Chapter Text
Water sloshes gently against the shores of the bathing halls. Steam drifts lazily through the air. Qifrey thinks he might genuinely be dying.
And as if that’s not enough misery for the young apprentice to endure, a certain black-haired boy finds his way to where Qifrey is having his private breakdown.
“YOU!” Olruggio yells and points, as he is wont to do when they run into each other yet again.
It has been almost comical how often they find themselves in the same room. Qifrey would suspect the other boy of stalking him, but that would imply Olruggio actually wants to be around him. Which he clearly doesn’t. Instead, fate must be conspiring against Qifrey because they cannot escape each other, no matter how vast the Great Hall is.
Usually, Qifrey would yell and point right back, make some grand show of how infuriating it is that they keep having to share the same air supply, and talk big about extracting himself out of the room as quickly as he can without actually being that quick about it.
This time, he doesn’t. Because of the whole dying thing.
Qifrey is sitting on a bench in the bathing halls, his feet pulled up onto the stone so he can bury his face in his knees and wrap his arms around his calves. The steam-filled room rings with the sound of trickling water, echoes bouncing off the high stone arches. He’s wearing nothing but a bathing wrap, making him feel uncomfortably exposed.
And he’s not doing too hot. His throat feels closed off and it is as though there’s a hive of drizzlebees trapped inside his chest, furiously buzzing in his lungs and his guts. What few breaths he manages to take come in quick gasps, hot against the skin of his knees. Mostly, he is not breathing at all — he can’t, he wants to, he’s trying, but he can’t — and is feeling lightheaded as a result.
Olruggio puts his hands on his hips and cocks his head when Qifrey doesn’t respond. “…Hey,” he says, the annoyance previously present now replaced with confusion. “Are you crying?”
“No!” Qifrey gasps on a ragged inhale, keeping the air trapped inside his lungs where it stales, unable to find a way to let go of it. The gasping doesn’t make him sound very convincing. The tears on his cheeks don’t really help his case either. “Go away!”
“Nuh-uh.” Olruggio takes a step closer. “You’re definitely crying. Your face is all red and blotchy.”
“I’m not,” Qifrey chokes out, squeezing his eye shut so hard he sees spots. “It’s just warm. In here. Everyone knows. That steam. Makes your skin. Turn red. Stupid.”
“You’re the one that’s stupid,” Olruggio huffs. He hovers for a few seconds, shifting his weight, looking uncertain. Then he sits down on the stone bench right beside him. “Look at you. You’re breathing all wrong. I’m way better at breathing than you are.”
Qifrey peeks out from behind his knees, wet eyelashes sticking together. He tries to glare, but his face is too puffy to form the expression. “Breathing isn’t. Something you can be. Good or. Bad at.”
“It is, and I’m the best in the Great Hall,” Olruggio insists, pointing his thumb at himself. His voice is different, softer. He reaches out, grabs Qifrey’s trembling hand, and presses it flat against his own chest. His chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm. “Feel that? That’s expert breathing. Now match me.”
Qifrey swallows hard against the lump in his throat. He takes a shaky, hitching breath, trying to follow along.
“Terrible. Worse than a beginner,” Olruggio mutters, clicking his tongue. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. C’mon, do it right.”
Slowly, the agonizing iron band around his ribs yields, the crushing tightness in Qifrey’s chest beginning to loosen. The gasps transform into something longer and less painful. He remembers how to inhale and exhale like a normal person.
As soon as his breath settles into an easier rhythm, a sharp sting of self-consciousness strikes him, as well as something else — that same writhing feeling as when this boy held him the first time. Qifrey yanks his hand away, pulling back to the far end of the bench where he wraps his arms tightly around his legs to shield himself. He aggressively wipes his face with the back of his wrist, as if speed will erase the evidence.
Olruggio doesn’t comment on the sudden retreat. He simply nods as though his job is done, stands up, and walks over to the edge of the pool. Without hesitation, he wades into the steaming water until it reaches his waist, then kicks off from the bottom, letting himself drift back to float on top of the surface.
Qifrey watches him with a guarded gaze, bracing himself for the inevitable taunt. But the mockery never comes. Olruggio just lies there, his dark hair fanning out in the water.
“We have these hot springs, back home,” he says conversationally. “People from here think hot springs sound so wonderful, but they’re only nice when you’re in them. As soon as you step out to dry yourself off, you’d be freezing. At least here, you’re nice and warm the entire time.”
Like an animal coaxed out of its shell, Qifrey slowly uncurls himself, first one arm and then the other, until he’s sitting instead of folded in on himself like something trying to disappear.
The water keeps its small ceaseless conversation with the stone — drip, drip, drip. The sound of rain. But now, it is interspersed with the sound of Olruggio’s voice.
“A lot of things here are nicer than they were in Ghodrey.” He sighs, deeply and a little forlornly. “But I’m still a little angry at all the things that are missin’, you know? It’s not the same.” He twists his head to make eye contact with Qifrey. When Qifrey, slightly befuddled by this topic, doesn’t respond, Olruggio continues, “Is that why you were crying? Were you missing your home?”
Home.
Maybe he should feel some kind of sorrow at the lack of a response that word brings up in him. Yet all he feels is a bit of relief. Sometimes Qifrey fears that his lack of a past is written on his skin, for any and all to read. It’s reassuring to have Olruggio misunderstand this about him. It means this other boy, annoying and persistent as grit behind his fingernails, cannot read his mind.
“No. And I wasn’t crying.”
He can practically hear the eye-rolling that Olruggio is doing. “Okay, so, then why were you ‘not’ crying?”
That is more difficult to answer.
Qifrey doesn’t know how to explain that somewhere in the back of his head there is a box, and the box is full of water, and he is in it. It sounds silly just thinking of it like that — the lake-like baths here are harmless. Yet some part of him, the scared creature-brain that can think about nothing but survival, does not know the difference between this water and that water. His body has never forgotten the sensation of not being able to breathe, nor the way water had soaked through everything and settled deep until his skin felt loose and wrong, like it might just come away from him entirely, sloughing off in the dark.
“I don’t like getting my head underwater,” he just mumbles.
“Oh,” Olruggio says. He rights himself, sending small waves lapping closer to Qifrey with the splashing effort. “So that’s why your hair’s looked so sad this week.”
Qifrey glares at him, but at the same time he also runs a hand through his fringe, sighing softly as his fingers snag in the strands. Usually, his hair is soft and wispy, bouncing with every step he takes, but days of avoiding a proper wash have left it dull and undeniably greasy. He hates the feel of it, yet the alternative feels infinitely worse.
“I guess,” he mumbles, dropping his hand back to his lap. “What’s your excuse for having your hair be in front of your eyes so you look like one of those fluffy cows?”
Olruggio just snickers in response. “Glad you’re you again.”
That reminds Qifrey. “Also, get out. I was here first.”
“Well, I got into the water first. You were just sitting there.”
“I’m getting to it!”
“Well, should’ve been faster. These waters now belong to Olswimmio.”
Qifrey groans. He’s still not sure what exactly his sense of humor is yet — Master Beldaruit has taught him that there are many, many bad jokes out there, and that a bad joke at the right time can actually be secretly hilarious — but he already knows that Olruggio’s persistently terrible wordplay will never be funny. Not even if they were the last two people alive in the entire Great Hall.
When Qifrey can’t come up with a clever witticism fast enough — he’s trying to get better at that, but words have a way of getting away from him — Olruggio cocks his head.
“Are you getting to it though? ‘Cuz you’re still sitting there.” He frowns. “Or are you scared?”
Qifrey presses his lips into a thin line. “I’m not scared,” he says stiffly, the lie obvious even to his own ears.
He expects Olruggio to call him out, to call him a scaredy-whiskercat and dare him to jump into the water or be otherwise declared the loser of their definitely-real bathing competition.
Instead, Olruggio silently treads water for a moment, his cobalt eyes fixed on Qifrey. He makes a thoughtful expression, rolling his lower lip between his teeth. Suddenly, his face brightens. With an energetic splash, Olruggio trudges back to the shore.
“Hold on. Don’t move,” he says enthusiastically. Dripping a trail of wet spots behind him, he runs off, disappearing into some other part of the bathing hall.
Qifrey tilts his head, left alone with the steam and the soft drip-drip of the arches. Before he can even begin to wonder what the idiot is up to, Olruggio reappears, holding a filled vaporbubble that’s evidently a little too heavy for him, because he has to haul it up with both hands.
“Tilt your head back,” Olruggio instructs as he stands behind Qifrey and places the vaporbubble next to him on the bench.
“Why?” Qifrey asks, suspicious.
Olruggio chuckles. “If you hate putting your head under, you don’t have to, you know,” he says matter-of-factly. “Hold this at an angle, then hold still.”
Qifrey does so, tilting the vaporbubble so warm water flows into Olruggio’s cupped hands. Before Qifrey can protest or shrink back, Olruggio carefully lets the scooped-up water drip over the back of Qifrey’s head, keeping the liquid away from his face and eyes. Qifrey instinctively sucks a sharp breath through his teeth. The warmth cascades gently over his scalp, soothing something stiff at the base of his neck.
Qifrey stays very still. His fingers curl against the edge of the bench, ready to grip it if he needs to, but the water is warm, and it is only touching his hair. It does not flow down his face. It does not fill his ears or his mouth. He can still see the bathing hall, still hear Olruggio’s voice, still feel the solid stone beneath him.
Olruggio pours another handful over his hair, taking his time so that Qifrey can feel exactly where the water is going. “See?” he says quietly. “Not even a bit scary.”
Qifrey considers correcting him. It is, in fact, still a bit scary. But it is also something else.
“Not too bad,” he admits, so quietly that the words nearly disappear beneath the ambience.
“Hehe,” Olruggio agrees.
He does another scoop, and then another. Qifrey’s face remains dry. This is a little similar to how Beldaruit does it, though his master has Qifrey lean back against a basin while he uses a pitcher, cheerfully telling long, winding stories to distract him.
Qifrey feels the warmth spread through his hair, making it stick to his skin. Water runs down the back of his neck in rivulets, disappearing beneath the edge of his bathing wrap. His shoulders sag a little, not quite in relaxation, but nevertheless more at ease. He had been expecting to feel tense, waiting for this to become too much, but instead there is only the gentle heat and the slight pressure of Olruggio’s fingers separating the wet strands.
“You want me to do the soaps as well?”
“Yes,” Qifrey mumbles, half-embarrassed, half not wanting this to end yet.
Qifrey brought his bag with him from his room, its mouth still loosely tied around the collection of soaps and oils he took from the atelier. There are three small soap cakes wrapped in paper, a little bottle of scented oil, and a bar of ordinary washing soap that smells faintly like lemons.
“Why do you have so many? Isn’t one bar of soap enough?” Olruggio says as he rifles through it.
“They do different things.”
“What?” Olruggio exclaims, sounding a little indignant. Qifrey almost turns to look at his face, but he’d risk getting water in his eye if he tried that, so he doesn’t. “Which one do I need, then?”
“The blue one.”
“There’s multiple blue ones.”
Qifrey frowns. “No, there aren’t.”
Olruggio picks up one of the soaps and waves it in front of Qifrey’s eye. “This one?”
“No. That’s for hands. Also, that’s green.”
“Pssh. Aquamarine at best. Okay, this one?”
“Yes.”
Olruggio gets to work, massaging the soap into Qifrey’s hair while Qifrey keeps his head tipped back, his gaze drifting over the ceiling. The soap smells faintly of anise and something sweet, and as Olruggio works it in, the scent seems to gather around Qifrey’s face like a warm cloud.
No new water is poured, and so Qifrey feels himself relax. This is… kinda nice, he thinks.
“Uhm,” Olruggio says, sounding suddenly a little awkward. “Is it okay if I pull back the hair over your right eye? Or do you not want me to see?”
Qifrey freezes at the question. Only now does he notice that the tuft he keeps in front of his mostly-healed wound has remained dry and in place. Olruggio has been avoiding it on purpose.
“Um,” he says.
There was a boy in the Argentgard, last week. Five, maybe six, not old enough yet to be anyone’s apprentice, trailing after his parents on a walk. He found Qifrey reading against a silverwood trunk and decided that they were now friends. It had been, in its clumsy way, kind of sweet, right up until Qifrey absent-mindedly ran a hand through his hair and the boy got a glimpse of the angry pink scarring beneath. He’d gasped and scrambled back toward his mother as if Qifrey had suddenly sprouted horns.
Qifrey had tried not to let it hurt. He had told himself the kid was just young, easily startled by anything unusual. But the memory stings all the same.
If he sees that same expression on Olruggio’s face, he thinks he’ll die.
But— maybe it’s best to find that out now. If Olruggio is disgusted by him, he might as well know now and save himself the trouble of hoping otherwise.
Qifrey swallows hard and gives a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. “It’s fine. You can move it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Olruggio hesitates for another moment before carefully gathering the strands and pushing them back, flattening them over the rest of the wet locks, more iron in color than silver.
There’s maybe a second of a pause, and then Olruggio keeps moving, blunt fingernails against his scalp, the fresh soapy scent almost making Qifrey feel heady.
He prepares himself for questions — What happened? Why is it like that? Does it hurt? — but instead, all that happens is Olruggio’s thumb brushing a little lather away from Qifrey’s eyebrow.
“Your hair’s really soft,” he says.
“What?”
“I said your hair’s soft.”
“Oh.”
Qifrey forces himself to exhale. It’s a little shaky, but it goes.
“I need to rinse it now. You ready?”
Qifrey nods, tilting his head back again. This time he doesn’t brace quite so hard. He’s starting to trust that Olruggio will keep his promise. And he does. Again, the water is carefully guided, suds sliding down his neck and then further down his back.
“There. You survive?”
“Obviously.” Qifrey blinks droplets from his lashes — not from the rinsing, but from condensation. His head is heavy with wet hair, but he feels— lighter, somehow. Emptied out of something that had been sitting in his chest all morning.
Olruggio hops up and jogs for his own bag, toweling his hands off before fishing out his quire and pen. Qifrey cranes to see what he’s sketching and then pretends, badly, that he wasn’t looking, the instant their eyes catch.
Suddenly, warmth.
Heat blooms, a whole-body kind, like curling up too close to a hearth, like being wrapped in a blanket on a cold night. The warmth washes over Qifrey’s entire body, rapid and gentle all at once. Moisture lifts from his hair in fine, visible plumes of white mist that vanish into the ambient steam of the hall. Within seconds, the sodden weight dragging at his scalp disappears entirely.
Olruggio clicks his pen cap back on, a smug grin plastered across his face.
Qifrey touches his head in wonder. His locks have fluffed back up into their usual weightless, bouncy halo, completely dry. He runs a hand through his fringe, his scar once again hidden safely out of sight.
The warmth on his skin is cooling, but deeper inside him, it lingers. It settles between his ribs, a stubborn ember that refuses to die. His heart pulses in his throat.
“We’re still not friends,” he mutters eventually, turning his face away.
“Obviously not,” Olruggio agrees, smiling anyway.