#goliam

They had left the Sandfolds for what Ha’ub insisted was known as Downside Prairie, and the imp was determined to urge them ever-forward, towards a series of hot springs to rest.  The prairie was lush, and beautiful, a green more beautiful than all of Soliam’s former riches, even with the storms.  It was strange, being alive and changed, taking such joy in things like the thundering downpour of a surprise tempest, soaking clothing and hair and dripping along the faint grooves of his horns.  Even when Ha’ub and Gol had managed to find them a cave to huddle into, or were able to construct a lean-to with sufficient shelters he would stand out in the roaring rains anyway, to the imp’s amusement and his former general’s resigned chagrin.

That is what Soliam is doing now, standing out amidst the storm and enjoying the feeling of the elements battering against his skin, arms out as if entreating the sky, soaked and glistening and laughing.  Lightning flashes, a little too close for even his recklessness to allow, and he turns back towards the night’s shelter with a sheepish grin.  There is such a look of helpless fondness on Gol’s face, from where he is watching, that Soliam stops, breath caught.  It passes swiftly, however, under Soliam’s eyes, and again he has his exasperated general (former general, and not... not his. Not as he wants it to be).

“My liege, you will catch a cold, and then we will all be sorry.”

Soliam winces, internally, both at the reproof and at the reminder of what they had been.  Of the foolish man he had been, unworthy of such devotion.  It is habit for Gol more likely than not—the practiced respect—but it serves ever-more as a reminder of all that Gol had forfeit for his sake.  (Soliam thinks of a stolen press of lips against Gol’s forehead, and feels ashamed).  He makes his way into their cave-shelter, head down and chastened, and opens his mouth to make an apology.  Before he can speak, Gol hustles him in and settles him down on a low rock to serve as a stool, and takes up the dripping mass of his hair.  

“Hold still.”

The words are unneeded; Soliam is frozen, unmoving, as Gol begins to carefully use the slickness of the rain to tease the tangles out of his hair, using the flashes of lightning as guidance when the careful feeling of his fingers fails.  Soliam has never known how to care for it before, and the addition of the huge horns only make the task a more difficult one.  But Gol has infinite patience, it seems, and a gentle tenderness as his blunt fingers comb carefully through the mess.  As he encounters them, Gol keeps removing pieces of foliage and debris that seem to have logged themselves into his hair—including a twig that is perhaps more accurately a decent-sized branch—and then dropping them to the floor with soft snorts.  Soliam can feel a flush crawling up his neck, and is pathetically grateful for the obstruction of vision that his horns provide.

Eventually Soliam relaxes into it, the feel of Gol’s blunt fingertips dragging along his scalp, the careful way his fingers trace oh so lightly around the tender skin at the base of his horns.  He lets his eyes shut, and rests in the certainty that the forfeit of all the Empire was most certainly worth this.  This moment right here, where he is wet and starting to get a little cold, with a better knowledge of who he was and who he could be, and at the receiving end of boundless gifts of mercy.  This moment with Gol at his back and his fingers in his hair, combing and detangling and patting dry and… braiding?  Neat plaits that keep what is becoming more of a mane than a head of hair tamed and out of the way.  There is such a gentle care, as Gol’s hands linger around his horns as he gently towels them dry, as Gol takes care of him, and with his eyes shut Soliam can pretend that it is instead an act of domestic intimacy, instead of an extension of Gol’s unearned loyalty and service, a gift beyond price.

His eyes are shut, and he thinks back to the look on Gol’s face when he first turned back, that half-flash of what seemed fondness, that look that makes Soliam think that one day, perhaps, it will not be hopeless to believe that this unnamed something in between them could grow to be more.  That his kisses won’t be limited to the brush of lips pressed to a forehead with only the stars to witness.  But he doesn’t know if he can hope for more, doesn’t know that he should.

The wind howls as it whips across the Sandfolds. Gol had not known that the Downside could become so cold.  The Emperor– Soliam, now, he instists upon Soliam, does not seem to feel it; though whether that lie because he had grown so familiar with such discomforts, or the changes wrought upon his form that had granted him such a terrible visage also encompassed a greater tolerance for such things, Gol would not venture to say.  Ha’ub has found them a place for the night, a shelter burrowed into the dunes, still retaining some of the heat from the day.

Gol presses back against the heat of the sand, ignoring the way it begins to shift and slip into his clothing, rubbing up against his skin with an unpleasant grit.  It would be helped, perhaps, were he not ever-so-slightly shivering from the chill, but he did not want to bother his liege with such a trivial discomfort.  It is still strange, to think of him as anything different, even if that word does not, perhaps, properly encompass the depths of his feelings.  This thing between them is still so new, changing.

You gave your freedom, Master Golathanian, so that I may yet have mine.

The words still linger in his head, hidden among a general’s mind for terrain and tactics.  They will need to forage, and supply themselves.  They will need to upkeep their remaining armaments, and—if possible—obtain more.

You gave your freedom.

The flash-memory fear of his liege’s form on first sight blends with the stirring of pity, the deep-rooted loyalty and respect, the strangeness of this new familiarity, and it sends his mind in spirals even as he huddles closer into himself for warmth.  Gol lets his eyes fall shut, seeking rest before the early morning when it will be his turn for watch, and burrows further against the wall, gritting his teeth and flinching forward against the sifting fall of sand.

There is a sudden heavy weight around his shoulders, and it feels like a blanket of heat.  Gol’s eyes crack open to catch his liege’s face, lingering so close to his own.  His liege’s own cloak is in his hands, settled carefully around Gol’s shoulders, and Gol can do nothing but stare, caught, into the yellow-gold glow of those demon eyes.  Their noses could almost touch, and Gol realizes he can feel the phantom touch of his liege’s curling horns brushing against his hair, the tight coils wild and free of his helm in preparation for sleep.

His liege at last begins to draw away, and it seems to break whatever moment had held them suspended. It is not even a thought, as Gol extends out his arm, and shifts so that he is using only half the cloak.

“You will be cold, sire- Soliam.”

There is that almost-wince at the corner of his liege’s eye, the slightest tic of a reluctance to accept the title that Gol so hastily corrects.

“If you insis–”

“I do.”  Gol swallows the sir that lingers on his lips, and doesn’t speak as his liege carefully levers down to settle next to him.  They are close, pressed against each other for warmth, the closest they have ever been since Gol had assisted Ha’ub in the darkest days of his liege’s brush with death.  It is strange, and new, but weariness overtakes even the turmoil of his mind, and Gol slowly drifts to sleep, only half-aware as his head falls to rest upon a broad, warm shoulder.

.

“Don’t-!”

Gol holds at the aborted shout from Soliam’s mouth, his hand curling back from the small chunk of shining silver and orange crystal he had reached for.  Before Gol can even check the movement, Soliam is at his side, and his large, clawed hands drawn around the hand he had stretch out, gently cupping it with all earnestness, and drawing Gol further away from the crystal chunk and others like it.

“Please be careful what you reach to touch.”  Gol meets his lord’s eyes as Soliam entreats him.  “There are many beautiful things in the Downside, but most of them are terrible.”  He inclines his great horned head towards the crystal growths.  “Those in particular are highly poisonous, made of heavy metals that even on contact can make one become gravely ill.”

His liege draws him father away, and closer to their encampment on a small outcrop above the hot springs shielded away from the elements by the jut of a cliff face and Gol follows, trying to ignore the way his hand is still held so gently in Soliam’s own as the demon speaks.

“Such crystals, in part, worsened my illness, before.” Gol remembers.  He cannot imagine the worst of what Ha’ub had nursed Soliam through, alone, before Gol had encountered them, and fought back the Sisters of the Arch, for a time.  Even towards the end of Soliam’s illness, there were many nights of little sleep, with precious water-soaked rags to cool Soliam’s brow and ease the aching, heated skin around his horns as his liege shook with fevered dreams and frailty.

As Gol draws himself out of such memories, Soliam continues “I could not bear it, should such illness befall you.”  The former emperor’s voice is low and soft, filled with an earnestness that leaves Gol feeling warm from something other than the sulfurous steam of the Bloomingpools.  His face flushes with that heat, muted in the mocking gold-yellow glow of the pools that cannot be bathed in, for all their offered warmth.  Gol moves to take half a step back, and finds his hand even now still caught between his liege’s gentle claws.  They both, as one, turn to look at the joining of their hands, and Soliam traces a careful clawtip over the calloused pads of Gol’s fingers before drawing away.

“Forgive me, for pulling you away, so suddenly.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Gol swallows the sir, yet again, biting it between his teeth, “I am grateful for your concern.”