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It’d only take a little bit.
It should only be a little bit in the first place. Too much would ruin the flavor, and then Brad would figure out what’s been going on, and then everything would come crumbling down around Nero’s ears. It wasn’t exactly like he could taste-test the food he was poisoning, either, so Nero just carefully measured out his new secret ingredient and mixed it in, praying to whoever might be listening that this would help keep Brad alive one day longer.
His plan didn’t sound as selfish if he framed it like that. It was a pretty simple one: poison Bradley’s food, just a little bit, just enough to make him too sick to go throw himself into situations that could get him killed, and then take care of him while he suffered his mysterious new “illness”. It was simple as hell, but simple was fine—the fewer complications a heist plan had, the easier it was to pull off. It was still a gamble, since there was always the chance that Brad would suspect something was up if he got sick one too many times after eating something Nero made for him, but…
“Thanks again for this,” Brad said as Nero nudged his door open with his foot, carrying in a tray. What he made for Brad right now had to be relatively simple and go down easy, but if it was too simple, the taste of the “medicine” would start shining through. That balance was as delicate to maintain as it was to keep the bowl of rice and tomato soup from spilling—Nero couldn’t quite get his hands to stop shaking.
Brad tried to shove himself up into a sitting position, but he wasn’t quite strong enough to do that right now. It was a strange thing to witness. Brad wasn’t supposed to be weak like this. His eyes weren’t supposed to be cloudy and unfocused. Brad was supposed to be strong, focused, free—and claws of guilt started digging into Nero’s gut until he reminded himself that Brad just kept using that freedom to go out and get himself hurt. It was better this way. It was. “Lemme help.”
Nero helped ease him up, and Brad’s skin was clammy under his palms. “Damn, this is pathetic,” Brad said as he watched Nero go through their now-daily ritual, swapping the ring of luck off Nero’s hand and onto his own. Even though he was trying to grin and keep the mood light, it really wasn’t working. “I dunno what I’d do if you weren’t here, Nero. Not like anyone else would wanna spend every day lookin’ after me like this.”
“Sure they would,” Nero said, feeling like he was lying even though he knew he was telling the truth. Everyone adored Brad. He was the center of their world, here in their little pocket of the North. The gang revolved around him like the world around the sun. And Nero revolved around Brad like the Great Calamity around the world—closer than anyone else, and threatening to destroy him because he loved him too much. “Where’d any of us be without you?”
Brad just laughed it off, and Nero wasn’t sure if he was glad or not that he wasn’t reading between the lines. “You’d all probably still be doin’ the same things, just without a whole gang to back you up,” he said, grinning. It was nice knowing that even as sick as he was now, Brad could still wear that lopsided grin of his so easily, even if it wasn’t as strong as it normally was. “I know that’s what I’d be doin’, at least.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re a dumbass,” Nero retorted, and Brad laughed again. It sounded a little warmer, this time. “Eat your soup already.”
“What, not gonna feed me again?” Brad’s stupid grin turned into a teasing smirk. “If I’d known that was a one-time deal, I would’ve savored it more.”
“Wha– You said you were too weak to feed yourself! That was why I did that!”
“Well, I’m sayin’ it again. C’mon, Nero.” It was already inevitable that Nero was going to cave and spoon feed Brad again. It had been inevitable from the moment he’d stepped into the room, really. But Brad was a bandit, after all—he preferred the thrill of the chase to just being handed his prize. “Gonna abandon your partner in his time of need?”
Nero rolled his eyes. For all of Brad’s posturing as a tough, independent Northern wizard, he wanted to get spoiled as much as anyone else. He might act like he was macho enough to leave everything behind if he had to, and to be fair, he probably really was, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to miss it if he did.
And Nero didn’t want that to happen. Nero didn’t want Brad to disappear on him, either. So he obligingly held up a spoonful of tomato soup and rice, called Brad a spoiled brat, and fed him poison that was going to keep him right here in this bed, right where Nero could keep spoiling him. Forever. Brad couldn’t disappear on him now.
Watching Brad’s lips close around the spoon made a wave of disgust crash over Nero. This was disgusting. This was horrible. He was deliberately hurting the person he loved most in the world and no matter how he tried to frame it, there was no justifying that. This was something those creepy twins who kept an entire city of humans like pets would do, and that alone should’ve discounted it from his options.
He should dump the rest of the soup on the floor and apologize for being a klutz and remake it, free from anything that could hurt Brad—wasn’t the reason he’d resorted to this in the first place to keep Brad safe? Wasn’t he contradicting himself right now? Wasn’t he—
“...Thanks, Nero.” Brad’s voice, gentler than it usually was, interrupted his swirling thoughts. “It ain’t too bad bein’ sick if it means you’re gonna be the one nursin’ me.”
A switch flipped somewhere in Nero’s head. That’s right. This wasn’t too bad at all.
“What else was I gonna do, just let you suffer all alone?” Nero returned the spoon to the bowl, and lifted another spoonful to Brad’s lips. “‘S not like you’d let that happen in the first place.”
And fed him another mouthful of poison.
It had already been a couple days since the beginning of the plan, and it continued for many days afterwards as Nero figured out the right way to go about this. Dosing all of Brad’s meals was way too much, but once a day was just right. And although it wasn’t like they usually slept separately anyways, Nero made sure he was spending every night at Brad’s side, taking care of him as the poison worked its magic and made him puke his guts out in the middle of the night, keeping him too weak to do anything stupid even if he pushed himself. But that was okay. That was the point.
Nero was always going to be right there to rub his back and clean things up afterwards, to be warm and comforting as Brad curled against him for some amount of solace from how sick he was, to hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay. There was something thrilling about being able to tell him everything was going to be okay and mean it. There were no outside variables to get in the way. No unexpected outcomes. Brad was just going to be sick. He wasn’t going to die. He was safe here.
Nero hated himself so much he felt sick, too. Brad was still willing to fall asleep in the safety of his arms only because he thought he was just sick, not because his partner that he always trusted to have his back had gotten so tired of his recklessness, how he was always charging into danger instead of hanging back where it was safer, reveling in near-misses instead of being shaken by them, that his partner had decided to take his freedom away. If Brad knew that Nero’s arms were a cage meant to trap him, would he still want to tuck himself into them as he shivered and trembled while the poison tore him up inside? Hell no. Of course he wouldn’t. Guilt wrapped its fingers around Nero’s neck every time Brad’s breathing evened out and he fell asleep on his shoulder.
If Nero’s arms were a cage, then the poison was the lock, and Brad’s trust in Nero was the key. It was the only thing keeping him trapped here. And as long as he still trusted Nero, he’d never really be free again after this.
He did have the typical day to day management of the bandits to distract him from thinking too hard about these kinds of things, but Nero still kept finding himself frustrated with how little time he was actually getting to spend with Brad. On top of cooking for the gang he had to deal with the management stuff that Brad usually took care of—that Brad was actually good at—and looking after the members and making sure any arguments didn’t blow out of proportion and all that jazz, which was way more difficult without Brad’s natural charisma. People naturally congregated around him, wanted to impress him, wanted to listen to him. Brad could say all he wanted about how all of them had sprouted from equally shitty roots, he was still a shining gemstone in comparison—someone who’d been meant for big things ever since the day he was born.
It was hard, sometimes, believing in the fact that Brad saw something similar in Nero himself. He had a little magic charm for when he thought too much about that, though—a simple one, just as simple as his current plan was. All he had to do was look at Brad’s hand with the ring of luck. It was an ugly ring, to be honest, since the stone was dull and cloudy instead of clear and bright, but that was part of why Nero liked it—it reminded him of himself. A dull stone for a shining gem. It was nice seeing a little bit of himself on Brad’s finger, like it belonged there. These days, running his thumb over the stone was how he worked the magic charm, reminding himself of the part of him that would always go back to Brad eventually.
They had a little ritual with the ring, actually, and it was one that they’d changed around a little when Brad got “sick”. Normally, how it worked was like this: Nero wore the ring when they were on the job the way Brad had told him to back when he’d first found it, arguably to keep himself alive. When he got back still in one piece, when the job was over and they were back in the hideout safe and sound, Nero would get down on one knee, slip the ring off his finger, take Brad’s hand in his own, and slide the ring onto one of his fingers. Its magical properties wouldn’t do him much good if they weren’t on the job, but that was just how Brad was; when Nero had first tried to offer the ring to him, he’d said he’d only accept it after Nero had gone out and survived to bring it back to him. And that was what had happened. Nero had come back and Brad had let him put the ring on his finger, and then the next time they’d been about to go on a job, Brad had tossed it back to him and told him to wear it—thus, the beginning of their little ring-swap ritual.
It wasn’t lost on Nero that it resembled human marriage ceremonies. He was pretty sure those involved two rings plus a shared promise when they put them on, but he and Brad only had one ring and a wish between them. It was still more than enough, as far as he was concerned. It was still something special, something just for them.
But their ritual was different now, since Brad was sick in bed and Nero had to be acting leader. Instead, Nero wore the ring during the day when he had to contend with the fiery Northern tempers of the rest of the gang, and at night, right before dinner, he’d slide the ring back onto Brad’s finger for the night. He’d said it was so Brad wouldn’t die on him in the middle of the night, and that was…true enough, really, if you ignored the part about dinnertime being when Nero poisoned him for the day. It was just an extra little bit of insurance. That wasn’t so wrong of him, was it?
A ring to keep him alive on his finger, poison to keep him safe in his mouth, and Nero’s arms to keep him warm curled around him. It was a perfect setup. Brad was the brains of their operation, but Nero was pretty satisfied with his own plan’s efficiency, too.
Even if, as the days went by, he started growing more and more dissatisfied with its results. Brad was getting weaker by the day, and the gang was getting more restless. Eventually, something was going to snap, be it the gang’s patience with waiting for Brad’s recovery, or Brad himself, fracturing to shards of stone. That last one was weighing more on Nero than the former—the gang wasn’t going to up and abandon Brad so easily—but a weakened Bradley Bain, leader of the world’s most infamous bandits, was a ripe target. Cut off the head, and the rest of the beast dies. Kill Bradley, and the gang implodes in on itself. And Bradley was so, so, so weak now.
When Nero nudged the door open with his foot, he only heard a faint murmur of acknowledgment from Brad’s bed. As he set the tray of poisoned soup to one side, his shaking hands almost dumped it all over the floor, but he only spilled a little. Not enough to worry about.
He helped Brad sit up. He barely looked like the person Nero had fallen in love with anymore. It hurt to look at Brad and know that his current condition was all his own fault. He was the one who’d done this to the person he loved.
“Hey, Brad,” Nero said, keeping his voice gentle. “Got dinner for you.”
Brad grinned at him, or tried to. It was a very tired-looking expression. “...Thanks, Nero.”
“Here, gimme your hand first.”
Brad shifted his weight, beginning the first steps of moving his hand, and then…stopped. “...Nah,” he said, “don’t need it tonight. Keep it for yourself. I don’t need to keep borrowing your luck.”
That was when something snapped.
Or rather, when something that had long been resisting finally crumbled away.
Nero hated Brad when he talked like that. He hated the way Brad could talk about himself like he wasn’t just as pitifully, pathetically mortal as anyone else in the world. It was in these moments more than any other time that Nero doubted Brad really saw anything in him. He was about four steps from knocking on death’s door, and he had to have known that, and yet he was still shoving Nero’s worries away like they meant fucking nothing to him. If he was going to act like that, maybe Nero should just get it over with and strangle him right here and now.
But he didn’t. That would be too much to bear and he knew it, because when he lifted a hand it didn’t go to Brad’s neck and instead slapped him right across the face.
“Are you an idiot?!” Didn’t he have any idea how vulnerable he was right now? Didn’t he know how dire things were? “Do you have any idea how worried me ‘n everyone else in the gang are?! The only reason I can even fuckin’ sleep is because I can still hear your breathing, and that ain’t a luxury the rest of the guys have!” Had he just been ignoring how Nero’s fingers trembled every time he put that ring on his finger? Or, worse—he did know, so now he was planning on dying all alone? Without Nero getting to have any say in it? His partner? “If you plan on dying like some stray animal, then—”
But it was hard to stay angry at someone so sick. As flames of Nero’s fury died out, he crumpled to the floor, squeezing one of Brad’s hands as tightly as he could. “Please,” he pleaded, pressing his forehead to the back of Brad’s hand, “just let me do something for you…”
The room was silent. Brad was going to say no. He’d never abandoned his pride before, and he wasn’t going to now.
Nero heard Brad’s weight shift again, and then felt fingers running through his hair. He leaned into them, finally looking up at Brad again, and when his eyes met Brad’s, Brad opened his mouth to reject him. “...Alright. Just this once, though. ‘N only ‘cause you begged for it.”
He was still putting on airs, or maybe he wasn’t. For once, Nero didn’t care. He roughly wiped the tears out of his eyes. “...Thanks.”
And then he gently, so gently, slipped the ring off his finger and onto Brad’s. It really did feel like magic. Nero had spent so much time putting his faith in the stupid thing that just seeing it on Brad’s hand again had convinced him everything was going to be okay now. Everything was going to be okay. Brad was going to go back to being his strong, confident, stupid, reckless, idiot self. He’d go to being the person that Nero had fallen in love with in the first place. That was how Brad was meant to be. Free.
Even if Nero hated it.
“...Sorry ‘bout the dramatics,” Nero said as he picked up Brad’s bowl of soup. He knew what the next step was.
“Yeah, well. You really know how to—”
Nero dropped the bowl on the floor, shattering it into pieces. He was never going to rely on tactics like this ever again. He couldn’t let himself do this kind of thing anymore. “Ah, shit. Sorry, lemme clean this up and I’ll make you something else.”
It wasn’t a good or satisfying ending to the plan that Nero had staked so much on. He even hesitated a little bit before chucking the rest of his special secret ingredient into a river he knew opened out to sea, and told himself over and over that this was what was really for the best until he more or less believed it. In the end, he was right back where he started, or maybe during all of this he hadn’t even taken a single step. It was hard to tell.
He never did confess to Brad what he’d done, and Brad never asked him about it, not while he was recovering, and not afterwards either, even though he had to have known something was up with how he only ever got sick after eating Nero’s food. Instead, it just never got brought up again. There wasn’t a clean break, a place where Nero could say that he’d absolved himself of his guilt and put the whole thing to bed. Maybe he was just trying to run away from all of it like this, considering he knew perfectly well what the right thing to do here was, but at least this way, Brad was still right next to him.
And Nero wasn’t going to let that change.