Work Text:
Caspian pauses outside Harvey’s room. He takes a deep breath even though he doesn’t need it.
He twists the door handle, feeling a loose tremble in his own hands that he wishes would go away. Harvey doesn’t seem to notice him slipping into the room, but his soft footfalls are always hard to notice; it’s been years since he’s trained himself to move silently.
The vampire asks not for permission to enter. Always welcome, he thinks.
Caspian stops because he doesn’t know which words to pull from the mess of them on the tip of his tongue.
“What did you say to him?”
He cringes internally. Probably not the best opening. The clatter of Harvey’s wooden puzzle scattering on the desk makes Caspian twitch, nerves already frayed and jumpy. He can hear the fear in his own voice. Caspian doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be having this conversation – not with Harvey. Never with Harvey. But he needs to know.
“To whom?” the Tiefling looks at him. After all this time, Caspian likes to think he can glean the right emotion from the shape of those familiar flames, “I’m sorry?” Harvey says.
Oh, he doesn’t know. That’s okay – Harvey hasn’t done anything wrong. Caspian just wants to know, so they can go back to that sweet, unspoken trust they’d been nursing. That Caspian had been nursing even though it’s an indulgence of the kind that he knows, in the back of his mind, that he can’t afford.
“Hes,” he clarifies, finding his voice stuck on anything further.
“I didn’t – I didn’t go looking for him,” Harvey says. The defensiveness that underlies the words puts Caspian on edge. Maybe – maybe what had happened had been worse than whatever Hestia had implied? Caspian swallows, feeling phantom sweat on his palms. He never would’ve thought that Harvey would go looking for Hestia. He isn’t like that, is he?
Caspian refrains from shaking his head to clear his head of the thoughts being unduly lain there. He’s too susceptible to it, the paranoia. Especially in moments like this.
“We met by accident, in the Hall,” Harvey continues, because Caspian waits him out. He already knows this part, red-eyed gaze levelled at the man across the room, the sturdy wood of Harvey’s desk a dense barrier between them. Caspian feels the door at his back, and Quicksilver at his hip.
“I didn’t tell him anything you’ve told me.”
Caspian hadn’t thought he would.
But the words are reassuring.
Caspian takes a breath, just to remember the body at his command, and thinks to speak. But Harvest continues.
“I – He didn’t have to—”
“Harvey,” Caspian cuts him off, surprisingly himself a little. Once he speaks, he feels the words come easier – but they come out wrong, “I don’t care,” No, that’s a bad way to say it, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
He steps inside the room, closing the door behind him softly, but not moving from within reach of the handle. He sees Harvey sit back, so he softens his voice.
“It wasn’t…your place,” Caspian adds, but the words feel too stiff. Fearful. Like control slipping through his fingers. Like someone taking his livelihood straight out of his hands and into their own. He looks at Harvey, apology in his gaze, and can’t tell what the Tiefling is thinking.
“I know,” Harvey says, clear and frustrated like a rusty bell’s ring, “Of course I know. But you’re – you’re my friend, my closest friend. Don’t you think I would want to say – to do something when –”
“I don’t need you to do anything, Harvest,” Caspian cuts in, faster than he might’ve done if he did not feel so – so unnerved. He doesn’t. He doesn’t need someone else solving his own fights, deciding that he’d owe them, deciding things for him.
He clenches his teeth, the muscles in his jaw jumping. He wants to crawl home and hide.
“I can fight my own battles,” he continues, just a little bit of gentleness back in his voice, but the words are still fast and a little bit insistent, “I was doing fine, I had a handle on it – it wasn’t a battle that…needed fighting. You don’t need to get involved,” he pleads. He’s pleading with him, like either of them can turn back what has already happened. Caspian leans against the door, tired.
“Please, Harv,” he adds, weakly. He’d hide his head in his hands, but he needs them free.
They’re still dancing around the edges of an argument. Caspian has reliable sources to tell him that this is the point where he gets sent away.
The silence is deafening, whilst it reigns.
“I know,” Harvey says with conviction, “I know that you can handle it. Heavens, Caspian, I never thought you couldn’t,” Caspian knows what that means - You’re paranoid, and overreacting, “I just wanted to do something –” Harvey trails off, and Caspian waits with baited breath, his pointed ears straining, “For you.”
It’s not true.
Doesn’t Harvey know that a fight is the last thing Caspian would’ve wanted?
He can hear a buzzing in his ears.
“I wanted – I wanted to help –”
“Well, good fucking job,” Caspian lashes out, and regrets it immediately. He flinches at his own reaction, his hands curling into punishing fists. The pinch of his own nails in his dead man’s skin.
He thinks to apologise, to back down, to calm the phantom rabbiting beat of his useless heart.
“You –”
“I know ! Alright? I know I fucking screwed up. I’m perfectly aware of that fact. I didn’t maul him, I barely did anything to him – not a scratch or a claw mark, perfectly intact,” Harvey begins to bark, and Caspian can feel his own anger, already generously named, drain away into the thud of fear in his stomach.
He steps back, feeling the back of his heel hit the door behind him.
“He’s alive,” Harvey snaps.
The unlike either of us goes unspoken.
“Feel free to go back to him and tell him you’ve called off your fucking attack dog, berated them, and that I won’t taunt him again—” Harvey continues, and Caspian doesn’t understand why he’s shouting. Doesn’t know where it’s coming from, all this –
All this bitterness.
“I’ll shut up, stay quiet, and you can have your fun,” Harvey hisses, and falls quiet.
Caspian’s hands tremble.
“Fun?” he parrots, quiet and wounded, the distress in his voice barely veiled, “You think I was having fun when I found out what had happened?”
Caspian stares at Harvest, daring him to answer.
“He’s fine,” Harvey insists.
Caspian sighs, a rush of unneeded air, his brows furrowed and eye closed. If – maybe if he could just compose himself a little bit, he could still save this.
“That face of his is entirely unscathed, just as pretty as you like, so why don’t you go back to all of them and stop telling me to get out of your business. I get it! I’m not – I don’t – I get it! I’m trying, Caspian,” Harvey continues, an edge of desperation clear in his voice, but it’s – it’s too mean, it’s too accusatory. Caspian hadn’t known that this is what Harvest had been hiding.
It’s cruel. It’s cruel, because Caspian loves Harvey. He’d do near anything he’d ever ask, treasures him like no one else at Strixhaven. But Harvey had never met him halfway, had he? They’d both been too scared. Or something.
“I won’t do it again, so please, go to your – to them and know that I’m trying, I don’t need you all to remind me that –” Harvey stops, the crack of wood under his fingers.
Caspian tries hard not to cry on the spot.
Who’s he supposed to go to?
Harvey’s so angry about all of them, but they don’t exist.
“I’m sor—”
“I don’t care about his face,” Caspian says, cold like barren snow. He flinches as Harvey scrambles to his feet, hand twitching toward the hilt of Quicksilver, “You think I’m that shallow? That I care so little about you?” he looks up at Harvey.
“I care – I cared that you fought him, Harvey,” Caspian’s voice breaks on the name, “That you didn’t tell me anything.”
He pauses, dropping his gaze.
“I was worried,” he says.
Caspian falls quiet, abandoning the rest of his words. His mouth wobbles, and he pulls open the door with clumsy speed, casting himself from Harvey’s room and shutting it behind him with a trembling sound.
A deep breath, even though he doesn’t need it. A hand, clamped over a broken whimper.