Chapter Text
Chilchuck had protested that the cloak was too long when Laios first gave it to him, but now that they were nearing their destination, he was grateful for it covering not only his arms and chest, but down past his ankles. Cold wind slowed their approach, the last few days of nearly a month of travel the most grueling part of the journey, though if not for the horses they rented, it would have taken three or four times as long. Chilchuck sat bundled on the saddle, Laios’s arms reaching around him to hold the reins, eyes blinking open and shut, fighting off the urge to lean back against the broad chest behind his head and take a nap.
He wasn’t really sure why he agreed to this, even now, when they were almost there. It made sense why Laios asked—his relationship with his parents sounded strained at best, and while Marcille would have made a better guest, she was busy with a sudden research opportunity, and the Touden siblings had very few other friends they could rely on—but he didn’t know why he said yes.
“Please?” Laios had begged, literally on his knees before the tall-man sized stool Chilchuck was perched on. “You don’t have to do anything, really. I just need someone else there so they have to at least pretend to tolerate me. And I’ll pay you the usual rate, too!”
He’d looked so desperate. Chilchuck felt sorry for him. But sorry enough to agree to accompany his employer on a long journey to his hometown just to avoid uncomfortable conversations with his parents?
Maybe it was more empathy than sympathy, then. Chilchuck sure knew what it felt like to shiver at the thought of being alone in a room with certain family members…
“We’re almost there,” Falin said, and Chilchuck straightened up, blinking his eyes against the wind to make out the foggy shapes of a town in the distance.
“Is that it? Where you grew up?” he asked, quiet enough that only Laios could hear, especially with Falin’s horse starting to pull ahead.
Laios took a moment to answer. Chilchuck titled his head back, looking up at him with wide, searching eyes. He’d only known the guy for a little less than a year, but he knew Laios being this quiet was far from normal, and neither was that blank, distant expression he wore.
“Yup,” he eventually said. One syllable. No emotion.
Chilchuck frowned, eyes landing back on the town ahead with trepidation. Under gray skies and shrouded by freezing mist, it almost appeared like a ghost town, but he knew there were people there. People Laios felt ill at the thought of seeing.
Two years later…
“Do you almost have it open yet?” Marcille asked.
“Shh! Don’t distract him!” Laios said, pulling her back in such a way that made the elf let out a disgruntled yelp.
“Both of you can it! I told you to join our game if you needed a distraction,” Namari groused.
“But I like watching him work…” Laios was pouting, and Chilchuck had to close his eyes and take a deep, controlled breath. He wanted so badly to yell at them all to shut up, but with his back to the floor, head and shoulders crammed into the underside of a trapped chest to get at the mechanisms, it wasn’t worth it. If he just breathed too hard, the whole room could be blown to bits.
“Oh, that’s a match!” Falin said, slapping some cards down on the stone floor. “I win!”
Namari groaned while Shuro congratulated her, and Marcille heaved a sigh as she sat down, offering sullenly to join the next round. Laios remained silent, still watching Chilchuck work, if he had to guess.
Of course he was. The only thing Laios was more obsessed with than Chilchuck was monsters, but just by a slim margin. He’d been weird about him since the beginning, honestly, but it only got worse in the nearly three years Chilchuck had been employed by the Toudens.
Luckily, Chilchuck didn’t exactly mind the attention, when it came from Laios. The only downside was that his flushed cheeks and sweating palms made it ever-so-slightly more difficult to work in the tight space, and the inside of this chest was like a hairball of wires and pins, designed specifically to make the explosive linked to the main lock as difficult to disarm as possible.
It was standard stuff, having a lock that looked difficult to pick on its own to let your guard down so the trap could set off once the pins clicked into place, but all this mess in the underside of the chest was not standard by any means. In fact, when Chilchuck first saw it, he was convinced the chest wasn’t housing anything at all—it simply didn’t seem like there was space for anything else—until he compared the depth of the lower cavity to the total depth of the chest, and realized there was definitely a thin compartment inside. Whatever sat in there, small though it must surely be, had to be worth something if it warranted all this protection, so there he was. Plucking wires off pins in just the right order to disarm the explosives while the rest of his party played card games.
The final wire went limp, and Chilchuck let out a deep sigh, chest deflating with relief.
“Finally!” He pushed himself out from under the chest, and was met with Laios’s shining eyes and gleeful smile.
“Is it open?” he asked, leaning forward onto his tip-toes.
“Not quite, but this last part will be easy.” Chilchuck switched tools and kneeled down in front of the lock. He turned his wrist back and forth, easily pressing each of the pins into place, until the mechanism clicked and the lid of the chest popped open a few millimeters. Something else clicked below, a lever meant to light the ignition, but it was rendered useless, and nothing happened.
Everyone let out one last sigh, certain now that Chilchuck had done it, and gathered around to watch him open the chest.
“What do you think it’ll be?” Marcille asked, hands clasped and eyes sparkling.
“Gold bars?” Namari offered.
“No, something smaller: an enchanted weapon?” Shuro suggested.
“I thought it might be a book,” Falin said.
“Or a preserved delicacy…” Laios whispered under his breath.
“Well, let’s see!” Chilchuck flipped the lid back, and there in the thin compartment of the chest was a single piece of paper, hardly weathered from sitting so long in its preserving chamber, but decorated with gray ink in a language he didn’t recognise, scrawled around the contours of a map.
“A map!?” Namari sounded outraged.
“Oh! But it might lead to treasure!” Marcille lit up, and Laios nodded along with eyes just as glimmering. Chichuck was wont to agree with Namari and Shuro’s disappointed sighs, but that look put half a smile on his face, and he felt a silver lining gild itself onto the rain cloud in his head.
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see,” he said. “Falin—want to take it?”
“Mn! I’ll put it in a scroll tube, for safekeeping.” She lifted the sheet and gingerly began to roll it up. “Then we can take it to the library in town and see if we can’t figure out where it’s pointing to.”
“That’ll be so much fun! Just like we’re back in school!” Marcille threw her arms around Falin’s shoulders, and they both giggled, Falin’s round face flushing as Marcille pressed their cheeks together. Namari rolled her eyes, but Shuro looked at them with oblivious fondness.
Chilchuck stifled a laugh. Let the guy think he had a chance. It didn’t change the truth.
“I guess we should probably head back, then,” Laios sighed. “We are getting low on food…”
“I’m not opposed.” Namari stretched her arms over head. “It’d be nice to sleep at an inn.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” Chichuck bumped his shoulder into Laios’s hip, and a smile crept back onto Laios’s lips.
“Yeah, I guess so…” he said. “Alright, then! Back to the surface!”
…
“Just as I’d thought, it’s an ancient dialect of elvish, but surprisingly one I’ve never heard of before,” Marcille was explaining, already deep in her research though they’d just emerged from the dungeon that morning. She’d probably be even farther along if she hadn’t spent two hours in the bath getting the dungeon grime off, in her own words.
Falin nodded along, adding tangential input here and there as Marcille went on. The rest of them didn’t really understand, but since they were all a few drinks deep, that didn’t matter too much. It was nice to see Marcille so excited.
“It’s so elaborate… I wonder what kind of treasure must be at the end of all this…” Laios said, leaning sleepily towards Chilchuck and putting his hand on the other side of his seat so the half-foot was tucked into the triangle between his arm and his chest.
Chilchuck cleared his throat, and Laios’s drunken flush turned a different shade of pink.
“Ah, sorry—” he moved his arm, but Chilchuck rolled his eyes and slid off his seat, offering a hand to the tallman.
“I think it’s time you turn in for the night, actually,” he said.
“But Marcille was still—”
“Come on, I know you haven’t washed up yet, and if you get any drunker you won’t be able to do it yourself,” Chilchuck cut him off. Laios pouted, but got up and followed him towards the stairs.
“He’s like his dad,” he heard Shuro say as they left, followed by a stifled chuckle from Falin.
Chilchuck felt strangely smug, but suppressed the urge to laugh along with her. Instead, he reveled in the ease with which his hand slipped into Laios’s once they were up the stairs and out of sight.
“Are you really gonna make me bathe by myself?” Laios asked, still making that sad, sulking face.
“Oh my gosh, you big baby,” Chilchuch huffed, but his heart was too soft on the man. “Yeah, whatever. My hair could use another wash anyways, I was too quick with it this morning.”
Laios giggled gleefully, practically skipping over to the call bell for the water.
“I can wash your hair for you, right? I love washing your hair, Chil!”
Chilchuck’s ears burned. Laios was an open book to begin with, but he got so damn honest when he was drunk.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. But you’re taking off your armor yourself,” he told him. “Last time I tried to help with that, it was a total disaster. I don’t know how you wear such heavy stuff all day…”
Laios nodded and began to shimmy out of his gear, whistling as he worked. Chilchuck took off his scarf and vest, then quickly traded his clothes for a dressing robe, and just in time, too. The second he had the sash tied around his waist, the knock came at the door and a pair of inn attendants came in with the water, filling up the tub with just two trips between them. Laios dropped his pants so easily, shuffling down into the steaming water.
“Ah… that’s nice,” he sighed, tilting his head back, then cracking one eye open in Chilchuck’s direction. “Getting in?”
“Mn.” Chilchuck dropped the robe, keeping his eyes down as he climbed in, sitting between Laios’s open legs, facing away from him so he didn’t have to be nearly eye-to-eye with the tallman’s crotch. Plus, this was the right position for Laios to wash his hair, which he did so without a word, just sudsing his hands up and reaching for Chilchuck’s auburn locks like he owned them.
In a way, he kind of did.
“Alright, alright.” Chilchuck waved his hands away when he’d been scrubbing for a few minutes too long. “That’s enough. You need to get clean too, you know.”
Laios let out a mildly hurt whimper, but started scrubbing his arms and chest anyways. Chilchuck got a bucket and rinsed off his hair, then sped through giving his skin a once-over, eager to escape the tub as Laios got closer and closer to cleaning his legs, which required him to lift them out of the tub and further into Chilchuck’s personal space.
“Can you wash my hair?” Laios asked as Chilchuk lifted himself out of the water, and before he could protest, Laios gave him a pleading look and reminded him it was only returning the favor.
“Fine.” Chilchuck grabbed the soap. “But sit up properly. We’ll get the floor dirty with you hanging out of the tub like that.”
Laios did as he was told, always so much more eager to follow Chilchuck’s directions when they inevitably led to what he wanted in the first place. Chilchuck had to reach up to get his hands in his scalp even with Laios sitting and him standing, but at least he didn’t have to pull over a stool. After two years of relative intimacy with this man, he’d gotten used to the injustice of their height difference. Laios was simply twice his size, and there wasn’t much to be done about it.
Not that they’d always been this close. It’d taken a while: a slow, silent drifting into tighter and tighter orbit after that spring Laios took him home. But intimacy was inevitable in their situation, especially so when Laios had such a frail grasp on boundaries to begin with.
So it was normal, now, for Laios to stand naked from the bath and wait to cover himself until Chilchuck himself had handed him the towel. And it was normal to climb into the same bed once they were dry and clothed again. It was normal to blow the candle out and shift together, Chilchuck on his side and Laios draped against his back, arm heavy on his waist and hand pressed protectively to his front, holding him in place like he never wanted them to move, like it hurt him every night they couldn’t do this simply because the others were watching.
“Night, Chil,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of Chilchuck’s head.
Chilchuck praised the dark for hiding his blush and let out a small sigh.
“Goodnight, Laios.” And as the sweet, stupid, giant of a man fell asleep behind him, it was quite perfectly normal for Chilchuck to stay awake a while longer, wondering if this was where the two of them ended, or if there would ever come a time when he could look Laios in the eyes when he was naked; if they could climb into bed together before the clothes came on; if they could tangle in a more active embrace; if those lips could land on his mouth instead of his scalp.
If he could be a real husband to the man he’d married two years ago.