Work Text:
With its southerly location blizzards weren’t exactly common on the Naakiwan Downs, but every winter at least one managed to defy the odds and come howling across the rocky, treeless plateau.
The strong winds would rattle the doors in their jambs, and deep blankets of snow would lounge across the roof of the atelier and keep its residents pinned inside until it blew over. Certainly snow and ice fell within the bounds of Qifrey’s water magic, and it was a simple enough matter to melt it or move it to forge a clear path, but as more would immediately rush in to take its place any snow removal seemed scarcely worth the effort.
The only thing to do while it engulfed the outside world was to stay put by the hearth, eat warm food, and occasionally admire the hoarfrost patterns creeping along the corners of the window panes.
Late into the second night of a particularly stubborn blizzard, Qifrey found himself alone in the kitchen, his meal prep finished for the evening, his tea drunk down to the last of the leaves.
Despite the interior of the atelier being as toasty as could be, there was something about a heavy snowfall that kept him looking for warmth in all its forms, and nothing exuded warmth more than Olruggio.
It was time, he thought, for a long overdue visit.
Olruggio had been holed up on his side of the bridge for what must’ve been days, venturing out only once in search of stew, giving the girls a distracted, cursory sort of hullo before vanishing again to finish the last of a very involved commission.
Qifrey also suspected that the pressing commission was something of an excuse. Even now, years after the fact, blizzards made his friend tense and withdrawn, and as Qifrey was the only one with a standing invitation to Olruggio’s room, it fell on him to do a little late night investigating.
The door to Olruggio’s workshop was open a crack, as it always seemed to be these days, the cranky admonishment on the sign blithely ignored.
When Qifrey nudged the door open a little more and leaned in to inquire after his friend, he could see no sign of the man, only the pleasant glow of a lamp from the upper platform.
“Olly?”
He waited politely by the door, but even after a full minute no answer came.
“Olly, I’m coming in.”
With a light snap of his boots he drifted upward with practiced ease, and found that it was no surprise Olruggio hadn’t answered.
His friend was bent across his work table, legs crossed beneath the heavy wooden surface, his attention fixed with obsessive focus on the daisy chain of spells laid out before him. Qifrey saw him run a hand across his unruly hair, then scratch out another circle of signs on the farthest scrap of paper as a kind of afterthought.
What the intended result was, Qifrey had no idea, but he knew it couldn’t be healthy to go this long without human contact or dedicated rest.
He floated to the upper level and landed lightly, his boots scuffing quietly on the stone floor.
Carefully, Qifrey reached out and put a hand on Olruggio’s shoulder in an attempt to bring him back to their shared plane of existence, and the move was a legal one as far as their friendship was concerned, but it still startled Olruggio so badly that he jumped and nearly knocked his ink water over the surface of the desk.
“Little warning?” Olly protested, hands moving to tidy the space and prevent another near miss.
“I gave you two,” said Qifrey, brows lifted. “Did you not-” He paused, his gaze following Olruggio up and down, taking in his disheveled state. “No, I suppose not.”
Olly ran a fingertip across his own brow, answering a small itch. “What day is it?”
“Day? Dear me, I’m sorry, but you do need to sleep. Or eat, or at least get up from the desk for half an hour.”
“Can’t,” Olly answered simply, reaching for a new stack of parchment. “She moved the time up to tomorrow evening.”
Qifrey, at his side, tried a new approach. “They’re your clients, to be sure, but even freelancers are permitted to ask for extensions.” He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward to appreciate the ornate spellwork.
“It’s for an event, otherwise I would’ve.”
Qifrey could feel the expression his face so desperately wanted to make, and it was one of pure exasperation. If he was feeling generous, he counted patience as one of his many virtues, but most of that patience was saved for the girls, not willful fire witches with poor time management skills.
Olruggio scrubbed his hand through his hair again and left much of it standing on end.
“I’ll grab dinner in two clock marks, I think I almost have something,” he said, offering a small compromise, a placation that may or may not be true. He even tossed a distracted little smile over his shoulder before turning back to the lacework of intricate signs on the paper before him.
And normally this would’ve been enough for Qifrey to leave him to his own unhealthy devices - he was his own man, after all - but Qifrey was feeling a touch isolated and lonely after days penned inside.
Instead of retreating back to the kitchen to bring him food, Qifrey set his toes against the back of his heel and slid his foot from his boot. With that done, he did the same to the opposite foot and nudged the pair of boots against the wall.
He then stepped towards the messy hammock on the far side of the platform and wordlessly lowered himself onto it.
Olruggio sat up straight, suddenly keenly aware. He twisted in place to watch.
Qifrey climbed forward into the plush nest of pillows and blankets, and there was the warmth he’d been searching for. He settled himself back into their softness, his hand brushing against what must’ve been the earliest prototype of the snugstone.
Against the lush, brightly coloured geometric embroidery of the pillows Qifrey’s solid black on white was in stark contrast. Hopefully, he thought, the standing invitation between them also included the bed. Olruggio hadn’t mentioned it, so it seemed fair game as of yet.
Qifrey stretched out like a contented animal, and if he was a languid whisker cat, Olly’s attention was like that of a scale wolf, ears alert, up, and ready.
“Comfortable then?” Olruggio asked from his desk, and Qifrey heard him set his pen in its holder and do his best to feign a casual air. Olly kept his tone dry and disinterested, a man with work to do. A man who, at the very least, was not telling him to go back to his own damn bed.
“Very,” said Qifrey. He took his glasses from the bridge of his nose and swiped at the lenses with the hem of his robe. “When you’ve reached a good stopping point do let me know, I’ve saved you something for dinner.”
“Ah. Yeah, sure. …Okay.”
Qifrey closed his eye, and after a long, significant pause, he heard the sound of a pen scratching on paper once more.
Perhaps it was crossing some kind of unspoken boundary between them, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and if Qifrey was going to be manipulative, then at least he could do it for the greater good. The sooner he could sway Olly into taking a rest, the more refreshed he would be, the fitter he would be to finish his work. Very little good came from nonsensical nocturnal scribbles at two am.
From the other side of the room he heard Olly exhale, a long huff of something like indecision.
Qifrey rolled onto his side and tugged the nearest quilt with him as he went. And the bed, he thought with a little thrill, smelled just like Olruggio. Ink and wine and something deeper, something pleasant.
At some point, curled on his side, draped in the thick quilts, Qifrey fell asleep.
It certainly hadn’t been his intention to do so, but the snugstone warmed his back and the sound of the wind gusting outside was enough to press him into a deep, dreamless sleep - a rarity for him these days.
It was hard to say just how long he slept, breathing softly against the pillows, weighted into a gentle, timeless kind of oblivion, but when he opened his eye again the position of the moonlight had changed very little.
He tried to roll back, to move to the other side of the hammock, and was met instead with a solid, comfortable resistance.
Still half asleep, Qifrey looked over his shoulder to find the other side of the bed occupied. Olruggio lay on his back, both sleeves untied, snoring quietly with one arm crooked over his head. His fingertips were speckled with ink.
With careful movements, slowly, in an effort not to rouse him, Qifrey turned in place and adjusted the quilt so it covered them both. He shifted to make more space, and Olly snored on, his mouth just open, his expression one of furrowed concentration, even in sleep.
Qifrey lay his head on the pillow next to him and smiled - a little flighty thing - observing the way his stubble trailed along his jaw.
He lifted his fingers from beneath the covers and touched his skin gingerly, the short bristles catching.
“You started it,” said a sleepy voice, husky with exhaustion.
“And you didn’t stop it,” Qifrey said, settling in against Olruggio’s side and resting his chin on Olly’s shoulder, pausing only to move the snugstone trapped between them.
“Isn’t that always the damned way,” Olruggio muttered, and, with impressive speed, he began to snore lightly again.
Qifrey smiled into the fabric of Olly’s rumpled sleeve and closed his eye, wonderfully, wonderfully warm.