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The bar itself was nothing to particularly write home about; it was dingy at best, grimy at worst. There was a loose board on the floor that if you stepped on it too hard, it'd creak like it was about to give way and take half the place with it.
The owner was a grouch that would cut you off early because the wind blew east that day, and the bathroom sink in the men's room was notorious for spurting if you turned it on too fast.
But it was familiar in all its dinginess; a home away from home for most students and residents in their sprawling district. An escape from academia as much as labor, a staple spot for comradery and memories.
"To Qifrey!" Their small group cheers, glasses clinking together perhaps a tad too aggressively, if the beer that sloshes over the edge and nearly onto Olly's sleeve says anything. It's hard to be mad about such a small thing, though, when the smile on his best friend's face is so—warm. Genuine. Sweetened with flattery and a level of sentimentality he never lets escape.
"You're all too kind," He says, politely setting down his pint to instead focus on the fritters they'd ordered, still piping hot if the flinch of his fingers says anything about it.
"Don't be so humble! A master's degree is nothing to sniff at! You worked hard for it," Alaira interjects, leaning too much weight on their commandeered table, Hieheart hastily grabbing hold of his edge to keep all of its feet firmly set on the aged, ragged wood.
"She's right, and to manage that on top of work? I can't imagine it." The tallest adds, somehow pulling a miracle in holding the table, taking a fritter, and sneaking a sip of his glass all in the span of a few seconds.
"It was certainly challenging." The star of the night defers, allowing just a smidge of the truth trickle through the cracks of his tone.
Challenging doesn't even cover it. Olly saw Qifrey more than anyone, and he hardly saw the man in the final stretch. The only time hed get a proper conversation with his friend of many years was when he would impede his presence himself.
But that's just how Qifrey had always been; always occupied, on the cusp of a little too much, somehow managing to juggle it just so. Making it seem doable, effortless, and joyful.
Very few people saw the truth in his curated image. The late nights, the early mornings. Dozing off on Ollys' terrible leather couch that got sticky in the summer. Drinking from his paint water mug. Flitting between cleaning and baking fits.
And shopping for houses, apparently. In the idyllic and borderline remote hills of the Downs. Far away from the boarding school, from the great halls of their university. From Beldaruit and Mr. Nolnas' stationary shop.
From Olruggio.
He hadn't meant to snoop, honest. He'd just wanted to pay Qifrey a visit, get them out for some air and escape deadlines that plagued them both. Strong-arming the man into getting out of his pajamas and into some actual pants so that they could stretch their legs in tandem.
He'd started rifling through the plethora of papers on his friends work desk—nothing new there. Concept sketches for paintings, some notes to himself with check marks proving he'd done the intended tasks. Rough drafts of his dissertation.
A cottage. Printed on pristine white paper. A little worse for wear, but its foundations were obviously solid. Persisting through the seasons. Sprawling hills of rich grass, framed by flora clearly well cared for, the cobblestone walk-way picturesque and romantic.
Marked with Qifrey's unmistakable scrawl, the price circled and its date of availability highlighted. A phone number etched into the side like a brand.
And what had Olly done?
Calmly set the paper down as if he never saw it, ventured further into his friends flat and asked him to pick up the pace, like always.
He hadn't slept that night.
"So?" Alaira prompts, drawn out and teasing,
"So?" Qifrey parrots in return, light-hearted on the surface, peering over his mug he's barely touched.
"You taking a job at the boarding school? You know alums get hiring priority."
"Ah," Qifrey says, lilting and wispy, as if he was so caught up in life he simply forgot that fact. "Perhaps, we shall see when I start putting my resume out there. My work at the community center may lead me elsewhere, whose to say?"
"Why look elsewhere?" She questions as blithely as asking about the weather, resting her chin on the back of her hand. "Professor Beldaruit would put in a good word if you so much as hinted at the idea of working there."
"It would certainly set you for life, that's for sure," Hieheart tacks on, younger and loftier than the rest of them, but certainly no fool. Everyone knew that cozying to the the staff was a one-way ticket to a job practically on a silver platter. It helped to have known them personally, to have garnered their affection and their academic respect through years of tutelage.
Qifrey had—some of that.
"I suppose only time will tell," He laughs, all coy and feathery. It's the way he responds when he already knows the answer, the outcome, but chooses to withhold it. Like keeping cards close to ones chest, waiting to see what the best outcome would be.
The crisply printed, color image of that cottage flashes unbidden across Olruggios' memory. The swoop and crash of his insides. The clatter of Qifrey faffing about in his bathroom contrasting against the conclave of his chest.
The yawning hole that began to swallow him with each passing second. The same one that makes itself known now, stuffed into the cramped booth of the pub.
That had been weeks ago. Right before his dissertation, his graduation, and still Qifrey hasn't said a thing about it to him.
He figured—if it did ever come to it, he would be the first—
It's irresponsible, he's past the point of his life where he can get shit faced on a random week-day evening. He's got deadlines to focus on, a meeting with his publisher later that week and he needs to have something to show her, but—
He takes the mouthful anyway, then another, swallowing the familiar beer like he was embracing an old friend. Grimacing against the especially hoppy taste and setting his mug down a tad disruptively.
"Come now, there's plenty a' time to talk job logistics later. We're celebrating, aren't we?"
The energy at the table perks up almost immediately, Olly's ever sharp eyes catching the way his friends shoulders smooth and loosen the same moment Alaira comes to a half stand, mug once again in the air.
"Here here!"
"To Qifrey!"
He laughs, raising his own glass good naturedly, "You all did this already—"
"To Qifrey!"
Olly isn't sure how much time passes between the first pint and the third (fourth?) but it's enough for the world to go a little fuzzy and pleasant at the edges. Allowing himself to bask in the thrum of the busy bar on a Thursday night. Despite its general air of not transplant friendly, the warm, low lights and the poorly chosen songs cutting through the jukebox offer at least a brief moment of solace.
But then, as always, like he's been doing since day one, his eyes are drawn the stark white of his companions' hair. Huddled away at the far corner of the bar seats, shoulders straight but head low.
He can't see from his position, but he can imagine it clear as day; Qifreys' finger gently tracing the rim of his glass, his gaze distant and thoughtful as he went somewhere not even he could follow.
An island just a little too far out of reach.
It's so odd, knowing someone like the back of your hand, yet sometimes turning them just so and feeling like you don't know them at all.
He plasters his chest against his friends back, flattered and melancholy all the same when his friend doesn't flinch. Worse so when his hand reaches back to pat playfully at his dark hair.
"Oi, what are you doing over here all by your lonesome? It's your party after all."
"Watching Alaira beat Hieheart at billiards is plenty of fun for me at the moment." The tone is playful, lilted into something almost cheeky. Well practiced and perhaps, even often times genuine. But there's always something to it that translates to Qifrey being there, but not all there.
Everything and everyone at arms length, surveying what lies in front of him with far too severe of an eye so young. "And you? Are you having fun?" He prompts, shrugging Olly off enough to turn to him. The smile is fake, but the softening in his brows isn't. The expansion of his pupil and the warmth that exudes from him in droves.
Olruggio wishes it was enough. Wishes it didn't hurt so damn bad being loved by and loving someone so damn—flighty.
But that's just how he's always been. Olruggio had known that. Had chosen to chase the sour and melancholy boy down the hallways anyway. Wiggled and squirmed his way into the role of best friend, had learned how he ticks to such a degree it felt like second nature.
He knew that. And yet his chest hurt anyway.
"Aye," he says, brackets his arm against the others shoulder best he can from his elevated position, "but I'll bet I'll have more fun if you have another drink with me and we go cheer Alaira on." As if the woman needs it; she'd paid for plenty of uni-day meals by swindling innocent bystanders from their hard earned cash with her skills.
Qifrey smiles, a little more real, a lot more indulgent as he breathes a gentle, "Alright."
He comes to with his face against Qifrey's shoulder, the ambient noise of the train and his friends' ever present scent. Shifting through the years as detergents changed, taste in cologne changed, but Qifrey. Always something—antique. Ink and paper, warm cloth on a sunny day.
He'd taken many a naps to those smells, over the years.
"Which train're we on?" He mutters, closes his eyes for what he swears is just a minute, slouched and heavy.
"Yours."
"Not 'ours?"
"Yours had the shorter time, I can just sleep on the couch."
"Don't be stupid," He quips, rubs his stubble against the soft fabric of his friends' beloved petticoat, admiring the rasp and catch. It'd been a gift from Beldaruit so many winters ago, perfect for his spindly frame. "Y'can crash with me."
"And risk you elbowing me in the stomach making a run for the bathroom again? Perhaps not."
"That was one time." He doesn't whine, but it's a close thing, stowing his hands into his hoodie pockets and shuffling closer. Qifrey let it happen. It always made something squeeze and squirm inside of him. Something dangerously close to smug.
It was an honor as much as a point of puzzlement, being Qifrey's chosen person. Free to touch, to grab. There were fellows and ladies in equal measure that, when his best friend had begun to grow into himself, to be confident and charming, would have paid hefty sums to do what Olly did on a daily basis.
"Hm," he huffs, taking his weight with practiced ease and an affectionate exasperation, "I suppose I'll have to take your word for it then."
"That because y' believe me or 'cause you hate the couch?"
The pointed silence is enough of an answer, biting at the shoulder within range and taking the laughter that follows as his prize.
He almost forgets what he was drinking away from like that. Almost.
The inside of his flat was the same it had always been; chaotic. Controlled, of course, he wasn't an animal. But rocketing straight out of school into publishing had its set-backs. He'd never truly kicked his habit of ambitious projects on a tight schedule, consumed by his concepts and blinded to time and bodily needs.
A blanket tossed thoughtlessly aside on his couch, his tea mug from that morning on his counter, his own notes plastered on his fridge, his coffee table.
It's been home for so long the novelty of his space had long worn off, but something about the evening has him seeing it all with new, cloudy eyes. Qifrey shuffling them inside with a level of intimacy and habit that resonates harshly against his fresh aching heart.
Even with the flat being in his name, the furniture paid for by him, every nook and cranny of it imbedded with him as a person, there was still Qifrey.
Knick-knacks gifted to him through all their stages of life, the coffee table they'd gotten into an argument about fitting into a rented truck. Qifrey's spare toothbrush and eye care kit, a blanket only he likes, because he likes the heavier ones even when it gets warm, the mad bastard.
They brush teeth in unison, Olly leaving to give the other privacy to care for his prosthetic. Changing into clothes that might be Olly's, might be Qifreys', abandoned and mixed after sleepovers in endless life stages.
Sprawled out on his (first!) full size bed, forced to lay on his side per Qifrey's demands, the other lying on his back with his eyes closed, but shoulder pressed against his back in a soothing sign of company and comfort.
It's all so—familiar. Has been for years. Easy as breathing. A waltz he hasn't had to check his steps to since he still had baby teeth. The coolness of the night, Qifrey's presence. The knowledge that tomorrow, the other will raid his fridge and make him eat a proper breakfast, teasing him about his drinking.
Maybe he'll stay for an extra cup of tea, be nosy about his latest chapter, make himself known in the way he likes to most.
Or. Maybe he'll leave. And—
It strikes him, clear and sharp, that this is temporary. It had always been temporary. Qifrey is a restless soul, self imbued or not, he was never meant for the monotonous hustle of the city. For the stuffy halls of the boarding school or the scrawling history of their university. Qifrey has always ached to go, towards open skies and rolling hills, of rich grass and self sufficiency.
It's what drove them outside more often than not in their boyhood. Running through the sparse pieces of nature they could find, pretending to be bigger than they were. Acting like they knew what the world was going to be.
That's where Qifrey had truly flourished and bloomed. Where he saw his first show of true joy, of wonder, of love.
Olruggio had gotten complacent in his young adult years. Consumed by the typical personal dramas of growing, the demands of his schooling and what would become his work. Falling into the trap of daily survival mixed with ambitions for more than just, the days of running through creaks and climbing trees becoming merely sweet memories. Forgetting the yearning in his friend's gaze towards the horizon, his shrinking smile within the demands of acedamia.
He got too comfortable, with Qifrey going for his masters, working at the community center, allowing himself to be dragged out now and again for drinks and fried food. Painting in the warm glows of his tiny studio on the farther corners of the city, not too far from Beldaruit, from his obligations, but just so.
Smiling at Olly every time they came together, no matter the number of times, the hour, the day.
He fooled himself into thinking that was enough. That this—their little life and their routine—would be enough to keep Qifreys' feet on the ground.
Whatever alcohol lingering in his system fizzles away to leave terrible, horrible sobriety—the agony and fear he'd been running from striking him directly in the forehead. Rocketing his heart into his throat and threatening to burn his retinas with hot, dreadful tears.
"Qifrey, Qif," He slurs, using herculean effort to to roll and roll until he's hovering over his best friend. He's got an arm over his face, sprawled on Olly's bed like he belongs there—like he always has. Peering up at him, young and stupid and vulnerable through that mess of white hair in his dorm and taking part of Olly with him when he looked away. "Don't go."
Qifrey makes a questioning chirp, moving his arm away from his face to squint at Olly in sleepy confusion. Behind it is the usual haughtiness that brews under the man's long-trained pleasantries at being disturbed after a long day.
"I'm already in bed," He mutters, moving to push him back down onto his other side, "Go to sleep, Olly."
"No, no. I mean don't go. Don't leave." He resists the pushing, making a grab for his friends' wrist and quietly apologizing when the other flinches.
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Don't go to the downs, Qifrey." Silence. Like air got vacuumed from space itself. Still and explosive in equal measure. "At least," he tacks on, voice smaller and vulnerable with each syllable, "not without me."
He lies still as a statue, now.
"how did you—"
"I saw the papers. On your desk, a few weeks back." He wonders, briefly, if he should apologize for prying. But it had never been a boundary they'd spoken of in the past. Shouldering each other to see what they were working on, drinking from each others cups, opening doors without knocking, once or twice.
More quiet, broken by Qifrey with a long suffering, weighty sigh.
"Were you actually not going to tell me?"
"I was just—looking," He sputters, and that's a tell in of itself. Qifrey didn't get flustered anymore. He didn't stutter and he didn't flail, but he does look away, sharp and quick and riddled with an air of caught red handed.
"But you want that. You were planning."
"Olly—"
"No, no don't—don't do that mess you do when you're trying to get out of something," He rushes, pushing himself up higher to really loom over the other, suddenly thankful for his shit luck in his apartment window being right next to a lamp-post. It allows him to see the unblinking blankness on Qifrey's face. The dread, the terror of being caught in his own brewing secret. "You want that, don't you? You want out of here?"
"Of course I do," He whispers, each word cracking and crumbling until all there is in it is guilt. "I've wanted it for so long."
Somehow, hearing it out loud makes it hurt worse. That even in their best moments, their absolute best days, some parts of Qifrey were still elsewhere. Reaching towards a future that looked different.
"And you were going to just—fuck off? Without telling me?"
"No! No of course not I—I was just—" Qifrey groans, hand rising to scrub at his good eye as he takes a bracing breath. "It was all—spur of the moment. It was there, and. I saw the image so clearly that I just had to—see."
"You went and saw it?"
"No." He pauses, slowly peering through his fingers at him. "Saturday. I…I'm going to see it Saturday."
And. There are so many emotions that well and crash inside of him in that moment. Anger, of course, potent and cloying and all too much like their first nasty spat as teenagers. Devastation a close second, followed by something so raw, so succinct. Long buried in the decades of knowing one another. Feelings and thoughts that were so scary to little Olruggio, too hot to touch and too big for a young heart to understand. Too desperate to keep a flighty, pained boy at his side.
He loves him. He loves him like he's never loved anyone. And even the idea of a Qifrey shaped hole burning into his life makes his chest ache like his heart's already checked out and made a run for it. Because this was always an inevitability. Carved into the future the moment he'd met him, signs on the road always reminding him.
This time is borrowed, this is only for as long as he can hold him. He will go.
He should let him go. He has to let him go. But he can't.
"Alright," He says, shocking himself with how calm and collected he sounds, at least to his own ears. "We're seein' it Saturday."
The reaction is immediate, Qifrey trying to sit up sharply with a rushed, "Olruggio—!"
He shoves him back down, hand pressed to his sternum and voice harsh, "Stop it, dammit, just—you don't get to make that choice for me." He says, rushed and thick with a cocktail of so, so much, "Qifrey, please. You can't…don't shut me out, don't…"
Don't leave me.
They stare at one another, breathing the same air, noses brushing and Qifrey's heartbeat humming bird quick against his palm. It reminds him, starkly, of their first year in Uni. When Qifrey would scuttle away from Beldaruits' to haunt Olruggio's dorm, sharing his tiny twin bed and getting dirty looks from his old roommate. The comfort of it, the fear of it, wanting him so close but so terrified of what it meant.
"I can't ask this of you," Qifrey breathes, cold, cold fingers entrapping Olruggio's wrist. But his hold is gentle, light, it always has been.
Like it was never about wanting to run away. Like. It was making sure Olruggio could always leave. Could pull away, if he wanted to.
What a foolish thing to assume.
"Then don't ask," He murmurs back, mustering his courage to break free of Qifreys' grasp to slowly, painfully slowly, place those icy fingers on his clothed chest. Against his own thundering heart. "Please."
Qifrey looks at him, all devastatingly blue, wide open in a way it feels like Olly hasn't seen in a long, long time. Devastated and hopeful, terrified and elated. Fingers curling into the worn collar of his shirt and holding tight. Tight enough to make stitches creak.
"Alright."