Ivvain/Phaize (Book One: Part One)
After 12 years of separation, Ivvain and Phaize are reunited at the height of the Taerian Revolution, when Phaize comes to the city with his best friend M'vana in order to save her niece and hopefully get some practice with his healing magic. Phaize is almost instantly separated from M'vana and arrested for trying to heal a member of the Royal Guard. This is where he once again runs into Ivvain, who is the General of the Public for Glorious Freedom. After clearing up the 'misunderstanding' with his arrest, Ivvain brings Phaize into the fold of the revolution, and they start to reconnect.
This is where their unequal knowledge of each other becomes an issue.
Ivvain is sort of happy that he and Phaize have been apart, as he has gone through a lot in the past 12 years, and part of his philosophy is that if people find out about his traumas, they will view him as weak and either coddle him and treat him as fragile (as Loraz does) or degrade and punish him for being weak in the first place (as Father Talgeren did). So, since Phaize doesn't know anything about Ivvain's trauma, he can't treat him in either of those ways, and they have a sort of blank slate with each other.
It becomes Ivvain's ultimate goal that Phaize doesn't know about any of the things he has gone through. This will become an issue later.
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Meanwhile Phaize is incredibly happy to have Ivvain back, and wants to take the opportunity to learn as much as he can about Ivvain and, in turn, share as much as he can about himself. This starts when he shows Ivvain his wings (an act of immense trust, as people have been consistently bad to Phaize once they find out he has wings). He tries to get Ivvain to give him some kind of information in exchange (specifically about how he lost the tips of his fingers), but Ivvain avoids this. Their relationship as children was transactional in this way, and since Phaize has an atypical view of experience and human interaction, he settles back into this pattern with Ivvain, even though Ivvain is actively avoiding it.
Eventually, Phaize catches onto the fact that Ivvain is not sharing information with him, and ultimately decides not to pry about it. He want's to get close to Ivvain again, as the lingering fondness from their childhood bond compels him too, and fears that if he tries to push Ivvain to interact with him in this way, it will drive him away. So Phaize ends up biting his tongue about a lot of things, and for a while, their relationship does manage to work on this unsteady foundation.
Outside of this dynamic, Phaize and Ivvain still have that sort of outgoing/introverted, talks/listens, sun/moon thing going on. Ivvain is a bit more talkative then he was in his youth, though.
Eventually, Ivvain sort of appeases Phaize’s need for transaction by starting to paint his portrait a lot. This is another thing that strengthens their bond.
Their relationship sort of stagnates, until Phaize sort of examines why he was fighting so hard for this to work when he wasn't getting what he wanted out if it (getting to know Ivvain again) and realizes he has romantic feelings.
Phaize manages to keep this a secret for a little while, but at the same time starts to try and subliminally signal to Ivvain that he feels this way. Ivvain, who has had romantic feelings for Phaize in some capacity since he was 14, sees this, but doesn't know how to say he reciprocates.
Eventually they confess to each other at the ball which celebrates the revolutionaries victory.
