Chapter Text
One of the things that you don’t really understand about smuggling until you start doing it is the fear. Reth still didn’t really understand the fear until he heard that his usual contact got arrested.
He thought, Damn, that’s crazy. And then he thought, HE KNOWS MY LEGAL NAME.
He didn’t have enough money to bug out at the time, so he didn’t, but he spent the entirety of the week wholly believing that this was it. He was going to get a knock at the door and he was going to be gone. He was still afraid of people knocking on the door. He always thought it was going to be Eshe, or Subira, or some random human saying “you’re fuckin’ with magic, I’m gonna call the cops.”
But you can’t blame a guy for being jumpy — especially with a Watcher circling overhead.
Literally. When the tavern was quiet, he could hear her footsteps.
Not that it was quiet that often anymore. It used to be. Most of the villagers usually came in the evenings, and going to the tavern twice in a day seemed excessive. But humans had bizarre sleep schedules and big appetites.
So the inn was getting deliveries from Badruu and Hassian constantly, and Reth didn’t know which was worse. Don’t get him wrong, Badruu was nice to him (although he was nice to everyone, which made it hard to gauge how he really felt about the village path traitor), but when it’s two in the afternoon, you’ve got a splitting headache, and your options for conversation are the guy that hates you or the guy that shits rainbows? Well, at least the guy that hates you is reading the room correctly.
On the bright side, Badruu actually followed a schedule, which meant that when someone came in the door just a couple minutes before his time, Reth was already saying, “Hey, Mr. Daiya, what’s—”
“It’s not that big a deal, it’s just the most important competition you’ve ever been in…”
Reth looked up and didn’t see Badruu — he saw his squeaky-clean rancher boy son.
He was about a quarter of a way into rolling his eyes before noticing that Nai’o wasn’t quite walking his usual lazy gait. Come to think of it, the muttering wasn’t normal either.
Nai’o set the delivery down a little too hard on the counter. Reth winced. “Vegetable delivery.”
“Alright, lettuce acquired! My soup is saved!” No reaction, not even a cringe. “So, uh, is Badruu busy or something?”
“Oh! No, no, no, everything’s fine!” Nai’o raked a hand through his hair. The color and stiffness of it, it was like hay. “Me an’ Butterball are just gearin’ up for a competition in Bahari City next week, and I gotta give her a bath, trim her hooves, clean up her horns—”
“Sooo… what’re you doin’ here , then?” Reth said, raising an eyebrow.
Nai’o wrinkled his nose. “My dad told me to take a walk to clear my head. Figured I’d do this while I’m at it.”
“Dude, you picked up extra work while on a break from work? I might be calling the kettle black here, but I think Badruu’s got a point.”
“About what? I’m doin’ fine!”
“...”
“...”
“Are you crying?”
“Nope! Bye!”
“Wait, you forgot—!”
As Nai’o almost ran out of the inn, Reth stood there like an idiot holding out a bag of money.
Crossing the bridge, it occurred to Reth that he was a city boy who’d never been to the west side of the valley before, let alone the Daiya family farm. This meant that he was a bit taken aback by how big an ormuu actually was.
“Uh,” Reth said.
An ormuu had lifted its big fuzzy head and seemed to be regarding him.
He waved. “Hi.”
The ormuu snuffled and mooed at him.
“Well, looky here!” Badruu called. “Never thought I’d see you on this side of the river, busy bee!”
“Yeah, well, Nai’o ran off without letting me pay.” Reth tossed him the coin pouch.
The farmer fumbled the pouch with one hand and caught it with the other. “Good on ya, bud — Nai’o’s been so in his own head lately that you could’a just taken the money and run!”
Badruu seemed to find that hilarious. Reth did not, and changed the subject.
“Yeah, he seemed… anxious.”
“How anxious?”
“Uh, overshared, started crying, and then left without getting paid, anxious.”
Looking at the ormuu while talking to someone else wasn’t great manners, but Reth had never seen Badruu look genuinely upset, and he felt like it was something he wasn’t supposed to see.
Badruu took his hat off, exhaled deeply. “I had no idea he was feeling so much pressure. Y’know, he’s been like this since he was little — taking on so many responsibilities. I guess we got used to relying on him…”
“I mean, that’s what family’s for, right?”
“Sure, but gosh, I don’t wanna work him to exhaustion.”
Reth didn’t have a good answer for that one.
“I tell ya what — you’re good at makin’ soup, right? Would ya mind whippin’ him up a bowl of sernuk noodle soup? It’s on me, but tell him it’s on the house. I don’t wanna make him think he’s gotta repay me.”
“Alright, sure!” Reth rubbed his hands together. “Far be from me to pass up an opportunity for soup.”
Reth had never made sernuk noodle soup before, but Ashura had a recipe, which, much to his disappointment, revealed that it was technically a stew.
Whatever. If Reth was good at anything, it was committing to a dumb decision.
It was summer, and Reth had been enjoying getting to leave work before sunset. But thinking about Nai’o working outside, the wall of hot, humid air that greeted him was more concerning than comforting.
“What up, farm boy!” he shouted in the general direction of the stables. “Guess who’s got two thumbs and a bowl of soup? …Stew? Whatever!”
Nai’o’s response: a horrible retching noise.
Any uncertainty about the farm boy quickly fell away in favor of a deeply-ingrained caretaker response. Reth put the soup down on a post and dashed around the side of the stables, where Nai’o, the color of a steamed crab, was vomiting thin bile.
“Oh,” he said, wiping his mouth and trying to recover, but still visibly shaking. “Uh, hi.”
Reth pointed to a hay bale. “Sit down.”
“No time, I got—”
“You sit down or you’re gonna pass out, I guarantee it.”
Nai’o shook his head. “Thanks for carin’, but there’s only so many hours in the day.”
“Nuh-uh, we’re not doing this, man, you’re bright pink.”
Nai’o looked at himself. “...”
“ Pinker than usual! When’s the last time you ate?”
“Look, I drank some water, like, an hour ago—”
“Very nutritious.”
“And I am in,” Nai’o said, swaying on his feet, “the best shape… of my li…”
His eyes rolled back.
Reth probably should’ve prepared for this when Nai’o refused to sit down, but whatever — man was fainting now and thank the Dragon, Reth managed to grab him and slow his majestic faceplant into the dirt.
Nai’o’s face had gone from flushed to pale just like that. Reth scrambled to try and remember the recovery position in case he puked again, but the absurdity of the situation was making him blank, and he couldn’t get a grip on him, anyway, what with all the sweat.
“Yo, babe, I think you dropped your dinner over — holy fuck!”
Suddenly, Kenyatta was at the reins, turning Nai’o onto his side and placing his hand under his head.
“What happened?” she said, even though her fumbling to unclip Nai’o’s canteen from his belt indicated that she probably already knew.
“He’s been working in the heat for who-knows-how-long and his last break was who-knows-when.”
Kenyatta exhaled through gritted teeth as she splashed Nai’o’s water canteen on his face. “I told you this would happen, you big idiot… After he lost consciousness, did you try to make him sit or stand?”
It took Reth a second to realize that she was addressing him. “No, I just slowed his fall.”
“Good, good. When a person faints, it’s because they’re not getting enough blood to their brain — falling isn’t the problem, it corrects the problem.”
“But most people’s first instinct is to sit ‘em up.”
One time Reth woke up to his dad shaking an unconscious Tish, trying to get her into a sitting position. Reth had to wrestle his own father off his sister to keep him from accidentally killing her.
“Right,” Kenyatta said.
Nai’o coughed and spluttered, his face regaining color.
Kenyatta put her hands on her hips. “Welcome back, dumbass.”
Reth copied Kenyatta. “You could’ve died just then.”
“I mean, it was just heat exhaustion.” Kenyatta took Nai’o’s hand and rubbed it — not comfortingly, but hard. “But it could’ve been way worse. You’re lucky that shrimp-hair over there was around to keep you from whacking your head on something. Eat, drink, and then maybe I’ll consider letting you go back to work.”
Shoot, right, the soup—
—had fallen off the post at some point and into the dirt.
“Damn it! His soup!” Reth scratched his head. “You think he’ll survive long enough for me to make another batch?”
“Dude, I think I can just give him a piece of bread and he’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but I already made him that soup, and it’ll be a tragedy if he doesn’t get to enjoy it.”
“Soup…?”
Nai’o, slurring, had lifted his head to regard Reth.
Reth shrugged, feeling oddly exposed under Nai’o’s dizzy gaze. “Technically, it’s a stew.”
“For… me? The soup’s for me? Me soup?”
(“Maybe I didn’t stop him from hitting his head after all,” Reth said, wincing.)
“I dunno what to say. That’s… that’s really nice. You made me soup…”
People were starting to move around the town square in earnest now, and Reth was doing his best to use his body to block the scene. Kenyatta snapped her fingers in front of Nai’o’s face.
“And he’ll do it again, but first, let’s get you to Chayne, okay?”