#jeraffe

The wily Ronso hasn't said a word about it, but Thaffe's been catching odd glances all day - at both of them; glances he can't quite decipher. If Jeryk's noticed, he hasn't remarked on it, and gods know he probably hasn't; if it's not a trolley or a Talos, these days, nothing catches Jeryk's attention. He's likely blissfully unaware of the scrutiny, and Thaffe wishes he could be half so oblivious.

Still, he reminds himself, it's not as though they're doing anything wrong.

Whatever it is they're doing.

Maybe it's nothing, he tries to assure himself, joining Magnus in a seat on the tavern's steps - what passes for private in a town this small. Maybe it's just a friendly chat.

True to his word, Magnus has only tea to drink; Thaffe has a feeling he's going to wish he had more than Twine's weak ale.

"So," Magnus says. "Jeryk?"

Oh gods. Thaffe can't meet his mentor's eyes, preferring to watch as the sun goes down over Twine. Jeryk himself should be trotting home from repairs over at Mount Biran soon, unless he's lost track of time again. Wouldn't be the first time Thaffe's had to go fetch him after sundown since the return of night...

"What about him?" His face feels hot. Is he blushing?

Magnus snorts, unfooled. "Don't play stupid, Thaffe; you're too clever to be any good at it."

"Wicked white," he mutters, taking a drink. He doesn't want to talk about this with Magnus; he can scarcely bring himself to talk about it with Jeryk, and that's after over three years! "Why aren't you asking him?"

"I might just do that later, but you're here now."

And what Jeryk would make of that, Thaffe can't guess. He'll likely just be puzzled that Magnus thinks it's even worth asking after - all this fuss, and for what? A few kisses? A handful of tender words when they're both half-asleep? Jeryk'll think it's silly to poke and prod at it; just like he thinks it's silly the way Thaffe keeps trying to sort out just what it is.

"You're stalling." Damn it all, Magnus sounds amused. "I'm not angry, lad; just curious. I'd always thought of the two of you as brothers, not lovers."

Lovers; is that what we are?

"I thought the same thing, for a while." Jeryk's parents had all but raised Thaffe after his own parents' death; maybe he should see Jeryk as a brother. But that's sure not how he feels with Jeryk's lips on his, or when they settle down to bed together at night. It's been a long, long time since Thaffe last felt guilty about seeing his friend as my foster parents' real son instead of my brother. He feels a prickle of the old guilt again now, though, and takes a drink to try and swallow it back down.

He takes a deep breath. "We've been..." What? Lovers? "Together, I suppose, since a little before Anga..." No need to say more.

Magnus looks away. Takes a swallow of his tea. Grimaces. "Always hated this stuff." He sets the cup aside. "I suppose that goes some distance toward explaining why I missed it. I haven't been paying much attention to anything."

"We're not... loud about it."

"True. And that's something. I didn't think Jeryk could keep quiet about anything." The Ronso smiles, almost affectionate. "He hasn't grown up much in three years, has he? Still like a kid with those trolleys."

"He's good at what he does," Thaffe says, defensive; the trolleys they do have would've fallen to ruin if not for Jeryk. "And you can't say he's not passionate about the work." It's all he ever talks about these days; trolleys and Talos and giant trolleys...

Magnus nods, then chuckles. "That's true. Gods save us." He shakes his head. "You love him, then?"

Cold sweat prickles his skin. That's the word he's skittish about. "I love him," he agrees, slowly. "I don't... I don't know that I'm in love with him, but-"

"After three years?"

"I know." Jeryk's got a place in his heart no one else can touch, but is that love? In three years, Thaffe can count on his fingers the times they've really kissed; more than the odd peck here and there. He hasn't bedded Jeryk, no more than he has anyone, for all he tends to wake up with Jeryk in his arms nearly every morning. Is that love? This quiet, subtle thing? Everything Thaffe knows about love suggests it's meant to be louder, stronger, all-consuming.

Still, he can't imagine ever feeling this way about anyone else.

"I know," he repeats, frowning into his drink. "Believe me, I know."

Magnus shakes his head again. "Well, I suppose you have to share him with trolleys either way," he says, amused. "Only take my advice, will you?"

"And what's that?"

"Don't take it for granted, whatever it might be." Magnus turns his head, gazing toward the graveyard. Agna. "It's too late to be grateful for what you've got after it's taken from you."

"I'll..." He can't quite bring himself to imagine losing Jeryk. It's far more likely he'll be the one taken well before his time. "I'll keep that in mind, Magnus."

"Keep what in mind?"

He'd know that chipper voice anywhere. He looks up. Sure enough: Jeryk, returned from the evening's work, and blithely oblivious to the conversation he's walked in on. There's a familiar cheery smile on his lips... and a smudge of grease on his freckled cheek, which he seems equally oblivious to.

Oh, Jeryk, Thaffe thinks, setting his drink aside and rising to greet his friend. "Never mind," he says, lifting a hand to wipe the grease from the other man's face. "You're a mess."

It does little to dampen Jeryk's eagerness. "But we did manage to-"

"I'll leave you two to it," Magnus says, standing and cutting off what promises to be a lengthy description of all Jeryk and the others have accomplished while the two of them sat here talking. "I'll take a look at it all in the morning." He claps Thaffe's shoulder as he walks away, laughing under his breath.

Gods, but it's good to hear the man laughing again. Even if it is at Thaffe's own expense.

"What'd you two talk about?" Jeryk asks, quizzically gazing after Magnus.

Such a simple, normal evening it'd been; the two of them sitting in one of the covered tunnels along the tracks after the day's work - shelter from the Light, without returning home just yet. The tunnels had become a common hangout spot for youths after the trolleys stopped working: often they weren't the only ones sheltering there, but not that day. That day it'd been just the two of them. Everyone else had been seeing off yet another family departing from Twine, leaving Amh Araeng for greener pastures - just as Jeryk's own had left just half a year before, leaving him behind at his own insistence.

They'd been talking about it - about the family that was leaving, and what it meant for Twine. The dwindling population; the dying industries. And out of the blue, Jeryk (of all people) lamented that there were so few people their own age left in Twine - true enough; with this family's departure, it left them some of the youngest people in town - and that there were no girls their age left at all, and...

And just how was anyone meant to have a first kiss, at this rate?

I didn't even think he cared about that sort of thing, Thaffe thinks, his face heating at the memory. It's an odd sort of betrayal, almost; he'd always assumed Jeryk was just as uninterested in romance and its trappings as he was. The other boy never mentioned anything of the sort before; so far as Thaffe had ever known, Jeryk's first and only love were the trolleys.

But then, I didn't think I cared about that sort of thing, either.

But he'd sat there thinking about it, while the sweat trickled down his neck and his mouth went dry - he'd sat there thinking about it, with his heart pounding so fast it made his vision blur, and he'd realized, swallowing hard-

"We could kiss, I suppose."

He'd meant it to sound casual. A joke, maybe; something they could laugh off, except... except that abruptly, with everything in him, he desperately wanted to kiss Jeryk. His best friend, his oldest friend; how'd this sneak up on him? Surely it should've hit him sooner than this, but he'd gone eighteen years without so much as a flicker of desire, thinking himself too mature to stumble into this sort of pitfall. He'd watched their other friends break their hearts against each other over the past few years, and never once did he think he might...

He'd meant to take it back, to laugh it off as he'd intended, but Jeryk... Jeryk had lit up at the idea. That smile! Thaffe still sees it when he closes his eyes, like staring at a bright light too long.

And then...

How does one judge this sort of thing? Was it a good kiss? Gods, Thaffe doesn't know. It was light, tentative, the gentlest brush of dry, chapped lips, full of promise. The promise of what - that's what sets Thaffe's heart to twisting; that's what's kept him awake at night all week. They hadn't talked about it - they'd laughed, anxious little laughs, and they'd gone back to talking about other things, though Thaffe doesn't recall a word of what he said. There'd been a little flush in Jeryk's cheeks, though, and he couldn't seem to stop smiling.

He can't stop thinking about it. But he can't bring himself to talk to Jeryk about it, either - what would he even say? What does he even want to say? He can't keep avoiding Jeryk the way he has, that's for certain; even if it hasn't become obvious yet, it will soon, and someone's going to start asking questions. Worse, Jeryk might start asking questions, and Thaffe's not sure he's got the answers.

He sighs, gathering today's meager collection. He's done a lot of banging on the cavern walls with his pickaxe for not a lot in the way of ore, and certainly no leonine. And he's no closer to unraveling the tangle in his head for his efforts.

All week, he's headed straight home from the mines, the better to clean up and get to bed early - before Jeryk gets home. It's not all that unusual. He's done it all the time, since taking up mining when he'd reached fifteen summers; early to bed, early to rise. Jeryk won't question it, not yet. If he keeps it up, though...

What if he gets it into his head that he's done something wrong? Thaffe hesitates outside the mine, blinking in the Light. What if he starts thinking I'm avoiding him for the kiss, when it was my own idea in the first place?

...Wicked white, he is avoiding Jeryk for the kiss, when it was his own idea in the first place.

With a heavy sigh, he turns his feet not toward home, but toward the railyard at Mount Biran, where Jeryk is sure to be. Magnus will be heading home by now, along with everyone else, but Jeryk? Jeryk'll spend another hour or so there, even if he's just looking at the old equipment, mesmerized. Thaffe finds himself walking quickly, surprising himself with his eagerness to see his friend again, after a week apart-

And maybe that's an answer all its own, isn't it? He misses Jeryk; misses him like he's lost a part of himself.

Whatever this is, whatever he's feeling, whatever comes of it... gods save him; he doesn't want to be away from Jeryk any longer. They'll figure it out better together than they will apart, surely.

The railyard's empty, but a light blazes in the window of the old Stoneworks office building. Jeryk's perched on the desk, drumming his heels against the scarred wood as he reads one of the technical manuals the old engineers left behind... but he looks up at Thaffe's arrival, startled by the door opening long after everyone else has gone home.

And he smiles, delight kindling in his green eyes. "Thaffe! I haven't seen you all week! Have you and Agna found any leonine?"

There's a vice around his heart, and something lodged in his throat. "Not.. not yet, no. Listen, Jeryk..."

Jeryk's smile fades. He sets the book aside. "Thaffe?"

Do or die, he orders himself. Get it over with or go home. He closes the distance between them, coming to stand before Jeryk, trying to keep his breathing steady. "I've... I've been thinking a lot," he says, doing his level best not to stare at Jeryk's lips. "About the... the kiss."

Color blooms in Jeryk's cheeks. "Oh?"

He sounds so hopeful it makes Thaffe want to laugh. So hopeful that it gives him hope, and enough courage to step even closer. He tugs the old hat off of Jeryk's head, rests his own forehead against his friend's.

Their breathing mingles, both a little unsteady.

"I'd like to kiss you again," Thaffe says, his voice rough. He cups Jeryk's face in his hands. "And I... I think I'd like to kiss you more, if you'd have me."

Jeryk laughs, a little breathless, but full of sheer delight.

But there's work to be done, and Twine won't be rebuilt in a day, let alone by lying about in bed for hours, no matter how tempting the return of night might make it seem. The best thing to do with the oncoming changes - Magnus rousing from his grief, and the night itself returning to Amh Araeng; both miracles equally unlooked-for as far as Thaffe's concerned - is to try to find some kind of routine and stick to it. And that means getting started with the day, just the same as he would have yesterday, and the day before.

Even if he does have to light an extra lantern, rather than simply cracking open one of the shutters.

He goes about his business, preparing for the day ahead - it's a good deal harder to shave by lantern light than by the Light, he learns, but he'd rather adjust to the change than give up the night sky again. He dresses carefully, half-certain he's going to put something on backwards-

His caution earns him a giggle from Jeryk, half-muffled by the pillow.

Thaffe peers over his shoulder, unsurprised to see Jeryk's eyes glinting back at him in the lamplight.

"I'll get used to dressing in the dark," he says, with as much dignity as he can muster. "I wager you like it better this way, anyhow."

"Better than letting the Light in first thing in the morning, when I'm still trying to sleep?" Jeryk's eyes crinkle in a familiar smile. "Oh, yes. It's easier to watch this way, too."

Now that makes Thaffe's ears and neck feel altogether too warm.

"You're impossible." He shakes his head, extinguishing the lantern before he can make a further fool of himself. In the darkness, he reaches down, finding the bare curve of Jeryk's shoulder and trailing his fingers down the man's spine until he feels the worn fabric of their blanket. He tugs it up, wrapping it securely around Jeryk against the morning's lingering chill.

"Be safe," Jeryk murmurs, drowsy again.

Thaffe leans down to press a quick kiss against Jeryk's temple, then rises. "I'll catch up to you later. Don't give Magnus too much trouble."

"Mm..."

But it's been a whole week, he thinks, plaintive; he can't remember ever going so long without speaking to Thaffe in his entire life. The effort to find leonine has to take priority, he knows. They can't restore the Talos without finding proper hearts, after all, and without the Talos, there can be no trolley! Agna's taken the best miners deep into the old mines, seeking out good-sized chunks of leonine that might've been missed by previous generations. That's why Thaffe's been gone lately. That's all.

And of course all that digging tires him out, so it's only reasonable that he heads straight home... and heads right out again in the early hours, before Jeryk's so much as thought about stirring. The miners aren't supposed to be spending the entire day down there, but Thaffe's hardly the only one; he's just as determined to find leonine and get the Talos mended as Agna is.

That's all.

Jeryk's chewing his lip again, and the words on the page might as well be written in some ancient Ronkan alphabet, for all the sense he's able to make of them.

It's just a coincidence that Thaffe's been making himself scarce since...

Was it that bad?

Such a little thing, really, in the end. Maybe that's the problem; maybe they should've made a bigger thing out of it - first kisses are supposed to be world-changing, aren't they? Gods know Jeryk's been daydreaming about kissing Thaffe since he was fourteen, and maybe he ought to be disappointed that the real thing turned out to be so short, so brief: just the softest brush of Thaffe's lips on his own, and then it was over. It's just not in him, though, to feel slighted. Not when the kiss itself had been Thaffe's idea, Thaffe's suggestion! He hadn't even been bold enough to dare suggesting it himself...

Why's he avoiding me, then?

He's not. Surely not. Would Thaffe do that, just kiss him and then refuse to ever talk to him again? No.

Maybe they should've talked about it, Jeryk reasons, frowning at a diagram of a Talos's heart-chamber. Maybe they ought to have sat there in the aftermath of the kiss and had a proper talk about it, about what it was and what it wasn't; about what it meant and what it didn't mean - maybe he's gone and spooked Thaffe, that's the problem; maybe he'd put a little too much want into a tiny kiss that wasn't supposed to be anything more than a first kiss for two boys who might otherwise never get one.

He heaves an unsteady sigh, thinking about it. Small as it was, it's kept him warm at night - Thaffe's breath on his lips, the way Thaffe's cheeks turned as red as his hair, the way Jeryk's lips tingled for bells...

If he hurries home now, maybe he can catch Thaffe before he settles in for the night. Maybe it isn't too late to talk about it.

Give him space, he scolds himself, again. He'll come 'round when he's ready.

The door to the old offices opens. Strange; everyone else left a while ago-

"Thaffe!" There, see? He's not avoiding me. "I haven't seen you all week! Have you and Agna found any leonine?"

There's a look on the man's face Jeryk doesn't quite recognize, and his heart sinks. That's not the look of a man who's simply come to visit his best friend after work on a whim. Either something terrible happened in the mines... or this is about something more personal, more immediate.

This is about the kiss. Thaffe has been avoiding him.

But surely if the kiss was that bad, Thaffe would choose to keep some distance between them, the better to make it clear no such thing would ever happen again... but instead he closes the distance, coming to stand right in front of Jeryk. So close, Jeryk's sure Thaffe must hear the way his pulse speeds up; if Thaffe is about to tell him off for the kiss, the man very well might hear the moment Jeryk's heart shatters just as thoroughly as all those Talos' out there-

Thaffe tugs Jeryk's hat off, setting it aside with the book he doesn't remember putting down, and rests their foreheads together. They'd done this when they were children - giggling conspiratorially in the private space between them - but it's different now; charged. This close, Jeryk feels all but surrounded by Thaffe - by the warmth of him; by the scent of sweat and the hot earth of the mines; the whisper of his breath. Jeryk could drown in it, he thinks; he could die right here, and be content.

Until Thaffe says he'd like to kiss him again, and Jeryk realizes he needs to live.

Thaffe's hands are tough and calloused against his face, but gentle, so gentle. You'd never hurt me.

"How else do you reckon we'll get to Kholusia?" he demands, giving his own amaro a gentle scratch. It leans affectionately against his hand with a gentle chrr, seemingly untroubled by the fact that they've only just met. The Crystarium's been generous enough to loan out amaro to those who mean to help with what's only being called, the effort. Mysterious, but evidently, the miners of Twine - and those with experience with Talos - will be of great help to the effort.

They'd gotten as far as Lakeland, where the amaro waited patiently to bear them across the sea... and there, Jeryk balked.

"I know you're not afraid of heights," Thaffe says, watching as others mount up and ready themselves for the journey. "Not when you spend all your time up on the tracks-"

"Those are tracks," Jeryk protests, hugging himself anxiously, eyeing the amaro as though they might attack at any moment. "They're going somewhere! You can see them! A trolley goes where it's meant to go; these things-"

He's getting a headache. "Also go somewhere. Where they're trained to go. And these are trained to go to Kholusia."

"They're just giant vultures."

"They're actually a bit more like lizards, I think."

"That doesn't make them better, Thaffe!"

"What's all this, then?" Magnus cuts in, frowning at the two of them, glaring from one to the other - which Thaffe can't help feeling is a bit unfair. "What are you two still standing around for? We're meant to be on our way."

Jeryk's defiance, always short-lived, melts into wistfulness. He sighs. "If there were only a trolley to cross the sea..."

Magnus snorts. "I'd say that's the stupidest idea I'd ever heard... but I just found out what we're needed in Kholusia for. You won't believe it." His eyes glitter, amused. "It seems a friend of ours is in need of as many hands as she can get, boys. She's building a giant Talos."

Thaffe stares, bewildered... but it does get Jeryk scrambling up onto the amaro at last, pale and trembling and clutching the reins as tight as he can.

"Not deep, at least," he comments, ignoring Jeryk's hisses of pain; at least he's sitting still. As still as he ever does, at any rate. "What did you do to yourself?"

"Clearing away the- ow! The nests on the tracks."

Why bother? Bitterness floods him. He bites it back, swallows it down like bile. But it's true. Agna had been their last hope of finding leonine to mend the Talos, and any hope of seeing the trolley restored had died down there in the mine with her. They may as well break apart the tracks - aye, and the trolley carts with it - for scrap, for all the good they're likely to do...

"Thaffe?"

He's paused in his ministrations, he realizes; let his despair get carried away. He shakes his head again, and sets back to his work. It won't do to let Jeryk get sick from some foulness on those vultures' claws; the nearest thing to a medic is likely in Mord Souq, and probably more than either of them can afford.

"You might as well leave the vultures to it," he says, keeping his voice as gentle as the agony within will allow.

Jeryk shakes his head. "They've had the run of the place for the past two months. There must be a dozen nests still out there-"

"Jeryk, there's no point." He'd known this would be the hard part; for all their lives, Jeryk had loved the trolley, long after it had stopped working - when Magnus and Agna returned, and it had seemed as though the Talos and trolley might be restored to their former glory... well, not for nothing had Jeryk seized on the opportunity to begin training as a trolley engineer, and Thaffe right along with him.

But that was before...

Jeryk's gone still, the lantern light reflecting in his green eyes. "No point?"

The heart's gone out of the whole damn town, that's the trouble; Agna and Magnus had brought something like life back into Twine, giving it a purpose once more. That life had begun to taper off as the search for leonine became more and more futile... and now this. Agna had taught him all her best tricks for mining the deepest reaches of the earth; she'd spent a few years drinking with the dwarves, she'd said, and they'd taught her a thing or two. She said she'd've passed on her tricks to her own son, had he a taste for the mines, if he hadn't been taken from her.

She'd kept an eye on Thaffe and Jeryk over the few short years she was with them - made sure they had food on the table and enough work to make ends meet. Magnus, too: training them in this and that, seeing to it they could make their way in the world, come what may.

Now this.

Now Agna's gone, and Magnus...

"There's no point." He reaches for the bandages, glad to have something to focus on that isn't Jeryk's face. If he just gets this over with, gets Jeryk patched up, he can climb back into bed and carry on pretending he'll never have to acknowledge what Twine's lost. "There's no heart, there's no Talos, there's no trolley, there's no restoring Twine. There's no point." As he speaks, he winds the bandage around one of Jeryk's wounded arms, then the other, wishing he could mend the wound this is going to cause.

Gods, but he's willing Jeryk to understand.

Is that cruel? Maybe it'd be kinder to let Jeryk come to terms with all this on his own. Is it better to wish his best friend could be suffering right alongside him? Maybe he's just lonely in his heartache. He hasn't been brave enough to face the raw agony of Magnus's grief, too fresh and too intimate to intrude upon, but Jeryk... he and Jeryk have always understood one another.

"She wouldn't want us to give up, you know." Jeryk plucks the roll of bandages from his hand and sets it aside. "She was searching for leonine because she believed in restoring the trolley."

"And look where it got her." His own voice is numb to his ears, hollow.

Jeryk stands abruptly, and for half a heartbeat, Thaffe thinks the man means to slap him - half hopes he might slap him.

Instead, before he can protest, Jeryk's got him pulled into a tight embrace, clutched in those freshly-bandaged arms, Thaffe's ear resting against Jeryk's heart. He means to pull away, truly - he doesn't need to be held; he just needs to crawl back beneath his blanket and slip back into oblivion for a few more hours, a few more years... but when he lefts his arms to brush Jeryk away, instead they wrap around the other man instead, his hands twisting into the fabric of his friend's shirt.

And he sobs. And then he can't stop.

It's as ugly and as uncontrollable as a mine collapsing. He shudders and weeps against Jeryk's collarbone, distantly, dimly aware of Jeryk's voice, surprisingly gentle, unusually soothing; a barely-audible whisper of I'm here. Fingers in his hair, hands rubbing his shoulders. A thousand tiny comforts. Thaffe clings to each one, and tries to let them guide him back to the surface before he drowns himself in tears, in grief.

It feels like hours later when he comes back to himself at last - breathing hard, head pounding harder than ever. His eyes ache.

He feels better than he has since they'd pulled what was left of Agna out of the mine.

"Jeryk." His voice is ragged. Throat hurts.

His answer is a kiss to the top of his head, and Jeryk steps away, returning to his own seat. Thaffe might've held onto him a little longer, given the choice, but his limbs feel heavy and languid, useless. He feels like he could simply slide to the floor and lie there, a puddle of burned-out emotions.

Jeryk looks no worse for having held him together - a bit tired, perhaps. A little drawn around the eyes. He takes a breath. "I'm going to keep working on the tracks, Thaffe," he says, firm. "And I'll keep the trolley carts and all in good working order. If the day comes-" He stops, swallows. Blinks back tears. "If the day comes... when we can repair the Talos, then... then it'll all be ready. I'll see to it. It's what she would've wanted. It's what Magnus will want, too, someday."

Look at him, Thaffe tells himself, on the verge of something, something he can't name. Look at him. Freshly bandaged, just as bereaved as the rest of us, and...

"Not alone, you won't." Thaffe smiles. It's weak, it's tired, and it wobbles more than he might like, but he smiles all the same. "We'll ask around town; there's bound to be others who want to see it maintained, at least. And when you head out again, I'll go with you."

Jeryk's eyes widen; his lips part in surprise-