#evalan

Junelezen 6: Control

There were days he still missed Busari taking up space in his rooms. There were days he considered asking Alanais and Gantsetseg to spend the night, just to make his free company suite a little less empty. (Oh, not that they weren't there during the day, not that he didn't sometimes come home to be greeted by the sight of Gan sprawled across the settee or Alan talking to the goldfish quite as though they understood him--but as yet, he'd only ever slept in their yurt, and hadn't worked his way up to the other way around.)

But on days like this, when he'd settled down to work on the Vidofnir's Wings accounts and the people he loved were on the other side of the world, there was something to be said for controlling his own space. Nobody distracted him. Nobody tried to strike up conversation. He could actually get things done.

My feelings for you go far beyond friendship.

It’s simple, that thought. It drops into his mind like rain on an otherwise unremarkable gray day, one where he’s not particularly burdened by the work of caring for his free company because Alan has shown up for a visit. Busari’s out—adventuring again, paying their bills—so it’s him and the Nagae sisters and Enkhtuya, and Harumi’s gotten Alan to help with lunch for their clients. Alan fits in like he was born to be standing at the counter chopping lettuce, sleeves rolled up to reveal sinewy forearms and an escaping tendril of brown hair flopping in his face. Evrard’s fingers itch to push it back, but—Alan’s wearing his bandana and it wouldn’t be worth the risk of revealing his third eye. Yes.

They’ve been closer. They’d had to share a bed when he first hauled an injured decurion out of the snow, for the Fury’s sake. (And he’d been warm and strong and Evrard is not going to think about that now.) But sitting on this bench, just looking at him from across the room, Evrard’s heart lodges in his throat.

He’s known Alan is attractive. He isn’t blind. And watching him in battle...well, that would stir the blood of a dead man. But attraction is one thing, easily ignored. The slowly spreading warmth through Evrard’s chest at the sight of Alan Vesper simply existing in his space, bumping Harumi lightly out of the way and cracking a faint smile at something she’s said, as far from the brittle sharp edges of Alanais pyr Venditor as it’s possible to be—

No. They are friends. They will only ever be friends. He has a lover he is quite fond of, thank you, and Alan has a girlfriend he is wild about and who would probably bite his face off if she even thought he was competition. Not that he is. He won’t be.

“Evrard!” Alan calls. “You want anything?”

He shakes his head, not trusting himself to speak.

Alan shrugs and continues assembling sandwiches. Evrard sends a fervent prayer to the Fury.

The day passes.

Two years pass.

He is single, now. Camp Broken Glass is nothing like the oven-baked heat of Ul’dah. Alan has grown braver, bolder, more sure of himself. More beautiful. His girlfriend is here as well, and she is the bright brief flash of lightning across his eyelids. When they aren’t off fighting or working to make the lives of the Garleans easier, they’re curled together like two crescent moons. He can’t even be jealous. (He could. But they adore each other, and he isn’t sure which of them he envies more.)

Once again, he’s sitting back and watching Alan work. This time he’s sipping ether potions and rolling bandages, while Alan’s taken over another table in the mess hall in the service of entirely disassembling and cleaning his gunblade. Gantsetseg is leaning over the back of his chair, gesturing animatedly as she suggests upgrades that she swears will not explode in his hands. Alan hums thoughtfully as he tightens a screw; he’s wearing fingerless gloves that are almost worse for the direction of Evrard’s thoughts than bare hands would have been.

(He broke his vow of chastity long ago, with a man who’s turned out to be unworthy of it. He keeps thinking about that tiny bed in Our Lady’s Mercy with the wind hissing through the cracks and Alanais pyr Venditor curled up between him and the wall.)

Evrard takes one slow breath. Another. Another.

Gantsetseg’s tail has flipped lazily into Alan’s lap. He doesn’t seem to mind the spikes at all.

I...

He doesn’t even let himself finish the thought.

Alan is grinning. It’s not at him.

Evrard used to think Ishgard was cold. Shivering in his cell attached to the church—all that remained of the rectory—it certainly had been. Even when he’d rescued Alan, and his narrow bed had suddenly had to accommodate two men and Alan’s obnoxiously large dog, he’d never been fully warm. His nose would be cold, or a socked foot would stick out of the covers, or a somnolent fight over blankets would see him crashing to the stone floor at some unholy hour. (Alan, even injured, was quite a bit stronger than him. He still is.) So yes, when he’d gone to Garlemald he’d imagined more of the same.

He’s wrong. It’s worse.

“How do you people live like this all the time?” he demands.

Alan looks up. It’s just him in the yurt at the moment; Gantsetseg’s still out hunting with their dog. (Evrard’s still not sure how he feels about the dog. He’s never really been a dog person, and the curly-coated Ilsabardian water hound they found wandering in the city ruins is rather...large. And odorous. But Gantsetseg and Alan both love the beast, so he supposes he must tolerate it.)

“Booze,” Alan deadpans. “And keeping busy.”

He’s clearly opted for the former option; he’s got a book in one hand, something in Garlean about engineering, and a mug of something hot by his elbow. Evrard can’t help but watch his hands as he marks his page, face warming as he imagines what they could do to him. For a wild moment, he entertains thoughts of asking.

But surely there are boundaries. Alan and Gantsetseg have let him into their life, into their bed, but he’s fairly sure there must be etiquette around when he’s allowed to—to do anything. He hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask yet. By the Fury, he’d practically expired on the spot when they’d sat down on either side of him and Gantsetseg had cheerfully told him Al has somethin’ to tell ya. It doesn’t matter that he knew Alan long before she did, that he’s had her tail twined around his legs while she tries and fails to count his freckles, that this arrangement is entirely normal for her people. In Ishgard this is the sort of—relationship?—that starts actual wars.

The way Alan looks up at him as he sheds his scarf and coat makes him think a war would be worth it. “I thought you were still on shift.”

He rolls his eyes. The infirmary had all but kicked him out. “Evidently I am required to take breaks.”

“So you came here.”

It feels like the most natural thing in the world to fold his long legs and take a seat on the cushions next to Alan. Ceruleum-generated heat soaks through the rugs from the metal floor, warming him down to his bones. “I wanted to see you.”

Alan blushes, which is—well. Evrard is an ordained priest, but he’s broken his vow of chastity years ago and the red staining Alan’s cheeks would tempt a greater man than him. He leans in before his nerves can catch up, pressing a kiss to the edge of the scar that slices diagonally across Alan’s face. He remembers when that scar was red and raw, when he’d prayed to the Fury that his magic was enough to stave off infection. Alan had told him once that it’s still a little numb.

Not that numb, because Alan makes a quietly surprised sound and turns to catch his mouth with his own.

Why was he hesitating? This is good. This is right. He can’t believe he wasted years with a man who ended things with a letter when he could have had this—when he spent months thinking about the fact that he could have had this. Alan tastes like mulled wine, spiced well enough that Evrard’s own tongue tingles, and the hand that sinks into his loose white hair is warm. He could spend hours doing this, if he didn’t need to breathe.

Alan must find his courage by the time they pull away, because he runs his thumb along the edge of Evrard’s ear and murmurs, “You’re still cold.”

His breath catches in his throat—Elezen ears are sensitive—but he manages to blurt out, “I won’t be if you keep doing that.” A warning or a promise, he’s not sure which. (The bed is across the yurt, but the carpets are soft enough. He’s done more in worse locations.)

Alan must take it as the former, because he turns red again and draws back with a muttered, “Oh—er. Sorry.”

He’s overstepped. The knowledge sits in his gut like a stone. “Don’t be.” It’s some comfort to know he’s not the only shy one.

Fumbling, Alan offers him his mug of wine. It must be one of Gan’s, because it’s painted with a goggle-eyed yol. “Drink?”

They drink. Wine helps, but the way Alan slowly, carefully settles against his side, head tucked against his chest and fluffy brown hair tickling his chin—that helps more. Evrard breathes, tastes wine and cinnamon and cloves, and thanks the Fury for blessings like this. Perhaps this is his reward for being brave enough to seize it.

Eventually, Alan breaks the silence. “...Are you still cold?”

“Not with you.”

This time, Alan kisses him first.

His vow of chastity had always lain lightly on him. Oh, he was tempted, like most any man might be, but in a contest between his desire and his goddess there was a clear winner. He’d been perfectly polite to unmarried maidens dropping off fresh-baked pies and unmarried men showing up to chop wood for his fire with their sleeves rolled up. There was a higher calling.

And then, sadly, he’d met Busari of the Bayaqud, and between the shock of the Dragonsong War and the...everything about the man, well…

He’s not a very good priest anymore.

He knows this. He’s accepted this. Most days, it doesn’t bother him; vows of chastity are meant to focus the mind on the Fury’s will, and he’s never aspired to a rank where they were actually required. If the Fury has a problem with Alan kissing him on the cheek or Gantsetseg wrapping her tail around his shins, She is welcome to tell him Herself.

But sometimes, he looks at both of them and feels like the scum of the earth.

“Are you entirely sure…?”

Gantsetseg is probably not trying to seduce him. Alan definitely isn’t. If nothing else, they’ve been trudging through freezing, rocky Urqopacha for three days and while he certainly wouldn’t begrudge a much warmer bedroll he’s fairly sure they’re all too exhausted. And there’s Master Waters and Archon Augurelt (“Thou hast helped me knit a man’s intestines back together, thou mayest call me Urianger”) in the next tent, which is extremely not soundproof.

(Koana gets his own, much larger tent to himself. The privileges of rank.)

So no, he really doesn’t think anything is going to happen. Nothing’s happened yet, and he’s been staying later and later in their yurt back home. But the bed in that yurt is enormous, big enough to fit all three of them and Alan’s long-legged fluffy white dog; he can be reasonably assured of not waking up wrapped around either of them like an octopus. At least, not accidentally.

They’ve had to put all three of their bedrolls together in this tent, and they’re still not all going to fit unless they all agree to flagrantly disregard each other’s personal space. He and Alan have shared tighter quarters before, but that was—well. Before. When they were only friends and their chief concern was not freezing to death. If his feelings had bloomed then—if either of them had said anything then, before Busari, before Gantsetseg…

But they hadn’t, and he doesn’t know what would’ve happened if Gantsetseg hadn’t been braver than both of them put together. Probably he would have spontaneously combusted the next time one of them wore a sleeveless shirt.

He looks at Gantsetseg again. She’s the shortest of them by a few ilms and has shamelessly claimed the middle spot, still bundled up to her nose. Her horn cozies have little tassels on them. It’s probably the least arousing situation he’s ever seen her in and yet there’s still heat crawling up his face, because now he knows how the body under all those layers feels under his hands.

She rolls her eyes. As well she should; this is normal for the Bayaqud, and she was the first one to point out they all had two hands. (In Ishgard, such a sentiment starts wars.) “Wouldn’t’ve asked if I wasn’t, aye? Get in here.”

Alan doesn’t say anything. He just shucks his boots and coat, sits down on Gantsetseg’s other side, and holds out a hand to Evrard with shy hope in his eyes. There’s a sliver of bare skin revealed by his loose shirt, warm peach-pale.

They have a long way to go tomorrow. They’re all tired. A good priest wouldn’t be having the thoughts Evrard is having.

In all respects save one, the rosary Evrard carries is a traditional Halonic design. It has the twelve large beads, the sixty smaller ones, the three spears. Its links are good Ishgardian steel. But the beads in other priests’ rosaries are made of carved wood or ivory or precious metal, and his are granite as darkly freckled as his skin. He didn’t cut the stone himself—it came from a quarry outside the city—but he theoretically knows how. He spent enough time watching his father work when he was a child.

The Briardionnes had been masons. Well, they still are, but the shop’s passed to his uncle and it just doesn’t feel as though it’s a thing that belongs to Evrard anymore. He has no right to claim it. His are inks and prayers and incense, not stone dust and chisels. That had been his parents’ art—his father Haboraux had done most of the heavier work, while his mother Linois had carved marble to translucency. He had read, mostly. But he’d learned to drill tiny holes and pass even tinier chains through them, and that had served him well when he’d been ordained and his uncle had given him the beads that now make up his rosary. It wasn’t traditionally Ishgardian, but neither are they.

He’s never been to the Black Shroud. He doesn’t particularly want to. Six of his eight great-grandparents had decided to take their chances with the dragons rather than spend another day under the tree canopy, and they’d taken their culture with them when they left. Evrard’s grown up with stories of sacred serpents and baked mushrooms and amber-studded masks. And stone. Granite for walls, marble for cups, crystals for heating and cooling and ventilation. He might live on a mountain rather than under it (an ancient, terrible Duskwight diaspora joke), but he knows its worth.

Right now, he’s handling a collection of tiny round granite beads as though they’re solid gold. They’re jet black with pale gray flecks, utterly common, but he thinks the effect will be striking in the sunlight. He draws closer to the single candle he’s afforded himself for this work, squinting in the flickering flames as he threads the beads in place. Twelve for each of the Knight’s Twelve and the Fury’s Prayer, sixty for the prayers which make up the Novena for the Blessed Fury. It’ll be large enough to loop around a man’s wrist twice when it’s done.

Well, around his wrist. He should have measured Alan’s—the man is much more solidly muscled than he is—but there’s no way to do that without giving the surprise away. The thought of his dear friend’s face makes him smile.

(Alan had asked if Evrard had thought him ready. And then, his voice shaking, if he was worthy. Evrard rather thinks this will settle the question.)

Maybe he should have seen it coming. Busari had been affectionate enough, devoted enough, when he was present—but he’d been gone for longer and longer stretches of time, lately. Adventuring, he’d say, and he had the scars to prove it so Evrard didn’t doubt him. No, he didn’t think the man had been unfaithful. (It would have been easier to bear if he had.) But looking back on it, he couldn’t deny that his lover had been...distant. Restless. Less involved with Vidofnir’s Wings and Evrard’s life than he would’ve liked or expected had he been in his right mind. But he hadn’t been—there’d been far too much to worry about what with Garlemald and the Final Days and everything else—and so Busari’s odd behavior had fallen by the wayside.

And then there had been that letter, the sentences still seared into his mind.

He’d read it. He’d burned it. He’d looked around at his quarters in Laterum, with half of Busari’s things still scattered about—half of Busari’s things, he now realized, that the man had figured he could part with because he wasn’t coming back—and nearly burned that too, flames licking at his soul, before he’d clenched his fists and stormed down to the commissary to get blisteringly drunk.

Alan had found him at some point during the second glass, and managed somehow to get an explanation out of him. What he’d actually said, he couldn’t remember—but it had been enough to make his best friend snarl, fists clenching like he’d like to tear Busari limb from limb, and all of a sudden Evrard had felt heat suffuse his face that he couldn’t blame on the alcohol. He’d...well, he hadn’t forgotten, you don’t forget a thing like that, but he’d deliberately let himself stop noticing that Alanais Venditor was very handsome when he was angry.

And then the man had hauled him down to the training grounds to burn off some of the emotions and the alcohol, and that had...it had helped. It had helped a lot.

Too much.

He should be more broken up about this, shouldn’t he? He and Busari had been together for years. He shouldn’t be able to return to work in two days as though nothing had happened, the hole in his heart less a chasm and more an unexpected missing stair. But Busari had been distant for quite a while, and his friends were here. Alan wasn’t shy about offering bloody vengeance, his fellow healers kept him well supplied with baked goods and sympathy, and even Busari’s own family members seemed to be on his side.

“So when I send you his horns, do you want the rest of his skull to be attached?”

Evrard lifted his head from his still-warm sandwich, staring at Gantsetseg. The woman had plopped herself down on the bench opposite his, seemingly straight from the workshops if her lightly begrimed state and unzipped jumpsuit was any indication. He hadn’t even heard her approach. “You’re not sending me anyone’s horns!”

She raised an eyebrow. “What, y’don’t want proof?”

“Proof of what—no. No, Miss Bayaqud, please do not kill your cousin for me.”

She blinked big crimson eyes at him, her limbal rings bright with outrage. “But he—”

“Behaved abominably, yes.” He was proud of himself for not hissing that, but he couldn’t stop his ears from flattening against his skull in remembered rage. What a cad. “He does not deserve to die for it. He does not, in fact, deserve a single moment of your, my, or anyone else’s time.”

Another blink. Finally she sat back, and he heard the thwap of her tail hitting the base of the bench in frustration. “’Tis your call,” she muttered. “But he’s a bloody shame on the clan, I’ll have you know.”

He couldn’t help but relax. There was something very comforting about being the object of so much care. Strange, yes, but still very comforting. Gantsetseg had always been friendly to him; he’d thought it was just because he was dating her cousin, but now it seemed he’d been wrong. “Such has been made...exceptionally clear to me. You are not the first one who’s offered to slay him.”

“That would be Al.” Her fondness for her own lover—who, notably, would never think of dumping her without a single word—shone through her voice, and Evrard had to fight down a sudden uncomfortable twist in his gut.

It got worse when she leaned on the table, an action which did fantastic things to her breasts in that tightly-woven shirt she wore, and continued, “He’s been right worried about you, y’know. We all have been, but him especially. You sure you won’t let him kill something for you?” Seeing his face, she added, “It doesn’t have to be my idjit cousin! A bear will suffice!”

He blinked slowly. Some half-formed memory of Busari explaining how Xaela flirted was screaming in the back of his head. Elaborate-yet-useful gifts were involved—pelts, woven cloth, fresh meat, weaponry. “And what would I do with a bear?” he heard himself ask, because there was no possible way Gantsetseg of the Bayaqud was flirting with him. Or, worse (better?), flirting with him on Alan’s behalf.

She shrugged. “Nice warm rug? It’ll keep you warmer than my cousin did.”

His grimace wasn’t entirely from embarrassment. “No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” And then she was looking past him at the long line of lunch workers. “Oh, there’s sausage soup! I’ll be right back—what’s that face? Didja not think I was gonna bring you a bowl?”

“I’m—” Not hungry, he was going to say, but the truth was that he’d been spending his morning feeding aether to badly malnourished Garlean refugees and was bloody starving. The sandwich wasn’t going to be enough. “...Thank you.”

She grinned at him, bright and wild and fanged, and he thought, Oh, shite.

At least she was gone to wait on line in the next moment, so she couldn’t see the expression on his face this time. Nor the way he raked a hand through his hair, the next best thing to pulling it out by the roots. Blessed Fury, preserve me. But the prayer fell flat, because the rest of his mind was suddenly full of Gantsetseg’s arm muscles and the light in Alan’s eyes.

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