Chapter Text
Month 0
Scara did not expect Durin to make such an impact on his life.
The spring semester was over. Scara was just emerging from a haze of final papers and exams, and it was a strange and faint grief. Another year gone. He still had summer work, but it was vague and unstructured. Mostly background research in preparation for the fall semester, when he was required to commit himself to a thesis at last. It should have been simple for him. He was studying the intersection of theoretical physics and alternative realities -- but he was frustrated that he could not cite events that had never existed, in his current timeline.
The reprieve from stress and exhaustion left him empty, anchorless. Without the Akademiya to keep him busy, he was at the mercy of his own thoughts. And gods, they circled darkly, when he had too much time alone.
Two days after his last exam of the semester, he returned to his dorm to find a letter postmarked from Mondstat, slipped under the door. It was brief, yet he knew exactly what it meant.
SUCCESS. COME SEE. -A
Scara was on a boat that very evening, destined for Dornman Port.
He could never forget the feeling of walking into the Favonius Barracks and seeing human Durin for the first time. He was a young man sitting on Albedo's couch, wearing borrowed clothes, with awkward holes cut in the back for his wings and tail.
And Durin looked at him with those fire eyes, bright and burning. He was striking, sharp-jawed, undeniably handsome. His pale purple hair, his wings the same color as his eyes.
Durin cocked his head and said, "Why aren't you a cat?"
Scara's scowl was deep and immediate. "Are you kidding?"
"What?"
"You've really seen me as a cat this whole time?"
A second thought hit him, with a weird warmth: And you still recognize me. But it was too pathetic to say out loud. Almost too pathetic to think.
"Well, yeah. That's why I asked."
"Ugh, whatever. Nice to meet you too, Durin."
"But we already met." Durin frowned. "And why is your hat so big?"
Scara rolled his eyes. "Because I'm Hat Guy."
At that moment, Albedo walked back into the room, carrying a tray with a teapot and cups.
"Ah, Mr. Guy. You received my letter."
"Lucky timing."
"I knew when your semester ended." Albedo set the tray down and told Durin, "Hat Guy is not his real name. It's more like a title."
"Oh, why?" Durin wasn't asking Scara, but he did pass Scara a lip-curled frown, openly judging him.
There was no malice in it. It was as if Durin simply had no filter between internal and external emotions yet. Where Scara built a vault around his innermost feelings, Durin had an open window.
Albedo gestured at a large piece of parchment on the table. Upon it, Albedo had painted a set of concentric circles in rainbow order. At the center was a red circle that said MYSELF, followed by an orange ring for FAMILY, yellow for FRIENDS, green for NEIGHBORS, blue for STRANGERS, purple for ENEMIES.
"You trust everyone from here--" Albedo traced his finger from the red circle to the blue outer ring "--to here with your name. Hat Guy only trusts people here with his name."
Then Albedo pointed at the center, at the red center. MYSELF.
"That's weird," Durin informed Scara. "People have to call you something."
"Thanks for your concern." Scara turned his head and frowned at the chart. "What is this?"
"A framework for social boundaries. Easy to visualize." Albedo studied it with the quiet scrutiny he always had toward his creations. Endlessly seeking improvement. "I read it about it in a developmental psychology textbook. It's called the circles of trust. It seemed helpful, since Durin has many decades of Simulankan social rules to reconcile."
Durin was still staring at the board when his head popped up in sudden revelation. He interrupted the end of Albedo's sentence, asking Scara, "Wait, Hat Guy. You don't even tell your family your name?"
"I don't have family."
"Wow, that's sad."
Durin said it with quiet shock, shaking his head. Somehow, his sincerity was worse than sarcasm.
Scara scowled at Albedo and said, "You can turn him back into a dragon now."
Albedo snorted. Then he did something that Scara had never seen from him before. He let his composure slip. He grinned, grasping Durin's horns in both hands. He started pushing and shaking Durin, saying, "You heard him. Revert, devolve. Get back in your book."
Durin laughed and play-fought him, like they had been brothers far their entire lives. Like they had once been boys together.
Then, breathless and holding Albedo's wrists, Durin looked between the both of them and said, "You're making a joke, right?"
"No," Scara said, at the same moment that Albedo said, "Yes."
Albedo continued, as he stood upright, "Hat Guy will give you ample opportunity to practice recognizing sarcasm."
Scara folded his arms over his chest. He could not explain to himself why he felt so out of place. Perhaps it was that lingering cold feeling that overtook him, when Durin asked about his family.
But he puffed himself up, put on a cranky face, and demanded, "Why are you two acting like that, anyway?"
"Oh, you don't know because you don't have family. That's what brothers do." Durin tapped the orange FAMILY circle on his social circles chart.
Albedo smiled his usual subtle smile. "Durin, it's rude to keep pointing out what someone is lacking."
"Oh, sorry. You could push my horns too, Hat Guy. You're my friend."
"Why the--" Scara bit back a curse. "Why would I do that?"
"Hitting horns together is a sign of friendship and trust for dragons." Albedo gave an example push on Durin's horn, which made Durin hum-laugh, low in his chest. "This is my closest approximation."
"I told Albedo he should give himself horns and then we'll really look like brothers." Durin's eyes brightened, the light of an idea. "You should give Hat Guy horns, too! No one will see them with his hat, so he can still blend in with humans."
"I'm afraid those have to be included in the original schematic." Albedo sat next to his brother and gestured toward the chair opposite them. "Please, Mr. Guy. Have some tea."
Scara shook his head and sat down, saying, "How ridiculous."
Internally, he was a sickening mix of nervous, self-conscious, and hopeful. It had been easier to be nice to Durin when he was a dragon in a storybook. The suspension between the real world and make-believe made Scara feel less foolish than he did now. Now he felt like a gullible idiot -- for answering Albedo's letters, for showing up so eagerly.
For letting himself care so much.
Scara spent a week with the both of them in Mondstat. In that time, he learned that Durin had been human for eight days. It explained much of his behavior. His struggle to drink from cups without spilling. His tail constantly knocking things off tabletops. His tendency to verbalize every little thought.
Durin was only fifteen days into his new body, when Albedo pulled Scara aside and quietly said, "Grandmaster Varka has requested my assistance in Nod-Krai. It appears that there is a growing threat in the north."
"What kind of threat?"
"He didn't clarify. I assume he didn't want to risk the wrong information reaching the wrong people."
Scara nodded. Despite his growling and grumbling, he had no hesitation in what he said next. He knew someone as trusting as Durin would not do well that far north, where duplicity was the norm and sincerity was a weakness.
He said, "Durin can stay with me. I'll look after him."
Albedo agreed. And, apparently predicting that response, he gave Scara a detailed list of tasks for Durin to practice integrating in his new body. Hand-eye coordination; left-right brain communication, crossing what Albedo called the brain's midline; fine motor and gross motor tasks; reading and writing; emotional regulation; social boundaries.
Sometimes, and only fleetingly, Scara wished he had never offered to help.
***
Month 1
In those few weeks, Durin had so many firsts.
---
His first boat trip, to reach Sumeru. He had dressed like a tourist, in his shorts and T-shirt. He even brought sunglasses and a ballcap, with holes cut for his horns.
Despite his hat, Scara got a wicked sunburn, because Durin wanted to stand on the deck and watch the water for hours. He held onto the railing of the boat and rocked back and forth on his heels, tail flicking, his wings catching the wind like sails. The air off the water smelled brackish and cold.
"You know, Hat Guy," Durin said. "I've decided that I want to work on a boat. I want to see the whole world."
"You don't need a boat. You can just fly around."
"Yeah, but my wings get tired."
Durin turned his head, and Scara caught his own reflection in Durin's mirrored sunglasses. He saw himself smiling and immediately replaced it with a frown.
"Hey, do you want to trade hats?" Durin said.
"No."
"You'll still be Hat Guy, no matter what hat you're wearing."
"Why do you want my hat?"
"Because then I'll look like you."
Scara rolled his eyes. He was glad he was already pink from the sun, because that brought immediate heat to his face.
That boat trip was also Durin's first bout of seasickness. When they hit rough waters, Durin puked over the railing and said, with his head still bowed, "I changed my mind. I'm not working on a boat."
"Oh my gods. You were never going to work on a boat."
"Maybe I could have. You don't know."
Then the boat pitched again and Durin gagged.
Scara almost started lecturing him that this was why he suggested going into their cabin sooner. But Durin looked so greenish and ill that Scara just got him saltine crackers and water.
And yes, maybe he did spend the rest of the journey trying to act a little nicer, for Durin's sake.
---
His first head cold.
Durin got sick within a few days of his arrival on the Akademiya grounds.
That was predictable. Albedo had warned Scara that Durin's immune system was still developing, and Scara had shrugged and answered, Okay, then he'll get a cold or two. No big deal.
Durin felt it was very much a big deal.
In fact, Durin was a complete baby about it. He woke up coughing and sneezing and asked Scara, with genuine fear in his voice, "What's happening to me?"
They were in Scara's dorm room. It was small, but it was in the doctoral students' wing. It had been outfitted more like a studio apartment, with its own bathroom, a twin bed, a desk, a couch, and a tiny kitchen. Durin slept on the couch, and Scara knew what was coming when he woke up first and heard Durin's congested snoring.
At that moment, Scara was at his desk, going through the unreasonably detailed folder of speech and occupational therapy tasks that Albedo had given him.
"It's just a head cold, Durin."
"No, my head is hot." He pressed the heel of his hand on his cheek. "And my face hurts. Is my face going to hurt all the time now?"
Scara laughed at him, not meanly. He turned in his chair and found Durin sitting upright, leaned over the back of the couch. His eyes were pinkish and pouting, his hair messy with sleep.
"No," Scara said. "Only for a few days."
"Hat Guy, this is really serious. I don't feel right."
Scara sighed and got up. He came over and touched Durin's forehead with the back of his hand. Durin did feel a little warm, but he always felt a little warm.
"You don't even have a fever," Scara said.
"Yes I do." He scowled, then paused, then asked, "What's a fever?"
"When your body temperature increases when you're sick."
"I definitely have that. I'm definitely sick."
"Barely." Scara rolled his eyes. "I'll make you some tea. It will help."
Scara made him a cup of ginger tea with honey. He brought it over, and admitted to himself that the way Durin sat hugging his pillow was sort of cute.
"Here, let it cool before you drink it. But if you breathe in the steam, it can relieve some of that sinus pressure."
"Thanks, Hat Guy." He said it so miserably, followed by an equally miserable sniffle. Then he looked up at Scara and asked, "What's a sinus?"
"They're in your face." Scara tapped his own cheeks. "Both sides."
"But what is it?"
Scara hesitated, then said, "I'll get a book and show you."
"Okay." Durin didn't sound very convinced.
Scara left him to go to the library. There he borrowed two books: a medical textbook (because he couldn't find anything simpler) and a book of fairy tales (because maybe Durin would like it, and maybe he was turning into the kind of idiot who cared about that).
When he returned, Durin was napping. He was flushed, his cheeks puffy. His wings and tail were curved around himself, as if making a self-soothing cradle.
Scara put the books down on the coffee table and touched Durin's forehead. This time he did feel hot, and Scara almost felt guilty for being so stern with him.
Durin winced an eye open. An iris like a sunset. Gods, he was pretty, even like this. And gods, Scara hated how he kept noticing it.
"Go back to sleep." Scara smoothed Durin's hair down. "You do have a fever now."
"I told you."
Scara almost said, Yes, and now you'll die within the hour. But Durin wouldn't find that funny at all.
"Yeah, okay," Scara said instead. "You're sick. Now sleep. Sleep helps when you're sick."
"Will you sit with me and read to me?"
Scara looked around the dorm room, searching for justification to reject the idea. But he didn't have anything better to do. And no one would know. And Durin did look sad and needy.
"Fine," Scara sighed.
Durin sat upright, taking his pillow with him. Scara didn't realize what Durin meant until he sat on the warm cushion, against the armrest, and Durin put his pillow on Scara's lap to nestle in close.
Scara made a tch noise and shook his head.
"What?" Durin said, frowning up at him.
Scara's chest hurt far too much, for a puppet without a heart. No one had held this kind of power over him before. Durin just looking up at him like this made his stomach pitch forward. An anxious mix of feelings he was unwilling to identify.
If he didn't observe his feelings, they wouldn't become defined and real. Quantum longing. There was a thesis -- scrapped and rejected the moment he thought it.
"It's nothing," Scara said, sharper than he meant to. "I just didn't expect that."
"When I was little, I used to cuddle with my mom when I was sad." Durin's stare grew distant and pained. "And then I had no one to be with when I was sad."
Scara twisted his mouth. "It gets easier once you expect being alone."
"But I don't have to be alone anymore. I have you, Hat Guy."
Then Durin started coughing hard. It was a chesty cough, thick and uncomfortable.
"Ew, Durin. Cough into your elbow. Fuck."
"Fuck," Durin repeated. Then he kept coughing, this time into the bend of his arm. "What's that?"
"It's a swear word."
"Oh, Klee taught me those. Like shit, hell, damn."
"Klee taught you?"
"Yeah, she said Jean can't hear you say it or you get house arrest all day."
"That's for kids, Durin. You're not a kid."
"Jean doesn't care. Anyway, she isn't here." Durin fixed his glassy stare on the wall. "Fuck. I like it. It's snappy: fffuck."
"It's rude. So it's a friends and family circle... thing."
"Oh, I don't want to be rude." Durin sat upright to scowl at him. "Why did you say it if it's rude?"
"Because coughing all over me is gross. Don't they have germ theory in Simulanka?"
"Ohh, that's like why Albedo told me I have to wash my hands."
Scara missed Albedo in this moment. He was so much better at sincerity. It made Scara itchy all over, to offer so much affirmation. He wanted to layer everything under a protective shell of irony and sarcasm. Some broken part of him could not say, yes, Durin, you're right, without poisoning it first.
He just grimaced and said, "Yeah. Like that. Do you want me to read to you or not?"
Durin nodded, then bedded down again. There was something so charming about the tuft of his purple hair at this angle. Like a Sumeru rose, freshly blossoming.
Scara had Durin hold the textbook open while he moved his finger on the page, tracing the words as he read them. It was a simple introduction to human anatomy. He pointed out the diagram and read only a couple of paragraphs when Durin interrupted him.
"Where are the characters?" Durin said.
"There aren't any. It's a textbook. It's nonfiction."
"Ugh, it's so boring. It's making my head hurt worse."
Scara curled his lip and sneered, "I thought you didn't want to be rude, Durin."
"Well, it's true."
Even as he fought it, Scara could not hide his smile. He could only put a wry edge on it.
"I did get another book for you," Scara said.
Durin gasped in genuine delight, when Scara traded him the textbook for the fairy tale anthology.
"A storybook!" Durin grinned. "Aw, Hat Guy. You try so hard to act like you're not nice."
"I'm coddling you. Don't make me regret it."
Durin just laughed under his breath as he flipped through the pages, looking at the pictures and saying, "You're not scary. You're probably one of the nicest people I've ever met."
"You know five people."
Durin paused, looking upward in thought, and began counting on his fingers.
"It's an exaggeration, Durin. It's not literal."
"Shh, I'm counting." Then a moment or so later, Durin said, "I know twelve people."
Scara shook his head, with another eye-roll as instant as breathing. "Yeah, that's way different."
They paged through the book and read story after story. Stories about a jinn whose hope poisoned into bitter wickedness for a world that treated her poorly; aranara who played tricks upon their neighbors and came to apologize for it; poems written on leaves and placed in a river that flowed backward in time.
Durin kept dozing off and waking only when Scara stopped reading, saying, Wait, I was listening to that, only to sleep again within moments.
When Durin seemed truly, deeply asleep, Scara tested if he was awake by pretending to read, "Once there was an annoying dragon who coughed all over a cat and gave him an annoying dragon cold. And the cat realized that having friends is inconvenient and overrated, and he never, ever talked to the dragon again. The end."
Durin didn't stir.
Scara caught himself lingering on Durin's long, lavender eyelashes. The scales trailing down the nape of his neck. He sighed and stroked his fingers through Durin's hair.
Perhaps Durin was right. Perhaps he really was a cat in every damn story, and he never learned his lesson.
---
Next came his first bleeding injury.
This was also predictable -- but only somewhat.
Scara saw the strategizing on Durin's face the moment that Durin noticed the tree. It was a huge adhigama tree, its lowest boughs thick and close to the ground. They were mid-conversation on their way to the cafeteria, when Durin stopped speaking and snapped his head toward it, staring.
"No," Scara said, instantly. "You may not climb any trees. Especially on campus."
"But it looks so easy," Durin said.
That made Scara smile, even as he scoffed. That was so very Durin: unembarrassed of his impulses, unaware that his wings and horns already gave people too many reasons to stare at him. He didn't need to add being a grown man sitting in a tree to that list.
"You'll fall, and you'll get hurt. Don't do it."
"Gosh, Hat Guy. I won't fall."
Scara should have been more suspicious, when they were waiting for another batch of tandoori chicken to finish cooking. But Durin was so causal when he said, "I'm going to go to the bathroom."
"Alright," Scara answered. "Do you want to eat here or back at my room?"
"Outside. It's beautiful and sunny."
"Ugh, fine."
The cafeteria was a large room, with rounded picture windows facing the plaza beyond it. Scara stood with his back to it, getting lost in his mid, making lists of chores and tasks for the day. Handwriting practice for Durin, research for himself.
He did not register the time passing until the food was ready, and he realized that Durin still hadn't returned. That was when he looked around and saw an idiot with purple hair, a tail, and dragon wings scaling up that goddamn tree.
"Oh my gods," Scara muttered.
He walked out fast, head down, the streamers of his hat swaying. He had spent years being distant and cold, so that people would ignore him as another neutral feature of this campus. And now Durin was ruining his reputation by being the most conspicuous weirdo imaginable.
Scara got to the glass doors leading outside, just in time to see Durin about three meters up in a tree. He was pulling himself up onto the next branch, when he slipped and cried out. He tried to catch himself but tumbled gracelessly anyway.
It was a short fall. Only a few seconds. Short enough that his wings could only orient him to fall forward, instead of on his knees.
Even so, genuine, actual worry clutched at Scara's stomach.
He ran over and crouched down as Durin sat upright. He was wearing only a tanktop and shorts. His knees were pink. The strap of his sandal was torn. And his right arm, from the elbow halfway up his forearm, was scraped, oozing blood.
Durin bent his arm to study it. His eyes were damp, and he looked at Scara in open-mouthed shock.
"I told you," Scara said, harsher than he intended. "I told you, you would fall."
"I'm bleeding," Durin said.
It wasn't really an answer, but it rattled Scara with instant guilt, for reacting as he had. Durin's voice was wet and shaky. His breath was coming in fast, gasping little inhales, perhaps the first punch of adrenaline in his new life.
"Come on, stand up." Scara held out a hand to help him. "Let's go to my room. I'll bandage it."
"I can't believe I'm really bleeding."
Maybe you shouldn't climb a fucking tree next time, Scara wanted to say.
But instead he said, "Well, maybe you should listen to me when I warn you about things."
"I thought you were just being boring."
Durin was uncharacteristically silent on the return to Scara's room. He walked fast inside, his head down. Scara stopped to set his hat on the couch, then directed Durin to go into the bathroom and sit on the closed toilet seat. It was only then that Scara realized why Durin had kept turning away from him.
Durin was crying. Fat tears, streaking freely down his cheeks.
Scara had the insane urge to wipe them away for him.
Instead, he wet a clean towel under the sink and said, as gently as he could, "You don't need to cry."
"It hurts so bad, Hat Guy." Durin swiped at his face with his left arm.
"Well, it's about to hurt more. I have to wipe the dirt off."
"No!"
He turned away from Scara, wrapping his wings protectively around himself.
"Durin, you can't leave dirt on a wound like that. It will just sting for a little bit, and then it will stop. I promise."
"Go get my brother."
"I can't. He's in Nod-Krai."
"How far away is Nod-Krai?"
"A couple days on a boat, at least."
That's when Durin started really crying. Like a child. He hugged his arm to his chest and covered his eyes in his left elbow, sobbing and saying, "I wanna go home. I want my brother."
Scara sighed and held his forehead. Then he did the only thing he could, even though it felt weak and ridiculous.
He hugged Durin's head to his own stomach and ran his fingers through Durin's hair, telling him, "It's not that bad, Durin. It's a big scrape. But it's not that bad."
"It is that bad! You just can't feel it."
Durin smelled like grass and sweat and soap. His hair was still so warm, kissed by the sky.
Scara pushed breath through his teeth, then said, "I know it hurts. I'm saying it's a small hurt. It feels big, because you've never been hurt before. But, you know. One day you'll be a Knight of Favonius like your brother, and you'll laugh about this."
Durin peered up at him. Brows raised, eyes shiny, mouth pinched.
"Really?" Durin said.
"Yeah, of course."
Durin sniffled. "I got so scared."
"I know."
"I feel stupid."
"You're not. You're smart. You're just... new to being human."
Now Durin studied his arm. The blood was already darkening in a scab, and it held a grainy layer of sand and tiny gravel pieces. Durin twisted his mouth as another fresh tear fell.
"I'm really hungry, too," Durin said.
"Well, let me teach you how to take care of this, and then we'll eat."
"You're my best friend, Hat Guy."
Gods, that melted him. That earnest upward look. Durin's hair in his eyes. So utterly honest -- nothing veiled or shadowed. Nothing hidden.
Scara half-smiled and pushed on Durin's horn with one hand.
"That's because you don't know that many people," Scara said.
Durin wept again when Scara cleaned the dirt from his scrape. It was silent crying, Durin's lip tight, as if he was trying and failing to suppress it.
Scara didn't acknowledge it. He had Durin wipe ointment on it, then he placed gauze on it and wrapped it. It didn't really need to be bandaged, but it seemed to make Durin feel better, to not look down and see his own broken skin.
Durin marveled at it, patting the bandage tentatively.
"Wow," Durin said. "Are bandages magic?"
"What? No. Why?"
"It barely even hurts."
Scara dipped his head and snorted, as he rinsed off the cloth he had used. Blood and rusty sand washed down the drain. "That's how scrapes are. They sting for the first few minutes, and then you get used to it, and it stops hurting."
"Have you bled before?"
"I've been a human for more than three weeks, so yeah. Of course."
"How old are you?"
Scara hesitated, looking at Durin. He flicked his stare from Durin's face to the dip of his collarbone, then back to his eyes.
"Red circle," Scara said.
"What?"
"That's a red circle question, for me. I don't talk to anyone about that."
"Well... okay. But I do."
"We're different people."
Durin accepted that easily enough. Scara gave Durin his shower shoes to wear, since his sandals were now broken. They were half a size too small, but Durin didn't complain.
That day was also the first time that Durin ate spicy food. There was still tandoori chicken when they returned, and Durin insisted that he wanted the red one.
"That one is extra hot," the cook warned him.
"I'm a dragon," Durin said. "I like hot things."
Scara was embarrassed, but the cook laughed deep from his stomach, like it was the first joke he had ever heard. Scara was further embarrassed when Durin made chipper and overly friendly conversation. This is my friend Hat Guy. He's my best friend. He doesn't like to talk to people, but I do.
When they walked out the cafeteria doors, Scara hissed at him, "Don't tell people so much stuff about yourself. Or about me. All of that is friend circle information."
"But he was nice."
"You don't know that."
"He gave me extra food. That's pretty nice."
"Not everyone who gives you stuff is doing it to be nice."
Scara had a half-second of realizing that he was just teaching Durin to have the same trust issues that he did. But what was better: let Durin climb every damn tree and get hurt every time, or protect him from inevitable pain?
Durin just waved him off and said, "You worry too much, Hat Guy."
They sat under the same tree that Durin had fallen from. Durin took an overly large bite of chicken, and Scara expected him to start gasping and whining about how hot it was.
But Durin just chewed, swallowed, tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His eyes flickered, as if in divine revelation.
"Gosh," Durin said. "That's spicy."
"I can get you some milk. It helps if your mouth is burning."
"No, no. I just didn't realize that other food is so boring. Why isn't every food spicy? This is amazing!"
"Because not everyone likes spicy food."
"Oh, they should. Wow." He took another bite. "Wow. Hat Guy, you need to learn how to make this."
"I don't like it that spicy."
"That's sad for you."
"Excuse me? Are you being sarcastic?"
Durin grinned, devious and sly. "Maybe."
Scara laughed and shoved his shoulder. He secretly thrilled in the way that Durin leaned his head, as if catching Scara's imaginary horns, and elbowed him back.
And for Scara, that was the first time he sat outside on a bright Sumeru day and felt happy.
---
Then there was his first realization of boundaries.
Durin was so binary in those early days. Good things were amazing; bad things were horrible. Everything was forever. But he did seem to find equilibrium as he gathered experiences. It was strange to see a grown man treating every little thing like a new and fascinating phenomenon.
Stranger still was the fact that Durin volleyed so much between childish behavior and... well, grown man behavior.
Only a day after the tree incident, Scara woke up to Durin jerking himself off. The sound was unmistakable, and still Scara sat up in shock. From his own bed, he could see Durin on the couch. He was covered in a blanket, his eyes half-open.
"What are you doing?" Scara said.
Durin just looked up at him, knees raised, hand still moving under his blanket, and said, "Can you go back to sleep? I'm almost done."
Scara turned his head away, his whole face flushing red. "Oh my gods. Durin, stop. What the fuck?"
Durin did stop, but he seemed annoyed when he said, "Albedo told me I can do it if I'm alone in my room."
"You're not alone, and it's my room!"
"You were asleep."
"Ugh. You can only do it in the shower while you're here."
Durin still had his hand down his pants when he informed Scara, in a near-perfect mimic of Albedo's vocal affect, "You don't have to be embarrassed. Masturbating is perfectly normal. Almost everyone does it."
"In private. They do it in private."
"Gosh, okay. Jeez." He pulled his shorts up and waved his hands, exasperated. "Then I'll go finish in the shower."
"Wash your hands when you're done."
"Why?"
"Germs."
Durin paused and looked at him in actual shock. "There are germs in my penis?"
"Yes, and then you get cock and cum germs everywhere. Gods. Holy fuck. Why didn't Albedo teach you this?"
"You're being rude, Hat Guy."
"I'm being rude?"
Durin openly adjusted himself in his shorts and said, sighing, "Anyway, I'm going to go take a shower."
He was in there for about ten minutes. Long enough for Scara to get irritable at how cloudy his mind became, when he saw Durin touch and tuck his own hard sex. It was foolish, physical. Deeply unfamiliar. Scara did enjoy his fair share of romance novels (which were all well-hidden under his bed). But he couldn't recall experiencing this feeling toward anyone before. He thought he wasn't even capable of it.
And yet, that same cloudy feeling filled him when Durin emerged damp-haired, wearing only his shorts. He was already muscular, built like a college athlete. Lavender hair dusted his chest, darker on his armpits.
Scara was in the kitchen, warming up leftover upma for breakfast. He stared for only a half-second, his eyes and mouth widening. Then he wiped the look away and said, "What did Albedo teach you about sex and masturbation?"
"Uhh, it's normal to wake up hard, so I shouldn't be worried." Durin tapped off on his fingers, as if reciting a rote list in his mind. "Penis is the regular word, but in a romance context people prefer a word like cock, even though it's rude. Albedo doesn't like having sex, so he didn't have a lot to say about that. Except that I should make sure someone doesn't have any diseases first. And having sex is just in the friend circle. You have to ask, and the other person has to say yes. If they say nothing or I'm not sure, that means no. Oh, and if I get hard in public, I can just tuck it in my waistband, so it's not embarrassing and it doesn't make anyone uncomfortable."
Scara scoffed. "Wow, okay. Detailed."
"Yeah." Durin sighed and leaned against the kitchen counter. "There are a lot of rules."
"He didn't teach you not to jerk it in front of other people?"
"Well... he did. But I thought you were asleep, and I don't have my own room. I'm sorry."
"It's fine. Just take a shower, and I won't ask questions. Deal?"
"Deal." Durin paused. "When do you masturbate?"
"Gods, Durin. Red circle question."
"Then why are you asking me about it?"
"Because I know the social rules and you don't."
"But do you do it at all? Albedo doesn't."
Scara couldn't help it. He snort-laughed, and his grin had a little knife in it. Irminsul would burn before he said out loud, I only jerk off while I read gay romance novels.
Instead he said, "That is not something you should tell me. I am so confident Albedo doesn't want you repeating that to anyone else."
"Oh. Okay." Durin twisted his mouth. "It's weird, because it's not supposed to be something bad, but it's still so private."
"Well, it's how people are psychologically. People don't like to talk about private things, even if it's not something bad."
"Like your name."
Scara hesitated. Durin was looking at him so earnestly. He had no concept of the wound he was touching. Achy and deep, a poison down to the bone.
"Yeah," Scara murmured. "Like that."
Durin frowned. "Did I make you sad?
He inhaled and exhaled. His soul-deep impulse to hide was now coming into conflict with Durin's basic need to know that he was recognizing an emotion accurately. For a moment, he almost lied. He almost played off Durin's trust and eagerness to believe him.
Then Scara said, "Yes."
"Why?"
"It makes me think of things I don't like to think about."
"Aw, Hat Guy. I'm sorry."
Durin hugged him without hesitation. It was so sincere. Tight and squeezing, even his wings folding around the both of them. He pressed his cheek to Scara's shoulder, almost poking Scara's eye with his horns.
Scara's face flushed. He knew he was some shade between pink and red. He could only freeze up and say, "I'm not a huggy person."
"I am."
"I noticed."
"Are you saying you don't want me to hug you?" Durin lifted his head, searching Scara's face.
Gods. So close. Too close. The thrumming in Scara's chest was so fast, he could almost mistake it for a heartbeat.
"Not often," Scara said. "Or it will lose its charm."
Durin pulled away and smiled at him. Scara was uncertain if they had ever stood like this. He could see the faint whorls in Durin's eyes, like a fire frozen in time. The stubble flecking his jaw.
Then Durin said, with all the subtlety of a hammer, "I like looking at you."
The feeling in Scara was like a pond disturbed. A stone dropped, rippling outward.
"That's an inside thought, Durin. Red circle. Just for yourself."
"No. I wanted you to know."
Scara swallowed and stared at him. It was rare, that he found himself unable to speak. Yet Durin just turned away and consulted his suitcase for a clean shirt to wear. He found and pulled on a gym T-shirt with the Knights of Favonius emblem on its breast.
Durin chattered away cheerfully about what he wanted to do that day, like nothing had happened.
And Scara just stirred and stirred, trying to cleave himself from his emotions. It had once been so easy. He had sharpened himself into a blade, and no one could get close to him.
No one until now.
---
That was a first, too. Not for Durin, but for Scara.
He caught himself being ... sweet.
It was enough to make him inwardly berate himself. Pathetic and desperate. But no matter how many insults he turned upon himself, he just couldn't bring himself to hurt Durin's feelings, even for his own sake.
He let Durin nestle against his shoulder when they read books in the evening. He almost admitted to himself that he kind of liked it.
He made Durin worksheets from blank exam booklets, writing example sentences in ink with traceable versions in pencil underneath. I am Durin, I am a man, I have a brother, I am from Mondstat.
Scara had no heart, yet his vacant chest still ached when Durin asked, "Can you teach me to write my mom loves me?"
Out loud, Scara only said, "...sure."
Scara could not help but think of how he had been in a similar state before. Newly made, every baffling rule of the world rotely memorized. But he refused to allow Durin to feel as he had: unwanted, an error.
So even as it hurt him, Scara helped Durin write daily letters to his mother. Durin held his pen with great effort and made his letters huge. He still wrote in all capitals -- except for lowercase Es, which permeated everywhere.
Over the next two weeks, Durin had gotten to the point that he could flip through a stack of sight word cards for words he had practiced reading. He was getting better at guessing the shape of words, although he often lifted his head to ask Scara how to spell this or that.
That last letter. The last day in June, when Durin still needed Scara's help to slide his paper into his envelope without tearing it. Scara left the absolute slough of research papers swamping his desk, to sit beside Durin and hold the envelope open for him.
"Don't read my letter," Durin said, as he struggled to fold the paper evenly in half.
"I know. I won't. You told me before."
"Good. I'd be pissed."
Scara tilted his head away, his mouth tugging at the corner. Gods, he was so charmed by how Durin had decided pissed was the one rude word he could use. He had no idea how Durin made the calculus in his mind, except that it was an adorable self-imposed rule.
Still, in his periphery, he caught the final sentence, in Durin's blocky handwriting.
IT WAS A GREAT DAY BECAUSE I WAS WITH MY BEST FRIEND HAT GUY.
He was glad that Durin was too focused to notice his shy and instant smile.
And that was when Scara knew. He didn't have a direct name for it yet. The feeling hit him like panic, squeezing his throat, sucking the air from his empty chest.
He was fucked.
He was falling in love, and he was so fucked.