Work Text:
Three months ez-Meliz from Zeru
Thyon Nero stared into the smoke, trying to figure out what he had done wrong this time. His laboratory work table was littered with pages of notes, and he picked up the latest one, squinting at it. He cursed as he threw it down again and turned back to the bowl of smoking brown sludge. He had been so sure that this combination would work, but it had failed, just like the ninety-three previous trials.
He sighed, then waved some of the smoke away from his face. It was hot in the laboratory, and he wished he could open the window. The night breeze would help him stay awake. Unfortunately, the world they were currently in had frequent bouts of acid rain, and he could hear it beating against the impervious sides of The Astral. He sighed again. The acid rain was the whole problem, really.
“No luck?”
Thyon whipped around to see Ruza leaning against the doorframe. “You startled me,” he said, ignoring the way his hearts leaped. “...Wait. I locked that door.”
Ruza grinned, unrepentant. “I got Lazlo to make me a key.”
“Why would Lazlo give you a key?” Thyon asked, irritated. He liked privacy when he was working.
Ignoring this, the warrior took a few steps closer and peered at the contents of the bowl. “It looks like you were cooking mashed slugs.”
“Thank you for that visual,” Thyon muttered, starting to tidy up. He grabbed a pen and wrote down the results in his log. Trial 94: 4.5m of Clurrite, 2m of Evnewn, 0.9m of Pylvo. Looks like smoking mashed slugs.
“What are you trying to make?” Ruza picked up a blue glass vial and twirled it idly.
Thyon found his eyes drawn to the movement of Ruza’s calloused fingers against the glass, and stared for a long moment before he realized what it was. “Don’t touch that!” he snapped, quickly snatching the vial back. His fingers tingled from the brief contact. “It’s a very strong form of acid that reacts with the oils in your skin. It could take your finger off.”
Ruza blinked at the tiny glass bottle. “Really? Why do you have it in here where anyone could break it?”
“I would think that anyone would be able to figure out that some things in here are dangerous, and- Don’t touch that!”
Ruza drew his hand back from a green bottle. “What does this one do?”
“It spontaneously combusts when exposed to moisture. Meaning it could light your hand on fire.”
Ruza shook his head in amazement and pointed to a jar at random. “And that one?”
The alchemist glanced at the yellow jar, then picked it up carefully, tipping it so the ordinary salt inside shifted. “It gives you scales.”
Ruza stared at him, raising his eyebrows. “It does not!”
Face serious, Thyon said, “Yes it does. I’m working on an antidote right now, so it would be a while before I could reverse it.”
The warrior gave the jar a speculative look. “Can I borrow it? Calixte put salt in my porridge yesterday, and I still haven't gotten her back.”
Thyon chuckled. “Maybe another day. Why are you bothering me, anyway?”
Ruza looked shifty. “I’m bored. Feral and Sparrow are trying to keep the weird rain from ruining the garden, Lazlo’s busy reading that creepy logbook, and everybody else is asleep.”
“Well, if you have so much time on your hands, help me clean this up.” Thyon gathered up the papers and handed them to his friend. “Put those on the desk.”
“What are you really trying to make, anyway?” Ruza grumbled as he crossed the room.
“I’m working on a way to turn the acid rain into real water. We’ll run out soon if I can’t, because Feral can only call existing clouds, and all the clouds here are full of acid.” Thyon started putting away jars and bottles, each one in its own space on the shelves.
“Huh.” Ruza stared at the papers, covered in complicated scribbles. “Are you close?”
“I thought I was. I had high hopes for that bowl of mashed slugs. Now…” He shrugged. “I’ll figure it out eventually.” I will. I must figure it out, he thought. “I just have to try again and again until I get there.” He rubbed his eyes.
There was a moment of silence before Ruza said, “You missed dinner. And lunch. And breakfast. Everyone’s worried.”
Oh, so that's why Lazlo gave him a key. “I’m fine.” The words came out harshly, so he added, “I’m not hungry. You can tell Suheyla to leave something outside the door if she really wants to.” Sighing, he finished clearing the table and turned to his desk. “I need to redo my calculations."
He blinked when Ruza stepped in front of him, blocking him from moving forward. “No you don't. Not tonight.”
Thyon drew himself up, irked. “I need to. This is important. If I don't-”
“You won't get anywhere tonight. How much sleep have you had?”
“Does it matter?” the alchemist demanded angrily, taking a step forward. The truth was that he had stayed up most of the previous night, trying to devise a formula.
“You’re tired. You won’t do us any good if you fall asleep and light your hair on fire.” His friend’s voice was steady and reasonable, which annoyed Thyon even more. “Even you wouldn't look beautiful with no hair.”
“I- What?” The ridiculousness of that last statement made him stop. He was tired. He slumped, reflexively running a hand through his hair. “Fine.” As the anger vanished, he realized that Ruza was only a few inches away. His heartbeats surged, and he felt his face heat. Turning away hurriedly to hide his blush, he scanned his laboratory, making sure everything was in its place, then headed towards the door.
Out in the corridor, he locked the door, turned to head for his room, and paused. “Honestly, I don't think I could sleep. I'm too wound up.”
“Let's find some food!” Ruza said cheerfully. “That'll help.”
“You think food can fix everything,” Thyon muttered, but he smiled.
Suheyla had made a sort of savory pie with meat (some bird-like creature native to their current world) and vegetables for dinner, and there was still some left. Ruza found two plates and gave each of them a heaping portion.
“Didn’t you already eat?” Thyon asked, amused, as Ruza took a large bite.
“Sho?” the warrior said with his mouth full.
They wandered through the quiet metal hallways, ending up in the library. There was something comforting about the smell of dust and leather and old paper. Thyon took a deep breath, closing his eyes, and something in him loosened, just a bit.
When he opened his eyes again, Ruza had sat down with his back against one of the tall shelves and was beckoning him over. The alchemist sank down beside his friend, leaning against the shelf and balancing his plate on one knee.
They ate in companionable silence for several minutes. Their shoulders and knees brushed when they moved, and each light touch sent electricity zinging up his spine. Eventually, wiping up the last of the sauce on his plate with a scrap of bread, Ruza said, “You know, we can always go back into Geriont if we need water. Lazlo can make some cisterns to store it in. It isn’t the end of the worlds,” he said, his tone light.
Geriont, the world they had come from, was similar to Zeru, with real water in the clouds. “I know,” Thyon said, setting his plate aside and drawing his knees up. “I just- I need to figure it out. It’s not about the water, it’s about me. I should be able to do it.”
Ruza set his plate down and regarded him, humor gone. “You put too much pressure on yourself.”
“I was trained to,” Thyon said, a bitter edge to his voice. “I didn’t have much of a choice. Greatest alchemist of the age, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not a person. People aren’t perfect all the time.”
“In Zosma, it did.” To my father, it did. The alchemist rubbed his forehead. Why am I telling him this? Merciful seraphim, I'm tired.
“Good thing we’re worlds away from there, then.” Ruza looked like he wanted to make a joke, change the subject, but he didn’t. After a long moment, he said quietly, “What are the scars on your arms from?”
Thyon stiffened, his hearts skipping a beat. He glanced down, seeing that his loose sleeves had ridden up, exposing a few inches of his forearms. Yanking them down, he snapped, “I told you-”
“Yes, an alchemical experiment.” Ruza’s eyes were fixed on his face. “But I… thought you might want to tell someone. Sometimes, that helps.”
Thyon had been braced for accusations, for prying questions. But the awkward gentleness in Ruza’s voice, so unexpected and so, so rare, found the weak spot in his armor and tugged. He stared at the floor for a long moment, hesitating. He had never intended to tell anyone this particular secret.
Then suddenly, he gave in. What was the use in pretending? Ruza was more than just anyone to him. He knew that, even if it terrified him. He closed his eyes, blowing out a breath. If I can show this to anyone, it's him. Moving quickly, scared that if he hesitated he would change his mind, he roughly pulled his right sleeve up to the elbow, exposing the neat row of scars.
He spoke haltingly, trying to find words. “You don’t know what it was like, living in Zosma. Being the ‘golden godson’.” He said the name like a curse. Once, he had been proud of the title. Now, it represented everything he hated about himself and his past. “It was… stifling. Everyone expected me to be perfect, to be the best at everything. Eventually, I did too.”
Once he started talking, the words spilled out, all the bottled up shame and regret flowing off his tongue. “Any mistake I made was a shameful secret that half the city would know about within hours. Everything I did felt… fake. Unreal, in a way. The person everyone knew, it wasn’t me. Even I didn’t know the real me, until I went to Amezrou.”
He turned his head, meaning to try and read Ruza’s expression, but found himself unable to look him in the eye. His gaze skimmed over the warrior’s jaw, the way his throat shone in the lamplight. Thyon swallowed and looked away.
“I had power, but I had no control. None. Oh, I could give orders, servants would obey my every command. But the things that mattered, they were all arranged by my father and the other nobles.” His lip curled as he spoke of the man who had made his life miserable.
“I had nothing. I craved some small taste of control. I was fifteen when I-” He gestured at his arm. “It was when I was trying to transmute lead. At first, it was just one cut. It hurt more than I expected, but it gave me a feeling of control. This was the one thing no one could stop me from doing. It was something real, something no one could change. After that…” He shifted, staring fixedly at the floor. “Whenever the pressure was too bad, when I felt I would die from it… The pain cleared my mind, helped me think. It released some of the- the emotions I couldn't show.
“My father knew, of course,” he added bitterly. “He was furious, but he couldn’t very well supervise me all the time, and he couldn’t really prove that it wasn’t an alchemical experiment. So he just told me I was a failure, as usual, and beat me with his favorite riding crop. Didn’t stop me, though. He taught me a long time ago that pain would pass.”
Suddenly realizing he had said far more than he had meant to, the alchemist fell silent. He still couldn’t make himself look at Ruza, so he stared at the scars on his arms. There were more than two hundred of them, if one counted the places where new cuts had been made on the site of old ones.
There was silence for what felt like an eternity. Thyon began to be convinced that the warrior was horrified, disgusted with him. Then Ruza said, quietly, “I cannot imagine what you have been through. I don’t-” He took a deep breath, seeming to search for words. “But no one should have to go through any of it.” He started to say something, stopped, started to say something else, then exclaimed, “Damn this, I’m horrible with words.”
Startled by the suddenness of the statement, Thyon turned his head to meet Ruza’s gaze. His eyes were filled with complicated layers of emotions, and he seemed to be struggling with himself. Then he leaned over and kissed Thyon, softly, on the lips.
Thyon was frozen with shock, and Ruza didn’t give him time to react before he drew back. The warrior watched him, as if trying to gauge his reaction. Thyon found himself whispering, “You don't… You don't find it sickening?” His hearts were beating harder than ever as he waited for the answer.
“Of course not!” Ruza looked almost offended. “Would I kiss you if I did?” He suddenly looked unsure. “Was I… should I not have done that?”
Part of Thyon, the old part, the duke’s son, was shouting that this was wrong, unnatural, shameful. But he knew what he felt when their hands touched, when he met the warrior's eyes, when they were close like they were now.
He had accepted that Tzara and Calixte were in love. Could he love a man? Love. A few months ago, the concept had been alien to him. But so had the thought of having friends, of helping others simply because it was right. He was learning. Perhaps this too was something he could learn.
“I don't know,” Thyon admitted. He felt Ruza tense beside him, and added, “But I'm glad you did.”
“Good,” Ruza said, relieved. He shifted position, drawing his knees up so he was sitting like Thyon. After a moment he said, “I don't find anything about you sickening. Not even your ridiculous face.”
Thyon chuckled, and it turned into a yawn. He was exhausted, and he knew he should get up and go to his room, but somehow he couldn't make himself move. Their shoulders were pressed together and instinct told him to move away from the contact. He didn't.
Ruza shifted again, sliding one arm behind Thyon to wrap it around his waist. The alchemist stiffened, then relaxed into the touch. Too tired to worry about Ruza’s reaction, he rested his head on the other man’s shoulder. Part of him knew that later, things would be complicated, but right now, he didn't care.
The two of them sat in a comfortable silence. Thyon closed his eyes, letting Ruza's warmth seep into him. He could feel the warrior's breathing, the cloth of Ruza's tunic rough against his temple. After a minute, Ruza rested his head against Thyon's. In moments, feeling truly safe for the first time in years, Thyon Nero fell asleep.