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Leona felt like he was losing his fucking mind.
He'd been normal, he was sure, only a couple of months ago, before summer had come crashing down, before— Leona couldn't name it. Something had changed, undeniably, even if Leona hadn't the faintest clue what, exactly, that something was.
Jamil wouldn't look at him.
That shouldn't have bothered him. Leona breathed in. He held the breath, held it until his lungs started to burn, before he let it go, slowly. He looked down, over the edge. He couldn't see an end to the pit, the darkness suffocating in its intensity. Twelve sectors, but clearly each sector held more than one story. Leona breathed in again. He'd never been prone to vertigo before. He cleared his throat. "Jamil."
Jamil stiffened, his shoulders tensing, and Leona resisted the urge to press his palm between his shoulder blades, rub his thumb along the line of Jamil's spine, until Jamil relaxed back into him. It was a ridiculous urge, and completely inappopriate considering their limited contact so far. Leona did not understand it. Jamil half-turned his face towards Leona. "Hm?"
Leona bit his tongue against an almost instinctual raise of his hand, as though to stop Jamil with a palm on his arm, or shoulder, or— "Gimme one of your pointless jingly hair things."
Jamil's head tilted, but that was all the hesitation he seemed to allow himself before he was reaching up to unfasten one of his hair beads. Jamil held his hand out almost absently, the golden bead glimmering with what little light lingered. Leona almost would have missed the tension in his fingers had he not been paying such close attention.
Leona didn't let himself think about it too hard. He took the bead slowly, letting his fingertips drag across the expanse of Jamil's palm, as though to collect the warmth that gathered there. Leona heard the exact moment Jamil stopped breathing. Jamil's arm twitched as though to draw the hand back, stopping only at the last moment. Jamil had discovered a sort of skittishness around Leona recently that Leona could not make sense of. The bead was a tiny thing once Leona closed his fingers around it. It was warm from Jamil's palm, which, for whatever reason, sent heat rushing up Leona's neck, his fingers tingling with it. Leona felt slightly ridiculous. More than slightly. He didn't want to let the bead go.
He let it drop into the pit.
He heard Jamil heave a sigh beside him. He did not hear the bead hit the bottom. "I can't hear it hittin' the ground," he told Jamil. "It's gotta be more than fifty stories."
"Was it really necessary to use one of my belongings for that?" Jamil asked drily, neck craning as though to look for his sacrificed bead, carefully holding the hand Leona had taken the bead from within the other like a broken bird.
"No one forced you to hand it over," Leona reminded him, something giddy bursting to life in his chest at the informal address. Fuckin' ridiculous, he told himself. He did not understand it. "It was just some tiny thing," he continued, as though to cover up that giddy spark, as though Jamil would somehow sense it if Leona didn't distract him from it. "No need to whine about it."
Jamil grit out a smile, eyes flat. "Me, whine?" he said, looking straight ahead and nowhere near Leona. "I wouldn't dream of it. It's an honour to be of service to you, Leona."
Leona tried not to snap at the utter blandness of Jamil's tone. It was nothing to snap at. This was simply what Jamil was like, cold and inauthentic and distant, but something about it grated at Leona, moreso than Leona was sure it used to. "I don't buy that shady smile for a fuckin' second," he informed Jamil needlessly. Jamil did not even turn. Leona grit his teeth together. "Not even tryin' to defend yourself anymore?"
Jamil did not answer. His back remained turned, stiff. This was not unusual. Jamil was defensive, quick to snap back, but he knew a losing battle when he saw one. And yet.
There was something else there, too. Something subtler, something he couldn't quite put a finger on. Something in the way Jamil had been studiously avoiding Leona, something in the way Jamil carried an added tension like a second layer of skin whenever Leona entered his notice, something in the way that Jamil flinched at the slightest brush of Leona against him. Something in the way Jamil was so goddamn skittish around Leona in a way he never had been before the summer.
"Okay," said Leona. "What the fuck is your problem?"
Jamil, somehow, impossibly, managed to tense up even further. Leona wanted to grab him by the shoulders and turn him, to shake him, to claw something true out of his throat, to— Leona took in a deep breath. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," Jamil said, measured and tight.
"Cut the shit," Leona told him curtly. "You've been actin' weird ever since—"
"Ever since what?" Jamil interrupted sharply, turning so quick he must have pulled a muscle, eyes flashing strangely with the question.
Leona narrowed his eyes. "Since the holidays. Since—"
"And what was I like before, then?" Jamil asked, and there was something vicious to the question, although Leona couldn't put his finger on what, exactly, it was that made the question so vicious. "Before the holidays?"
Cold. Inauthentic. Distant. And what was Jamil like now? Cold. Inauthentic. Distant. But there was— there was something wrong, something missing, a switch that had been flipped over the course of the summer, in the the time Leona had spent in the estates Jamil had uneasily called home all his life, and that switch had been abruptly, without warning, been flipped back again and Leona was left expecting light where there were only shadows, and— what the fuck did any of that mean. "Less afraid to meet my eyes," Leona settled on.
Jamil let out a harsh sound that might have been a laugh. "Less— Great Seven. Afraid to—" Jamil visibly wrangled his expression into something appropriately controlled, dipping his head down, but Leona had already caught the flash of manic hysteria that passed over him. Leona frowned. Jamil took in a fortifying breath. He looked straight past Leona. "I am not afraid to meet your eyes, Leona. I'm merely showing you the respect you deserve as a prince."
Leona ducked his head in an attempt to force Jamil to look at him, but Jamil, as Leona had come to learn, was skilled in the art of avoidance. "Bullshit," Leona argued. Jamil was already walking ahead.
He did not meet Leona's eyes.