Housewarming
"It could be a good deal worse," Esmena says cheerily, opening the shutters, letting out almost ten years' worth of stale air. Thaffe looks around the small house, with a good deal more trepidation than excitement - his parents' house, almost untouched since the fever had claimed them years ago.
His house, now.
This had always been the plan, he reminds himself, feeling strange in his own skin as he helps Jeryk's mother clean: he had always intended to move out as soon as he'd seen sixteen summers, was working a steady job (as steady as any in Twine these days, at any rate), and could stand on his own two feet. His parents had left him the house on their deathbeds - the only thing halfway safe left to leave him. Most of their belongings had been burned, in case they still carried whatever illness had swept through Twine.
Maybe that's what's got him feeling strange. The house doesn't look the way it does in all his memories of the place: the furniture's gone, repurposed elsewhere in town; the little decorative touches - framed sketches, little knickknacks - his mother had favored are long since gone. Weathered away by the passage of time or sold for enough coin to keep food on the table, Thaffe supposes; there's little room for sentimentality with all the life bleeding out of the dying mining town.
Which is part, of course, of why he has to move out of Esmena and Ardin's home. He's got a year's worth of work in the mines under his belt now; he can put food on his own table.
...Though it's thanks to them he even has a table to put any food on.
"Thanks again for the furniture, Ma," he says, for what must be the third time.
Esmena steps back from the last of the windows, dusting off her hands - a bit prematurely, Thaffe thinks; there's still ten years' worth of dust built up everywhere - and smiling. "Oh no, love, thank you; Ardin wants a new workshop, and with how few visitors we're seeing..."
The furniture, of course, comes from one of the unused rooms at their family's inn; since the Stoneworks' departure, Twine no longer plays host to visiting engineers and officials from far-away Kholusia. The occasional stray traveler or historian interested in the nearby ruins isn't enough to require every room in the inn to be kept well-furnished.
And it'll make less waste for them when the time comes to leave it all behind, Thaffe thinks, with the familiar twist in his gut.
He shoves it aside, listening instead for Jeryk - he and Ardin, his father, are doing some repair work around the exterior of the house, patching up the scars of a decade of neglect. Sure enough, with the windows open, Thaffe can hear his best friend chattering away, with the occasional half-interested hum from his father in response.
"That's enough smiling, you," Esmena teasingly scolds, holding out her much-used broom. "The dust has dust in here; let's see to it before we start trying to haul in linens."
He accepts it with a grin. "That's life in a desert for you."
"Where I'm from," she says, setting to the task of cleaning off the countertops, windowpanes, and walls, "there would be mold, and we'd be tearing up the floorboards to be rid of it. The air's altogether too dry here, but I suppose it's good for something, hm?"
Thaffe bends himself to the task of sweeping, gathering up dust and cobwebs, trying to listen with half an ear for just what in the world Jeryk's going on about. From the sound of things, he's explaining the history of trolleys in Nabaath - with some creative liberties most charitably described as speculation - to his long-suffering father, who knows the history at least as well as any man born and raised in Twine.
Esmena sings quietly to herself as she works, just as she always does when she's doing chores - be it her own or the locals' laundry - and Thaffe listens with half an ear to her, as well.
It's going to be very quiet, living on his own.
You may as well get used to it.
He grits his teeth, shoves the thought aside, and focuses on sweeping. There's a lot of work to be done, after all.
They work through the morning, cleaning away a decade's worth of abandonment; once Esmena is satisfied that the inside of the house is clean, she summons Ardin - and Jeryk - inside to perform a few small repairs. A creaky shutter here, a broken cupboard there. They begin hauling in the furniture: not much, but the stuff of a small life. Table, chair, dresser. A new bed. Little by little, the little two-room house begins to resemble a livable home.
"Linens," Esmena sighs, exhausted, wiping an arm across her brow and brushing her sweat-drenched blonde hair out of her face. "After lunch. Wash up, boys!"
Back home, then - back to their home, anyhow. Thaffe's few meager possessions are already packed for the trip next door: the room he's shared with Jeryk for years already looks emptier.
"I don't suppose I'll know what to do with all the extra space," Jeryk says, joining him in the doorway. There's something strained beneath his friend's usual cheer, like something caught in his throat - and he won't quite meet Thaffe's gaze, even more than usual.
"Make it a workshop," Thaffe suggests, with more levity than he feels. "Like your dad's doing with the free inn room. You're taking on more of his jobs, after all; like as not you'll need somewhere to work."
Jeryk makes an noncommittal sound, brushing past him into the room and sitting heavily on the bed - their beds, long since pushed together, yielding to his younger friend's tendency to climb into his bed with him to spend the night chatting. Jeryk's bed now, Thaffe supposes, now that he's getting one of the - substantially larger - beds from the inn. Thaffe tries not to think about what it'll be like to sleep alone for the first time since he was a child, choosing instead to sit next to Jeryk on the bed.
Like they have a thousand times. Like they might never again.
They've not talked about it, not really, not exactly. It's always been the plan. Thaffe's talked about it since they were small - moving into his parents' old place, once he was old enough.
It's just that the actual day of it came up a lot faster than he thought.
"This is ridiculous," he hears himself say, rubbing his stinging eyes; no tears have fallen yet, thank the gods. "I'm moving next door. We'll see each other every day. Ma insists I visit for dinner at least once a week or she'll hound me-"
"Like she'll hound us if we don't hurry to lunch," Jeryk cuts in, with a wobbly smile. His eyes look too bright. "You know how she gets!"
So they wash up and hasten their way back for lunch; Thaffe thinks he's made a decent recovery of it, but Esmena's green eyes linger on him a touch too long - a little too worried, a little too knowing. And Jeryk's quiet. Jeryk's never quiet.
But she doesn't pry.
After lunch, linens. Esmena sets Ardin and Jeryk to the task of hanging curtains - curtains she'd stitched herself, no less - while she helps Thaffe put the sheets on his new bed. They're old, but not quite threadbare... and they smell like home, the scent of the soaps Esmena uses in the laundry waft from the fabric as they work. It smells like a thousand hot afternoons spent helping Esmena and Jeryk scrub laundry and hang it up to dry.
His throat feels tight.
They'll be right next door, he scolds himself.
But a quieter voice wonders, For how much longer?
Jeryk's still quiet as he helps hang the curtains; quiet and pensive. Thaffe wonders what's going through his mind - if he recognizes that his parents will have to move away soon. The inn's not making enough money; they both know Esmena and Ardin have been skipping meals so their boys might eat. Even with Thaffe scraping in his own meager income, things are tight. Soon, they'll have to do as so many other families have done, and...
Well. Just as well he's going to be getting used to living alone, right?
"This is what you want, isn't it, love?"
Esmena's voice startles him out of his woolgathering. "Yes," he replies, too quickly. "Yes, of course."
She glances up from putting his clothes in the new dresser, gauging his expression with maternal skepticism. "If you're sure. You're always welcome back home - you know that, of course? Jeryk's going to be lost without you."
I'm going to be lost without him. "He'll do alright," he says, glancing toward the other room, where Jeryk balances carefully on a chair, hanging the last of the curtains. He's learned a great deal from his father all these years - no matter where Jeryk and Ardin wind up, they'll find work. There's always a need for steady hands and a knack for fixing what's broken.
It's not the work Jeryk wants to be doing, but the days of Twine's trolleys are long over.
"He'll be fine," he says, a bit more firmly. "Like I told him: I'll still see him every day."
She nods, closing a drawer. "I worry you're only doing this for us, Thaffe - that you're leaving the nest a bit too early."
He feels his face heat. "I'm old enough to support myself, Ma. I don't want-"
"You were born in this very room, did you know? I was one of the first people who got to hold you." There are tears glittering in Esmena's eyes, and she turns away to conceal them, smoothing out the bedsheets - but not so quickly that Thaffe didn't see them. "And then your poor mother... we swore, she and I, that if anything happened to one of us, the other would always, always look after our children."
"I'm not a child-"
She turns again, composed, and reaches up a hand to touch his cheek. It occurs to him, again, how strange it is to look down on her - just as it has every day since his growth spurt, years ago. "You'll always be a little bit my child," she says, quietly. "And it's always going to be a little bit my responsibility to look after you. You're not a burden, Thaffe."
He feels six years old again, sobbing into her skirts as his parents are buried. She'd rested a hand on the back of his head, offering soft, quiet words of comfort, telling him how much his parents had loved him; how much they were going to love him now: that he was family, that he was wanted, that he was safe.
And if it were all as simple as that-
He takes a deep breath. Swallows. "It's really just time I had my own place, Ma. My parents wanted that, too; that's why they left me this place."
She lowers her hand, smiling wistfully. "I suppose they did, didn't they? You'd make your mother proud, shadows rest her soul. Gods know you make me proud."
"That's the last of the curtains!" Jeryk bounces into the room, his mood evidently thoroughly recovered; if he notices the sentimental tension he's interrupting, he gives no sign of it. "What's next?"
Esmena sighs. "Next, we leave, and let Thaffe get settled in," she says, winding an arm around Jeryk's shoulders and steering him back out of the bedroom. "Say good night, love; you'll see Thaffe after he gets home from the mines tomorrow, as always."
Jeryk squirms. "But-"
Thaffe, too, feels a stab of alarm at the idea of being left alone... but that's childish; isn't this what he wanted? This very thing? He can't get used to living alone if he's never properly alone.
So he makes himself smile as he walks Jeryk and Esmena to the door, where Ardin is already waiting.
Esmena tugs him down to kiss his cheek as she bids him goodnight; Ardin shakes his hand and quietly congratulates him on the new house (with an assurance that if any repair work still needs doing, Thaffe's to ask for it without a moment's hesitation), and the two of them slip away, leaving the boys alone. Thaffe doesn't doubt that if Jeryk lingers too long, Esmena will return to usher him out of Thaffe's hair.
Even if it's the last thing Thaffe wants.
"So," he says, awkward.
Jeryk takes a deep breath. Then, "What if..."
Thaffe waits.
Nothing.
"What if?" he prompts... but Jeryk shakes his head.
"Nothing," Jeryk says, smiling. "Nothing, never mind."
Obeying a sudden impulse, Thaffe simply pulls his friend into his arms, giving him the tightest hug he can manage, until Jeryk squeaks in not-quite-protest, getting his own arms around Thaffe in the process. They haven't held onto each other like this since... since a year or more ago, when for a heart-wrenching few minutes, Thaffe had been certain Jeryk had been killed by sin eaters - or worse.
Then, as now, Thaffe had wondered just how in the world he was meant to carry on without Jeryk.
"I'll be right here," he says, reminding himself for what seems like the thousandth time that Jeryk's going to be right next door, at least for the immediate future - he can worry about the eventuality of his family leaving town later. It's going to be hard enough to make it through the night alone.
Jeryk pulls away, blinking hard; teardrops cling to his long eyelashes. "Right," he says, with none of his usual enthusiasm. "Right, of course. Thaffe..."
He puts his hands on Jeryk's shoulders and leans down, resting their foreheads together. "You can visit any time," he says, around the lump in his throat. "Any time, any reason. Alright?" He waits until Jeryk nods, then gives the boy a little shake. "Right. Best you go on home, then, before Ma starts wondering if I mean to keep you."
And with one last see you tomorrow, off Jeryk goes, closing the door reluctantly behind him.
Alone.
Thaffe stands alone for the first time beneath his own roof, in his own home. The old floor creaks under his feet as he drifts from one window to the next, closing the shutters for the night against the blinding Light outside. He lingers for a moment, watching as Esmena, Ardin, and Jeryk walk home; Jeryk's dragging his feet, fiddling with the old scarf he always wears - something he always does when he's anxious, as well he might be now, facing his first night alone in years...
Thaffe closes the shutter, closing out the sight. He sighs, resting his head against the window, wishing his chest didn't ache; wishing... what? That he'd find some miracle ore down in the mines, or something; anything that might sell for enough to keep Jeryk and his family here? That the trolleys might run again, that the Stoneworks might come back?
That somehow, somehow, the inevitable future won't catch up to them?
Jeryk...
He takes a deep breath and hauls himself away from the window, making his way through the darkened house to the bedroom. The bedroom, where the bedsheets still smell like home. Thaffe strips off his clothes for bed, leaving them on the floor - Esmena would scorch his ears for it, but she won't see it - and heaves himself into bed.
There, with no one around to see it, he buries his face in his pillow and lets the first of the tears flow. Homesickness, heartsickness. Loneliness.
The pillow smells like Jeryk; it's from the bed they'd shared for years.
There's comfort in that. Some, anyway.
He tries to sleep. The hours creep by - after a year in the mines, he's already got a decent sense for the passage of time, but it seems to him these hours must be a lifetime each. Bouts of fitful melancholy set in: he sheds more miserable tears, rises to pace around the room. Tries talking to himself. A thin ray of Light slices through the room from a crack in one shutter - need to get that fixed; maybe that's what's keeping him-
A knock at the door.
"Who'd be visiting in the middle of the night," he wonders aloud, grumbling as he manages to tug his trousers back on... though a part of him knows.
Specifically, his heart, which had leapt at the sound of the knock, and it's pounding now.
It's Jeryk, of course.
His friend stands grinning on his doorstep, still dressed for bed - looking, in fact, as though he'd rolled directly out of bed: from his frizzy, tousled blond hair all the way down to his bare feet. If he's slept at all, it doesn't show; his bright green eyes are red-rimmed and weary, though his smile is cheerful as ever.
"Jeryk," Thaffe says, fighting the urge to smile.
"Hello, neighbor!" Jeryk offers a little wave. "I was wondering: are you all settled in yet?"
He feels his lips twitching. "Settled enough to have company over for the night, maybe?"
Jeryk's smile fades, ever-so-slightly. "I'll go right back home if you want, I swear it," he promises. "I just... couldn't-"
"Couldn't sleep."
"-Couldn't sleep," Jeryk finishes, only a little sheepish.
He's never going to get used to living without Jeryk at this rate, Thaffe thinks, but he steps aside anyway, letting Jeryk in. He tells himself it'll be easier if he... weans himself off; lets himself get used to it little by little - that's why he lets Jeryk lead the way through the dark house to Thaffe's new room, as though he lives there. Jeryk doesn't even wait for a further invitation; he just hops right into Thaffe's bed, settling in.
"I think this might be bigger than our bed back home," Jeryk says, already drowsy, as Thaffe strips back down and climbs back into bed.
"By a sliver, maybe." The inn's beds had to be big enough to hold Ronso, after all; they're a more than fair fit for two humes. The bed doesn't seem half so large with Jeryk in it - and the night doesn't feel half so long with Jeryk's voice chattering to him in the quiet.
The ray of Light still slices through the room, enough to illuminate Jeryk's hopeful smile. "Can I come over every night?"
"Do I have any hope of stopping you?" Thaffe teases, rolling over to face his friend. "Who else is going to talk me to sleep about trolleys?"
It makes Jeryk laugh, ending in quiet giggles. "Well, now that you mention it-"
"I suppose I asked for this, didn't I."
"-I've been looking at some of the old manuals from the Stoneworks, and I reckon I can work out how to start mending some of the old tracks, if we can get some decent steel..."
Thaffe closes his eyes, and lets sleep claim him, still smiling.
It's good to be home.
