Chapter Text
Words were crude. An inefficient, lesser way to communicate; the people of Gallifrey had words, but didn't use them often.
There was a growing movement, the verbalist movement, for prose as an art form, but most of society looked down on the verbalists as unbearably pretentious. Nothing that mattered could be put into words, and the people who insisted that it could were just trying too hard to be unique and quirky.
Rassilon was not a verbalist, or so he insisted; he didn't see language as an art form, but a legitimate tool.
"It's a comfortable step removed from all this constant mind-reading. I'm not the strange one for not wanting other people in my head all the time," he said. "What's strange is how many people pretend they don't secretly agree with me. I don't need telepathy to know most people would be more comfortable this way."
"I think," said Omega, "you really love the sound of your own voice."
"Who doesn't love the sound of my voice?" Rassilon retorted in a tone that suggested he may actually be looking for names. "What use is it, being the most well-spoken, articulate person on Gallifrey if I don't actually do any articulating? Just because the rest of you can barely string a sentence together doesn't mean speaking isn't a worthwhile endeavor."
Rassilon had always maintained an absurdly high level of psychic detachment, even in situations where he couldn't force everybody to observe his preference for verbal communication. He even wore gloves—all the time—and when he deigned to communicate telepathically, he left his mind precisely as open as it absolutely needed to be to get an idea or sentiment across.
He didn't care how rude this was; he was the sort of person who could get away with treating social norms like flies to be swatted, and most people wouldn't question it (or they'd be too intimidated to admit they were questioning it). Other people could be "strange" or "eccentric." Rassilon was just Rassilon.
But then, most people didn't spend enough time around Rassilon to even suspect his closed-off spiel was anything but pure conceit. His mask slipped so rarely that only somebody who was with him every day for years and years might witness it. Omega liked to think he was the only person who'd ever accomplished this.
Others had attempted it; nobody could be as popular as Rassilon without enduring all sorts of invasive, overly-familiar behaviors. Parasocial, he called it. He shut all of them down, sometimes so aggressively the poor sods ended up with psychic injuries. Nobody but Omega could ask Rassilon to forego speaking in favour of telepathy and expect to be met with anything but condescending laughter.
But Omega had made full unfiltered contact with Rassilon once. It was like being punched in the sense of self, invaded with the full thought process behind some of the most disturbingly specific ideas. A level of evaluation and analysis that only a computer should be capable of (frankly, most computers might explode if they tried).
Just from that one brief glimpse…Omega had been accused of overthinking everything enough times to want to start punching people, but now he was truly vindicated in his denial of this accusation; true, he could complicate things now and then, but anybody wishing to witness overthinking ought to connect with Rassilon.
Are my eyes shifting about the room too much? If I hold eye contact, will it come off as aggressive? How long should I hold his gaze before looking away? Of course, the looking-away part must seem natural, I can't seem bashful. Is my hair frizzing? I think some of the beads may be about to fall out, but I can't fix them right now, that would only draw attention to them. Is my expression the correct balance of neutral-but-not-bored—engaged in the conversation, but not engaged too intently—do I look tired? It's good to look a little bit tired, give a visible impression of a dedicated work ethic, but we wouldn't want to look tired enough for it to be concerning—do the bags under my eyes add character, or do they make me look dishevelled? I should cover them up. But not too obviously, or people may get the impression I'm trying too hard, and then they may speculate on my health, which could be a disaster. Is the way my hands are resting on my lap conspicuous? What does one do with their hands, having a casual conversation whilst sitting down, with nothing to actually do? If I pick up my tablet, surely that will look like a sign of disinterest in the conversation. I wish I had something to fidget with; it'd look more natural than sitting here with my hands folded perfectly still. Less rehearsed. It is imperative, in social situations, not to seem rehearsed. Intentional, but effortless. I can feel his presence—oh, Goddesses, how much has he felt? He's never going to see me the same way, now, I just know it.
This lasted all of maybe two seconds before Rassilon withdrew, physically recoiling as if Omega had struck him, and literally ran from the room. It might have been the only time anybody had ever seen him vulnerable, but it was enough. It was hard to put what was going on in his ridiculously calculating head into words, but what mattered was that Omega knew, he didn't merely suspect, that the true reason why Rassilon preferred language over telepathy was because otherwise everybody would know just how "effortless" his façade really wasn't.
***
Marriage, Rassilon always said, was an untrustworthy institution that served only to reinforce society's outdated views on men and their role in the world. No self-respecting man with his wits about him would consider it.
"You are so dramatic," Omega had laughed.
"Of course I'm dramatic," retorted Rassilon, "but on this, my friend, I am completely serious."
"Do you realize how many men are happily married?"
Omega did not say your father's unfortunate situation is not the norm, but the thought did cross his mind. He hoped Rassilon wasn't reading his thoughts.
"That isn't the point!"
"Then what is the point?"
"Marriage is a legally binding contract! Once that contract takes effect, a married man no longer has any recourse, should things…sour between him and his wife. Trust is one thing, but relying on it is stupid."
"Some people marry for—"
"My dear Omega, if you finish that sentence with the word love, I am going to laugh at you. Absolutely guffaw. All the condescension I can muster, directed at you."
"…That isn't the point," said Omega, who actually had been about to finish the sentence with the word love.
"What a romantic gesture!" cried Rassilon, sarcastically. "Oh, I'm so in love, I'm going to sign a legally binding contact before a judge and everything granting this person the legally-recognized right to control all my money, what I wear, eat—"
"Yes, alright, I get it—"
"—what jobs I can work, if I can work at all, when I leave the house—"
"I get it—"
"If love truly has the power to render a person so stupid as to willingly agree to such an arrangement, then I hope I never experience it."
He went on many such rants.
And then, one day, he announced his engagement to Omega's older sister. The media was in on it the moment the engagement was official. With a stupid too-perfect obviously-staged engagement photoshoot and everything.
Rassilon refused to officially give a reason why he felt the need to get married.
Omega knew the reason, of course. Rassilon had been spending years now attracting the negative attention of the government, railing against the establishment on every possible point from gender to overreliance on magic to how they were managing the war effort. Well, now it seemed the government had discovered that Rassilon was unwed and his mother was not in the picture. As a man could not be a citizen in his own right—only by right of his mother or wife—this meant legal grounds to seize everything he owned, dissolve his architectural firm, perhaps even sell him back into indenture or even slavery; of course he scrambled to find a citizen of high standing willing to marry him. Epitaxy already had two husbands, both far more proper and from suitably upper-class families; why she would agree to marry Rassilon was the true mystery.
Rassilon had never actively covered up his…less-than-aristocratic origins, but he never spoke of them openly either. He did such a flawless job of imitating the way the upper class spoke and behaved that nobody thought to question whether he belonged among them; when he made vague allusions to having grown up with Omega in the same household, people assumed they must be cousins. This marriage was nothing more than another transparent attempt at social climbing.
Which, of course, Rassilon was not going to admit in a billion years.
And so, when anybody worked up the courage to wonder why he would do something so uncharacteristic as to get married, they were met with expert non-answers more suited to a politician than an architect. Omega knew Rassilon well enough to know that when he refused to give a straightforward answer on something, it meant that either he didn't have one or the answer was something that might go against his image.
***
Traditionally, an engagement party took place at the prospective groom's home. The bride and her family would bring some expensive wine as a gift, and both families would gather together, eat, drink, and get passive-aggressive with each other until they'd all had enough to start throwing jinxes.
They were also, traditionally, one of the only occasions where men were permitted to dine alongside the women rather than remaining quietly out of sight in the men's quarters of the household. But this tradition was a moot point in this case, as Rassilon lived alone in a house he had personally designed, and being who he was, he didn't design it with separate spaces for men and women. He didn't even design it with a shrine, to the household gods or to Time, and had to rush to set one up before the party so that his soon-to-be-in-laws wouldn't think he was a complete heathen.
Epitaxy made an offering of incense for the household gods, and led the whole gathering in the requisite prayer asking Life to look kindly upon their families. Both she and Rassilon went through the words and the motions flawlessly, as if everybody on Gallifrey didn't already know how pious they both weren't. Rassilon never said his prayers unless somebody made him, and Omega had certainly never seen Epitaxy do so either.
It had been a long time since Omega was in a room with all ten of his siblings, let alone them and their mother and various fathers. Twenty people. A twenty-person family didn't seem unreasonable at their own (normal) house, but it was comical at an interfamilial party where the other family consisted of exactly two people (Rassilon and his father, Alcyone).
The man of the hour sat next to Omega at what had been temporarily designated the men's side of the table. He was careful to drink just enough wine to look normal (and avoid insulting Epitaxy and Omega's mother) but not enough to threaten his social alertness, and generally seemed closer to losing his grip on the room than Omega had seen him in a long time.
Yakinthi and Evlampia, two of the sisters, and youngest brother Youseline, made all sorts of jabs at Rassilon's background and interrogated him as to what exactly a peasant with no dowry could bring to the table in a marriage to a countess. Ixchel, Epitaxy's father, ridiculed Alcyone's clothes. Omega's own father, much to Omega's embarrassment, said something implying Alcyone must have failed as a husband and as a man to have remained unmarried since his son was seven years old. Alcyone meekly looked down and radiated hurt and shame, but Rassilon looked ready to throttle somebody.
More than once, his perfect practiced expressions visibly slipped.
He and Omega were sitting awfully close together. Nobody else in the room was sitting this close.
***
At the end of the party, after however many eternities of the most painfully stunted small talk anybody had ever made in the history of Gallifrey, Epitaxy gave Rassilon the sash and necklaces he was meant to wear at their wedding. Which was funny, because that was traditional. That was what the woman was meant to do when getting engaged to a man, and Omega had honestly expected Rassilon, in all his hatred of the established social hierarchy, to eschew such customs when it came to his own engagement. It wouldn't have been out of character for him to give her wedding regalia.
Rassilon kept his tone even as he led the closing libations to Fate and Death, but made no effort to psychically mask that he considered libation a waste of good wine.
***
Rassilon and Epitaxy lingered in the living-room after the party dissipated, long enough to make sure everybody was gone and there was no longer much risk of media attention, then spent a few minutes discussing some opaque plans with their…opaque social club, the Neo-Technologists. A cryptic mixed-sex political organization that Omega frankly didn't want to understand, because its members were always getting arrested at protests. Finally Epitaxy left because she'd been there long enough that people might talk if she stayed any longer.
"Well, that was a disaster," snorted Omega. "I thought Ixchel might actually—"
"Punch somebody? Epitaxy bribed him not to."
"I'm surprised you didn't punch anybody."
"Remove that smug undertone from your demeanor this instant or I may yet."
Omega, to his own surprise, successfully repressed the urge to snort and make some comment to the effect of you can't reach my face. Even though it was literally true. Then again, Omega had watched Rassilon climb onto a table to strike somebody before, so perhaps being seven feet tall wouldn't be enough to save Omega from his wrath.
"I wouldn't dream of being more smug than you usually are. It's only us; you can tell me what sort of absurd scheme this is."
"This whole ordeal is a disaster! Oh, look at this so-called radical activist suddenly admitting he really does need a woman to save him! But it was this or…"
"The government really did threaten you."
"Why would I fabricate such a story?" Rassilon sighed. "I thought you didn't want to hear about my political antics."
"I…didn't realize it had gotten so serious."
"They actually believed I could be intimidated into shutting up! Me! Rassilon! They thought they could just—just threaten my citizenship status, and I'd, what, go back on everything I stand for? Everything that woman does only strengthens my resolve to get rid of her. She thinks she can just humiliate me like this! I'll show her humiliation, I'll…"
He sighed again, burying his face in his hands. Resisting the urge to go on some several-thousand-word rant about the Pythia, no doubt. If he was at the point of expressing frustration so openly and actually getting married, then he must be under enough stress to drive an ordinary person insane; Omega would have hugged him, would have said something reassuring, but Omega also knew better than to show anything vaguely resembling pity for Rassilon.
***
If Epitaxy had any sense, she would have simply decided to hold the wedding on her family's estate, but instead, she and Rassilon announced they would be hosting their wedding at a concert hall, of all places. The one Rassilon had won some bloody prestigious architecture prize for, only for the award ceremony to be swarmed with protestors against the men's liberation and Neo-Technologist movements, and security had to have Rassilon ushered off stage into a safe room until they could finish calming down the crowd.
Being who he was, Rassilon spent the months leading up to the wedding pretending as though everything was going smoothly and then privately fussing over every tiny detail from the seating plan right down to the colour of the bloody napkin-holders. He even left his house to meet with merchants and retailers in person, on his own, pointedly refusing to be accompanied by a female chaperone or carried on a basterna. There was, as he pointed out frequently, no actual law forbidding men from walking the streets or from going outside un-chaperoned; the "rule" was entirely social in nature and could be enforced only in the form of disapproving looks and rude psychic intrusions. Omega politely suggested that he at least cover his hair, which would draw less attention, but Rassilon insisted that his hair was "glorious" and "everybody ought to see it."
(Omega couldn't argue that point. Rassilon did have nice hair—and more importantly, it would be offputting to see somebody like him wearing a veil like a proper young gentleman.)
He said he and Epitaxy were planning the wedding together, but when Rassilon planned something alongside another person, what really happened was that he dictated everything and very occasionally entertained the other person's ideas. Then pretended he came up with them.
"Weddings are one of the most potentially significant networking opportunities. You should see the guest list, it's going to be spectacular. There will be some terribly interesting people present and everything must be above critique. If my father so much as clears his throat in a disapproving tone, I'll—"
"I don't see why you need me there," complained Omega. "What if I have better things to do?"
"Oh, please. It would reflect poorly on me not to invite my dearest friend to my own wedding. What sort of message would that send? Also, nobody who's ever met you would believe you have better things to do."
"I do have better things to do!"
He didn't, but admitting that would be akin to admitting defeat.
"Yes, yes, I'm well aware of how strongly you'd prefer to sulk in your lab than endure a social event, but I'm afraid you'll have to grin and bear it. It's only a week, you'll survive."
He went on to ramble for several minutes straight on how crucial it apparently was that the venue be decorated in a way that was impressive without seeming like he had put too much effort into trying to make it impressive, and how somehow that meant making sure the colour palette was bright enough to be striking and memorable but not bright enough to seem gaudy, something, something, intentional-but-effortless, and it also meant firing four wedding planners.
"What does intentional but effortless even mean?"
"Well, it means you know what you're doing, it's not just luck, but you're not…wasting time on it. Intentional, you meant to be this stunning, but effortless, you didn't agonize over it because being stunning comes to you naturally. You know?"
Omega rolled his eyes.
"Epitaxy knows you're always like this. Why she's deciding she'd like to deal with you until Death do you part is beyond me."
He hoped she would be absolutely miserable putting up with her fiancé's legendary talent for micromanagement. He hoped she'd be miserable and file for divorce and cause a scandal that would at least threaten to put a dent in Rassilon's political career.
"What makes you think I'd waste time on somebody who can't deal with me?"
"I think this marriage is a mistake—"
"I think, my dear friend, that you had better not make a scene at my wedding."
There was no need to add an or else to the end of that statement. Somehow, despite his small stature, Rassilon had the sort of intimidating presence that removed the need for him to make overt threats; all he had to do was vaguely imply them.
***
A party the night before a wedding was traditional, to celebrate the groom's final night as a single man. The duty of planning this horrible ordeal fell to the groom's best friend, and while Omega did not enjoy parties, he knew Rassilon would flip his lid if nobody threw one for him, and nobody else in his entourage could be trusted. They'd probably bring in prostitutes or scantily-clad slaves to do provocative dances or some other sexual debauchery, because they didn't know Rassilon like Omega did; they'd just assume he must enjoy that sort of thing.
Omega had experience dealing with Rassilon at parties, and his legendary shenanigans typically consisted of convincing everybody else at the party to do something ridiculous. One time, he arranged the other partygoers into an impromptu choir and taught them to sing North Shobogan drinking songs. While he accompanied them on the harp. Another time, he talked twenty-some-odd drunk students into stealing a statue of the 507th Pythia and getting it onto the roof of their dorm. Nobody ever found out who was responsible for that one; people assumed it was some manner of omen. Yet another time, what began as a party ended with the writing and performing of a short play.
(Shortly after that party, after sobering up and thinking on it for a few days, Rassilon came to the conclusion that the play had potential; he took a couple of weeks to write a proper script for it, and funded and directed a whole run of productions himself.)
Confronted on the subject, Rassilon claimed that with his "charming personality and head-turning good looks," getting around sexually would be too easy. Too obvious. Organizing and directing successfully-executed group projects, he said, was more impressive.
Which was funny, because it was the sort of baffling statement only Rassilon would ever make. Was he under the impression that it went without saying that people only had sex in the hopes of…seeming impressive for having done it? Apparently, it didn't even cross his mind that people had sex for other reasons.
Why anybody would choose to attend any sort of party was beyond Omega. Partying lacked any intellectual value whatsoever. It was an inherently stupid activity that stupid people took part in because they lacked the intelligence, the depth, to wrap their minds around real worthwhile uses of a person's time; partying was the entertainment of the masses who probably barely knew how to read and thought the most important thing in life was…optics, as Rassilon was so fond of putting it.
Rassilon was clever, sort of, but the truly intellectually gifted knew that real genius placed an insurmountable barrier between them and others. The majority of the population was mind-numbingly stupid, so to relate to them enough to have "good social skill" must require a degree of stupidity. Rassilon was a step above the masses—Omega wouldn't bother with him if he wasn't—but he would never know what it was like to be singularly bright.
Of course Omega wasn't going to waste time planning and organizing a bloody bachelor party as if it were some sort of important event! Putting time and effort into a frivolous social engagement was the sort of thing socialites did, the sort of thing Rassilon would do; it was beneath a man of science. So spending a night out drinking was "boring." Well, it wouldn't bloody well kill Rassilon to do something boring for once in his life instead of turning everything into a big grandiose occasion. He could be as dramatic as he wanted on the day of the wedding.
***
The setup was simple, not because Omega couldn't think of a more creative premise, but because he didn't want to and he wanted to see the look on Rassilon's face when he realized he was not going to get the most unhinged bachelor party of all time.
Booking a hotel for the whole group was surprisingly easy, since Rassilon's friend group included several women, all of whom were used to volunteering as "chaperones" when the group wanted to go out together. Asdextria, one of the "getting arrested for protesting in the Death Zone" regulars, spun a just-barely-convincing story about it definitely not being for a bachelor party, but some business she couldn't divulge without impugning the honor of several of the attendees, and strong-armed the associate into not asking questions.
With that out of the way, Omega awkwardly instructed the rest of the group, none of whom he knew all that well, to simply bring as much alcohol as they could carry and meet up at this nice idyllic outdoor park near the hotel as the evening began to set in.
There'd probably be headlines or something. "Gallifrey's only relevant male architect spotted drinking at mixed-sex party right out in the open like a bloody maniac." But it would hardly be the most scandalous headline ever written about Rassilon. In fact, it wouldn't even be the first time he'd caught flack for attending mixed-sex events; merely the first time the event was for him specifically. He'd find a way to spin it, he always did.
Just as Omega predicted, Rassilon refused to complain out loud about the party's awfully simple, understated setup. He was always on about how complaining openly was a "risky" move. He said that "being a whiner" was among the worst reputations a person could have. Omega had amused himself before in trying to see if he could get a rise out of Rassilon, get him to drop the stiff upper lip and just say he was irritated or angry or otherwise not capable of forcing a situation to do his bidding, and really, it was entertaining whether the attempts succeeded or not.
"It is a wonderful day for a nice walk," said Rassilon, in an affected chipper tone that probably convinced the rest of the group. "I've been cooped up in my studio for far too long."
"I can confirm, there is no workaholic more incorrigible than him on all of Gallifrey—no, in all the Empire!" said Casilda, one of the recent hires at Rassilon's architectural firm.
"All the universe, actually," Rassilon corrected her with a grin.
Everybody Rassilon spent time with was afforded the privilege of his presence for a specific reason. He actually kept notebooks full of notes on the people in his group—basic information like important dates, nicknames they did or didn't like to be called, random trivia that "might be useful" and typically consisted of potential weaknesses; some people got an entire page or more, others were a simple name, birthday, patron goddess, role in the group—but he also kept those notebooks under lock and key, even going so far as to pay an enchantress to put all sorts of hexes on them in case anybody who was not Rassilon tried to open them. And so, why Casilda of all people got invited to anything remained a mystery.
Rylan, whose notebook entry consisted of the basics plus something about being a "moderate" Neo-Technologist at risk of being swayed to the opposition if the Pythia got any better at the art of rhetoric, conveyed telepathically that he couldn't imagine Rassilon drunk.
It was strange that it seemed strange for Rylan to prefer direct telepathy, because in any other social situation, that would be the norm. But it seemed that the Neo-Technologist set all defaulted to talking out loud.
"Speak out, Rylan, you silly individual," said Rassilon. "We'd all love to hear your voice."
The rest of the group repeated the sentiment in varying tones of "friendly" mockery, and Rylan laughed nervously.
"I—I don't know that I ever have spoken outside of. You know. Religious…context," he said.
"Become a heretic!" Cackled another one-sentence-entry Neo-Technologist named Ingvild. "Join us!"
"Hoorah for heresy!" said Asdextria.
The group went about the task of pulling two picnic tables together so they could all sit and play two truths and a lie (except instead of playing it like a soul-sucking workplace team building exercise, they were playing the version that involved alcohol).
***
Drinking games were silly and Omega did not participate in them.
"On the off-chance that we need somebody to be sober, I may as well be that somebody," he said. "The rest of you, enjoy trying to drink each other under the table."
A round of raucous cheers and then somebody suggested they play drink or dare.
Nobody tried to whine and complain and persuade Omega to take part in their rapidly-drunkening antics. Not a single oh, come on to be heard. It was possible that they all knew already, through Rassilon, that Omega was not easily convinced of anything. Or it was possible they didn't know who he was or why he was here and were just sort of politely trying to ignore them so they could party.
(Or it was possible they realized that he, weighing nearly two-hundred kilos, would have to consume their entire supply of alcohol to actually get drunk.)
There was something off about Rassilon. He was closed-off as ever, not transmitting anything, but a vague aura of something foreboding radiated off him as he finished off his fifth drink for the night, his usual suave-social-butterfly laugh starting to sound suspiciously adjacent to a drunken giggle.
Once the party made it to the point in that counting-to-twenty-one-while-adding-ridiculous-rules drinking game where everybody was rather tired and emotional (so to speak), the speaking out loud had largely died down in favor of telepathy.
Not entirely, though; somebody loudly suggested they should consume the rest of the booze by way of a good old drinking contest.
The "somebody" in question was actually Rassilon himself, but it took Omega a moment to realize, because that was not the sort of thing anybody would expect Rassilon to say. He'd always been so cautious about drinking. He was actually well on his way to getting jober as a sudge, now, and instead of trying to come up with an excuse to stop, he was…doing the exact opposite.
"Are you feeling alright, Rass?"
"Feeling—feeling alright—? Oh, please, I know I don't look like a heavyweight, but I can and will out-drink all of these fine people!"
He spoke with his father's accent, the distinct dialect of the rural North Shobogan peasantry, apparently unconcerned with keeping his voice "perfect" nor with seeming unsophisticated. Something had to be wrong. If Rassilon wasn't bothering to overthink how he imagined people might perceive him, then something was wrong.
Casilda went first, lost pathetically quickly, and leaned on a nearby tree to vomit into a rubbish bin. Rassilon, now proper red-faced, slurred something about Casilda not being able to hold her liquor, and asked who wanted to go next.
Omega sat down across from him.
"I'll go. This won't be difficult."
The rest of the group stared, like they were suddenly remembering Omega existed. And that a man his size could probably out-drink anybody in the Empire.
"You want—I thought you hated fun," slurred Rassilon.
"Watching you drink yourself under the table will be fun. For me."
Asdextria handed over two glasses. She looked like she was excited to see how this would play out. For a moment, Omega wondered how many people in this group secretly wanted to watch Rassilon make a fool of himself. It could be all of them, for all he knew. They were, after all, a curated collection more than a group of friends. They could all be hovering around him waiting for an opportunity to stab him in the back, or at least to see him humiliated.
Then he wondered how many people secretly wanted to see him make a fool of himself, and suddenly he was more in the mood to show off.
The duo made eye contact as they raised their glasses, and Omega was telepathically overcome with a sudden sensation of weightlessness and dizziness that could only come with insane quantities of alcohol (apparently Rassilon was drunk enough to forget not to…do that). He dropped his glass and winced.
"Okay, really, Rass, how much have you had?"
"Fuck you!" Rassilon laughed and got right to drinking.
One of the lackeys poured another glass for Omega, and this time he pointedly avoided eye contact with Rassilon before chugging it. It would be a stain upon his honor as a seven-footer and as a strongman to lose a drinking contest to somebody about one-quarter of his weight. No amount of telepathic trickery could change that.
To Rassilon's credit, he made it through three more full glasses before falling out of his chair. For a tiny little slip of a man who almost never drank at all, he held his liquor impressively well. What really mattered, though, was that Omega had just officially bested him at something. In front of an audience. Omega punched the air and whooped obnoxiously, amidst the various ohhhhhs and oooooohs of the rest of the group (most of whom had probably never seen Rassilon lose at anything). And then he walked over to make sure his friend was alright.
Rassilon was, of course, unconscious. Really, with how much he'd been drinking, the fact that he'd only just passed out now was a shining testament to how stubborn he was.
"The man of the hour is officially out of commission," said Omega. "I'm taking him back to our room. The rest of you…I don't know, find another game to play, or something."
***
The weather was nice for a walk, and nobody was out at this hour of the night. Omega's personal deadlift record was four-hundred kilos, so of course it wasn't exactly difficult for him to carry Rassilon (who weighed about one-tenth of that record, thanks to decades of getting so wrapped up in his work that he forgot to eat) back to the hotel.
Even the strongest telepaths known to Gallifrey couldn't keep a mental shield up while unconscious. It was something you had to do, actively, not a reflex. Not something that just passively happened. This was one of the many reasons why Rassilon hated sleeping on principle and point-blank refused to fall asleep in the presence of another person. He didn't even realize how incomprehensible his thought process was to most people; as far as he was concerned, letting his guard down for even a moment meant…actually, Omega wasn't certain what exactly Rassilon was afraid might happen if he let his guard down, but knowing him, it probably involved some manner of social consequence.
Right now, there wasn't much going on in his head by way of thoughts. Neither the inebriated nor the unconscious tended to do much thinking, and Rassilon was currently both. What there was was a seemingly endless reserve of stress and anxiety.
And something else, something similar to anxiety but distinct and deeply out-of-character for Rassilon; fear. He was actually afraid. Of government retribution, of the war, and of his impending marriage. A memory drifted unusually close to the surface. A woman with the same copper skin and hooded blue eyes as Rassilon, her hands around the neck of a man—no, a boy—shaking him like a wild dog with its prey, her face contorted with fury. Omega recognized the boy; a younger Alcyone. The woman, he'd never seen before, but it wasn't difficult to deduce her identity.
Rassilon never spoke about his mother. Omega never asked, mostly because he'd always assumed she was dead and that asking about her would only make things awkward. He wasn't going to ask about this memory, either, in fact he was going to pretend he hadn't come across it, but it certainly recontextualized some of the things Rassilon had said over the years.
***
The singular bed in their hotel room was meant to be slept on by a normal-sized person; the entire mattress was exactly as long as Omega was tall. He set Rassilon down, then sighed, wondering for the millionth time why he did all this in the first place. He could have just let Rassilon and his group get some grander event together and party without him, and gone home to his nice, comfortable custom bed he didn't have to curl up to fit on. But it was too late now; if he went home now, he'd probably wake up the whole house. Better to just commit and catch up on sleep some other time.
He laid down slowly, hoping not to disturb his sleeping companion, but it was apparently a moot point;
"I don't want to get married," Rassilon slurred, apparently already awake. "I don't…'m gonna kill the Pythia."
"Before you do that, you should go back to sleep," Omega whispered.
Rassilon took a deep, shaky breath, sounding suspiciously like somebody who was trying not to cry. Too drunk and too worn-out to shield himself, even awake (or partially awake), he couldn't keep up his usual pretenses; the only feelings coming from him now were anger and desperation. He rolled over and leaned his face against Omega's chest, like the concept of refusing to be vulnerable wasn't even occurring to him.
"We should just run away," he murmured.
"You're drunk. Think about running away in the morning."
"Together, you and I, we…"
He drifted off again before finishing the sentence.
Omega was scarcely more fond of telepathy than Rassilon, but he tried his best to project some vague sense of reassurance as he pulled the blanket over both of them. He draped his arm around Rassilon, his hand covering most of the smaller man's back, and wondered what the chances were that he would fall asleep at all tonight.
***
Despite everything, Rassilon still dragged himself out of bed at an unholy hour. His shields were back up, his demeanor as characteristically impenetrable as ever. He neither said nor projected anything to address the night before; he simply said, in a voice slightly more ragged than usual, that he had to go and begin the process of getting ready for the wedding. Something about a spa appointment followed by an appointment with a team of makeup artists followed by another lengthy appointment with a hairstylist. In that moment, with his hair a bedheaded mess and his eyes red and groggy, it was hard to imagine that a few hours from now he'd probably be more dressed-up than the Pythia.
It was satisfying, in a way. Epitaxy would get to see Rassilon all dishevelled and exhausted eventually, no doubt after their wedding night, but Omega saw him like that first. Omega laid beside him first.
***
The wedding, of course, was an event.
As gratifying as it would have been to show up and find the whole thing hideously tacky, all that obsessive planning wasted…it was, in fact, the most impressive wedding Omega had ever seen. Every tiny detail was perfectly cohesive.
"I'm an architect," Rassilon said flippantly. "Aesthetic cohesion is part of my job."
Three receptions, festivities lasting a whole week, an entire philharmonic orchestra and a professional concert choir, bloody fireworks—and all of the staff were free and paid, not one slave in sight. The first reception ended with a harp solo Rassilon had written specifically for the occasion, because he was egotistical.
He wore ten different outfits, four of which he'd designed himself—architect, activist, harpist, fashion designer, when in the blessed names of all of the Menti Celesti did Rassilon sleep—and each one of which would probably have dozens of articles written about them.
A few people in attendence looked like they were fighting off a brain aneurysm when the bride and groom recited identical vows, as if anybody had actually expected Rassilon to go with the more traditional vows that would have included a clause about obeying his wife as if her will was that of the goddesses and all that. Which was a moot point anyway, because Rassilon would argue with the goddesses if he could.
There were thousands people at the wedding, all in all, which had to be more people than either Rassilon or Epitaxy had ever even spoken to in their combined lives. The bride and groom made the rounds a few times, switching between pure telepathy and verbal conversation, but they came back to a few specific groups frequently. Speaking in hushed tones and throwing wary glances over their shoulders like these particular conversations were more than the usual trite small talk one made at weddings.
Omega couldn't be bothered to keep track of Rassilon's always-rotating entourage, but he did recognize a few of the prominent Neo-Technologists who were usually at protests with the man. Getting arrested for protesting in the Death Zone was actually not their first time getting arrested as a group, but it was the most publicized instance. That fiasco had caused such a stir in the media that the Pythia herself responded publically, with a statement condemning abolitionists as heretics who wanted to turn the divinely-ordained social order on its head. And make entertainment illegal. She also said that "ridiculous boys" like Rassilon needed to be "kept under control," and that if any of her husbands behaved as he did, she would beat the delusions of grandeur out of them herself.
Rassilon and Epitaxy had a good laugh about that one.
The only thing that actually changed at the Death Zone thanks to all their theatrics was an increase in security staff.
Epitaxy's two other husbands were present, but made it apparent that they were there only because they had to be. When the part of the wedding came where all three of them—Rassilon and the two irrelevant husbands whose names weren't worth remembering—had to join hands and say some spiel about behaving as family and not ripping each other's throats out, the two elder husbands held their hands out with their palms facing downwards (a known sign of disapproval).
It was difficult to blame them for their obvious disdain. They had both married Epitaxy in boring, traditional, religious ceremonies; no fireworks for them. To say nothing of how unorthodox it was for the countess to name her youngest husband as the highest-ranking one.
Rassilon grabbed their hands and forcibly twisted them the other way around, the serene smile on his face not faltering for a moment.
Closing the final ceremony was a grandiose series of animal sacrifices and a prayer to the Menti Celesti; may Life be patient, Time be generous, Pain be our teacher, Fate be forgiving, and Death be gentle.