Until the wound becomes a window

enchanted by how incredibly dorky this is hfskjda this man has a 'keep out!! olly's secret lair!!!!' style sign up on his bedroom door. do you think he put this in place before or after the apprentices turned up. (if it was for the girls -- I can't imagine it would be needed neither as warning not to bother him while he's working nor as entertainment while it was just agott, but I think tetia would get a kick out of it. I think I'm headcanoning this is kind of a joke they had between them after tetia came crashing in already yapping while he was deep in concentration over a delicate contraption one time too many.)

other very funny to me option: this used to be on the door to his room back in his later student days and he brought it with him when they moved out of the great hall

early early days qifrey's hair is so floppy I find it both very sweet somehow and a bit weird now that I'm so used to how it looks later... look at how it's a bit flat on top even and you can more clearly see where it parts

Aw man thank you so so much for your kind words! I DO in fact have an AO3 account, which can be found over there — no WHA fic up quite yet, alas, though I’m ssso close to finishing my first one, it’s basically done but for a few quick read throughs for edits! Barring catastrophic failure of my unpredictable neurons to line up for long enough to let me do that, it should drop within the next few days :) 

Sneak peak of said fic for those who might be interested ahead — it’s a story about Qifrey returning home to the atelier after the last time he tried the ‘leaving Olruggio for his own good’ trick. He’s just told Olruggio he’s staying for good this time and Olruggio promptly burst into tears of pure exhaustion and relief, as you may well imagine lol. 

-- -- --   

If it were anyone else who’d made you look like this, I would… I’d… Qifrey lets out a tired breath of laughter at himself. What does it matter. Who else but him has ever managed to make Olruggio look this sad. It seems to be his one defining talent, his evergreen specialty.   

Eyes falling shut as if against pain, Olruggio lets his head fall forward, until his forehead comes to rest against Qifrey’s shoulder.

“I’m so tired,” Olruggio whispers. 

He does still smell quite strongly of booze, this close up. If he doesn’t remember all of this tomorrow, it will for once not be Qifrey’s doing. Qifrey strokes his fingers through the sweat-damp hair at the nape of his neck and listens to his breathing.  

“I know,” Qifrey says. “Me too. I’m… despite everything, it’s good to be home.”  

Olruggio sighs again, pushes his forehead harder against Qifrey’s shoulder for a second. 

“I think I need to know… I missed you so much, but sometimes when you’re here you look so sad that it makes me wonder…” Olruggio swallows. His eyelashes are dark and clumped together, still wet. “Are you less sad, when you’re out there?” 

A bark of savage, bitter laughter tears itself from Qifrey’s throat before he can even think to stop it, a shrill ugly thing that rings borderline unhinged to his own ears. It barely even sounds human, more the mad mocking cry of a crestgull, the shriek of a hyena, some animal in pain. Olruggio glances up at him in surprise, his eyes wide.

“No,” Qifrey manages, “no, Olruggio, I’m not.” Pushing the fever pitch spike of raw emotion down — it’s so unfair, it’s all so fucking unfair, if only he could burn the damn tree out of himself with the heat of this rage so he could collapse into Olly’s arms and tell him everything — he takes a deep, steadying breath, wipes at his eyes, and says, soft now in his honesty rather than ragged: “I’d… I would always rather be here. With you.”

He expects Olruggio to ask so why haven’t you been, then?, braces himself for the answer he doesn’t know how to give, but Olruggio is the kindest person Qifrey has ever known. Whatever he sees in Qifrey’s eyes, it only makes him shake his head, features creased by a wistful sympathy even clearer than his confusion.

“...spells are a lot simpler to make sense of than being a person, huh?” Olruggio offers.

I don’t deserve you, Qifrey thinks. You’ve certainly done nothing to deserve me.