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Travelling with other actual breathing people, as Partitio’s come to find, has far more perks than he originally thought it would.
Taking turns cooking, for one, is pretty darn good. Sure it means he sometimes has to sit through Osvald’s nutritionally optimised and flavourfully lacking dishes but that’s nothing a healthy amount of salt can’t fix, and maybe Ochette’s got a little too much meat on her brain to leave room for vegetables but Castti always foresees it coming from halfway down the river and more than makes up for it with whatever she can forage from the wilds.
It's also easier to get a good night’s sleep, too, when you’re resting easy knowing that there’re at least five other sleeping people and two awake ones who can and will help you kick some serious ass at a moment’s notice.
They used to only do single watches, rotating through the night as everyone else traded shut-eye, but swapped over to duo-shifts when they realised, among other things, that Agnea has a tendency to fall asleep with nobody around to keep up conversation, and that Ochette has a far more worrying tendency to wander off into the distant hills with nobody around to keep her (figuratively) leashed and in line.
Partitio doesn’t mind it, see; he’s always been pretty flexible with his hours, happy to stay up late if that’s what the others need – and one look at seven faces currently cycling through different levels of exhaustion tells him more than he needs to know about just what that entails right now.
Agnea’s already yawning, rubbing blearily at an eye as she slowly but surely undoes her braid and combs her hair out with her fingers. Osvald never shows his exhaustion (he probably thinks it an unnecessary weakness or something equally practical) but Partitio knows he’s more of a morning bird than a night owl. Even their mother-hen Castti is a little more reserved than usual, something freshly haunted burying itself in the shadows beneath her eyes. Getting your memory back’d prolly do that to just about anyone, let alone someone with an internal compass that considers ‘helping others’ the closest thing to true north there is. Partitio can’t tell if she’s lost something or found something or done a little bit of both, but he’ll save asking her about it for tomorrow when she’s at least gotten a good night’s sleep under her belt. Such is the duty of the normal, ain't it, when surrounded by people with demons that’ve spent years learning how to swim.
“I’ll take first watch,” he says, arms stretching hiiigh over his head as he tries to loosen up the stiffness a whole day of trotting about has ironed into his shoulders. “I’m far too dusty from travellin’ to wanna slide right into bed anyway. Y’all get some rest first, y’hear?”
Castti nods. “Alright. Wake me if you need anything at all. I’ll be right here.” There’s a slow gratitude to her movements as she sets about setting out bedrolls a little further back from the fire that Osvald’s currently tending, sparked up by principle of magic (oop, there’s another perk: fire-starting via magic, no matter how cold, wet, or miserable they might find themselves).
Agnea barely has enough left in her to manage a quiet goodnight as she meets Castti halfway to help where she can. Partitio plants a hand in her hair as she passes him by, giving her loose waves a polite ruffling. “Don’t mention it. You can pay me back with a smile tomorrow!”
Ochette comes next, her seemingly limitless energy stretched to its thinnest points. “Thanks, Parti,” she mumbles, bumping against his side with a gentle, feline headbutt – before promptly starfishing and passing out right on top of a mostly made bedroll, Mahina roosting against the space between her shoulder and cheek as she tucks her hooty head under an equally owlish wing.
Partitio rolls his eyes, no bite behind the motion. “Kids these days.” He sighs, crouching and shrugging off his golden coat in the same motion to tuck it carefully over the both of them. Can’t have their shared custody daughter catching herself a cold instead of whatever prey she’s got her eyes on next, especially when they’ve all still got a long way to go.
He feels more than hears Throné come up behind him, the sudden goosebump prickle of a presence over one shoulder something he senses before he even turns around. At least he can say he’s gotten used to her creeping up on him like that. Small mercies. She’s watching him, hip cocked, and nods back in the general direction of the fire; if it weren’t for the flames sputtering behind her, her black hair and dark clothes would practically be blending into the night. “I’ll join you.”
“Y’sure?” A hand drifts to his chin. If Partitio’s being honest, he’s not quite convinced he’s ever actually seen Throné sleep. She’s always alert, always living life like she’s ready for it to slip away any second – marginally less so now, but still. Ain’t it, ain’t she, “Ain’t you tired?”
Throné shrugs, the barest shift in the line of her shoulders. “I’ve done more with less.”
It’s not the most reassuring way to put it. Then again, he can’t deny that it’d certainly be nice to have someone as capable as her helping him watch over the rest of them, considering that he’s about two whole levels below when it comes to combat prowess. Once again, the duty of the normal. That settles it then – he’s about to voice his assent, maybe throw in an easy little joke along the way, when someone else sidles right up to their little conversational circle and slips in among the silence they’ve left like it was made for him to fill.
“Actually,” Temenos says, arms folded with hands demurely curled around opposite elbows, “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Doctor’s orders, Throné – or did you already forget?”
Partitio blinks, words scattering to the wind. “Oh, shoot, you’re right – you still got that wound you’re healin’, don’t you, Throné?”
Throné clicks her tongue, gaze tossed to one side; a clear a marker as any that she did not, in fact, forget, and had simply elected to not remember. “It’s nothing.”
Partitio knows for a fact that it hadn’t been nothing – not if Castti’s pale face at the sight of all that blood had been any indication. Based off how Throné’s staring off in that general direction, he’s got a mighty good hunch that she hasn’t entirely sold herself on that either.
Temenos opens his hands magnanimously. “Fear not. All’s well that end’s well, for I’ve explained the situation to our good friend Hikari,” Partitio doesn’t miss the way Temenos’ eyes stray in his direction at the name, “and he has rather nobly offered himself up in your place. Now come along, Throné; no time like the present to get you shepherded off to dreamland.” Throné goes without much complaint, Temenos smiling enough for the both of them, and it’s not long before their merry band of waking eight has dwindled to a single pair of two.
Partitio’s heart does a funny little hop-skip-lurch behind his sternum as the others leave, unsure whether to jump for joy or fall straight down to his toes. It's not that things're awkward after that night in the tavern – far from it, actually. He's even managing to feel a little less physically winded every time he sees Hikari's new outfit, his blushing maiden act blessedly fading down to something more controlled as the weeks have passed them by. Good thing, too, as Hikari seems to have rather taken a shine to it, only trading back into his warrior gear when they're prepping to fight creatures with far too many teeth to be worth risking that much skin. It's just that he's a little overly conscious all of a sudden, perpetually aware of where Hikari is, what it is he's doing, and why it is he's suddenly paying so much mind to these things. He sighs, hands clenching at his sides. Right. Well, his Pops raised nothing if not a brave little chickadee – time to put on his big boy pants and make himself some conversation.
Hikari’s already set himself up by the fire, a long stick in one hand as he leans up against the logs lined up around the old pit. He prods at the crimson depths, embers sparking and spitting off of burning branches to arc up into the air around his makeshift poker. The warmth does him plenty of favours – not that he needs them in the first place, but the firelight turns the red satin of his shirt liquid copper as the ends of his hair glow crimson. Partitio lowers himself to sit opposite, a quiet oof slipping out as he perches on the splintery bark, and his arrival seems to break Hikari’s nigh-meditative focus.
Partitio offers him a lopsided smile. “Just you n’ me, Hikari.”
Hikari nods, once. “So it seems.”
“Hope y’don’t mind being dragged into this – you know how Temenos can get when he decides somethin’ for the rest of us.”
Hikari sets his stick down, shifting on the ground to fold his legs under himself. Even now, his scabbard lies in arms reach behind him, resting across the top of the log. “It’s fine. I’m not that tired anyway.”
“Truly?” Partitio stretches his legs out to one side, crossing at the ankles, and groans as he rolls his neck. “Idunno how you do it – must be the youth.”
Hikari’s smiling over top of the fire. He’s at the perfect height for tongues of flame to reflect in his pupils, the fluttering tips licking at his lash line. “I guess it must.”
They lapse into silence, Hikari keeping his eyes trained down as Partitio turns his face up to the stars. That’s the good thing, he guesses, about camping it out in the middle of nowhere – the night sky. It’ll never get truly old no matter how many times he sees the glittering galaxy.
It’s Hikari who speaks first. “Partitio. I have a question.”
Partitio drops his gaze but not his head, chin still tipped back. “I'm all ears.”
“How do you…” Hikari wets his lips, uncharacteristically hesitant. His brow pinches. It’s devastatingly adorable. “Forgive me, I’m… Not sure how to word this.”
Partitio sits up a little, offering him an encouraging smile out of the corner of his mouth. “Take your time. We’ve got all night!”
It’s another minute, maybe two, of Hikari and the fire, Partitio and the horizon, when: “Have you ever gotten… Lonely, when you’re travelling?”
Partitio considers this with the same weight as Hikari seems to have put into asking it in the first place. “Lonely? Sometimes, but less so now that I’ve got all of you. Guess I’d get that way if I was on the road a lot without stoppin’ by in any town. That what you mean?”
Hikari’s lips pull into a thoughtful line. “I’m not sure. It feels more like a deep loneliness… Here,” he says, placing a hand to his chest. “I know I have friends in all of you, but I think about my kingdom and it… It’s hollow, where my heart should be.”
A frown crosses Partitio’s face. He’s tempted to chalk it up to – yknow, Hikari being Hikari, his home being a political pot of turmoil that’s long bubbled clean over, but if anyone knows what that’d feel like it’s the boy who’s living it. Something else, then? Something that isn’t his seven metric tons of maturity?
He hems and haws over it a little, debating it internally… … … … Ah.
A metaphorical lightning strike as Partitio’s brain-gears kick into productive motion. “Oooh – I think I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down now.”
Hikari stares up at him. “You are?”
“Yep.” A sage nod. “Makes sense you wouldn’t know it, considerin’ you ain’t really been away from your kingdom before. Humour me for a second: it’s not just related to what you gotta do, is it?”
Hikari mulls this over as feeling himself out through the hand at his chest, before eventually shaking his head. “I don’t think so. But meeting Kazan again… I feel that it has only reminded me how much further I have yet to go before I can return home in earnest.”
“As I thought: Doctor Partitio on the case.” He wishes he still had his coat with him – then he could pop the collar for the drama. “You, my good friend,” he lifts a hand to fingergun-click right in Hikari’s direction, “are homesick.”
All he gets in response is a slow, stunned blink. “Homesick…?”
Partitio nods. “Sure are. I’d bet my hat on it. Why, when I’m away from Oresrush for longer than a couple o’ months I start gettin’ antsy – and I left of my own volition! I can’t imagine what it’s like to be forced out n’ all – not,” he hurriedly tacks on, “to be insensitive or anythin’, you understand.”
Hikari shakes his head. “It’s alright. I thought it simple duty, knowing all that I must face to be able to reclaim my people and save them from themselves, but,” the hand over his heart tightens, shirt collar bunching underneath his fingers, “mere duty cannot explain this chasm in my chest when I think of the desert itself. How do you deal with it?”
Partitio hums. “Talkin’ about it helps. I’m always here to be your soundin' board if you so wish – I’m as good at listenin’ to stories as I am at tellin’ them.”
When Hikari looks back up again, it’s with something painfully soft gentling the corners of his usually sharp eyes. “That… Would be nice, Partitio. Thank you.”
Aw, geez – Partitio doesn’t know what to do with nearly so much sweetness, especially from someone like Hikari, so he diverts the sentiment the quickest way he knows how: with more questions.
“So?” He leans over, scooping up Hikari’s discarded poker to shift around some of the coals at the base of the pit. “What’s it like back home? Yknow, before,” his free hand waves in a sweeping generalisation, “everything went the way it did.” Hikari seems like the kind of guy to talk to himself enough about those sorts of things, forever measuring himself up to an impossibly high standard and finding a way to surpass it anyway. There’s no way Partitio’s gonna remind him of the burden of lineage and royalty that weighs down over his head – the heaviest crown of all and he hasn’t even gotten to wear it proper yet.
“Hinoeuma… Is not the most forgiving place. That’s why it has such a history of bloodshed. People have to take to survive, and before my father attempted to broker peace it was the only way most knew how to live. … The only way my brother still does.” A wonder, then, Partitio thinks, that you turned out the way you did. “It's hot, and sandy, and there aren’t many ways to get things to grow well aside from in a few areas, but…” he trails off, hands curling around themselves where they’ve taken up residence in his lap. Partitio knows without looking that the palms are calloused, a sword master’s grip, but he’s not sure when the rest of those hands got a little harder too.
He keeps his voice low, gentle; like how someone (not Ochette) might talk to a small critter. “But it was home?”
Hikari swallows. “Yes,” he says, thumb smoothing over nail. “It was.”
The wind changes, the firelight shifts, and suddenly it ages Hikari, years and years, and Partitio gets the distinct feeling that it’s not the first time he’s stared down something burning.
Might not be the last, either.
He scoops up the conversational thread with careful hands. “Sounds nice. I’ve never been – never really had the reason to set out quite so far.” Most of the trading routes out there were monopolised anyway, historically entrenched by years of business. “Don’t mean I wouldn’t like to see it one day, I think. Feel like there’d be some mighty fine deals to be made that far out in the wilds.”
Hikari straightens slightly, shoulders unfurling from where they’d sank forwards. “I’ll take you, once everything’s settled down. I think… I think they’d like you there.”
Partitio grins, hat nudged higher up his forehead with the crooked joint of his index finger. “Don’t sell me too highly, now – I’d hate to disappoint!”
Hikari’s chuckle is only barely audible over the crackling fire. Partitio’s happiness sings like a brand against his chest. This time, when silence settles, it’s less humid and stifling and ugly – more comfortable and shared, a kind of quiet sympathy over missing a world that’s more ground than green.
This time, when Hikari breaks it, he sounds infinitely surer too. “Partitio.”
Partitio catches his eye again, blinking a morse-code question, but Hikari’s answer still knocks the wind right out of his sails.
“Dance with me.”
He says it with all the conviction he does when he’s challenging someone to a duel, the same steel in his voice that glimmers inside his scabbard. It’s such a strange juxtaposition, the delicacy of his outfit and hair paired with his sword and those wolf-eyes.
Partitio stammers through a series of extremely unattractive noises. “Wh– H– ‘Scuse me?” Talk about whiplash. “Give a guy some warnin’, would you? Where’d that come from?”
Hikari’s already climbing to his feet. “Dance with me first and find out.”
Earn it, he means. Earn my honesty.
“Aw, shucks,” Partitio starts, a hand drifting to his cheek to slide right by and curl around the nape of his neck. “Iunno, Hikari. I ain’t much of a dancer – oughta leave that kind of thing to the gentlefolk, yknow?”
Hikari levels him with a look that’s both critical and thoroughly unimpressed. “Backing down from a challenge? That’s not like you.”
Partitio huffs. “Now hold your horses for one second here – challenge? I thought y’were askin’ me outta the goodness of your own heart!”
“It can be both,” and the way Hikari says it makes it sound like it’s the simplest thing in the world to juggle business and pleasure. “Now, come – show me what you’re made of.”
Partitio doesn’t not dance, is the thing – just that his idea of dancing involves far too much drink, far too little sobriety, and an overall grand old time that he’ll barely remember come sunrise. He’s used to whirling people around to jaunty music, throwing in a couple of spins and a little showman’s flair. He dances because he’s happy, while Agnea (and, he supposes, Hikari by extension) dance to share that kind of good will with others. He’s got nowhere near the finesse nor the coordination to match them, either on the floor or on the battlefield – but he’s never really gotten anywhere without shooting for the moon, a burning arrow of ambition forever notched in the bowstring of his heart. The moment drags on, heavy with anticipation… Before he inevitably throws both hands up, conceding defeat. “Alright, alright, if you insist – but don’t say I didn’t warn you when I end up treadin’ on your toes.”
Hikari’s smile is downright triumphant, and the firelight catches the curve of his cupid’s bow and one side of the bridge of his nose as it throws the distant half of his face into shadow. “I’ll manage.”
“So,” Partitio says, standing as he pulls off his gloves to tuck into a back pocket (because if he’s gonna do this then he’s gonna do it proper!): “Where do we start?”
Hikari stares him down, then up, eyes lingering on where Partitio unfolds and refolds one of his sleeves with deft fingers. “You’ve surely seen me dance enough already. It’s only fair you return the favour.”
Partitio quirks a brow. “Mighty bold – askin’ me to sweep you off your feet?”
If not for the wavering fire serving as their only source of light, Partitio would almost swear that Hikari’s gone a delicate petal-pink across the bridge of his nose at the jibe. “No. I’m just more curious about how the… Average,” he pauses, picking his words carefully, “person dances. Agnea wants to be a star. She shines differently on the stage, and I don’t think anyone could truly keep up with her even if they tried.”
Partitio nods, slow. Makes sense. “Guessin’ your folk ain’t the dancin’ kind?”
“They are, but it’s not the same. I’ve never seen someone dance like her before. A lot of it is more ceremonial. You don’t really meet people who dance for the sake of the act itself.”
Maybe, Partitio thinks, it’s because they don’t have all that much reason to.
His mouth shapes into an easy grin. “Alrighty then – strap yourself in, prince, ‘cause I’m about to knock your socks clean off.” Hikari’s eyes are bright, open with curiosity as Partitio shakes himself loose and tries to leave his nerves behind in favour of doffing his hat and offering a hand to the boy opposite him.
“Would you, Hikari Ku, offer me, Partitio Yellowil, the honour of this here dance on this fine night?”
Hikari’s face stutters, smile freezing on his face as his eyes flick down then up then down again, and Partitio’s just starting to think he’s finally taken things a little too far when he seems to make up his mind. His hesitation vanishes as his jaw sets, a new edge to his gaze as he sets his decidedly cooler hand in Partitio’s own. “Lead,” he says, as his fingers curl tighter around the xylophone grooves between Partitio’s fingers and send far too much feeling seeping straight into his bones, “and I’ll always follow.”
“Yeesh,” Partitio muses, utterly starstruck. “You got no clue how you sound sometimes, do you.” But Hikari’s already got his learning face on like he’s actually going to commit whatever Partitio trips through in the next five minutes to memory and pull it out next time they face down a group of frost moles – which means, in turn, that the show must go on.
Welp, nothing for it then!
Partitio clears his throat with a theatrical a-hem or two — and starts up razzing through the kind of music he’d hear sweeping out from inn windows back in Oresrush; the kind that’s most at home being banged out on a faded piano while being backed by the slightly-out-of-tune twangs of an equally busted cello. The sort of music that makes his Pops smile, the type of thing that probably only sounds good to people already halfway to a hangover and the whole way to tipsy. Still, he jangles, jives, and scats his way through a loose rendition of something fun and frisky, barely more than a murmur so as to not wake the others sleeping a scant couple of metres back. He’s only playing for an audience of one, after all – no need to get all fancy with it.
Hikari’s eyes widen at the first two bars, clearly not expecting a backing track let alone one with such a quick beat, but he picks it up just as quickly to meet Partitio halfway. They have a couple of near misses at the start when Partitio first pulls them both into some semblance of a routine, Hikari trying desperately to work out just what it is that Partitio’s doing – tough ask, really, ‘cause even he ain’t quite sure. As long as his limbs are going places, his heart’s in the right spot, and a smile’s sticking to his partner’s face, then he must be doing something right.
It's a lot less cultured, a lot less pretty, and a lot less socially acceptable than anything they’ve ever caught Agnea doing – heck, it’s barely passable for what Ochette considers dancing, given that Hikari’s still operating from maybe a chapter behind. Partitio can’t quite find it in himself to care though, not when Hikari looks like he’s one good side-step away from bursting into laughter as he kicks his leg out to one side while Partitio swings himself around to the other. They pull away and back in, orbiting bodies, and Partitio even chances a spin, throwing Hikari out with an arm before chasing him right back with laced fingers.
Partitio’s drunk. He’s gotta be, there’s no other way to explain how light-headed he feels seeing Hikari twirl circles around him and in and out of shadow.
They come to a stop eventually, Hikari with one hand planted on Partitio’s chest as the other remains linked by fingers between fingers. It’s the closest they’ve ever been, bar that one time they all had to squeeze into one boat because fighting a giant shark-fish unsurprisingly smashed the rest of ‘em to splinters. Their breathing is too loud in the sudden quiet left behind by an absence of boo-bops and shuffling feet, and Partitio can’t, for the life of him, drag his eyes away from Hikari’s face.
A moment, then two —
“Again,” Hikari says, putting a respectful distance between them once more as he breaks their point of contact to reach up and tighten his ponytail where it’s started sliding loose in the hullabaloo.
Partitio’s cheeks hurt, sunburnt by his own happiness, and his breathlessness is something that runs deeper than just exertion. Based off Hikari’s easy posture and barely hidden grin he’s not faring much better in that regard.
“Again? Cmon, Hikari, you’re workin’ me to the bone! I thought you were a quick learner.”
“I am,” Hikari says, rapid as ever to counter, but there’s something younger in his smile, in the way he reaches for Partitio again. “But that was fun. It's different to how I dance with Agnea.” Always the curious one, always the bright-eyed optimist, always everything that Partitio wants to be holding all that he has been and might be again.
Partitio’s grin turns fierce, stepping right up to the podium and offering his hand once more. Hikari takes it, matching him beat for beat. “Finally got you to loosen up a little, have I? Good, good — but don’t say I didn’t warn you about that dancin’ bug!”