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Someone is stroking Wylan’s hair.
He’s lying on something very soft, and everything is quiet, and someone is stroking his hair.
Wylan does not remember falling asleep.
He remembers the fight. The smoke and the fire and the screams. He remembers the pounding headache he’d had after.
They’re guests of Prince—King, now—Nickolai, and have all been offered to spend the night in the palace until the funeral. Some survivors had wanted to burn the body immediately, and Wylan understands why, but ultimately the people come first. It was decided that Ravka would take stock of their numbers, attend to their wounded, and that the pyre would be held the next day. They’d been asked to be there with the king and the sun summoner and their companions for their aid—which is frankly such a bizarre departure from everything Wylan had been expecting to experience at the beginning of the month, that he can hardly make sense of the series of events that led up to it.
It’s sort of a blur after that. They were treated for their injuries. Nina was tasked with helping the healers, though she complained loudly that it still wasn’t a skill she possessed, and that ‘if people wanted their bones properly set or dressed, they were really better off without her’. They’d all piled into a room together afterwards, exhausted but unwilling to try and sleep yet. Unwilling to be alone. He thinks someone had found alcohol at some point. He thinks maybe it was Nina.
The soft thing he’s laying on shifts under him, but the hand in his hair doesn’t stop its ministrations, so that’s fine. He hears a small sigh—a very familiar sigh, at that—and then there’s more shifting. It wakes Wylan up a little more. Enough to make him curious about his surroundings, though he already has a theory.
He’s really quite comfortable, actually, and he doesn’t really remember the last time someone touched his hair for this long. It feels good. He doesn’t want it to stop.
Curiosity wins out in the end, though. He opens his eyes and braces against the light of the room. The first thing he sees is Jesper above him. They’re on a couch, he realises, then: Jesper is on the couch, Wylan is on Jesper.
He’s turning something over in his hand—a coin. He closes his fist around it and tenses, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he purses his lips in concentration. When he opens his hand there’s a key in place of the coin, resting delicately in his palm.
Wylan is so transfixed by it that he momentarily forgets everything beyond the movement of Jesper’s hands. The marvel of the magic taking place there. He hasn’t truly seen the fabrication process up close before, but he’s always been captivated by the idea of manipulating the elements using one’s own abilities. Science and magic, working together.
Wylan’s been pretty much convinced that Jesper Fahey is magic from the moment he met him, before ever knowing that he’s Grisha. That hasn’t changed. Not at all. Jesper is magic through and through, and he thinks maybe none of it has to do with his abilities—which are wonderfully fascinating both from a scientific standpoint, but also because they’re Jesper’s.
The fact remains: Jesper is magic. Maybe some of it is because of what he is, but Wylan suspects a great deal of it is due to who he is.
It’s too soppy a thought to be having when he’s only half awake and lying on his—they haven’t put a label on it yet. Saints—on Jesper’s lap.
He watches as Jesper repeats the process with the key. When he opens his hand, he’s holding the same coin as before.
When he sees Wylan looking at him, he pockets the coin and smiles, “Hello gorgeous.”
“What—um,” Wylan starts. His voice is raspy, mouth tacky from sleep. He clears his throat.
“You fell asleep right on my lap,” Jesper says, a bit smugly. Wylan starts to sit up. “No no no, don’t feel bad. I actually thought it was really, very cute.”
Wylan’s still hovering between sitting up and lying down. Elbows braced on top of Jesper’s thighs. “Where did everyone go?” he asks.
“To bed, I think. I’m not sure if Kaz actually sleeps, or if he just runs on kruge and revenge at this point. You passed out a few hours ago and you looked comfortable, so…” he shrugs. “You missed Nina and Zoya singing Ravkan drinking songs, by the way. But I think that’s probably for the best. I love her, but that girl really cannot sing. I’m surprised you slept through it.”
“Oh.” Wylan lies back down and covers his face with his hands. His cheeks are very warm. Not that Jesper and he have been particularly subtle in front of everyone so far—the opposite, they haven’t tried to hide it in the least—but he can’t help the embarrassment at the idea that he’d actually fallen asleep on Jesper in a room full of people. Never mind that they were his friends. Especially because they were his friends.
And then there’s the knowledge that Jesper has evidently been sitting almost completely still for hours. That even after everyone else left, he’d stayed in this empty, quiet room, in a position that surely couldn’t be that comfortable, just because he wanted to let Wylan sleep.
“Hey, don’t hide,” Jesper runs a hand through Wylan’s hair again. It’s probably even messier than usual. Between the multiple boat and carriage rides, the fighting, the explosions, and whatever Jesper’s been doing to it for however long, Wylan's glad he hasn’t had time to look in a mirror. “Wylaaan,” Jesper calls softly. He pokes him. “Let me in.”
“No,” Wylan says stubbornly from behind the wall of his fingers. He shakes his head.
Jesper leans down and presses his face directly against Wylan’s over his hands. His nose is cold against the hot burn of his skin. “Open up. I have a warrant.”
Despite himself, Wylan giggles a little, unable to help it. He finally relents and moves his hands. Jesper smiles. “Missed you, sunshine.”
“I was right here.”
“Yes but you were asleep. Beautiful, yes, but a good conversation partner, no.”
It’s too much. Jesper Fahey is entirely too much. Wylan arches up to kiss him, hands winding around the back of Jesper’s neck. It’s a steadying thing, a grounding thing, the way that Jesper wastes no time in responding. That he’s becoming used to the press of Jesper’s hands around his back and the smell of the oil he uses on his hair. The way he always tilts his head forward when they break apart for breath. They’re both too tired for it to become anything more, he thinks. But for now it reminds Wylan that he’s really here, that they both are.
“How’s your head?” Jesper asks.
He says it casually, but he looks a little worried. Jesper looked worried before too, he remembers, after Wylan was struck by the nichevo’ya and thrown into a wall. Wylan decides he’s about done with it. They’ve both done enough worrying to last them years, probably. Maybe they can be spared one night.
So he tilts his head, smirks, “I’ve been told it’s pretty decent, actually.”
Jesper gives a mock gasp, “Cheek.” Some of the tension retreats around his eyes, but not all. “Really, though.”
Wylan shakes his head in exasperation. “Headache’s gone, I think.” He shakes it again, just to check, and nods.
“Okay, good,” Jesper says. He opens his mouth and then closes it.
There’s something he isn’t saying, Wylan can tell. “What?”
Jesper hesitates. Tucks a stray piece of hair behind Wylan’s ear.
“Jesper,” Wylan sits up and turns to face him, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I just—if it’s still kind of fucked up in there, that’s okay too.”
Wylan gives him a look.
“That… maybe came out wrong. I meant that it’s okay if, you know, if you’re not okay. Not that, I meant—Saints, come back here.” Jesper tugs on Wylan’s sleeve, then his hand, and Wylan slowly lets himself be pulled back down into his earlier position.
The hand that Jesper’s still holding moves with his as he waves it around expressively while he talks. “That was a lot back there. For all of us. Really. So I’m just letting you know that you don’t have to pretend to be over it if you aren’t. That I’d understand, if you weren’t.”
To be fair, Wylan had sort of been a mess earlier. He was mostly okay during the actual fight. Scared, sure, but it had been overpowered by how fast everything was moving. It was loud and it was terrifying and the danger of the whole thing never escaped him completely, of course not. But it had taken a backseat to the immediacy of it all. He’d been able to focus on the task at hand because there hadn’t been time for anything else. He hadn’t truly registered how awful he felt until after. The pain in his leg and his stomach and his head hadn’t seemed so bad until they’d all stepped outside and the sun hit his eyes and it was over. It was over and they were alive.
It had been quiet in the aftermath. Wylan had been able to stop. Wylan had been able to think. He’d been able to panic.
He hadn’t wanted to let on how much it affected him, but he hadn’t been able to hide it from Jesper. Jesper, who had barely taken his eyes off of Wylan since he'd unceremoniously crashed to the ground and hid behind a stone pillar. Never going too far as to not be able to catch him if he fell. Hand on his back or arm around his shoulders—never mind that he’d taken more than his fair share of hits. It had been almost mother hen-ish in its intensity, and strangely gratifying to endure.
Wylan couldn’t complain, anyway; he wanted to keep Jesper just as close.
None of them were spared entirely from the fighting, but they’d walked out under their own power, standing and whole. He’d wanted to focus on that, except that that was around when the shaking started, and the headache got worse, and only then did it fully hit him that they all might have just died—so many times. Jesper sat Wylan down on the first table he saw and Wylan had breathed and done little else until the world felt a little more manageable. He’d tried to rein it in as much as possible, because what right did he have to be falling apart? He didn’t lose anyone, he wasn’t that badly hurt. Everything was fine. Still, the undeniable truth was that Wylan wasn’t used to that much action, and it showed.
But that was then, and since then Wylan has apparently fallen asleep on Jesper’s lap and Jesper has been stroking his hair while he slept on his lap and he thinks maybe he’d like to go back to that, actually.
“I think I had most of my freak out already, honestly,” he says, shaking off the residual memories by staring at the curve of Jesper’s lips. At the blink-and-you-miss-it, just barely there stubble under his chin. “Before the adrenaline wore off.”
Jesper snorts, “That it did.”
“Now just feel, um, calm? I probably won’t later, I don’t know. Like my brain got all of its energy out and now it’s just kind of quiet. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”
“But I feel… good is—possibly too strong a word, but we helped save a whole country! Maybe the whole world! And we witnessed a miraculous historical event. The destruction of the Shadow Fold, the possible unification of Ravka. Things historians and scholars have been debunking the likelihood of for years. They’ll write about it in books, and we’ll have already lived it.” He looks up at the ceiling and sighs. “I think I’m also just relieved to be alive at this point.”
Jesper looking at him, fondness painted so boldly across his face that Wylan has to fight not to look away from it. “What?”
“Nothing just—you’re something else, you know that?”
“What kind of something?”
“The best kind.”
It isn’t clear who moves first, but they’re kissing again. His hand in Jesper’s clasped between their chests. Wylan pushes closer, and he can feel Jesper’s rings where they press into his sternum.
“I’m sure there’s a room we’re supposed to be in somewhere. Want to go find it?”
“Mm. In a minute.” Wylan leans his head into Jesper’s hand and closes his eyes again. “Keep playing with my hair.”
“Oh, now he’s bossy too. I like it.”
“Do you?”
Jesper tugs playfully on the hair that falls over his forehead, and Wylan knows he’s smiling without opening his eyes. “It suits you, novice.”
“I thought I was an expert.”
“Oh, pardon me, expert.”
“The best expert.”
“Do you want me to play with your hair or not?”