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“Why is it so bloody cold?”
Jesper groaned, resisting the urge to roll over and glare at the boy sleeping on the floor of his cabin.
“Stop your whinging, merchling. If it’s that bad you can come up here and join me, I have plenty of ideas on how to warm you up,” he replied snarkily.
All night Wylan had been complaining about the cold, and Jesper was quite sick of it. Couldn’t the boy just wrap himself up in his blankets and suck it up like the rest of them? Or was that not good enough for his pampered, merchant ass?
Jesper sighed, loud enough so that he was sure Wylan heard it, and closed his eyes again, hoping the light lulling of the waves would rock him to sleep.
They were well on their way to Fjerda, with every night getting chillier and chillier as they neared the coast. Until last, Wylan had been sharing with Matthias, but the two of them had argued sometime earlier in the evening and Wylan had been sent to bunk with Jesper, interrupting him as he was half asleep.
Since then, the combination of Wylan’s pleas for more blankets and Jesper’s usual restlessness, had made it impossible to fall back into a slumber. He was so fucking tired, but his body wasn’t willing to rest.
He heard shuffling behind him yet chose to ignore it, maybe the merchling had given up on him and decided to annoy Kaz with his complaints. Jesper would love to see how that played out.
But within a few seconds, he felt his blanket being ripped away from his shoulder, causing a sharp chill to hit him through his thin sleepwear.
He whipped around and threw a deathly glare at Wylan, who was standing in front of him in nothing but shorts and a singlet underneath the silver light of the moon. Jesper couldn’t even deny that he spent a few seconds lingering at the sight of the boy’s bare legs, eyes catching on every little brown freckle dotted up and down his thighs.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked, snatching his blanket back and finally tearing his gaze away from the boy’s bare skin.
Wylan seemed to shrink, an embarrassed, flustered blush on his cheeks.
“Please, Jesper, I’m freezing.”
Jesper was about to roll his eyes and try to explain that he was joking about the whole warming him up, when his gaze wandered to the floor where Wylan had been sleeping.
“Is that… a sack?” he asked, staring up at the shivering boy in front of him, hoping the darkness of the ship cabin was playing tricks on his eyes.
Wylan turned around to glance at his makeshift bed before facing back to Jesper,
“Uhhh, yeah. I couldn’t really bring my hammock from Matthias’ cabin in here so…” he waved his arms around aimlessly instead off finishing his explanation.
There wasn’t even a mattress on the floor.
“So Kaz sent you in here with essentially nothing?” Jesper pressed, a surge of anger towards his boss rushing through him.
“Yeah… kind of,” Wylan replied with another shiver.
Jesper took another quick look at Wylan’s ‘bed’ before sighing and pushing himself as far up against the cabin wall as he could, motioning to the now empty space in his cot.
Wylan hesitated but a cold breeze wafted through the room and he seemed to give in to Jesper’s offer. He slipped into the bed, his arm touching Jesper’s and causing him to jump at the sudden cold. Saints, the boy really had been freezing. Jesper helped throw the blanket over them both, but the only way they could both fit under it was if Wylan pressed right up against him. He wasn’t particularly opposed to the idea, he’d been in similar positions with all matters of people before, but for some reason his face started to heat up like he was a little boy with a stupid crush. Wylan shifted around next to him for a bit before finally settling. He looked up at him with big, grateful eyes, the same colour as the zemeni sky on a bright, summer’s day.
“Thank you,” he whispered, voice soft and almost musical.
“You should’ve told me you were this cold sooner,” Jesper scolded, trying not to wince at the boy’s icy touch.
Wylan stared at him deadpan,
“And what do you think I have been doing all night, Jesper?”
He scoffed,
“Well you could’ve been a lot less annoying about it.”
Wylan rolled his eyes and began to move out of the bed,
“If i’m that irritating, I’ll just go back to my floor then.”
Jesper reached for his waist and pulled him back towards his chest,
“Not on my watch, merchling. You’re our insurance that we’ll be getting paid and you’re no good to us or your father dead.”
Wylan stiffened and muttered something Jesper didn’t manage to catch before shoving himself right up against him again.
They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a bit, or maybe for Wylan it was fine, Jesper had just always found silences uncomfortable. That’s why he filled his nights with the heavy, pleasured gasps of strangers. He hated silence.
“So what did you and Matthias argue about?” he blurted before he could stop himself. He’d been curious about it a while, his wild theories part of the reason he hadn’t been able to sleep.
Wyaln stirred and made an annoyed sound, Jesper realising he’d been trying to sleep.
“Grisha,” he answered quite bluntly before closing his eyes again.
Jesper paused, letting the other boy indulge in a few seconds of quiet as he tried to decipher why Wylan would even care that much about that to have a full argument with Matthias. He felt his fingers twitch, pulling at the very fibres of the blanket he was clutching, itching to be able to bend and manipulate the object into whatever he so desired. He clenched his fists, trying to dull his need to create.
“I know he’s a dickhead about Grisha but surely his opinions on them don’t affect you enough to have to move rooms?” he asked as a distraction, hoping Wylan’s words would pull him away from his own head.
The merchant’s son tensed,
“I just… didn’t like the things he was saying. I don’t think anyone deserves to be told they shouldn’t exist. It's horrible.”
“Yeah of course but…” he paused as he tried to word what he wanted to say, “Matthias is big , like he could really seriously hurt you. Why would you risk yourself like that? I didn’t think the Kerch really cared much for Grisha.”
Wylan rolled onto his back and shrugged,
“I did the same to Kaz. I stood up to him.”
Jesper scoffed,
“Yeah and you scared the ever living shit out of me, I thought he was going to gut you right then and there.”
Wylan smirked, pulling himself closer to Jesper and boring into him with his intense blue gaze,
“Jesper Fahey,… are you worried about me?”
Jesper’s cheeks went hot at the accusation.
“I just… didn’t want to get blood on my clothes, it’s a real pain in the ass to get out,” he laughed nervously, uncharacteristically stuttering. Why the hell did Wylan Van Eck of all people have this effect on him?
Wylan stared at him for a few more seconds, before smiling and wriggling back to sleep next to him like he had been before. There was only a few seconds of silence before it became unbearable.
“So why’d you run away from home?”
Wylan let out just about the loudest, most irritated sigh Jesper had ever heard.
“What happened to ‘wanting to sleep’?”
Jesper pursed his lips,
“I’m just curious.”
“Well don’t be,” Wylan snapped. “I just want to go to bed.”
Jesper shut his mouth instantly, surprised at how pissed Wylan had gotten.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Oh really,” Wylan grumbled, closing his eyes again and tucking his head closer to Jespers chest.
“No I mean it, it’s not my business and I shouldn’t have asked.” Wylan eyed him suspiciously. “I just… I can’t sleep and hate silences,” he confessed. “I’m just bored and I suppose worried as well.”
“About what?” Wylan pressed, sitting up and leaning on his arm, head tilted endearingly.
There was something about the hypnotic lull of Wylan’s voice, sweet, soft and so incredibly kind, that made Jesper want to tell him everything. Tell him every little worry, every little concern, because Wylan was looking at him as if he actually cared about how Jesper was feeling. Or maybe that was the foolish hope of a stupid farmboy who was desperate for someone to actually be concerned for him mixed with the vulnerability that came with late nights and tiredness.
Regardless, he sighed, throwing back his head and squeezing his eyes,
“It’s all just a lot right now. This job is insane and Kaz refuses to tell us anything, which is typical of him to be honest, but it’s just really getting on my nerves. Sometimes I wonder why I’m still even here.”
“Why are you then?”
Jesper turned and opened his eyes to see Wylan boring into him with that intense gaze, rendering him unable to just shrug it off with an I don’t know . Wylan wouldn’t accept that as an answer.
“I guess-”
Why was he here? Was it his need for adrenaline? His taste for thrill? Was it the prospect of life changing money that he’ll just go gamble away? Or was it purely the fact that Kaz had called on him and his lovesick heart would bend backwards to please that bastard.
“I’m not sure,” he whispered. “I’ve never really thought about it before.” He stared back at the funny little demoman, “why are you here?”
Wylan diverted his eyes to look at the roof, fiddling with his hands,
“There's a reason I ran away,” he said quietly, “I'm not spoiled like you think I am.”
Jesper felt a touch of guilt creep up through his throat.
“No, I get it,” he said. “I mean,” he laughed awkwardly, ‘I can’t say anything. I had it as good as one can have it and still threw everything away. Maybe… maybe i’m here because even though there’s the risk of dying,” he swallowed, throat suddenly very dry, “that fate is much more appealing than ever having to face the fact I failed them.”
“Failed who?” Wylan asked.
Jesper let out a deep sigh, willing himself to stay composed,
“Kaz, Inej, my da, my ma . There’s a long list of people,” he joked, his pitch a little too high to convincingly pretend he was okay.
He felt Wylan grab his hand, the action sending a wild, burning flame right up Jesper’s arm and planting it in his fucked up heart.
Wylan gave a little, broken laugh, causing Jesper to want to hurt anyone’s who had ever wronged the boy,
“I know the feeling.”
The two of them sat quietly after that, hands clasped together, not talking or even looking at each other. It was, weirdly, a quiet that Jesper didn’t seem to mind.
After a while Wylan rolled onto his side, pressing his back against Jesper’s chest, still holding his hand.
“Goodnight,” the boy whispered over his shoulder.
“Goodnight,” Jesper replied, trying not to think about the fact Wylan was rubbing circles over his knuckles too much. “Sleep tight.”
It wasn’t long before Wylan’s light snores filled the cabin, slightly sniffly from the cold. Jesper couldn’t help but smile and press closer to him, letting the music of the waves and Wylan’s breathing lull him to sleep.