#galure

“I made tea, and some for you too, if you want it?”

Tirumala took a step back and there was a flash of elemental energy, the mists whipping in circles, running from the force as he took gijinka. The light lasted only a moment, but Galuré flinched away from both the brightness and the distant memories it brought up. He had only changed forms once, and the process had been so slow and agonising that he’d never attempted it again since. Just the sight of someone else doing so was enough to drag up the feeling of his bones snapping as every inch of him, down to a microscopic level, rearranged itself over the course of several minutes, so he snatched up the two mugs he’d left beside him and drank from his. It scalded his mouth, but somehow the real pain was more tolerable than a phantom one.

Tirumala lowered himself to sit beside him with a grunt, on the same level, but still he kept his distance. He took the drink when Galuré offered it, before quickly setting it back down on the decking with a panicked frown as he shook the heat from his fingertips.

“Oh, is it too hot? Sorry, I can’t feel it.” Galuré said, raising his free hand as if to demonstrate like Tirumala didn’t already know. He supposed he could feel it, but the existing pain on the surface that deepened into numbness meant any other pain or feeling was superficial. His skin was likely blistering as he spoke, but he held the mug close regardless – The warmth of it outweighing the need to prevent the damaging of flesh that would soon fall away and be replaced regardless.

Tirumala turned his eye back to the thickets he’d just emerged from, armour still thick on his shoulders from the morning’s patrol. He had a ruggedness about him that Galuré found captivating; Tirumala had a good 20 years on him – had a son about his age, even – and it made him wonder about his own future. He’d have cut a path through the underworld for Dantalion’s retirement long before that time, and he had no doubts his lover would age like a fine wine then, but himself… They’d have to catch me first, he thought. I’d look good with an eyepatch, anyways.

Tirumala said something that Galuré didn’t pick up on.

“Sorry, what was that?”

Again, he tasted the vibrations on his tongue and heard the rumble of his voice from within his chest, but couldn’t quite make out all the syllables.  

“I – You need to speak up, I’m hard of hearing.” In an old habit, he gunned his fingers and swiped them down, then bounced them in a small arc outwards. “Do you sign? No, wait, never mind, it’d be a different language anyways – It helps if you face me when you speak, though.”

For the last few months, he’d been in good health which helped his hearing, and conversations were manageable, but Tirumala spoke so softly that some of the sounds were missed. Vanadev had said before that Tirumala didn’t speak much and wasn’t adept with eye contact either, and he worried for a moment about how to find a compromise between his needs and his friend’s comfort. Luckily, Tirumala swivelled round to face him, one leg folding to rest on the flat of the porch as he spoke, and this time the words rang through.

“You’re up early.”

“It’s more that I haven’t been to sleep yet.” He chuckled.

“So, it’s… Galuré then?” Galuré gave a nod of affirmation, a small glow of secret pleasure blooming in his chest that Tirumala had made the effort to remember. “Why haven’t you slept?”

Now there was a question.

He wasn’t unused to being awake all night, having being born out of Aneikenon’s wish to freely go drinking in town of an evening, and he and Dantalion often travelled under the cover of darkness, but there was no reason for him not to sleep on this evening in particular. On his own, Galuré did most of his sleeping on a mid-afternoon basis, but last night he’d crawled into bed alongside his three lovers, yet still found himself unable to drift off with them.

He’d remained there, still, just enjoying the intimacy of it. Dantalion to his right, naked, limbs curled around him in a full body embrace and the warmth of his body heat not unlike that of a hot bath. Vanadev to his left, one arm still loosely holding Galuré’s head to the soft silk of the bed-robes covering his chest, and Tirumala just a little beyond him, leaning in with an arm draped over his husband’s waist. It was a gentle, domestic bliss that Galuré had never thought he’d ever feel, and for once, he’d counted himself a lucky man. Sleep eluded him, but someone how felt better off for it.

“I wanted to be up bright and early to greet you after your morning patrol, of course!” Galuré hoped a partial truth would be enough to satisfy him.

He’d felt the shift in weight on the bed as Tirumala had got up, but had said nothing for the sake of Dantalion, who was always so on edge that the slightest sound would jolt him awake. Once the room had settled and he was sure Dantalion was still sleeping, he’d crawled out from his pile of bodies and warmed himself by the fire as he stirred his hazy mind back to the day’s reality. At the time he wasn’t sure how long Tirumala’s patrol would take, but once he’d found the energy to re-dress himself, he’d moved to the kitchen to make the two of them some tea for his return.

Tirumala dipped his head in acknowledgement, but offered no further opportunity for conversation. He picked up his cup and brought it to his lips once more to take a cautious sip. His reaction would’ve been perfectly concealed behind the polite lack of reaction, but a slight creasing to his inner eye gave him away; too hot still. Over the years, Galuré had found that he had a knack for reading people, especially faces, his sight compensating for his hearing – It made card games easy, but very boring. “You got brought up proper, didn’t you? Are you a Prince or something?”

“No,” Tirumala snorted. “but an Heir? Maybe.”

“You can tell. Or I can, at least.” Galuré took a drink of his own tea, and found it to be just right in temperature, if not a little bland in flavour. “I’m good at that, but I’m not sure how. I don’t really know much about being a Prince though, you’d have to ask the other guy about it.” He tapped the side of his head.

Tirumala didn’t want to talk about it. Aneikenon wouldn’t either.

A silence of his own creation fell between them, and it made his skin itch. Dantalion was good at this, the sitting and the quiet, but Galuré was not. He’d never had a problem holding up a conversation by himself before, and couldn’t put his finger on why Tirumala suddenly made it difficult. One hand reached to the hairline of his neck, and he drove his fingers in hard, hoping bones would scratch where his missing fingernails could not.

“What happened to your eye?” Tirumala wasn’t like Dantalion, and probably wouldn’t tell just because he’d asked, but grasping at straws was better than the quiet. “Is it still in your head or is it like, gone?”

Tirumala’s fingers landed on his eyepatch, as if he was surprised to find it there. For a moment he said nothing, and Galuré fought down the urge to air his frustrations with a heaved sigh.

“It’s there…” He trailed off, pupil narrowing as it looked back in time to a world Galuré couldn’t see. Whatever emotions he felt towards it, he didn’t let them show. “Just about. Any deeper and I’d be dead. Vanadev saved me.”

“Well, see? Isn’t that nice and romantic?” Galuré leant in to rest his elbows on his knees, a clever trick to get closer without moving at all. His hair slid from his shoulders at the angle, curtaining him, and he left it there, not keen on moving his hands more than was needed.

Tirumala’s eye dragged back to scrutinise him, a gesture far more obvious that any other he’d displayed so far, although there was no creasing of brows to indicate that he’d found something he didn’t like.

“That’s what you consider romantic?”

“You don't? Fighting alongside someone and protecting one another… If that’s not a good indication of trust and love then I’m not sure what is. I mean, sure, most of the fights me and Dantalion get into are pretty one-sided, but …” Galuré felt the grin split his face as he thought back. “Like, when we’re taking cover from enemy fire, crouched together behind some wall and trying to figure out our next move, I think that’s when I feel closest to him.”

Tirumala sipped his tea, but the edges of his mouth curved parallel to the mug’s rim, and a chuckle rocked the liquid as he swallowed. Galuré watched as he ran his tongue across his top lip, catching a stray droplet that remained, and somehow he knew that at the very least, Tirumala understood.

“Work shouldn’t be your whole life. You’ll last longer if you have romance outside of it.”

Tirumala was special, Galuré realised then, as in that moment he felt not an ounce of his usual indignation. He took poorly to advice, even Dantalion’s on occasion, for who could presume that they were on a level even close to his, and yet, for the first time, Tirumala’s words made him consider the future.

‘I’ll help Dantalion retire’ had become his primary driving force, at some point completely eclipsing his previous motives of fun and freedom that were once overpowering but now felt so fickle. A goal, certainly, but one that felt so far away as every action seemed to dig them further down away from that light, that never once in all the this time had Galuré considered what happened once they reached it. He couldn’t fathom what life after all this would look like for Dantalion, and it occurred to him all too suddenly that he wasn’t necessarily guaranteed a place within it.

Now that he thought about it, he and Dantalion were always together, and yet when they weren’t out on a job or travelling for one, it felt like they didn’t do very much anything at all. They went down to The Black Lagoon often enough, but even that was because it was a known hotspot for criminal activity so it was easy to pick up jobs there. Sure, Galuré knew it wasn’t his fault that he was so sickly and that Dantalion had no hobbies whatsoever, some things can’t be helped, but compared to when he lived back at home on the Icefields, where there was always some skill for him to practise or some duty for him to fulfil, life outside of work was now frighteningly hollow.

What would happen to them once the work stopped?

Underneath it all, he found himself envious of the power behind Tirumala’s ability to stun a man into silence with so few words.

“It’s that dire?” Galuré wrinkled his nose in contempt at the description, for while he knew Tirumala’s mind was as sharp as his senses, he had not taken him to be foolish enough to poke fun. “We’ll go out then, all four of us. There are plenty of beautiful places Vanadev and I can show you. After, we can watch one of the Fireflies’ performances and go somewhere nice to eat… I think Vanadev’s wanted to for a while, but you two never stay for very long when you visit.”

Tirumala looked him in the eye then, gaze soft, but he may as well have pinned Galuré to the deck and snarled in his face for all the good it did his heart. A torrent of emotions tore up inside him like sand kicked loose at the bottom of a river, too fast and made of too many small parts for him to be able to grasp. A few grains thought it sounded nice and wanted it, before a cascade of others slammed them against the rocks and silenced them.

He liked Tirumala and Vanadev, loved them even. He looked forward to visiting them when they could, was always eager to climb into bed with them and more than happy to play house with them for a few days at a time. He felt the undertone of closer in Tirumala’s words though, and closer was something he wasn’t sure he could do. They were both in his heart, but were kept banished to the outskirts; any closer he might start to resent them, the way he resented everyone else, sweetness turned sickly from a stable diet.

Any closer, he thought, and they might start to resent me.

Curses in his skin, venom in his veins and a mind where doors only opened inwards, Galuré teetered dangerously on the edge of what it meant to be human, but had not yet fallen from that cliff, and so like most mortals he was desperate for love. He had it, of course, in Dantalion, but now he had new things in Vanadev and Tirumala, and once a child is gifted a new toy they are rarely keen to give it back.

A strong breeze startled him from his ruminating, carding its fingers through his hair and feathers and thieving the heat from his drink and hands. It must’ve caught Tirumala’s attention too, for he finally slid closer, guiding the hair that had fallen loose with the backs of his fingers to return it delicately to its place, hand hovering in place for a few moments longer.

It was a gentle gesture, full of genuine tenderness. Galuré felt like there was a loaded gun pressed between his eyes.

Keeping their eyes locked, as if Tirumala would vanish into the forest mists if he looked away for even a moment, an unwatched hand moved to place his mug onto the decking, the sound of baked clay meeting wood louder than all else other than the eternal march of his heart chased into a run. His other hand moved up, divergent in visual but mirror in gesture, to Tirumala’s jaw; neither touching, stuck in orbit of one another but kept at bay by the smallest layer of something distinctly foreign, but Tirumala’s gravity was too great and Galuré fell, aflame, out of control.

He did not crash, though. Tirumala’s lips embraced, accepted, his - a silent message, received, understood and challenged with a nip of teeth against a scar long healed.