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The common room had emptied by stages around them: the merchants first, then the family with the crying child, then the old man who had fallen asleep sitting upright and been gently steered away by a girl half his height. Now it was only them, and the snot-nosed serving boy who had stopped pretending not to yawn.
There was nothing remarkable about the place, no real reason they'd chosen this inn beyond its convenient location right by the road leading back home and Olruggio wanting to sleep in a proper bed again for once. The innkeeper—a fiercely red-haired mountain of a man—had been ecstatic about two witches staying the night, everyone was always ecstatic about witches staying anywhere.
Olruggio set the cup to his lips and drank. The innkeeper had called the beer "local," which probably meant that it was some cheap swill brewed by one of his other snot-nosed nephews in this very inn's basement. It certainly tasted that way, and yet Olruggio was drunk.
Not embarrassingly so, but there's a pleasant warmth behind his eyes and the edges of the room had gone soft like clouds. His tongue was slower than usual in his mouth, which meant he had been saying things he would not normally say, and Qifrey had been listening to all of it.
"You should slow down," Qifrey said from across the table. The other witch had his chin propped in his hand and his eyes were very blue in this light. They have always been very blue, which was an observation that Olruggio has made approximately ten thousand times.
"You should mind your own business," Olruggio said, taking a bigger gulp of the local-snot-nosed-nephew-brew.
Qifrey smiled. He had a way of smiling that seemed to hide whatever he was thinking. It was akin to watching a curtain being drawn across a lit window; you could see the warmth of the light but not the room. Olruggio had known him since they were both children bent over ink and parchment in the Great Hall's dark studies, and in all that time he still had not worked out what lived behind that skin.
"You've had more beer than me, I am just trying to make sure you don't fall off your chair."
Olruggio reddened, then frowned. "I'm not going to fall off my chair."
"You said that last time, too."
Qifrey took a delicate sip from his cup. He'd been nursing the same serving for the past hour. Meanwhile, the snot-nosed serving boy had come thrice to refill Olruggio's cup. He'd been generous with himself tonight.
He asked for another cup.
"You're going to regret that," Qifrey said.
"I regret most things."
The curtained smile again, followed by Olruggio looking away to escape the warmth that bloomed in his chest at the sight of it. He'd been nineteen years old for six months now and had spent roughly two of the preceding years developing this practice, and it had served him reasonably well.
He did not, later, have an exact recounting of how they got from the table to the room. He remembered standing unsteadily and Qifrey's hand briefly under his elbow until he found his footing. The corridor to their room was dark, long and smelled of damp stone. The candle Qifrey carried made the shadows on the ceiling jump.
The latch was stuck and Qifrey had to push the door open with his shoulder. They stepped into the room that would be theirs for the night and it was… quite small. Much smaller than the innkeeper had implied when he'd gestured broadly and spoken of "fine accommodations for honored guests." The window was a sad square set above the chest of drawers, and there was one bed.
One aggressively narrow bed.
"He promised two beds," Olruggio said.
"He said two pillows."
Olruggio turned to look at him. "He said two beds, Qifrey. I heard him say it."
"You were quite drunk when he said it."
"I was not drunk when we—" He had been, perhaps, slightly drunk when they arrived. Marginally drunk. "He said two beds, I am nearly certain."
"We'll take what we can, Olly." Qifrey sat down on the mattress, it gave a prolonged shriek. "At least we won't be cold tonight," he said, patting the space beside him.
The mattress was perhaps wide enough for one person to sleep comfortably, provided that person was a child or uncommonly narrow, for two grown men it was a jest. Olruggio stared at it, at Qifrey's hand still resting on the blanket, and felt the pleasant warmth behind his eyes intensify into something closer to heat.
"This is ridiculous," he said.
"It's one night."
"I'll sleep on the floor."
"Don't be stupid." Qifrey stood, began unlacing his travel cloak. "The floor's stone and you're drunk. You'll wake up with your joints aching and spend the entire day tomorrow complaining about it."
"I don't complain—"
"You complain constantly." The cloak came off, got draped over the single chair. Qifrey's shirt beneath was rumpled from travel, the collar slightly askew. "Last month you spent three days telling anyone who would listen about the bread at that inn in Romonneau. 'Too dense,' you said. 'Like eating a brick.'"
"It was like eating a brick."
"It was perfectly fine bread."
Qifrey was now unlacing his boots. Olruggio watched him do it, watched the way his hair fell forward to hide his face, and thought about the two years he'd spent training himself not to look too long. Not to notice the particular angle of Qifrey's wrist when he drew sigils, or the way he tilted his head when he was listening to something that genuinely interested him, or the fact that his eyes were very blue and had always been very blue and Olruggio always aware of that at all times.
The beer had made him stupid. That was the only explanation for why he hadn't already fled to the stables.
"Get into bed, Olly." Qifrey's boots were off now. "Unless you'd prefer to stand there swaying all night."
Olruggio made a decision that he knew immediately was a mistake, but committed to it anyway because the alternative was admitting defeat. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and began working at his own boots. His fingers were clumsy with drink, and it took longer than it should have. When Olruggio finally got the second boot off and turned around, Qifrey was already lying down, pressed against the wall with his back to it to leave as much space as possible. Which was to say, almost none.
His back was to Qifrey's front. He could feel the heat of him through two layers of shirt and the blanket they were now sharing. Qifrey's elbow dug into his spine as they both tried to find positions that would allow for sleep and preserve some shred of dignity.
"Sorry—"
"That's my stomach—"
"I'm aware, I'm—"
"If you put that elbow there again I am sleeping on the floor, I mean it, I will sleep on the stone floor—"
"Mm." Qifrey shifted, trying to get his arm somewhere that didn't involve bruising Olruggio's back. The mattress creaked with every little shift. "Stop moving."
"You're the one moving."
"If you would just—here—" Qifrey's arm came around him and settled across his ribs. "There. That works."
It did not work—it was the opposite of working, in fact. It was a disaster, because Qifrey's breath was stirring the hair at the nape of Olruggio's neck, and the beer had lowered every wall Olruggio had spent two years carefully raising.
"This is—we shouldn't—"
"It's fine." Qifrey's voice was quiet. "Just go to sleep, Olly."
But Olruggio couldn't sleep, couldn't even pretend to, because every nerve in his body was on fire. He could feel Qifrey's heartbeat against his back, steady and sure. Could smell the faint scent of ink that never quite washed out of their skin, the woodsmoke from the common room.
"I can't—" he started, and then stopped, because he didn't know how to finish that sentence. I can't sleep. I can't think. I can't keep pretending.
"Can't what?"
Qifrey's thumb had started moving in small circles against his ribs and he could not tell what he meant with it. He had never been able to tell with Qifrey, who kept everything behind that damned curtain.
"This is—it's too much," Olruggio said, and his voice came out rougher than he intended. "The bed is too narrow, you're too close, I—"
"Do you want me to move?"
No. Yes.
"I don't know. I don't know what I want."
Qifrey's hand stilled on his ribs. For a moment, the only sound was their breathing, the creak of the mattress. Then Qifrey shifted, propping himself up on one elbow so he could look down at Olruggio.
"I think you do know." Qifrey's free hand came up, fingertips brushing Olruggio's jaw. "You get maudlin when you're drunk."
They were too close, having crossed some line that Olruggio hadn't even noticed, and now Qifrey's thumb was at the corner of his mouth and his expression was, for once, wholly without curtains.
He couldn't have said who moved first. It didn't really matter. What mattered was the taste of bad beer on Qifrey's mouth and the way Qifrey's fist knotted in his shirt and pulled, and the sound the bed made when Olruggio settled his weight over the other witch. It was the most exhilarating thing Olruggio had experienced in all his nineteen years of life.
"Off," Qifrey said, yanking at his shirt. "Take this off."
Olruggio sat back and hauled the shirt over his head and Qifrey's hands were on him immediately, fingers dragging through the hair there, his thumbs brushing across his nipples until they tightened. The touch was full of hunger, almost greedy. Had Qifrey been holding back just as long as he had?
He pulled Qifrey's shirt off in turn and the body beneath it was flushed from throat to navel. Olruggio bent his head to the other's chest, trailing open-mouthed kisses across the heated skin.
He truly did mean to take his time, to study every inch of Qifrey's skin, but the need was too great. Olruggio began to move lower, kissing down the flat plane of Qifrey's stomach, feeling the sweet little twitches beneath his lips. When he reached the waistband of Qifrey's trousers, he paused, looking up at the other through his lashes.
"Olly…" Qifrey's eye was half-lidded, his lips parted and slick. His hair was a wild tangle around his face, Olruggio had never seen him look so undone. "Do it—"
Olruggio didn't need to be told twice. He made quick work of the laces, tugging the trousers them down along with his smallclothes. Qifrey's cock sprang free, hard and flushed and already leaking at the tip, Olruggio's mouth watering at the sight of it.
He stroked him slow at first, watching the flush spread from his chest to his whole body. Qifrey's hand found his wrist and his hips fucked up into Olruggio's fist with a rhythm that was coming apart fast.
"Unfair," Qifrey cried. "Take off yours as well—"
Olruggio shucked his own trousers and kicked them off the bed, meaning that both were fully bare now. He moved back up Qifrey's body, mouth dragging across his stomach, his chest, the ridge of his collarbone, until they were face to face again and he felt Qifrey's cock strain against his hip and his own heart beating somewhere in his throat.
The curtain that was Qifrey was still gone and what Olruggio found underneath was brighter than the sun and twice as beautiful. He'd imagined this moment before, in the dark hours of the night when he couldn't sleep and his hand wandered. He'd imagined it and felt ashamed of it and imagined it again anyway.
The reality was nothing like those midnight imaginings. The reality was Qifrey's hand moving on him while his own hand moved on Qifrey. The reality was messy and desperate and better than anything he could have conjured alone in his narrow bed at the Great Hall.
"Faster," Qifrey said against his mouth. "Like me, please—"
They stroked together and Olruggio allowed himself to lean forward until their foreheads pressed together. He could feel Qifrey's breath against his lips, could smell the beer, sweat and the ink that was Qifrey. Olruggio had never felt closer to another person in his life.
The pleasure was building too fast, coiling tight in his gut. He'd barely started and already he could feel it end. Qifrey's free hand came up to cup the back of his neck, holding him there, forehead to forehead, sharing the same air.
"Olly—" His voice cracked down the middle of the word.
Qifrey shuddered and spilled hot over Olruggio's knuckles, and Olruggio followed him there with his face now pressed hard into the crook of his neck, teeth catching the skin, his whole body seizing and loosening all at once.
For a while he did not move. To be honest, he was not certain he could move, or talk, or think, for that matter. The candle had given up entirely somewhere between then and now and the room was completely dark, warm and close. One of Qifrey's hands was still in his hair, those clever fingers carding through the mess of it.
They lay there in the dark and Olruggio thought that this was the most content he'd ever been in his life. I could stay here forever, he thought. He could fall asleep just like this every night, with Qifrey's heartbeat beneath his ear and Qifrey's hand in his hair.
Qifrey is the one to speak first, his breathing still uneven. "Will you remember this?"
The strangeness of the words was enough to clear the pleasant fuzziness in his head. "What?"
"Tomorrow, will you remember this?" Qifrey's thumb brushed his cheekbone. "In the morning, will you remember?"
A strange thing to ask. A genuinely strange thing. "I'm not that drunk," Olruggio said.
"But will you?"
"Obviously. Why wouldn't I remember?" Olruggio said, frowning. Did Qifrey think this meant so little to him that he'd just forget it?
Qifrey nodded once. His hand came up to Olruggio's jaw, and they were kissing again. The narrow bed stopped mattering, and everything else stopped mattering, and Olruggio thought: As if I could ever forget this. I am going to remember this until I am dead.
Then Qifrey pulled back.
The loss of him was jarring; Qifrey's hand slipped from his hair and he shifted away, putting inches between them that felt like miles. In the darkness Olruggio couldn't see his face clearly, but he could hear the unsteadiness in his breathing.
"Qifrey?" he said, and reached for him.
Qifrey caught his hand, his grip was tight. "You won't remember."
He remembered being truly angered by it. What are you talking about? he'd meant to say. Of course I'll remember, why you do think I wouldn't—
The last thing he felt was Qifrey's hand, back in his hair, then nothing.
He did not dream.
