Chapter Text
“I refuse. This isn’t in my job description. I’m not going to fucking do it and they can’t fucking make me.”
“Then tell them no,” Cor said evenly, not looking up from his desk.
Nyx glared at him from the couch. A small voice in the back of his mind was still shitting its pants about being so casual in front of the Immortal himself. It was begging with every fiber of its being for Nyx to kowtow his way out from the office and all the way back to Galahd before Cor realized he could squish Nyx like the gnat he was, so Nyx put his feet up on the coffee table. And then ground his heel into the stained top, just because he could.
Cor glanced up at him, eyebrow raised. Nyx grinned back at him.
“Feet off the table.”
“Yeah, like I can tell the King ‘no’,” Nyx continued, settling in to the couch and folding his arms back behind his head. “Because that would go over so fucking well.”
“You can.” Cor shuffled some papers around, stamping three in succession and throwing another handful into the bin. “You should.”
“I should tell them ‘no’, or I should prance around like a prized pony?”
Cor just grunted in reply.
“You know, you really have a way with words.”
That little voice was screaming as the words left his mouth, but Nyx kept his eyes on Cor’s face and his expression even. There. Nyx suppressed the urge to celebrate as he watched the corner of Cor’s mouth twitch into a smirk.
See? Fuck you, the Marshal thinks I’m funny.
“He wants you to have someone demonstrate one of your traditions,” Cor said as he flipped through a few more files. “It doesn’t have to be you. Doesn’t have to be a dance, either.”
“Yeah, no, I was there. He specifically said he wanted me to do it, and he specifically mentioned dancing.”
Cor tilted his head slightly—an expression that Nyx learned was as close to a concession as he would ever get from the ever-impassive Immortal—followed by a slight sniff, which meant he thought Nyx should just do it anyway. Or that it was dusty and Nyx was reading way too much into this.
But Nyx was sure he was right. Eighty percent sure, anyway, which was pretty good for him when it came to being sure of himself. Just like he was sure he could be in Cor’s office, because they were coworkers, and this was how coworkers behaved. Maybe with less cursing, but they were military, so fuck it. Not that Cor cursed much, but he also had a kid at home so that could explain that. Shit, should Nyx not be cursing in front of him? He would say something, right? No, it was Cor, he doesn’t say much in general, why would he—
Cor was staring at him. Nyx startled, realizing he had been staring at the corner of Cor’s mouth longer than was strictly friendly, and felt that little voice crawl its way up his throat and out his mouth.
“Sorry,” he muttered, quickly removing his feet from the coffee table and relocating his gaze to the floor.
“S’fine,” Cor sniffed. “Tell him no.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“You’re going to need to learn how.”
“You’re seriously gonna do a little dance for His Majesty?”
Nyx lobbed a knife at Lib’s stupid smirk, watching with annoyance as he flickered around it easily. He lazily chucked another three in the general direction of the blue sparks, snorting as one pinged harmlessly off Lib’s knee-pads.
“Not really being given much of a choice,” Nyx said. “You have to practice phasing without the gear at some point.”
Lib glared at him, rubbing at his knee. “Yeah, I will when it’s not you doing the throwing.”
“Coward!” Crowe called, dangling lazily from the ropes overhead.
“Mind your six!” Nyx yelled back at her, watching as one of the greener Glaives tried to warp up behind her. Anya, he was pretty sure. The rare Nif with a talent for magic.
“You should just hire one of those troupes to do it for you. Less embarrassing for Galahd that way. I’ve seen you dance.” Lib said as he tossed the knives back into the Armiger.
Nyx pulled them out again and readied his aim. “Yeah, keep talking and I’ll make you do it.”
“Or,” Luche said, clapping a hand on Nyx’s shoulder. “You could grow a pair and tell his royal arse to shove it.”
Nyx held the knife over his shoulder, offering it to Luche, who took it immediately.
“You’re late,” he said as the knife whipped past his ear and towards Lib’s chest.
“Yeah, well, blame yourself for putting me on guard on the other ass-end of this fucking city.”
“Blame yourself for running your mouth in front of Councilor Balneum.”
Luche scoffed, grabbing another knife from Nyx’s hand and pitching it at Lib. “He had it coming.”
Nyx nodded slightly in agreement, sniffing once. “Yeah, he did. Doesn’t change the fact that I had to do something about it, or risk him mouthing off to someone else with more sway.”
“Fucking politics.”
Nyx laughed, “Yeah, welcome to the Citadel, Luche. You still want to be my second?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Luche sighed, throwing the last knife at Lib and missing by a meter. “Let me take a nap instead of running drills, and we’re even.”
Lib watched the knife clatter off in the other direction, bemused.
“How about you go relieve Crowe of her flag and I won’t make you do target practice for an hour to make up for your shit aim?”
“Oi, fuck you!” Crowe shouted, now dangling slightly to the left of where she had been earlier and attempting to shove Anya off the course.
“Deal,” Luche laughed before shattering into blue sparks behind him.
“Still should just tell them off, Hero,” Lib said, sauntering back from retrieving Luche’s stray throw. “Or at the very least have someone else do it. No reason to make a fool of yourself for the royals. You’re not just a random Glaive anymore and they need to remember that.”
“Easy for you to say,” Nyx scoffed. “You’re not the one standing in a room with them every day.”
“Sounds like you need to remember it too, Captain.”
“Okay, I’ve changed my mind. This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.”
Cor raised an eyebrow at him, looking far too casual in the standard gym kit then Nyx could deal with at the moment. Nyx shifted on his heels, wincing at the way the worn rubber squeaked against the tile and echoed off the high cathedral ceilings. He decided he hated the royal training hall. Too cramped, too echo-y, and too full of Cor Leonis in sweatpants.
“You asked for help.”
“No,” Nyx shot back, quickly shifting his eyes to the ceiling. Fuck, how many lamps did they need in here? “I asked you to put me out of my misery. Pretty sure you’re not allowed to execute me in here.”
Cor huffed in a way that definitely meant he could, if he wanted to. “I’m not going to execute you.”
“Yet.”
Cor snorted and motioned vaguely at the floor.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t know what you’re expecting out of me here,” Nyx said, scratching the back of his neck and attempting to look casual. He knew he probably looked like he was about to shit himself.
“Walk me through what you have.”
“What I have,” Nyx laughed bitterly, “is the urge to crawl into the sewers and try my hand at being a malboro.”
Cor leveled him with a flat look. Unamused.
“Uh, yeah, anyway. I thought, maybe, the best one to show His Majesty would be one of the beginner kukri sequences.”
“Not a dance?”
“It is a dance, technically. It’s a, uh. It’s a Galahdan thing. Anyway—”
“Explain.”
Nyx glanced at Cor. He looked relatively uninterested, and frankly Nyx wasn’t in the mood to explain the quirks of his homeland to an Insomnian, but he really couldn’t ignore a direct request from Cor. Which was the main reason they were even in the private hall in the first place. The private hall that Cor had specifically booked time for them in, sacrificing some of the Marshal’s slim unscheduled time to help Nyx with this ridiculous demand the King had made of him.
The little voice was currently scratching a hole in his throat.
“Okay, so. Galahd? We’re well beyond the Wall, so daemons are a pretty common issue. Especially during the flooding seasons, when the power gets knocked out a lot. So, uh, we start weapons training pretty young. Someone, at some point, figured out that it was easier to teach kids how to fight if they turned it into a game of sorts. Most of our dances are just drills set to music, honestly. Nothing all that fancy. Not like what you Insomnians have.”
Cor just made a thoughtful noise, urging him to continue using his eyes alone like some kind of psychic freak. A psychic freak that could probably hear him calling him a psychic freak in his head right now—
“Okay, so, yeah. Anyway, those drills are really the only ones I know how to do. Growing up, there were a lot more that had more to do with our traditions and history, but those are extremely intricate and require an entire troupe to do. I don’t think I could do that justice if I was even willing to try.”
“Hmm,” Cor added, helpfully. Really helpful, the Immortal.
Please don’t be reading my mind, please don’t be reading my mind—
“Nyx.”
Nyx startled. Which he realized he did a lot around the Marshal. Who was staring at him, face now looking a lot less amused than before. He looked annoyed, actually. Shit.
“Right, sorry. I should, er, get on with it then?”
He knew he was stalling. He did not want to do this. He didn’t want to dance for the King, but at least he could convince himself that it was a sacrifice made in the name of an obnoxious monarch and call it a day. Turn his brain off and blame someone else, you know? The good ol’ soldier solution.
His feet felt wrong in his shoes as he took a step back, then another. He was not sure how to start this without the drums and fire. Not sure if he wanted to—knew very well that he did not want to—dance in front of Cor. But Cor was here. Cor set aside time to help him, and there wasn’t a fucking miracle in Eos that was going to let him back out now. Not without ruining what little patience the man had for him. What little good will.
Scrubbing at the side of his face with his hand, he realized he couldn’t start with his shoes on. He kicked them off before he could second guess himself, before he could consider if it was against some Lucian rule to be barefoot in the Citadel, and summoned his blades.
Don’t think, Ulric. Just do your drills, don’t think about it.
He took his first step forward. The motion was fluid, weight leaning forward and rolling along the knee. The second was instinct. The third wasn’t even a thought. The steps were all too familiar, steps he did every day but in all the wrong order and not to any tempo. Now, when his feet fell, they weren’t part of any greater Lucian plan, but part of a familiar drum beat.
His blades were an easy weight in his hands, not armed and bared like fangs, but simply held. An extension of himself, as the Lucians taught. An extension of his heart, as his father taught. He pivoted around them like an axis, each turn and sweep a revolution around the suns he held in his hands. His father’s kukri glinted as he spun above it, and for a moment Nyx could forget that it was the harsh over-head lights and not the sun filtered through the canopy.
The smell of the fire, sharp in his lungs as he fell out of the pivot again. His father’s voice was already barking over the hammering of his heart, unintelligible but understood as rote. ‘You hesitated,’ he’d snarl. ‘An Ulric never hesitates. They know their blades like their own souls and they never question. Again.’
Except this time, he flew through the movement and fluid into the next. His feet landed on the tile, light where his sneakers would have been loud, and he found himself ripped from the illusion of home in the same second the sequence ended. He looked up, still half expecting his father’s unimpressed expression, and met Cor’s eyes. Blue eyes, not flint steel, but impassive all the same.
“And, that’s all I’ve got,” Nyx said.
He pulled himself out of his kneel, wincing as he sent his blades back into the Armiger rather than attempt to examine the damage he had done to them by jamming them into the tile in the final kill. He was too used to doing that sequence in the dirt. The soft earth was far more forgiving than marble tile.
Nyx avoided looking at Cor as he wandered over to where he had kicked his shoes. He could feel the heat building in his face, well too aware that absolutely none of it was from the exertion of the sequence he could do in his sleep and that he couldn’t even blame it on the well-regulated temperature of the hall. Instead, he made eye-contact with one of the many suits of armors along the walls—what purpose did those even serve, other than trip-hazards—and watched Cor’s form from their reflection as he pulled on his sneakers.
His impassive, unmoving form. That was staring right at him.
Fuck me, can I crawl into the sewers yet?
Pulling together all the false bravado he could muster, he looked lazily over his shoulder.
“It’s better drunk,” Nyx felt the words fall out of his mouth the second his eyes met Cor’s, “and with a partner.”
“That’s a paired dance?” Cor asked, genuine interest playing on his face.
Wait, is he not mad?
Nyx did not swallow his tongue in his rush to answer, but only just.
“Can be,” he winced at the way his voice cracked at the end, like it was somehow a question. “Depends on the, uh. On the tempo, I guess.”
He did not add that he had only ever done that sequence with his cousin, who had always been flighty and jittery and tails-above-heads better at the routine than him. And that none of that talent had translated to any real fighting prowess, or he’d still be alive and not have been sent down the river in Nyx’s sixteenth year.
“How?”
Cor’s face was contorted in a way Nyx had never seen it before. Brows furrowed, nose pulled up to one side, forcing his right eye into a squint. It reminded Nyx a bit of how Crowe looked when trying to figure out if her week’s pay allowed for another drink and did not like the answer she was coming up with. Nyx swallowed back the snort, feeling the heat still twinging across his cheeks as he met Cor’s inquisitive gaze.
“Uh,” Nyx responded, intelligently. “It’s uh, sort of just? You start together at one end of the fire and make your way around it in parallel, meeting at the end.”
Cor was looking at him like he’d just handed him a coconut and called it a coeurl. Nyx couldn’t swallow the snicker.
“It’s not that complicated,” he said, getting to his feet. “You just don’t end with the kill, instead you sort of just. Come together?”
Six, he didn’t know how to explain this to an Insomnian. He was glad Cor wasn’t asking him any questions about the sorts of instruments that went with it or the cultural importance. Nyx was well too aware that he had none of the answers.
“Come together?” Cor pressed, still staring at him. Incredulous. That was the word for the look he was giving him.
“Tsu’Ste. Does that not translate?” The look Cor gave him told him it didn’t. “Six, I don’t know. The word is. You just. Ugh—”
Nyx came forward swiftly, hand moving on instinct to grasp at the back of Cor’s head and pull him down. He slotted his forehead against Cor’s, the lines of their noses flush together, their eyes meeting. Nyx found himself caught up in just how blue they were—not the ice and steel they looked from the distance, but flecked with the deep sea—before he remembered it was Cor the Fucking Immortal he was manhandling and took a step back.
“Come together,” he finished, stupidly, staring at his shoes.
Cor hummed, the way he did when he was considering something.
How best to brutally murder me. Nyx scoffed at himself.
“You know,” Cor murmured, startling Nyx out of his head with how close he was still standing. His breath ghosted along Nyx’s forehead. “That’s not what Regis has in mind.”
“I have no idea what His Majesty has in mind,” Nyx said honestly, letting his exasperation leak into his voice.
“He wants something he can display to the nobility. Preferably something intricate. Flashy,” Cor sniffed.
“Yeah, I don’t do flashy,” Nyx snorted. He could barely contain his smirk when he looked up to see Cor’s eyebrow raised at the obvious lie. “If he wants that, he should contact a troupe.”
Cor kept staring at him.
“That’s what he wanted me to do in the first place, isn’t it?”
Cor smirked, shaking his head as he turned to walk away.
“And how are the preparations for your exhibition going, Ulric?”
“Found a heritage group and put them in touch with your people, Your Majesty,” Nyx said, voice even in a way he didn’t feel. “They will supply a troupe and all the necessary props for a traditional Galahdian story-telling, which is done through dance.”
He kept his eyes trained on the painting behind His Majesty’s head, not sure he could look his regent in the eye but unwilling to stare at his shoes like a child at their father’s feet. It was of one of the few Lucian kings that Nyx could reliably remember, and that only because of the statues that he had erected around Insomnia. Optimus Lucis Caelum CVIII stared down at him from behind his great-great-great-grandson, free from any of the usual astral paraphernalia. Just a man, dressed in Lucian black, looking far too human to have been a king. Nyx had the feeling it was one of those paintings whose eyes followed you anywhere around the room.
“I thought you were going to display something for us?” His Majesty drawled, voice inquisitive.
Nyx could feel it crawling up his spine, trying to yank the little voice out of his throat to apologize. He swore Optimus was glaring at him. Nyx swallowed.
“No, your Majesty. I’m not going to do that.”
“Pity,” His Majesty sighed. There was a heavy silence in the room while Nyx continued to make eye-contact with the long dead king. “Seems I owe you, Clarus.”
What.
“You’re still short on the last bet as well, if I recall,” Clarus sighed. “Avernettus never did make him cry.”
Nyx tore his gaze from the painting to glare between the two older men. His Majesty—no, fuck it, Regis—was smirking, though Clarus was at least being decent enough to suppress his into a mild smile.
“Okay, fuck you two,” Nyx said before he could wrangle his own tongue.
Cor audibly snorted.
Coda
Cor stepped into place beside Nyx, who was entranced by the performance in front of him. The Galahdian troupe was proving to be a hit amongst the nobility, who were watching the intricate dancers in reverent awe. A hard-fought victory for anyone not Insomnian, but the troupe more than deserved it.
Bright swaying fabrics, intricate beading strategically catching the light better than any Tenebraen chandelier, and disturbingly beautiful face paint. All of it highlighted by the fire-pit the troupe had erected in the center of the hall, swathing the dancers in warm light while also casting the crowd into the shadows. It took great talent to other the Insomnian nobility—to beat them at their favorite game—and even more so to make them love it.
And they did love it. He had been trapped amongst these vultures for long enough to know. He expected there would be an increase in interest in Galahdian culture in the near future. He was not sure that would be a good thing, in the long run, for the refugees.
Something small in Cor was bitter for Nyx, that he was not amongst his people in the light and instead relegated to the shadows with the rest of them. That the man was stuck in the crowd and stuffed into his stiff formal uniform instead of swathed in the intricate flowing blue regalia of his homeland and back-flipping through fire. Cor was also fairly certain he felt the same, a faint sense of longing hanging about Nyx’s features. Cor leaned in, their shoulders almost brushing.
“I’m not from Insomnia,” Cor said, only to him.
Nyx jolted minutely, clearly unaware that Cor had snuck up beside him. Cor reveled in the brief moment of pure emotion that flashed across Nyx’s face as their eyes met. The hard mask Nyx was learning to wear more and more these days slipped ever so slightly to reveal the excitable youth underneath, his blue eyes wide and expressive.
Cor watched Nyx’s tongue dart out between his lips while he tried to collect his thoughts, the barest quirk forming in the corner of them as Cor watched him piece together what exactly had just been said. It was one of his favorite things about Nyx. The way he actually looked at him. Actually listened to what Cor was saying and not just to the words that came out of his mouth.
“Huh,” Nyx said. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Media gets everything wrong.”
Cor hummed in agreement.
The silence that hung between them was cut through with the laughter of the crowd as one dancer dawned a comical mask—simultaneously far more crude than any that Cor had seen used in Insomnian traditional theatre and infinitely more expressive—and began a different dance. Now Cor was far more pleased that Nyx was beside him, and that the eyes of the crowd were anywhere but on them.
“Duscae?” Nyx asked after a few moments, eyes twinkling with some ill-hidden joke.
Cor snorted, “No.”
“Leide?”
“No.”
Nyx kept his eyes on the dancers in front of him, but Cor couldn’t help but smile at the way the mask hadn’t resettled onto his face. Nyx’s stance had shifted, leaning slightly more towards Cor, and he fixed his stance to match. Their shoulders touched, then pressed together, comfortable and equal.