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The fire in the common room had burned down to its last log, and nearly everyone else had retired for the night.
Basil had seen Sarah to bed many hours earlier, but now he enjoyed the quiet creaking of his inn as he cleaned up the remaining food and drinks.
To his surprise, he found Fizroy still there, sitting at the bar nursing a glass of mead with a notebook next to him. There was a distance to him, the look of a man reflecting on thoughts he wasn’t entirely happy with. Basil considered him for a moment, debating whether he should leave him to his thoughts.
Fitzroy solved the problem for him as the floorboard creaked under Basil, and those odd yellow eyes turned to look at him. There was a flash of emotion through those eyes, gone almost as fast as it came, and then he spoke. “Sayo White,” he said, his voice quiet, but carrying clearly across the room. “I didn’t expect to see you up.”
“Basil, please,” he said easily, coming around to stand on the other side of the bar. “I came through to do some cleaning after Sara had settled in.” He leaned against the wall behind him, studying Fitzroy as Fitzroy watched him. “Could say the same to you.” The papers next to Fitzroy were blank - if he had meant to be writing, he hadn’t gotten very far. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Fitzroy raised an eyebrow, and his lips quirked into a slight sardonic smile. “About what?”
Basil had only a small magical talent, but standing next to Fitzroy still felt like standing too close to a campfire. Still, Basil smiled cheerfully back. He’d seen many a patron at this bar tired, overwhelmed, and looking for someone to talk to. And Basil was still a Mdang, and he knew a few things about tending fires. “Whatever it is that has you out here, instead of with your fanoa.” There was another flash of reaction, quickly suppressed. Frustration, Basil thought, or hurt. “Or I can just leave you to think, if you prefer.” Basil shrugged. “But the offer’s open.”
When Fitzroy remained quiet, Basil shrugged again, and grabbed a towel to start wiping down the bar, collecting leftover plates and glasses by the sink to be washed. Fitzroy stayed there apparently focused on his drink, though Basil was reasonably sure that Fitzroy was actually watching him.
Finally, Fitzroy spoke, “Kip is more comfortable around you than he is with the rest of his family.”
“We’ve always been close,” Basil agreed. “And the rest of our family can be very overwhelming.” He smiled wryly and walked over by Fitzroy again, leaning casually against the bar. “Even when you grow up with them.”
“I’ve noticed,” Fitzroy said, smiling wryly and then falling silent again.
Basil considered him. “What is it that you want to know?”
Fitzroy’s eyes flashed up to meet his, surprised, and Basil met them with a smile. Fitzroy huffed out a laugh, and took another drink of his mead. “How it is that he can tell you what he’s thinking.”
Basil heard the unspoken “and not me” hanging off the end of that statement. He reached over to grab a clean glass, then plucked the mostly empty glass out of Fitzroy’s hand, and walked over to the open keg to fill them.
Fitzroy raised an eyebrow at Basil again when he returned, but took the glass from him. He sat there, watching Basil steadily, and Basil was reminded of Kip’s patient silence in the face of his teasing when he’d first arrived. But where Kip’s silence had been patient, receptive, and mild, Fitzroy’s was weighty, expectant, and revealed nothing. It wasn’t even his magical presence that put so much weight on his attention, Basil reflected, but simply the focused charisma of a man who had somehow been both bard and emperor. But he was also the man that his cousin loved, and it was in that capacity that Basil answered him.
“We’ve always been close,” Basil said, considering. “He was my first friend when Dimiter and I came to Gorjo city. We were misfits together, I suppose you could say. He was always brilliant, everyone could see it, and everyone had expectations of him.” He laughed quietly. “We all did expect him to make it into the Lays.”
Fitzroy’s expression softened at that, with a hint of a smile and sparks of pride and affection kindling in his eyes.
“But our family’s not generally free with praise. He was so very good at everything he did that what mattered to them was keeping him humble. Sometimes I think I was the only one who wasn’t constantly cutting him down to size.” Basil shrugged. “So I was the person he could brag to.”
“He never has been good at sharing his own accomplishments,” Fizroy murmured.
“No,” Basil agreed. “When everyone’s expectations are so high that you can only ever meet them, there’s not much room for showing pride in what you’re good at. He got good at hiding the things that were most important to him. Eventually he started hiding them from himself. I know what to look for, that’s all. And he does respond well to being challenged.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Basil grinned. “Of course you have.”
“I don’t want to push him.”
“Sometimes he needs to be pushed.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Basil continued thoughtfully, “You know, Sara and I haven’t always been good at communicating. She’s my heart’s desire - it seemed like we hardly needed to speak to understand each other. And then she got sick.” Basil took a longer drink from his glass before glancing over at Fitzroy again. “It was like we had to learn to communicate all over again. At first, when we realized that she was going to remain sick, she wanted to do everything she had done. She thought that she could do it if she just was careful about her energy. She was always so strong, so full of life. She hated needing help.”
“She had to learn to ask for it, and I had to learn to offer it. It wasn’t easy for either of us, and I won’t say that there weren’t very bad days, or that there aren’t still bad days. But the thing that we both had to learn was to communicate. To ask for what we needed, for her to be willing and able to need things, and that I wouldn’t love her any less because she was sick.” He smiled, reflecting.
“And I’m not saying it’s the same for you two. Neither of you are sick. But you’re both used to communicating one way, and now things have changed. Now you - both of you - need different things. And you may find that you need to work on talking about them, and not just trusting that the other will figure it out.”
“Healthy communication, in other words,” Fitzroy said, amused.
“Being willing to be vulnerable, to say what you need and what you are feeling,” Basil said, quietly. “I don’t get the sense that either of you have much practice in that.”
Fitzroy’s mouth twisted, but he nodded and finished his drink. “Thank you…Basil. I think that was what I needed to hear.”
“Any time, Fitzroy,” Basil said with a smile, picking up the glass and carrying it over to the rest of the dishes.
Fitzroy made his way up to his room, pausing at the door to Kip’s bedroom.
Being willing to be vulnerable.
Kip might be asleep, but… Fitzroy took a deep breath, and knocked. Only a few moments later, Kip opened the door, looking surprised.
“Is everything all right?”
Fitzroy steeled himself, and made the leap. “I would prefer not to sleep alone tonight.”
He wasn’t sure what reaction he was expecting, but the look of unguarded delight on Kip’s face made his heart leap.
“I wasn’t enjoying the attempt much, either,” Kip admitted, and invited him inside.