ngeh

qifrey urgently places the carrots and radishes down on the counter to climb the small step of stairs towards you at the entryway of the kitchen, the lines on his forehead creased in concern.

his hand gingerly tips your chin upward, checking around your irises and sclera, “what happened? do they hurt? are you able to see just fine?”

oh, poor, innocent qifrey.

“unless i'm mistaken, those orange and white things you were about to add in the pot…” you struggle to bite the laugh bubbling from the back of your throat.

“things? you mean, the carrots and radishes? what about them?”

qifrey looks almost lost, struggling to connect the invisible dots behind your thinking. surely your eyes are working properly, right? after all, a witch without their vision is equivalent to a fish without their fins.

“so they really were carrots and radishes.”

your voice wavers, hands clutching his wrist for stability, but being face to face with his worried puppy eyes only makes it harder for you. your lungs feel like giving up, it's a little hard to breathe when you're trying not to laugh.

“yes? are you alright?”

“it's just that,” you pursed your lips together. “you haven't had those ‘horrid' things for so long.”

your struggling ends when his face suddenly turns vexed, watching you lean over from laughter and your shoulders shake from the way it wracks up your whole body. how you find this so funny, he doesn't understand.

“what's that supposed to mean!?”

“it means you hate vegetables so much that seeing you cook something with a few is a rarity.”

olruggio snickers at the way you seem to laugh harder, sometimes wheezing for air when it gets particularly hard to breathe.

“oh my god, i'm about to lose my mind!”

“i think you've lost that way long ago.”

qifrey grumbles embarrassingly, cheeks a little flushed from your and olruggio's teasing. you seem to be having the time of your life though, with the way your knees gave up on you, barely keeping yourself up if he wasn't holding you. perhaps he should just drop you, that will do the trick.

“do tell me you've fed the girls more vegetables than this!?”

“if you don't feed them enough vegetables, you'll be a bad influence and they might not eat those too.”

“i take their nutrition very seriously, if that's what you're inquiring about!”

“i bet they don't know what a broccoli looks like.”

It takes Olruggio a moment to comprehend your words—how can there possibly be such a thing as "kissing for too long"?—but gradually the fog in his head clears just enough for him to focus. So kissing him has been uncomfortable. Perhaps you never said anything because you didn't want to hurt his feelings, but that only makes Olruggio feel guiltier now. He gets so buried in his work that it's simply easier to maintain a beard than to stay clean-shaven. It never once occurred to him how it might feel against your skin.

The next morning, Olruggio wakes before you do. He clambers out of the hammock, painstakingly careful not to rouse you from your sleep, and pads barefoot over to the washbasin. He's about to reach for his facecloth when he catches sight of his own reflection in the small mirror hanging over it. Olruggio stares at it for a long while—the dark smudge of stubble shadowing his jaw, the slightly uneven patch at his chin. The careless scruff of a man who's stopped looking at himself too closely a long time ago.

Hm.

He glances back over his shoulder. You're still sleeping soundly in the hammock, blankets tangled around your bare legs, one arm dangling limply over the side. Fondness blooms quietly in Olruggio's chest, steaming erbe tea steeped in hot water, warmer than the morning sunlight pouring in through the upper window.

Then he turns back to the basin and crouches down to dig beneath the sink, rummaging through old tins and cracked cups until his fingers close around what he's looking for.

It's late morning by the time you awake. The instant your consciousness stirs, you become aware of the reason—the space in the hammock beside you is grievously empty, the blankets lacking in any trace of another's body heat. The loft and workshop, too, are disappointingly Olruggio-absent. So you stretch, expelling your sleepiness from your body with a long yawn, before reaching for your outer robe and climbing down the stairs. Olruggio's probably in the main wing of the atelier, preparing breakfast—though it might be closer to lunch, with the late hour you've awoken.

You shuffle across the catwalk, rubbing sleep from your eyes. Sure enough, when you push open the kitchen door, there he is: standing with his back to you, quietly humming as he whisks a bowl of eggs at the counter. Qifrey had mentioned heading to the Great Hall for some errand yesterday, and you can hear the apprentices' distant voices drifting down from upstairs—something about a mess and who's responsible for it. Perfect.

You creep up behind him—on your tiptoes, quiet as a mouse—before you slip your arms around his waist, pulling him back against you. Olruggio makes a startled sound, nearly dropping the whisk in his hand, and you lean in to kiss the side of his jaw before he can turn around. Your lips seek the familiar scratch of his jaw… but instead of stubble, your mouth meets smooth, bare skin.

Huh?

You scramble back so fast you nearly trip over your own feet, heart hammering in your chest. Is there an intruder in the atelier? Did Qifrey dye his hair black all of a sudden? Did you just accidentally kiss the wrong man? What—

"You scared the heck outta me!" Olruggio yelps, whirling around so quicklly a few flecks of yolk splatter onto the counter, whisk clutched protectively to his chest. His cheeks are stained pink, ripe as rose apples—and without the beard, there's nowhere for the colour to hide. "You—"

"What happened to you?" you cry, lifting a shaking finger to point it at him. "Who—who are you?"

Olruggio freezes for a second. His expression collapses into immediate offense in the next. "What do you mean, who am I?"

"You look like a completely different man!"

"I shaved!"

"You removed half your face!"

"I didn't remove—" He hisses, the nectarine-pink flush on his face deepening to a lurid crimson. Still, his hand flies to his cheek on instinct, as if checking to make sure the missing beard hasn't somehow taken a substantial portion of him with it. "It's the same face!"

You stare at him for a long moment, before you take a step closer. Olruggio immediately glances away, chin ducking in an attempt to shy away from your attention, but still he lets you take his jaw in your hand. You tug his newly bared cheeks this way and that, tilting his face toward the light as if to confirm he isn't some imposter wearing Olruggio's skin.

The same nose, same blue eyes. The same soft, flustered mouth.

"You shaved," you say, disbelief seeping into your voice. "I've never seen you shaved before. What brought this on?"

Olruggio's face only gets redder, somehow.

"You mention you sometimes get a rash when you're kissing me," he mumbles under his breath, refusing to meet your eyes. His gaze stays doggedly fixed on some point past your shoulder—the windowsill, the kettle on the table, anywhere but your face. "I didn't want ya to have to put up with that anymore, so…"

The sentence trails off, swallowed by his embarrassment.

It's hard to do anything but stare at Olruggio. At the flush burning high on his cheeks, the clean shaven jaw he's so clearly self-conscious about. His hand twitches at where it's fallen at his side, as though he wants to reach up and touch it, and your chest fills suddenly with so much warmth it overflows, a bubbling spring that spills forth with no end.

Oh, he's impossible. You tug him in by the waist, ignoring the way Olruggio lets out something suspiciously close to a squawk. Impossible, and so, so lovely. Before he can squirm away you pull him firmly against you and bury your face in his soft chest. This close, you can feel everything—the rapid, rabbit-quick beat of his heart, his stuttering breath.

"Oh, Olly." His name alone feels like an endearment in your mouth. "When I said that, it didn't mean I disliked it. Actually, I'm rather fond of it—it's like a little mark I carry of you, after we've been together."

Olruggio blinks, expression slightly stupefied. "Really?"

"Yeah." You smile—soft, fond, perhaps just a little mischievious—before your fingers tug aside the collar of his shirt to rub at the fading crescent of teeth marks sitting low at his collarbone. "Besides, haven't I give you a few marks of my own, too?"

Whatever flush had dissipated from Olruggio's face races back up at once. "That's—that's different—"

You wind your arms around his neck this time, the faint edge of laughter still on your lips as you pull him down towards you again. Olruggio squeezes his eyes frantically shut. Just before your mouths can meet, however…

"I can't." You break away from him, laughing so hard you have to brace a hand against his chest just to stay upright. "I don't think I can stop laughing long enough to kiss you until you get your beard back, Olly."