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Dehya, Cyno knows, is nosy. Not really outwardly nosy, and she’d immediately call him sexist if he told her that (it had nothing to do with her gender!). But she was nosy, and he kept this in mind when he brought her into his apartment after a particularly bloody battle—lately, Dehya had been hired to shirk her bodyguard duties for an afternoon or two and help the Matra, seeing as many Matra had lost their jobs after the exposed corruption within the ranks of the Sages. Cyno watches from the side of his eye as Dehya bleeds onto his carpet.
“I’m gonna cauterize the wound,” she grunts, and he looks away as she hisses, the smell of burnt flesh wafting up.
“There is a medical ward,” Cyno mutters, taking off his headgear. Dehya pointedly ignores him and lets another groan slip between her teeth.
He goes to his bathroom to shower and this is his first mistake—it only takes him ten minutes to wash off the grime and blood and sand under the cool spray of his showerhead, and only five to get dressed, but by the time he’s out the bathroom he finds Dehya has already snooped and is holding a stack of letters that he’d kept hidden in the drawer in his desk. Dehya has the decency to look ashamed, and Cyno can’t find it within him to be shocked. At least, he tells himself, there is only a small chance she’s destroyed any of them.
“Done cauterizing?” Cyno asks dryly, grabbing the letters from her and putting them back in his drawer. Dehya is red in the face.
“I didn’t realize,” she mumbles. Cyno looks up at her, confused. She isn’t usually so ashamed of her nosiness. Usually more defensive, actually. “I didn’t realize they were from your lover.”
Cyno’s face suddenly burns as if Dehya had tried to cauterize it. “What?”
“The letters,” she stammers. “I only read one, I swear. I thought they were business letters.”
“You thought they were busine—Tighnari?” Cyno bounces back, helplessly. “Tighnari is not my lover.”
Suddenly, Dehya’s eyebrows furrow. “Excuse me?”
Her confusion offends him further. “Yes, excuse you.”
“No, no,” Dehya shakes her nosy head, stepping closer and snatching up a letter, unfolding it and scanning it. Cyno only lets her because he is confident that whatever she finds there will back him up. “Yours, Tighnari? Does he sign every letter like this?”
“It’s shorthand,” Cyno explains, snatching the letter back. “He used to write, ‘your friend, Tighnari.’ Then he wrote ‘yours truly’ and then just ‘yours.’ It’s a natural progression.”
“A natural progression,” Dehya deadpans. “General.”
“Yes?” Cyno asks, compiling his letters back into a neat little orderly pile and placing them back in his desk.
“Does he kiss you as a shorthand as well? Oh it’s such work to say goodbye, when just a peck will do!” Dehya finishes in a flowery voice which is a poor rendition of Tighnari, anyway.
“That’s ridiculous, Dehya.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dehya says, picking the letter back up. Cyno’s fingers twitch in annoyance. She begins reading again in that flowery voice. “I miss you, Cyno! When will you return? I’m yours, yours, yours!”
“He doesn’t say all that,” Cyno huffs, rolling his eyes.
“I wouldn’t tell a woman I was hers unless I really was,” Dehya says. “Are you sure Tighnari is not your lover?”
“I’d like to think I’d know something like that,” Cyno says, and snatches the letter back out of her hand. He places it neatly back in the pile. “Tighnari is my friend.”
“Do you love him?” Dehya asks, suddenly serious. Cyno closes the drawer and swallows.
“That’s a separate question.”
“Well, he clearly loves you.”
Cyno rolls his eyes. “Dehya, there is a medical wing. One you should be in, now.”
Dehya gets the hint and heads for the door. She seems lost in thought. Cyno walks her to it. Before she leaves, she turns to face him. “You’re lucky, and you don’t even realize it. If Dunyarzad said she was mine…” Dehya shakes her head and leaves him to it.
It stays on Cyno’s mind for the next week. He tries to avoid thinking about it. It’s stupid, anyway, he isn’t—well. He isn’t so naive as he was when he’d first started out, when Tighnari was still enrolled at the Akademiya, all those years ago. He knew now it was hopeless. Dehya had no idea the depth of their relationship, and couldn’t, how could anyone? So it made sense that she made out-of-left-field assumptions. But still. Still he thought about it.
When Cyno visited Tighnari for their weekly dinner with Collei, he thought about it, and cursed Dehya for putting the thought in his head in the first place. When Tighnari greeted him by ghosting a kiss to his cheek, he blushed. He hadn’t put thought into that in years. While they ate, Tighnari’s fingers traced his palm under the table. He hadn’t put thought into that in years, either. God, what was happening to him?
After dinner they sit in front of Tighnari’s house and watch the sunset. Collei goes back to her home, so it’s just the two of them. In Cyno’s head, all that’s playing is yours, Tighnari.
“You’ve been out of it all day,” Tighnari says, idly playing with some blades of grass. The earth seems to bloom under his touch. “Do you have something on your mind?”
“No,” Cyno replies, and immediately. This is the one thing he will never be forthcoming about with Tighnari. This is the one guilty lie he clings onto.
Tighnari, unfortunately, always knows. He wrinkles his nose in distaste and Cyno’s (foolish) heart wrenches. He swallows.
With a bout of bravery he wasn’t aware he possessed, he asks, “Why do you sign your letters ‘Yours, Tighnari?’”
Tighnari turns to look at him fully. His hair, which has recently gotten long enough to fall past his shoulders, shifts with him, glossy in the low light. He blinks at Cyno. “Where is this coming from?”
“Dehya was over lately, and looked through my drawer and read one of your letters. The most recent one.”
Tighnari smiles. “Dehya is nosy.” Then, after some thought. “I wouldn’t tell her that, though.”
“I thought the same thing.”
Tighnari twirls a blade of grass around his finger. “Do you not like the way I end my letters?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I wasn’t finished. Dehya read your letter and she assumed…she assumed we were lovers,” Cyno manages. Even thinking it is embarrassing, let alone saying it.
Tighnari turns to look at him again. The look on his face is hesitant, thoughtful. Cyno has absolutely no time to prepare for what comes out his mouth next. “Isn’t she right?”
Cyno swears the earth opens below him and he falls forty feet, with the way his stomach swoops. “What?”
Tighnari turns pink. “I mean, perhaps lovers is a strong word. But we are life partners, right?”
“Life partners?” Cyno repeats, incredulous. Of course he wants to be life partners with Tighnari, but what is happening right now? “I’d like to circle back to you being okay with the term lovers.”
Tighnari, despite steadily turning pinker, laughs. “Well, I guess we can’t call ourselves that as we don’t sleep together. Isn’t that what lover means?”
Cyno malfunctions.
“But we have a child together,” Tighnari shrugs.
“I mean–that’s a complicated situation—”
“And we both aren’t seeing anyone else.”
“Neither are some of our other friends—”
“Are you saying you’d rather not be called my lover?” Tighnari asks. Under his joking tone is a string of hurt.
“No,” Cyno says, so quickly it makes Tighnari smile. “But—well. How long have you thought I was your lover?”
“Thought?” Tighnari raises an eyebrow.
“How long have I been your lover?” Cyno corrects, swallowing.
Tighnari purses his lips. “Well, we never spoke about it…but a few years now, I’d assumed. So…what did you think we were?”
“Friends. Best friends,” Cyno says.
“Oh.” That string of hurt is still in Tighnari’s voice.
“And you thought we were lovers?” Cyno asks.
Tighnari nods, eyes on the blade of grass still weaving between his nimble fingers. “I suppose I shouldn’t have assumed.”
No, no. Cyno needs to fix this and fast. “Hold on. I never said I was against this. I just…I had no idea. I mean, we never kissed or, or anything like that.”
Tighnari’s blush is even more pronounced now. The redness on his cheeks is too endearing. Cyno’s heart feels like it’s on a leash. “I just thought you didn’t really do those things. I was okay with just the kisses on the cheek and sharing a bed. You’re often dispassionate about things, so I thought romance was one of those things.”
“I’m very passionate about you,” Cyno says. He doesn’t even have the time to be embarrassed because of Tighnari’s smile stretching across his face.
“Oh yeah?” Tighnari asks, confidence clearly restored. “So if I’d have said something…you’d have kissed me?”
Cyno swallows again. It feels like there’s a knot in his throat. “If you’d let me.”
“I’d let you,” Tighnari whispers.
Heart rushing in his ears, Cyno leans in and—
“Guys I forgot my—oh. Am I interrupting something?” Collei surveys the both of them as they turn red, turning the same color herself.
“Nope!” Tighnari says, scrambling up. “Let’s get whatever you forgot.”
“My plant,” Collei mumbles, scurrying after Tighnari. Cyno rubs his face, then gets up to follow.
Collei collects her plant, shaking like a leaf in the wind, and then red in the face, she blurts out, “I’m sorry I interrupted your private moment!” Then she stiffens like a board and runs out before anything else can be said.
In the silence of the room, Tighnari bursts out laughing. Cyno groans and covers his face, which is hot as a furnace.
“Poor girl looked traumatized,” Tighnari manages between giggles, clutching his stomach. “Oh my god, her timing is incredible.”
“We can never kiss outside,” Cyno says, mortified. Tighnari pulls in close to him, looping arms around his neck. He catches Tighnari by the waist, smiling despite himself.
“So inside is free reign?”
“As long as we lock all the doors,” Cyno mutters, still a little embarrassed.
Tighnari laughs, delighted. “Scandalous. Who are you and what have you done with my general?”
My general. Cyno can’t help it, he leans down and presses his mouth to Tighnari’s, and both of them are smiling too much for it to be a proper kiss, but once he gets a taste, he goes in for another, and another, and then a proper kiss is the least of his worries.
Later in the week when Dehya is crudely cauterizing her wound in his living room again, he crosses his arms, leans back and says, “You were right.”
“Many people are saying this,” Dehya says, and then winces as she finishes with her injury. “About what?”
“Tighnari.” Cyno tries to hide his grin. “He is my lover.”
Dehya pushes his shoulder, a matching grin on her face. “Congratulations on being the last to realize.”
“Well, thank you for the push. You’re welcome to bleed on my carpet anytime.”
“Really?”
“No.” Cyno stands, offering him her hand. “Go to the medical wing, Dehya. I’ll bill you for my carpet if your blood doesn’t come out.”
“Oh boo!” Dehya takes his hand. “You’re welcome for saving your relationship!”
She claps him on the shoulder before she leaves, a sincere look on her face. “Really, though. Congrats.”
Cyno nods. “You should try having a similar conversation with Dunyarzad.”
“I’d rather die,” Dehya replies, already out the door. Before she fully leaves, she bends to grab something, handing it to him with a wink. Another letter from Tighnari. “Have fun with this letter, General. Not too much fun, though, you hear?”
Cyno grabs the letter, shutting the door in her face. He opens it like he hasn’t seen Tighnari for five years, not five days, and his eyes jump to the end for those familiar words in that familiar script. It’s different today. Different, but better.
Your love, Tighnari.