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Starlight is a busy season for botanists.
Garlands for every eve and mantlepiece, bouquets of holly to brighten every empty planter and flowerpot, fir trees of all sizes to decorate indoors and out—everyone is eager for a piece of the Twelveswood to bring home to brighten the gray days and cold nights, and there is great demand for endless bushels of winter greenery to compensate for the leafless branches overhanging Gridania’s streets. Sylvien feels he might smell perpetually of fir well into the Second Umbral Moon for all the time he has spent toting piles of spiny boughs across the city, and his fingertips may remain slightly tacky for just as long, despite his best efforts to avoid the sap.
He prefers to keep busy, not only for the coin, but because the chill in the air brings to mind his early days in the city, a winter two turns past. His memories of the festivities that season are faint and indistinct, buried beneath the overriding recollection of long nights huddling away from the wind in bushes and unnoticed alcoves, or nursing the single flagon of mulled wine he could afford to justify his presence in a tavern long enough to catch someone’s eye and claim a single night someplace warm. The celebratory atmosphere had entirely escaped his notice, the cheer and anticipation and goodwill in the air privileges to which he, as an outsider, had no right. It had been an especially cold winter. He would sooner forget it.
Last turn, as a member of the Botanists Guild, he learned quickly how profitable the season could be for a woodsman of his skills, and had seized the opportunity gladly, almost fervently, for he had only recently secured lodgings of his own and was loathe to lose them. He spent nearly every day out in the cold forest, from the late dawns to the early dusks and sometimes beyond, piling up bushels of fir boughs and seasonal berries and hauling them back to the city until he almost resembled a tree himself for all the needles stuck in his hair and to his clothing. He had been so preoccupied that he had all but missed the holiday itself, eager to wring fortune from the celebrations until the very end, and too exhausted from his exertions—and the equally taxing time spent peddling his goods—to do aught but collapse into his bed every night.
This season, the first touch of a chill had made him eager to march back out to the woods, but it is strange to now find himself pulled in two directions, for it is also, he has discovered, a busy season for carpenters.
Sylvien had yet little experience with the intricacies of toymaking, and in late autumn, Beatin had been eager to teach him, for it is, Sylvien has learned, a favorite hobby of his. The lessons were a special treat, for Beatin was in rare form expounding upon the various techniques developed solely for the purpose of crafting miniature objects to bring children happiness, the importance of quality even in seemingly frivolous items, and the crucial principle that toys are a conduit for imagination as surely as staves are a conduit for a conjurer’s aether and should be crafted as such. Though he took the matter as seriously as any other, his usual gravity lifted somewhat, a childlike joy of his own shining through in a way that Sylvien found rather delightfully charming—though Beatin was quick to scold him if he caught Sylvien’s attention drifting.
He learned a great deal, despite his questionable focus, but as winter approached, it became clear that his talents would be put to use more effectively elsewhere, for as the holiday orders came pouring in, there was less and less time to devote to lessons. Sylvien returned to the Shroud and was quickly caught up in the demands of the season, so for over a fortnight now he has scarcely seen the Timbermaster outside of his brief deliveries to the Atrium.
He is back in the city today for one such delivery, for on his last visit he had noticed a dwindling supply of dowels and the oak and pine with which to make them, and he dreads to think of Beatin reaching for this crucial connecting piece and finding his drawer empty.
The Oak Atrium is festooned with some especially verdant boughs, for he had spared no effort in the guild’s decorations. Whether anyone has noticed is another matter—but Sylvien likes to think that Beatin has, assuming he has even left the workshop since Sylvien put them up.
He hitches his chocobo outside—a new investment this season and already proving herself more than worthy of the coin—and carries his bundles of wood into the lobby, leaving them with Ferreol, who will know best how to distribute it. Then, after a pause, he decides to duck into the workshop.
The place is suffused with cheerful chaos, the mill humming, carpenters calling requests and orders back and forth, every workbench cluttered with a unique project. Beatin’s domain, up in the loft, is busier than ever, for the lack of inspiration that sometimes plagues him seems a distant memory this season, and a shelf along one wall is sagging under the weight of dozens of finished toys, twice as many as the last time Sylvien stopped in.
Sylvien cannot help but feel a slight pang at the sight of the bustling workshop, and Beatin, carrying on quite happily without him, but he reminds himself firmly that it is only temporary, for next year he resolves to be here too, helping properly. For now, he presses back the worry that his interruption will only be a nuisance and makes his way to the loft.
“Wait,” Beatin says immediately, without looking up, as soon as Sylvien crests the stairs. Sylvien goes still, watching him carefully thread a thin wire around a wooden spool, wondering what sort of whimsical contraption it will eventually power. “Alright. Thank you. What is—” He straightens up and turns, breaking off with a smile. “Ah! Sylvien. What brings you here?”
“Just checking in,” Sylvien tells him as Beatin crosses over to him. “I brought the wood for the dowels. Is anything else running low?”
Beatin looks him over, and it occurs to Sylvien that he must appear half-crazed, cheeks flushed from the cold, stuck all over with pine needles, hair flying every which way from a combination of his hood and the wind—but Beatin just mutters, “Ah,” as though he has solved some sort of puzzle, then sets down his tools, places a hand on Sylvien’s waist, and pulls him into a soft but certain kiss.
He straightens up as though it is the most natural thing on the star to greet Sylvien thus, though it is, if Sylvien’s memory can be trusted, most decidedly not.
Not here, not now, in the middle of a busy day, even if everyone is fully absorbed in the toymaking frenzy, and they are out of sight up in this particular corner. Not when a customer might step through the doors at any moment, clamoring for the perfect toy for their precious child or the finest handicraft for their beloved spouse, not when there are so many things to do. Sylvien can only stare at him, feeling warm and bewildered, while Beatin gazes back, a crease forming between his brows.
Then he lifts a hand and plucks something from Sylvien’s hair, no doubt some branch tangled there in the course of the day’s frantic gathering, and holds it up, one eyebrow drifting higher.
“Was this...not intentional, then?”
And dangling in his fingers is a perfect sprig of mistletoe, lovelier than any Sylvien had sold all season, berries plump and glistening with melted frost, leaves firm and verdant. Sylvien gazes at it in astonishment, both for its presence and its beauty, the implication of Beatin’s question slowly dawning.
“It…was not,” Sylvien confirms, though he cannot deny Beatin the assumption. It does, he reflects, seem like something he would do, though he has frankly been too preoccupied to even think of it.
And besides, he would have come much later, when all but the most stubborn toymaker had gone home, and he deemed it time to offer a little encouragement in favor of a brief break. Perhaps Beatin might not be coerced to leave, but there was always a chance he—
“Hm. I shall keep it, then,” Beatin concludes, interrupting Sylvien’s train of thought. “Better not to let anyone else get ideas.”
“R-right,” Sylvien answers, willing away the flustered feeling in his chest, and the little thorn of yearning that accompanies it. He came here to check on supply needs and offer his assistance in hunting down any materials that might be running short in the holiday rush, not to make some grand announcement in front of the entire guild.
“But while you are here,” Beatin breezes on, “perhaps you might assist me. I am nearly finished with the gifts for the children of the Orchard, here, but I cannot help but feel I am missing someone.”
This, Sylvien has learned, is Beatin’s annual project—ensuring that none of the children who visit the Orchard throughout the year feel forgotten on Starlight. An ambitious undertaking—and indeed, a somewhat unrealistic one, so there is always a stock of suitably generic toys for those younglings who appear unexpectedly for the season’s festivities—but Beatin goes to great lengths to fashion personalized gifts, especially for those who no longer have families to provide them.
Some might consider the yearly practice excessive, especially since anything crafted by the Timbermaster of the Oak Atrium is likely to endure for far longer than a single turn, but Beatin insists. The toys may last, but children are constantly changing, and one need not be content with the whims and fancies of the past—though redistribution of the gifts of prior years is often a large part of the fun, Beatin yet aims to grant each visitor a newly suited present for the holiday.
So Sylvien turns his attention to the shelves, the method to the apparent madness becoming clear the longer he looks. The gifts are tagged, though this helps him little, and he relies on his memory of the Orchard’s visitors to summon a list of names to mind.
Some matches are obvious, and he points them out himself, then rattles off a few names for Beatin to confirm, which he does readily.
Sylvien purses his lips, stymied for a moment, then adds, with a cheeky smirk, “…me?”
“You must wait for that,” Beatin replies without missing a beat, and Sylvien blinks. Barely resisting the impulse glance searchingly around the rest of the workshop, he returns to the task at hand.
“Emmaline?”
“Here.”
“Koha’to?”
“This one.”
“…Bartemaux?”
Beatin hesitates, brow creasing, then claps his hands so sharply that Sylvien jumps.
“Bartemaux! The boat. I finished it especially early, when he was asking all those questions about the Moonfire Faire. I do hope he still retains some interest in ships, all these moons later…”
Sylvien assures him that he saw the boy experimentally floating pieces of bark down the stream bordering the Orchard just last week, before it started to freeze, and Beatin nods, relieved.
“See, what perspective a little distance from this chaos grants you!” he adds. “I asked Mera earlier and he looked liable to simply burst. I do worry about that boy, sometimes…”
Sylvien chuckles, struck suddenly by how much he has missed being here—and how much he has missed him. Sharing these mundane moments, the little confidences of the day-to-day, the passing inconveniences, the minor victories. To be apart from it for a while only emphasizes how significant a part of his life such things have become—how to be by his side seems the default, settled state, while to be away is a temporary divergence.
He hopes again that no one saw them earlier, with the jealous prickle of fear that twines like a briar around the boldness of claiming a thing and thereby inviting the tragedy of its loss. It is safest to keep valuables hidden—this is a lesson he has learned well.
He lingers a while, though his purpose here is complete, for Beatin seems to be in a surprisingly talkative mood, and Sylvien can’t help but test just how long he can keep him from his work. Leaning against the corner of the shelf, he listens almost greedily to the news of the last fortnight, basking in the warmth of the workshop, the sound of Beatin’s voice, and the proximity of his presence that the noise of the mill necessitates.
“Oi, Timbermaster!” Hartford’s voice rises from the bustle the workshop floor, breaking through Sylvien’s dreamy state, and a few other carpenters glance up at the sound. “Isn’t that mistletoe?”
Sylvien blinks, following his gaze to the upper corner of the shelf behind him, where a suspiciously familiar sprig of greenery has materialized, almost directly above his head.
For a moment, he only gazes at it in astonishment, slow to process the import of its presence. No one had seen their embrace earlier, but now they have everyone’s eye, the rasp of saws and the beat of hammers fading to an anticipatory silence that Beatin certainly would have remarked upon, if it were not for the fact that he is—bafflingly, impossibly—the only one who could have orchestrated it.
Sylvien spins around to gape at him, and Beatin avoids his accusatory stare entirely to look instead at the twig affixed to the shelf as though he has only just noticed it—a rather exaggerated performance, in Sylvien’s opinion.
“So it is,” Beatin remarks, scratching his chin. “Nothing for it, I suppose.”
And then he directs his gaze at Sylvien.
Sylvien stares back.
“What?”
“’Tis custom, no?”
“Bad luck if you don’t!” Hartford puts in, and Sylvien shoots him a glare, which is only answered by a wink.
“That will not do, Sylvien,” Beatin adds gravely, and Sylvien is quite sure his eyes are sparkling behind his glasses, even if his mouth is set in a somber frown. “We cannot afford ill fortune this time of year.”
Sylvien remains frozen, his disbelief so thorough that he almost wonders if he should pinch himself, though whether this would be a dream or a nightmare, he is not entirely certain. But he supposes that, really, it is not so strange that Beatin has taken this chance to corner him. For moons, Beatin has been trying to speak to him about the clandestine nature of their relationship where the guild is concerned—and for moons, with something akin to terror, Sylvien has been changing the subject, procrastinating on the discussion until Beatin is once again too busy to have it, or scurrying off to the forest when all else fails.
Of course, he knows that it is not a secret here, but nor is it anything else, anything defined and finite, with a start and an inevitable end. The others may speculate, but if they do not know, then it will be easier when Beatin at last tires of him, and this thing without a name can simply dissolve like morning mist, leaving naught behind.
If no one knows that he has this lovely, precious thing, none can taunt him for the loss of it. Better not to have such things at all.
And yet, that tiny thorn pricks. He thinks of those sunny days in Costa del Sol, strolling the beaches where no one knew them, hand in hand. He thinks of the pains he takes to not always dawdle at his bench on those nights they plan to meet, waiting for Beatin a little way down the lane to spare their colleagues the obvious assumption. And he thinks of those mornings when Beatin lingers with him in bed, and they breakfast together and walk to the Atrium and he glimpses the sort of mundane routines they might have if Sylvien was only the sort of person worthy of it, the sort of person someone like Beatin would share that with.
It sits there before him, like a tangible thing, a prize he knows better than to grasp. And despite every instinct he has built over a life of successful survival, he inches forward.
Something in Beatin’s expression flickers—surprise, Sylvien realizes, at the success of his uncharacteristic ploy—but with a wider smile, he pulls Sylvien into his arms and spins him around, the unexpected enthusiasm pulling an audible, embarrassing yelp from Sylvien’s throat.
But then he settles, Sylvien secure and steady in his hold, and pauses, still, before closing the final distance. He is close enough that Sylvien can see past the tint of his lenses to the amusement and fondness crinkling his eyes, just before he presses their lips together, as soft and sure as before.
Whistles and cheers erupt from the workshop as he dangles in Beatin’s arms, but Sylvien barely hears them. Even the voice in his head clamoring to ask if this is allowed is strangely quiet, an uncertain whisper instead of a shout.
“Happy Starlight, Sylvien,” Beatin says, then sets him upright again, with a hand on his shoulder as though guessing—rightly—that Sylvien would find himself a little unsteady on his feet. His heart is pounding, and he is entirely unsure where to look—at Beatin, still smiling gently, or at the rest of the guild, babbling as they get back to work, remarks of “about time!” and “that’s five hundred gil, Averitt!” bouncing between the carpenters over the resuming sounds of hammers and saws.
Something seizes in him, an acute, irrepressible instinct, and he turns on his heel and strides back across the workshop and out the door.
Outside, he almost forgets his chocobo, and when he remembers her, he fumbles so badly with the loose knot of her rope that he nearly gives up and leaves her behind anyway. His vision seems slightly dim, and he stalks away from the guild almost blindly with her in tow, back towards the Blue Badger Gate even though he has deliveries yet to make in the city, all the while some other voice in his mind wondering, “What in the seven hells are you doing?”
For in his chest, there is a bright bloom of something warm and solid and happy, and he does not think he has been more afraid of anything in his life.
He does not go far; he has learned well the consequences of wandering the woods while distracted. Instead, he falls into a heap on the stones on the shore of the Jadeite Flood, gazing out over the gray waters at Figaga’s Gift, his chocobo settling beside him and cooing softly until he relents and slumps into her feathery warmth.
He knows not how long he stays there, mind as flat as the lake, until both of them are shivering and darkness starts to sink through the trees. Stiffly, he gets to his feet, and they walk slowly back to the city, where he leaves her at a stable and makes his own way to the Acorn Orchard, dark and silent in the winter night, and perches on the edge of the deck.
He does not expect Beatin to know he is here, but he barely has time to begin to feel the chill again before there are footsteps on the deck behind him.
“Are you angry with me, child?”
Sylvien bites his lip and shakes his head, a quick little jerk of a motion. With a sigh, Beatin lowers himself to the deck beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to his brow, and finally catching his lips when Sylvien turns. Sylvien savors the kiss for the moment, but when they part, his pout returns and he resumes his consideration of the mossy boulders across the orchard.
“I apologize,” Beatin says gravely. “I should have known better than to startle you. I admit, I was…carried away, somewhat, by the spirit of the season, and I did not think.” He pauses a moment. “Hartford, too, was quite contrite, though I told him that the blame for any hurt should rightly lie with me.”
“I’m not angry,” Sylvien mumbles. “Or hurt.” In fact, he is newly embarrassed to think of how it must have looked when he fled.
“Even so,” Beatin says. “It was selfish of me.”
Selfish—Sylvien turns the word in his head. “Is that what you want, then? For everyone to know.”
Beatin hums thoughtfully. “For everyone to know…no, I do not care so much about that, one way or the other. But I see no reason to hide how I feel for you, particularly around those I also care for, and trust. However, if you feel differently…”
Sylvien clenches his teeth against the rising lump in his throat. “People will think less of you. If you’re with me. And they shouldn’t, because I started it.”
“Sylvien,” Beatin says, with just a note of chiding, “pray do not absolve me of my own choice in this matter. And,” he sighs, “you may be right. But there will always be those people. Do you let them dictate the course of your life in other matters, or is it only with me that they become a great concern?”
Sylvien frowns, somewhat stymied by the question, and Beatin chuckles.
“I forget sometimes how new to the city you still are; rest assured that I have not always been the universally respected Timbermaster of the Oak Atrium—and indeed I could not claim such a distinction even now, and would not wish to. Leave my reputation to me. Is that the foremost of your worries?”
Sylvien chews on his lip. “You will tire of me.” And everyone will know.
“Ha. And you underestimate me. It is more likely that you will tire of me, withering oak that I am.”
“Withering,” Sylvien scoffs. “Let anyone who says so spend a night with you.”
“I am not certain that would prove as much as you think. You mustn’t underestimate your own contribution.”
There is a well-trodden path here, away from the weightier conversation to one much more familiar, and Sylvien hesitates at the crossroads, tempted. Beatin, he senses, has said his piece, and would quite willingly follow him, if the lips brushing his ear are any indication.
But a question sits on Sylvien’s tongue, fragile and tentative as a chick teetering on the edge of the nest, fluttering at the precipice before Sylvien at last lets it fall.
“Do you love me?”
Beatin pauses and pulls back—wind rushes, the terrible grip of gravity takes hold while Sylvien can only watch with unfolding horror—
“Quite dearly, Sylvien.”
A catch of a wing against the air, but still, the unforgiving ground hurtles nearer, and now that he is falling, Sylvien has no choice but to desperately wonder—
“Why?”
It is the fatal question, and for asking it, he feels he has already failed. For what reason could there be for anyone to love him simply on his own merits, not because they have no other choice? No one has ever done so before—to demand it strips away the illusion of the past six moons, and now it all must end. The way Beatin sits silently beside him only seems to confirm as much.
“Because,” Beatin starts to say, and Sylvien almost throws out a hand to muffle him, but morbid, insatiable curiosity keeps him still. “You are a conscientious and reliable carpenter with an excellent eye for wood. Because you have inspired me to reach new heights in my own craft. Because I need not explain to you why I would choose one length of timber over another.”
Compliments, but excuses. Sylvien frowns across the Orchard, trying to ignore how they please him nonetheless.
“Because,” Beatin goes on, “despite all the hardship you have faced, you live true—flexible, adaptable, but always, undeniably, yourself.”
Sylvien blinks at that, for he has certainly never been praised for this particular characteristic before. But Beatin is not finished.
“Because, with that boldness, you drew me free of a mire of regret and bitterness to which I had grown so accustomed that I had not realized how deeply in it I was sunk.”
Breath catching, Sylvien goes still. That can’t—
“Because,” Beatin murmurs in a lower voice, speaking right into his ear, “of a sound you make when I bed you that I could never tire of should I hear it a thousand times and more. And because”—he presses his lips now to Sylvien’s temple—“because you would ask, and make me say it all aloud, when I am ordinarily rather cowardly in such matters, and might ever be inclined to simply hope you knew.
“I do not feel I need to shout it from the treetops,” Beatin continues, when Sylvien finds himself unable to speak, “but it has been, and shall continue to be, evident that you have made a mark on me, and you should be as proud of that as of anything else you have crafted in the year past. I mean that quite sincerely, Sylvien.”
For all his eccentricities, his questionable jokes, his single-minded fixations, there are times when it is simply impossible not to take him seriously. Sylvien resigns himself to this realization and allows the words to sink in with an odd sense of responsibility that he is not certain he has ever felt so distinctly for anyone.
To be important to someone—to matter—is a foreign sensation. He is important to Irienne, yes, but he must be, else everything she has sacrificed for him, every burden she has borne for him, would be for naught. Beatin is bound by no such thread of fate, Beatin could have chosen anyone else—but Sylvien is the one who is here, with an impossible truth placed in his hands: that he, an unwanted mistake left uncorrected, a burden to everyone he has ever been close to, has changed another’s life for the better.
He opens his mouth, then closes it, part of him wanting to protest, but unable to find the words. Beatin is mistaken, surely—but if nothing else this year past, Sylvien has been watching him. As an apprentice, yes, heeding closely his every lesson, but also in those moments when most others would have already returned to their work, deterred by a stern word and the blankness of those silver spectacles. Sylvien watched a moment longer—Sylvien saw the droop of his shoulders when a certain Serpent Captain neglected to retrieve his orders in person; the restlessness that gripped him knowing the man was in the city, a handful of impassable yalms away; and the irascibleness that overtook him knowing he was on assignment far afield, worry manifesting in sharper critiques of his apprentices and longer hours at his own workbench.
Love, Sylvien had thought when he liaised between them, and Gairhard a worthy recipient of such feelings—brave, strong, and selfless. For all their trials, there was a romance here of a sort Sylvien was quite unfamiliar with—between two men, no less—and for those moons it had gripped him, to his eyes a tale worthy of the bards.
Yet Beatin was unhappy.
It broke through the rosy tint of Sylvien’s observation, slowly but surely. Tidings of Gairhard brought temporary elation, days of good humor, eager attention to Sylvien’s work and the most profuse compliments when it was found to pass muster—dashed to much longer periods of gloom and anxiety as soon as Sylvien reported that Gairhard’s unit was deployed again, off into the Shroud without a word.
And then the fits of grief, and even rage—expressions of passion, perhaps, yet they left him drained and morose, and sometimes worst of all, uninspired. Gairhard may have no choice but to cause such strife, torn between duty and love—but Sylvien does.
He knows he has caused his own share of worry. But it is also true that it has been moons since he has caught Beatin at his workbench gazing blankly at an unfinished bow, moons since he has been brushed aside to leave the Timbermaster to his thoughts, moons since Beatin has grown so incensed that he has injured himself—and now, when Sylvien dares to peek around his bangs to the man beside him, Beatin’s expression melts effortlessly into a smile, and Sylvien is just a little too observant to fail to notice the difference.
“I will leave the question of whatever it is you see in me for another day,” Beatin adds, which is an unexpected relief, for Sylvien feels quite speechless. “For now”—Beatin shivers slightly—“this is no season to be sitting out in the dark, and while I know how this may sound coming from me, I suspect you have been overexerting yourself of late. The Starlight Stalls may not yet be open, but the Carline Canopy is certainly serving mulled punch by now—or wine, if you prefer. Perhaps we can continue this conversation by the fire?”
For the moment, Sylvien barely feels the cold, but he gives a mute nod, a little surprised by the suggestion, but quite willing to follow him. Beatin stands, but as he does so, another shiver promptly wracks his frame, and he rubs his arms with a grimace as Sylvien arches an eyebrow.
“Where is your coat?” he finds his voice to ask as he hops off the deck, noting for the first time that despite the bite of frost in the air, Beatin is dressed only in his usual carpenter’s smock.
“Ah—somewhere.” He makes a motion with his shoulders that is half shrug and half shudder. “I admit I have not left the Atrium in some days, and I forgot I might need it…”
Sylvien sighs, then tugs the scarf from his neck, reaching up to drape it around Beatin’s instead, for the cut of his collar really does leave far too much skin exposed for this weather. Beatin blinks back at him, seemingly about to protest, but Sylvien knots it rather stubbornly before stepping back and tilting his head pointedly in the direction of the Canopy.
“If it’s alright to be seen with me, then this shouldn’t be a problem, either,” he notes, not quite meeting Beatin’s eyes, but Beatin stops fussing with the scarf, and moves to follow him, instead.
“Indeed it is not, child,” he agrees. “Thank you.”
They leave the Orchard side by side. Beatin glances back at the Atrium as they pass, already locked up and dark for the night, and he makes a small sound of surprise.
“Sylvien, those garlands—they are quite exceptional. Did you—”
“Yes, a week ago,” Sylvien informs him. “Speaking of overexertion—I'm not certain I should let you return here tomorrow.”
The dark lane is certainly not empty, for the hour is not especially late—but a hand slips around his waist regardless, and Sylvien shivers in a way that has naught to do with the cold.
“And I think you might succeed in convincing me, should you try,” Beatin tells him.
“Withering old oak, my arse,” Sylvien retorts in a low voice, and the rich baritone of Beatin’s hearty chuckle rings in his ears the rest of the way to the Canopy.