remember that; not out of pride, but as a call to be cautious.
He wished he had more chances to train his full strength, but he knew that controlling his strength was also an important thing to master.
With the Big Four he didn’t need to hold back as much as he did with regular soldiers, but even if the other three were closer to his level, he still outclassed them greatly.
Still, their closeness to each other made him feel not so bad about potentially hurting them: In part because he knew how much each of them could take, but also because they got on his nerves way more than the rest of humanity did.
“Dorshe,” said Apeas. “Wrestle with me.”
Apeas seemed completely emotionless, as usual.
Dorshe smirked. He was more than happy to be Apeas’ partner; he knew Apeas could handle him better than Bebin or Domas could. He had known him the longest and they often trained together when they were young, it was almost nostalgic.
“Alright,” he said. “I'm up to it.”
“This time, I want you to not hold back against me.”
Domas and Bebin, for their part, agreed to wrestle with each other nearby.
Both duos got shirtless and shook hands.
They began.
Against Apeas’ request, Dorshe was still holding back. He didn't know why Apeas wanted him to go full out, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t willing to run the risk of severely injuring him, no matter how much Apeas insisted he could handle it.
It didn't take long for Apeas to notice this. Angry, he took a more aggressive stance: Kicking Dorshe in the balls so he could take the chance and pin him to the ground.
“What are you doing!? We agreed that going for the balls wasn't allowed!”
“If you aren’t going to take this seriously, why should I?”
Dorshe groaned.
Despite keeping his always-deadpan exterior, Apeas was clearly pissed. Now sitting on top of Dorshe, his legs pressed against his arms so he couldn’t move, he punched Dorshe’s face without mercy. Dorshe struggled, trying to break free without using his arms, but Apeas was too heavy to push away without them.
Domas and Bebin, astounded, stopped their own match to watch them.
Dorshe was getting furious. It was exactly what Apeas wanted.
Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath to concentrate, Dorshe gathered all his strength to break free, lifting his chest and head-butting Apeas hard to push him away.
Throwing Apeas to the ground, Dorshe tried to stand up. He cleaned his mouth with his fist and breathed heavily, enraged.
Apeas pulled himself together too, smiling. His smugness was pissing off Dorshe some more.
“I finally got you to take me seriously.”
“Lord, just shut up.”
They clinched each other with all their strength, Dorshe no longer holding back. He knew this was exactly what Apeas wanted to achieve, but he didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to break his ribs a little.
“Should we do... something about this...?” asked Domas, sweating and nervous, yet unable to stare away. He found it both fascinating and terrifying to watch these two powerhouses fight, feeling they could probably easily kill him if they wanted to. He felt they should probably do something about this before it ended badly, but he knew if it interrupted them, it would end badly for him.
“It's better to let them continue and keep a keen eye on them, just in case things escalate to the point where we need to step in.” Answered Bebin. He spoke like a wise man, but his face was barely trying to hide how amused he was by the whole show.
Domas sweated. These three were all terrifying.
Apeas’ punches had weakened Dorshe greatly, but he was fighting as well as he could. He was determined to win. He wasn’t going to Apeas humiliate him.
Apeas was driven too. The thrill of knowing that Dorshe wasn’t holding back was making his blood rush and pumping him up.
He hopelessly tried to topple Dorshe, but for all Apeas had trained for this day and all he managed to weakened him before, Dorshe still had the upper hand. Apeas sparsely managed to land some blows on him, but he increasingly struggled to keep up with Dorshe’s pace.
The match kept going with neither of them wanting to give up, but Apeas was getting too beaten up to be able to keep up.
Dorshe got him in a chokehold. Noticing that Apeas was too exhausted to keep going, he felt it was about time to call quits there. His rage had calmed down. He was exhausted too.
“I win. Let's end this here, the sun is going down already.”
“Ah... I... Alright...” said Apeas, barely breathing, begrudgingly accepting that he had no way to win if they kept going. Dorshe let him go, and he tried to put himself back together.
“Alright,” said Bebin. “Can you guys walk the way back to the castle, or do you need help?”
“I'm fine,” said Dorshe. “I'm tired but I can manage the way back if we go slowly. Apeas knees are too beaten for him to stand, though.”
“I... I could use some support…” Apeas tried to walk a little and struggled. Bebin held him. “Thank you...”
“I will help you put your shirt back on. Domas, you help Dorshe with it.”
“No, I'm fine, don't-”
Domas grabbed his shirt and put it on his head before he could finish. Groaning, Dorshe begrudgingly got dressed with Domas’ help.
All dressed up, they headed back to the castle.
Apeas walked with Bebin's help. Bebin observed him closely, trying estimate how long it would take him to recover. Just by looking, he guessed that aside from all bruises, he most likely broke a few bones as well. It would take him some good weeks to recover. Yet he didn’t get the impression that Apeas regretted any of this.
Next week they better stick to chatting, Bebin thought.
He looked at Dorshe, who walked alone after repeatedly refusing any help from Domas, insisting he was fine. He struggled to breathe a little. Bebin could tell that he was in worse shape than he let on, each step hurting him a little more. He was less injured than Apeas, but it would still take him a while to recover.
They always paid visits to the castle’s doctor after they got injured from training, but Bebin felt this time it would be better to ask Queen Hiling for her assistance. He knew better than to try to suggest that to Dorshe, though.
Lucky for him, he could always count on Domas to say things without thinking:
“Maybe it would be good to ask Queen Hiling if she could-”
“Absolutely not,” Dorshe interrupted, “I'm not going to bother her and make her worry over something like this. We have never asked for her help after sparring and I'm not going to start now.”
“Yeah, but you are both in pretty bad shape now. Besides, once she learns about this, she's probably going to volunteer anyway.”
“She won't learn about it,” Dorshe said very serious. “We will head right to the doctor’s office. Once we’re done there, we will all head directly to bed. If I get enough sleep and visit the doctor again early in the morning, I'll be fine enough for her not to suspect anything tomorrow. So don't tell her anything.”
There was a weird silence.
Apeas somehow felt they were forgetting about him. He guessed he better just follows what Dorshe says.
“Dorshe... I will wait as long as I need to recover… But once I'm back in shape, promise me we will fight like this again.”
“Just shut up, will you.”
----
Out of the doctor's office and patched up, Dorshe headed straight to his room, careful to take the best route to avoid encountering Queen Hiling.
He begged the other three to do the same thing, and they swore they would do (albeit feeling a bit threatened if they didn't). They promised that if they did happen to encounter Hiling, they would tell her the reunion went just fine and it ended earlier than usual since they were exhausted, not mentioning anything else. Dorshe trusted their word.
He felt relieved once he finally arrived to his room. He quickly undressed, leaving only his underwear on, and settled into bed.
Snuggled up in there, cozy, he felt like a child. It was a true joy.
It had to be around 8 or 9, no later than that. He didn't want to check, he couldn't bother. He only knew that it was early, but he just wanted to sleep and not think of anything else.
He relaxed there, taking his time to fall asleep. He didn’t worry, there was no rush. He was just happy to be able to lie in bed. It was so cozy...
But the more he lied in there, the more he began to fully realize how much his body was truly hurting.
The pain felt worse now than it did right after the fight was over. He was in worse shape than he thought. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do tomorrow about it, but he didn’t want to think about that right now. Tomorrow he would see. Tomorrow he could worry. He didn’t want to think about anything at all, he only wanted to close his eyes and forget about everything, forget about how much it hurt. Tomorrow he could worry. Tomorrow he would figure out what to do.
The pain didn’t lessen and the night was still young, but Dorshe fell asleep before he could notice.
“You're really stubborn, you know that?”
Her voice made him jump out of bed. Dorshe opened his eyes.
He was dizzy. He didn't realize he had fallen asleep and had no idea what time it was. It was still night, it had to be past midnight judging by how dark it was. Maybe around 2 or 3 in the morning, he thought. He couldn't see well, the light of her candle felt too bright to his eyes.
He heard the door closing, followed by the sound of her carefully locking it. He rubbed his eyes to try to see more clearly. As he became more awake and began to understand what was going on, he felt extremely nervous.
“Hilin-”
“Don't say anything,” she sighed. “I don't want to hear it.”
She placed her candleholder on a little nightstand next his bed. “Don't try to move, you'll just tire yourself out. Just let me heal you.”
Dorshe complied and lied quietly back on bed, feeling guilty.
He wondered who told her what had happened, if it had been one of the other guys or if it had been the doctor. He guessed it didn't really matter now. Whatever the case, there was no way to convince her to leave now.
She carefully moved the sheets aside to look at his body and see how badly injured he was. She grimaced looking at his wounds.
He felt ashamed of himself for making her worry, right after he told himself that making her worry was the last thing he wanted from all this.
And over something as stupid as wrestling with Apeas, that's what embarrassed him the most.
Done with examining his chest, Hiling got closer and grabbed his face with both hands. Dorshe shivered. She leaned closer and took a good look to see how injured his head was.
She touched his head carefully, trying to see how swollen it was, fondling softly.
He tried to stay collected, but her touch was making him feel a little flustered. He looked away from her, really hoping that he wasn’t blushing, but his cheeks were indeed terribly red. All he hoped was that she didn’t notice. All he hoped was that she didn’t think he was gross.
He wouldn't blame her for that. He felt he ashamed and gross whenever he enjoyed her touch and felt like this.
Hiling kept staring at him for a while, still touching him, not moving. Dorshe felt increasingly more and more scared that she was disgusted at him. She stared at him intensely, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking about. She was deadpan, serious but not angry, immersed in her own thoughts. Dorshe stopped feeling so embarrassed and began instead to wonder what went inside her mind.
She seemed was so distant, like on another planet, yet here together in this small room in the dead of night it felt like they were the only two people on Earth and there was nothing outside those four walls. His heart beat faster.
He felt a somewhat unusual intimacy - not because she was touching him, but the intimacy of silently staring at each other, each on their own worlds, yet still connected.
He didn't know how long they stayed like that. It was such a long time for him, but it must have been a few seconds.
He wondered if she went to see Apeas as well, or if she was planning to see him afterwards, tomorrow, or if she just didn't care about him.
He wondered if someone saw her coming to this room. He wondered if she told someone about this or she came in secret.
It was so late… Did she learn earlier about his injuries and waited till everyone was asleep to come and heal him? Or did she only learn about this now past midnight? Did she sleep a little, or had she been awake this whole time? Had she been worried this whole time because she didn’t see him arrive at the castle, so she decided to find out what happened?
Perhaps she didn’t ask any of the guys what happened and instead decided to cut the middle man by going to his room directly. Maybe she didn’t suspect anything and went to sleep with no worries, but it was a bad dream what told her something was off and decided to go check on him.
There was so much he wanted to ask her, but he didn’t feel like talking. The silence was fine. Not knowing what exactly brought her here was fine. What mattered was that she was there with him.
She finally moved, seemingly breaking away from whatever she was thinking, and moved her hands a little to touch Dorshe's face, less mechanically than before. He couldn't tell what it was that she was trying to do now. He felt flustered again.
She was no longer checking his wounds. She just moved her hands clumsily, without the careful elegant softness from before.
Trying to make out of her face in the dim candlelight, he could see a feeble smile in her face, but her eyes seemed a bit sad.
She let go of him, and walked away a little. Dorshe couldn't see her from where she stood, but he could heard the sound of her opening a bottle and aggressively gulping it all at once. She threw the bottle to the ground.
The way she drank so fast terrified him. She groaned loudly, grabbed a second bottle and gulped again. She finished it and exhaled loudly.
Dorshe had forgotten about his pain by now, this was whole display was scaring him too much.
Not announcing anything, without much ado, she walked closer and now standing next to his bed, she extended her arms, and at once she began to use her magic on him, glowing brightly.
She struggled and groaned. His body quickly began to feel lighter.
Healing so quick felt so nice. He felt weird, feeling the ecstasy of accelerated healing while he could hear how much she suffered doing this.
He hated asking her to do this. He had sworn to himself years ago that he would avoid being a burden to her at all costs, yet here he was.
She stopped her magic to catch her breath. After a resting for two minutes, she continued some more, before abruptly stopping.
She was out of breath, any more of it and she would pass out.
Using her last strength, she went closer and looked at Dorshe's body, checking to make sure he was better. Touching and seeing he was healthy again, she sighed in relief and fell on the border of his bed. She had no energy left to stand up.
“Hiling-sama!”
Dorshe sat and looked at Hiling, concerned.
“I'm fine... I'm fine, don't worry, I'm not gone. Don't worry.” She said, not moving.
Dorshe worried.
She wasn't unconscious, just really exhausted. He wasn't sure what to do to help her out.
“Hiling-sama... Hiling-sama I'm- I'm so sorry for this! Thank you... I don't how to begin to express how grateful I am... I owe you so much for this...”
“I know, I know. You don't have to say anything, I know how thankful you are, don't worry.” She smiled. “I know you. Stop worrying so much.”
But he felt guilty. Not only she cured him at her own expense, he also made her worry by not telling her straight away. He felt he just kept messing up tonight.
“Hiling-sama, I will make this up to you. Please allow me to make it up to you later.”
But she didn't answer.
Dorshe got closer.
“Hiling-sama? Hiling-sama?”
He carefully grabbed her arm to see if she reacted. She was just half-asleep. She breathed normally; she just needed to get some sleep. But she was still partly lying on the floor, the upper half of her body clinging onto his bed.
Dorshe got out of bed, carefully grabbing her in his arms. She opened her eyes a little, not seeming to mind this. He gently placed her on his bed so she could rest better.
“You didn't have to, I was fine…” she spoke, to his surprise. But contrary to what she said, she immediately made herself comfortable there.
Dorshe smiled, covering her with the sheets. She snuggled onto them tightly.
Now having made sure she was comfortable, he wondered what he should do about himself.
He began to feel kinda awkward; while he was happy letting her sleep there, he didn't know where to go now. If it was up to him, he would try to sleep sitting at the bottom of the bed where her feet wouldn’t reach, or try to sleep in the chair he kept next to his door, but he didn't know if she was comfortable with him staying in the same room while she was there sleeping.
Only then he realized that it would have been smarter to grab her and carry her to her own room instead. But now she was well-settled in his bed and soon to fall asleep in there, it would be plain rude to kick her out. Even if he waited for her to fall asleep to carry her out, he feared the trip to her room was too long to ensure she wouldn’t wake up during the trip.
This was all around an awkward situation.
The best thing he could do was to go sleep somewhere else and let her stay in his room until she had gotten enough sleep, he thought. Not wanting to bother her, he quietly stood up to leave, making sure to not awake her-
“No, no, you don't have to leave. It's fine. Stay...”
Dorshe sweated. His discreet exit had failed.
“I'm not going to kick you out of your own bed, c'mon.”
He was taken aback. Hiling moved to a side of the bed, leaving space on the other half so he could get in there. As if she wasn’t being clear enough, she opened the sheets to invite him to come.
His brain kinda stopped responding. He wasn't sure what was the "correct" thing to do, and for more he tried, he couldn't decide what he should do; the suddenness of all this didn't let him process it.
...He was just shy, all in all. He knew she just meant sleeping together side by side; she was way too tired to want to do anything else, but that was enough to make him wonder if it was truly okay.
She didn’t move, still waiting for him. “It's fine, I don't mind. You need to sleep too. The least I can do after you let me stay here is to let you share the bed with me.”
Her words just made him feel guiltier… He was the one who should be thanking her for healing him. Remembering that made him hesitate some more, even if she insisted it was fine.
He walked towards the door. It would be impolite to rob her space out of bed when he’s indebt to her. It would be plain rude to abuse of her kindness and not let her sleep comfortably. It would be-
“Please... Stay. I want to be with you.”
“...”
Swiftly, Dorshe headed back towards her, entering the bed and making his way in the space she left for him, covering himself.
He tried to keep himself as cramped to the border of the bed as he could, giving her as much space as possible.
He put out the candle. The room was now almost completely dark.
“You don't have to keep so much distance, it's fine. I'd feel bad if I don’t let you have enough space in your own bed... Come closer.”
He went closer, a bit nervous to be so near each other. He could barely see her, but could feel her breathing close.
She seemed so calm, like she was going to fall asleep any second now. He tried to see if he could make out her face in the dark, but he didn't stare for too long. His eyes were closing before he could notice.
He finally felt truly calm, no longer worrying about anything. He was happy that she could get some rest too. He was happy to be so close together. Now that he was there, he couldn’t remember why he was so worried about everything some seconds ago. It felt so natural to fall asleep next to her.
Eyes closed, he felt her holding his hands, carefully interlacing her fingers with his. He held her hands tightly.
She snuggled a bit closer towards him.
“Dorshe... Did you win?” Hiling whispered, yawning.
“Uh?”
“Did you beat Apeas?”
“Oh. Yes, I won... If you think I was a mess, you should have seen how he ended up.”
“Good!” She laughed. “I'd be disappointed if it had been any other way.”
They both laughed. Hiling immediately fell asleep, and Dorshe soon followed.