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Olruggio is many things—Qifrey’s Watchful Eye, de facto teacher to the students of the atelier, master craftsman. Confidant, best friend, first love, old love, and—
Subtle, he is not.
“I wish you would take care of yourself the way you take care of me,” Olruggio says, ever gruff. All day he’s been cooped up in his workshop, feverishly inventing, looking for a spark of inspiration before his next deadline. It wasn’t until Qifrey drew him out with the scent of a late-night meal that Olruggio finally broke his concentration and scuttled out to the kitchen.
Maybe Qifrey should have let Olruggio stay sequestered away for the night. That feverish focus still sets his eyes aglow, and all their fire is blazing toward Qifrey right now.
“A bold demand from someone who could do with the same advice,” Qifrey replies as he picks up their empty plates, entirely too old to blush the way he is right now. “If I don’t take care of you, you certainly won’t.”
“I do just fine on my own,” Olruggio objects, but he belies the truth of it as he quietly clears the kitchen next to Qifrey anyway, a side-by-side dance they’ve long since mastered in their entwined lives.
Quickly, efficiently, they make work of the mess. The leftovers are stored in the freeze box while unused ingredients are tossed in the stasis cupboards. Qifrey’s water sweeps across the table tops and Olruggio chases his rag after. A precarious stack of dirty dishes piles up and down by the self-cleaning sink as they clear the counter, teetering as they collect high until they dump in the next round.
Although he is no longer a boy under the command of his master, Qifrey still feels a furtive sense of impropriety when he decides to dump the heap of swept up scraps and trash onto an earth seal of decomposition in front of Olruggio. Plenty of witches found it uncomfortably close to forbidden magic, for all that the Knights Moralis had yet to apprehend anyone for its contained use.
The gaze of his Watchful Eye is heavy, though it’s nostalgia that curls at the edge of Olruggio’s crooked grin. “That old trick. Have you shown the kids, yet?”
“Heavens, no,” Qifrey says as he dumps the fresh dirt out the back door. “They’ve already had far too many brushes with the Knights. I’d rather not tempt fate any further down the awry path it seems to have laid down for the children. No need to rush in this, at least.”
Olruggio scratches his beard. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Tetia or Riche stumble across a similar design for a circle before long. Fits their style of casting.”
The casual thought builds into a violent avalanche of memory in Qifrey’s mind—of the illusory labyrinth, of the twin bottles, of Euini. Of the Knights Moralis and Beldaruit himself, and how they seem to wait for his students to crumble. Their distrust of Qifrey and, by extension, his kids rubs salt in his still-open wounds and narrows the margin of error his children must tread, through no fault of their own.
Most of all, he can remember the fierce anger on Olruggio’s face, and the way he took one look at Coco and was ready to haul her off to the Great Hall with barely a second thought.
His fists curl in, nails biting into his palm. Still, he manages a light tone to his words. “And if their discovery causes them trouble, will you add to it?”
Olruggio jerks back. He gapes as if it isn’t his job to report back on all of Qifrey’s actions, to be his compass—not in morality, but servitude to the law of witches.
But Olruggio subsides without a defensive word spoken. He releases a deep breath and turns his face up to the ceiling, arms akimbo. His head cocks as if he’s searching for the sounds of the kids giggling or their footsteps pounding through the halls no matter how sneaky they think they are.
Finally, he says, “I wonder if I should have said no when you asked me to be your Watchful Eye.”
Qifrey’s breath escapes him forcefully. It’s harder to fill his lungs back in, but he manages inside a chest that is quickly calcifying, behind ribs that crack and ache under a lifetime’s weight of choice and compulsion.
Perhaps he should have anticipated such a regret. It is Qifrey’s fault they’re like this, after all.
“If you’ve finally outgrown our little atelier, I won’t stop you.”
Olruggio groans. “That’s not—”
“You deserve to dive into your aspirations,” Qifrey says, gesturing out toward the window to all the land and people that would thrive under Olruggio’s care. “Go to where you’ll find inspiration, the most compelling requests, a bustling center that would benefit from your genius.”
“You know I hate people,” Olruggio says, yanking Qifrey’s hand down and out of the air. “If I have to cater to them more than I do already, I’ll go mad.”
Olly's thumb absently runs back and forth over the fragile bone and sensitive skin of Qifrey's wrist in a way that hardly befits what is expected of them now. The exasperation on his face is also a staple of their relationship since they were children, Olruggio steadily clipping at Qifrey’s heels to keep apace with whatever chaos Qifrey sows next.
It’s a wonder the Wise Ones haven’t called foul at Olruggio's poor impartiality. But the Great Hall, Qifrey thinks uncharitably, doesn’t truly care what happens as long as appearances and its ever precarious peace are kept.
Olly cares. His actions and words are always in sync, and his direct demeanor is rivaled only by Coco’s sharp lines. And yet he remains in love with Qifrey and knows he is loved back, unable to cede to it because of unfeeling rule and the weight of tradition and a yoke of fear—
One day, Qifrey is sure Olly will stop bending and simply break.
“It’s more than just that,” Qifrey says, knocking free of Olruggio’s hold. He brushes past toward the kitchen table, nudging the legs of a chair to make just enough room to slump into it, unable to look at Olly as he speaks. “Have you never thought of finding someone else to share your life with? The Wise Ones will never reverse their ban on allowing Watchful Eyes to be involved with their charges. And more than one witch has asked me outright if you’re single.”
Olruggio hums neutrally. “And what do you tell them?”
“That I’m not your keeper,” Qifrey says, his acrid words unraveling a tight curl of possessiveness, “Though you’re mine.”
The silence lingers. It sparks in the air, tension growing ever brighter and hotter as Olruggio doesn’t speak and Qifrey doesn’t look. He doesn’t want to see what face Olruggio is making, even though he can imagine it perfectly—jaw to the floor, comically shocked and flushed and seconds away from sputtering a denial.
The floorboards creak with each of Olly’s gentle steps, creeping nearer. He stops just behind Qifrey’s chair. Qifrey tenses, unable to pick up Olly’s form in his fading peripheral vision.
The seat jolts. Qifrey grabs onto the arms as he finds his chair screeching across the floor until he’s facing Olly, who is now sitting at his feet. Olly releases the legs of the chair and rests a forearm on his upright knee as he leans into Qifrey’s space. His other hand settles low on Qifrey’s thigh, warm and more grounding than anything Qifrey has felt in months.
“Speak honestly, Qifrey,” he asks, face upturned and earnest. “Do you still want me to be your Watchful Eye?”
Olly’s question comes with a cutting calm that surprises Qifrey. There are pieces of Olly’s life that Qifrey rarely sees, things that are changing him into someone he may not recognize someday soon. Then again, it’s much the way Olly doesn’t ever see all of Qifrey—though perhaps not as intentionally as Qifrey ensures Olly’s ignorance.
“You know the difference between want and need better than I, Olly.” Qifrey lets his fingertips brush the edge of Olly’s pinky. “And most of what I desire disqualifies me from being a good witch.”
Olly flips his hand over, letting Qifrey run his fingers across the expanse. The landscape of his palm has shifted in the long years since Qifrey last held it with any regularity. The rough ridges of his calluses are unfamiliar, as is the way they give into soft valleys of skin. Scars litter the plain of his hand and intersect the wrinkles he’s creased deep into his ever-working hands.
“I agreed when you asked me to be your Watchful Eye over your lover,” Olly says. “Even though it meant giving you up in one way, I thought it would help me gain something I never thought I’d earn. Your trust.”
“I’ve always trusted you, Olly,” Qifrey says quietly. “More than anyone in the world.”
“Yet it is still a miserly amount. Being your Watchful Eye—that was the first time you’d ever asked me for anything that truly mattered to you.” Olly’s voice is urgent in its deep gravel tone. “I just want to help you. Please, Qifrey. Let me.”
Olly tangles their fingers together, their skin rasping against each other. The fire in his gaze still blazes something fierce.
“You help enough.”
“I hardly make a dent. Why do you hold so much back from me?” Olly asks.
It aches to fully confront the way Qifrey is failing the person he loves most in the world. And yet he cannot help but take this as evidence that he is right in his choices. Olly has proven he is so very bad at protecting himself.
Most of all from Qifrey.
“If anything, you trust me too much.”
“I know you are a good man, even though you don’t seem to agree.”
The seal on Qifrey’s cap is proof enough of wrong Olly is. Secrets and misdirections stack high into a wall Qifrey builds around himself, dutifully mortaring brick by lying brick. And yet Olly claws his way through to the bleeding heart of Qifrey every time. Touches a Qifrey, who, most days, wonders if he’s ever really grown up from that amnesiac boy who embraced the worst parts of himself in some futile, pyrrhic effort to finally own and know his own whole self.
“Olly, my dearest friend.” At Qifrey’s gentle assertion, a deep sorrow sinks into Olly’s frame. “I still need you as my Watchful Eye. This place wouldn’t be home with someone I distrust jumping to make the worst of my every move.”
“I know,” Olly says, resting his forehead onto their clasped hands.
The still-feral, childish part of Qifrey resents Olly for not kissing him anyway, here in the safest of places, just like they used to. And yet Qifrey will not—cannot force Olly to do so. As much as Olly’s perception of the Wise Ones as some moral authority has long since shattered, Olly would never eschew their rules for something as simple as his own desire. To do so would go against his very being. Qifrey is too selfish to drive Olly away entirely, but he will not corrupt him any further than he already has.
Qifrey nudges Olly’s head up and palms his cheek, beard scratchy beneath his touch. The bags under his eyes give easily as he thumbs them. Olly heaves a sigh and leans into it, eyes closed.
Without a thought as to if it’s right or cruel, Qifrey bends over and presses one, two kisses on Olly’s eyelids. There is so much yearning inside of him all the time, held back by sheer force of will, that Qifrey has to release the pressure, just this once, or risk implosion.
“That you remain in my life is one of the greatest joys I will ever come to know,” Qifrey murmurs, forehead knocking against Olly’s. “A lifetime would not be enough time to express my gratitude for you, dearest.”
“Don’t you dare thank me,” Olly threatens. Qifrey’s laugh trails off as Olly kisses his wrist, lips lingering over Qifrey’s fluttering heartbeat. “Just let me stay beside you, and that will be all the gratitude I ever need.”