Sorry, I have a bodyguard

by RockCatTomato

Summary:

Tango is Jimmy’s bodyguard and lifelong best friend.

Jimmy and Scott are arranged to be married.

At first, Jimmy and Tango don’t know what to think of the inscrutable Rivendellian prince, but what will happen as the three’s lives become further and further entangled? Politics is one thing, but love is another entirely.

Notes:

Remember when I said I was planning a sequel? I wasn't lying.

You do not have to have read 'Sorry, I have a boyfriend' to read this. The large majority takes place about a decade beforehand and will have small references throughout it, but neither is required to understand the other. Although, of course, if you like one, you'll probably like the other!

Chapter 1: an engagement

On the outskirts of the central archipelago of the Ocean Empire, there is a small island containing nothing but a wooden dock and a bakery. 

 

Although, bakery might be a strong word for it really is.

 

After becoming queen, Lizzie commissioned the construction of an industrial one person kitchen on the small piece of land. It’s within quite a cute little cottage, with a sign above the door proclaiming, Cake!

 

When she has time, she comes here and she bakes and she bakes and she bakes. The citizens are welcome, and any who come can take a piece of cake (if there’s any left) made by the queen herself. 

 

This island is also where Jimmy and Lizzie go to be alone together. Sometimes they talk, sometimes Lizzie bakes and Jimmy watches, sometimes they sit on the dock and stare out at the endless expanse of ocean in complete silence. 

 

Jimmy can feel the hardness of the salt soaked planks against his legs. Water laps at his bare feet, and can see a formation of birds flying out in the clear sky. He breathes in the smell of the ocean and feels Lizzie’s presence beside him, and feels a little bit like he’s done it, like he’s made it where he’s supposed to be. 

 

Except, Lizzie is squeezing her hands together, and he doesn’t know why. 

 

It was a convenient anxious tick for her to develop as a child, as a crown princess destined for the throne. Jimmy remembers watching her from across the table, always told to sit straight, knees together, hands held tightly in her lap. He’d seen how her nails had dug into her skin, how her knuckles turned white and her forearms shook with the strength with which she held on. 

 

Now, Lizzie is a queen, and has no need for hands clasped carefully in her lap. But, old habits die hard, or so they say. 

 

Jimmy sighs, leaning to bump his shoulder against Lizzie’s. “What’s up?” 

 

She blinks, looking up at him, “What?”

 

“Your hands.” 

 

She looks down, loosening her grip. Jimmy can see where her long nails have left crescent moon indents on the back of her hands. “Oh.” 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“I don’t know,” Lizzie says. 

 

“Yes, you do.” 

 

She sighs, “I got a letter from Rivendell.” 

 

“I remember.” 

 

It would be hard not to. The high elves always made a production of their correspondence. A single royal letter delivered conspicuously by six snowy white owls. He read a book about birds once, it listed owls as one of the slowest birds. They seem to be an awfully inconvenient method of delivery. 

 

“It was about you.” 

 

This slams into Jimmy’s train of thought like a sledgehammer, bringing everything to a complete halt. 

 

“ What? ” he asks, because people don’t just send letters about Jimmy. Especially not to his sister. In the near decade of her rule, he can count on one hand the amount of times a royal correspondence has specifically concerned the Ocean Empire’s first-born prince, not just an invitation with his name tacked on the end. “Why would they be asking after me?”

 

Lizzie tilts her head up to look him in the eye, “We need allies right now.” 

 

“Yeah.” Jimmy knows this, of course he does. With tensions rising between them and the Grimlands, and more salmon entering the oceans, there is very little between them and all out war. Even with Gem ascending to Great Wizard in the Crystal Cliffs, and their alliance with the Grimlands’ sister nation stronger than ever, the threats continue rolling in. 

 

“Rivendell has offered us an alliance.”

 

“Isn’t that a good thing?” he asks, because Lizzie looks so uneasy he wonders if he should be more scared. 

“Their prince, you know him?” 

 

“Not really.” 

 

“Me neither,” Lizzie gives him half a smile, “but his mother wants him married before she dies and he becomes king.” 

 

Jimmy doesn’t say anything, he's gotten the horrible impression he knows where this is going. He begins unbuttoning his vest.

 

“In an exchange for the alliance,” Lizzie says, “they want you to marry him.” 

 

Jimmy removes his vest from his shoulders, laying it down on the wood of the dock, and slips into the water below him. It’s cool and comforting and he feels every muscle in his body relax as he goes under. His gills flare and his larger fins, usually pressed tight against his limbs in the harshness of dry air, open themselves up to the ocean’s current. 

 

He breaches the surface and lays his forearms on the boards in front of Lizzie’s crossed legs. The wood darkens as seawater spreads from his wet arms.

 

“I’m not making you do this,” she says. “I’m barely asking you to. There are other options, other alliances, and other ways forward. We’re not even-”

 

When Jimmy cuts her off, it’s not because he truly wants to. It’s because he knows his sister, he knows the creases at the corners of her eyes, her clasped hands and the marks her fingernails leave. He knows her late nights in her office, the years of her life spent writing treaty after treaty, deal after deal. He knows every drop of sweat that she’s put into nothing but keeping their empire out of war. It’s because he knows that the letter was delivered two weeks ago, knows how long she must have spent thinking about this, knows that he can’t bear to watch her kill herself over something that he can change now. 

 

“Lizzie,” he says, “stop. Please.” 

 

She stops talking, mouth clamping shut. He can see tears at the corners of her eyes, something he is very near the only person privy to. 

 

“I don’t-” he stops himself. “I’m not saying no, not at all. Ok?” 

 

She nods, “You can though.”

 

“I know,” Jimmy says. “Trust me, I know.”

 

He takes a deep inhale, smells the sea, feels the warm sun on his back and the cool water against his legs. “Can you give me a day on it? Please?” 

 

“Of course.” 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

That evening, Tango only has time to hang his sword up on the rack by the door after entering the room before Jimmy is on him. He grips his forearms right over the bulky armour and resists the urge to press his face into the warmth of his neck, right above where his chest plate ends. 

 

Tango jolts, turning into him. “Jim?” he asks, disorientated. 

 

“I’m getting married,” Jimmy says, all in a rush. It’s only been a few hours since he left Lizzie on the island, but it feels like hours spent with his mouth sewn shut, protecting a secret that was never really a secret in the first place. 

 

“What?” Tango’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm. Jimmy feels a familiar sensation on his calve as Tango’s soft tail reaches to wrap around his leg. 

 

“I’m getting married,” Jimmy breathes it out, half a sigh of relief at finally being able to tell someone. He slumps down into Tango, letting his best friend hold him up. “I’m getting bloody married.” 

 

“Ok,” Tango says, his voice has gone tight and controlled like it does when he’s stressed. “Ok, let’s get you sat down.” He guides Jimmy to the bed and sits him down on the edge. He shucks off his chest plate, takes a moment to unbuckle the thick guards on his arms, and sits down next to him. “Ok, tell me what’s happening.” 

 

“Rivendell offered us an alliance against the salmon.” 

 

“The high elves? In the mountains?” 

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy nods. He feels out of breath. “Yeah, them. They just- they want me to marry their prince.” 

 

“And you have to do this?” Jimmy can still feel the weight of his tail around his leg. It’s grounding. 

 

“No, well. Liz says I don’t have to, right?” Tango nods. “She says there are other options, other things we can do. But she got that expression, you know the one I’m talking about, and she kept clasping her hands, and-”

 

“Jimmy,” Tango leans towards him, bumping their shoulders together. “Slow down. Why can’t you say no?” 

 

“Because she works so hard. She does so, so much and I can’t just sit here and not do the one thing I can to help.” 

 

“Ok, ok,” Tango says. “I-” 

 

Jimmy feels his shoulder against his own as he inhales and exhales, regulating his breathing. The guard training had breathing lessons, Jimmy knows. Tango can’t breathe underwater, so he needed to learn to hold his breath. Train on how to get more air into his lungs. He’d taught some of it to Jimmy. He’d insisted that he didn’t need to be able to hold his breath. But, in the end, Tango was right, breathing helps sometimes. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think this was going to happen to you,” Tango says. “I mean, I probably should have thought of it. It’s normal, right?” 

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy nods. “My parents didn’t meet until their wedding day. Lizzie and Joel are the exception, not the rule.” 

 

“Yeah,” Tango says. “I just, I just never considered it.” 

 

“You didn’t need to,” Jimmy says. “That shouldn’t be something you had to consider. It’s my issue.” 

 

Tango snorts, “You know very well this isn’t just a you issue. I’m in it too, whatever choice you make.” 

 

Which is, of course, the way it has always been. Jimmy and Tango, entirely interwoven. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says.

 

“No, you’re not,” Tango replies, poking him in the side. “That’s stupid. You’ve just been told you might have to get married to some creep you don’t even know, this isn’t a time for you to apologise.” 

 

“I’m… sorry?” 

 

Tango laughs shortly and leans down to begin unbuckling the armour still strapped to his legs. “Stop it.” 

 

Jimmy lays back on the bed, arms spread wide and staring up at the ceiling. “You stop it,” he says half-heartedly. 

 

Jimmy hears the thunk of leather and scales against the wooden floor. Tango scoots up the bed, supporting himself with an elbow to lean over Jimmy. 

 

“I want you to reject the proposal, obviously.”

 

“Obviously,” Jimmy echoes. 

 

“Like, to be clear, I don't want you going to live with some guy in the mountains. But also, I get it. You know?”

 

“You get it?”

 

“You and Lizzie. I get what she’s going through, and what you’re thinking, and I get it if you accept.”

 

“Thank you Tango,” Jimmy says. “I, yeah. Thanks.” 

 

Tango flops down on the bed, broad shoulders clipping Jimmy in his fall. Tango takes a moment to settle, arms behind his head, but when he does Jimmy lets himself close his eyes and listen to his breathing.

 

Technically, Tango has his own room. It’s an offshoot of Jimmy’s built shortly after he became employed officially as his bodyguard. There was something about needing to be there in case of danger, extra protection. They didn’t really listen, they were just happy to be closer. 

 

Except that Tango’s room was small, and his bed was uncomfortable. And maybe they could have just asked for a new mattress, what with the whole being royalty thing, but who could be bothered? 

 

Tango slept on the couch for exactly three days before moving into Jimmy’s bed. This was an issue for neither of them. As children, they’d slept more often sprawled over one another than not, why was this any different? 

 

And now, Tango’s armour rack stands next to Jimmy’s bookshelf. Now, his amateur woodcarving is on the same shelf as Jimmy’s extensive collection of sea glass. Now, they have two wardrobes and two sets of drawers and two dressing robes hanging on the hook on the back of the door. 

 

Jimmy sometimes thinks that one day they might get sick of it, sick of living in each other’s pockets. It hasn’t happened yet.

 

Tango rolls over toward him and Jimmy opens his eyes. Tango’s hand reaches out to touch him, and Jimmy looks down to see him tracing the outline of one of the many scales against his shoulder. 

 

“It’ll be alright you know,” he says, not making eye contact. “Whichever you choose. And like, even if you do go, I’ll be there with you.” Tango looks up, so close with his pure red eyes. Entirely all-encompassing. “You need a bodyguard right?” 

 

It is this realisation, more than anything, that makes Jimmy tell Lizzie yes. 

 

On the one condition that he can take Tango with him. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Scott has spoken to his mother seven times in the past year.

 

This is not a bad thing, it is, perhaps, even a good thing. Things tend to go better for Scott when he doesn’t speak to his mother. 

 

The Queen of Rivendell is gorgeous and imposing and as Scott enters her throne room for their eighth annual conversation, he finds himself wishing that her eyes didn’t look quite so much like the icicles hanging from the ceiling of his balcony. The kind of icicle that would much prefer to puncture someone through the eye socket than be served in a drink.

 

He bows deeply as he stops in front of her throne, tall, gold, and three steps up on a marble dais. The floor he stares down at is the same white as the stairs, freshly cleaned and trying awfully hard to convince him that in the millennia it has existed, no one has ever stepped foot on it. 

 

“Rise,” his mother says. 

 

Scott looks up in time to see his mother’s lips close carefully after the word. They are painted to match her skin tone, and he doesn’t think he would even be able to see the flat line they’re fixed in if he were any further away. 

 

His back straightens and his shoulders square, his jaw sets and his gaze fixes firmly ahead. His posture is perfect, and he knows it. 

 

“You are to be married.” 

 

All at once, Scott stops breathing. He keeps his face perfectly still, but his throat closes up and any air flow is halted immediately. One, two, three. He breathes. Aeor, he could have done with a little warning. Except, of course, this is his mother, and she is not practiced in anything but perfect bluntness. When speaking to her son at least. 

 

“As you know, before you ascend to the throne you must secure a partner in order to maximize the potential of an heir before the end of your reign,” the queen pauses, and for a second, Scott feels hopeful. 

 

He thinks for a desperate moment of the possibility that this is simply a gentle nudge into him looking for himself; her encouraging him to find a partner soon. Maybe. 

 

“I have taken the liberty of securing you a match.” 

 

He reminds himself he had expected this, had known it was coming. He shouldn’t be disappointed. 

 

Although, he would argue that he can find someone to marry before his mother dies. Surely pairing him off right at this moment isn’t the only option. Except that this is his mother, and he doesn’t argue with his mother. 

 

No one argues with his mother. 

 

“Who?” he asks before his conditioning can set in. Do not speak unless asked a direct question. 

 

Her expression sours. “The prince of the Ocean Empire.” 

 

He remembers, years ago, attending the coronation of the ocean’s newest queen. It was a deeply informal event, and, despite the numerous royal attendees, he and his mother were the only ones in proper royal garb. He doesn’t remember picking out the prince in the crowd, but then again, he can’t say he even remembers the queen’s face. 

 

“Why them?” 

 

Her eyes narrow and he suspects he might be pushing his luck. “They need alliances, and they have grown in size and fortitude under their new queen. It will be a lucrative marriage for the both of us.” 

 

“Of course,” his mother wouldn’t accept anything less. 

 

She nods to him, and an advisor, previously standing a few meters behind the chair, steps forward. She turns to talk to them, and Scott understands that he is dismissed. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Pearlescent Moon is, if Scott is being entirely honest with himself, the only person he would die for.

 

He would, given the chance, gladly be run through by a sword or pierced by an arrow or blown up by dynamite just for the smallest chance of saving her life. And he would be glad of it too. 

 

This is all true. 

 

What is also true, is that right about now he would like to run that sword through her himself. 

 

“Pearl!” Scott says, sitting up from his spot on her floor, “You’re not taking this seriously.” He throws himself back to the ground, regretting it a little when his spine is bruised against the hard tile. 

 

Pearl, on the floor just past his feet, continues folding her pile of shirts. “I’m taking it plenty serious, bud. I’m just not sure what the end of the world is.” 

 

Scott groans, “The end of the world, bud,” he kicks her in the knee, “is that I have to get married now.” 

 

Pearl pinches him right back, just above his ankle. Scott yelps. “You knew this was going to happen.” 

 

“Not now.” 

 

Pearl looks at him, “Last year she was being all cryptic and you were fully convinced it was happening for like two months.” 

 

“I’m still not prepared.” 

 

Pearl shrugs, “At least it’s a boy.” 

 

Scott stares up at the ceiling. “At least it’s a boy,” he agrees. 

 

“And,” Pearl says brightly, “at least he’s not old as fuck.” 

 

“I think.” 

 

“You said his sister was like twenty when you went to the coronation, if he was old as fuck he would be first in line.” 

 

Scott rolls over onto his stomach, spinning to face Pearl as he does so. “I still don’t want to marry the guy.” 

 

“I know,” she says. 

He stays silent, staring across the room at Pearl’s wall. 

 

“Would folding some laundry help?” 

 

He groans, loudly. 

 

“It helps, I promise.” 

 

“Just cause it helps you, doesn’t mean it helps me.” 

 

Pearl leans over and pulls at his shoulder. “Sit up.” 

 

“No.” 

 

She pinches him again, he slaps her away. “Sit up, you’re helping me fold.” 

 

Scott sits up and finds himself with a pile of freshly washed shirts in his lap. They smell like the same lavender as the rest of the room.

 

Pearl started her laundromat four years ago. It belonged to an old woman who sold it to her for much below market value when she retired. When he had first entered it, almost a decade ago now, his first thought had been of how different it was from every other part of his life.

 

It had smelled like soap and fabric softener and felt like being on the inside of a paper bag. The walls felt light and insubstantial, warm wind drifting throughout the open rooms, and the sun creeping in unexpected places.

 

It still feels like that, and he still loves it. 

 

Since Pearl bought it, he spends as much time here as he does anywhere else. And he spends almost as much time as he’s here, helping. 

 

Which is to say, now, Scott knows how to fold a shirt. 

 

Three shirts in, he has to admit that there’s a bit of truth to Pearl’s words. It’s nice to have something to do with his hands, to push all his nervous energy into motion, to distract himself a little from his thoughts. 

 

“At least you’re not leaving,” Pearl says. 

 

Which is true. He thinks of the ocean prince, he doesn't even know what he looks like, but he’ll be the one forced to leave everything he’s ever known. Not Scott. Scott gets to stay here. 

 

He doesn’t tell Pearl that the only bad part of moving away would be having to leave her.

Notes:

Thank you for reading! And thank you to LuminousMe for beta reading.

Chapter 2: the blaze

Jimmy does not recognise the maid who brings in the bundle. 

 

This is important, he thinks, because he recognises most of the palace’s staff. The palace doesn’t employ many people, at least in comparison to other kingdoms and empires, and Jimmy is sure that he can list every one of their names, at least he was sure, until now. It will haunt him later, him not knowing her name, the way that he can’t quite recall her face, its terrified features blending into obscurity as time passes. 

 

He’ll remember her clothing, the casual uniform of their maids, the bottom of her skirt plastered to her shins with seawater as the rest of the fabric rustles with her hurried movement. He’ll remember the way her footsteps echo loudly through the quiet room, and the way his father winces at the noise, before schooling his expression and turning to greet her. But, he won’t remember her face. 

 

“Evening, miss… ah…” 

 

She brushes past him, something rarely done to their empire’s king, to lay her bundle out on the table. It glows, bright. 

 

Jimmy has never seen a firefly before, but he’s heard about them. They come out in lake spring, buzzing through the Ocean Empire’s distant swamps. He asked his father if he could go see them a few weeks ago. He was told he could eventually, when he is older, he thinks that nine is plenty old enough. 

 

So, no, Jimmy has never seen a firefly before, but he imagines that they would glow like this.

 

He is out of his seat and at the head of the table in an instant, looking over his father’s shoulder with burning curiosity. 

 

The maid shifts some of the fabric, unwrapping the bundle slightly. Jimmy peers down at… a kid. Just like him. It’s a small, strange kid, eyes closed and thin body curled into a ball. 

 

He’s starved and pale, skin almost white. Jimmy can clearly see his wrist bones jutting awkwardly through his skin. His hair is the only vibrancy to him, soaked, and yet still a striking yellow more blond than Jimmy’s own dusty locks. 

 

The most shocking thing is the glow. The boy, no longer smothered in fabric, glows brighter, resembling an ember, done with its bright burning and losing its flame. He emits a soft light, bathing the table around him and the face of Jimmy’s father in warmth. 

 

He is the strangest and most beautiful thing that Jimmy has ever seen. 

 

The maid is saying something but Jimmy doesn’t hear her, he turns to his father and speaks, cutting her off. 

 

“Can he stay?” 

 

The maid’s jaw snaps shut with an audible click, and Jimmy looks at her. She looks utterly horrified. 

 

His father glances between the two of them, but just as he opens his mouth to speak, the maid blurts out, “But- but it’s a blaze!” 

 

Jimmy crosses his arms. He knows what it is used for, it is used for chairs and tables and sometimes animals if someone is not very nice. It is not used for little boys like him. 

 

“Not it,” he says. 

 

“Thank you for bringing him to us,” his father says to the maid, “you can leave.”

 

“But-” she hesitates, eventually going quiet. After a moment, she leaves. 

 

Jimmy looks to his father imploringly. “Please, you can’t.” Can’t what? He doesn’t know. But whatever will happen to the boy if he doesn’t stay, it can’t happen. 

 

“He’s a blaze, son. Blazes don’t live in the ocean.” 

 

Jimmy looks at the boy, so small, and it seems that his light has dimmed just a little bit. 

 

“He has nowhere else to go.”

 

Lizzie speaks quite suddenly from behind them. She had snuck up on them effectively, whether intentionally or not. 

 

“He needs to stay.” 

 

Jimmy’s father looks to her, “Elizabeth?” 

 

Jimmy sees the way the corners of her eyes crinkle at her full name. It doesn’t change her tone from the calm insistence.

 

“What else would we do with him? You’re not going to let him die. The blaze haven’t been a threat to us for centuries. He deserves to live.” 

 

“I wasn’t going to kill him.” 

 

“Leaving him to the ocean is the same thing to a blaze, and you know that.”

 

There is a long silence during which Jimmy looks between his sister and his father. Lizzie has her hands clasped behind her back, squeezing her fingers together with a white knuckled grip. 

 

His father breaks eye contact with Lizzie and looks down at the boy on the table. 

 

He sighs deeply, his hand moving to cover his face, and Jimmy knows he’s won. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

The blaze stays in the castle’s medical wing for almost two months after his arrival. 

 

This is horrible for him of course, and Jimmy supposes that he must be quite sick or injured to stay for so long. But, most annoyingly of all, no one will let Jimmy in. 

 

He just wants to see him, he tells the guards outside of the medical wing. He just wants to say hello. 

 

They tell him it’s for his own safety, that the blaze is dangerous. He thinks of the small, shivering body on the table and can’t imagine anything less so. 

 

His chance comes a few weeks after the blaze’s arrival. Jimmy is standing outside, arguing with the guards as has become his habit, when a messenger comes sprinting down the hall. He has dark brown scales that blend into the colour of his uniform, and he sports a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. 

 

He’s bent over and panting by the time he reaches them, but he says through gasps, “Riot, in the- in the hall. Closest guards.” 

 

The two guards, slouched and comfortable from having been taking part in their usual daily activity of arguing with a nine year old, stand at attention. 

 

“A riot in the hall?” One of them asks, hand going to the scabbard by his side. 

 

The two exchange words before quickly starting for the hall, messenger in tow. 

 

“Stay put,” one of the guards shouts the order to Jimmy over her shoulder as she leaves. 

 

Unsurprisingly, Jimmy doesn’t listen. 

 

It really is a shame, he thinks as he squeezes through the door, that it was a riot to drag the guards away. On any normal day, he would have followed them, keen to investigate anything new or interesting. 

 

The medical wing has three sections, general, security, and royalty. The blaze won’t be in general, there’s that at least. He wants him to be in royalty, but knows that that is a level of wishful thinking that his short time frame can’t afford. Jimmy turns down the hall and into security. 

 

The security section is rarely used and in considerably worse condition than the rest of the medical wing. Jimmy can see it from the moment he walks through the door. A thin layer of grime coats the floor, and the paint peels where the walls and ceiling intersect. The wing was built before more recent advancements in waterproof material, and while the rest of the space has been restructured and repainted, the security section clearly has not. 

 

Jimmy turns through the first door in the hallway and enters a room that more closely resembles a cell than a medical chamber, with a single bed pressed snugly against the corner. At least it’s clean, he supposes. 

 

On the bed sits the blaze. He’s still small but looks fuller somehow. He looks real, no longer a half drowned figment of Jimmy’s imagination. He sits straight, with a thick but scratchy looking blanket pooled in his lap and around his shoulders. His hair still glows with that same golden vibrancy, but Jimmy can see that his eyes are open. His scleras are entirely red, with only a small black, cat-like pupil staring at him intensely. 

 

Jimmy hadn’t been scared of the blaze before, not even a little bit, despite his father’s warnings, but now he’s beginning to doubt that judgement. 

 

“Hi,” Jimmy says. He stands with his feet together just only a step into the room. He struggles to keep his hands by his sides, resisting the urge to fidget. 

 

The blaze stays silent, and it occurs to him that they might not even speak the same language. 

 

He takes another step forwards, holding out his hand in a way that he hopes appears friendly. “I- uhh, I’m Jimmy.” 

 

The blaze blinks, and he supposes that that’s a good start.

 

He steps closer still, and now stands only a meter from the blaze, hip level with the edge of the bed. The blaze leans back a little, shrinking from his approach. 

 

“I suppose that I just kind of wanted to check on you. You- I didn’t like how you looked when you first arrived. You look better now.” 

 

The blaze’s expression doesn’t change, 

 

“You washed up on our shores you know,” Jimmy continues, figuring that he’s already started digging this hole and he may as well commit to it. “A maid, she uhh, she brought you in. They wanted to leave you there I think.” 

 

The blaze’s expression shifts at this, going from blank weariness to a kind of sadness. Can he understand him after all? 

 

“I asked them not to.”

 

The blaze blinks slowly, his eyes close for half a second and as he opens them Jimmy sees his eyelashes flutter, long and dark blond. 

 

“Why?” The blaze asks. It’s one word, and he says it so quietly that Jimmy is shocked he even caught it. 

 

“Because you didn’t deserve to die.” 

 

“You don’t believe that.” He says it so matter of fact, in his small, quiet voice. 

 

“Why wouldn’t I believe that you should live?” 

 

“None of them do.” 

 

Jimmy has never met a blaze before, but the thing is, he doesn’t think anyone else has met one either. 

 

“They just don’t know you,” he says. 

 

“Neither do you.” 

 

“But I want to.” They don’t, stays unspoken between them. 

 

The two were silent for another long moment, staring at one another. The blaze’s eyes roam Jimmy’s body in a way he suspects mimics his own. It’s an uncomfortable form of scrutiny. 

 

“It’s cold in here,” the blaze says finally. “Can you get them to give me another blanket?” 

 

“Uh- yeah,” Jimmy nods. “Anything else?” 

 

“It’s really wet too.” 

 

Jimmy looks at the ground, rivulets of water run over the floor and into drainage cracks, everything is covered in a layer of moisture. It’s nothing unfamiliar. 

 

“I’m not sure I can do much about that, pretty much everywhere is wet here.” 

 

He watches as the blaze twists the edge of the blanket between his fingers. 

 

“Why?” The blaze asks. 

 

“I mean, it’s water.” 

 

“And?” 

 

“And?” 

 

“So what it’s water? Doesn’t mean you need it all over the place.” 

 

Jimmy shakes his head, “How much water should be in a room then?”

 

“None, ideally.” 

 

“ None?” Jimmy almost yells it, jumping to a level of exaggeration in the previously calm conversation; he doesn’t think he’s ever encountered a room without water in it. “How would that work?” 

 

The blaze sits up straighter, the blanket slipping from his shoulders a little, and Jimmy can see that someone must have put him in a thin cotton tunic, the material dark against his glowing pale skin. Something moves from under the blanket, a corner slips, and a long rope flicks out. Well, not a rope. It looks a bit like a rope. 

 

Merfolk have tails sometimes. They’re scaled and thick, dragging behind on land, moving elegantly in the sea. Some are smaller, acting as balance rather than propellers underwater, and some become a merfolk’s bottom half, preventing them from being on land entirely. None of them look like this. Thin and furry, only as wide as Jimmy’s wrist, it moves fluidly, wrapping around the blaze’s arm. At the end is a tuft of fur that looks quite a bit like fire, Jimmy wonders if it would be hot to the touch. 

  

“It would just be like this room,” the blaze says, pulling Jimmy from his thoughts, “except with no water.” 

 

He decides that if the blaze is talking to him, he can probably sit down, and climbs up into the bed to sit a metre away from the other boy, cross legged. 

 

“That’s weird.” 

 

“Is not.”

 

“Is too.” 

 

The blaze is smiling, Jimmy realises. His teeth are sharp and pointed, all of them, not just the lengthened canines Jimmy has. 

 

“Where even am I, if there’s apparently water everywhere?” He says it like it’s a ridiculous thought. 

 

“What do you mean?” 

 

The blaze shrugs, “I mean no one’s told me where I am yet. I didn’t even know I washed up until you told me.” 

 

This is a few too many things for Jimmy to think about. 

 

“Sorry, what? Why hasn’t anyone told you?” 

 

He shrugs again, pulling the blanket back over his shoulders. “I mean, you’re the first person I’ve talked to. The others just kind of gave me food.” He looks at Jimmy for another moment, “You’re a lot younger than them though.” 

 

“No way, really?” Jimmy asks, sarcasm in his tone. Of course, he's younger than them. 

 

The blaze nods, seeming completely genuine, “Yeah, you’re a lot smaller. And you talk to me.” 

 

“I guess so,” Jimmy says. “And, we’re in the Ocean Empire.” 

 

“Oh,” the blaze nods, “I guess that explains the water, and the salty air.” 

 

“I guess,” Jimmy says, he can’t say he’s noticed the salty air before, but he guesses he hasn’t known any different. “So, what about you?” 

 

“Hmm?” 

 

“Where are you from?” 

 

The blaze averts his gaze. “Oh.” 

 

“Where?” 

 

The blaze doesn’t look at him, keeping his mouth shut. Did he hear him?

 

“Do you- uh, are you ok?” 

 

“Yes,” the blaze says. “I just-“ he cuts himself off. 

 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Jimmy really, really wants to know where he’s from. He thinks he wants to be friends with him a little bit more though. It certainly wouldn’t be worth asking the questions if it makes the blaze stop talking to him. 

 

“No, I-I. I don’t remember.” 

 

“What?” Jimmy asks. 

 

“I don’t remember.” 

 

“What do you mean you don’t remember?” 

 

“I- I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

 

Jimmy stops and leans back from where he had been sitting forward excitedly. Friends, he reminds himself. Sometimes people don’t like him when he asks too many questions, especially when they want him to stop. Lizzie told him it was probably why the footman’s daughter didn’t want to be friends with him anymore. He makes himself close his mouth. 

 

“Yeah, ok, I guess that’s fair.” 

 

The blaze deflates a little too, opening his mouth to speak, “Look- I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” 

 

“Jimmy.” 

 

“Weird name.” 

 

“It is not.” 

 

“Is too.” 

 

“Is not.” 

 

The blaze bursts into laughter. It’s high pitched and a bit manic and Jimmy can’t stop watching his face, spread into a wide grin so similar to his own. 

 

“Ok then,” he says, unable to stop himself from grinning back, “what’s your name if mine is so weird?” 

 

“I don’t have one,” the blaze is still smiling as he says it, completely nonplussed by this earth shaking news. 

 

“You don’t have a name?” 

 

“Nope,” he pops the p on the word. 

 

Jimmy clasps his hands together, “Ok, first mission, find you a name.” 

 

“First mission?” 

 

“Yep, mission A, number one, numero uno, whatever you want to call it. We need to find you a name.” 

 

The blaze shrugs, “If you say so.”

 

“Promise?” Jimmy asks. 

 

“Ok.” 

 

“Shake on it,” he holds out his hand imperiously to the blaze. It doesn’t occur to him to be worried until the other boy hesitates. 

 

“I don’t bite,” Jimmy whispers. 

 

The blaze rolls his eyes before reaching out quickly, shaking his hand. His touch is soft and warm and Jimmy almost feels sad when he pulls away. 

 

“I promise,” says the blaze. Jimmy believes him. 

 

When Jimmy leaves the medical wing, still smiling from his conversation with the blaze boy, Lizzie is outside, leaning extremely casually against the wall. 

 

“Jimmy,” she says, nodding. 

 

“Lizzie,” he nods back, feeling a little like a secret agent. 

 

He ruins the effect when he runs over and hugs her. “Was the riot you?” 

 

She pokes him in the ribs, but her other arm wraps around his back, “You can’t tell dad.” 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Three days and six bonus chores on Jimmy’s weekly schedule later, and the blaze has been moved out of security and into the royal section of the medical wing. Lizzie even agrees to take over feeding the axolotls if Jimmy tells her everything he finds out about the blaze when he next sees him. 

 

Jimmy considers it a win. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

“Annie.”

 

“No.” 

 

“Augustine.” 

 

“No.”

 

“Ben.”

 

“Nope.” 

 

“Benedict.” 

 

“Double no.” 

 

“Ugh,” Jimmy throws the book down, flopping back onto the blaze’s new mattress. “We’re never going to find you a name.”

 

He hears a snort, and the blaze’s head appears above him, blond hair falling in long strands into his face. “Jimmy, we’ve been through like five names.” 

 

“Five too many.” 

 

“You were the one who wanted to get me a name!” 

 

“I didn’t know it would take this much effort.” 

 

“I guess we don’t have to… but I did promise.” 

 

Jimmy sits up, forcing the blaze to lean backwards out of his space. “And then what? I just call you ‘the blaze’ until we’re old and dying? That’d suck.” 

 

“So keep going,” he says, crossing his arms, “give me more names. You can’t just give up.”

 

Jimmy rolls his eyes, “Fine, but we’re not using the book, those names suck.”

 

“That’s ok.” 

 

“Gerry.” 

 

“No.”

 

“Sophie.” 

 

“No.” 

 

“Amber,” Jimmy begins listing on his fingers, “Percy, Jen, George, Oscar, Terra.” 

 

“I don’t mind Terra,” the blaze says, shrugging. 

 

“But is it your name?” 

 

“Does it matter?” 

 

“Yes,” Jimmy slaps his hands down on the bed, “it needs to be your name.” 

 

“Ok, keep going then.” 

 

“Tony?”

 

“Nah.” 

 

“Trenton, Tori, Turquoise, Terabithia.” 

 

The blaze raises his eyebrows at him. “Terabithia?” 

 

“Table,” Jimmy shoots back. “Target, Train, Tango, Tentacle.”

 

The blaze slaps him on the arm, “That’s it!”

 

“Tentacle?” Jimmy asks, dubious. 

 

“No, Tango!” 

 

The blaze jumps from sitting cross legged to half standing, a grin spreading across his face. “That’s my name, Tango.” 

 

Jimmy looks up at him, “Really? That’s it.”

 

“I’m sure,” Tango says. “It fits, doesn’t it?”

 

Jimmy smiles back at him, and he thinks about it for just a moment. “It fits perfectly.” 

  

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Three months after his arrival, Tango gets sick. Very very sick. 

 

Jimmy has been coming to his new room in the royal section of the medical wing for a few weeks, and at this point, he’s pretty sure the guards have decided to turn a blind eye every time he sneaks past them. Not that he’d gotten more than a scolding when he’d gone to his father about Tango’s living situation. 

 

But now, despite every one of his doctors talking highly of his health’s progress, he has gotten sick. 

 

Jimmy sits on a chair next to the bed, Tango a small mound under the blankets, only his eyes and his golden head of hair peeking out on the pillow. 

 

Probably just a bug, they had said, something caught easily with his weakened immune system. Except that now Tango is bedridden, barely able to speak, and remarkably boring. 

 

Jimmy reads to him, his tutors have told him that he’s quite good at reading, not even stumbling over many words. Tango can’t read yet, he doesn’t remember if anyone tried to teach him. Jimmy decided a few days ago that Tango should come to tutoring with him. Convincing his father and his tutors of this is still a work in progress. 

 

So Jimmy sits on the chair next to the bed with his own copy of whatever book has taken his or Tango’s fancy, and he reads. 

 

He is, to put it lightly, ok at reading. Worse than Lizzie, and certainly much worse than his tutors. But they’re so much older and he’s so much younger and he’s trying his best, ok? Either way, Tango doesn’t seem to mind.

 

“…she looks out the window, just in time to see the tip of a tail dis- disappearing into the waves.” Jimmy finishes the chapter, placing the book face down in his lap and picking up his cup of water. He takes a large sip and sighs. 

 

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” 

 

Tango glares at him from the bed. 

 

“It’s really just awful of you.” 

 

Tango raises his eyebrows. 

 

“You would really make your poor friend keep reading to you? Even when his tired voice has nearly killed him?” 

 

Jimmy sighs, mimicking the sound of his father whenever he stands up as closely as he can, “Fine, I guess I’ll keep reading.” 

 

He picks up the book and continues, “Chapter six. Marilyn leaps to her feet, running for the stairs down to the beach. It’s-” Jimmy is cut off as he feels something brush against his hand. 

 

He looks down and it’s Tango, warm fingers pressing into the space within his previously closed fist. Tango, holding his hand. 

 

Jimmy blinks at him, but when he doesn’t move, Tango smiles and squeezes his hand. “Thank you.” Jimmy can’t tell if it’s a whisper or if he’s imagining hearing Tango’s mouthed words. 

 

“Of course,” he replies, barely louder than a whisper himself.

 

After a moment, Jimmy looks back down and goes back to reading chapter six. He trusts me, he thinks all the while, he trusts me he trusts me he trusts me. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Tango’s fever breaks three days later and he’s up and about his small room only a week and a half after the sickness hit. Jimmy is there all the way, often having his tutors follow him into the medical wing for his lessons. 

 

It’s four months after his arrival and two weeks after his recovery that Tango tells Jimmy that his nurse mentioned him being released from the medical wing soon. It’s on that day that Jimmy goes to his father about where they will be moving him. 

 

He tells Jimmy that it is likely that Tango will be moved to one of the outer land-based regions of the ocean empire, likely to the Codlands and the distant swamps. 

 

This is, of course, unacceptable. 

 

It takes him a full week, help from Lizzie, and the promise that he’ll stop stealing his math tutor’s pens before their lessons (he has no idea how his father found out about this) but, in the end, the king agrees. 

 

His father won’t call him Tango, but the blaze can stay. 

 

Tango’s bedroom is down the hall from Jimmy and Lizzie’s rooms in the royal family’s wing of the palace. It is large and spacious and about as dry as anyone could get it. There is the occasional stream through the middle of the room, and the adjacent bathroom has a thin layer of water along the floor, but it’s fine, Tango assures him, really it is. 

 

Standing there on that first day, looking out at Tango’s new living space, a vast improvement from his previous hospital room, Tango reaches out for Jimmy’s hand. 

 

“Thank you,” he says. “I- I really appreciate it.” 

 

Jimmy smiles at him. He feels as though he is flying. High just on the idea of having Tango so close to him, just a room over, completely within reach. “You’re welcome.” 

 

That night Jimmy lays in bed staring up at the ceiling of his room. It’s made of dark prismarine, glow ink etchings stretching out in hypnotising patterns in the darkness. 

 

He thinks of Tango, his first night in that room all alone. 

 

Jimmy slips out of bed, grabs his stuffed dolphin, Norman, and, in his pyjamas, makes his way towards Tango’s room.

 

The door doesn’t creak when he opens it, but a thin beam of light streams into the room, highlighting Tango lying splayed on the bed, over the covers with his arms spread wide and head at the foot of the bed. 

 

He sits up, looking over at the origin of the light. “Jimmy?”

 

He eases the door shut behind him, leaving them in a dark room lit only by the luminescent ceiling. “Hi.” 

 

“What are you doing here?” 

 

“I thought you might want some company.” It was part of the reason. If Jimmy is honest with himself, mostly he just wanted to see him. “Besides, we can have sleepovers now.” 

 

He climbs onto the bed and slips his legs under the blankets, staying sitting up next to Tango and placing Norman in his lap. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he begins to see a clearer outline of the other boy’s features. 

 

He knows that merfolk have better night vision than humans, especially underwater, needing it to see where the sun can barely reach. He doesn’t know about blazes, he wonders if Tango can see in the dark. 

 

Tango exhales, and Jimmy watches as he reaches out and feels as his warm hand lands on his wrist. “Yeah, we can. That’s pretty cool.”

 

“Yeah.” 

 

There’s a moment of silence before Tango moves his hand from Jimmy’s wrist to his cheek. Jimmy jerks a little on instinct. 

 

“Hey!” Tango says, “you didn’t tell me your scales glowed.” 

 

Oh. 

 

Small patches of scales smatter Jimmy’s body, growing like clusters of oysters. Speckled in between the regular brown and green, there are a few that are bioluminescent, mainly so that merfolk are able to see each other while deep underwater. 

 

They’re nothing special. Everyone has them. 

 

He shrugs a little, “Not all of them.” 

 

Tango’s pupils are blown wide in the darkness, and he moves from tracing Jimmy’s cheek to his shoulder, and then his arm. Jimmy watches as his tail moves from where it had been laying dormant to flick curiously behind him. “That’s ridiculous, you glow.” 

 

“You can glow too.” 

 

“That isn’t the same,” Tango protests, “I have to try to do that.”  

 

“It is still infinitely cooler than a few scales.” 

 

“Hmm.”

 

“Come on,” Jimmy pokes him, “show me.” 

 

“What? No.”

 

He pokes him again, “Show me.” Another poke, “Show me, show me, show me.” 

 

Tango sighs dramatically, “Fine.” 

 

Jimmy can see that he’s smiling. 

 

“Where?” 

 

Jimmy shrugs, “Anywhere.” 

 

Tango holds out his hand in front of him, and Jimmy watches as it begins to glow with a golden orange light, illuminating the other boy’s face in harsh lines, and making shadows dance in the corners of the room. Warmth comes with the light too, warmth like a bonfire, like laying outside on a summer's day. 

 

Jimmy remembers the first time Tango had shown him. It had been only a few weeks after he’d met him, late in the evening and just before he’d been about to leave. 

 

“Can I show you something?” Tango had asked. 

 

“Of course.” 

 

Tango held out his hand in front of him, palm up, and for a moment Jimmy had thought he wanted him to give him something. But then he began to glow. It started at his fingertips and ran all the way up his arm, seeping into his neck and chest but stopping before reaching the rest of his torso. 

 

Jimmy had been shocked by this, he hadn’t seen the boy glow since that first night. Not even a little. Tango always held a level of warmth to him. When questioned, Jimmy’s tutor told him that blazes have a much higher core temperature than Merfolk, one of the many things that made them dangerous to the oceans. 

 

Jimmy wasn’t sure about that last part, but when he had asked, she wouldn’t explain what she meant. 

  

But in that moment, as it is doing now, a flame had risen from the other boy’s hand. A flame that danced as if part of a campfire, and clung to his skin as if it was the wood. 

 

“You have to see how much cooler that is,” Jimmy says. 

 

“I mean it’s different.” 

 

“It’s unique.” 

 

“Unique,” Tango’s voice doesn’t sound as happy about this as Jimmy’s does. 

 

“You’re like a night light, you never have to be scared of the dark.” 

 

“Are you scared of the dark?” Tango asks. 

 

“I used to be.” Jimmy shrugs, “It’s ok now, I grew up.”

 

“You’re not even ten yet.” 

 

“Well, neither are you.” 

 

“How do you know that?” Tango asks. 

 

“Cause you’re so small, no one that small can be ten.” 

 

“That’s just mean.” 

 

“It’s true,” Jimmy protests, “you’re tiny!” 

 

“Well you don’t have fire, do you?” 

 

“I thought you said my glowing scales were cool.” 

 

“I take it back.” 

 

Jimmy gapes at him, “I would push you off this bed if you weren’t holding fire.” 

 

Tango grins, “Aha! Leverage.” 

 

“That’s not fair!” 

 

“I don’t know, I think it’s pretty cool.” 

 

“Oh, shut up.” 

 

Tango’s smile changes from slightly maniacal to a more friendly expression, one that’s warmer. Ha. “I’m not sure it would hurt you anyway.” 

 

“What do you mean? It’s fire, of course it would.” 

 

The Ocean Empire isn’t exactly big on fire, what with the whole most of the empire being underwater. While merfolk are quite susceptible to the cold on land, their bodies adjust almost perfectly in the ocean to deal with the chill of the deep. It tends to be better to just have readily available water sources than to run the risk of setting often sodden wood alight. Nevertheless, Jimmy knows about fire. He’s seen it a few times and knows full well to stay away. 

 

“But I don’t want it to,” Tango says.

 

“It’s fire, Tango.” 

 

“Magical fire.” 

 

Jimmy stays silent. 

 

“We need to test it.” 

 

“What? That’s insane.” 

 

“For science,” Tango says, pleading, “come on.” 

 

“You want me to set my hand on fire and see if it burns? Tango, seriously?” 

 

“Trust me,” he looks at Jimmy, “please.” 

 

This is undoubtedly going to be the worst decision he’s ever made.

 

“Fine.” 

 

Tango gapes, “Really? I didn’t think it would be that easy. You really say yes?” 

 

“You’re making me want to take it back.” 

 

“No, wait.” Tango holds out his hand, flame still alight. “Come on, for science.” 

 

Jimmy sighs, “For science I guess.” He puts his hand in the fire. He puts his hand in the fire and- 

 

“It doesn’t burn.” 

 

“Yes!” Tango fist pumps the air with his free hand. “Yes, it works! I told you it would work, didn't I?” 

 

“You definitely did.” 

 

Tango puts his hands on the bed to push himself to his knees, and Jimmy watches as the flame in his hand disappears, leaving Tango’s forearm still glowing, illuminating the room. 

 

“See, it’s because of the desk,” he says, bouncing on the bed, taller than Jimmy now that he’s on his knees. “It was like, a month ago I think? And I was playing with the fire, trying to make shadows on the wall. Except I was thinking about burning right? About how dangerous it was, and how I could burn the whole bed if I wasn’t careful. But the fire’s magic right? And I can get it to listen to me kind of. So I wanted to see if it would burn the desk. It’s burnt things before but I wasn’t really thinking about it then, you know? But maybe if I thought about it really hard then it wouldn’t burn.” 

 

Jimmy smiles up at him, “And it didn’t?”

 

Tango bounces to his feet, standing upright on the bed. “And it didn’t! It didn’t burn!” 

 

Jimmy reaches for him and Tango helps him up. “You know you could have told me that before making me think you were trying to m-mutilate me.” 

 

Tango shrugs, “I didn’t think it would matter.” 

 

“That’s silly.” 

 

“Maybe.” 

 

“You’re silly.”

 

“Maybe”. 

 

“Do you wanna make a blanket fort?” 

 

“Of course.” 

 

Tango’s room, like Jimmy’s, contains a plush couch pushed against one wall. The two boys pull it to the middle of the room across from the end of the bed, spreading a blanket between the two and using books from the built-in shelves to weigh it down. 

 

Within, there are three more blankets, and all the couch cushions, and four of the sweets that Tango snuck into his pocket during lunch yesterday. 

 

That night they sleep in a pile of blankets, and when Jimmy wakes up early in the morning, he sees the cool glow of his scales, and the warm light of Tango’s skin. They look beautiful, colours moulding together in a gentle brightness. 

Notes:

Ideally, chapters will be posted every 2-3 weeks on Mondays my time.

Thank you to Kiwi for beta reading, and thank you to you for reading!

Chapter 3: the guard

Notes:

thank you to Lumi, a true gift of a beta reader, and I hope everyone enjoys this chapter!

People are rude in the Ocean Empire, Tango knows this much. 

 

To be fair, he doesn’t really know how people act outside of the Ocean Empire, but surely it’s not like this. 

 

He knows he looks different, sure. They’re fish for goodness sake. They have gills and scales and tails and fins. And he… doesn’t. 

 

Tango has a fear of water and hands that catch on fire sometimes. He has skin that’s hot to the touch and no memory of how he got to where he is. 

 

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? There’s no reason for them to be so mean about it. 

 

He’s been out of the medical wing for a while now, and staying with royalty of all things. He’s allowed most places, as long as there’s someone with him. But, everywhere he goes there’s this wariness in the people around him. 

 

First, their eyes will pass over him, maybe hovering for a second over Jimmy by his side, taking note of the ivory buttons on his vest. Then, they’ll dart back to Tango, taking a second glance. They’ll see the yellow hair and the red eyes and the distinct lack of scales, and they’ll flinch. They’ll cross the street, pull their children (often much older and bigger than Tango himself) behind them, some even glare. 

 

It’s the reason he’s started hiding his tail. It’s easier really, to tuck it under his waistband, instead of risking the way it makes him stand out just that tiny bit more. Not that he’s not already conspicuous enough. 

 

Jimmy doesn’t notice the people very often, usually he keeps chatting, doesn’t even break his stride. Tango doesn’t mention it. 

 

One time he noticed. It would have been pretty hard for him not to, honestly. There had been a man, a short man, but still much taller than Jimmy and Tango. He had purple scales on his arms and a dragging tail of the same colour behind him. 

 

His expression made Tango scared. 

 

“ You ,” he had sneered, stepping towards them, eyes locked on Tango. “You vile little…” 

 

Tango stumbled back, grabbing Jimmy’s arm subconsciously as he did. His tail had squirmed, wanting to be free, to hold onto something for comfort and balance. 

 

Jimmy looked up, clocking the fast-approaching man, and stepped in front of Tango. 

 

In that moment, Tango had felt nothing but thankful for the other boy taking the bullet. It had only been afterwards that it occurred to him to be a little scared for him. 

 

“Stop,” Jimmy had said with all his might, hands on his hips, “leave him alone.” 

 

The man scoffed. His arm had been outstretched, ready to strike, but he changed its course to jab a finger into Jimmy’s chest. Jimmy’s expression morphed into one of shock, and it occurred to Tango that this boy, this prince , had probably never experienced anything like this before. And, more than that, the man didn’t know who he was.

 

“What are you doing defending it, boy ? We don’t even know how it got here.” 

 

It hit him like a blunt force to his breastbone, knocking the air out of him. Because it was true. No one in the Ocean Empire had any idea, not even Tango. 

 

He has no memory, none at all. The first thing he remembers is being cold. Not a normal sort of cold, but a death chill all the way down to his bones. He hates the cold even more than he hates water.

 

He’s told that he’s nine, maybe ten. They say that he’s small, too small, but hears them whisper that they don’t know what too small really is for his kind. He’s told that he’s smart, too smart, although they don’t truly know what that means either. They were shocked when he could talk, and even more shocked a week of perfectly formatted speech later, when he couldn’t read. 

 

Tango isn’t sure what the big deal is with reading. He supposes it’s fine, he’s been sitting in on Jimmy’s tutoring for long enough to decide that it just seems boring. The merfolk are always wet anyway, and yet they insist on using paper that is both much too vulnerable to water, and much too flammable. 

 

He asked Jimmy why once. He shrugged and told him that they use different stuff underwater, he said they had to use paper on land because of trade . 

 

Tango still thinks it’s stupid. 

 

Jimmy likes reading, or at least Tango thinks he must. He reads a lot more than he would ever consider reasonable. At least it's stories, mostly.

 

Tango likes stories. 

 

He remembers being sick, that wave of fever months after he first woke up. He couldn’t talk, struggled to open his eyes, and could barely think from the headache. He thought Jimmy would leave him, go find someone else new and interesting to play with. He didn’t. Instead, Jimmy sat next to him for an entire week and read to him. 

 

Tango remembers looking up at him from his place on the bed and thinking that he must be the best person in the world, with his kindness and his smile and the way he stumbled over the words as he read. In that moment, Tango would have done anything for him. 

 

He remembers the first time he saw the prince. Or, well, the boy. He’s never quite looked how Tango would imagine a prince. 

 

He was wearing linen pants and a vest made of some kind of animal hide, he wore no shoes, which was unsurprising, none of the people here do. Like the others, the boy was covered in scales. They ranged in colour from a pale brown to mottled green, and covered his upper arms and lower legs, spreading like freckles and moles to leave their mark on his entire body. Gills pulsed on the side of his neck, and as Tango watched him, he saw delicate fins raise and lower against his upper arms. 

 

None of this, not the scales or their colour, not the clothing he wore or his anxious expression, was unusual. None of it made him stand out, made him seem any more than common. 

 

But something had stood out, something that kept Tango’s interest, kept him looking. Something that had made the boy different.

 

Maybe it was just that he was young, like him (it wasn’t that). Maybe it was the kind look in his eyes (probably not). But, when he opened his mouth, he’d been friendly, welcoming, interested . He’d talked to Tango like he mattered and like he cared. 

 

It was… really really nice. 

  

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

It is Jimmy’s tenth birthday. Tango knows this, he has a calendar on his wall and on it there is a day circled, decorated with little hearts. Best Boy’s Birthday , it says. Jimmy wrote it, and Tango treasures it. 

 

So, yes. It is Jimmy’s birthday, it is Jimmy’s birthday and Tango hasn’t seen him. 

 

There’s a party on in the hall, Jimmy told him it was happening. He sounded sad as he said it, and when Tango asked why, he admitted that he didn’t want to go. 

 

“Why? It’s your birthday.” 

 

Jimmy shrugged, “It’s not really about me though. I mean, they say it’s about me, and Liz acts like it’s about me, but it’s all foreign ambassadors and old people I have to meet.” 

 

“I’m sorry,” Tango said. “I can be there though, can’t I?” 

 

Jimmy’s head had raised at that, a small smile blooming on his face. He grabbed Tango’s hand. 

 

This was something he had been doing, it was nice Tango thought. It felt nice to hold Jimmy’s hand. All the same, it made him jump a little every time it happened. 

 

“Yes!” Jimmy said, “Yes yes. You can be there. That’ll be good.” 

 

And that had been the plan, Tango was going to be there. He was excited. He’d even made a present. 

 

But, this morning he woke to a knock on his door. He would have thought it was Jimmy, but Jimmy wasn’t a person who knocked. Instead, the door opened to reveal a man, dressed head to toe in brown and impossibly tall. 

 

“Sir,” the man said. 

 

Tango looked up at him, he had never been called sir before. 

 

“His Majesty has sent me to inform you that you shall not be attending the event this afternoon.” 

 

Tango blinked. “What? No. I’m going to the party.” 

 

“I am under orders to not let you attend the party, Sir.” 

 

“This is my best friend’s party!” Tango crossed his arms. “I can’t just not go.” 

 

“I am under orders to prevent you from attending the event, I would prefer not to lock your door.” 

 

And, well, the man really was very tall. 

 

The man closed the door behind him as he left, and Tango tried not to cry too loudly, holding his breath as he watched his tears turn to steam before they hit the ground. 

 

 

Now he lays on the floor, staring up at the ceiling in a position he often finds himself in. He glances at the clock on his wall, the party must be properly in session now. He wonders how Jimmy feels without him, he hopes Lizzie is there. 

 

Tango sighs and almost misses the sound of the doorknob turning. 

 

He sits up quickly, turning to glare at the door, arms crossed, prepared to show the tall man exactly how unhappy he is with this situation. 

 

Instead, there stands Jimmy, on his tip toes and closing the door behind him as quietly as possible. 

 

He is dressed in much fancier clothes than Tango has seen him in before, all vibrant blues and jewel toned greens. The clothing is uncharacteristically wrinkle free, and even weirder, he’s wearing shoes . Tango doesn’t think he likes it very much.  

 

Jimmy turns, a grin plastered on his face, as Tango leaps to his feet, running over to him. He hesitates in the moment before hugging the boy, but Jimmy closes the gap for him, wrapping his arms tight around Tango’s torso. 

 

“Jimmy,” Tango sighs into his shoulder, “happy birthday.” 

 

Jimmy laughs. “Hi,” he says, breathlessly.

 

Tango pulls away from him, taking a step back out of his space. His tail flicks, moving towards Jimmy, but he keeps it in check against his own leg. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the party?” 

 

“They’re all boring,” Jimmy smiles, “I’d rather hang out with you.” 

 

Tango is pretty sure he’s blushing, but he rolls his eyes anyway. “Won’t they notice that you’re gone?” 

 

“Lizzie said she’d cover for me.” 

 

“I love your sister, Jim,” Tango says quite honestly. 

 

“She’s pretty cool, usually.” 

 

Tango giggles and takes a moment to glance back over Jimmy’s clothing again. “What are you wearing?” 

 

Jimmy groans, looking down at himself. He sets to unbuttoning his vest. “Look, I know. I don’t get a choice in this stuff. They actually sent someone to my room to dress me.” 

 

Tango gasps, only half genuine, “ No. ” 

 

“Yes,” Jimmy nods sagely, he finishes unbuttoning the vest and throws it to the ground, leaving him in only his white linen shirt. 

 

It’s tight and thin, Tango finds his gaze drifting to his friend’s chest. 

 

When Jimmy moves, leaning down to unlace his shoes, Tango’s vision is disrupted, and his eyes snap back to his friend’s face. 

 

He makes sure to keep them there.

 

“And I just have to stand there while they poke and prod. It’s awful,” Jimmy continues, laying down on the floor, almost exactly mirroring Tango’s previous position. “Clothes suck. I’m anti-clothes.” 

 

Tango sits next to him, crossed legs level with Jimmy’s chest, he looms over his face. “In your ideal world, there would be no clothes?” 

 

“Nope,” Jimmy says, “none at all. We would all run around naked and be happy with it.” 

 

“What about the cold?” 

 

“We wouldn’t get cold.” 

 

“How?” 

 

Jimmy shrugs, “I don’t know. It’s my world, isn’t it? I say we don’t get cold.” 

 

“I guess.” 

 

Tango stands up, walking over to his bedside table. 

 

Jimmy sits up on the ground, “Where are you going? Come back.” 

 

“Give me a second,” Tango says, “I have something for you. Lay back down.”

 

Jimmy does lay back down, grumbling all the way. 

 

From the drawer, Tango takes a small piece of paper, folded over once, and puts it behind his back. He walks back to Jimmy. 

 

Jimmy looks up at him expectantly, “What is it?” 

 

“Close your eyes.” 

 

He does so obediently.

 

Tango reaches out and takes one of Jimmy’s hands, lying limp on his chest. He slips the paper into his grip. 

 

“Open your eyes.” 

 

Jimmy opens his eyes, sitting up as he does, to be opposite Tango. 

 

“Can I open it?” He asks. 

 

Tango nods, “That’s what it’s for.” 

 

Jimmy shoves his shoulder lightly, Tango sticks out his tongue. 

 

Jimmy unfolds the piece of paper, and as he looks down, breaks into a smile. 

 

“Tango!” He says, looking up. 

 

Tango smiles. “Happy birthday.” 

 

He gets no warning before Jimmy launches himself at him, pushing the smaller boy entirely to the ground and wrapping his arms around him. 

 

“Thank you,” Jimmy says.

 

Tango, crushed by the weight of a newly ten year old prince, hugs him back as tightly as he can, trying to give as good as he gets. “I’m glad you like it.” 

 

Jimmy hugs him tighter. 

 

On the floor next to them rests a drawing of two boys. One of them is taller, little blotches dot his arms and a book rests by his feet. The other is shorter, with bright hair and colouring to his eyes, he’s smiling widely. 

 

Their hands, between them, are clasped tightly together.

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

The first time Tango sees the palace guards, it’s out of the corner of his eye. He and Jimmy are in the gardens, Jimmy trying to coax him into the small inlet of a lake. Tango is making his case as to exactly why this is a horrible idea, when a flash of metal in the sunlight catches his eye, making him turn his head towards the sight.

 

Off to the side is a large patch of grass, upon which about two dozen merfolk spar, each with their own partner. 

 

That is, two dozen merfolk, but one. There’s a lady without scales, without a fishy tail, without gills or fins, or any of the defining characteristics of the merfolk. Instead, where her arms and legs peek out from her armour, they are covered in a thin layer of fur. Orange and black stripes decorate it, and, as Tango looks closer, he sees that where her hair is pulled back, she has no ears where he has come to expect them to be. 

 

He has the same ones as the merfolk, fleshy rounded things at the side of his head, though theirs have convenient covers that come down underwater and are often surrounded by small fins. The guard, instead has small, furry ones poking out at the top of her head. 

 

Somehow, despite everything, the last thing he notices is her tail. 

 

A tail like his. 

 

Tango has never seen anyone with a tail like his before. It extends behind her for balance, flicking as she shifts from foot to foot.

 

She’s a land hybrid. The first one he has ever seen. A tiger, if he isn’t mistaken. He and Jimmy had poured over a book on the Lost Empire just weeks before. He knows that many villages of hybrids live in their rainforests. He wonders how she got here. 

 

She is more decorated than the others, patches sewn to the sleeves of her tunic, and as Tango watches, her long tail creeps from behind her to wrap tightly around the ankle of her opponent. The guard looks down as he catches his balance and, using his moment of distraction, her blade twists against his, sending his weapon clattering to the ground. 

 

Tango looks down at his own tail and wonders if it can do the same. 

 

He flings questions at Jimmy like bullets, who was she? Who were they? Why was, after all his time here, there suddenly someone different? 

 

Jimmy tells him that they were the palace guards, not the regular soldiers, or those trained for easier positions within the walls, but the kind his father brings out at ceremonies, who accompany royalty and diplomats. He says that they’re soldiers trained on land, the ones who take part in competitions, who accompany royalty in diplomacy. 

 

They are the ones who do the things that need to be seen.

 

As for her? The land hybrid? He has no idea. 

 

Tango corners Lizzie on her way out of her room two days later. 

 

“There’s a hybrid woman in the palace guard, who is she?” 

 

Lizzie blinks at him, “A hello would have been nice.” 

 

“Hello,” he waits a moment, “do you know her?” 

 

Lizzie slouches against the doorframe, clearly resigning herself to this conversation. “Not personally. But, she’s the captain of the royal guard.” 

 

The captain of the guard. The captain . 

 

“What’s her name?” Tango asks.

 

“Lenore, or at least that’s what I’ve heard her called.” 

 

“Lenore,” he whispers under his breath. Lenore . “A-and she’s a hybrid? Living here? Why don’t I know about her?” 

 

“Why aren’t you asking Jim these questions? You two are usually attached at the hip.”

 

“He doesn’t know anything.” 

 

Lizzie smiles, “I’ll be sure to tell him you said that.” 

 

“You won’t.” 

 

“I will,” she sings. 

 

Tango goes to pinch her side, but she slaps his arm away. He settles for poking her in the chest. 

 

“Answer me.” 

 

“What did you ask?” 

 

“Why is there a hybrid here? Why is she the captain of the guard? And why don’t I know her?”

 

“Look, Tango,” Lizzie says, “this is kind of a long explanation, and while I would love to help, I really need to get to lunch. Can I talk to you-“ 

 

“Tomorrow?” Tango interrupts. 

 

Lizzie nods, “Fine, yes, tomorrow. After dinner.”

 

“Ok. After dinner.” 

 

He meets her after dinner in her room the next day and, though it’s another very wet room he has to deal with, finds out a great deal about Lenore and decides, in the end, that it’s worth it. 

 

Tango is told that forty years ago the Ocean and the Lost Empire had some quite significant border disputes. According to Lizzie, they weren’t at war, but they almost were. The Lost Empire was attempting to take over some stretches of swamp bordering on the ocean, which the Ocean Empire hadn’t been happy with.

 

There were dozens of battles along the coastline, but during one of the final ones in the area, one won by the Ocean Empire, a soldier was left behind by the Lost’s troops. She was young, inexperienced, and according to Lizzie, it had only been her first battle. Though, she admitted that the story was somewhat of a legend in the palace, and it was likely exaggerated. The soldier had had a significant cut to one of her legs, and couldn’t walk. 

 

It was policy at the time, when Lizzie’s great grandmother had ruled, to kill any and all opponents left behind on the battlefield. 

 

Tango gasps when he hears this, sitting up straight on Lizzie’s couch. 

 

“I’m sorry, what? ” 

 

She shrugs, “That’s what the textbooks say. I think we were allied with the Grimlands back then, before they chose the side of the salmon. It was their policy.” 

 

“That’s insane.” 

 

“Yep.” 

 

“And, so?” 

 

“So what?” Lizzie asks. 

 

“Well, she’s not dead, is she?”

 

“No, she’s not.” 

 

The royal guard doesn't usually go to battle, she tells him. They stay at the palace, or go to other empires for diplomacy if they have to. They don’t fight border discourse in remote swamps. 

 

The captain of the guard before Lenore hadn’t been anything like that. He had been merfolk, more scar than scale, and had served in the force before turning to a more ceremonial position. He had been at this battle, and he had spared Lenore’s life. 

 

“You sound like you know him.” 

 

“I didn’t, he died two years before I was born. I had a tutor who I’m pretty sure was in love with him though.” 

 

Tango stifles a laugh, “What?” 

 

“She was like, super old, taught me history for three years. I think she’s retired now, but somehow every conversation came back to Captain Hardock .”

 

“That was his name? Hardock?”

 

“I can’t forget it at this point.”

 

He’d taken her in, trained her in the ways of the Ocean Empire instead. She’d stayed on in the Palace guard, unable to join the military due to her lack of affinity for water. When Captain Hardock died, she had ascended from lieutenant to captain, the only non-merfolk to have ever been a part of the palace guard. 

 

Tango decides in this moment that he wants that to change. 

 

 

And now, Tango sits, Jimmy by his side, watching the guards train for the third day in a row. 

 

Jimmy sighs, “Please. Please . Why do you need to watch this so badly?” 

 

Tango frowns at him, “It’s interesting.” 

 

Jimmy frowns right back, “It’s boring. They’re just fighting.” 

 

Tango points at him, “Can you fight?” 

 

“I’m supposed to learn soon.” 

 

“Can you fight? ” 

 

“No.” 

 

“You see,” Tango says, “you don’t get a say.” 

 

“You can’t fight either.” 

 

“That’s besides the point.”

 

“Well,” Jimmy says, “I’m not going to watch this anymore.”

 

“Ok,” Tango says.

 

Jimmy stands, takes a step away, and looks back over his shoulder. “Bye,” he says. 

 

“Bye,” Tango replies, unmoving. 

 

Jimmy crosses his arms, “You’re not coming with me?” 

 

“You said you wanted to go.” 

 

“I do.”

 

“Then go.” 

 

Jimmy stands there, staring at him a moment longer, and then he leaves. 

 

Tango feels a stone sink to the bottom of his stomach. He and Jimmy have never really disagreed before, and Tango has never been alone outside of the palace and their living quarters before. 

 

He looks at the ground beneath his feet, rough gravel beneath thin grass. Was that the right choice? 

 

He doesn’t know. 

 

Tango stays there, gaze fixed on the ground, the argument having lost him his focus on the guards. Which is entirely against the point of the argument, he thinks moodily. 

 

It is only when two boots, brown and worn, land in front of him, that Tango looks up. 

 

It’s her. The hybrid, the captain of the guard, Lenore . 

 

“Hi,” he says. 

 

She grunts, “Hey kid, you watching us?” 

 

Tango fixes his gaze on the scalemail of the armoured plates over her shoulders. “Yes,” he says, and when she doesn’t answer immediately, “Is that ok?” 

 

“‘Course,” she says, “do you wanna be watching?” 

 

“What?” 

 

“Do you want to be watching? Would you rather be doing instead?”

 

And he does. Tango watches as, over her shoulder, one guard flips another, landing with their forearm on their chest. It’s hard to imagine, being that strong, that capable. He would never have to be scared of anything, not if he could do that. 

 

“Yes,” he says, “I want to be doing.” 

 

Lenore shrugs, “Then do.” She takes a step away from him, but keeps eye contact, “Come on.” 

 

Tango rushes to keep up with her long strides towards a rack of weapons. He notices a slight limp in her step and remembers the injury Lizzie told him about. The deep cut in her leg. Despite this, her tail swings lazy and effortless behind her. Tango wants to try out the movement with his own, but feels it twitch from where it’s tucked tightly down the leg of his pants.

 

When they reach the rack, Lenore hands him one of the smaller blunted swords, discarding her own by her side and taking one more similar to his. 

 

The sword is long, and heavy enough that he struggles to hold it, even in both hands. He thinks the hilt is made of bone, with leathered sealskin covering it. The blade, though tarnished, is made of metal, a rarity in the Ocean Empire.

 

Lenore steps away from the rack and turns to face him, “Ok, stand there.” 

 

Tango stands.

 

“Spread your legs.” 

 

He spreads his legs. 

 

“Not like that,” she says. “Shoulder width. Like me.” 

 

He looks at her stance, wide with her knees slightly bent. He copies it. 

 

“Ok, good enough, don’t let the sword dip. See the turret there?” She points behind her without even looking, Tango knows which one she’s referring to. “Yeah, point it at the tip of that.” 

 

Tango lifts the sword, it remains the approximate weight of a large boulder. 

 

“Which is your dominant hand?” 

 

“I- ah.”

 

“Which hand do you write with? It’s probably that one.” 

 

“Right.” 

 

“Ok, put your right hand above the left.” She watches as Tangi adjusts his grip, “Yeah, like that, make sure your thumb stays facing upwards, and keep some room between it and your left.” 

 

Tango shifts his left hand further down the hilt of the sword.

 

She shrugs, “That’s fine for your first time. Now, stab me.” 

 

He looks at her, “Sorry?” 

 

“Don’t apologise, kid, just stab me.” 

 

Tango honestly doubts his ability to be able to hold up the sword for long enough to reach her, let alone get it through a layer of scale or chainmail. 

 

“You’re not going to hurt me,” Lenore says, lifting her own sword in an indication that she has vastly overestimated Tango’s self confidence.

 

He takes two steps towards her, and when she doesn’t move, tries, hesitantly, for the gap at her side between her front and back chest plates.

 

Lenore sidesteps easily, “Come on, you can do better than that.” 

 

For the first time, there’s humour in her voice, a hint of a smile at her lips, and Tango feels the muscles in his neck relax a little. This time, he moves with more confidence, aiming for her thigh in a slashing motion. 

 

Lenore’s blade tilts up from why it had lain dormant, and Tango hears the sharp scrape of metal on metal as the flat of her blade clashes against the edge of his. Lenore’s free hand reaches around the hilts to press into a place on Tango’s hand. It spasms, releasing the sword, which clatters to the ground messily. 

 

Tango looks up at her, mouth slightly ajar. 

 

“That was better,” Lenore says, “more enthusiasm.” 

 

“How did you do that?” 

 

“Do what?” 

 

“You, like, you just grabbed my hand, and then I was dropping the sword.” 

 

“Oh,” Lenore reaches out, “May I?” 

 

Tango gives her his hand. 

 

“See, I just pinched here,” Lenore says. She places her index finger between his middle and index knuckle, pinching the hand with her thumb. He notices her nails, short and well kept. “If I apply more pressure…” she begins to press down slowly. “Can you feel that? It’s painful, even if you don’t notice it in the moment. It’s such a vulnerable part of the body, and your hand wants to do everything it can not to have its tendons sliced.” 

 

And Tango can feel it, the cavern of skin she’s hooked her fingers into, how the mounting pain would make his hand, in most cases, give anything to get away. Lenore let’s go.

 

“That’s really, really cool,” he says emphatically. 

 

“Yeah?” She asks, “I think so too.”

 

“And,” he says, “it’s so cool that you just know that. That you can just do it.” 

 

“I can give you lessons if you’d like.”

 

Tango looks up at her, “Lessons?” 

 

“I can teach you how to fight. We start guard training at fourteen, you’re not much younger, are you? You can learn.” 

 

You can learn. He can learn.

 

“I- really?”

 

“Really, kid. Don’t push it. You don’t have to do them, not everyone wants to train.” Lenore looks up at the turret behind her, the one she had told Tango to point his sword at, “Especially in the palace.”

 

“No,” Tango says immediately, “I mean yes. I mean, just. I want them, I want the lessons.”

 

“Really?” she asks, and he thinks she’s teasing, “Are you sure?”

 

“I’m sure,” he says, “I’m so, so sure.”

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

That evening, after an unusually silent dinner, Tango knocks softly on Jimmy’s door. There isn’t a reply, but after a few seconds, it opens to reveal the prince. He’s in his night clothes. Thin linen trousers and no shirt, revealing a new constellation of scales across his collarbones and chest. 

 

“Hi,” Jimmy says. 

 

“Can I come in?” 

 

Jimmy steps back, walking to take a seat on his bed, scooting backwards, and crossing his legs beneath him. Tango, after closing the door behind him and letting his tail free, joins him, laying his hands in his lap. 

 

“How were the guards?” Jimmy asks, and when Tango looks up, he looks genuine. 

 

“They were really nice.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Lenore, the captain of the guard, was really nice. She offered me lessons.” 

 

“Wow,” Jimmy says without much emotion. “Do you want them?” 

 

“More than anything.” 

 

Jimmy gives him a small smile, “You’ll learn to fight before me.” It’s an olive branch. 

 

“You’ll have to catch up.” 

 

“I’m already stronger than you.” 

 

“Not for long.” 

 

“Guess I’ll have to take advantage of it now.” 

 

Tango raises his eyebrows at him, “Will you?” 

 

“Yep,” Jimmy says. “I can only beat you at wrestling for so long.” 

 

“Go ahead and try .” 

 

Jimmy leaps at him, bowling Tango over and sending him soundly onto his back, they bounce on the mattress, and Tango grasps at his shoulders. He pushes back, but Jimmy is much bigger and heavier than he is, keeping his hands firmly at Tango’s wrists and his legs over his. 

 

He thinks of Lenore, thinks of her tail, and how she used it as she fought. He lets his, always kept carefully in check, make its way up to behind Jimmy’s neck, brushing lightly behind his ear. 

 

Jimmy yelps, “Tango!” He flinches to rub his ear against his shoulder, itching at it. “Goodness, is that your tail?” 

 

Tango smiles, and his tail darts forwards once more, and, without warning, sticks its fluffy tip soundly up Jimmy’s nose. 

 

“Aghhh!” Jimmy flinches again, this time throwing himself half backwards. Tango uses his momentum to surge forwards, throwing himself at the other boy and, this time, landing on top. 

 

Tango is grinning, “Who’s stronger now?” 

 

Jimmy rolls his eyes, “Still me.”

 

“What?” He exclaims. 

 

“It’s not my fault you’ve got a bloody feather duster attached to you. If you didn’t have a tail I would win. I’ve won every other time. And, if we were underwater I would win.” 

 

“Oh, well then,” Tango says, “if we’re speaking like that, if we were in the nether I bet I would win.” 

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, “you would.” 

 

He smiles, and Tango is already grinning, and there’s a moment of silence where he suddenly becomes very very aware that he is still on top of Jimmy. 

 

He lets go of his wrists and rolls off of him, staring up at the ceiling. There’s a lamp burning in the corner of the room, but he can still see the bioluminescence glowing above them. 

 

“I want to train to be a guard,” Tango blurts out, he doesn’t give himself a choice to doubt the words before he speaks them. 

 

Jimmy turns to him, “What?” 

 

“Lenore said I could do it if I wanted to, and I do, I want to train to be a palace guard.” 

 

“Why?” 

 

“Because I want to.” 

 

“ Why do you want to?”

 

“What else am I going to do?” Tango asks. 

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You’re the prince,” Tango says, “you don’t get it. You’ve already got a whole thing going on. You have to attend parties and talk to people when you grow up, even if Lizzie is the one to be queen. You have to marry someone or go to war.”

 

He can feel the heat rising, deep in his chest. He tries to push it down, breathing in and out, “I don’t have that.” 

 

I’m just your pet project , he doesn’t say. I’m just here until you or your father get tired of me. Until you find somewhere else to put me. 

 

“You think I want things I have to do? You think that’s a good thing?” Jimmy sounds disgusted. “You can do anything, you get to pick. I didn’t get a choice.”

 

Tango doesn’t know how to respond. He’s always been jealous of Jimmy’s guaranteed life, he doesn’t know how to view the lack of uncertainty as anything but a privilege. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Tango says. “I guess, yeah. That does suck.”

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy replies. His gaze is fixed somewhere over Tango’s shoulder. “Having nothing else to do doesn't seem like a good reason to become a guard.”

 

“I-” Tango starts speaking, but stops himself. “It’s not just that. It felt good, felt so so good. It was like, if I could do that I could do anything. I would always be confident, I would never have to hide or be scared. I want to do it, trust me, I want to.”

 

Jimmy looks at him. “It’ll take a lot of training.” 

 

“I’m ok with that.” 

 

“And you’re sure?” Jimmy asks. 

 

“I’m sure.”

 

“Ok,” he says, “ok.” 

 

There’s a long moment, and then Jimmy rolls over towards Tango, laying on his stomach and slinging an arm over Tango’s chest. It’s half a hug. 

 

“I love you,” Jimmy says.

 

“I love you too.” 

 

Jimmy loves him, and he loves him back, and everything will be okay. But, Tango is going back to Lenore tomorrow, and as he looks up at the ceiling, he can still see the bioluminescence glowing above him. It’s the same shade as Jimmy’s scales, and looks nothing at all like him. 

Notes:

keep an eye out for Scott, coming next!

Chapter 4: first friend

Notes:

Enjoy :)

Scott had an uneventful childhood. It was boring, or at the very least cold, in every sense of the word. 

 

When he was born, his father was already dead. He did not know this until at age four, he asked. He was never mentioned again. 

 

He was the first and only heir to the throne of Rivendell, and was shadowed meticulously by guards until he was old enough to run away from them. He didn’t go outside until he was eight, and even then, he didn’t leave the palace grounds. He doesn’t remember this bothering him. He had never known any different. 

 

For six hours a day, he attended classes. These started as far back as he could remember and were about everything. He learned history and literature. He learned science and politics. He learned how to properly hold a knife and fork, and how to not break his wrist skewering someone with a spear. 

 

He rarely spoke to his mother. This bothered him for a long time. 

 

And so, Scott, a prince surrounded by an array of guards and servants. The only student in a class taught by the highest educators. A young boy with no friends to speak of, became a deeply lonely child. It was a while before he figured this out, and no one thought to tell him. 

 

Scott found out he could freeze things when he was seven. He was dragged to his mother in the middle of a meeting. She stared at him for a long time. 

 

After that day his caretaker was fired, and his mother hired a new tutor for his abilities. It was never spoken about again, at least outside of the confines of his classes.

 

The palace was no good place for children, it was barely a good place for adults, and so it stood to reason that Scott was twelve by the first time he met someone his own age. 

 

He had seen them before, from his time in the gardens. There was a town right outside the walls, and he’d see them running through the streets. They yelled, threw colourful balls to one another. None of them wore clothes like him. He became increasingly jealous of their loose pants and warm looking coats. 

 

Of course, Scott didn’t feel the cold. Even the snow against his bare skin didn’t bother him. But, he could feel the warmth. And he thought they looked particularly comfortable, not at all like his starched suits. 

 

The first time he saw a child inside the palace walls was in the kitchens. He wasn’t technically allowed there, but there were no guards, and he was yet to be stopped when slipping into the palace’s lowest levels. 

 

The people there were interesting, different. They wore clothes that were brown and green, pink and orange. Not just the whites and blues of the nobles above. They talked, loudly. They shouted sometimes even. Occasionally he saw them eat with their hands, and when he was offered a piece of bread, he wasn’t given a plate with it. It felt like a tiny slice of rebellion to be able to eat it from his own fist. 

 

They smiled, with wide mouths and crooked teeth. Some of their hair was shorn short, some of it multicoloured, and they touched each other without care. He didn’t talk to them much, but he liked to watch. 

 

Then, one day, there was a kid. 

 

She was maybe a year or two older than him with long legs and dark hair. It was cut just above her shoulders, which would have made him stare outside of the kitchens, but here, somehow, it was fine, it fit. 

 

He almost thought she was a human at first, which was stupid. He’d never seen a human, not an alive one at least. There was a stuffed one in the library. Preserved centuries ago before people started getting mad about things like that. It was strange, short, hairy. He’d also seen them in books, lots of books. They had rounded ears and grew hair on their faces, but only sometimes. 

 

The girl was loud like he heard they were, walked with flying limbs, and had little care for her safety. He saw her stumble a few times. Then, he saw her pointed ears. 

 

Half elves were not common in Rivendell. He’d seen a few, and only in the kitchens. They were shorter, wider jaws and stilted ears. But, they were there, and they were mostly okay to talk to as far as he could tell. So it was good that the girl wasn’t a human. 

 

The first time he saw her, she stared right back at him, mouth hanging open in an expression that Scott would never dare make. She had turned to an older woman, a high elf he assumed was her mother, and whispered something to her. Her mother had replied, and that seemed to be the end of it. She barely paid him any attention. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing. 

 

He listened to conversations about her from then on, and even asked questions occasionally. Her name was Pearl. She’d moved recently from the Crystal Cliffs. Her father was a full human, something far more common below the mountaintops.

 

He found himself wishing he had a book on her, one with an index and full length sketches. He wanted to flip to the page titled favourite foods and find out if she liked orange or lemon tarts better. He wished he could read the footnotes on her character design and find out exactly what leather her boots were made of. She was the only child he’d ever been even a little close to, and he found himself becoming obsessed with her. Pearl.

 

Pearl was only in the kitchens sometimes, but every Thursday she came in to make the cranberry buns. He made sure to be there to watch. She barely looked at him, but he saw the way she kneaded in the berries and thought of her when he ate the buns for afternoon tea. 

 

Once when he was in the gardens he heard the shouting of children and headed for the fence as he usually did, to watch their games. That time, Pearl was there. For some reason it had never occurred to him that she could leave the palace grounds, that she wasn’t trapped there like him. 

 

She was the only half elf of the group, a position that, from his observations, predisposed one to having less of a say in which game they played. But as he watched, she stood tall, commanding some kind of authority in the group. She instructed them on which game they would be playing, sorted them into groups. 

 

Scott was violently, desperately jealous of her. How easily she could talk to them, how confident she seemed. He would have given anything in that moment, anything, to be in Pearl’s position. 

 

She turned around and as she looked up, she made eye contact with him through the fence. He held her gaze for one second, two, and then he ran. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Scott is not allowed to practice magic in the gardens. 

 

Really, he isn’t allowed to practice magic outside of his tutoring sessions. And, truthfully, he’s barely allowed in the public areas of the gardens. But, no one’s caught him yet, and technically the magic isn’t a secret. Or at least not a very big one. 

 

The frost forms in slow spikes over the leaf, covering the dark green in an icy coat and turning it muted. Scott focuses on his precision, how carefully he can mould his power, the cold inches along slower and slower. 

 

“You’re the prince, aren’t you?” 

 

Scott startles, his entire body finching backwards. He watches in dismay as the entire bush freezes over in his fright. All that for nothing. 

 

He feels something pressing against him and realises that he’s jerked back into the leg of his attacker. Looking up, he sees a girl leaning over him, her head blocking out the sky above and messy strands of hair falling into her face. 

 

“Pearl,” he says.

 

She raises her eyebrows at him, “You know my name.”

 

It was probably a bad idea to say her name. Scott freezes, paralyzed by indecision on how to reply. 

 

Luckily, Pearl doesn’t seem to dwell on it long. Instead, she steps to the side and sits down on the grass beside him, her leg, covered in thick woolen trousers, touching his bare knee.  

 

“They said that you were the prince.” 

 

Scott looks at her. 

 

“Well,” she says, “are you?” 

 

He takes a moment, straightens his back, and places his hands in his lap as he has been taught. “Yes I am,” he says, “my name is Scott Smajor, crown prince of Rivendell.” He has a longer title, he’s not sure Pearl would appreciate it. 

 

She holds out her hand to him, straight arm, “And I’m Pearlescent Moon, but you know that.” She smiles at him. “Probably of the Crystal Cliffs, but maybe of Rivendell.” 

 

“You don’t know?”

 

She shrugs, “I’ll decide soon, I’ve only been here a bit.” 

 

It seems strange, the idea of deciding where you are from. He is impressed by how calm Pearl seems about it, if it were him he’s sure it would be a very stressful situation. 

 

“Are you going to shake my hand?” 

 

Scott realises that her arm is still outstretched, inviting. Aeor, his tutors would be embarrassed for him.

 

He shakes her hand, she’s warm and has a strong grip. “Hi.” 

 

“Hi,” she says, “you don’t have to call me Pearlescent by the way. Pearl is fine.” 

 

“I’m Scott.” 

 

“Hi Scott.” 

 

He drops her hand, he’s been holding it for a bit too long. It’s ok, he tells himself, it’s ok. 

 

“So,” she says, tucking her knees up to her chest. He mourns the loss of contact, just a little. “What were you doing when I came up?”

 

“Nothing,” he says. 

 

“I saw you fridge that bush, dude, I was asking to be nice.” 

 

“You could have said that.” 

 

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Pearl shrugged, “you can leave me to make my own assumptions.” 

 

“You don’t mean that,” Scott says. He wants to cross his arms, but his tutor says it’s a sign of weakness, so he keeps them in his lap. 

 

“I mean it’s not like I can make you do anything, it’s basically the truth.” 

 

Scott stares at her. 

 

“I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Pearl says, tucking a thick piece of hair behind her ear. “Even if you don’t tell me what you were doing.” 

 

“Why not?” Scott asks quickly. 

 

“Because it’s mean, and I want you to like me.” 

 

I want you to like me.

 

Scott wants this new, unimaginably cool girl to like him more than he can remember wanting anything before. And she wants him to like her. 

 

And, well, his magic isn’t a secret… technically. 

 

“It was magic.”

 

Pearl leans forwards, hands on the ground in front of her, “Magic?” Her eyes are wide and excited. 

 

“I don’t think I’m supposed to call it magic,” Scott confesses, “they call it a unique ability.” 

 

Pearl scoffs, “That’s stupid. I’ve seen magic, and this is just like it.” 

 

She’s bragging, which Scott usually doesn’t like. But he doesn’t mind too much right now. “You’ve seen other magic?” 

 

She leans in conspiratorially, “I lived in the Crystal Cliffs before we had to move here. They called it the Capital of Magical Cultivation.” She flutters her hands, mocking some grand gesture. 

 

“What?” Scott asks skeptically. 

 

She shrugs, “They have a magical school. The ruler is a wizard. All that jazz.” 

 

“I knew that much, but the whole title sounds ridiculous.” 

 

“Not as ridiculous as unique ability.” 

 

Scott rolls his eyes, “Well, I don’t say unique ability.” 

 

“And I don’t say Capital of Magical Cultivation,” Pearl retorts. 

 

“Fine,” Scott says.

 

“Fine,” Pearl crosses her arms. 

 

“Will you tell me about the magic now?” 

 

He watches as she traces a smiley face in the small patch of snow near them. “Only if you show me more of your magic.”

 

“Okay, deal.”  

 

“You first,” Pearl pokes him. 

 

Scott pokes her back. He’s never poked someone before, and, irrationally, hopes that he’s doing it right. She slaps his hand away and smiles, and he gets the impression it was correct. 

 

“Well, I mean, what do you want to see?” 

 

“What kind of magic can you do? You were making the bush cold before.” Pearl reaches out to brush her finger over one of the frosty leaves, “So, you got a nature thing or an ice thing? Or,” she leans forwards excitedly, “is it a weather thing?” She keeps talking before he has time to answer, “I met a gnome who could control the weather. Once, the bakery raised the prices of its sourdough and it didn’t stop raining for a week.” 

 

Scott shakes his head, “Not weather, for me it’s ice. Like Rivendell.” 

 

“I mean it’s not really like Rivendell is it?” Pearl asks, “It’s cold here, but like you’ve got your whole deer thing too, right? A shapeshifter would have made sense. And elves have had nature magic for ages too.” 

 

Scott isn’t sure how offended he should be by her calling Aeor and Exor your whole deer thing. “Aeor is a stag, and the nature thing isn’t us. Those are the wood elves.” 

 

She’s already talking over him, continuing in a torrent of words. “And like, it feels kinda mean to just make your whole thing the cold because you live in the mountains. Wait,” she places her hand on his leg, “is that why you have shorts on? I thought it was weird. Is it a magic thing?”

 

“I mean, probably. I guess. It’s not super weird though, is it?” It occurs to Scott that this might be the reason he hasn’t made any friends.

 

Pearl’s hand on his leg burns. He’s not sure if he wants her to remove it or keep it there forever. 

 

“I mean, not like, mega weird. Just a bit.”

 

“But it’s fine?” 

 

“I mean I think it’s sort of cool. It’s so cold here, and you don’t have to worry about that.” 

 

“Oh, that’s uh- nice.” 

 

“Can I ask another question yet?” Pearl asks. 

 

“I thought the deal was for me showing you magic, not you quizzing me,” he replies.

 

She sits up straight, “We can get to the demonstration later, first, how did you get your magic?” 

 

“How?”

 

“Genetic, gifted,” Pearl starts listing on her fingers, “bargained for, stumbled upon, learned,” she leans forward grinning, “ stolen.”

 

“They’re from Aeor, he chose me.” This is what Scott has been told. He has no idea what being chosen by his benevolent god means, he assumes it’s a good thing. 

 

“Ooo, so gifted then. That’s cool.” 

 

“What is magic usually?” 

 

“I mean, gifting is pretty rare,” Pearl says. “Crystal Cliffs is pretty big on schools, so most people I know have learned it. But quite a lot of it is genetic too. People who made deals for it don’t usually spend much time in towns, people who got it by accident tend to get themselves killed before they can control it, and I’ve never met someone who’s stolen it.” 

 

“How does stealing magic work?” 

 

“I’m not sure,” Pearl says, “my mum might know. You can ask her.” 

 

That seems like one of the worst possible ways he could go about answering his question, and Scott can imagine the exact book in the library that might just have the answers he’s looking for anyway.

 

“No thank you,” he says politely.

 

“Ok, that’s cool.” She claps her hands together, “Demonstration time!” 

 

“What do you want me to do?” 

 

“Whatever you want,” Pearl says. 

 

“Now?” 

 

She flaps a hand at him, “No, tomorrow. Yes, now!” 

 

Scott, hesitantly, holds his hand out to the patch of snow next to them. He thinks about mountaintops and the snow on the branches of trees and the view of a white landscape from up high. Slowly, a spire rises from the earth. It’s part snow, part ice, part frozen dirt. It stretches up, maybe five centimeters in diameter, until it’s just above their seated heads. When it stops, Scott feels his muscles unclench, and he exhales. 

 

Pearl breaks into a round of applause, light claps interrupting the sound of creaking earth in the silent gardens. 

 

“That was very cool. It’s like, a whole terraforming thing. A bit of earth magic in there. Can you do it on a larger scale? It could be really useful.”

 

Scott fixes his gaze at a thread hanging off her jacket at the shoulder. “I’m not sure, I haven’t tried.” 

 

“Ok, well,” Pearl stands in one fluid motion, holding out her hand to Scott to help him up, “that, is what we are going to do tomorrow. At 4pm you are going to meet me here, and then you are going to take me somewhere more secluded because I’m sure you know this place better than I do, and we are going to see what you can do.”

 

Scott lets her haul him to his feet, “Why at four?” 

 

“Because that’s when mum lets me stop helping out in the kitchen.” She runs her hand through her hair, then moves to brush any dirt and snow off her clothing. “I have to go now though, does that sound good?” 

 

“I, yeah, ok,” Scott says. 

 

“Perfect,” Pearl says, clasping her hands together. “I’ll see you then!” 

 

She sets off at a brisk walk back towards the servant's entrance to the palace, leaving Scott wondering just how much choice he really had in this friendship.

 

Not that he’s complaining. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Scott was supposed to meet Pearl in the gardens at 4pm. He wrote it down as soon as he got back to his room and everything, diligent letters in a leather bound journal. He was so, so careful not to forget. 

 

And he didn’t. He hasn’t forgotten. He’s just… showing up a little early.

 

The kitchens are bustling as usual, finishing up on the lunchtime rush of nobility and workers in the palace. A woman in a headscarf almost runs into him as she speeds from a cutting board of raw chicken to a bowl filled with water and green beans. She doesn’t even look at him, her eyes focused straight ahead as she messily pats him on the shoulder, apologising in a loud but genuine voice. 

 

She doesn’t realize who he is, doesn’t take a moment to consider that he’s anything but a son or daughter of one of the people working in the kitchen. He could be anyone. She doesn’t care. Even as she moves to rinse the beans, he feels the branded skin where her hand touched his shoulder. 

 

Pearl sees him before he sees her. He’s standing against a wall, trying to look inconspicuous while he scans the room, when he hears a voice call out. 

 

“Scott!” He turns, and sees her, hair tied at the nape of her neck, striding towards him.

 

He only has time to take two steps forwards before she’s in his space, wrapping an arm around him, their hips pressed together. It’s so casual. Like the lady in the headscarf. This is a hug, he’s sure it is. 

 

Scott doesn’t remember being hugged before. Not ever. 

 

“Hi, Pearl,” he says. 

 

She pulls away from him, moving to place a hand on each shoulder, holding him at arm's length. She looks taller like this, standing up, right in front of him. 

 

“You came early!” She’s grinning, she sounds excited to see him. It’s a lot. 

 

“I did.” 

 

“This is perfect,” Pearl says, “you can help me with the carrots.” 

 

“The carrots?”

 

She grabs his hand, dragging him over to one of the benches. In front of them is a cutting board, and a sack of what must be at least a hundred carrots. 

 

“Yep, you can help me cut them. It’s pretty much just these and some cucumbers for the salads and then I’m free to go.”

 

Before Scott has a moment to do anything really, Pearl is pressing a knife into his hand and gesturing to the bag before him. “I don’t-”

 

“Pearl!” It’s a voice, cutting through the cacophony crisply. A tall elven woman steps between two counters, walking to stand in front of the two of them. She has the same thick hair and sharp nose as Pearl. “If you’re bringing friends in here I hope you’re giving them a job to do.” 

 

Pearl rolls her eyes, “Yes Mum, he’s about to start on the carrots. Right, Scott?” 

 

He hesitates, Pearl looks at him. “Right,” he says. 

 

“Lovely,” her mother says. She places a hand on his arm, making her the third person who’s touched him in the last forty-five seconds. “You’re welcome to see Pearlie whenever you’d like in here, as long as you help out.” She stands up straight, clapping her hands together swiftly, “Isn’t that right?” 

 

“Mmm,” Pearl mumbles. She turns back towards Scott, leaving her mother to get back to whatever she was doing before she came over. She looks down at the knife in Scott’s hand. “Have you cut anything before?”

 

“No,” he says hesitantly. 

 

“Have you held a knife before?”

 

“No.”

 

“Stupid princes,” Pearl says, Scott tries not to take it too personally. “I guess we’re teaching you how to cut carrots.”

 

She leans to grab a knife from the sink next to her and picks up a carrot, holding her knife over the end. “Ok, copy me.” 

 

He does.

 

“No,” Pearl says, “Not like that. Move your thumb up, no, wait stop. Yeah, there. And hold the rest of it with your fingertips, not your palm. And, cut.” 

 

He does, the knife goes through smoother than he thought it would, even if the piece is a little lopsided.

 

“Ok, great,” Pearl says. “Keep doing that, we’re trying to get pieces like a centimetre thick? They’re going to be diced anyway so they don’t have to be super even.” 

 

“Ok,” Scott says, he sliced another piece off the carrot. This one is a little thinner. “Is this ok?”

 

Pearl looks at it, “Yeah, it’s fine. I mean I think it’s good enough, mine aren’t perfect either.” 

 

“Oh,” Scott says, “I thought you were always perfect.” 

 

Pearl laughs, “Was that a joke? I didn’t know you joked.” 

 

Scott huffs, “I joke.”

 

“You’re quiet.” 

 

“It doesn’t mean I don’t joke, and you’re loud.” 

 

“Of course I’m loud,” she says, “why wouldn’t I be? When I’m this perfect.” 

 

And he had thought she was perfect, hadn't he? Watching her from the window. 

 

He begins slicing his carrot, one piece at a time. “I kind of did think you were, you’re so confident. You saw me watching.” 

 

Pearl nods, “Yeah, I thought it was pretty weird. But like, ice magic beats being a bit weird. And besides, you’re cool.” 

 

“I’m cool?” 

 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t be around you if you weren’t, would I?” 

 

“I guess,” he says. 

 

Pearl moves onto her third carrot, he’s still halfway through his first. “And also, being loud doesn’t mean I’m perfect. It just means I’m loud.” 

 

He doesn’t respond. 

 

“And, like, super cool. Obviously.” 

 

Scott smirks, “Obviously.” 

 

“Obviously.”

 

The carrots take them an hour. Pearl chats the whole way through, about small things mostly. She tells him about all the people in the kitchen, everything she’s heard about them. She explains to him some more of the utensils around him and tells him that the washing up for lunch finishes right when the prep work for afternoon tea starts. 

 

Slowly, as the afternoon grows longer, Scott speaks louder. He moves more, he makes more jokes. Pearl grabs his forearm as she moves around him and he doesn’t jump. He’s good. He’s better. He’s happy.

 

It’s just past three when they begin to pack up, scraping the ends of the carrots into the compost.

 

“Good thing you showed up early,” Pearl comments. “I would have been sitting out in the cold for ages.”

 

“I would have been there early anyway,” Scott says, “It’s not like I have much else going on.”

 

Peale looks at him, “What do you do?”

 

“Like, with my day?” 

 

“Yeah, you’re like a prince, right? What do princes do?” 

 

“I read a lot.” 

 

“And that’s it?” 

 

“I mean, I have lessons. They take up most of my day. But my afternoons are free, and none of the advisors or nobles want to talk to me, even if I was allowed to talk to them. You’re basically the only kid I’ve seen in the palace.” 

 

Pearl moves to place the knives and cutting boards on the sink, where a man washing up almost immediately begins running them under hot water. Steam rises from the sink in the cold air. Scott notices for the first time that Pearl has her coat on even inside.

 

She begins walking towards the back entrance, the one that leads to the garden, leaving Scott to weave his way between benches and limbs. “Can you leave?” She asks him over her shoulder. 

 

“No,” Scott says, “never.” 

 

“That’s super weird,” Pearl shuts the door behind them, and her breath comes out in puffs of steam. 

 

“I only shook the bodyguards last year, at least I’m mostly free now.” 

 

She places her hands on her hips, “That’s even weirder.” 

 

He shrugs, “I mean, I am the heir, right? If I die that’s kind of a big deal.” 

 

“Still sucks though.” 

 

“Still sucks.” 

 

“Did you figure out a place for us?” Pearl asks. 

 

“A place?” 

 

“Yeah, to see what your magic can do.” 

 

He’d almost forgotten what was supposed to be the point of all this. “Oh yeah, there’s this hilltop behind the palace that’ll work, I think. People don’t go there often, and it’s technically within the grounds. It’s a bit of a hike though.” 

 

Pearl shrugs, “I don’t mind, I like a good walk.” 

 

As they start on their trek, she turns to him again. “Wait, you said you’re the heir?” 

 

“Yeah? I thought you knew.”

 

“I mean, I probably did.” she says, “It’s like, if someone had asked me if you were I would have said yes, but I’ve never thought about it properly. Do you know what I’m talking about?” 

 

“I know what you’re talking about.” 

 

“But, like, doesn’t that mean you’re gonna be king one day?”

 

“Yep. I figure that’s what all the classes are for.” 

 

“Oh but that’s so cool,” she grabs his arm, “you’ll be king of the whole empire.” 

 

He laughs nervously, “I mean, that just makes it scarier, doesn't it? The whole empire.” 

 

“I think it makes it cooler.” Pear sighs, “You’ll be able to make whatever rules you like. You can like, give everyone chocolate and stuff.” 

 

“Would people like that?”

 

“Of course they would, everyone loves chocolate.” 

 

“Ok, I guess I’ll give everyone chocolate then.” 

 

“It’s gonna be so cool,” Pearl says, “trust me.” 

 

“Ok,” Scott says, “I trust you.”

 

And he does. 

 

They practice magic. They see just how much snow Scott can move at once (a lot) and how tired it makes him (also a lot) and how much dirt can be in the snow before he can’t control it anymore (not a lot). 

 

In the end, Pearl concludes that while he would be amazing at terraforming as a hobby, it probably isn’t realistic for him to be the one to do it for everybody. She also decides that snowmen would be infinitely easier to make if she had his magic. 

 

Scott makes her a snowman, and she gives it her scarf. He then gives her his scarf, and his coat, because he doesn’t get cold and she looks like she’s about to freeze to death. 

 

They make really bad snow angels in hard-packed snow, and Scott thinks about all the things he’s missed out on, not making friends. 

 

He asks Pearl if he can help her make the cranberry buns on Thursday

 

She says yes.

Chapter 5: how to float

The Mezalean Empire is colourful. 

 

Watching their procession enter through the palace gates, it’s the first thing Jimmy notices. 

 

They arrived on boats, docking at the island a few hundred metres from their walls. The boats were huge, towering things with multiple stories. And, from the boats, came three carriages. 

 

The carriages are a patchwork of every colour Jimmy can think of, not just the blues, greens, and pinks of the ocean empire, and they are covered in greenery. Gorgeous flowering azaleas and vibrant moss. 

 

He loves them. 

 

“They’re so bright,” Tango whispers next to him, face pressed to the window. 

 

He’s put on muscle since starting training with Lenore, gained a little weight. He’s been doing it for months now, and Jimmy only started training with a blade a few weeks ago. Tango has beat him in every sparring match they’ve had. Jimmy’s only a little mad about it, he sees how happy it makes him. 

 

Now, he finds his gaze fixed on Tango’s upper arms instead of out the window. 

 

“Do you think they dress like that too?” Jimmy asks. It seems like a strange thing to do, the colours are pretty, but to be so entirely surrounded by them? He’s not sure he could stand it. 

 

“We’re about to find out,” Tango says, gesturing down to the courtyard. 

 

Three people exit the front carriage, first a short but stout man, then, an extremely tall woman, and finally, a teenager, not all that much older than Jimmy himself. 

 

All three are dressed in cyans and magenta, and the men wear green sashes over their chests. 

 

Jimmy thinks they look absolutely ridiculous. 

 

Tango laughs, loud and abrupt, before slapping a hand over his mouth. “They look like flower bushes.” 

 

And they do. “I’m glad they didn’t make me attend,” Jimmy says, “I don’t think I could have kept it together.” 

 

Jimmy’s father and sister stand on a dais in front of the approaching royal family. As the two watch, Lizzie takes two delicate steps onto the flat path, and walks to stand in front of the Mezalean teenager, their prince. 

 

He bows deeply, opens his mouth to say something, cracks a smile. Lizzie bows back, and her expression doesn’t change, but, as Jimmy watches her turn back around out of view of the prince, he sees the corner of her mouth twitch. 

 

Jimmy grabs Tango’s shoulder. 

 

Tango turns to look at him, “What?” 

 

“She smiled,” Jimmy whispers. 

 

Tango raises his eyebrows, “And?” 

 

“She likes him.”

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

The day that Tango first starts a fire doesn’t exactly go great for him. 

 

This isn’t to say that he hasn’t set something alight before, he has. Many, many times. It’s just that usually, it’s small enough for nobody to notice. 

 

This time, somebody does notice. This time, it’s Jimmy’s curtains. 

 

The two of them had been leaning out the window, Jimmy pointing out dolphins leaping from the water in the distance. Tango had been excited and hadn’t noticed when his hand slipped to touch the other boy’s extremely flammable curtains. 

 

The fire didn’t cause any permanent damage in the end, the Ocean Empire is eternally damp after all. But it did lead to Tango, forty five minutes wiser and standing in front of the empire’s king, who had his arms crossed and his face fixed firmly in a frown. 

 

Tango got off pretty easy in the end, he thinks. Despite what Jimmy says, he’s nearly certain it’s thanks to him. He is sent down to the kitchens every night for a week to help wash the dishes, he doesn’t mind it. 

 

The worse bit, in his opinion, is the second part of his punishment. Tango has to take lessons. Not just normal lessons, lessons in his ‘magic’ as they call it. 

 

He doesn’t need lessons, he’s been doing pretty well so far, hasn’t he?

 

Well, apart from the curtains. 

 

 

The Wizard is… interesting. 

 

For one thing, she’s the strangest looking person he’s ever met. She wears a long purple cloak and carries a tall wooden staff, which he supposes would be pretty cool to have. She’s covered in jewellery, all sporting different coloured gemstones. The Ocean Empire isn’t huge on jewellery, but he’s seen it on many a visiting royal. Hers are nicer than most.

 

Apart from the way she dresses, she has the brightest hair that Tango has ever seen. Maybe apart from his own. It’s a vibrant red, standing out like flames against her cloak. 

 

The other thing he notices about her, is that she’s definitely not an adult. 

 

Tango crosses his arms, “You are not The Wizard.” 

 

The supposed Wizard crosses her arms right back, it looks a bit uncomfortable with the staff. “I am too.” 

 

“You’re barely older than me. The Wizard rules the Crystal Cliffs, that’s what they said.” 

 

“She does.” 

 

“So you admit it!” He points at her, “You’re not The Wizard.”

 

“I’m her apprentice, Gem, and I am perfectly capable of teaching magic.” 

 

“I already know magic, no one needs to teach it to me.” 

 

“They told me you set a pair of curtains on fire.” 

 

Tango stays silent. 

 

The room is empty apart from them, bare marble with no furniture or decoration. Gem was already here when he entered. 

 

“Look, how old are you? Eleven? Twelve?” 

 

“As if you’re any older.” 

 

“I am fourteen, thank you, and I have been learning magic for twelve years.” 

 

This, at least, is a little bit interesting, 

 

“Look, you’re a fire guy? Yes?” 

 

Tango nods. 

 

“Watch.” 

 

Gem almost casually reaches out with her staff, pointing the jagged top end at Tango. He watches as light excudes from the top, casting the room in an orange glow. Slowly but surely, a fireball forms. It’s a miniature sun, golden and glowing, undulating as it floats in the air. 

 

Gem’s gaze flips from the fireball forming to make eye contact with Tango. She smiles and the fireball goes soaring over his head. He feels its heat against his skin, and spins just in time to see it crash into the marble wall. 

 

It turns to smoke, not even leaving a mark. 

 

“I really don’t think they want you to teach me that,” Tango says, against his better judgement. 

 

Gem shrugs as he turns back to her, “Are you going to be the one to tell them?” 

 

And maybe she’s fourteen and pretentious, but she just threw a fireball across a room and offered to teach him how to do the same thing. So, Tango is pretty sure he likes her. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Tango retains that he hates water. It’s not just dislike, no, he hates it. 

 

This is quite an inconvenient opinion to hold. He lives in the Ocean Empire for goodness sake. He finds himself, day after day, year after year, entirely surrounded by water. In honestly quite unnecessary quantities. 

 

It is unfortunately due to this fact that he concedes to letting Jimmy teach him how to swim. 

 

Jimmy looks different in the water, and Tango supposed it makes sense. It’s where he’s supposed to be. Through the thin layer of water in the shallows, his scales are reflective, lighting up in iridescent waves and casting back light far more intricate than the scale’s browns and greens. The fins along his limbs open up and spread out, fanning in the same motions as the small waves against the shore. 

 

This new view of Jimmy has nothing, he assures himself, to do with Tango’s decision to learn to swim. 

 

“Come on,” Jimmy motions to him from his position, laid back in the water, feet sticking out in front of him. “It’s warm.” 

 

At least there’s that. 

 

Tango takes his first tentative step from the sand of the shore and into the bay. The water is not warm. 

 

He leaps back, stumbling on a rock. “Jimmy! That’s not even a little bit warm.” 

 

Jimmy moves so that his head is the thing facing Tango now, “It feels warm to me.” He shrugs as much as he can, “Your body is already warm though. It’ll feel fine once you get in.” 

 

Tango grits his teeth as he takes another step into the freezing water, and another, and another. Why Jimmy seems to love this so much is entirely beyond him. 

 

He’s not stupid, he’s read every book on blazes he can find. Even the ones proclaiming them horrible monsters. The nether doesn’t have any water, it never gets cold, it never rains and all seas are made of lava. It explains why he hates the ocean, even if it doesn’t change anything. 

 

When the water reaches Tango’s waist, it becomes a bit too much. He reaches for Jimmy, swimming delightedly next to him, to grab hold of his upper arm tightly. 

 

“Ok, that’s it. I’m done.” 

 

“But you're still standing? You can’t learn to swim when you’re standing.”

 

“Jimmy,” Tango says, “I’m not going any deeper.” 

 

He hears a laugh echoing from behind him, high and joyful. He whips his head around, searching for someone. Are they laughing at him?

 

Along the shore of this particular island, there are an array of docks, empty in the day as the fishermen go out to sea. Tango and Jimmy swim between two of them, but another dock down he sees two figures sitting at the edge of the wooden planks. 

 

He recognises the colours of Mazelea first. Someone, dressed in their obnoxious royal garb. The Mezaleans have been here for a few weeks now, and he’s unsure why. Surely business can’t take quite this long. 

 

Looking closer, Tango recognises the prince they saw out the window. The young one. And next to him is… Lizzie? 

 

She’s smiling wide, doubled over herself and letting out peals of laughter. It was her he heard. As he watches, the prince makes another comment, his own grin evident. Lizzie reaches after to whack him lightly over the back of the head, and he brings his hand to his chest in mock offence.

 

“Jimmy?” He asks, “Is Lizzie friends with him?” 

 

Jimmy follows his gaze over to the dock. “Oh yeah. I mean they’re engaged I think.” 

 

Tango looks at him, “ What? ”

 

Jimmy shrugs, “It’s not official I don’t think, and it’s more of an arranged thing. It’s why they’re here anyway. Dad brought it up and Lizzie didn’t argue though, so I think she’s cool.” 

 

“Jimmy,” Tango says, “that’s insane, right? Like that’s so insane.”

 

Jimmy shrugs, “Not really, I mean he seems fine. Lizzie hasn’t mentioned actually hanging out with him though so that’s cool they like each other.” 

 

“Jimmy. Just being told you have to marry someone is crazy. She’s sixteen.” 

 

“They don’t have to get married until they’re adults,” Jimmy notices his expression. “Look, it sucks sometimes but it’s pretty normal. It might even happen to me at some point.” 

 

Tango reaches for him, and Jimmy reaches back, they hold hands under the water. “I really don’t like that, Jim.” 

 

“It’s fine, really,” he says. “I’m second in line, it’s less likely. Yeah?” 

 

“Ok,” Tango says. 

 

They’re silent. Tango watches Lizzie and the prince smile at one another. They seem happy.

 

“His name is Joel.” 

 

“What?”

 

“The prince’s name is Joel.”

 

“Have you met him?” 

 

“He smiled at me from across the room, Lizzie told me his name.” 

 

“He smiles a lot,” Tango says. 

 

Jimmy laughs, “Everyone smiles a lot.” 

 

“Lizzie doesn’t smile like that very often.” 

 

“No,” Jimmy says, “I guess not.” 

 

“That’s good then, right? That he’s making her smile?”

 

Jimmy nods, “Yeah, it is.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Okay,” Jimmy says, releasing Tango’s hand as he claps his own together. “Can we try floating here?”

 

Tango frowns at the change to a far less enjoyable topic. 

 

“Please?”

 

Tango sighs, “Fine.” 

 

He begins lowering himself carefully into the water until it’s just above his shoulders. He shudders. He doesn’t care what Jimmy says, it’s cold.

 

“What now?” He asks.

 

Jimmy lays his hand on Tango’s back. It makes him startle a little. “And now you float!” 

 

“I don’t know how.”

 

Jimmy’s eyebrows raise, “Just, like, lean back. You’ll float.” 

 

“I really don’t trust that.” 

 

Jimmy moves his hand to press more firmly against Tango’s back, “I’ve got you, see?” 

 

“What if my head goes under?”

 

Jimmy’s other hand rests against the back of his head, “I’ve got you.” 

 

Tango doesn’t move. 

 

“We don’t have to,” Jimmy says. “You can just get out.” 

 

“No,” Tango says. He takes a deep breath, “Ok.” 

 

He leans back. It’s awful. It’s horrible. In the moment, it feels like the worst decision he’s ever made. He feels the chill hit the back of his head, seeping into his hair. It’s a mistake. But, Jimmy’s hands are behind him, and he doesn’t slip further. He is held there.

 

“Ok,” Jimmy says, muffled, “now lift your legs.” 

 

“What?” Tango asks incredulously. 

 

“I’ve got you.”

 

Slowly, very slowly, Tango lifts one leg, and then the other. His heart is beating very fast. 

 

Jimmy’s hand presses harder into his back, bushing his chest up and just above the surface of the water. His feet aren’t touching the ground, nothing is touching the ground. It’s terrifying. 

 

“Breath in,” Jimmy says. “The more air in you, the better you float.” 

 

Tango breathes in, he feels as the pressure of Jimmy’s hand decreases, Tango’s own body keeping him level. 

 

“And raise your legs.” 

 

He feels his legs lagging below the surface of the water and pushes them upwards. He feels when his toes hit the air, strangely colder than the water itself. 

 

“Jimmy,” he says, “this is horrible.” 

 

“I think it’s nice,” Jimmy says. 

 

“You can’t drown.”

 

Jimmy rolls his eyes, “I’m gonna let go of you.” 

 

“What? Why?” 

 

“Cause you’re not floating if I’m holding you up.” 

 

“You suck.” 

 

“I know,” Jimmy says. “Ready?”

 

“No.” 

 

“Three, two, one…” Jimmy lets go. 

 

Tango breaths in as deeply as he can and holds it there, willing himself to float. He feels his butt begins to sink and he wishes he were in a position to glare at it. 

 

He lasts less than ten seconds before planting his feet back on the sand, still neck deep in the water. “That was crazy.” 

 

“Good crazy?” Jimmy asks.

 

“Crazy crazy.” 

 

Jimmy is on his back again, floating and kicking along like it’s nothing. “Wanna try again?”

 

“ No,” Tango says emphatically. 

 

Jimmy laughs. He drifts towards Tango and holds onto his shoulder to anchor himself in place. Tango reaches to pull his torso towards him in turn. 

 

He directs his gaze to the sky, where Jimmy is looking. There are no clouds, just a wide expanse of blue. 

 

“I love the ocean,” Jimmy’s voice is light but serious, “It’s so big.” 

 

Which is exactly the reason I don’t. That and the water, and the cold. 

 

But he can see how happy being in the water makes Jimmy, and that’s good. It makes him happy. “That’s good.”

 

Jimmy snorts, “ that’s good? ” 

 

“Shut up.” 

 

“Idiot.” 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Jimmy is turning fourteen and Tango is allowed to go to dinner. Not the after party mind you, where Jimmy must walk around at his father’s side, smiling and saying very little. But, he is allowed to go to dinner. 

 

It’s something to do with Joel he thinks. 

 

Joel, the Mezalean prince, Lizzie’s fiancé. He’s been here for months now, even after the rest of his contingent left in another extravagant parade. 

 

Tango has met him now, at the ‘family’ dinners he’s attended, and once, when he and Jimmy went to visit Lizzie in her rooms. He’s loud, and bright, and a bit obnoxious, but Tango likes him. 

 

He seems awfully like he’s trying to make a good impression. 

 

The engagement hasn’t been announced. As far as the Ocean Empire’s citizens are concerned, the Mezelean prince is an awfully good friend of their crown princess. Which means that she is bringing a friend to her brother’s birthday dinner. 

 

So why shouldn’t her brother’s one get to? 

 

They sit in a side room off of the banquet hall, Tango, Jimmy, his sister, his father, about a dozen more attendents than couldn’t possibly be necessary. The King stands at the edge of the room, facing away from the three children who are sitting at one of the many tables. 

 

Lizzie is chatting about something, Tango doesn’t really know what. Something about history, and freshwater, and salmon. Tango’s chest feels like it’s about to explode. 

 

He stares down at his hands, watches as his fingers grip at the cuffs of his shirt, rolling them between them. He hates long sleeves, he feels like he’s being suffocated.

 

The sounds of muffled chatter echo through the room, coming from the hall just a wall away. Hundreds of people Jimmy said, hundreds. Tango doesn’t think he wants to see hundreds of people. Sometimes one person is too much. 

 

“Tango? Tango?” Jimmy’s voice comes from next to him. 

 

Tango looks up, “What?” 

 

“Sorry. I- are you ok? You know you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” 

 

“No!” Tango says, “I do want to. I just-”

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“They’re going to stare at me.” 

 

Jimmy shrugs, “Of course they are. They stare at me, Liz too.” 

 

“They stare at you cause you’re royalty, they stare at me cause I’m weird.” 

 

”Yeah, cause you don’t like swimming.” 

 

“Jim.” 

 

Jimmy’s expression softens into something a little more sympathetic. “I really mean it, you don’t have to come. I know it’s harder for you.” 

 

“I want to come. It just sucks.” 

 

“I know,” Jimmy says, and after a moment he takes Tango’s hand in his. 

 

They haven’t done this recently, holding hands. It started feeling weird at some point, Tango doesn’t remember when. But it feels nice now, safe. 

 

He catches The King’s gaze across the room, not aimed at him, but Jimmy. He watches as the boy makes eye contact with his father across the room. Tango feels him hold his hand tighter. 

 

He looks across at Lizzie, watching the same interaction. 

 

A call comes from the hall, one amplified throughout the room. 

 

“Announcing, His Majesty, King Marcus of the Ocean Empire.” 

 

The King’s cape makes an arc behind him as he sweeps towards the door, and Lizzie and Jimmy stand quickly behind him. 

 

“Announcing, Crown Princess Elizabeth of the Ocean Empire.” 

 

Lizzie leaves the room, sending Tango and Jimmy a quick smile over her shoulder. 

 

“Announcing, Prince Jimmy of the Ocean Empire.” 

 

Jimmy squeezes Tango’s hand one last time before walking out the doors after his sister.

 

“Announcing… Tango, friend to the Prince.” 

 

The hall is huge. Tango knows this, has been in the room countless times (notably, he and Jimmy snuck out to lay here in the middle of the night last week). But with the people? He never imagined that it could be filled with so many tables, so many colours. 

 

He sees the Ocean Empire’s royal table on a dais in front of him. Jimmy is already sitting down. That was quick. How long has he been standing here? 

 

He makes his way quickly to the royal table, taking his seat between Jimmy and the already seated Mezalean prince. 

 

Joel grins at him, reaching his hand under the table to request a high five, Tango concedes, reaching covertly to slap his hand on Joel’s and returning the smile. 

 

“Ay, good to see you, T,” he whispers. “It’s nice not to be the only person who doesn’t smell like fish in this place, huh?” 

 

And, despite the truly horrendous colouring of his clothes, Joel is the third coolest person Tango knows, after Lizzie, and Gem. “Don’t let Liz hear you say that,” he whispers back. 

 

Lizzie is on Joel’s other side, and engaged in what appears to be a deeply boring conversation with a foreign emissary about the Lost Empire’s rice supply. Yet, as Tango watches he sees one of the lilac fins around her head flick back slightly in Joel’s direction. She’s listening alright.

 

“So you don’t think they all smell like fish?” Joel asks. 

 

“Well, they do,” Tango says, “but-”

 

He sees Jimmy move in his periphery as the boy leans around him. “What are you saying?” 

 

Tango clamps his mouth shut. Joel’s smile grows as he looks between the two, and Tango tries his best to send please please please signals with his gaze. 

 

“Oh, Jim,” Joel says, “fireboy over here was just telling me all about how you smell like fish.” 

 

Jimmy sticks a spiny elbow into the middle of Tango’s back. It hurts, but he straightens and he supposes that he has good posture now at least. “The hell else would I smell like?” 

 

“Not fish,” Tango grumbles. 

 

“Well, you smell like smoke.” 

 

“You said you liked that.” 

 

Tango watches as Jimmy’s face flushes red. Joel reached around Tango to poke at Jimmy. 

 

“Oooo, did you now, Jim? What have you been hiding from your good brother in law?” 

 

“Not yet,” Jimmy mumbles. 

 

“What was that?” Joel asks. 

 

“All I said was that I like the smell of smoke. And,” he says, turning to Joel, “I’m not your brother in law yet.”

 

Tango leans into his best friend behind him, letting him hold his weight. Jimmy’s hand snakes under his arm to pinch at his midriff, but otherwise he submits to being used to prop the blaze up. 

 

“And that you liked the smell of me, loser.” 

 

“Well, if I smell so much like fish, why are you using me like a chair, loser.” 

 

“Ooo,” Tango says, “is big man Jim too weak to hold me up.”

 

Joel nods from where he’s smiling bemusedly from across the table. “Big man Jim seems all talk and too little action.” 

 

“Especially for someone who can’t beat me in a fight.” 

 

Jimmy punches him again, harder this time, and Tango yelps. “Hey!” 

 

“It’s not my fault you’re actually training now.”

 

“And it’s not my fault you’re not,” Tango sticks his tongue out at him. Jimmy sticks his tongue out back. 

 

They stay like this for a long moment, frowning, tongues sticking out at one another. Then, Jimmy starts laughing, his body shaking against Tango’s back. 

 

Tango holds out only a moment longer before he’s laughing too, smiling at Jimmy on his fourteenth birthday. Where he, Tango, gets to attend the royal dinner. 

 

By the end of the night, he feels warm and happy. By the end of the night, he can barely feel the stares of strangers drilling holes in the back of his head. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

When his tutors decide that he is probably fourteen, Tango enters full time training as a guard. 

 

This, Jimmy decides all at once, is the worst thing that has ever happened to him. 

 

First, Tango has to move out. After living in what is essentially his best friend’s pocket for the better part of the last five years, Jimmy protests vehemently. Then, he looks at Tango’s face. 

 

Tango wants this so bad. He wants it more than anything. And he has wanted so little in his life, and gotten even less. Jimmy can’t stop this. And so, Tango moves into the guard barracks, leaving Jimmy alone. 

 

This is alright, he tells himself, this will be alright. He will see Tango during the day! They will have their tutoring sessions together, and they will have dinner and breakfast, and they can hang out. 

 

Tango has training. Every day. Jimmy hates it. He does his tutoring sessions with the other training guards now, a dozen rowdy boys and girls between fourteen and seventeen. They hold Jimmy on a pedestal, he knows, but they terrify him. He has never been that loud. 

 

He sits in on a few of Tango’s training sessions at the beginning, just to see him. But he sees one of the girls whisper something to his best friend while looking at Jimmy, and Tango blushes. After that Jimmy figures that it embarrasses him to see him there. 

 

Jimmy is blindingly jealous of the other guards in training. They get Tango. Tango who trains with them and learns with them and takes his meals with them. They all sleep in the same room, and Tango tells him once in his most excited voice that it feels like a sleepover every night. A sleepover every night without him. 

 

Tango doesn’t have much time any more. It’s three months into his stay in the barracks that Jimmy realises that he hasn’t seen Tango in a week. It's the longest they’ve been apart since they met. He hates it. 

 

It’s on that day that he’s sitting with Lizzie in the gardens and Tango walks past. He’s with three of the other trainees. Tango walks in the middle, the shortest, and yet seeming to walk taller than Jimmy has seen before. He’s laughing. They all are. 

 

Jimmy half raises his hand to wave at Tango. Maybe he thinks he’ll come over, introduce him to his friends (even if they scare him), let him in on the joke. 

 

Tango doesn’t even see him. He walks right past. 

 

Jimmy misses him so, so much.

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

The barracks are cold. Tango supposes he should probably be used to it by now. 

 

He’s been spoiled in his dry room in the royal wing, with temperature controls and all his blankets. Here he lays underneath another boy who snores so loudly he rattles the bunk bed. He has one blanket and a stream of water runs under his bed. 

 

Tango loves the training. He loves the swords and the archery and the martial arts. He loves the lessons, interpreting battle maps and learning the history of the Ocean Empire. He even loves the people, with their loud voices and probing jokes. 

 

He’s something of an enigma to them. The only one who’s a bit different. They knew that he was the blaze, the prince's friend. He’s smaller than most of them, he thinks some of them were laughing at him. He knows he’s different. 

 

He can’t tell anyone about his fire either. He bemoaned it to Gem in their last sessions, laying on the ground as she encouraged him to breathe deeply while she jabbed her staff into his sternum. She gave him the speech, told him it was for his own safety. Blah blah blah. 

 

Then, she lay down next to him and offered to make pictures in the air out of steam. So it wasn’t all bad. 

 

It wasn’t until their first proper training session that any of the other trainees actually seemed to like him, anyway. It was then that he was glad that he had started training many months before them. It gave him a chance to show off. 

 

He likes being around them, he has to at this point. They’re nice, well, they’re friendly. And if they’re not friendly they ignore him. Which is ok. 

 

Lenore is proud of him. She’s so, so proud of him. At the end of their first day of classes she came up to him and crouched with her hands on his shoulders and told him that he’s done it. That he’s tried so so hard, that he’s here, that he deserves it. 

 

He’s made it. He has. He’s here and he’s doing it and he’s getting everything he’s ever wanted. And he’s loving it, he is. 

 

He’s even stopped hiding his tail, started letting himself have that sliver of freedom.

 

He tells himself he’s never been happier in his life. 

 

This is a lie. But that’s ok. 

 

Tango is cold. 

 

He misses Jimmy. 

 

He rolls over and buries his face in his pillow. He lets out a long groan. 

 

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s the bit he’s trying not to think about. The bit where with the training and the classes and the barracks, he hasn’t talked to Jimmy in a week. Not just hasn’t talked to him, hasn’t even had a glimpse of his best friend. 

 

Jimmy knows that he’s busy, he knows his schedule. Tango gave him a copy on his first day. He’s a prince, he has all the free time in the world. Tango even told him to visit. To come down to the barracks, to attend the practical training sessions. 

 

So why hasn’t he? 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Three months later, the King of the Ocean Empire falls ill. 

 

Jimmy’s father falls ill. 

 

He stands by his bedside with his sister, who holds Joel’s hand. 

 

Jimmy knows he has support, knows that Lizzie is there for him, knows that even Joel is. 

 

He still wishes Tango could have been the first person he told. He still wishes Tango were there too. If only so Jimmy could hold his hand. 

Notes:

:(

thank you so much to kiwi for editing, and for help with the chapter title!

Chapter 6: the aftermath

Notes:

A bit shorter than usual. But, ah, I hope this makes up for it?

The king of the Ocean Empire dies on the day of his daughter’s nineteenth birthday. This is not a surprise to anyone. 

 

He was sick, very sick, and had been for months. Some said it was his old age, others that it was a targeted attack from the salmon. But it all came to a head right as Lizzie was about to turn nineteen. 

 

Merfolk are superstitious people, Jimmy should know, and the whispers have followed him and his sister since the moment their father fell ill. 

 

A bad omen , they say. Her rule will be a failure, she wasn’t supposed to be queen. 

 

Lizzie has the best posture of anyone that Jimmy has ever known, even as children he doesn’t think he saw her without a perfectly straight back. But he can see the way the comments are wearing a hunch into the line of her shoulders. He hates it. 

 

The funeral takes place before the coronation, during the week-long period of mourning in which the Ocean Empire does not have a ruler. It is a dangerous position to be in, for an empire with few allies. 

 

The procession stretches around the entirety of the empire’s central island, a thick river of darkness. In the central courtyard of the palace stands the casket. It’s closed, and Jimmy knows that no body lays inside. 

 

The real burial was three days ago. He and Lizzie found themselves on one of the remotest islands in the empire, stretching far into the ocean with no land in sight. They lay their father’s body in the water in its bay, and watched slowly as it sunk to the bottom. It rested with the bones of their ancestors, all lain to rest in the salt water. 

 

Lizzie held his hand and he felt her gripping it so hard his fingers went numb. When he looked down, her knuckles were white. 

 

Jimmy has always cried easily. He got made fun of for it when he was younger. He cried when he stubbed his toe, he cried when he got into an argument, once he cried because his favourite stuffed animal, Norman, fell off his bed during the night. He’s fifteen now, almost sixteen, which should be too old for that stuff. He still cries a lot. 

 

And yet, he hadn’t cried at the burial. He hadn’t cried since his father’s death. Even now, standing in his own bloody father’s funeral procession, he can’t squeeze out a single tear. 

 

Lizzie is there, pale faced. A tear rolls down her face as the officiant speaks, saying something about their father’s great deeds to the empire. Joel stands next to her, dressed in deep magenta for the occasion. His head is bowed. They look perfect. Future rulers in grief. 

 

Jimmy hopes it isn’t too obvious how hard his jaw is clenched. 

 

He wants to cry, he wants to sit down more than he wants to cry and leave more than he wants to sit down. 

 

He saw Tango in the procession earlier. He should be over it by now, over him . It’s his father’s funeral, and seeing his best friend marching with the casket shouldn’t be affecting him so much. Former best friend, who he hasn’t talked to in nearly two years. Who doesn’t matter. 

 

His grief and anger at his father is getting mixed up in his grief and anger at Tango. He wants to punch them both, and wants to hug them even more. 

 

Jimmy hates himself. He can’t cry, not even at his father’s funeral, he can’t show any emotion, can’t even listen to the officiant speak. 

 

He can’t stop thinking about his ex best friend, who’s busy living his own perfect life far away from Jimmy. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Tango never knew the king well, hadn’t even liked him when he was around, and can’t bring himself to feel any remorse at his death. He looks at the casket and feels nothing. 

 

He knows it must have hurt Jimmy, the death. He knows it must be working its way into his heart like a tumour. It had been his first thought after the announcements, first of the illness, and then of the passing. 

 

Is Jimmy ok? 

 

In another time he would have been there, he would have been there the whole way. He would have been the person he could have leaned on, he would have been the most supportive friend he could have asked for. 

 

But that’s not him anymore, and he hasn’t been there for him, and he can’t be. 

 

Jimmy hadn’t always gotten along with his father, but he’d loved him, and that was what mattered. 

 

The royal guards stand in a circle around the casket, behind the royalty and high court, creating a clear divide between them and the civilians. Tango stares directly ahead at the back of Jimmy’s blond head. He can remember the last time he was this close to him. 

 

Jimmy’s feet are pressed tightly together and his back is perfectly straight. He’s in his stuffy royal garb, the kind he never wears (never wore ) unless he has to. He looks like a prince in every way. Except, Tango watches him, scanning his body up and down, the way he’s only started doing in the past year. Drinking in as much as he can, stockpiling information on his former best friend because he doesn’t know when he’ll get another chance to look. 

 

Jimmy’s picking at the skin of his fingers. As Tango watches, a hangnail rips down the side of his thumb and a bubble of blood forms. Jimmy keeps picking. 

 

He wants to stop him. He doesn’t know how. 

 

Tango takes an aborted step towards the prince, stopping himself mere centimetres out of line. He’s done it now, broken position. Jules, the guard standing next to him raises her eyebrows at him, glancing back at his spot in the row. 

 

He supposed it's too late now anyway. 

 

Tango takes another step towards Jimmy, and another. He stands next to the prince. They’re so close. So close. Jimmy doesn’t even look over. 

 

And he knows that it’s his father’s funeral, knows Jimmy is distracted, knows that he must already be feeling every emotion under the sun. But it hurts , ok? It hurts. 

 

Tango’s body feels unruly in a way it hasn’t in a while, not since he started training. His hands feel too big for him, and as he looks at the ground below him, he feels deeply uncomfortable. What is he doing? Why would he ever think that this was a good idea? 

 

He knows the answer. He misses Jimmy. He misses him and he misses him and he misses him. Even when they stand close enough to touch.

 

A drop of blood lands on the cobblestones at his feet. Jimmy’s. 

 

Tango’s fists clench and unclench, his fingers feel stiff. His chest aches.  

 

He reaches, slowly, carefully, and takes Jimmy’s hand. 

 

Jimmy doesn't react, his back stays straight and his fingers stay fidgeting. Tango grips tighter, and his fingertips brush against the chill of a scale on the back of his hand. 

 

He knows this scale. He knows the exact way he used to press his thumb against it, to brush over its smooth surface. He’d forgotten about it. It was so small and so present and he’d forgotten . Oh, how had he forgotten? Tango closes his eyes for a long moment, if he’s going to cry, at least it’s at a funeral. 

 

When Tango opens his eyes, Jimmy is looking at him, head turned, face blank. His eyes are brown and empty, staring with nothing behind them. Tango is not even sure if there’s recognition there. It scares him. 

 

“Jimmy?” He whispers. 

 

Jimmy blinks at him. Nothing. Tango hates it. 

 

They hold hands until the end of the ceremony, and when the officiant finally closes his book, Tango searches for Lizzie in the dispersing crowd. He sees her, head held high despite her red and puffy eyes. He meets her gaze. She looks at him, at Jimmy, at their joined hands. She nods. 

 

Tango drags Jimmy’s impassive body behind him into the castle and up to his room. He remembers the way, barely having to pay attention to the direction his feet lead him in. Instead, he keeps an eye on Jimmy. Guiding him up the stairs, and once, memorably, catching him before he could trip over his own feet. 

 

They pass Tango’s former room on the way down the hallway, it’s shut tight and he sees a thin layer of dust on the door handle. That hurts as well, just a little. 

 

Reaching the door to Jimmy’s room, Tango uses his free hand to push it open, leading Jimmy inside. 

 

He’s immediately hit by the smell. He has no idea what it is, but could identify it in a heartbeat. Scent has the strongest connection to memory, and right now Tango can feel every moment in this room racing through his head. 

 

Jimmy drops his hand, and begins shucking off his clothing the moment Tango closes the door. He pulls off his stiff, scaled vest, his buttoned shirt. Tango sees a glimpse of light chest hair, well on its way to growing in, and turns around to look at the rest of the room.

 

It’s the same, it really is. It hasn’t changed a bit. 

 

Jimmy has the same blanket, and many of the same books on his shelf. Norman still rests by the pillows, and a sea glass wind chime still hangs by the single window. 

 

The blinds are shut. They’ve never been shut before. 

 

On one of the walls is a series of pictures, drawings and little quotes Jimmy has penned down in his own weaving script. Tango walks over. In the centre of the constellation is one that is much too familiar to him. 

 

He reaches up, letting his hand brush against the card. Emotion rises in his chest and he moves his fingers away quickly. Tango can control his fire, he can . He doesn’t want to risk it. 

 

It’s Tango’s drawing, is what it is. The one he spent hours on for Jimmy’s tenth birthday. It’s his drawing, placed carefully in a collage of everything that Jimmy cares about. 

 

Somewhere in the back of Tango’s mind, he’d thought that Jimmy must have taken it down. There was no reason to keep it up, was there? Why leave it? But, here it is, staring him right in the face. It’s proof, proof that he was here. It’s like he never left. 

 

He closes his eyes for a long moment, breathing in and out, before turning back around to Jimmy. 

 

He stands in the middle of the room, looking, more than anything, a little lost. His funeral garb lays at his feet, a pile of black fabric, leaving the prince in only his undershirt and thin shorts. Jimmy looks up when Tango turns, making eye contact with him. 

 

Tango remembers how easy being with Jimmy felt. Not that long ago, really. He didn’t have to struggle, didn’t have to stop and think, didn’t have to analyse every action. Wondering if it was too little, too much. It was easy. It was comfortable. He misses being comfortable with Jimmy. Maybe he just misses being his friend. 

 

Tango half raises his arms, an invitation. 

 

Jimmy steps forwards and falls into him. 

 

It’s so much. It’s so, so much. It’s Jimmy closer than he’s been in years, closer than anyone has been, not in this way. It’s his breath on Tango’s forehead, and Tango’s nose pressed against his shoulder. It’s closeness and familiarity and everything that he has tried so hard to find with anyone but the person currently pressed against him. 

 

Tango knows Jimmy must be uncomfortable. He still wears his ceremonial armour, big bulky pieces that aren’t at all comfortable to wear, and can’t feel very nice pressed into someone. Jimmy’s taller frame is also leaning on him heavily, his head bent over. And that must hurt too, mustn’t it? The strain in his neck? 

 

But, Jimmy doesn’t say anything, he just hugs him. And Tango ignores the way his Jimmy’s elbow digs into his side uncomfortably, in favour of inhaling against the prince’s skin, drinking in as much of this moment as he can. 

 

He smells citrus in Jimmy’s hair, and it makes his throat clench. Not because he recognises it, but because he doesn’t. Jimmy’s hair had always smelled like something wooden. Like a tree or a table or those bundles of dried herbs. 

 

Except now it smells like citrus, and Tango hasn’t known what his hair smelled like for more than a year. He hasn’t known .

 

When Jimmy pulls away, his face is wet with tears. He hadn’t been crying before. Tango is pretty sure it’s a good thing. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says, it’s the first time Tango’s heard him speak. 

 

“For what?” 

 

“A lot,” Jimmy says. He can’t keep eye contact. “Too much.” He reaches up to scrub at his face with his hand, wiping away his tears. When he pulls away, his nose is red. 

 

Tango takes his hand. “Ok,” he says. “Are you ok?” 

 

Stupid. Stupid, stupid question. 

 

“Not really,” Jimmy laughs half heartedly. 

 

Of course he’s not fine, his father died. Idiot.

 

Tango lowers his forehead to rest it against Jimmy’s chest. They’re so close, he can’t get enough of it. I missed you, I missed you, I missed you. 

 

This isn’t about him. It’s not even about him and Jimmy. It’s about Jimmy, who’s father has just died. Who Tango found disassociating at his funeral. He knows this, but the thoughts stay a backing track to his every motion. I missed you. 

 

“Right, sorry. Stupid question. Do you want to sit down?” 

 

“I don’t know.” 

 

Tango straightens up, “Eating something?” 

 

“I- I don’t think so.” 

 

“A shower? A swim?” 

 

“Tango,” he says, and how Tango has missed the way Jimmy says his name. “I really, really don’t know.” 

 

And, ok. Jimmy looks more upset now. That’s not good. That’s not what he wanted. He wanted to help . 

 

“You should go to sleep,” he tries. “To reset a little, it’ll help.” 

 

“Ok,” Jimmy says. 

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Yeah, ok.” 

 

“Ok,” Tango says. “Ok.” 

 

As he turns towards the bed, he sees Jimmy’s face relax, just a little. 

 

The bed looks soft and welcoming and familiar. It whispers to Tango of countless sleepovers, nights spent under the covers, playing with fire and luminescence, eating sweet things stolen from the kitchens. It’s the same, because of course it is. 

 

Jimmy gets into the bed, sliding under the blankets and reaching to pull them up to his chin. He looks small and sad. Tango feels the irrational urge to kiss his forehead. Which is insane, so he ignores it. 

 

Now, Tango is left the only one standing awkwardly in a room that is not his own. He unbuckles his sword holster from his side, laying it on the ground. Then, he unstraps two of his daggers, the ones at his ankles, leaving the one at his hip. Finally, he takes his hair out from its bun. Letting it rest at his shoulders. It had been short, once. After years of not letting anyone near his head with scissors, he’s had to let it grow out. 

 

He finds himself wondering halfheartedly if Jimmy would cut it. 

 

Then, Tango slides from standing to seated on the floor, leaning against the bed frame. He stares across the room at the bookshelf, and resolves to stay awake while Jimmy sleeps. 

 

He should ask Jimmy if he wants him to leave. He really should. People don’t tend to want heavily armed blazes sitting alone with them while they’re sleeping. But, Tango doesn’t want to leave, and he decides to let himself be a little selfish. 

 

“Tango?” Jimmy whispers from above him. 

 

Tango keeps his eyes closed. “Yeah?” 

 

“Can you come up here?” 

 

Tango’s heart rate picks up. “On the bed?” 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“Ok,” Tango says, standing up. 

 

He sheds his armour, setting the heavier prices down carefully on the floor to avoid any loud noises. Looking down, he wrestles with the idea of taking off his final dagger. It’s only since joining the guard that he’s become uncomfortable with not being armed. He settles for placing it on top of Jimmy’s headboard, hoping that it will remain within reach when he lays down. 

 

Finally, feeling quite vulnerable without leather and scales as a barrier between him and the world, Tango climbs into the bed. 

 

Climbs might be a strong word. Tango takes care to lay down as carefully as possible, right at the edge of the bed. He lays on top of the blankets, and rests his head gently on the pillow. He feels viciously uncomfortable, it might have something to do with how every muscle is tensed, as if in preparation for a fight. 

 

Jimmy faces him, laying on his side, Norman is clutched tight in his embrace. The same as ever. Tango can hear his breathing, can see the way the speckled scales around the edges of his face glow in the semi-darkness. 

 

He lets out a shaky exhale that he hopes is quieter than it feels. Jimmy blinks. He really should relax. 

 

Jimmy opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “Can you… can you come here?” 

 

“Come here?” 

 

“Closer. Please.” 

 

Tango doesn’t respond. He’s too busy trying to make sense of what Jimmy is asking of him. 

 

“I’m cold,” Jimmy says. 

 

Oh, of course. It clicks in Tango’s head. Jimmy has always run a little cold. And despite how easily he feels the chill, Tango is warm. 

 

He pushed himself onto his elbow and shimmies under the blankets. They’re warm and soft and feel every bit as luxurious as one would expect from the room of a prince. Tango moves closer to Jimmy until they’re almost touching. 

 

“Are you,” he asks, “are you sure?” 

 

“You don’t have to.” 

 

“I know.” 

 

“Are you ok, Tango?” Jimmy asks. Which is stupid. Because he’s the one who’s not ok. He’s the one who’s now officially an orphan, he’s the one who really really shouldn’t be checking in on Tango’s feelings. 

 

“Of course.” 

 

He can feel Jimmy’s breath on his face. Somehow he’s only just realised this. It’s a terrifying thought. They’re close enough that he feels as if he should close his eyes. 

 

“Can I hug you?” 

 

“I asked you too.” 

 

And so, resisting the urge to stall further, Tango draws closer to Jimmy, bundling the prince’s head under his chin. He wraps one arm around his back, lets the other rest between them, and throws a leg over the top of Jimmy’s. In this way, Tango curls his body around Jimmy’s larger one, and hopes that it helps, just a little bit. 

 

They’ve both grown since they’ve last been this close, in every sense of the word. Despite the aching part of his heart whispering to him how familiar this all is, every part of the hug feels starkly different. 

 

It’s the way that Jimmy’s legs have grown, how his sharp knees now dig into Tango’s side. It’s the hair that now covers the both of them, sliding together where they touch. It’s Tango’s longer hair getting caught under his neck, sticking between them, it’s the way his chest has filled out enough that Jimmy actually has something to rest on. It’s how much bigger they are, how much more . How every feeling Tango has feels amplified into something a hundred times more important. 

 

“Will you stay?” Jimmy asks. It comes out quiet, but rushed, as though he has been holding it in. 

 

“Stay?” 

 

“Stay. Not leave. Just, stay.” 

 

Tango sighs into Jimmy’s hair, smelling that citrus scent that is slowly becoming more and more familiar. 

 

“Of course, Jimmy,” he says. “If you want me to. Of course I’ll stay.” 

 

“Ok,” Jimmy says. “Thank you.” 

 

“Nothing to thank me for.”

 

Chapter 7: a taste of freedom

Notes:

I almost made this two chapters, but instead, here is a mega chapter for your consumption :)

CW: parental neglect and mild-ish emotional abuse

For as long as Scott can remember, he has known that he is trapped on the palace grounds. This has been an indisputable fact, something that he would never think of questioning. 

 

He cannot leave. 

 

So, when Pearl asks him if he wants to go into town with her, his first instinct is to laugh. 

 

“What?” She asks, her arms crossing defensively. “What’s so funny?” 

 

She stands in the middle of his bedroom floor, her sun bleached red cloak out of place in the perfect paleness of the room around her. Her boots are coated in a thick layer of dried mud, there’s dirt under her nails. If anyone saw her in here, they’d probably have a heart attack. 

 

Scott sits, legs crossed, at the edge of his bed, dressed in his daily robes. They are an outfit that is, even at its most casual, fancier than anything he’s seen anywhere near his friend. 

 

He’d gotten back from his lessons just a few minutes before to find Pearl loitering in the hallway outside his room. He ushered her inside, regretting ever telling her where he slept and trying his hardest to explain why no one could see her there. 

 

Scott stops mid laugh, expression sobering when he realises that Pearl’s suggestion wasn’t a joke. 

 

“I’m not allowed. I’ve never been allowed.” 

 

“So?” She shrugs. “You said you weren’t allowed in the kitchens.” 

 

“No one’s actually told me I can’t. It’s just if my mum found out…” 

 

“She’d tell you you couldn’t.” 

 

“Yeah,” he sighs. 

 

Pearl moves to sit on the floor in front of him, leaning back against the bed frame. She tilts her head to look up at Scott’s face and the ceiling above it. “It’s not like anyone will find out, it can be a secret.” 

 

“It’s hard to keep secrets from my mother.” 

 

“You’ve kept me a secret.” Her eyes are wide.

 

And it’s true. For three months, he has been friends with Pearl. For three months, he has seen her nearly every day, gone to the kitchens almost as often. For three months, no one has found out. 

 

“People would recognise me, I don’t have any regular clothes.” Scott gestures down to his uncomfortably bejeweled get up. 

 

Pearl sits up straight, spinning on her butt to face him. “I have clothes,” she says, a smile creeping onto her face. 

 

“I can’t-”

 

Pearl stands up, reaching to grab one of Scott’s hands, pulling him off the bed and onto his feet. 

 

“Nope,” she says, “you have no excuse. You said the clothes were the issue, and the clothes we can fix.”

Pearl lives in the belowground servants' quarters with her mother. Scott hasn’t been there before, and as he enters, he can’t help his wandering gaze. 

 

“Sorry,” Pearl says, “I know it’s a bit sad. I think we’re trying to move into town, but there aren’t many places available at the moment.” 

 

Scott doesn’t think it’s sad. He doesn’t think it’s sad at all. 

 

As they walk down the hallway, past rooms with carefully labeled numbers on the door, he sees how many of them have their doors open. Looking in, there are only small rooms, but none of them look sad, not even a little. They have carpets and colourful bedding and paintings hanging on the walls. Half of the rooms have doormats outside. Even those with closed doors have quotes or pictures stuck to the lacquered wood. One of them has a wreath of pine needles and sweet berries hanging on it, sending a pleasant smell down the hall. 

 

They reach Pearl’s room, number thirty-two, and his friend produces the key from one of her leather belt’s many pockets, unlocking the door and letting him enter first. 

 

The room is small, a kitchenette to his side and a door leading off to what he presumes is a bathroom. There are no windows, but the redstone lamp in the corner rests within a small amethyst geode, bathing the room’s two beds in a purple light. 

 

“Ignore the mess,” Pearl says, picking her way through the things on the floor to a chest of drawers against the right wall. She begins digging through one of the bottom ones, the clothes she throws out of it adding to the chaos. 

 

Scott steps forwards to stand in the middle of the room, spinning in place to get a good look at the room around him. 

 

This must be their bedroom, right? He’s never been in any bedroom but his own. 

 

“This place is really cool,” he says. 

 

“What?” Pearl says, looking up at him. “No, it’s not.” 

 

“You can’t just say no it’s not,” Scott replies, “it’s my opinion.” 

 

She rolls her eyes. “But it’s clearly not cool.” 

 

“It is cool,” he says emphatically. “You all like live in this one place. You have people living right next to you that you can talk to whenever you want.” 

 

“It’s cool until Philly next to us is snoring at 3am,” she dismisses. 

 

Before Scott can reply, Pearl stands, holding a bundle of clothing in her hands. “Ok,” she says, “what do you think of these?” 

 

Pearl lays the clothing out on the bed. It’s a set of apparently matching brown trousers and vest, thick enough for Rivendell’s coldest months. Next to them is a thick woolen cloak dyed a deep shade of blue. They look worn, as all of Pearl’s clothes do, small tears at the hem of the cloak and the knee of the trousers patched up. 

 

They are perfectly normal clothes for a perfectly normal kid. 

 

“The pants will be a bit long,” Pearl says, “but you can roll them up. A lot of kids have clothes a few sizes too big anyway. You can wear your own undershirt, right?” 

 

“Yeah,” Scott nods. “I’m going to boil to death in this.” 

 

Pearl rolls her eyes, “You’ll live, the rest of us are freezing. You can’t go walking around in shorts in public. Someone will file for neglect.” 

 

“Fine,” he says.

 

Pearl looks at him. “Do you like them, though?” She looks hopeful. 

 

“They’re perfect,” he says. “Thank you.” 

 

It’s only once he’s getting changed in the bathroom that he realizes what he’s agreed to by putting them on. He’s going to leave. 

There is a place in the garden wall where a ditch has been dug. 

 

Behind a row of bushes, an area of frozen dirt has collapsed, leaving a gap between the ground and the cobblestones maybe thirty centimetres wide. It looks awfully uncomfortable to squirm through. 

 

“This is awful,” he tells Pearl flatly. 

 

“It’s plenty big enough for you,” she tells him. “You’ll be fine.”

 

“Fine and dirty .” 

 

“Dirt never hurt anyone, you’re making it a big deal.” 

 

“It is a big deal.” 

 

Pearl groans. “How the hell did I become friends with someone who hates dirt?” 

 

“What?” 

 

“You heard me,” she says, “I, like an idiot, went and made my best friend a boy who can’t even crawl.” 

 

Scott doesn't know what his expression is. Pearl is playfully glaring at him, but his brain is too busy repeating best friend best friend best friend to formulate any kind of response. 

 

Best friend . Pearl called him her best friend. 

 

“I can crawl,” he says, a little late. 

 

“Okay, fancy pants,” she replies. “I’m going first. You better not back out.” 

 

As he watches, Pearl slides down the thin layer of fallen leaves into the pit and lays on her stomach to get through the gap. Best friend. There’s enough room for her to stay slightly on her knees as she shimmies through, although a knot in her hair gets caught on a stick as her head finally goes through. Best friend. A few strands of her hair are ripped from her head and she yelps. 

 

“Damnit,” she says, muffled from the other side, “I never remember to tie my hair up before doing this.”

 

Best friend. 

 

Hesitantly, Scott makes his way towards the gap, careful movements in contrast with Pearl’s confident ones. 

 

“Is this how you leave every time?” He asks as he crouches down. 

 

He can hear the eye roll through the wall. “Obviously not. I leave through the gate like a normal person, you’re the fugitive, not me.” 

 

He lies down and begins making his way through the gap, his arms guiding the way in front of him. The dirt under him is rough, with roots jutting into his ribs, and his sides scrape against the stones beside him. But Pearl was right. The gap is large enough. He doesn’t feel quite like he’s suffocating. 

 

As he emerges, standing shakily, she smiles at him. “Although it is fun to sneak out sometimes.”

 

Around Scott is a small area of woodland. Ten metres of thick nature before the street, he sees through the gaps in the trees. It shouldn’t smell different, it’s so close, so similar to inside the palace walls. 

 

It does, though.

 

As he watches the road, a cart goes past, pulled by a short, dark brown mule. The elven man in the cart has his hair up in two braids at the back of his head and wears clothes similar to Scott and Pearl. 

 

He’s real. He’s real, and he’s a person Scott has never seen before, a person whose life is entirely outside the palace walls.  

 

Scott has been trapped his whole life. He has known this, the fact that he cannot leave, the fact that he has never been able to. 

 

But he’s done it, and it was as easy as climbing through a hole in the wall. It could have been as easy as walking through a gate. 

 

Scott has always been trapped, but it was never the walls doing the trapping. It was him and his bone deep belief that he couldn’t leave. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

At 14, Pearl gets a job. 

 

Initially, this confuses Scott. 

 

“Don’t you already have a job?” He asks on a warm afternoon in the gardens, staring up at a cloudless sky. 

 

“Well,” she says, hands on her hips as she stands above him, “since we’re moving out and all…”

 

Scott sits up. “You’re moving out ?”

 

“Yes, Scott ,” she says, “keep up.”

 

“ Keep up? ” He mutters under his breath. 

 

“We’re moving into town, I told you we were trying to. Mum’s gonna stay in the kitchens, but I kinda hate cooking.” 

 

“You didn’t tell me you hate cooking,” he says. 

 

“Well,” she says, “I didn’t want you to like it any less than you already did. Then you wouldn't hang out with me there.” 

 

Which… makes a surprising amount of sense. 

 

“I would have,” he says. 

 

“ Anyway ,” Pearl pivots, “I’m working at the laundromat.” 

 

“What’s a laundromat?” 

 

Pearl looks at him, “Really?” 

 

“What?” He exclaims, “I’m allowed to not know what things are.” 

 

“You don’t know what a laundromat is?” 

 

“Shut up, Pearl.” 

 

She crosses her arms. “I forget that you’re a prince.” 

 

“I don’t.” 

 

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I get it. You’re all special and perfect and whatever.” 

 

That wasn’t what he meant. It wasn’t what he meant at all. He was thinking about every way that it follows him, every aspect of his life that prevents him from fully forgetting that he is different, that he, in some horrible inexplicable way, matters .

 

He likes that Pearl forgets, or at least that she says she does. 

 

“You know I didn’t mean that,” he says, frowning. 

 

“I know,” Pearl sighs. 

 

Scott doesn’t say anything. 

 

“A laundromat is where people go to get their washing done,” Pearl says eventually. “You probably get yours done at the town’s one.” 

 

“Does everyone’s washing go there?”

 

Pearl shrugs, “A lot of people do. Some people do it at home, but it’s a lot harder, and most people don’t have the time.” 

 

Scott has no idea how people do their washing. Is it hard?

 

“ And ,” Pearl continues, “Manny, who owns it, said that she’d teach me.” 

 

“Teach you?”

 

“Like school,” she says, “I went to school when I lived at the Crystal Cliffs. But you guys don’t really have too many, at least not close by.” 

 

Scott remembers overhearing a conversation once between two of the members of his mother’s council. It was some kind of small talk, the kind he didn’t usually enjoy listening to, but this time, he had heard them mention children . 

 

One of the members had mentioned that she’d sent her son to board over the eastern range, while the other spoke highly of their daughter’s experience with Crystal Cliff’s education system. 

 

He hadn’t known what it meant, not most of it at least, but it had interested him. 

 

“I think most of the noblepeople send their children away to other places,” he says. 

 

Pearl scoffs. “And what about everyone else?”

 

“I’m not sure they’ve thought about them.” 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

That Friday, after Scott finishes his lessons, Pearl drags him through the hole in the wall and towards the laundromat. 

 

It’s a huge warehouse-like building, peeling paint and old wooden slatted walls. Staring up at it from the ground, it seems to stretch up and up and up into the sky, a vision not helped by its tall, arching windows. 

 

Even from outside, he can smell the comforting scent of freshly washed fabric. 

 

Pearl leads him around to the back of the building, where the walls continue to look as doubtfully sound from a structural perspective, and knocks on the door. 

 

The lady who opens it is much older than Scott had imagined, and much human-er to boot. Which could really be connected if he thinks about it. She has long grey hair, braided and then pinned in a bun on top of her head, and wears a perfectly pressed dress with a starched collar. It’s entirely at odds with her impractical open toed sandals in the Rivendellian weather. 

 

“Hi, Manny!” Pearl says, grinning. 

 

“Pearlie!” The lady says. She’s short and has to reach up to hug Pearl around her broad shoulders. “What are you doing here so early?” 

 

“I thought I’d show my friend around before I started my shift,” Pearl says. “If that’s alright with you?”

 

“Oh,” she says, “you have a friend! How lovely.” 

 

For seemingly the first time, she turns to look at Scott. “Hello, Pearlie’s friend, what’s your name?” 

 

Scott knows he’s staring at her. Her rounded ears and mottled skin. Fortunately, his polite formality is too hardwired into him for his face not to slip into a smile anyway. “Hello, ma’am, I’m Scott.” 

 

“And I’m Manny,” she says jovially. She reaches out to clap a surprisingly strong hand on his shoulder. 

 

“It’s- it’s very nice to meet you.” 

 

“And you as well, Scottie,” she says, stepping aside to let them in. 

 

Scottie? He wonders bemusedly. 

 

Pearl rushes in, and as Scott follows behind her, Manny whispers in his ear, “Second generation, my grandfather was elven.” 

 

He stops to stare at her. “I’m sorry?” 

 

“I saw your look, kid. It’s alright. Not everyone here’s been around like Pearlie.” 

 

“Scott?” Pearl calls.

 

He turns to see her head already sticking around a doorway to another room.

 

“Are you coming?” She asks. 

 

He follows after. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

When Pearl moves out, Scott sees her less. 

 

She lives in a small place, within the same building as two other families. It’s nice, and as she excitedly tells him after her first night, she has her own bedroom now. 

 

He’s happy for her, he is. She’s happier now. 

 

All the same, it’s hard. It’s hard, and it hurts . Scott spent so long seeing her every day. He was able to run down to the kitchens, sneak into her living quarters, meet her in the gardens. Living without it feels like a small piece of himself has been ripped away. 

 

All this to say, Scott gets used to sneaking out alone to see her. 

 

The first time, it’s hard to slip under the wall alone, to make his own way through the town with nothing but his memory. 

 

The second it’s much, much easier. 

 

It’s nice, being in town alone, or at least without Pearl by his side. Scott had thought he would be overwhelmed with the people, the colours, the noise. He isn’t. 

 

If anything, the constant chatter is a comforting sound, it worms its way into his ear drums and reminds him of how much there is in this world. It falls over him like a weighted blanket and calms his nervous energy.

 

He discovers, cloak over his head but chatting amiably to the woman he decided on a whim to buy a pie from, that he doesn’t mind people. They can be nice a lot of the time. 

 

And so, Scott, the crown prince of Rivendell, finds himself in the palace less and less. He also finds that this suits him quite well. 

 

More often than not, he meets Pearl at the laundromat, or at her house, or behind the big wool storage shed where every other day they find new words painted messily on the outside wall. 

 

Other times, Scott goes to the markets by himself, or to the inn, or to the large garden in the middle of town where people walk or talk or play. 

 

As it turns out, not all that many Rivendellians know what their prince looks like. Scott was hidden away his entire life, kept within the palace at all times, under strict lock and key. He thanks Aeor that for once it’s worked in his favour. 

 

He wears the cloak anyway, at least most of the time. It covers his distinctive hair, and it can’t hurt to be a bit careful, anyway. There’s always the chance of seeing one of his tutors or the kitchen staff, or the unlikely case of a noble recognising the elven queen’s son. 

 

It’s good. It’s so, so good. It’s better than he ever imagined. To get even a sip of freedom after a lifetime of a dry throat? He wants to gulp it down and never come up for air again. 

 

The church of Aeor sits within the palace grounds. Its spires stretch up into the sky, seemingly endless, and its walls glow with holy golden light. When Scott was younger, he had sworn it was the most beautiful place in the world. 

 

He goes there weekly to pray, kneeling alone below the gilded statue of his god. 

 

Scott has been taught his whole life that Aeor values protection, cooperation. Safety in conformity. It feels blasphemous when at this god’s feet, he whispers his thanks for his chance to be himself. 

 

Scott realises, seated late at night at the back of the town’s inn, that himself might be a little different than he imagined. 

 

Every Thursday evening, the inn hosts what appear to be singing nights, where the elven patrons will come in with a song in mind. The inn rents out a band, who are told the song and, miraculously, seem to be able to play every one. The patron sings, and the band plays, and everyone else dances along. 

 

Pearl calls it karaoke. 

 

The only time Scott has truly heard singing has been in the church of Aeor. Hymns are sung as a backing track to the high priestess’ sermon, light and airy, soft enough to blow away in the wind. He likes them, or at least he knows he should, knows they’re important. But, hearing the steady thrum of instruments in the semi-darkness, and can’t help thinking that he prefers this kind of music. 

 

It’s so much. Larger than life sounds, larger than life people, swaying and dancing and having fun. 

 

Other days, Scott has found his gaze hooked on a jawline, an adam's apple, the way some of the men’s hips sway back and forth. So, it’s not much of a surprise when his eyes search out a boy in the crowd, jumping up and down along with the music.  

 

He’s beautiful, Scott thinks, with his long legs and slender wrists. He has short hair, more commonly found among commoners; it’s almost black in the low lighting. It suits him. 

 

“ Staring, ” Pearl says next to him.

 

Scott stamps his gaze back to hers, slanted eyes, small smile. “Shut up,” he says, eloquently. 

 

“Oh no, it’s fine ,” Pearl says. “Go ahead, ignore your best friend in the place she brought you to.” 

 

“I wasn’t ignoring you.” 

 

“Yeah, and neither were you ogling Paris.” 

 

“That’s his name?” Scott asks, his tone revealing the truth in her words.

 

Pearl shrugs, “How would I know?”

 

Scott elbows her, “Pearl, come on.” 

 

“You should go ask him his name. Good conversation starter.” 

 

He raises his eyebrows. “Good conversation starter? What conversation are you hoping to start? A two-second one?”

 

“Hey, it’s not my fault you can’t get yourself past an introduction.” 

 

Scott laughs, “Who says I can’t get past an introduction?” 

 

“Me.” Pearl sticks her tongue out at him. “You’re a coward.” 

 

Scott has a half finished drink, something Pearl assured him was non-alcoholic, before setting it down in front of him. He downs the rest of it in one large gulp. 

 

It had tasted pretty awful before, but he had figured that was par for the course. Drinking it all at once hasn’t improved the flavour. 

 

“Ok,” Scott says, pushing his chair back from the table.

 

“You’re off?” Pearl asks. 

 

Scott nods, trying not to show his uncertainty. “Yep, I’m off.” He takes a step back.

 

Pearl salutes him, two fingers to her forehead. “Best of luck, mate.” 

 

The crowd is worse when you’re in it. Scott doesn’t know the song that’s being played, doesn’t know to move his body in the way that seems to come naturally to everyone else. His hands flounder, and his legs shake just a bit, and he hides behind the hood of his cloak. 

 

He finds the boy in the crowd, Paris , who spins on the balls of his feet just as Scott comes up behind him. Paris stumbles into him, but when he turns to look at Scott’s face, he doesn’t seem embarrassed. He’s smiling.

 

He’s shorter than Scott expected, the energy he embodies making up a good part of his height.

 

Paris yells something, but Scott doesn’t hear it, whether over the sound of the music or the rushing in his ears. 

 

“What?”

 

The boy just shakes his head, still smiling. He reaches out and pulls Scott in towards him by the wrists, threading their fingers together when they’re close enough that their chests almost touch. One of his hands goes to Scott’s hip, and he begins to move once more. 

 

The music is loud and thumping, and Scott can feel it pulsing through the ground beneath him, travelling up his legs and into the rest of his body as he moves along to the beat. 

 

Paris moves their bodies together, and Scott swears in a moment of insanity that their hearts are in time as well. He flings his head back, and the hood falls from his face, and he feels what it is to be touched by someone who doesn’t know how long it took you to stop from flinching. 

 

Scott has spent his life making himself small. It isn’t an intentional thing, but a simple byproduct of being born into a world of things so entirely big. He shrinks from his mother, lowers his voice for his tutors, turns his eyes down whenever he meets someone new. He has never felt big, never felt powerful. He has always felt just a little bit like his skin is too tight for him. 

 

But tonight, Scott dances, he swings his hips, and he raises his arms, and for the first time in his life, he feels huge . 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

For his sixteenth birthday, Scott receives responsibility. 

 

Which, to put it lightly, wasn’t exactly what he was looking for. 

 

He had hoped, in a place deep inside of him both small and stupid, that he had convinced her that he simply wasn’t ready. He’d been spotted in town, surely he had. Just last week, he’d walked back in through the gate with barely anything between his face and the guards. He isn’t being careful about it. 

 

He even sold one of his rings a few months ago, pawned it off to the lady who sells him pies at the market. He’d thought it would get back to her, someone would snitch, she’d notice the missing space on his index finger. She hasn’t said anything. It annoys him, more than a little. 

 

It’s stupid, and he knows it. There is very little his mother wouldn't do if she thought he was acting up. And yet, maybe he did want her to see it all. The ring, the sneaking out, the nights spent at the inn. 

 

Maybe he wanted her to see it and see that everything she’d done? It hadn’t worked . He wanted her to know that he was everything she had tried to prevent. 

 

(And maybe, staring across the hall at a woman who had never so much as smiled at him, he just wanted her to look up, just for a moment. To pay a single ounce of attention to her own son.)

 

A convenient side effect would have been her not trusting him with anything, ever. Leaving him to do whatever the hell he wanted. 

 

Instead, he was called for an audience on his birthday, not for a reprimand, but for something much, much worse. 

 

Usually, Scott’s mother meets him sitting on her throne. Usually, she towers high above the ground, usually, he is able to convince himself that it is their physical distance making her seem so remote. 

 

This time, she stands directly in front of him, not a metre away. He could take a step forwards, reach out, touch her. 

 

And yet, she is as cold, as detached, as impossibly unattainable as ever.  

 

“It is your sixteenth birthday,” his mother states, matter of fact, entirely without emotion. 

 

Scott nods; he doesn’t know what else to do.

 

“You know you are Aeor’s chosen, correct? You have been taught that much?”

 

He nods again, electing to ignore the complete separation his mother has from his schooling. 

 

He watches as she inhales deeply, and the exhalation sounds a little like relief. Except that he has never known his mother to sound relieved. He must be making things up. 

 

“Your gift , how is it progressing?” 

 

His magic. 

 

“It’s progressing steadily,” he says. This isn’t a lie. He is improving. If only in learning exactly how long it takes to cool his drink without turning it into a block of ice. 

 

She nods. “And your training?” 

 

“My training?” He asks as politely as possible. 

 

“With the shortsword,” she says. There’s irritation in her eyes, but he’s almost certain she doesn’t let it affect her tone of voice. 

 

Ahhh. 

 

“It is also progressing.” 

 

This is a lie. Scott is lying to his mother. 

 

But he can’t tell how much he hates training. He can’t tell her how even the thought of his shortsword scares him. He can’t tell her how he hasn’t attended his lessons in three months. He can’t tell her that, given his way, he would never return.

 

It isn’t the sparring that he hates, or the sword that comes with it. It is what the training means. It means you will have to act; one day, you will be responsible.  

 

It doesn’t matter what he can’t say. She reads his tone as clearly as if his thoughts were broadcast to the room. 

 

“Your role as Champion is a responsibility greater than even that of your future rule. You know this, correct?” 

 

Scott knows this well, too well if you ask him. He knows it as a person who has had this knowledge drilled into him since he was conscious. 

 

He’s just not sure he can bring himself to care. 

 

“Yes,” he says, to the wall over his mother’s shoulder. 

 

“Good,” she says. Without warning, her hand comes up, intercepting his line of sight with a flick of her wrist. 

 

Even as his mother’s face remains unmoving, Scott turns his head to watch as out of a side room walks an attendant. In his hands is a bundle wrapped in shimmering gold cloth. 

 

The first thing Scott feels when he sees it is dread. He feels the hairs along his arms rise, and his jaw tenses involuntarily. Whatever is under that cloth, he doesn’t want to see it. 

 

The queen takes the bundle from the attendant and turns back to Scott, whose gaze is still fixed on the gold fibers. 

 

They glow. He swears they do. 

 

“Scott,” it’s his mother’s voice. When he looks up, the attendant is gone. He was too focused to notice them leaving. 

 

When was the last time he heard his mother say his name? 

 

Her mouth twitches. It catches his eye instantly, the barest hint of expression. He has no idea what it means. “This is for you,” she continues, holding out the bundle to him. 

 

He doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t fucking want it. 

 

He barely hesitates before reaching out and taking it from her arms. There is no universe in which he could refuse a gift from his mother. 

 

It’s heavy, heavier than he expected, and when the cloth falls away, he understands why. 

 

It’s a sword, a sword that he recognises. 

 

“This is-” his mother starts. 

 

“Alinar’s sword,” Scott interrupts, against his better judgement. 

 

Alinar. Aeor’s first Champion. Alinar, with his strength and his bravery and his rune-inscribed blade. Alinar and his statue in the gardens, in direct line of sight of Scott’s window. 

 

And this is his sword, Scott knows it. It has its gold hilt and sapphire gems. The blade is the whitest silver he’s ever seen, and glowing turquoise tunes shine from the flat of it. 

 

Even being near the weapon of such a Champion should feel like a gift, an honour. 

 

It doesn’t. 

 

“Yes,” the queen responds, “you are Aeor’s Champion, following in Alinar’s footsteps. It is your birthright. This is your weapon now.” 

 

You are Aeor’s Champion, she says, and he knows this; he always has. It is a fact of his life, he has come to terms with it. 

 

He hasn’t come to terms with what it means. 

 

She tells him he is his god’s Champion, and Scott hears it as everything just below the surface. 

 

Being his Champion is the most important thing in your life. You are his Champion before you are the prince, you are his Champion before you are my son, you are his Champion before you are yourself . 

 

But, Scott is so close to himself. He can feel him, the real him, standing just out of reach, just beyond the veil. He could almost reach out and touch him. 

 

He’s trying so, so hard. And he doesn’t want to be Aeor’s Champion, he wants to be Scott, be the Scott he hasn’t quite managed to find yet. 

 

He’s not ready to let him go. 

 

He doesn’t want it, not any of it. Not the sword or the powers or the weight on his damned shoulders. 

 

He thinks of Pearl, smiling at him in the gardens. 

 

He thinks of her red cloak, and her confident walk, and the warmth of her arms when she hugs him. He thinks of how she makes him feel the safest he's ever felt. 

 

He thinks desperately of Paris, dancing recklessly under the spluttering bulbs of the inn. 

 

He thinks of the way the shadows fell across his cheekbones, of the whiteness of his teeth, of how he makes Scott feel as free as he has ever been. 

 

That is what he wants, that . 

 

His mother’s gaze is stern as she awaits a response. Her eyes are narrow slits and her lips form a straight line on her face. Her nose is the same one as Scott’s, her brow wrinkles in the same way that his does. 

 

This is the longest conversation he has had with her for as long as he can remember. 

 

“Do you accept?” she asks, and it’s not a question. 

 

“Thank you, mother,” he replies. 

 

It is not the answer she wants, but she lets him leave the room anyway.

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

An announcement is made to the entirety of Rivendell a week later. 

 

Scott stands on the town’s stage, a step behind his mother. This is his first time out of the palace grounds with her permission, and as far as she is concerned, ever.

 

His mother stands head high, back straight, her posture never wavering for a second. 

 

His own neck hurts from how long it has been stretched to its full height, his own hands shake, and his own heart beats to the rhythm of his anxiety. He envies her, whether for how unaffected she is, or how well she hides it. 

 

When she speaks to the crowd, her voice runs high and clear. “Citizens of Rivendell, it is an honour to gather you here today, a gift to hold so many generations of this land in the same court.”

 

There is a murmur of applause from the crowd. 

 

“It is on this auspicious day that I will have the privilege of presenting to you my son.” 

 

This is his cue. Scott steps forwards. He does not look at the crowd. His vest is too tight around his chest. 

 

“Scott Smajor, Crown Prince of Rivendell, First Born of Camilla III, Descendant of Alinar, Seventeenth Champion of Aeor.” 

 

A gasp goes up at Champion.

 

“He will be your ruler and your protector, he will live to serve you the people, and it is now, as he reaches his sixteenth year, that he must make his oath.”

 

Rivendell’s citizens know that there is an heir to the throne; they know that there is a prince. They know when he was born, they know that he is young. 

 

Rivendell’s citizens do not know what he looks like. 

 

The empire is strict about who enters the palace grounds, and it is even stricter on who sees its prince. 

 

This should be a moment of discovery, of shock, of revelation, and in some ways, it is. 

 

Scott, responsible in every way he has never wanted to be, looks down at the crowd. He meets the gaze of Paris, of the innkeeper, of the lady who runs the pie shop, and knows that this is his fault. 

 

He looks down and sees them recognise him, he looks down and sees their anger, he looks down and sees every precious piece of his new life crumble to dust. 

 

He lets his gaze drop, first to the stage, then to his own feet beneath him. 

 

He feels cold. Which is impossible. 

 

The words come from his lips almost unbidden, years of repetition (in his lessons, in the gardens, in his room late at night, looking his own gaunt face in the eye) making them impossible to forget. 

 

“I swear my oath to you, Rivendell, in the shadow of Alinar and the light of Aeor, in disdain for Cohnal and defiance of Exor. I will be your ruler, and I will be your Champion, I will be your protector, and I will be your confidant. Until the day that Aeor has seen it right that the last breath of air may leave my lungs, I will serve you, first as prince and then as king.” 

 

Scott breathes in. It burns. 

 

A hand lands on his shoulder, and when he looks up, it’s his mother. The Queen of Rivendell, smiling down at him. 

 

Scott’s mother has never smiled at him before, and she has certainly never touched him. 

 

It’s worse than the detached distance. At least that meant something, this disingenuous display of affection makes him want to vomit. 

 

“This is a new beginning,” she tells him. “For the both of us.” 

 

He hears her voice, filled with fake warmth she has never bothered to affect it with, and he hates her. He hates her, and he hates her, and he hates her. 

 

Scott has never hated his mother. He has loved her, and he has dismissed her, and he has feared her. He has never hated her. 

 

But now, in this moment, on this fake stage with her fake love and the oh so real people in front of him, he feels cold. He feels cold, and he hates her more than he has ever hated anyone in his life. 

 

The queen gasps softly, drawing her hand away from his shoulder quickly and dropping it to her side. 

 

Her face reads as shock, and is that… fear? It’s the most he's ever seen from her. 

 

Scott lowers his gaze to her hand, looking for some sign, some proof that something happened. 

 

The tops of her fingers are bone white, and as he watches, a deep black begins creeping in around the edges of her nails. 

 

Scott knows the signs of frostbite, he’s seen it on others more times than he can count.

 

He’s never seen it set in this quickly. 

 

Scott has never used his powers on another person. Honestly, it has never occurred to him that he could . 

 

He can’t quite bring himself to regret it. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Scott hates it when he cries. 

 

It’s always loud and messy. He can never seem to let out a single delicate tear, instead entering sobbing sessions that last hours, days sometimes, and leaves him with a headache for at least the same amount of time. 

 

He tries to limit it as much as possible, keeping track of each time. Three a month, that’s what he gets, and he has to make them worth it. 

 

This breakdown, with that goal in mind, has set itself up with the goal to absolutely ruin his week.

 

He started crying in town, which was really his first mistake. The newly announced crown prince breaking into hysterics in the middle of the road? His mother will be thrilled when she finds out.

 

The tears didn’t stop coming when he made it through the gate, or up the stairs, or into the hallways of the palace. Hours ago, when he slammed his bedroom door behind him and buried his face in his pillow, his tears became torrential, and his sobs turned into wails, and he was for once grateful that nothing and no one was anywhere near him. 

 

Scott’s room is on a side of the castle almost entirely devoid of life. The only people he sees within three turns down the corridors are Pearl and the occasional cleaner. He sometimes wonders if it’s on purpose. 

 

Now, he sits on his floor, leaning against his bed frame and watching the sun set through the open doors to his balcony. 

 

He has a headache, and his eyes are sore, but at least his cheeks are only a little wet. The pillow he clutches to his chest is helping a bit.

 

The end of your first relationship is supposed to hurt, isn’t it? Not that Scott has any real point of reference. He’s read the occasional romance novel. 

 

“Scott!” 

 

He thinks he imagines the sound for a moment. 

 

“Scott, get the fucking Aeor out here or so help me-”

 

Scott stands up, spinning in a circle uselessly. “Pearl?”

 

“Out here, dipshit!” 

 

Finally getting a read on the direction of the voice, Scott rushes to the balcony. He catches a glimpse of something and peers over the edge. 

 

It’s Pearl, clinging bafflingly to the rough cobblestones of the palace’s exterior wall. 

 

“What the fuck, Pearl?” 

 

She glares up at him, “Stop ogling and pull me up. ” 

 

Scott leans over the railing to grab onto one of Pearl’s wrists, her hand letting go of the wall to hold his as he reaches for her other arm as well. 

 

With honestly more strength than he thought he possessed, Scott manages to haul her over the railing and onto the balcony, falling backwards with the effort of it. He lands on his back, breaking Pearl’s fall as she tries her absolute best to turn him into a pancake on the floor.  

 

“I cannot believe you didn’t hear me out here.” 

 

“I can’t believe you tried to scale the palace wall!” 

 

Pearl rolls off of him, her side still squished against his. 

 

“How else was I supposed to get up? I don’t work here anymore, and they lock the place up before sunset.” 

 

“You can’t go dying on me like that.” 

 

“I wasn’t gonna die,” Pearl props herself up on one elbow and reaches to ruffle his hair. “The fall’s not that far.” 

 

Scott rolls his eyes. “Are you alright?” 

 

She smiles, “I’m good, scratched up my hands a bit and bruised my knee, but I’m good.” 

 

“Need to ice it?” Scott asks.

 

“Trying to show off?”

 

“Fine, live with your bruise.” 

 

She laughs, and he summons some for her anyway, pulling the molecules of water in the humid air into a small curved rock of ice. 

 

“Thanks,” Pearl says, sitting up too and moving to ice her knee. 

 

“It’s nothing,” Scott shrugs. 

 

“If you say so.” 

 

It’s Summer in Rivendell. This means that snow doesn’t fall, and Scott is stiflingly hot, but everyone else is still walking around in long trousers and thick undershirts. Humidity hangs thick in the air, and rain falls more often. This is amazing for his magic and horrible for just about anything else. Pearl is in a thick jumper, but he can see a sheen of sweat above her brow. The wind on the balcony feels nice against his bare legs. 

 

“I wish I had time to punch Paris before I had to scale your wall.” 

 

Scott shakes his head. “I think you probably have time to kill him and come back before it gets properly dark. I know for a fact he can’t take a hit.” 

 

“Yeah,” Pearl sighs, “I’m not making that trip again. Maybe tomorrow. Your stars look a bit too nice right now.” 

 

Scott looks up at the sky, over Pearl’s head. “They are really pretty.”

 

“You’ve got an amazing view.” 

 

“I know.” 

 

Despite his words, Scott leans forwards into Pearl, resting just his forehead on her shoulder and closing his eyes. He’s not looking at the stars anymore. 

 

“That was a dick move,” Pearl tells him, “he told me what happened when I pressured him.” 

 

“Yeah,” Scott says simply. “I guess I’m just too much. ”

 

“Is that what he said?” 

 

“I guess it was my fault for not telling him about the whole crown prince thing.”

 

Pearl’s arms encircle him. “To be honest, I kind of thought he knew.” 

 

“Yeah, so did I.” 

 

“I’m sorry, it really sucks.” 

 

Scott just shakes his head. Pearl is warm, and it’s comforting, despite the summer air. 

 

“Have you ever been in love?” He asks her, and it’s easier without the eye contact, with his gaze fixed on their crossed legs.

 

“Were you in love with him?” 

 

Scott takes a moment to think, to really consider it. “No,” he decides, “I don’t think I was. It just sucks anyway.” 

 

“That’s ok, you didn’t need to be. I get it.” 

 

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

 

“I don’t think so,” Pearl says, her voice muffled above him. 

 

Scott sits up, but he rests his hands on Pearl’s legs, keeping that point of contact. 

 

“ Think so?” 

 

Pearl shrugs, “How do you really know if you’re in love?” 

 

In books, it always feels so obvious. The oh moment, when they think back to everything leading up to this moment, when they finally realise that yes, they are in love. Thinking about it, thinking about Paris, Scott can’t help but think that it probably doesn’t work like that. 

 

Is love something that sneaks up on you? Something that you realise bit by bit? He doesn’t know. 

 

“I love you,” he tells her.

 

“That’s not the same thing,” Pearl says. “Unless you have something to tell me?” She winks at him. She doesn’t wink very often; it’s messy and unpracticed, and it makes him laugh.

 

“Have I yet to confess my raw attraction to the smell of your sweat?” 

 

Pearl fake gags, “If anyone ever says that to me, I’m punching them.”

 

“And yet here I am still standing.” 

 

“It would be unladylike to defeat such a helpless opponent.” 

 

Scott punches her in the arm. “Hey! I’m totally stronger than you.” 

 

Pearl rolls her eyes. “By virtue of being a teenage boy. Doesn’t mean you could beat me in a fight. When was the last time you went to your training?” 

 

“I will turn you into an ice cube.” 

 

Pearl smiles at him, “You wouldn’t dare. You’d miss me too much.”

 

Scott smiles back. “I’d miss you too much,” he concedes.

 

Pearl moves away from him, but only so that she can lay down on her back again, looking up at the stars. “Lay down with me, you sap.”

 

Scott does, resting his back once more against the stone floor. He presses his and Pearl’s arms together. The stars really are nice tonight. 

 

“You never told me about who you were in love with.” 

 

“ Maybe in love with.” 

 

“Tell me about them.” 

 

“I had a friend when I lived at Crystal Cliffs.” 

 

“Yeah?”

 

“She was my best friend. I haven’t talked to her since I moved here.” She takes a breath. “I miss her sometimes.”

 

Scott stays silent as Pearl pauses for a long moment.

 

“I don’t think I loved her.” 

 

“But?” Scott grabs her hand, and her fingers intertwine with his. 

 

“But I think I could have.”

Notes:

featuring... gempearl! (I do jazz hands)

I hope you enjoyed :)

Chapter 8: to start anew

The coronation takes place three days after the funeral. 

 

It’s a stiff affair, with scratchy clothing and too many old people talking for Jimmy’s taste. 

 

Lizzie stands on the dais in a long dress, a priest stands before her, reciting verse from a book of hymns. Two guards, each dressed in bright green garb, stand at her sides, holding ropes leading to the ceiling above Lizzie’s head. 

 

The audience is large and varied, though the church in which the coronation is held is small. Many regular citizens of the Ocean Empire stand outside its walls, spreading out to cover the entire island, but inside sit not only important members of the Ocean Empire’s court, but foreign ambassadors and royalty as well. 

 

He notices the avian king off to the side, two of BEST’s three eastern ambassadors, the fur cloaked ruler of the Lost Empire. 

 

Jimmy had almost laughed when he saw that the high elf and wood elf kingdoms had been seated next to each other, apparently both seated one row back from the front after jostling for the prime position. He watches as the two queens sneak glances at each other, seemingly paying even less attention to the proceedings than Jimmy is. 

 

The wood elf, dressed in shades of green and gold, is the queen of the Vex Kingdom. She has six children, Jimmy knows from his classes, and it appears that she has brought one of them along with her. It’s a young boy, maybe ten or eleven. He’s dressed in the same colours as his mother, and when he turns his head, Jimmy can see a long scar across one of his cheekbones. 

 

Next to him, working, be it unintentionally, to separate their mothers, is the Rivendellian prince of the high elves. 

 

He’s dressed in the blues and whites of his kingdom and has his hands clasped neatly in his lap. Unlike the Vex prince, who shuffles in his seat, turning to look around the room and glance between the two queens, he stays perfectly still, staring straight ahead. Jimmy doesn’t even think he’s looking at Lizzie on the dais. Just at the spot on the wall directly ahead of him. He wonders, vaguely, if he’s ok.  

 

Tango’s elbow digs into Jimmy’s side. 

 

“Focus.” His voice is harsh but when Jimmy looks over he’s smiling. “Liz will kill you if you don’t watch her become queen.”

 

And, right. How could Jimmy have ever wondered about that elven boy when Tango is right next to him, real and smiling, and his best friend who he might just have gotten back?

 

It still feels like a dream. Even days later. Even in the wake of the deepest loss he’s ever experienced, he feels as though he has managed to catch happiness in the palm of his hand. Because he’s here, Tango . The boy who Jimmy’s life had revolved around almost as long as he can remember, who he lost so completely it felt like a death. He’s half convinced that he’ll blink and Tango will be back on the other side of the room, guarding the perimeter. Clad in his impenetrable armour, gaze fixed directly ahead in a line just as stubborn as his thick chest plate. 

 

Jimmy had hated it, how strange he looked, how distant. Almost as much as he had hated the very physical distance between them. 

 

Jimmy isn’t sure Tango has left his side since the funeral, actually, and he certainly hasn’t tried to reinstate that crushing distance. So he should really have gotten used to him by now. 

 

The consistent closeness shouldn’t have been possible, what with his whole guarding thing now. But, strangely, a messenger from Tango’s captain had come for him in Jimmy’s rooms the morning after the funeral, letting Tango know he had a little time off. 

Jimmy had woken groggily to a steady knock on the door. He lay curled in a ball, almost horizontal on the bed, face pressed into Tango’s neck. The clock on the wall told him that it was late morning. 

 

Jimmy rolled over and sat up, stretching. The bed creaked, and the knocking picked up. He stood, slowly, making his way to the door. Upon opening it, he found a tall man in a messenger’s brown garb. 

 

Jimmy leaned against the door frame. “Hi?” 

 

“Is this…” the messenger tried to look around him, Jimmy moved to stand in his way. “Is Tango here?” 

 

“Do you know him?” 

 

“No, I’ve been sent by the captain of the guard. I have a message for him. I was told he might be here.” 

 

Told by who?

 

Jimmy didn’t ask the question. “I can take a message.” 

 

“I don’t-”

 

“Look, I’m the prince, aren’t I? My father just died, my sister will become queen in two days. I’m technically the first in line for the throne now. I think you have to listen to me at least a little bit. Just give me the message.” 

 

The messenger’s face flattens. “The captain of the guard would like to tell him that he has the rest of the week off.” 

 

“It’s Sunday.” 

 

“Monday, actually.” 

 

The messenger was right, of course. “I’ll tell him.” 

 

“Ok,” the messenger took a step back. “Thank you.” 

 

“You’re welcome,” Jimmy said, and closed the door on him. 

 

He didn’t step away from the door, just stood there and took a deep breath. He tilted forwards and leant his forehead against the lacquered wood. 

 

“What was that about?” Tango’s voice echoed from behind him, startling Jimmy into spinning around. 

 

“Oh, hi.” 

 

Tango was smiling, his grown out hair falling in his face. It was big, and puffed out, and a little adorable. Tango, Tango , was in his bed. 

 

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Tango said. 

 

“Oh, no,” Jimmy said. “It’s ok.”

 

“Yeah?” Tango scratched at the back of his neck, and Jimmy’s eyes got caught on the way his arm moved. He looked so much different than before. So much more grown. Jimmy had seen him from a distance, of course. Sometimes. But in that moment, so close, it felt as though he were seeing an entirely new person. 

 

“So?” Tango asked eventually. “Who was it?” 

 

Jimmy walked across the room to sit down beside him, leaving his legs flung over the edge of the bed. “A messenger. For you actually.” 

 

Tango raised his eyebrows. “For me?” 

 

“Yeah, I- ah. Your captain, she gave you the rest of the week off.” 

 

“But it’s Monday. I haven’t even started.” 

 

“That’s what the messenger said.” 

 

“Ok,” Tango shrugged. He leaned back against the pillows, arms stretching over his head, and why couldn’t Jimmy stop bloody watching him? “I’m not complaining.” 

And so now he stands by Jimmy’s side, not even in his armour, turning back to watch as Jimmy’s sister puts her hand over the book held by the priest, and turns to her watchful audience. Citizens and abassators alike. 

 

“I, Elizabeth of the Ocean Empire, swear to rule you fairly, and with my best intentions. I swear to feed you, and clothe you in times of need, and I swear to help you prosper in times of wealth. I swear to respect you, and listen to you, and I swear to become your queen for as long as you shall let me.” 

 

She looks up as if to the sky, raising her hands above her head, and stands. She is the picture of royalty as the guards release their ropes, and a waterfall of holy sea water crashes down upon her head. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

The wedding is set to happen as quickly as possible after the coronation. 

 

It’s something about other empires taking their queen more seriously when married. Something about Mezalea wanting to secure an alliance. Something about wanting to raise the spirits of the Ocean Empire’s citizens. 

 

It's also, as Lizzie tells Jimmy, squirrelled away in the castle’s second smallest drawing room, that she and Joel just want to get married. Which makes sense. 

 

Invitations have to be sent out, and a nation has to prepare for their Queen’s wedding, so in the end it takes nearly a year for the date to arrive. 

 

In the meantime, Lizzie moves into their father’s rooms, and does paperwork, and organises alliance meetings, and goes on lengthy trips to visit the outer reaches of the empire, and does more paperwork. She sets herself up an office and has two full time messengers on staff. Jimmy doesn’t get to see her much, and he wishes she gave herself a break sometimes. But, Lizzie has been trained for this her entire life, and, slowly but surely, the empire gets better. 

 

A few months after her coronation, Lizzie sends one of her messengers for Jimmy, and he arrives in her office to a question. 

 

“What are we doing about your birthday?” 

 

Jimmy has never been given a choice. 

 

“Do you have something in mind?” He asks. 

 

“Not yet.”

 

“Do you need a publicity stunt?” 

 

“The wedding is enough right now.” 

 

“Then, nothing.” 

 

“Ok,” Lizzie says, “sounds good.” Jimmy watches as she scribbles her signature on a sheet of paper and hands it to him. “Can you do me a favour and give this to Tango when you see him? It’s for Lenore, she’ll actually read it if it’s coming from him.”

 

Jimmy hesitates, “That’s it? I don’t have to do anything for my birthday?” 

 

Lizzie shrugs, already with her head down in another pile of papers. “Not if you don’t want to, we don’t need it right now.” 

 

Jimmy leaves the office smiling, and, two weeks later, very quietly turns sixteen. 

When the date of the wedding rolls around, the actual event is hair raisingly formal, the highly official coronation all over again. He knows that Lizzie hates it almost as much as he does. He wonders, as she passes him down the aisle, how she puts up with the dress that seems to be limiting even her ability to walk in it. 

 

And yet, as Joel stands at the front, looking at her, there is such love in his eyes that Jimmy wants to cry. He feels a sharp pang of jealousy pierce his chest. He’s not quite sure what for. 

 

The after party also isn’t for him, which is ok. It’s not for Lizzie either. It feels just like every other official event, every other networking opportunity. 

 

He supposes it needs to be, but it makes him a little sad anyway. 

 

At least he has Tango by his side, for once a guest instead of a guard, dressed almost as formally as Jimmy is. He looks nice, even stuffed into an uncomfortable suit. 

 

Tango leans into Jimmy, “Hey, I want to introduce you to someone.” 

 

Tango guides him through the crowd, dodging waiters and nobles and the occasional ostentatiously decorated table. He reaches a lady in a long robe, her curly red hair making her stand out in the crowd. 

 

Tango taps her on the shoulder. “Boo.”

 

She turns, putting her hand to her chest in mock surprise and gasping theatrically. “Tango! You’re terrifying.” She doesn’t look too much older than them, with a friendly, open face and a wide smile. 

 

“I know,” he says, “I gain power by the day.” She laughs and he hugs her, and Jimmy feels jealous at their closeness, even as Tango has been by his side the whole evening. 

 

“Jimmy,” Tango says, turning to him, “I would like you to meet Wizard Gem.” 

 

Oh.

 

Jimmy smiles at her, “It’s great to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much.” 

 

“Not as much as I have, I can assure you.” Gem gestures at Tango with her thumb, “I’ve never been able to make him shut up about you.” 

 

Jimmy elects not to ask if this extends to when he and Tango were decidedly not talking. 

 

“I’ve never been able to make him shut up about anything .” 

 

Tango elbows him in the side. He could make it hurt if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. “I can’t believe I introduce you two only so you can insult me to my face.”

 

Jimmy turns his head to look at him, and is happy to see how large his smile has grown. How happy he is. 

 

Jimmy had been worried, almost a year ago now, that after the week after the funeral ended, he and Tango would go back to how they were. Without Tango’s time off, without the all encompassing numbness of Jimmy’s grief. 

 

With Tango so busy, and him so achingly not . 

 

Tango had come to him at the end of the week, the day before he went back to work, with a suggestion. 

 

“We should do a thing.” 

 

“A thing?” Jimmy had been sitting next to him at the docks, trying to get some fresh air for once, trying not to cry in public. 

 

“Yeah, we should do a thing every week. Like going somewhere and having lunch together, or sitting down here, or I don’t know, going for a walk.” 

 

Jimmy looks at him. “But we’re already doing all those things?” 

 

Tango shrugs, “But one day we might not.” 

 

So, every week they do a thing. Last week, they learnt how to make kelp rolls from scratch. 

 

They’ve been good at it, making time for each other, and Jimmy has finally stopped feeling like Tango is just a mirage in front of him, stopped feeling like he’s waiting for him to disappear. 

 

Gem is nice, and she’s fun, and she has a ridiculously cool staff that at one point in the night, she lets Jimmy hold. She uses magic to cool down Tango’s drink when his body heat warms it up, and the second time around, accidentally on purpose, turns it into a block of ice. 

 

Jimmy laughs when Tango jumps at the sudden chill, almost sending the glass straight to the floor. He understands why he likes her. 

 

After the party ends, they drag Gem with them to Lizzie’s new rooms as queen. Joel is already there, lying on the floor and arguing with Pix, the long time ruler of Pixandria and Joel’s best man. Jimmy hasn’t spoken to him, but Joel speaks highly of him, and Jimmy believes him. 

 

He, Tango, and Gem collapse on one of the couches. Gem strips off her robe, and Jimmy sees a kind of knit jumpsuit underneath. It looks much more comfortable than anything the rest of them are wearing. 

 

“Aha!” Tango sits up straight. “So that’s what you were hiding under there.” 

 

“You say it like it’s some big secret,” Gem says. “I like to be comfy.” 

 

“It’s cheating, is what it is,” says Jimmy.

 

“When you learn magic, you can walk around in a big mysterious robe and wear pyjamas underneath,” she pokes him with her toe, having kicked off her heeled boots. 

 

“Do I count?” Tango asks, “Have I reached that level in my training, oh tutor?” 

 

“Give it a couple more years.” 

 

Lizzie joins them a few minutes later, bringing two friends with her. And maybe they’re all royalty (apart from Tango, he supposes, but as far as Jimmy’s concerned, he counts), but they’re also teenagers who just went to, or even hosted, a wedding with the worst after party imaginable. 

 

Lizzie, queen of the Ocean Empire, pulls out the worst alcohol that Jimmy has ever tasted (for the ‘aesthetic’) and swears to him that this is the only time she will ever let him drink in front of her. 

 

By the time it’s beginning to get light outside and Joel has fallen sound asleep on Lizzie’s lap, Jimmy is feeling a good deal happier about the wedding. Gem left hours ago, sighting her strong commitment to never staying up past 2am, and Jimmy is drifting in and out of consciousness against Tango’s side.

 

A hand taps his shoulder, and Jimmy groggily looks up at the face above him. Tango’s eyes are half closed, but he’s smiling.

 

“Hey, we should go.”

 

Jimmy blinks at him. “What time is it?” 

 

“Three.” 

 

Jimmy groans, but when Tango stands up he follows him, feeling his friend’s tail push against his lower back to steady him. It’s comforting. 

 

Jimmy wraps an arm around Tango’s shoulders and lets him lead him, half closing his eyes and doing everything short of letting sleep take him. 

 

“Your room, right?” Tango asks.

 

“Mhm,” Jimmy says. 

 

It’s further from Lizzie’s than it used to be, but still not that far. Just down a flight of stairs and around the corner. 

 

It’s at the bottom of the stairs that Jimmy trips. He steps off the last stair and his ankle twists on him, sending him stumbling into Tango, who falls backwards into the wall behind him. 

 

“Sorry,” he says, laughing at their proximity. “Accident.” 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Tango stumbles backwards into the wall and lands with Jimmy’s forearms bracketing his head. Close, close, close.

 

“Sorry,” Jimmy laughs. “Accident.” 

 

Tango can feel the brush of Jimmy’s hair against his neck as he ducks his head down in the motion, and when he looks back up, Tango can’t stop looking at his lips. 

 

They’re pink, spread widely in a smile. His teeth are white, his pointed canines digging into his lip just a little when his face relaxes.  

 

And why can’t he stop looking? Why can’t he push Jimmy off him? Why can’t he laugh and move and forget this? 

 

Why is he frozen to the spot, eyes fixed on his best friend's lips?

 

Oh. 

 

Tango wants to kiss him. He is looking at his pink lips and his red cheeks and his brown eyes, and he wants to kiss him. 

 

Tango has never wanted to kiss anyone in his life. 

 

It had occurred to him, months ago, when two of the guards in training were caught making out in the change rooms, and a lady with a bun had been called to give them a talk about ‘relations,’ that maybe he should. Maybe that was something that should be important to him. 

 

But he had Jimmy, he had just gotten him back. And when he sat with him at dinner that night, staring across the table at his wide smile, he had thought that this would be everything he would ever need.

 

There has never been space for more than one person in Tango’s heart, and for as long as he can remember, that space has been taken up by the boy in front of him. 

 

He hadn’t needed to have anyone he wanted to kiss, because he had Jimmy, who was already everything else. 

 

Jimmy pushes off the wall and away from Tango, stumbling as he does. Tango grabs his shoulder on instinct, steadying him. 

 

The contact burns. 

 

Tango is entirely immune to fire; he, objectively, factually , cannot be burned. He’s tested it in every circumstance. And yet, right there, his fingertips against Jimmy’s arm, it’s on fire. 

 

Jimmy speaks, and Tango doesn’t hear it, but when he starts walking down the hall, Tango follows, if only to keep contact. 

 

He still wants to kiss him. 

 

His eyes dart from Jimmy’s nose to his chest to the length of his arms. He watches his face move as he speaks, and his legs move as he walks, and feels the way that every familiar motion fills up his heart.

 

He still wants to kiss him. 

 

He thinks about the sound of his laugh, and his voice when he’s excited, and the feeling of sitting next to him on the couch. He thinks about holding him as he cries, and seeing how many marshmallows they can stuff in their mouths, and hearing Jimmy’s horrible, horrible voice trying to sing in the morning. 

 

He thinks and he thinks and he still wants to kiss him. 

 

He thinks about how it would feel, Jimmy’s lips against his own, his hands in his hair, their bodies pressed together, and only has to put effort into imagining one part of it. 

 

It’s nice, it’s perfect, and he still wants it. He still wants to kiss him. 

 

Jimmy stops at the door to his room and turns around to face Tango, meeting his gaze. 

 

“You sleeping over?” he asks. 

 

Which is stupid, because of course Tango is. He didn't have to ask. 

 

Jimmy’s smile says he knows. 

 

Tango still likes to be asked, and, as he closes the door behind them, he still wants to kiss him. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Tango realises, lying in his bed in the barracks two weeks after the royal wedding, that he doesn’t really have many friends. 

 

He has Jimmy, who is huge and vibrant, and the sun that Tango’s solar system revolves around. But Jimmy has always been so much of him that he hasn’t known how to have anyone else. 

 

He has the other guards, who are nice, who are friendly. He doesn’t think he could call them his friends. He has Lizzie and Joel, but they have always been older, and more Jimmy’s than his in the end anyways. 

 

The only person who is really and truly his is Gem. 

 

Their sessions have been getting fewer and farther between, and he saw her two weeks ago, but he still thinks he misses her. 

Two years ago, Gem gave Tango a sending stone. It was a pale blue-grey, looking exactly like a normal if pretty rock one would find at the bottom of a river. 

 

How it works, she told him, was that if you held it up to your mouth and whispered into it the name of the person with the other stone, they would hear what you said. 

 

Tango, for lack of better words, sends her a message. 

 

“Gem?” He asks in a voice quite a bit louder than a whisper. “Gem? Can you hear me?” 

 

“Yes, Tango, I’m here.” Gems' voice resonates from the stone, clear, even as it sounds a little muffled, as if she were on the other side of a wall. 

 

“Hi,” he says. 

 

“Hi.” 

 

Tango is sitting on the ground, leaning against his bottom bunk in the barracks. It’s the middle of the day and everyone else is is out, enjoying the sunshine. He leans his head back against his thin mattress and closes his eyes. 

 

“I miss you,” he tells her. 

 

“You saw me at the wedding last month.” 

 

“Shut up, I didn’t come here to be insulted.” 

 

He can almost hear her rolling her eyes. “I’m not insulting you, idiot. I miss you too, obviously. I just don’t know why this is when you’ve chosen to use the stone. I nearly forgot I gave it to you.” 

 

“I think you’re my only friend.” Unlike his calling of her name, these words are a whisper. 

 

“Tango,” Gem’s voice is lighter than it was, almost purposefully so, “I hate to break it to you, but Jimmy is definitely your friend.” 

 

“Yeah, but-”

 

“Are you guys fighting again?” 

 

“We were never fighting.”

 

“You weren’t not fighting.”

 

“Jimmy’s different,” Tango says, “he’s my friend. He’s amazing and awesome, and he’s-” Tango cuts himself off. 

 

“He’s your best friend.” 

 

“I think I’m in love with him.” 

 

He hears a sharp intake of breath through the stone. “How are we feeling about that?” 

 

Tango shrugs before he realises she can’t see him, “It’s kind of a lot right now. I only just figured it out.” 

 

“I mean,” Gem says, “you guys are like freakishly close. Are you sure you- you like like him?” 

 

“You know how you were telling me about FWhip’s experimental method?” 

 

It was ages ago. Gem’s brother Fwhip had been visiting the Crystal Cliffs, and she had been telling Tango, who had a vested interest in anything explosive, how she was making sure that the Crystal Cliff’s inherent magic didn’t react negatively with his demolitions.

 

“Not really.” 

 

“That’s fine,” Tango says, “but I’ve been experimenting.” 

 

“Experimenting?”

 

The wooden slats of the bunk above Tango are rough and textured. He knows from experience that touching them is a sure way to get a painful splinter. 

 

“I went swimming with him, I sparred with him,” Tango begins listing on his fingers, even knowing that Gem can’t see. “I looked at him when he had just woken up, and I talked to him on one of his pissy days. I’ve seen him wet and sweaty and tired and irritable, and every time I’ve still loved him.” 

 

There’s a half laugh in Gem’s voice when she speaks, “And that’s your formula for love?” 

 

“Can you think of a better one?” 

 

Gem is silent for a long moment, and Tango doesn’t really mind. He begins counting the bunk’s slats and then counting the knots in the wood. 

 

“Can you imagine being happy without him in your life?” 

 

“I really don’t think that’s a good formula.” 

 

“Why not?”

 

“I mean,” Tango starts, “could you imagine being happy without your brother? Maybe, I don’t know, I don’t have siblings.” 

 

Gem sighs. 

 

“I have never lived a life without Jimmy in it. I don’t know if I can imagine living without him, let alone being happy. I don’t think that determines whether I’m in love with him or not.” 

 

“I guess not,” Gem agrees. 

 

“What did you call us? Freakishly close?” 

 

“You are,” she says. “That’s not really a bad thing.” 

 

“Liz called us codependent.”

 

“I haven’t been around you both that much, T, but hearing you talk about him…” 

 

“Yeah, I know.” 

 

“So,” Gem says after a moment, “what are you gonna do about it?”

 

Tango almost laughs. “Nothing, obviously. What is there to do?” 

 

“I mean, he might feel the same.” 

 

“Maybe,” Tango agrees, “but he also might not. You asked if I could have a happy life without him in it.” 

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“I,” Tango takes a breath, “I really don’t know. And I’m not willing to take the risk.” 

 

“So you’re just going to sit on this?” 

 

“I’m happy, Gem,” he says emphatically, “I’m actually, genuinely so so happy. I don’t need him to love me back if it means I get to keep him. As long as he’s a guarantee instead of a maybe, I’m happy where I am.” 

 

He hears Gem inhale through the stone, there are eight slats, six knots, and thirty two chips in the bunk. 

 

“You know,” she says, “being in love with Jimmy really isn’t helping your whole only having one friend thing.”

 

Tango smiles, “I guess not.” 

 

“You should really get on that, I’m sure there are people who would want to know you.” 

 

“I,” Tango sighs. “I know this sounds a bit pessimistic, but I really don’t think anyone ever got past the whole me being a blaze thing.” 

 

Gem scoffs, “What do you mean got past it?”

 

“People were really shitty about it when I was a kid. Like, really really shitty. They’ve gotten nicer, I’ve been here for so long. But like I’m the best in my age group at short range melee, and I’m still only known cause I’ve got a tail and red eyes.” 

 

“Tango,” Gem says. “Granted, I don’t know anyone else with a tail and red eyes, but I do know dozens of people with tails, even ones like yours, and quite a few magic users with red eyes. You really aren’t that weird.” 

 

“I know Gem, it’s really nice to hear. Anyway, some people are nice.” 

 

“That’s good,” she says. 

 

There’s a long moment of silence.

 

“Hey, Tango?”

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Do you think they’d let you visit me at the Cliffs?” 

 

Tango huffs, “ They is Lizzie now, dude. I bet someone could convince her.” 

 

“Great,” and he knows Gem is smiling, “there’s this cafe I know you’d love.” 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Tango graduates into a full time guard only a few months after the wedding.  

 

He stands on a dais in front of a crowd of people and is the absolute center of attention. It’s terrifying, and he doesn’t envy Jimmy and Lizzie for having to get used to it. 

 

Lenore, awarding the qualification, calls his name, and he steps forward, into the limelight. She shakes his hand, giving him his medal with the other. Under the watchful gaze of their audience, she leans in to whisper to him. 

 

“I’m so proud of you.” 

 

He steps away, walking to the other side of the stage with the rest of the graduates. When he wipes his eyes, he only hopes it doesn’t seem out of place. 

Tango has only been a guard for a year when the whispers start. The ones about Lenore’s looming retirement, the ones about her potential successor. They call it personal bias, unfair favoritism. 

 

Tango thinks they’re probably right.

 

The fact remains that she wants him to succeed her, to become head of the royal guard. Or at least that’s what he’s heard, it’s still a rumour after all. 

When Jimmy turns eighteen, he starts going on trips. Some of them are just for a day, occasionally they go for weeks at a time. He says they’re for diplomacy, a necessary evil. Lizzie can’t be everywhere after all.

 

Tango tries to stay busy when he’s away. 

 

Mostly, Jimmy complains about the retinue sent along with him. The one Lizzie sends for his safety. He doesn’t like them following him, doesn't like being so close with people he doesn’t know, doesn’t like that they don’t want to know him. 

 

“Do you have to have a whole lot of guards?” Tango asks once, lying in the grass of the gardens, head pillowed on Jimmy’s thigh. 

 

It’s a good feeling. The time they carve out of their busy schedules to spend together. Especially if he ignores how nice it feels each time Jimmy’s hand runs through his hair, how much he wants him to touch him in other places as well. 

 

Jimmy sighs, looking up at the sky above them. The movement exposes the Adam's Apple in the long line of his neck. “I mean, some of the time it’s smaller trips, and I think they could let me just bring one or two people on that.” Jimmy looks back down at him, “Liz says she might be getting me a proper bodyguard.”

 

Tango raises his eyebrows, “A bodyguard?” 

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy shrugs with clearly put-on nonchalance. “Someone permanent. I think she means at home too, not just while out.” 

 

Tango stiffens, fighting the urge to sit up, “A bodyguard here ?”

 

“I’m first in line, T. You know this.” 

 

“Of course I do,” he says, a little harshly. 

 

Jimmy’s hand stills in his hair. “And she worries about me. So do you.” 

 

Tango sighs, “I guess so.” 

 

“It’s not a horrible idea, it would make Liz feel better anyway.” 

 

“Would they have to be around you all the time?” 

 

“Most of it.” 

 

Tango looks up at Jimmy. The sun behind his head kind of looks like a halo. 

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Jimmy smiles. He looks sad.  

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Tango knows he’s being selfish, is the thing. 

 

His love for Jimmy is a backing track to his life. A hum in his ear of oh Jimmy’s hair looks nice today, oh I love the way he laughs, oh yes, it would be awfully nice right now to fall asleep with my head in his lap. 

 

It’s ok, it’s nice even. Tango doesn’t mind. It’s almost comforting, having something that matters to him so much. 

 

He’ll never tell Jimmy, of course. He’s lost him once and he’s never going to let that happen again. 

 

Tango is exactly where he wants to be. He is happier than he could ever imagine possible. One, tiny, insignificant improvement (that, he reassures himself, really is so small he barely notices its absence), isn’t worth risking everything over. 

 

And he’s fine, he is. 

 

Tango loves Jimmy, and Jimmy loves him back, and the fact that it’s in a different way is entirely beside the point. 

 

But he’s allowed to be jealous, ok?

 

So, when he finds himself knocking on the door to Lizzie’s office, he knows it isn’t with the purest intentions in the world, but he also isn’t doubting himself one bit.

 

“Come in.” 

 

Tango steps inside, closing the door behind him, perhaps a little more gently than his churning emotions urge him to. Lizzie is sitting behind her desk, scribbling something on a notepad, but when she sees it’s Tango, she sets down her pen and takes off her glasses. 

 

“Tango,” she says, sounding a little surprised. “Are you here for Lenore?” 

 

“I’m-” he stutters for a moment. “Well, I’m here for me.” 

 

Lizzie nods. Her hair is tied up on top of her head in a way it rarely is, but he finds that the whole messy bun thing looks good on her. 

 

“I want to be Jimmy’s bodyguard.” 

 

Lizzie crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair. She gestures to the chair in front of her desk, and Tango takes a seat. “Jimmy told you about it?” 

 

Before Tango can speak, Lizzie answers her own question, reaching a hand to massage her temple, “Who am I kidding? Of course he did. You know that was more of a hypothetical, right? It’s not a guarantee.” 

 

Tango looks at her, “I still mean it, I still think I should be his bodyguard. I’m well trained, I’m around him enough anyway, it really wouldn’t-” 

 

Lizzie holds her hand up, “You don’t have to make your case to me, Tango. You’re probably the ideal candidate to be honest. I just need to make sure you know what you’re signing up for.” 

 

Tango’s mouth has fallen open in shock, just a little. “Ideal candidate?” 

 

Lizzie raises her eyebrows at him. “If anyone loves my brother as much as I do, it’s you, Tango. You are the only person I know, apart from myself, who doesn’t need the job of bodyguard to die for him.” 

 

She’s right. Lizzie is one hundred percent totally and completely right. That doesn’t make it any easier to reply. 

 

“And,” Lizzie says as she picks up her pen again to jot something down on the notepad, “you, of course, have all the required qualifications.” 

 

“What are the qualifications?” 

 

Lizzie flips over her pad and grabs a page from a stack of files next to her. She begins reading a list. 

 

“As far as combat goes, you would need to be trained in shortsword, longsword, bow, crossbow, two-handed dagger, and spear fighting. You would also need to have passed second-level martial and self-defence training, which you have.” Lizzie looks up at him. “Of course, these qualifications are relatively easy to find at least in the royal guard, but you must also be qualified in table manners, body language, and speech patterns in a variety of environments, and diplomatic terminology. While you don’t have the official qualifications a guard would need, I think that both Jimmy and I can vouch for you.” 

 

Tango looks at her, “I think you might be overestimating my conversational ability. I’m not sure Jimmy knows diplomatic terminology .” 

 

Lizzie rolls her eyes, “Well, we’re working on that, aren’t we? The point is that you know how to act around royalty.”

 

“More or less.”

 

Lizzie looks at him. 

 

“More.”

 

She nods and continues speaking, “Past that, there’s typical posture training which I know you’ve got covered, us confirming both that you’re literate and have a basic understanding of our relations with other empires, and the candidacy interview with both me and Jimmy.” 

 

“Is that this?” 

 

“No, but I’m queen and I think I get to say it is. It’s basically to make sure both of us actually like you, and I think we’re probably good on that front.” She smiles at him. 

 

“You sure?” Tango jokes, “There’s no deep hatred you’ve yet to reveal?” 

 

“None deep enough to stop you from potentially saving my brother’s life, I can assure you.” 

 

“So?” Tango asks. “Is that it? Am I in?”

 

Lizzie sighs, “In theory, yes.” 

 

“In theory?” 

 

Lizzie leans forwardz over her desk to look him in the eye. 

 

Tango often thinks that Lizzie looks very queenly. During her coronation, her wedding, whenever she’s talking to a crowd, even here in this room, sitting behind her desk with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

 

He finds it hard to separate in his mind the Lizzie that is the queen, his queen, and the Lizzie that is not only his best friend’s sister, but very nearly his own by extension. 

 

He always misses the moment, the second where her presence switches over from commanding to comforting, when she stops being so on top of everything thrown at her, to sit at the bottom of the ever growing pile of to-dos, looking up at it with him. 

 

He misses the switch this time as well, but he knows that one moment she is his queen behind her desk, and the next she is his friend across the table from him. 

 

“Are you sure this is what you want, Tango?”

 

“Yes,” he says, unhesitating.

 

“Are you sure? ” She presses. “You know Lenore wants you to be captain, she’s told you, hasn’t she?” 

 

“Not in as many words. But, yes.” 

 

He knows that she’s getting older and that she needs a successor. He knows that she cares about him, that she believes in him. He knows that on that stage, when she had whispered I’m proud of you, she had meant it. He knows that for what feels like his whole life, he has been chasing this goal that is just now within reach. He knows that choosing this path would throw it away forever. 

 

He also knows that Jimmy matters more to him than anything else in the world.

 

“I’m sure, Lizzie,” he tells her, “I’m sure.” 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

As it turns out, Lizzie is remarkably quick with the organisation of Tango’s approaching shift in role.

 

So quick that Jimmy finds out far, far quicker than Tango expected him to. 

 

Tango is training when it happens, sparring with Jules in short-range spear and shield combat. They’re better than him, but not by much.

 

He doesn’t know when Jimmy got there, but just as Jules makes a stab for his chest, Tango catches sight of him. It distracts him, and he doesn’t move his shield up to block. They’re not sparring with extensive armour or blunted weapons, and Jules is forced to flinch to the side, their spear ricocheting off the side of his shield instead of impaling him through the heart. 

 

“Tango!” They say, dropping their spear to the ground so they can throw a hand up in the air. “What happened? Why didn’t you block?” 

 

They follow his gaze over their shoulder to where Jimmy stands, leaning faux casually against one the the palace walls. 

 

“Seriously?” 

 

Tango ignores their eye roll. “Sorry, can I take five?” 

 

Jules reaches down to retrieve their spear. “Go ahead.” 

 

Tango retreats to the racks to hang up his equipment and resists the urge to attempt to pull his hair out of a bun on top of his head. 

 

Though Jimmy refused, he had found someone who, first, didn’t flinch when they met Tango’s red eyes, and two, had some idea of how to cut hair. 

 

It had been fine, Tango had only gritted his teeth through half of it. Now, his hair is much shorter. He’s not used to it at all, although he’s glad it’s off his neck now. 

 

When he wakes up in the morning, it sticks up in spikes on top of his head. Jimmy told him it looked cute, he tries not to think about that too much. 

 

As Tango approaches him, Jimmy’s expression doesn’t change, which sets him a little on edge. 

 

Jimmy is barefoot, as usual, wearing long linen pants and a short-sleeved shirt. He’s got a bracelet on today, one of those cuffs that clips up just a bit looser than your wrist. 

 

He looks nice. 

 

“Hey,” Tango says. 

 

“Hi.” Jimmy doesn’t elaborate.

 

“Is anything… the matter?” 

 

“I-” Jimmy takes a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

 

Ahh. Shit. 

 

Tango, more out of shock than anything, doesn’t reply immediately. 

 

“I mean, I guess it’s just that I don’t get it,” Jimmy starts. “Like, ok, makes sense. You’re qualified, you’re my best friend, Liz likes you. And like, I told you I needed a bodyguard, being like hint hint you know?” 

 

“You did? ” 

 

“But why the hell didn’t you tell me, Tango?” 

 

“I-”

 

“You could have been like, hey Jimmy, what do you think about this? And I would have been like oh my goodness, Tango, that sounds amazing. But instead, you sneak off to see my sister in the middle of the bloody night.” 

 

“It was not the middle of the night.” 

 

Jimmy glares at him, Tango shuts up. 

 

“And you don’t even tell me! Instead, I found out from a confirmation letter I had to sign. You get that, right? Instead of you telling me you signed up to essentially be stitched to me, a piece of paperwork did.” 

 

“To clarify,” Tango starts. When Jimmy doesn’t interrupt him, he continues. “You’re not mad that I want to become your bodyguard. You’re mad that I didn’t tell you first?” 

 

“Why the hell would I be mad that you want to be my bodyguard?” 

 

“I don’t know!” The words come out much louder than Tango meant them to, and he winces. Jimmy looks over Tango’s shoulder at something and Tango turns to see some of the other guards looking at them. 

 

Tango reaches to grab Jimmy’s wrist, pulling him around a corner and out of sight. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I did it super impulsively, and I didn’t think Lizzie would tell you so quickly.” 

 

“I really don’t like that you didn’t talk to me about it first. I could have had an issue with it, or there could have been something wrong. I don’t, and there’s not, to be clear.” Jimmy leans against a wall and runs his hand through his hair. “But it would have been nice.” 

 

Tango crosses his arms, more protectively than anything. “I know. It was stupid of me. It was a really big thing, and we should have talked about it first.” 

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy sighs. 

 

“Yeah,” Tango says. “I’m sorry.” 

 

“It’s ok.” Jimmy leans off the wall, holding out his arms towards Tango. 

 

Tango uncrosses his arms and, only a little stiffly, moves to hug his best friend. When he stretches, his chin fits just perfectly over Jimmy’s shoulder, the other man’s hair soft against his temple. It’s nice, it’s familiar. It only hurts a little. 

 

He feels Jimmy exhale into his hair. “I’m really glad you signed up to be my bodyguard, Tango. I’m really glad it’s you.” 

 

“You haven’t gotten sick of me yet?” 

 

Jimmy half laughs, “I would have told you by now, wouldn't I?” 

 

“Maybe I’m overestimating your patience.” 

 

“Maybe.” 

 

There’s a long pause. Tango hears the sounds of the other guard’s sparring around the corner, sees the darkness of his closed eyelids, feels warm wind against his legs, and the sensation of his own breathing. 

 

“I’m glad too,” he tells Jimmy. “I’m really, really glad.”  

Notes:

kisses and hugs, a lot of things coming together in this one!! huge thanks to kiwi who is amazing as per usual.

Chapter 9: change

Notes:

Hi guys and welcome to the final chapter of the first arc!! I'm so glad you've made it this far. The next chapter is going to be the present-day shenanigans with them meeting and the main timeline! Until then, enjoy Scott :)

Pearl has been cutting her own hair for the past six months and has yet to fuck it up completely, which, quite honestly, is all the qualification Scott needs from the excecutor of his first ever haircut. 

 

He sits on a chair in the en-suite bathroom of his bedroom. There’s a bottle of something Pearl brought him on the counter in front of him. It tastes awful, but is making his head spin in a way that isn’t quite unpleasant yet. 

 

The bathroom tiles are a white so bright it burns, and the trim on the mirror is a gold so vibrant he thinks it might be stabbing him. 

 

He hates the white, he hates the gold. He hates the colour of his own hair and how well it fits with the rest of the perfectly cultivated palace. He hates that the rug in his bedroom is the same blue, hates that the couch is the same white, hates that Aeor’s antlers above his headboard are the same gold. 

 

Scott’s hair has never been cut before. It reaches almost down to his knees in a way that he has always found irritating. It gets tangled in things, gets caught in buttons and under him when he sits down. It takes up much too much of his day, tying it in the elaborate hairstyles expected of him, only for it to serve as a reminder of his infinitely important status . 

 

Now, Pearl stands over him with a pair of fabric scissors from the laundromat and a focused expression on her face. 

 

“Ok.” She holds up a strand in the air, “How short are we going?” 

 

Scott shrugs. 

 

Pearl holds the scissors just below his shoulders, “Here?” 

 

He shakes his head, and she holds them just above. 

 

“Here?” 

 

“Can we go like, proper short?” 

 

“I didn’t bring a razor, dude.”

 

That makes Scott laugh, perhaps a little louder than he should have. “Goodness no, can you imagine my mother’s face?” 

 

Pearl makes an over-exaggerated expression, posing as someone with a furrowed brow and pinched lips. “Like this?” She asks, voice strange from the way she holds her mouth. 

 

Scott laughs, more from nerves than anything else. 

 

“Come on, you get to be impulsive and rebellious once in a while.” 

 

“That was what the sneaking out was, I’m pretty sure.” 

 

Pearl rolls her eyes, and he watches the movement through the mirror. “You started that years ago. You can’t be limited to one rebellious act a decade, you’ll suffocate.” 

 

“I’m not sure the kingdom would agree.” 

 

“The kingdom or your mother? And either way they can’t say jack shit. You’re gonna be kin,g aren’t you?” 

 

“Eventually.” Scott leans his head back on the chair so that he can look up at Pearl above him instead of just her reflection in the mirror. “She's gonna live forever.” 

 

She raises her eyebrows, “Forever?” 

 

“Not literally forever. But she’s gonna live for so long. She’s gonna make sure of it, just to spite me. And I’ll be old and dying and still under her thumb.” 

 

Pearl smiles and leans down so their noses are almost touching. “All the more reason to rebel,” she whispers. “If you don’t start now, you might get too scared later on.” 

 

“I’m not sure about that reasoning.” 

 

Pearl stands up straight and shrugs, “Or we could always assassinate her.”

 

This shocks a laugh out of Scott. 

 

“It’s a textbook coup,” she continues, “eldest son doesn’t want to wait for his folks to die so he walks up and-” Pearl holds her hands up above her head and brings them down as if cutting off someone’s head, scissors moving dangerously with her motion. She makes the slicing sound effects to go with. 

 

Pearl smiles at him, “Wait, is it a coup if you’re just continuing the line of succession?” 

 

This gives Scott pause, “I’m not actually sure. Maybe?” 

 

“Either way, it’s definitely regicide.”

 

Scott points at her, “And matricide!” he says brightly. 

 

“Ahh,” Pearl sighs, “good old matricide. I’m happy you agree with my game plan. I think this place will be great when you’re king.” 

 

“And not just because you’ll get to be the power behind the throne?” 

 

“Well,” Pearl concedes, “mostly ‘cause I’ll get to be the power behind the throne. But you’ve got some pretty ok ideas sometimes, I guess.” 

 

“High praise.” 

 

“Only the best for you, fearless leader.” Something occurs to Pearl, “Wait, do you want to be king?” 

 

“I-” Scott pauses, “I’m actually not sure. I don’t suppose I’ve got much choice.” 

 

Pearl’s free hand comes down to slap him lightly across the cheek, “Shut up. You always have a choice.” 

 

“I don’t really.” 

 

“Shush, shush.” Her hand moves to cover his mouth, but only for a moment, lest Scott lick her. “You have all the choices in the world. Don’t listen to them. Abdicating is hot and sexy, and you should totally do it if you want to.” 

 

Scott sighs, only deflecting a little. “And I do so want to be hot and sexy.” 

 

“Exactly,” Pearl nods. “So keep that in mind when considering your options. Now, enough stalling. What hot and sexy haircut are you getting?”

 

“Must it be hot and sexy, or is that optional?” 

 

“Nup,” she pops the P, “it’s entirely compulsory. What’ll it be?”

 

Pear cuts his hair so it sits just above his ears in a way that probably wouldn’t look good to an outsider, but makes Scott break down into tears when he sees it. 

 

“Scott.” Pearl's hands are on his shoulders, “Please tell me you like it. I’m not that bad, am I?” 

 

When Scott looks up, he knows his face is red and blotchy, but he smiles around the knot in his throat. “Thank you, Pearl. Thank you so much.” 

 

“You like it?” Despite her earlier bravado, she sounds surprised. 

 

Scott hugs her. He falls forwards into where she crouches in front of his chair and throws his arms around her neck. “This is the best thing that anyone’s ever done for me.” 

 

Pearl squeezes him back, just as hard as he’s squeezing her, and they stay like that, wrapped up in each other, for a long time.

 

The silence is only broken when Pearl says, “When I become a hairdresser, that’s going on my business cards.” 

 

Scott chokes on his tears, “I’ll even give you permission to tell everyone it was said by a prince. That might give you some credibility.” 

 

Pearl buries her face back where it had rested in the crook of his neck. When she speaks, the effect of her words is taken down a few notches by how muffled it is. “Careful, you might fly away with that overinflated ego of yours.” 

 

Later that night, deep under the thick covers of Scott’s too-big bed, he turns to look at Pearl in the darkness, just one pillow away. 

 

“Pearl?” He asks. 

 

“Yeah, Scott?” 

 

“I think I want to be king.” 

 

There’s just enough light that he can see her blink. “Are you sure?” 

 

Scott thinks about Rivendell. He thinks about the cold weather, about how so many people in the inn are only there because it’s the only place they can get out of it. He thinks about the people without enough food when it’s overflowing from his breakfast, even after he’s finished eating. About all the people without blankets while he has a whole cupboard of them sitting unused by a boy who can’t even feel the cold. 

 

He thinks about how he sold his ring for six months of Pearl’s rent. He thinks about when he was younger, hearing his mother’s council members talk about sending their children away for school because Rivendell didn’t have the facilities. He thinks about all the parents who couldn’t do that. About Pearl’s mother who couldn’t. 

 

He thinks about a different Rivendell. The one he could create. The one where everyone has a house with a fireplace and more than enough blankets, where no one went cold. The one where everyone has enough food to eat and enough money to do nice things as well. The one where all the kids could go to a school that was nearby to their house. Where they don’t have to be rich to learn how to read. 

 

He thinks about making things better. 

 

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m sure.” 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Scott’s mother finds out he cut his hair.

 

No one tells her, or maybe she just didn’t listen, but when she decides that her son will need to be seen by other empires to be a legitimate ruler, it remains inevitable. 

 

He climbs into a carriage headed for the sea with hair well above his shoulders, and finds his mother sitting before him. 

 

The biggest shock of the experience is honestly that she would choose to ride in the same carriage as him. 

 

When she sees him, her perfect porcelain expression doesn’t change. Which is scarier than if she looked angry. 

 

Scott watches as his mother scans his hair and tries to keep his face as neutral as possible. 

 

She reaches out a hand, and he flinches. He does not believe his mother would hurt him, doesn’t believe she would stoop that low, but even the thought of a casual touch is terrifying. 

 

She doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause, and she reaches to lightly pinch the end of his hair. She meets his gaze, her eyes as cold as they have ever been. “What is this?”

 

She wants to make him say it.

 

“I cut my hair.” He wants to say the words loud and proud, wants to throw them in her face like a snowball or a bloody knuckled punch. He wants them to feel good. Instead, they come out small and quiet. Like every cowering part of himself, he's a little bit afraid he’ll never truly be able to escape. 

 

The queen inhales deeply, a breath that seems to straighten her shoulders even further, to harden her face into the same emotionless mask, but this time made of steel instead of porcelain. 

 

“This will never happen again,” she tells him. There is a threat in her voice, of what? He doesn’t know.

 

Scott nods. His heart is beating hard and fast, trying its best to jump its way into his throat. 

 

His mother nods, “Hair grows back, and you will see to it that yours does. Tell me that it will grow back.” 

 

“It will grow back.” Scott’s voice is small. 

 

“Tell me that this will never happen again.”

 

“This will never happen again.” 

 

She nods, satisfied, and turns away from him. Scott looks out the window and tries very hard not to cry. 

The carriage carries them for two days to the shoreline where they leave behind their horses in favour of a boat that honestly looks much too small for the half a days trip he knows is ahead of them. 

 

They arrive in the Ocean Empire. A place that seems less an empire than an archipelago of islands, and is altogether much too damp for Scott’s liking. 

 

Stepping off the boat, Scott, for the first time in his life, sees people who look entirely different from himself. 

 

He sees people with wings and people with tails and people with furry ears poking up over their hair. He sees people who are much shorter than him and people who are much much taller, and he sees so, so many people with scales.

 

He sees a boy at one point, maybe a man, he looks around Scott’s age, and his eyes are red . It’s not like the irises are red the way Scott’s are blue, his entire eye, even the bits that are supposed to be white, it’s all red. His hair looks like fire and his teeth look sharp and pointed and whatever he is, Scott has never heard of it before. 

 

Next to him, next to all of these people who are more different than he ever imagined they could be, Scott seeing his first true humans seems entirely negligible. A point not even a bit worth mentioning. 

 

Inside the wide open building where the coronation is held, a woman with pink hair and scales, looking not much older than Scott himself, becomes queen. He sits on an angle from the dais and sees how before walking into the spotlight she hugs herself tightly behind a partitian. He feels a little sorry for her. 

 

He remembers very little else. Very little apart from his mother’s oppressive gaze, staring at his newly cut hair. 

 

This will never happen again. 

 

On the way home Scott spends another excruciating few days right next to his mother. He tries to remind himself that a few years ago this would have been very close to the thing he wanted most in the world. 

 

His mother doesn’t speak to him much, and when it is, it's to talk about the other empires. Of the coronation’s facilities and their precarious political position. Scott doesn’t listen to this much because while she speaks with disdain about the Ocean Empire, she speaks about the wood elves and their Vex Kingdom with contempt. 

 

She tells him about how dirty they must be, living in the forest, and Scott thinks about the year he spent climbing under a wall. 

 

Dirt isn’t all that bad. 

 

He also thinks about the young prince who had been sitting next to him. He had been a lot, sure, loud with his body in the same way that Pearl is. He had twitched and shuffled and looked over his shoulders, but Scott had been less bothered by that than his mother’s eerie stillness. 

 

He hadn’t even been a little bit dirty. 

 

The queen also complains about how weak they are, keeping to the pre established safety of the forest instead of making their claim on the world. Building and conquering like ‘real elves.’ She calls them fake, pretenders, more like humans than anything else. 

 

Scott doesn’t think humans could possibly all that bad. 

 

She scoffs when she tells him she has never gotten their endless fascination with gold. They may as well be dragons with how they covet it. 

 

Scott refrains from mentioning the gold antlers over nearly every doorway in the palace, the pure gold thread woven into his own robes. 

 

He refrains from mentioning a lot of things. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

When Scott turns eighteen, he is moved into a new room. 

 

He hadn’t known it was happening, wasn’t told until the day of, when his stuff was packed for him and moved for him, and he was moved with it. 

 

His new room is really three rooms, a giant sitting room moving into a huge bedroom, attached to a bathroom that would be moderately sized if it were perhaps a dining room. 

 

He still has a balcony, which he’s grateful for. 

 

Alinar’s sword is placed above the mantle of the fireplace, and when he sits on the couch, he stares straight at it. 

 

The rooms feel too big, almost too much space to spread out in. Scott isn’t big enough for it all. He’s trying, oh he’s trying, but he can’t seem to stop trying to be small instead. 

 

The first night in the room he doesn’t sleep in his bed. Instead, he takes one of the blankets and some of the couch cushions and makes himself a nest in the middle of the sitting room floor. When he finally falls asleep, eyes drifting from where they had been fixed on the intricate ceiling, he finds himself wishing he had been brave enough to invite Pearl. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

“If I were to, hypothetically, buy the laundromat, what would you say?” 

 

They’re on the hill out the back of the wool sheds, a small patch of grass right before the town devolves into kilometres of spruce forests. Scott leans back on his elbows, legs splayed out in front of him, while Pearl sits cross-legged with her hands in her lap. 

 

In front of them is a plate of cheese and biscuits, taken from breakfast by Scott, who had hidden them within his robe’s abundance of fabric with expert precision. 

 

“Hypothetically?”

 

“Hypothetically.” 

 

“Then I would say that that would be hypothetically awesome and that you would be hypothetically amazing at running the laundromat.” 

 

Pearl smiles at him, “Thanks.” She pauses for a moment. “Hypothetically.” 

 

Scott laughs under his breath. “So… care to elaborate on this hypothetical?” 

 

Pearl sighs, cutting herself a piece of brie and not bothering to combine it with a biscuit before popping it in her mouth. “Manny offered it to me. Not like offered, but like. She’s gonna sell it, and if I buy it, she’d lower the price like crazy. I’ve been working there for like six years, and she knows I love the place.” 

 

“Do you want to run it?” 

 

Pearl looks at him a bit like he’s an idiot, “Obviously. Like. More than anything.” 

 

Scott pushes off one of his elbows to shove her lightly in the shoulder, “Then that’s awesome. Hell yeah!”

 

“Hell yeah?” 

 

“I meant what I said, you’d be amazing at running the place. It’d be amazing.” 

 

Pearl brings her hand to her mouth and bites at the nail on her pointer finger. Scott flicks her in the arm for it, but she just glares at him. 

 

“Stop,” he tells her halfheartedly. 

 

“Fuck off.”  

 

He shrugs, taking a biscuit from the plate and eating it plain, “Your loss.” 

 

“It’s just-“ Pearl rips her hand away from her mouth. “I know that I’m like gorgeous and perfect and all, but what if I fuck it up? What if I ruin the place?” 

 

Scott moves to sit up fully, discarding the second biscuit he had picked up. “Don’t be stupid.” 

 

Pearl’s hand is back at her mouth again, “I’m not being stupid. Manny’s done so well with the place, and I have no idea.” 

 

“You’re not going to ruin it, I promise. Besides, who bloody else would know anything about it? Would you prefer for it to go to someone who doesn’t even care about the place?” 

 

Pearl looks at him, “It doesn’t matter if I care about the place if I don’t know the first thing about running a business. Where can you even find out how to run a buisness?” 

 

She’s spiralling a little now, asking the question less to him than to the air above them. 

 

“Pearl,” Scott tells her, seriously, “Manny’s not dead yet. Ask her. ” 

 

Pearl buries her face in her hands. Scott shifts over to sit next to her, laying an arm over her back and leaning into her side. 

 

“Do you want some of the Gouda?”

 

She sniffs before taking a hand from her face to hold it out in a gimmie gesture.  

 

Scott cuts her a piece of the cheese, a true effort with only one free hand, and gives it to her. 

 

Pearl eats the cheese and sits up, removing her hand from her face. “That was really nice Gouda.” 

 

“I know,” he says. 

 

“Fuck.” Pearl rubs her face, “I hate it when you’re right.” 

 

“You’ve gotta give me a chance sometimes, you’re always hogging the spotlight.” 

 

“That’s because I’m always right.” 

 

“And perfect.” 

 

Pearl nods, “And perfect.” 

 

Scott reaches his free arm around Pearl’s front so he can hug her messily, letting his ear rest against the back of her head. 

 

“I’m really happy for you, seriously. This is really amazing.” 

 

A hand pats him comfortingly on the arm, “Thanks, Scott.”

Notes:

Thank you for reading! My lovely beta reader is at war (doing actual work) so if there are any mistakes, you aren't allowed to hate me.

ALSO. I have written a non-canon ranchers practice kissing fic! It's all finished and just needs editing, but I'll be posting it in a little bit and am very excited. It'll be posted in this series if you want to subscribe and see when it comes out :DD

Chapter 10: a rivendellian welcome

Notes:

YES I KNOW IT'S BEEN TWO MONTHS. In my defence, I totally got surgery and currently cannot walk. But I'm back and I hope you enjoy this long awaited chapter, with any luck three week updates will return

Tango has extremely limited experience in horse riding. 

 

This is perhaps a generous statement. Tango rode a horse three times a week for a month, six years ago. He learnt how to saddle the horse, how to get on and off of it, how to trot, canter and gallop. He took a remarkably lax examination and got his qualification. Tango can, on paper, ride a horse.

 

The fact remains that though he was once relatively okay at horse riding, he is now, significantly, significantly, worse.

 

And, even ignoring how much his butt hurts, he saw the inside of Jimmy’s carriage, and it looked damn nice . 

 

And, you know, it would be nice to sit next to his best friend. To be able to travel beside him for the last time before he gets married. 

Jules, leading their procession, calls the group to a halt in a clearing without many trees, only a few hours before sunset. They tell them that they’ll be leaving just after dawn the next day to avoid arriving at the palace after noon. 

 

Tango dismounts gratefully, untacks his horse in a way that he is certain looks amateurish, and begins helping set up tents. 

 

He watches from the corner of his eye as Jimmy leaves the carriage and stands awkwardly to the side of his entourage. Jimmy knows how to set up a tent; Tango was the one who taught him, but it isn’t exactly proper for a prince to enter a war on tent poles with the rest of them. 

 

In the end, there are three tents, two larger ones for five guards to sleep in each, and one smaller one for Jimmy and Tango. 

 

Tango is glad they’ll get their own space. 

 

Night falls, and one by one, each of the guards retreats from the small fire to their sleeping tents. Tango and Jimmy sit silently side by side until, finally, Jules leaves, clapping Tango on the shoulder as they do. 

 

“Sleep well,” they tell him. 

 

“You too,” he smiles tightly. 

 

Jules sends a nod to Jimmy, “Your highness,” before heading inside.

 

When she zips up the tent behind her, Jimmy leans more heavily into Tango’s side. “She knows my name.” 

 

Tango shrugs against him, “It makes people uncomfortable to call you Jimmy.” 

 

“I know. I hate it, though.” 

 

“Yeah,” Tango doesn’t know what to do but nod. They’ve had this conversation before. 

 

He fixes his gaze on the fire in front of them, watches how it dances. It’s warm, heating his skin even though it’s likely not much warmer than his core body temperature.  

 

They’re not in Rivendell yet, or at least not within the elves’ main territory, but it’s cold here. He hasn’t even seen a sign of snow, but he’s found himself shivering more often than not. 

 

It doesn’t make sense to the others, who feel the heat radiating off his body, who tell him how jealous they are of how warm he must always be. Tango doesn’t feel warm; he feels warm to them, but that’s because of how cold they are naturally. Right now he’s freezing. 

 

“I hate this place,” he tells Jimmy honestly. “It’s so cold.” 

 

Jimmy hums in agreement, “It is. Cold and dry, I miss the humidity.” 

 

Tango doesn't miss the humidity. In fact, he’s rather grateful for this place and its lack of water sources. However, in his own way, he does miss the familiarity of it. 

 

“Yeah, I get it.” 

 

Jimmy’s arm moves to wrap around Tango’s waist, hand gripping his hip on the opposite side. It sends shivers down Tango’s spine for reasons entirely separate from the cold. 

 

“I wish I could keep you warm like you do for me,” Jimmy tells him. 

 

“Mmmm,” Tango should really have gotten a grip by now, but Jimmy’s touch still manages to scramble his brain, “that would be nice.” 

 

Jimmy’s head leans against his shoulder. “You deserve to feel warm, Tango.” 

 

And, well, doesn’t that warm him up. 

 

“Are we gonna be alright?” Tango asks. 

 

Jimmy shifts to look up at him, “What do you mean?” 

 

Tango shrugs, “Everything’s going to be so different.” You’re going to be so different. 

 

Jimmy purses his lips, “It doesn’t have to be, not really. I’ll get married to some guy, we’ll sleep in separate rooms, and I’ll still have you.” 

 

I’ll still have you.

 

Tango reaches out, cradles Jimmy’s cheek with his hand. “Ok,” he says, “ok.” 

 

“Trust me,” Jimmy says, “we’ll be ok.” 

 

“Promise?” 

 

Jimmy smiles, “Promise.” 

 

This is the part where you kiss him, Tango’s brain whispers, as it does every few months. That little reminder. 

 

But he won’t. He never will. It’s not the end of the world. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Scott spends his last day of freedom with Pearl, as far away as he can get from the palace. 

 

He meets her in the laundromat, and they go to the inn and the forests and eventually end up on the grass behind the wool sheds, as always. 

 

It’s nice. It’s so nice. They eat apples, and Pearl brings cards, and at some point, Scott realises that he’s trying extra hard to make sure his smile stays wide on his face. 

 

Cause this is it. This is his last chance. He has to make it count. 

 

This is the best it is ever going to get. 

 

Tomorrow, Scott will meet his future husband. Two days later, Scott will get married. 

 

He doesn’t know what will happen, but he knows that he will never get this life back. 

 

His life is being moved around to fit another person, another person he never wants to meet, never wants to know . His life is being violated so fully to insert something entirely unwanted, and Scott realises that he has peaked. 

 

This is his last day of freedom. This is his last day sitting across from Pearl behind the wool sheds. This is his last day with this and this and this and not everything else that someone else will bring. 

 

This is the best it is ever going to get. 

 

Across from him, Pearl is smiling in the same strained way that he is, and he thinks that maybe she knows it too. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Years ago, Scott visited the Ocean Empire. He remembers very little, sixteen and lost in a mind-fogging depression. 

 

He knows that he had thought it was wet and warm, and that it was weird that all the people had scales. 

 

Which is to say, he is at least a little prepared for when the Ocean Empire’s procession enters Rivendell’s royal foyer. 

 

They are more colourful than almost anything Scott has seen in the palace, looking entirely out of place with scales that are blues and oranges and pinks. A few of them have tails, some have fins around their ears, fins running down their arms. 

 

The prince is in the middle of them, green and brown scales scattered along his arms and gills pulsating at his neck. He’s pretty, honestly, which Scott decides he’s allowed to be a little grateful for, with long eyelashes and freckles that mingle with his scales across his cheekbones. 

 

He looks uncomfortable, which Scott supposes is better than overconfident.

 

Next to him, dressed differently from the other guards and standing in a place of priority next to the prince, is a man who looks hot to the touch. He, Scott remembers. 

 

He’s got the red eyes and the mammalian tail, and he’s sure that if they were any closer, he would be able to see his sharp teeth. He has stuck in Scott’s mind over the years, someone who was so truly different from everyone around him. 

 

He's a blaze, he knows that now, after weeks spent combing the library. 

 

In his memory, he’s still short as he is now, but he had limbs that seemed a bit too big for his body, patchy facial hair and an awkwardness to his expression. 

 

Not that Scott has much room to judge, he had been much the same. 

 

Now, he’s filled out his body a bit more, strong, stocky limbs and proper stubble on his chin. His hair is short, and Scott can’t help but be a little jealous. 

 

His face is set in a hard line, and he walks close to the prince next to him, his armoured arm almost brushing against the prince’s clothed one. 

 

He's not just some companion, his armour says that clearly enough, he’s not the head of the guards, that had been the person in front, surely. So, what is he? 

 

For one, he’s certainly the only guard who isn’t merfolk. 

 

The group reaches the dais, and the retinue steps to the side until before Scott and his mother is only the prince and the fiery guard. 

 

The blaze kneels and the prince bows, “Your majesties,” says the prince, and Scott winces. Majesty is a term reserved for the sitting monarch. This could be a problem. 

 

“I am Jimmy, prince of the Ocean Empire.” 

 

The queen nods, and Scott does not speak. “Queen Camilla of Rivendell.” She gestures to Scott, “This is my son.” 

 

Aeor , does he not even get a name in front of his husband-to-be?

 

“And your companion is…?” She prompts the prince, Jimmy.

 

Hypocrite. 

 

The blaze blinks as if surprised he’s even been noticed, glowering as he is. 

 

“Tango, he is,” Jimmy hesitates for a split second, “my bodyguard.” 

 

And, well, Scott has a working theory for what exactly is going on. He watches the look that Tango shoots Jimmy, raised eyebrows, tongue darting over his lip, and wow, is that theory exiting its developmental stage. 

 

His mother responds in a tone that indicates the frown he knows she doesn’t wear, welcoming them to Rivendell and encouraging them to make themselves at home. He’s kind of glad she doesn’t make the effort to inject her words with false happiness the same way she might have before seeing that the Ocean’s prince had brought a blaze with him. 

 

When they leave, through the same door they entered through, Scott has not spoken once, which is fine. 

 

The prince’s face stayed carefully neutral throughout the interaction, but Scott had been studying his bodyguard’s facial expression as it progressed from discomfort to open hostility, and can’t quite bring himself to be surprised when, just as the door is about to close behind them, Jimmy’s arm twists around Tango’s waist.

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

 

 

Jimmy’s fiancé is weird as fuck. 

 

Don’t shoot the messenger, but Tango had kind of expected that their audience would involve actually talking to the guy. You know. The actual guy Jimmy was marrying instead of his mother .

 

Instead, he had stood there listening to Jimmy talk to what he suspects is the worst woman he has ever had the displeasure of meeting, and staring at a completely silent fiancé. 

 

He was certainly present for the beginning of the conversation, eyeing Tango like he wanted something from him, but it was barely two minutes before he seemed to check out completely. Tango watched as his back straightened, his face fell into a neutral expression, and he fixed his gaze somewhere on the wall behind Jimmy. Then, the prince didn’t move for the rest of the conversation. 

 

He respects it, a little, and envies his ability to dissociate. Tango has always been excruciatingly present for every moment of his life. 

 

Regardless, he didn't seem openly hostile, which is better than nothing. 

 

Tango is feeling a little openly hostile himself. 

 

First, he deals with Icy McIce Queen, and then, shuffled out of the entrance hall without so much as an excuse me, is forcibly separated from Jimmy. 

 

Jimmy had argued, obviously. Shit, Tango had argued until Jimmy had glared at him for it. But they seemed intent that while Jimmy got his own private sweet, Tango was confined to Rivendell’s barracks for the night, and no amount of but I’m his bodyguard! was going to change their mind. 

 

No matter, Tango has other ways of getting his way. 

 

The barracks are cold, certainly much colder than Tango had packed for. He can see steam rising from his skin, for goodness' sake. But, at least it has a window, and as he watches the sun finally, finally set over the horizon, he begins to lace up his boots. 

 

He has three shirts, two jackets, and his extra-thick pair of socks on (even if they don’t quite fit in his boots), he’s going to find Jimmy.

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

They put his fiancé in a spare room down the hall from his bedroom. Which is weird. 

 

Scott can’t help but think that if they’re gonna be sleeping less than one hundred metres away from each other, they may as well meet. But, he supposes his mother has different ideas. 

 

He’s not sure if he would be allowed to slip down the hall for a chat, but even if he is, he’s not exactly jumping at the idea. He’s sure he’ll have the rest of his life to never have a moment of peace from the man. 

 

Or, in theory, his bodyguard, that he’s maybe possibly sleeping with. 

 

It turns out gossip is so much more fun when you: A) don’t know the people, and B) very soon will be forced to. He can’t wait to tell Pearl. 

 

He hears, from his face-down moping position on the couch, a light tapping in the hallway. Hesitantly, he stands up, walking lightly over to the door to look through the peephole. 

 

There, in the hallway, is… the bodyguard? 

 

Tango, right. His name was Tango. Weird name. 

 

And there he is, in Scott’s bloody hallway, looking in keyholes like a freak. A freak with what appears to be six layers of clothing on. What the fuck. 

 

Then, he looks in Jimmy's keyhole, and Scott watches as a wide smile spreads across his face. 

 

Come to think of it, he had been a bit surprised he hadn’t been put in the same room as the prince. 

 

Come quite a bit more to think of it, Tango’s smile is really very nice. He hasn’t seen him smile before. 

 

Wow, Scott, you haven’t seen him smile before. In the whole two times you’ve seen him? Huh? The voice in his head sounds suspiciously like Pearl’s.

 

As he watches, Tango raps on the door firmly, it seems to be in a pattern, but quite honestl,y Scott is too focused on other things (see: the curve of his lips) to take note of what it is. 

 

After a moment, the door is opened by a cautious head of mussed blond hair, and Scott sees the fishy prince, Jimmy, look out at Tango. 

 

If possible, Jimmy’s smile is larger than his guard’s. 

 

Tango says something Scott doesn’t hear, but he’s still smiling, and when Jimmy hugs him, it’s certainly much more intimate than a prince and his bodyguard relationship. Aeor , is Jimmy’s hand in Tango’s hair?

 

Jimmy grabs his guard by the hand and pulls him inside his room, the door closing behind them. 

 

Scott leans back from his peephole, letting out a breathy laugh. 

 

Well, damn. That might make some things awkward. Scott hadn’t anticipated he would be third-wheeling his husband and his husband’s boyfriend after their marriage. He’s not quite sure how he feels about that yet. 

 

He falls backwards onto his couch, still laughing. 

 

What an event, huh? 

 

He supposes he’s happy for them; he’d be a lot happier if they were less attractive, but, you know. You win some, you lose some. 

 

Imagining Pearl’s expression when he gets to see her is win enough for right now. 

 

 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Five years ago, if you had asked Jimmy about Rivendell’s crown prince, he would have remembered a very sad boy seated on a pew. He would think of his blank expression and tense shoulders and tell you that he felt a little sorry for him, that he hoped he was ok. 

 

If you asked him yesterday, he would shrug, tell you that seeing a guy for five minutes, in which you never hear him speak, is not grounds to judge someone on. He would tell you that he hoped he was nice. 

 

If you asked Jimmy today, this morning, walking beside his fiancé in Rivendell’s immaculate gardens, he would tell you that he is a massive prick. 

 

He was woken up the morning after his arrival, altogether much too early for his liking, for a walk through the gardens with the prince, whose name he was yet to be told. The guards hadn’t so much as glanced at Tango, which Jimmy supposed was better than the alternative, considering his best friend had snuck rather unceremoniously into his room late the night before.

 

Not that he wasn’t grateful for it. It was nice to have a bit of warmth in this freezing palace. 

 

But they’d been led downstairs, through white marble hallways and doorways with golden antlers over the threshold, to reach the palace gardens. Tango walked two paces behind Jimmy the whole way, just as he had been taught. 

 

Jimmy hated it. 

 

The gardens were the most colourful thing Jimmy had seen in all of Rivendell. 

 

The most colourful thing apart from him and his retinue, who had left the night before. He almost missed them, even after a couple of hours. Jimmy remembered how he had felt seeing the Mezalean arriving in the Ocean Empire for the first time, how shocked he had been at their colour.

 

He supposed that’s probably how the high elves were feeling about him. 

 

The Rivendellian prince had stood before them when Jimmy’s booted feet had finally stepped from the stone onto grass. He was shorter than Jimmy, but not by much, and had blue hair that stretched long down his back. 

 

It had been shorter at Lizzie’s coronation. 

 

He seemed almost uncomfortable with it, pushing it behind his ears as it slipped forward, trying his best to keep it behind his shoulders. 

 

It had been endearing for a moment, him being uncomfortable. Fidgeting as if he were just as anxious as Jimmy was.

 

That was until the prince turned to look at him, fixing him with a blank expression rivalling that of his mother. His nose was upturned, and his eyes squinted slightly, and he looked for all the world like he would rather be anywhere else, like Jimmy was nothing more than the slime on the bottom of his gold embroidered boots. 

 

He wished Tango were allowed to be closer. 

 

Jimmy decides, a few minutes later, that he hates elves. 

 

In the past few minutes, he doesn’t think he has been able to identify a single personality trait in his husband-to-be. He is silent, except when he deigns to respond to Jimmy’s questions with one-word answers. His name? Scott. His hobbies? Reading. His favourite colour? Red. 

 

That one at least had been a little interesting. Jimmy hasn’t seen any red in the whole kingdom. 

 

When the prince looks at him, it’s uninterested, and when he speaks its with disdain, and maybe Jimmy would have preferred if he were outright mean, cause at least he wouldn’t feel so wholly invisible. 

 

Tango is behind him. He tries to pay attention to the sound of his footfalls in the snow. Tango is there, Tango has his back. 

 

“So,” Jimmy starts, because he’s trying , alright? “What kind of things do you like to read?” 

 

Scott shrugs, “Most things.” 

 

Jimmy’s skin itches. 

 

“Yeah? I really enjoy romances.” 

 

And… nothing. Not even a glance. His expression doesn’t change, and his steady footfalls stay the same. He doesn’t even nod. 

 

Jimmy has, throughout his life, felt dismissed. He was dismissed by his father and by his tutors and, though she tries, his sister and queen. He is protected, kept in secret little boxes deep in the castle. Oh Jimmy? He doesn’t know anything. He’s a good boy, he’ll stay put. No, don’t bother asking him, he’ll be fine. 

 

Too young, too small, too dumb to know anything. Unambitious, uninteresting, unneeded.

 

So, yeah. Jimmy doesn’t like feeling dismissed. And, yeah, he thinks his fiancé is a prick. 

 

There is a long moment of silence as Jimmy waits for Scott to elaborate. He doesn’t. 

 

“Great talk,” he mutters, and he lengthens his strides. His legs are longer than Scott’s, and he would just about kill for some space between them. 

 

There’s a confused noise behind him, Scott, and no, Jimmy sure as hell isn’t going to start feeling sorry for him now. 

 

He knows he’s maybe being a bit irrational. Sure, objectively, there are worse things than a disinterested husband. Much, much worse things. Scott doesn’t seem mean or violent; he just seems stuck-up. Which is fine. Jimmy has spent his life around stuck-up up, he can work with stuck-up. 

 

If only he could stop making it feel so personal. 

 

“You know,” a voice behind him interrupts his racing thoughts, “I really love how open you are.” 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

When Scott gets anxious, he shuts down. He gets… perfect. 

 

It’s served him well, and, honestly, there are worse coping mechanisms. 

 

It’s useful that every time he stands in front of his mother, his emotions turn off. His face evens and his back straightens, and he becomes the picture of a perfect prince. It’s not even on purpose anymore, not like it had to be when he was younger. He doesn’t even have to try. 

 

(The fact that afterwards, when he’s back alone, it all comes crashing down on him, the bone-crushing exhaustion that makes him feel like he’d run a marathon instead of standing silently in front of a crowd, well, that’s entirely beside the point.) 

 

It doesn’t help when Pearl is around. When she comes to visit him, only to find him seated perfectly on his couch, empty gaze staring at nothing. 

 

He tries to apologise to her, tries to force his muscles to relax, please, relax. It never works.

 

A few times, on the worst days, she’s made him climb into bed. She’s buried him in blankets even though he doesn’t need them, and climbed in next to him. She’s put her head on the pillow and met his gaze, even as he knows his eyes stay blank and his jaw stays clenched. 

 

It’s always hard to fall asleep on days like that, but Pearl makes it better. 

 

It hits him, two days before his wedding, watching his fiancé approach him, that he might never get that again. 

 

And he knew it, he did. He knew this is the best it is ever going to get, he knew things were changing. 

 

But, feeling his face shift and his muscles tense, he’s not completely sure he’ll ever be able to get them to relax again. 

 

He knows he’s a bit mean to Jimmy, who has a pretty smile and scales scattered across his cheeks and is, despite everything, nice. 

 

He doesn’t mean to be. It’s not on purpose. 

 

He’s trapped within his own mind, a little boy looking through his eyes and scratching at the walls of his cage, begging to be let free.

 

Jimmy asks him his favourite colour, and the little boy screams at Scott to tell him about a colour you’d be hard pressed to find in the palace. It’s the colour of Pearl’s faded cloak, and a sunset in summer, and the embers in a fire. It’s the first poppy in spring and the ruby necklace in the bottom of his jewellery box. It’s a colour he’s never seen his mother anywhere near. 

 

Instead, his mouth says red, which isn't even half of the truth.   

 

Jimmy tells him he reads romances, and Scott is so caught up in feeling sorry for a romance reader marrying someone he doesn’t love that he doesn’t realise he’s supposed to reply. 

 

Usually, you need to reply in conversations. Scott tries very hard to be good at conversations, which makes it hurt twice as much when he forgets the rules. 

 

Before he realises it, Jimmy is pushing past him and walking ahead, muttering something under his breath. 

 

Scott knows his expression doesn’t change, but he can feel his heart drop to his stomach. Oh. That wasn’t how things were supposed to go. 

 

He was supposed to make a good first impression. 

 

“You know,” the voice comes from right next to him, close to his ear, making Scott jump a little, “I really love how open you are.” 

 

He turns, and next to him, intimidating despite Scott’s full head of height on him, is Jimmy’s bodyguard. 

 

Tango, who his fiancé is probably maybe dating, who snuck into his room last night, who has been walking silently behind them this whole way. 

 

Scott needs to be more observant. 

 

Tango’s words are filled with venom, and his tail lashes severely behind him. He’s gotten up in Scott’s space, and he can feel heat radiating off of his body. 

 

Are people usually that hot? Like, temperature-wise. Surely not. Not that Scott has a huge amount of experience with proximity. 

 

He supposes he should probably be cowering or something. He’s like 90% sure this guy could kill him. 

 

Or you could freeze him. His brain whispers, y ou could beat him in a fight. 

 

You know I don’t have that in me, he shoots back. 

 

His brain doesn’t argue. 

 

“I’m… sorry?” It seems as safe an answer as any. 

 

Apparently not, according to Tango, who leans out of Scott’s space and back on his heels, crossing his arms over his broad chest.  

 

Damn, Scott’s eyes fix on the guard’s upper arms, and he can say for certain he sees the appeal of a guy with muscles. The red eyes are working with his pissed expression too.

 

“I know that you're all high and mighty or whatever, but would it kill you to share even a crumb of niceness with the rest of us?” 

 

He was being nice, wasn’t he? Or, polite at least. Scott is sure he was being polite. 

 

Scott glances over towards Jimmy, who has paused in his retreat and is now approaching them. It feels stupid to look for help in the guy he originally annoyed but he does seem to be a far less likely candidate for the cause of Scott’s demise. 

 

Scott looks back at Tango, “I-”

 

He’s cut off when Jimmy’s hand lands on Tango’s shoulder, “T, please.” Ahh, there’s that familiarity. 

 

Tango shrugs him off harshly, “No, Jimmy. He was being awful this whole time.” 

 

Scott goes to object to awful, but shuts his mouth when Tango whirls around, turning his attention back to Scott. 

 

“Don’t you start. This,” he hooks a thumb at Jimmy, “is your fiancé. You guys are getting married in less time than it would take for you to do anything about it, and you two are going to be stuck together. You’re going to have to learn to live with it, no matter how much you hate him.”

 

“I don’t hate him,” Scott can hear how small his voice sounds. It’s not cold anymore, even though he can still feel the ice seeping through his limbs. He tries to figure out what his face is doing, but the whole thing is numb; he has no idea what expression he’s making. 

 

Tango blinks, mouth falling open slightly, but he recovers, stepping forwards to jab a finger into Scott’s chest, “Well, you’re sure as hell acting like it.” 

 

Tango’s eyes are as red as they have always been, and it occurs to Scott that they’re the shade he likes, that it’s nice to see that colour here in the palace. Even with the anger behind them, it feels comforting. 

 

Scott breathes in, and, looking up at Jimmy over Tango’s shoulder, he breathes out. 

 

Jimmy’s lip is firmly between his teeth, and when Scott looks down, he sees his pointer finger picking at a hangnail on his thumb. It’s not bleeding yet, it probably will soon. 

 

You’re sure as hell acting like it. 

 

Was he acting like it? 

 

The best way to act when meeting new people is with a singular, unwavering expression and perfect politeness. 

 

This is a fact that Scott has learnt, meeting diplomats and aristocrats and visiting royalty. This is the best way to meet someone you are trying to impress, who you will talk to for five minutes before moving on to your next target, off to make another good impression. 

 

Maybe it’s not the best way to meet people you will know for the rest of your life. 

 

But I didn’t mean to! It wasn’t on purpose. I don’t want to be like this. 

 

And yet. 

 

They don’t know that. 

 

Scott’s eyes had stayed fixed on Jimmy’s fidgeting hand, but now he looks back up to meet his gaze. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t hate you, I should have been nicer.” 

 

Scott is bad at apologies. His mother has never demanded regret, only results, and he and Pearl resolve their issues in other ways. With scaled walls and stones thrown at windows, and sitting in silence. They blow up, and they don’t talk, and all at once they come back together as if nothing had ever happened. There never seems to be much room for talking about it after that. 

 

He’s not practised, but he’s trying his best. He hopes his face is cooperating, just a bit. 

 

“I don’t mean to…” he gestures to his own body. He knows how he looks, stiff shoulders, pressed suit. “I’m anxious, and I didn’t mean to take it out on you. Sorry.” 

 

Jimmy finally releases his lip from its cage, and Scott watches as it moves softly back into place. 

 

“It’s ok,” he smiles at Scott, just a quirk of his lips. 

 

Tango scoffs, still glaring at Scott, though his posture has relaxed with his arms dropping back down to his sides and his shoulders loosening. 

 

Jimmy runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “Tango, please.” He begins walking again, off into the gardens.

 

Scott moves to follow him but doesn’t know if his rift with the bodyguard is of more pressing importance, and there is a strange moment of connection where he makes eye contact with Tango, only to find his own worry reflected back at him. It’s nice, until Tango’s face morphs into a scowl and Scott lengthens his strides to catch up with his fiancé. 

 

“Hi,” he says, like an idiot. Jimmy’s legs are longer than his, and it’s a little bit of a struggle to keep up with his pace. 

 

“Hi,” Jimmy replies stiffly. 

 

It’s strange. Scott had been so detached before he hadn’t even noticed the tension in their conversation, the tension in his own body had been so overwhelming. But now, it’s as if the apology has opened a valve in his body, letting out the built-up steam. He’s sure he’s shrunk a few inches, and he can feel his face, including the pain in his jaw from how tightly he had been clenching it.

 

Jimmy’s voice is still terse, and he can hear Tango’s intimidatingly steady footsteps somewhere behind them, but Scott feels better than he has all day. 

 

“Are we…” he starts, “cool?” 

 

Jimmy looks over at him, and his eyes are very brown. The brown of warm mud, Scott thinks. It’s a good thought, a compliment really, but he doesn’t think it would be taken that way if he said it out loud.

 

“Yeah, we’re cool.” He pauses for a long moment, “…dude.” 

 

This makes Scott laugh. He’s been called dude by Pearl plenty, dude, mate, buddy boy. All the same, he knows that he doesn't exactly look like a dude.

 

“Dude?” 

 

Jimmy’s hand comes up to half cover his face, but he’s smiling. “Give me a break, dude, ” he doubles down, “I already did all the icebreakers while you were busy being aloof.”

 

“So we’ve skipped past getting to know you to what? Terms of endearment?” 

 

Jimmy’s expression is steadily clearing up; in turn, Scott can feel his own smile growing. 

 

“I’m pretty sure dude doesn’t qualify, and besides. It’s pretty entry-level friendly nicknaming.” 

 

“All I’m hearing is that we’re friends.”

 

Too far, too far, too far, Scott’s brain chants. 

 

He kind of expects Jimmy to go back to being angry again, for his smile to fall, maybe for him to drop back to be with Tango, as improper as it would be. 

 

Instead, he stays smiling. 

 

“You’re really gonna have to step up your game for that one, after your opening act. I think a few more apologies are due my way.”

 

Jimmy had had his gaze fixed firmly ahead of them, but after a few seconds, he looks over to meet Scott’s gaze. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Scott says seriously. 

 

There’s a long moment before Jimmy inhales as if steeling himself. “I’m sorry too. Mostly about Tango, he’s a bit protective.” 

 

“No, it’s cool dude,” he says, testing out the word. “He’s your bodyguard, right? Protective is kind of part of the job description.” 

 

Scott kind of wants to pat him on the back, to comfort him or something equally as stupid. Instead, his hands stay by his sides. He doesn’t think they’re quite at that level. 

 

Even if they might be possible future friends, his craving for touch is rarely reciprocated.

 

“But also, don’t be. I was being a prick, I kinda went perfect.” 

 

“Went perfect?” 

 

Scott gestures to his own face, “No emotions, you know? Perfect prince.” 

 

Jimmy studies him seriously, “I think you and I have different versions of perfect.” 

 

Scott shrugs, tries to be nonchalant about how his heart is trying to beat out of his chest. “It’s useful sometimes.” 

 

“That’s what you did at the first audience, isn’t it?” 

 

Scott scratches behind his neck, pushing his hair out of the way. “Yeah, it was. I don’t mean to.” 

 

“I thought you just didn’t care.” 

 

Scott smiles, and is a little surprised when it’s at least half genuine. “A little column A, a little column B.” 

 

Jimmy doesn’t seem offended at this, even laughing again. Again. 

 

“I mean, I was pretty bored, and I was actually talking.” 

 

“You know,” Scott says, “you’d think I’d be allowed to talk at my own audience.” 

 

Jimmy points at him, “That’s what I told Tango! It was like you were there as some art piece or- wait, wait.” 

 

Jimmy’s gaze fixes on something behind Scott, and he steps forward, brushing past him so fast he doesn’t even have time to zero in on the place where Jimmy’s hand touches his shoulder when he pushes him aside. 

 

Scott turns and finds Jimmy crouching in the snow, hands cupped around a lone blooming red poppy. 

 

It’s an extremely improper stance, unbecoming of a royal, Scott’s mother would disapprove. 

 

He doesn’t care at all. 

 

“Look!” Jimmy grins up at him. “It’s your favourite colour.” 

 

“My favourite colour?”

 

Jimmy plucks the flower from its place and stands up, holding it out to him. 

 

“You said it was red.” 

 

Scott takes the poppy from him, red and black and beautiful. He thinks of Tango’s eyes. 

 

He reaches up to tuck the flower behind his ear. “Yeah,” he says, “it is.” 

 

Notes:

Jimmy reads genre romance, the kind with shirtless men on the cover. He has no idea he's basically living one.

I hope you enjoyed <3

PS: sorry I have butterflies, my non canon ranchers practice kissing fic is out!! And I’m incredibly proud of it. I recommended you take a peek :)

Chapter 11: the wedding

Jimmy is getting married. He knows this, he’s known it for months. But even now, looking at himself in his pressed white suit, it still doesn’t make sense. 

 

It feels like one weirdly long game of pretend, like he’s just playing along, like someone will jump out from behind one of Rivendell’s pieces of perfectly varnished furniture and yell surprise! It was all a trick. You’re going back now. Wasn’t that fun? 

 

It wasn’t fun, but he’d smile anyway, laugh and agree. Because it would mean he’d get to go home. 

 

He’s getting married, but even now, waiting to walk through gold-etched doors, it really doesn’t feel like it. 

 

If it were real, Tango would get to be here. If it were real, he’d be wearing something comfortable. If it were real, he’d actually want it to happen. 

 

Instead, here he is, playing pretend. 

 

The man straightening the cuff of his trousers stands back up, looking Jimmy in the eye. He has long white hair and a moustache almost as long. He’s an elf, like everyone else. 

 

“Are you ready, your highness?” 

 

This isn’t real. 

 

Jimmy tries to smile at the man, he fails; but he supposes it probably doesn’t matter. “Yes, thank you.” 

 

The doors open, and he steps out. 

 

Everything is bright, white surfaces and countless mirrors only reflecting the light. It’s blinding, and when Jimmy’s vision recovers, it's almost worse. 

 

He doesn’t recognise a single person in the crowd. It’s a shocking experience, one that somehow, despite everything, he didn’t expect. Face after pinched face, all of them strangers. 

 

He knows Lizzie is there, somewhere. She should be obvious, but he can’t seem to find her pink hair anywhere. He’d tried to get Tango in the front row, at least in the front row, if he couldn't have anything else. 

 

Apparently, it hadn’t worked. 

 

Scott is standing at the altar, face fixed in the same expression it held in the gardens. His perfect not-smile. I’m calm, I’m put together, I’m happy to be here, as long as you don’t look too closely. 

 

He knows he doesn’t mean to put it on, knows he shouldn’t blame him. 

 

It doesn’t stop Jimmy from hating him, just a bit. 

 

Scott holds out his hand to him as he ascends the two steps of the podium. The hand is clean, polite, limp. Jimmy takes it because he has to. 

 

Scott’s hand is cold, and it’s only when he stifles a flinch at the temperature that Jimmy realises that he had expected them to be warm. Not warm, hot. Hot like Tango is. 

 

He wishes it were Tango he was standing here with. Tango would make him feel better; at least Tango would be wearing his real face. 

 

A man steps in front of them and begins talking, Jimmy doesn’t pay attention, too busy trying to convince his heart to slow its beating. 

 

He wishes he could catch a glimpse of something from Scott across from him, anything. 

 

He smiles slightly, just a twitch of his lips, and Jimmy clings to it like a drowning man on a lifeline. 

 

The man in front of them finishes with a flourish and steps back to light applause from the audience. Even Liz and Joel’s wedding was better than this.

 

“You may now kiss.” 

 

And right. This is the part that comes next. Jimmy might have forgotten about this part, but now Scott is leaning in and Jimmy’s eyes are closing and it’s… fine. 

 

It’s fine. It’s absolutely completely fine. 

 

Scott’s lips are dry and soft, and Jimmy doesn’t mind the feeling. 

 

It makes him sad, more than anything.

 

Jimmy has never truly thought about romance before, never actually considered what it would be like to be in love. His whole life, it had been him and Tango and the world at their fingertips.

 

There was no room for anyone else to fit. 

 

That had never mattered, not really. He had been happy with him and Tango. He didn’t need anyone else. 

 

But now, here, Scott’s lips pressed to his, he feels that sadness wash over him, and he wonders what this would be like to have this be real. 

 

He imagines himself standing at the altar, in something much more comfortable than this suit. His lips press against those of some faceless, nameless person. A person he’s never bothered to try and create in his head. The other him is smiling probably, and when he breaks away from the kiss, his teeth are whiter than Jimmy’s own. He’s laughing, he’s happy. 

 

Scott pulls back, and the image is broken, leaving the other, happier Jimmy further away than ever, and his faceless partner something less than his imagination. 

 

Scott squeezes his hand, and Jimmy tries very hard not to cry. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Scott should have, in all honesty, expected them not to let Pearl in. 

 

It’s just that, he asked , right? He mentioned her just after his mother told him about the engagement, and then a week before his fiancé arrived, and then after his fiancé arrived, and then, finally, the morning of the wedding. 

 

And now here he is, standing at the altar, once more a stupid little boy idiotically believing that his mother was better than she is. 

 

Pearl isn’t here, and his mother isn’t better, and he needs to get over it. 

 

He searches for Tango in the crowd and hopes that, at the very least, they had let him stay, for Jimmy. If Scott can’t have Pearl here, Jimmy should at least get Tango. 

 

He finds no one, despite his vantage point. 

 

Surely it would be stupid for his mother not to let the prince’s bodyguard in? It would be entirely unnecessary. He supposes that Tango is a blaze, which isn’t exactly a great look for the new prince’s bodyguard, but then again, the new prince is merfolk, so Scott feels like they probably have bigger fish to fry (ha). 

 

He wants to apologise to him anyway, with his eyes if not his mouth. Scott hasn’t seen him since he was given a curt nod at the end of the garden stroll, and suspects he is not forgiven. But, regardless, Scott is about to get married to the guy’s boyfriend so he feels a bit guilty about that, and he would like Tango to know he’s sorry. 

 

The blaze is going to have to go without an even lacklustre apology, however, on account of being missing or invisible. Scott doesn’t know which, but honestly, invisible would be more fun. 

 

How much longer are they going to make me stand up here for? 

 

Scott would very much like to speak with some kind of event coordinator right about now. Someone had given him a schedule, but they’ve conveniently held the ceremony in a room entirely without clocks, so he has no idea if they’re behind schedule. 

 

As if summoned by his very thought (he wishes), music starts playing. It’s slow and typical, and though Scott has never heard it before, he feels as though he knows it intimately as the ambient soundtrack for the entire palace, and therefore, his life. 

 

This is to say, he doesn’t like it in the slightest. 

 

Then, the double doors open, and Jimmy walks out. 

 

He probably looks very nice. His suit is just the right shade of ivory, his hair is combed well, and his jewellery is a shade of gold that complements his scales. His shoes are clean and his buttons are done up, and he does, in fact, have the posture of a prince. 

 

This is all, of course, instantly combated by how truly uncomfortable he looks, like he would rather rip his own skin from his body than be in this moment right now. 

 

Scott can’t quite bring himself to be offended. 

 

Jimmy’s skin is tanned, and his scales are green, and everything around him is white, white, white. He doesn’t fit, he doesn’t match, and lining both sides of the aisle are elves, looking nothing like him. 

 

When Jimmy reaches the dais, Scott holds out a hand, and Jimmy takes it. 

 

Jimmy’s hand is smooth and dry and warm. It’s larger than Scott’s, with bitten nails and broken skin around his cuticles. 

 

It’s a lifetime of experience that leaves Scott entirely unsurprised that as the priest begins to speak, the only thing he can think about is Jimmy’s hand in his. 

 

You absolute loser. 

 

As Scott looks at Jimmy he can see his chest rapidly rising and falling, pupils that have contracted into small dots. His pulse is racing against Scott’s palm. 

 

It’s strange. This is Scott’s first time properly meeting another prince, and he finds himself shocked at how utterly terrible he is at hiding his emotions.

 

I think you and I have different versions of perfect. 

 

Jimmy isn’t used to this. It’s weird, crazy even that someone of his standing wouldn’t be, but Scott realises that in his perfection, he has failed to give Jimmy anything to latch onto. 

 

He thinks he’s in this alone. 

 

So, Scott squeezes his hand, just a little, and he tries to give him a reassuring smile. 

 

It mostly fails, but he’s almost certain he moved his lips, and, slowly but surely, Jimmy’s heart rate slows. 

 

Scott feels strangely proud. 

 

“You may now kiss.” 

 

He really needs to be paying more attention to this whole wedding thing. 

 

Quickly, Scott leans in towards Jimmy before anyone can realise that he’s just a second too late. 

 

He presses their lips together and feels… well, he feels very little, honestly. Jimmy is warm, and Scott isn’t, and mostly he feels a bit worried that his body temperature might be too cold for the other man. 

 

He’s heard it all before. It doesn’t exactly make people want to touch you when you feel like ice when they do. 

 

Scott pulls away, and Jimmy blinks, and it’s over. 

 

It’s worse than if it had hurt, he thinks. It’s worse than if he had felt guilty or if it was painful or if he had hated it. He just got married, and his thoughts don’t even have anything but a lingering memory to cling to. 

 

The crowd starts moving in front of them, and maybe someone said something, but Scott can’t tell. He really needs to be paying attention to his own wedding. 

 

Jimmy pulls him down the steps of the dais and into the crowd, pushing in the direction they’re moving, and oh. Jimmy is still holding his hand. 

 

Scott had been certain he would drop it the moment everyone stopped looking at them, but here he is, warm hand holding Scott tighter than ever. 

 

It’s probably just to keep up appearances, even if everyone knows they’re not really in love, but Scott finds comfort in it all the same. 

────────•~❉᯽❉~•────────

Tango is perfectly willing to admit that his previous hatred for Rivendell’s Queen was largely superficial. She was a little rude and a lot controlling. She separated him from Jimmy, but so far he had faced no repercussions for not only breaking out of the barracks but spending the following night in Jimmy’s lavishly decorated room. 

 

So, you know. Maybe it was typical of a queen to be cold and generally clueless, maybe Tango was going a bit overboard with his dislike. 

 

Now, however, confined to the furthest sidelines at his best friend’s wedding, he feels entirely justified in his emotions. 

 

Please don’t make a scene. 

 

That’s what Jimmy had told him yesterday, after the gardens. 

 

They’ll like you less if you draw attention to yourself. 

 

Tango had argued, of course he had. Who cares what they think of him? They already hated him based purely on what he looked like. 

 

But Jimmy had looked at him as he always did, and he had said please Tango , and he had folded.

 

So, no. Tango doesn’t make a scene, even as he is shuffled off to the very edge of the room in a line of other guards. 

 

He doesn’t make a scene, even as he is told by a masked elf at least a foot taller than him, “Stay put.”

 

He doesn’t make a scene, as much as he wants to, as much as his blood boils, and he feels his hands start to get hot. 

 

He’s more grateful than ever for Gem’s training, even if at the time he had only been able to appreciate the parlour tricks she taught him. 

 

Everyone around him is elven, all tall and cold and perfect, and Tango has always been an outsider, but here there’s nothing but rigid uniformity to hold onto, none of the comfortingly ridged scales of home. 

 

He misses his old cohort, who cared for him even in his singularity; he misses Jules, who, despite their flaws, tried to make him feel like he belonged. 

 

He misses Lenore, who was different as well. 

 

He hadn’t expected the homesickness to come on this quickly, but then again, he hadn’t expected to be separated from Jimmy this frequently either. 

 

The music starts, and Tango stands up straighter than he had already been standing, craning to look over the heads of the standing crowd before the seated nobility. The guard next to him sends him a side eye, which he ignores. 

 

The doors open and he can’t see anything. He catches a glimpse of a shoe, a suit jacket, nothing of Jimmy’s face. 

 

He’s so far away. He must feel horrible. Tango should be there.

 

Everything is white, and everything that isn’t is a shining gold or an iridescent blue. It’s too much, Tango can’t stand it. 

 

Jimmy reaches the dais, and there, Tango sees him, hand in hand with the unnervingly passive prince.

 

Jimmy had talked to him about Scott’s behaviour, told him he hadn’t meant it. Tango isn’t particularly sure he cares. 

 

If your fiancé is moved to your frigid (both literally and figuratively) kingdom, it’s your responsibility to make him feel comfortable and welcome. Even if he’s unreasonably forgiving, including giving you a flower for your troubles. 

 

Tango is self-aware enough to know that a little bit of it is jealousy, but, really, that guy was rude.  

 

And Jimmy looks so, so uncomfortable in front of a crowd he never wanted and clothes he’s always run from. 

 

“You may now kiss.” 

 

Tango braces himself, watching the small forms of Jimmy and Scott at the altar. 

 

A second. Another second. 

 

Scott leans in. 

 

They kiss, and it hurts like he knew it would, but surprisingly, Tango feels himself hurting for Jimmy more than himself. 

 

Jimmy doesn’t want to marry this guy, he has very little say in being here at all. He looks tense and uncomfortable, and really, Tango just feels sorry for him. 

 

He feels sorry for Scott, too, even if he is marrying the person Tango will never be able to get over. He didn’t sign up for this either. 

 

They pull apart, hands still clasped together, and yeah, ok, Tango is solidly jealous of that bit, eyes locking in on where fingers curve against each other. 

 

The man standing behind them at the altar says something, and the crowd in front of Tango, the people outside of his line of guards, begins moving.

 

Quickly, Tango leaves his post in the line of guards and slips into the crowd. He can feel the fingertips of the Rivendellian guard next to him slip along his wrist, but he loses his grip, and Tango has disappeared into the throng. 

 

It’s claustrophobic, the mass of bodies pressing in on him from all sides. He tries to stay away from crowds, from situations that make him feel so small, like this, so insignificant. 

 

He talked to Jimmy about it once. Jimmy, who loves crowds and weighted blankets and when Tango lies down on top of him, pressing his whole body into the bed.

 

He said he liked the anonymity of it, not just the weight. No one knew who he was, and no one wanted anything from him. He was just another face in the crowd.

 

As much as Tango has spent a good deal of his life wishing to be normal, he’s spent so long standing out that it kind of scares him to feel like he fits in. 

 

And, anyway, even in crowds it’s hard for him to stay unnoticed. 

 

People feel his hot skin or see his fiery hair, and they shy away, make a bit of space for him even as everyone else is pressed closer. 

 

It makes him a bit less claustrophobic, and yet it makes that pain in his chest hurt even more. 

 

So, Tango puts his head down, tucks his tail around his leg so no one steps on it, and trudges forwards. One step in front of another, everyone moving in the same direction. 

 

It works, it works well . That is, until he runs straight into someone who is moving in what is decidedly a different direction from the rest of the crowd.

 

He looks up, blinking into the harsh reflection of sea lanterns off a white quartz roof. The person in front of him is short, shorter than him, with a cloak the colour of amethyst and a hat to match. She has a wild crown of red hair and a staff that would make a perfect walking stick if she would only let him use it as one. 

 

He’s not sure he’s ever been so happy to see anyone.

 

Gem hugs him immediately, right there in the middle of the crowd. Her arms are, as always, stronger than they look as they squeeze him within an inch of his life. 

 

“Oh, thank the cliffs, Tango,” she says. It sounds like a whisper, but he knows it’s just the noise of the crowd quieting her voice. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.” 

 

He laughs without meaning to, “I think I do, Gem. I had no idea you’d be here.” 

 

She pulls away, grabbing his hand and dragging him to the side, swimming against the tide until they stand in an alcove at the side of the room, protected from the people moving past them.

 

“I think they invited me out of politeness, to be honest. I doubt they expected me to show up. Especially since they wouldn't even let the ruler of an empire into the pews.” 

 

Tango's eyebrows leap up his forehead, “Really? You? Crystal Cliffs is like the only place for higher education; surely they’d want to stay in your good graces.” 

 

Gem crosses her arms. “Apparently not enough to let a human sit in the front row.” 

 

“Damn,” Tango mutters. 

 

“Yep,” she smiles tightly. “Damn.” 

 

“Anyway,” Tango says, watching as the crowd begins to thin out. “How are you? I didn’t catch you before I had to leave with Jim.” 

 

“Yeah,” Gem takes off her hat so she can run her fingers through the top of her hair. “I’m sorry I had to bail on you. Gilded Helenthia had a whole thing, and yeah. Their king is sick, and they thought it was magical. It wasn’t.” 

 

“Look, I promise I paid attention in my lessons…” 

 

Gem smiles at him, “It’s a farming kingdom, sunflowers and windmills, you get the vibe. Small, but it’s a nice place, I liked the sun.” 

 

“Glad you had fun ditching me in my time of need to go on vacation.” 

 

“Duty calls, you know how it goes. I don’t get this tan for nothing.”

 

She stretches out her arm, so pale it’s trying awfully hard to convince Tango it’s never seen the light of day despite its freckles. 

 

“I guess it does,” he responds, “gotta get that summer glow.” 

 

“Aren’t I radiant?” Gem jokes, before catching sight of something over Tango’s shoulder and sobering. 

 

“Anyway, ignore me. I’m not the one going through it right now. Is Jimmy ok?” She squints at him, “Are you? Why weren’t you up there?” 

 

Tango winces and feels his hand go instinctively to the back of his neck. 

 

“Same reason as you, I guess,” he shrugs. “Not quite enough of an elf.” 

 

Gem crosses her arms. “Oh, come off it, you came here with Jim. They can’t separate you forever.” 

 

“I think they’re trying, to be honest. They put me in the barracks the first night, although when I snuck ou,t no one followed up.” 

 

“Shit,” Gem mutters. “And Jimmy?” 

 

“I mean, he’s being carted around just the same as me.” 

 

“And his ah, husband?” 

 

“He was a dick.” 

 

Gem’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead, “Like a proper dick? Like an abort mission dick?”

 

“No,” Tango shakes his head, leaning back against the wall behind him. “He was just rude to Jimmy. I think they made up, Jimmy said he kind of likes him now, but like. He was really rude, and now they’re married, and I just can’t forget it. It hurts.”

 

Tango knows it’s not even half the reason the wedding hurts, but it's all he can tell Gem right now. 

 

Gem reaches out, hand alighting on his upper arm. “That sucks, dude. I’m sorry. How are you holding up with the wedding and everything?” 

 

The crowd has disappeared through a side doorway. Tango can’t quite bring himself to follow them just yet, feeling safe for the first time in days in this alcove with Gem next to him. 

 

“Uh,” he laughs. “Bad? I’m holding up pretty badly to be honest. I feel like shit.” 

 

“Oh no.”

 

“And it’s like. I knew the wedding would suck. I love him, you know? I knew that it would feel awful, and I would hate it. But then we came here, and everyone was rude, and they’re all trying to separate us, and it’s so cold just all the time. And it’s too much on top of the rest of it.”

 

“Did they give you a fireplace?

 

“Yeah,” Tango sighs. “I just feel like it’s not cutting it. And I can’t spend all my time curled up in there.” 

 

“In there?” Gem's eyebrows raise. 

 

Tango smiles, “What better way to get warm than to be in the fire?” 

 

“I always forget, dude. You know it takes decades to perfect fire resistance potions?” 

 

“There’s got to be some benefits to all this,” Tango gestures to himself. Sharp teeth, red eyes, long tail.

 

Gem rolls her eyes, “I won’t do self-deprecation with you right now, you know my feelings on it.” 

 

And he’s smiling now, and he’s stopped feeling he wants to slide down to the floor and curl into a ball. 

 

“Aww, come on, Gem. Can’t I have a little bit?” 

 

“Not around me, you can’t.” 

 

“Please?”

 

“You’re lovely and kind and amazing to be around. Are you happy?”

 

Tango’s tail had been creeping forwards entirely without his permission, and now wraps itself around Gem’s wrist in a hug.

 

She used her free hand’s fingertip to lightly brush over its fluffy tip.

 

“Yeah, I’m happy, Gem. Thanks.”

 

“And remember,” she points at him. “You can use the rock or send me a letter any time, and I’ll show up. I’m the Wizard now, they can’t turn me away even if they want to.”

 

He smiles, “Thanks.” 

 

She takes a step forwards, his tail still around her wrist, and wraps her arms around him in a hug. 

 

“ Any time, ” she whispers, “don’t be an idiot about it.” 

 

“I won’t be, I promise.” 

Notes:

<333

Notes:

I love comments and kudos, and you're welcome to hit me up on my tumblr.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Sorry, I have a...