Work Text:
The sun was wrong.
That was the first thing Wyll had clocked, somewhere around the first hour of Stormz's little game—the sun was wrong, pressing down on the arena's open field with malice.
The sky above was a bleached, merciless white that had no business being that bright, and the heat radiated off the packed dirt in visible waves that made the distance ripple like a fever dream.
It felt… wrong. Slushly didn’t look affected by it, but knowing the man, he could have been hiding it. That didn’t change the fact that all the other players seemed completely unfazed by the sun.
Wyll had fought in heat before. He'd fought in rain, in sleet, in the kind of dry cold that cracked lips and locked human joints into grinding half-movements. His body handled all of it—there was something that managed it, kept everything running at the right temperature, pushed excess heat out through the panels along his collar, the joints of his legs and the backs of his hands whenever it climbed too high.
He had never, not once in his life, felt hot.
He felt hot now.
It had crept up slowly, and then all at once. The first hour had been fine. The second, he'd noticed something was slightly off and decided it wasn't worth stopping for. The third hour, whatever usually kept him cool was answering slower than it should, running behind, struggling to catch up with what four to five back-to-back fights and a sprint across open ground had cost him. He was running on fumes, and fumes, apparently, didn't cool well.
He'd noted it. Kept moving. Told himself he'd deal with it later.
Later, it turned out, was now.
He was crouched behind a collapsed wall on the arena's edge—what had once been a village before Stormz had gotten his dramatic little hands on the layout—with his sword across his knees.
He tried to do the thing. The internal thing, the push, directing heat outward the way he always could. It stalled. He tried again. Got about a third of what he needed, the rest dragging like a machine running on a bad connection.
He stood, because there were things that needed doing.
The world tilted.
His knee hit the dirt and his hand caught the top of the ruined wall, stone crumbling under a grip with no precision left in it, and then his arm buckled and the rest of him followed. The ground came up and hit him hard, shoulder first.
The thud was considerable.
He registered several things, in order: the packed dirt against his cheek, which was cooler than he was and therefore almost pleasant. The faint orange glow he couldn't see but could infer, reflected dimly in the flat of his sword where it had skidded away slightly. The fact that his hair had fallen across his face and he didn't have the coordination to move it. His tail was limp, pressed against his leg.
"Fuck." he muttered to the dirt, in his own voice, which came out with an electronic crackle underneath it that he disliked intensely.
Footsteps. Fast ones. Slushly moved with a kind of coiled efficiency at the best of times, and right now he was moving like a man who had heard something suspiciously concerning.
"Wyll."
The skid of boots on dirt. Then Slushly was crouching over him, and Wyll had approximately two seconds to decide how he was going to play this.
"I'm resting," Wyll said instantly.
Slushly stared down at him. "You're face-down in the dirt."
"I'm aware of where I am."
"Your neck is glowing."
"It does that sometimes."
"It—" Slushly reached out and touched the side of Wyll's neck—quick, instinctive—and pulled his hand back immediately like he'd grabbed something off a stove. "What—"
"Don't touch the panels."
"They're orange—"
"I'm aware they're orange, you don't need to—" Wyll, with what remained of his dignity, pushed himself up onto one elbow. The world tilted again. He held very still and waited. "Help me up."
Slushly helped him up, ending with Wyll sitting against the ruined wall. Slushly crouched in front of him and looked at his face with an expression operating at maximum neutrality and not quite managing it.
"How long." Slushly demanded.
"How long what."
"Has your neck been orange."
"A while." The crackle was worse than a minute ago. He talked through it. "My—the thing that manages my temperature isn't keeping up. I'm—" He stopped. Slushly was watching him with the stupid patient look he wore when he was waiting for the real answer. "I'm fine."
"You were just face-down in the dirt."
"It's a habit."
"Wyll." Half a register lower. Done performing patience. "What happens if it keeps going?"
A pause. Wyll, who had enough sense to know when a lie became genuinely counterproductive, said: "Things stop working. Things I'd rather kept working." He held Slushly's gaze.
The expression on Slushly's face did something complicated and then settled into decision. He stood.
"We're moving," he announced. "Camp. Now."
"I can walk."
Slushly looked at him, his eyes glancing up before going down and then sweeping back up again.
"I can," Wyll insisted, with conviction that lasted exactly until he tried to stand, found the world doing the tilting thing again, and put his hand back on the wall.
"You're swaying. Come on." Slushly ducked under his arm and took his weight without asking, solid and matter-of-fact, and Wyll had objections. Several. He simply didn't have the capacity to properly voice them while simultaneously allocating everything he had toward not going face-first into the dirt again. So he let it happen, and noted the objections internally, and began muttering.
It started quiet. Barely audible. The kind of thing that was more breath than words.
"—can walk perfectly well on my own—don't need to be escorted like some—absolutely humiliating, this whole—you of all people—"
"I can hear you, you know," Slushly sighed.
Wyll did not stop, his tail weakly yet smugly wagging once. He wanted Slushly to hear him, obviously. "—months of this and now I'm being carried—"
"I'm not carrying you."
"—practically carried, and he's smug about it, you can feel the smugness, it's radiating off him like his stinky smell—"
"I'm not smug nor stinky.”
"—absolutely insufferable—"
"Are you done?"
"—not remotely—"
"Wyll."
"—give me two more minutes—"
"We don't have two more minutes, you're at whatever temperature you're at and the camp is there, so—"
"Fine." Wyll let the muttering subside, with the air of someone making a significant concession. "Fine. We can talk about this later."
"Looking forward to it," Slushly said flatly.
The route to the camp was four minutes at normal pace. It took them nine. Wyll was not going to acknowledge this.
The shade hit like a different world.
Not enough—nowhere near enoughaabut the temperature under the canopy dropped several degrees immediately, Wyll's body registered the change and did something that could only be described as grateful, a slight easing that he hadn't known he was bracing against until it arrived.
He exhaled.
Slushly steered them toward their camp they'd put together that morning and lowered Wyll against the base of the largest tree with the careful deliberateness of someone managing cargo they didn't want to drop.
Wyll sat down without protest, his tail drooping.
This, more than anything, probably communicated how bad it was.
He let his head tip back against the bark. The shade was real, thank god.
"Alright," Slushly said, already going through the pack with focused efficiency. "Water. We have water." His eyes moved around the camp. "The bucket—I found a bucket this morning."
"Why did you find a bucket."
"Because it was there. Because I pick things up." He deadpanned. "I'll get water. Cold water's good, right?"
"Yes." Wyll looked down at his hands. "Cold water on the panels—neck, wrists—it helps pull the heat out when I can't do it myself." He paused. Thought about it. Decided he didn’t care. "Don't wring it out too much. You want it damp, not dripping, but—"
"I know how a wet cloth works."
"I'm not suggesting you don't, I'm—"
"I'll be back in a minute." Slushly stood, bucket in hand. He looked down at Wyll with an expression that was making a considerable effort to be neutral. "Don't move."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Mean it."
"I mean it." Wyll looked up at him. "Go."
Slushly went, moving fast through the trees. Wyll watched the gap he'd left and then closed his eyes.
The numbers his body was running weren't reassuring. He tried again to do the thing—the push, the redirect—and got less than before. The shade was helping hold the line but not enough to reverse it on its own. He needed the water.
He heard himself make a sound. Low, garbled at the edges. His voice, but wrong—the heat getting into the parts of him that produced it, roughing up the signal. He had not meant to make the sound.
You knew, and you kept going, and now you're sitting against a tree in a manufactured death arena waiting for Slushly to bring you a bucket, was what was running in his head.
He was still thinking about that when the footsteps returned.
Slushly came back at a pace that was technically walking and functionally almost running, bucket nearly full, barely spilling. He was slightly winded. He set it down, dunked the cloth from the pack, wrung it once, and crouched in front of Wyll.
"Tell me if this is wrong," he said, and pressed the wet cloth to the side of Wyll's neck.
Wyll went still.
The cold against the panels was immediate. Sharp and clean, drawing the heat outward, away, through the cloth and into the air rather than sitting trapped in him. He exhaled, slow and deliberate, with the particular control of someone choosing not to make a noise about it.
"Better?" Slushly was watching his face with more attention than Wyll was strictly comfortable with.
"...Yes."
"The colour's changing. The orange." Slushly tilted his head. "Little darker."
"That's—" crackle, pop, Wyll pushed through it. "that's good. It means it's working."
"Okay." Slushly adjusted, pressing more firmly, and the lightning on his arms pulsed its low rhythm—quieter than usual, the way it always settled when he was focused. "Keep talking."
Wyll opened one eye, his tail twitching. "Why."
"Your voice is worse than it was. I'll know if it gets worse-worse." He dunked the cloth again, wrung it, applied it to Wyll's wrist. "So talk."
Wyll considered this. "This," he mumbled, "is possibly the most undignified thing that has ever happened to me."
"You fell face-first into dirt a few minutes ago."
"Which is exactly what I'm referring to, thank you for the thorough recap." He watched Slushly work. The lightning on his forearms traced its slow pattern, the pale yellow-white of it cooler-looking than the rest of the afternoon, though that was probably just contrast. "The cloth. Wring it more before you apply it."
Slushly looked up. "I just wrung it."
"You wrung it once."
"That's what wringing is."
"Give it here, dumbass." Wyll took the cloth, ignoring the Hey! from the man beside him and wrung it with both hands—steadier than he'd expected, the shade doing its work—until barely a drip remained, and handed it back. "Like that. Better contact."
Slushly looked at the cloth. Looked at him. "Heh—You're giving me technique notes," he smiled, not unkindly, "while overheating."
"Wipe that smile off your face, idiot. I'm giving you technique notes because I'm overheating. If you do it wrong it just traps the heat instead of—It just doesn't work as well. Do it like I showed you."
"Right." Slushly nodded and applied the cloth again, this time with better pressure, and Wyll's body responded to the improved contact. Slushly watched his face while he worked. "How close were you? When you went down."
"Close enough."
"That's not a number."
"It's not a number you'd have context for." Wyll exhaled. "But closer than I'd like."
Slushly was quiet for a moment. "What would've happened? If you'd stayed out there."
"Something would have stopped working." Wyll turned his head slightly, enough to look at him directly. "Permanently, probably." He let that sit. "I wouldn't have died, necessarily. But whatever came back up would have been missing pieces."
Slushly's jaw moved. Something in his expression went tight and then deliberately loosened. "Right," he said. "Okay." He dunked the cloth again. "We're not doing that."
"No," Wyll agreed. "We're not."
The bucket went back and forth. Slushly made two more trips to the stream, fast and quiet, returning both times without incident. He'd started scanning the perimeter on his way back—Wyll tracked the habit.
The cloth went through its rotations. Neck, wrists, neck again. The system of it became almost rhythmic, and Wyll found himself noting the temperature like a man watching a kettle, marking each small drop with the particular satisfaction of motion in the right direction.
"Say something," Slushly asked gently (his voice made Wyll a little uncomfortable, because Slushly had never asked him for something like that.), on the second trip's return.
"I've been talking."
"Something that isn't insulting me."
“Touché.” Wyll snickered, before changing the topic. "How long do you think Stormz runs this before he gets bored?"
Slushly settled back on his heels. "Stormz? I have no idea. He looked entertained this morning."
"He always looks entertained. He looked thrilled when he captured us." Wyll let his head rest against the bark. “At least I wasn’t with some random chungus.”
Slushly's mouth pressed flat, holding something back. "Is that a compliment?"
"It's an accurate observation. Don't make it a whole thing."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"Good."
"Extremely not making it a thing."
"Slushly."
The laugh escaped this time, brief and genuine, and Slushly ducked his head over the bucket to let it pass.
The lightning on his arms flared with it, a quick bright arc, and then settled again. When he looked back up, his expression had done the thing it sometimes did—the settling, like a surface after weather, something quieter underneath.
He applied the cloth to the back of Wyll's neck, and held it there with steady pressure.
Wyll's eyes closed.
The cool moved through him in a clean line, like water finding a crack, spreading down and outward. Something in him that had been pulled tight for the last several hours began to loosen.
"Better.” he hummed, before Slushly could ask.
"Good." A pause. "Your voice sounds cleaner."
"It settles as the heat drops." He could hear it himself, the crackle smoothing out, the words coming out more like themselves. "It'll be normal by the time we move."
"When's that?"
"Thirty minutes. Probably less."
Slushly nodded. He pulled the cloth back, checked it-warm, the heat it had absorbed from the panels sitting in the fabric—and re-dipped it without being told.
His hands were, Wyll noticed again, cooler than the afternoon. Human temperature, which against the state of Wyll's overheating systems felt almost cold. Whenever Slushly's fingers brushed the edge of the panels, or the metal at Wyll's jaw where it met the skin, Wyll's body clocked it like a signal.
He was thinking about this when Slushly asked quietly: "Does it help if I—"
He reached forward and touched Wyll's forehead. The back of his hand, quick and assessing.
He pulled it back immediately. "Okay," he said. "Yeah, that's still—"
"Hot," Wyll deadpanned. "Obviously."
"Your whole head is—" Slushly gestured vaguely. "Can I do the cloth there too, or is that—"
"The cloth on the face," Wyll stared at Slushly as if he just asked Wyll if he could fly, "would be— no. No." He paused. "The panels are the priority. The face is mostly… cosmetic. It'll cool as the panels cool."
"Right." Slushly nodded. He was looking at the top of Wyll's head with an expression that Wyll couldn't entirely see from this angle. His hand was still in the air between them, slightly, like he'd had an idea that hadn't resolved yet.
"What now.”
"Your hair." Slushly said it simply, stating a thing. "My hand won't burn there, right? It's not like the panels."
Wyll considered this. "No," he said. "It's—no. It's just hair."
"Okay." Slushly moved his hand, and his fingers settled into Wyll's hair—carefully, where the strands had been pushed back from falling, medium-length and slightly damp at the roots from the heat of him. He held still for a moment, just resting, and then pulled back toward the nape in one slow, even stroke.
Wyll's head leaned into it.
Not a dramatic thing. Barely noticeable. But his head tipped back and slightly toward the touch with the unthinking ease of something that didn't have to be decided—some old wiring, some instinct that operated below the level of deliberate choice, gravity or relief or something that was very inconveniently both.
He caught it a half-second after it happened.
He did not correct it.
Slushly didn't comment. He continued. One hand on the cloth at the neck panels, steady, and the other moving through Wyll's hair in slow, even pulls, unhurried.
Wyll’s hands fidgeted, shifting to rest in his lap, and he seemed to just realise his predicament with Slushly now. He blinked. His tail gave a little wag.
Slushly's fingers moved through his hair, that same unhurried drag, and the cool of his palm where it briefly settled was a clean, specific relief in a way that Wyll's processing kept flagging as significant and Wyll kept flagging back as not now.
“How are you doing?”
"Better." And it was true—the number was down again, his cooling finding its footing under the sustained help. His voice was nearly clean now. The crackle was there if he listened for it, less there if he didn't. "Getting there."
"Good." A pause. "You scared me. When I heard the thud."
Wyll didn't answer immediately.
"I didn't know what I was going to find," Slushly admitted. "When I came around the wall. I didn't know if someone had attacked, if you'd been hit, or if it was something else. The thud was loud."
"I'm aware." Wyll complained. "I was there for the thud."
"I know you were there for the—" Slushly stopped, a smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah. Okay."
"It was a reasonable response," Wyll said, which was as close as he was going to come, and Slushly seemed to understand this, because he didn't push it. The hand in Wyll's hair made one more slow pass and Wyll almost leaned into it.
Almost.
"You need to rest," Slushly concluded. "Actually rest. Just for twenty minutes, ‘kay?”
"If anyone attacks—"
"I'll tell you."
"If the sounds change—"
"I'll tell you."
Wyll looked at him. Slushly looked back, steady, the lightning running its slow calm rhythm across his forearms.
"...Fine," Wyll sighed.
He let his head rest back against the bark. His eyes closed. The cloth at his neck was doing its work, the shade was doing its work
"Idiot," he murmured, to the air, to nothing in particular.
From the man in front of him, without looking back: "Still hearing you."
"I know.” Wyll snickered.
”I seriously hate you, man.”