#evalangan

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.