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He is in his office, late at night. The window and curtains are thrown wide open, letting in the cool night air. A relief, after the balmy summer's day they've had. His sleeves are rolled up, robes hanging on the back of his chair. Moonlight pools on his desk, setting all the implements alight with silvery grace.
Cyrus is just about ready to leave for the night, clasping his robes at his throat, gathering up the last of his parchment, work that he can finish at home. Stretching, he eases out some of the tension in his back and neck, quite ready to fall into his bed, into Olberic's waiting embrace.
The thought is still utterly thrilling to him–that he, of all people, has somehow won the fathomless loyalty and love of the Unbending Blade of Hornburg himself. That the man waits patiently for him to return home, to their home. To their bed.
As an academic, he'd never put much stock in the concept of fate. He'd strongly felt that life was simply a culmination of hundreds, even thousands of decisions made on a daily basis by yourself and those around you, and did not follow a predetermined plan, or cosmic influence. Such was an affront to the concept of free will.
And yet…
Yet he had found himself questioning such staunchly held beliefs on his journey, after meeting Olberic, and the rest of their dear friends, after felling a deity. The likelihood of them all having met and bonded and accomplishing such a feat was so slim it may as well have been discounted as an impossibility.
Even slighter than that, he thinks, were the chances of the object of his youthful obsession falling in love with him. What could he, a daft history professor, possibly hope to offer a storied, selfless and noble man like Olberic Eisenberg? Why, it just had to be fate at play! Oh, it's all rather romantic–another concept he'd never put much stock in, until lately.
Who knew the man behind such esteemed legend could be such a nag, though. Cyrus checks his pocket watch. He'll certainly have something to say tonight!
When he moves to close his windows and extinguish the candles around his office, his eyes catch on something. A piece of wood, carved into an intricate dodecahedron, polished to a mirror shine, yet otherwise unadorned. Sitting squarely in the center of his desk, glossy in the candlelight, pretty as a picture and bold as you like.
But how did it get there, while his back was turned for but a moment? Is this some sort of prank, played by one of his students?
He looks out of his door, to see darkened halls in either direction.
He looks out his window, but… but his office is on the third floor.
Scratching his head, he goes back to the desk, relighting some candles he'd just extinguished while staring at the object. A mystery, delivered right to his desk, under his very nose, in the dead hours of the night. How convenient. Cyrus cups his chin, circling his desk slowly, eyes fixed on the object. Yes, yes, it's all a little too convenient, isn't it? He should be cautious…
…is what Olberic would say. Good thing that he is not here, then! How exciting!
Chucking his satchel full of parchment under his desk, Cyrus settles back into his chair, brimming with excited energy, readying fresh parchment and quill.
The scholar carefully lifts the item, inspecting it from every angle. It has not a seam nor nail nor hinge, suggesting that it was carved from one large piece of wood, but when he shakes it ever so gently, something rolls around inside. It's heavy, for its size. A box, or chest, perhaps?
Candlelight reveals nothing. Under the light of the moon, however, he can see tiny veins of silver streaking through the grain, in beautiful whorls. Oh! It's made of solid aetherwood! It must cost an absolute fortune… Why would someone leave this undoubtedly precious thing with him?
Placing his hands upon its many sides, Cyrus channels some of his magic into it, watching with delight as the colours of his essence flow into the veins. It had been different, the last time he'd had a chance to experiment with the material like this. Dark purples, almost black, streaked through with gold. Now it is predominantly blue, of every shade.
The box opens, unfurling like a lotus bloom and revealing the secrets within. That was too easy!
The insides are lined with rich, deep purple velvet, and nestled amidst the soft material is an orb of some kind. Gold, about the size of a grapefruit, maybe larger. Intricate. So, the box was only the first piece of the puzzle, it would seem…
He lifts it delicately with only his fingertips, looking at it in the moonlight, where it bursts into life.
Within its complex outer structure, it is the deepest colour, like the velvet lining, like the night sky. It is filled with stars. Millions and millions of stars.
He holds it up, tilting his head, looking at it this way and that like a curious bird of prey. He applies slight pressure, trying to shift the complex mechanisms. Something gives slightly and clicks into place. He gently taps it. Myriad colours explode under his fingers.
He taps a little harder, bright green blooming amongst the stars.
He flicks it with his nail, and his vision goes white.
#
When he awakes, he is feeling terribly strange, and–just terrible all 'round, really. His back is killing him. He groans, rubbing at his face, and cracking his eyes open.
He is in his office. Cyrus is supine, on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Morning light is streaming in through the open window instead of moonlight, along with rogue snow flurries and frigid air. It's not the first time he's fallen asleep in his office, though this is the first time he's collapsed to the floor. Olberic will be cross with me… though what he does not know shan't hurt him, hm?
When he sits up, the world sways with him. His head is pounding. Ugh… Cyrus hates to, but he must call off his lessons for today. It's not fair to his students, for them to have to miss out on their education, but he's currently unfit to lead a classroom. He thinks he might be unfit to stand. He needs to get home.
While struggling to compose himself and closing the window, Cyrus sees a glimpse of movement in his peripheral vision; himself, in his mirror. Olberic had laughed, the first time he had seen his office, teasing him for owning such an expensive, unnecessary object.
“Does your vanity know no bounds? Why do you need such a thing, in a place of learning?”
“A scholar's first line of offense is his sharply curated appearance, of course!”
There is aught about his reflection that is troubling him. But what? His hair is a bit messy, trying to escape its ribbon, but that's not it…. It still has a nice shine to it–he will remember to brush it out, though. His complexion is on the paler side, but his skin is clear and unblemished otherwise…
Tsk. I am starting to think that Olberic may have had a point… not that he'll ever admit such to him. Not gladly, at least.
He stares, and stares and-
The scholar's eyes are green. Is this some trick of the light? He leans in close–his eyes are green! Not just green, a clear, bright chartreuse. It doesn't suit the rest of his colouring at all!
Perhaps he's been cursed? He'll–oh, hells, oh, fuck, he will never hear the end of this! How is he going to hide this from his knight?!
He feels a stab in his chest; Olberic is always telling him about how much he loves the blue of his eyes…
One thing is clear: a trip to the library is certainly in order. Such a thing should thrill him, but he needs to rest first. And make an appearance… and excuses…
After attaching a shakily written note to his office door, he pulls his hood up, shoulders his satchel and steers well clear of anyone that might try and speak with him on his journey back to his home. As he crunches through the snow, he is unable to shake the feeling that something else has gone significantly and horribly awry.
But what?
#
Still feeling off kilter, his normally dextrous hands fumble with the lock and key. The house is quiet when he enters. Wasn't it Olberic's day off? Usually he's busy about their house.
“Dear?” he calls. “Are you home?”
“Hey!” he calls from the back of their house, from his study. “In here, sweetheart!”
Sweetheart…?
Perhaps it is just in his head, which is still swimming, but Olberic sounded… unusual. And why is he in his study? He knows Cyrus gets fussy when he tries to tidy in there.
He must be most cross with me for not coming home. Maybe he's trying to prove a point? Or else he has suddenly developed a strange sense of humour overnight, along with a terrible new pet name for him.
Exasperated, he approaches his study, looking around the frame.
Alfyn looks up from his mortar and pestle, his easy, warm grin lighting up his face.
“What's up, honey?” he asks. “Forget your notes again?”
“Er,” is all he can say, green eyes travelling around the room. His study has been partially given over to an apothecary workshop. Flowers and herbs and vials of Alephan-knows-what in racks cover every surface on that half of the room. He thinks he might be in shock. “I, um… What are you doing?”
“Makin’ you some more of that sleepin’ draught,” he answers, fingers deftly grinding herbs while he looks up at Cyrus. The familiar sound of stone-on-stone is rather soothing. “It's still helpin’, ain't it?”
…???
“I meant,” he tries again, uneasily. “What are you doing here?”
“Ah, yeah yeah, I know I was s’posed t’go pick up your stuff from the provisioner, but it's cold as heck out there! Y’know I don't do as well in the cold as you Flatlanders.” He shrugs, smiling in that easygoing yet bashful way of his, looking back to his hands. “Sorry, Cy. Would you mind going? I'll make it up to ya, promise.”
This is just a prank. It has to be. Therion's probably put him up to it. Yes, yes! That must be it. Olberic is likely in on it too, having let them into their house to facilitate this farce.
“Enough, now.” He folds his arms. “Where is Therion?”
“Mm? Therion? Shucks, don't ya remember? We got a letter from him just the other day, it's in your desk drawer, I think.” He's looking at Cyrus again, rolling his eyes. “The lovebirds’re out in Grandport. Therion's got his eyes set on some big new score in the winter market. Lucky thing he's got Olberic to keep him outta too much trouble.”
“I… I don't… that is, what I mean to say is-” he stumbles over his words, uncomprehending, yet still trying to remain ever the gentleman. Olberic and… Therion? If this is a joke, his young friend is certainly committed to it–and is a fantastic actor to boot. He should give up this apothecary lark, as he's missed his true calling in life, clearly. His head is throbbing, his patience is done. Cyrus rubs his eyes. “Alfyn. What… what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Woah, now! Didn't know ya knew the word.” He laughs, but then looks at him, concerned. “You're actin’ real funny… you okay, love?”
He stands, putting the back of his hand on Cyrus's forehead. He's close, much too close than is proper for a medical examination. He smells like sage and sleepwort. “Mm. No fever. Good…”
Where is Olberic? Why is he allowing this to happen?!
“Say, hows’about you call off your lessons?” he says, voice low and husky. “Let's get you to bed.”
He cups his cheek, closing the gap between them, kissing him firmly-
“Mmmpphhh!!!”
He shoves Alfyn back as hard as he can, furious. This is–this is well beyond the pale!
“Gah! Cyrus!?” He sounds genuinely hurt. “What's the big idea?”
Cyrus flees from his own house, from his precious friend who has clearly lost his Godsdamned mind, full pelt out into the streets and all the way back to the academy. Frantically the scholar thinks that if he were to slip on the ice and break his neck then that would be a mercy, as he desperately tries to unhear Alfyn calling out after him, sounding so confused and heartbroken.
#
He is in his office, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, seething with anger. Oh, Olberic had best prepare his finest, most heartfelt apology for this–this indignity-
Were they trying to humiliate him? Cyrus clasps and unclasps the lid of his pocket watch in an agitated tic. Why? Why was kind-hearted Alfyn such a willing participant? He can be cheeky, teasing, certainly, but never, ever cruel.
No, no, no.
There must be a logical explanation. A prank no longer fits the bill.
Cyrus catches his movement in the mirror again, staring at his green eyes. Things had been strange since the moment he'd woken in his office.
He starts from there.
He'd woken on the floor, in the center of his office. He's not sure how he ended up there, instead of at his desk, where he'd been surely sitting. What had he been working on? The sun and snow had been coming in through his open window…
Why had his window been open, in the middle of winter?
Oh, Olberic is right about him–they all are. He is a vain, oblivious idiot.
It had been summer yesterday. He'd been so distraught about his eyes changing colour, trying to come up with a suitable excuse that he might pass off to Olberic, that he hadn't even noticed the season had turned on its head overnight. Forest for the trees, indeed.
What else, then, is changed? Where, and how, to begin cataloguing such changes?
Cyrus rummages around in his desk. In his center drawer is one of his greatest treasures; the first journal he'd carried with him on his fateful journey.
Dare he…?
Flicking through it, he finds that instead of the love letter and shrine to the object of his (unbeknownst to him) affections he'd unknowingly penned, it is now… changed, seemingly along with the rest of his life.
Instead of page after page of sketches of his handsome knight, at rest, brooding, cooking, training–he'd had one where he'd captured him in a rare, full chested laugh, head thrown back, his favourite…
…instead, it's full of page after page of Alfyn. Laughing, playing with children, chatting to a stranger like they'd known each other for years, his lopsided easy grin on full display. His messy hair has been lovingly rendered in each one.
He loves Alfyn, of course, fiercely, but not like this, this is-
Further on, when others had come to join them along the way, there's sketches of his friends, interspersed between many Alfyns.
There are some that cause him a great deal of unease and distress. Therion, coyly handing the knight one of his pilfered apples. Another of them, sitting shoulder to shoulder, their backs to his perspective. Olberic's arm is looped about the thief's waist, possessively. Lovingly. The way he puts his arm around Cyrus.
It feels like his insides are trying to escape. He thinks he's going to be sick.
In his cupboard under the drawers, at the very back, is a bottle of Noblecourt red, stashed away for a celebration, or a rainy day. This, this certainly fucking qualifies for the latter, he thinks. He grabs it along with the glass and pours himself a generous amount, to the rim, downing it in one, not even tasting it. What a waste. It turns to acid in his stomach. He pours another.
Should he keep searching? He feels like he's seen enough to last him a lifetime. Those sketches had him seeing green, and–oh, isn't that just funny? he thinks, slightly hysterically, a lot bitter.
He misses Olberic terribly. He's sure it's only been hours since he's last seen him, but… there's something he doesn't understand at play now. Something vast between them, beyond time. Beyond space, maybe.
He slumps back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. What the hells is he going to do?
The same thing he always does; keep investigating, of course. In for a copper. Why let a trifle like self-preservation stop him now?
Cyrus shoves his feelings down, something he's become a master at over the years, and keeps searching.
In his second drawer, sitting nice and neat, is that golden orb.
Ah…! Now he remembers what had had him back at his desk last night. He'd been studying it, trying to coax out the secrets from its starry depths…
He holds the thing in his hands. It's beautiful, intricate, like a puzzle box. Something clicks and shifts into place. He's-
#
-face down on carpeted floor. He feels like he's just tumbled out of the Gates of Finis. For all he knows or understands, he has.
He feels immensely heavy, every limb leaden. Even lying down he can feel that his center of gravity is all wrong.
“What are you doing down there?” says a familiar voice, from somewhere above him.
When he musters the strength and courage to lift his head, he's greeted with-
Oh dear. He's going to scream. He's going to vomit. Both, definitely, he's going to do both.
Cyrus is greeted with the sight of himself, crouched over him, looking at him with concern. He's still in his office–their office?
Ah, I see. I understand everything now, he thinks, detachedly. I've lost my mind. Of course! That's the simplest answer! Something of an ironic fate for one who has spent their whole life cultivating it, but-
“What happened?”
“...I decided to take a nap. What does it look like?” comes his acerbic answer, from some force of habit that's both his and not-his. His voice is deep, rumbling, reverberating in his chest strangely.
He–that is to say, the other he–seems unsurprised, snickering slightly.
“Hmph. Prick,” Not-Cyrus says, fondly, lip curling at the corner in a wry smirk. He doesn't look like that… does he? Himself extends his hand. “Come now. Up you get.”
Cyrus helps Cyrus to his feet. When he is standing, he's noticeably taller than him–himself.
“Are you well?” Not-Cyrus asks, looking up at him, reserved yet plainly concerned.
“I don't think that I've ever been more unwell in my life,” he answers, deadpan.
“Hmm.” Not-Cyrus hums contemplatively, shrugging. “Strange answer, but somehow not surprising in the least, seeing as it's you.”
He watches with passive interest as himself kisses him on the cheek and brushes past him. Bile rises in his throat.
“You are looking rather ill, indeed. I'll call Therion, if you'd like.”
No, he would not like. He still has the lingering feeling that he'd quite like to kick Therion's arse, frankly.
Not-Cyrus walks by the mirror on the way to his-their desk. Cyrus's eyes are drawn to the reflection as he passes. He wonders…
He should stop wondering. That's how he got into this mess-into most messes, really. He's in another pit and yet again he has no one to blame but himself and his boundless curiosity.
Curiosity didn't kill the cat, in this case, but it certainly made the cat look fucking stupid. Is he stupid? He must be. He knows he won't like whatever he sees in the mirror.
He looks in the mirror.
Olberic looks back at him. His dark eyes and handsome face reveal little of his inner turmoil, just like the genuine article.
He's not a dramatic man. In fact, he's often switched into clinical detachment with concerning ease when faced with aught that might overwhelm his emotions. The deaths of his parents for instance, or being ousted from his beloved academy. When he'd discovered a mound of corpses under Quarrycrest.
This… this might just break him. He wants to scream again.
Instead, he calmly says, in Olberic's rumbling voice, that he loves so much: “I've lost something.” My mind. “A globe, about yea big. Do you have any clue where I might've left it?”
“On the bookshelf, dear. To your left. Up. There you go.”
Perfect.
#
He is… in his office… This is getting tiresome.
When he looks around this time, things seem warped, off in a way that he can't quite put his paw on. It's his office, certainly, but the proportions of things are all… wrong, in a way he cannot quantify.
Oh well, he thinks, closing his eyes and stretching languidly as he rolls onto his side, curling up into a tight ball. He's quite comfortable on the floor, all things considered, and achingly weary. Perhaps a nice nap will help provide him with the clawrity needed to solve this conundrum. Yes, yes, that sounds purrfect…
Someone is knocking at his door.
Tsk. Bugger off. Don't they know I am trying to snooze?
“Pawfessor! Are mew in there?”
“...yes?” he answers, hesitantly, feeling dread start to pool in his tummy, not wanting to confront what has gone horrifically wrong with reality now.
The door opens. Little feet pad over to him.
“Hey! Wake up, sleepy!” squawks a familiar voice. “You’re late! This is no time for a catnap!”
He cracks one eye open. A light brown-and-cream cait with big emerald eyes is standing over him, looking down. It-she?–is wearing an oversized feathered cap, and has a backpack at least as big as her.
Oh, good. Here he was worried it might have been something strange. He shuts his eye again.
“...oh no. Are mew okay? Should I go get Olpurric?”
“No, my dear purrchant, I'm fine, I-”
He holds a paw in front of his face. It's covered in dark fur and has pink beans. He laughs, and laughs and laughs, until it hurts. Until he's sick.
“Ahh! I'm gonna go get Meowfyn!” She unshoulders her big rucksack and sets it in the corner. “You wait right there!”
After she bounds away on all fours, he gets to his hind paws and scurries over to his little tiny mirror, because even though he's dedicated his life to the noble pursuit of learning, it truly seems that he will never learn his fucking lesson.
He's… he's… oh, dear Gods…
He's apawable. Covered in rich black fur, with big blue eyes (blue! That's something!), he has long elegant white whiskers and a little tiny set of academy robes clasped about his little tiny shoulders with a paw-print shaped brooch.
This is claw-ful, just… awful, awful is what he means! Intolerable!!
He needs to find the globe befur his furriend Meowfyn the apawthecary gets here. He's still fur-ious with him.
It's not in his little tiny desk drawers, or his satchel. He looks up at his big little bookshelf, scanning the shelves, but there's no sign of it anywhere this time.
In the corner, Not-Tressa’s rucksack tumbles over under its own top-heavy weight, a few items tumbling loose from its depths.
Amongst the pile of junk is a glint of gold.
There it is! He swats at it, sending it tumbling across the floor of his office where he gives chase, batting it this way and that. He pounces on it, curling around it triumphantly. Got you!
#
On and on and on it goes.
Cyrus drifts through reality after reality. It has ceased to be shocking; he's seen enough, been enough.
At one point he is Galdera, trying to crush the puny mortals he calls friends under his immense power, his damned blade, and that is no more or less upsetting to him than being a pirate, or being a cait, or being a dancer.
He gets his chance at Therion in one life, suckerpunching him hard enough to lay him out, and the wretched jealousy that still burned a hole in the pit of his stomach had screamed triumphantly. Who knew he'd had it in him!
The thief had still kicked his arse afterwards, though. He supposes that they're even. For now.
But in the countless myriad worlds he's gotten glimpses into, one fact remains throughout: not a one had unfolded in the same way his true life had–if it ever was the true one. Who is to say the life with Alfyn is less real than his? Or the one where he'd fallen in love with Erhardt, instead of Olberic? Perhaps his life had just been another glimpse, another what if? in the sea of billions of others. In a sea of stars.
In only one, his life, had he had Olberic, the real Olberic. What does that mean? So much for fate! Were the odds of them meeting and falling in love truly so infinitesimal that, across inestimable possibilities, it could have happened only the once, in the exact way it did?
There are infinite Cyruses and they're all fuck-ups. The cosmos weeps.
He buries his face in his hands. It feels like an eternity since he's seen his knight, and it may well have been. Will he ever find his way back to him?
#
“Well now, child of Alephan. Thou have made quite the mess, haven't thee?”
He looks up from his hands. His office is gone. Instead he's drifting in the infinity of the stars. It's beautiful, defying description, defying reality, and he just doesn't care. He'd thought this ordeal would break him, but now he thinks he may have started already broken, and that is why he is able to detach himself from his feelings so easily.
In front of him floats a woman, beautiful, ethereal, divine. Her hair flows from blue to purple, like the sky at twilight. Her eyes are covered, but somehow he knows that she can see, see him, see all that ever was or will be.
“Thou art very far from home.”
“...What?”
She laughs, the sound echoing through space and time.
“My brother has played a fine trick on thou and I. T’was most amusing, I admit, but t’is well past time it ended. I'll be taking back what is mine now, if thou please.”
She holds out her hands expectantly.
“Er,” he says, brain full of mush, looking at her hands dumbly, and then down at his own. Oh, the globe is back. Fancy that. He looks between it, and the woman, comprehension slowly dawning on him.
“Steorra?”
“That is I.”
He holds the orb tightly, anger and despair rising in him.
“What will become of me? What was the point of all this? Why-?”
“Ah, I'd forgotten mortals have such a penchant for the dramatic. T'is no large thing! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as thou might say, yes?” The Lady of the Stars smiles, rather smugly. “Now, return it to me, and I shalt see that things are restored to their proper order, in turn–thyself included.”
Hesitantly, he holds his hands out, and the orb returns to its master, hovering between her hands as she works its hidden mechanisms with enviable ease.
“...you found this most amusing, you say,” he grumbles, voice low. Witch.
“Indeed. Perhaps thou might learn aught from this experience, scholar? For that is thy purr-view, is it not?”
She laughs and laughs and laughs, the sound piercing through his head, reverberating forever and ever and ever-
#
He's in his office. He's–floating, in the air suspended above his desk, face down. Oh, hells-
Abruptly he comes crashing down, yelping and taking everything on his desk with him, ending up in a most undignified heap of parchment, tomes, candles and tools. Cyrus groans from the floor, reaching up to pull an open book off of his face.
The Twelve are arseholes, he thinks, struggling to his feet. They are probably still laughing at him from the heavens.
Brushing himself down, trying in vain to salvage his dignity, he staggers over to his mirror to see what fresh hell awaits him this time.
He's…
A mess. His face and silk shirt are hopelessly blotted with ink. His hair is unsalvageable; there's candle wax and a quill stuck in it.
But he doesn't have horns, or fur, or six arms. He's… himself, with blue eyes.
Cyrus looks around the office. No sign of the box, or the globe, or anything else amiss, except for the utter war crime that is his desk. The world outside his window is bright, sunny and warm, his curtain swaying gently in an early morning summer breeze.
Could his ordeal truly be over? It could not be as simple as that… could it? Cyrus dare not hope, not yet.
But he supposes divine intervention had been responsible for the mess, t'is only fitting that divine intervention saw it neatly concluded.
So it was a prank, after all, he thinks, limping home, too numb to give much of a shit who sees him in such disarray. Which one of them is responsible?, he wonders vaguely.
Aeber is a strong contender. He might just punch Therion again after all.
#
Fumbling with the lock and key, he stumbles into his foyer.
“Olberic…?” he calls, voice wavering with trepidation. “Olberic!”
He hears heavy foot falls approaching, and-
“Well, well. Aren't you late,” Olberic says, aggravation plain to see on his handsome face, arms folded sternly as he comes around from the kitchen. He is covered in flour, and peeved. “So late, in fact, that it is another day. We are going to have words–agh!”
Cyrus throws his arms tightly about his knight's neck–too tightly, strangling him, cutting him off mid-nag.
“Gghh… unhand me…”
“Oh, Olberic, you stupid man!!” He draws back, elated, then stands up on his toes to kiss him, again and again, frantic.
“What? What is wrong?” Olberic grasps him by the shoulders. When he takes in Cyrus's ink covered appearance, he snickers once, gently removing the quill from his tangled locks. “What has happened to you?”
Cyrus has to be sure.
“How did we meet?”
“What-?”
“Please! Humour me. Please.”
Olberic stares at him, concern drawing his handsome features. He folds his arms, considering for a long moment whether to cater to his addled mage's latest whim.
“...you were on the trail outside Cobbleston. You threatened me, a bit.”
“I have two scars. Where?”
“Here…” he says quietly, pointing to his hip, and then below his ribs. “...and here.”
“And when was the first time I told you that I love you?”
“It was…” Olberic looks pained, eyebrows drawing tight, dark eyes suddenly far away. He makes a vague gesture. “...in Duskbarrow.”
Cyrus lets out an enormous sigh of relief. He is home. Olberic means home.
“Cyrus. You are acting very strangely.” His mouth twists. “...stranger than normal, I mean.”
“Bugger off,” he retorts automatically. He could cry from happiness. In fact, he's already begun. The scholar wipes furiously at his eyes with the back of his wrist. "I love you. I'm fine.”
Then he wraps his arms around his knight's neck again, and Olberic embraces him back tightly, befuddled and not understanding in the slightest, yet crooning sweet soothing words into his hair all the same. Cyrus fits against him so easily, so perfectly, like they were made for each other–though now he rather suspects the opposite; that they found love in each other against all the odds.
He's just that lucky.
Patient, loving, steadfast. One-in-a-million–no, a billion. His Olberic, the only one in the world–in all the worlds. His, his, his. Cyrus’ll never, ever let him go again.
Cyrus might even concede to his arguments about taking better care of himself, in the future. About not staying up too late, or bottling up and shutting down his feelings, or sticking his face into celestial implements and meddling with the cosmos to satisfy his curiosity.
…Probably not, though. Divine intervention can only see you so far.
He's just glad to be home.