FANFIC
Incidently, Thrifty's called! I HAVE A BETTER JOB NOW YAYZ
WEDDING NIGHT
There has been a battle. They have won.
Outside of the medical tent, people are laughing and drinking, relating stories of the long trip across the continent to the Dread Isle. The voices are filled with exhausted content. There have been great losses, but it is over at last. Somewhere someone has started to play music.
Inside the medical tent, Heath lies on a stretcher, listening half-awake to the celebrations outside. The fire dragon's flame melted his armour like tin and left him with some bad burns. He is lucky to be alive. Only the healer's quick thinking saved him from being trapped forever in the wreck of his breastplate. Still wounded, although not critically, he has been confined to bed while the party rages around him.
He doesn't mind it. Never one for drinking, even under Vaida's notoriously hedonistic command, he prefers the relative quiet of the tent. Here he is alone. Even Nino, who suffered a grave wound to the chest before Jaffar went berserk and killed her attacker, is outside with a poultice in her bandages and instructions not to move too much. He is glad for her but gladder that he has an excuse not to join in the festivities.
In the cool semidarkness, his mind drifts to the aftermath of the journey. Their victory does not change the fact that he is a wanted man. As soon as they reach the mainland again, Bern's soldiers will be searching for him. He will need to find somewhere secluded in which to settle down and avoid them for a while.
Maybe Ilia, he thinks. He wonders how Legault feels about the cold. Then he dismisses the thought with an acute sense of his own weakness. Such a useless idea should not be allowed to exist. It should be banished, as all others like it have been, to a place where it will never trouble him again.
When the tent door flaps open, he assumes at first that another drunken couple have mistaken this for a good place to hold a tryst. It wouldn't be the first time. But there is no conversation, and no sound of fumbling physical advances.
Legault moves silently as ever, but by the very sound of his footsteps Heath can tell he has been drinking. "Heath?" he asks, quietly. "Does it still hurt? ...You awake?" Heath remains silent. Legault takes a seat in the chair beside his cot, carefully, and leans forward as if to kiss him.
"I'm awake," says Heath abruptly, aware that he couldn't take a kiss without reacting anyway. "It's getting better. What about you? Having fun out there?"
The response is one he hadn't intended; Legault looks a little hurt, which is rare, and in the past has never been his fault. "No," he says frankly. "Heath, I need to talk to you."
"Later. I'm trying to sleep."
Gingerly, so as not to dislodge his bandages, Heath turns away from him. He doesn't want to do this yet. He thought he'd have more time. It will still be a few days before the group is ready to head back to the mainland, and even after that, if he is very careful, he could have at least a little while before they have to separate...
At the back of his mind, he has always known that he won't be with Legault for very long. In the army, the real world becomes suspended, and people can do as they please. Life after the battle won't work that way. Legault will go where he has to go. Heath needs to stay on the run. It would be ridiculous to assume things could be otherwise.
Still, even a little longer...
"I need to talk," says Legault, pulling him towards him with a firm hand. "Now. I'm serious."
That's the first warning sign. Legault is almost never serious. Heath lets himself be pulled, smelling for hard liquor, a scent he learned to identify in the army. There is only a faint smell of wine. "You're drunk," he says anyway. "We can talk in the morning."
Legault shakes his head. There is a strange sense of urgency in his gestures. "I'm sober," he says. "It has to be now. By tomorrow I'll lose my nerve and I'll never say anything, and by the time I feel up to it you'll be gone for good."
"I'll... what?" Heath sits up in his cot, confused despite himself. That's the second warning sign. This certainly doesn't sound like any farewell he's ever been through.
"Look," Legault starts, wearing a smile that doesn't fit right now at all, "assassins are cowards. You sneak up on the enemy because you can't win against them face to face. So I've rarely the ability to be honest, because I've gotten used to lying and hiding. I don't say the things I mean to say. Especially to you." He frowns. "...This is difficult. I'm stalling for time."
Having never heard Legault talk like this before, Heath believes he's ready for just about anything. "What are you trying to say?" he asks, almost patronizingly. It's unusual for him to have the advantage in one of their conversations.
Legault takes Heath's hand in his own, which is callused and feels at that moment hotter than the dragon's flame.
"When we get back to the mainland, I want to travel with you. Anywhere you go."
It's possible that Heath could have been more surprised if Legault had revealed that he was secretly Ninian in a clever disguise. Other than that, this was one of the last things he expected. "No, you don't," he answers, convincing himself this is a fever dream before admitting that it can't be. "What?"
"Don't make me say it again," says Legault, still holding his hand.
Heath takes several moments. To his chagrin, he actually ponders the offer for a moment before shaking his head, disgusted at his own weakness. "That's ridiculous. Two people mean twice the chance of discovery. I've already got Hyperion, and he isn't exactly the easiest thing to hide... no, we couldn't do it. The Bern army would hunt us down the minute we entered civilization."
"I'm good at sneaking around, remember?" Legault's response is calm but with an undisguised intensity. "I have contacts from one side of this continent to the other. If I pull in a few favours, I can make it so nobody will even know where to start looking."
It's a good point. He wants to take it. "You'd be putting yourself at risk."
Legault shrugs. "I'm used to risk."
"I thought you said you were a coward." Heath experiences a sense of deja vu. This is starting to sound like one of the conversations they had when they first met, before they knew each other, when they were just strangers. "If you help me, they'll kill you too. Why would you agree to do all that for me?"
Outside, someone shrieks, and the medical tent is surrounded by drunken laughter. Shadows flicker across the canvas sides. Something about the glow of the fires around them makes it seem beautiful.
"Must be this thing called 'love,'" says Legault, very quietly.
Heath's chest tightens. To hear such a thing when he knows it's not true is almost unbearable. "That's not funny," he replies, equally quiet.
But Legault shakes his head, and his eyes are piercing, and his voice is almost anguished. "I didn't mean it as a joke."
The noise outside loses any meaning.
When he fell in love with Legault, Heath made a conscious decision to sublimate his feelings and continue as usual. He wasn't unhappy with that choice. It was far too awkward to do otherwise in his position. He, who had been living as the lowest common denominator of society, had been taken under the wing of a massive army and allowed to meet someone who understood him. The sex was good. He couldn't have found a better friend. Surely if he asked for more than that he would be punished. He pretended not to need more than that.
Now he thinks, why did I tell myself that was enough when I could have had more? Legault isn't the only coward here.
"...I'm... sorry," says Legault finally, apparently mistaking the look on his face for rejection, "if that makes you uncomfortable. I won't mention it again. I don't care how you feel about me. Just let me come with you."
Heath shakes his head, reaches out, grabs Legault's arm and tugs him onto the cot with him. "I'd love that," he says. "I love you. That would be wonderful. I'm just... I'm worried that I won't be able to protect you. It would be better if you were somewhere else and I knew you were alive."
Legault's body relaxes against his. His arm settles lightly on Heath's shoulder, stroking the bandages there, his chest rising and falling evenly. "I'm not the kind of person you have to worry about protecting. They didn't call me the Hurricane for nothing, you know."
"I know. But still... if something happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."
"Don't you think I feel the same way? I want to be close to you so that I can help you. Otherwise, I won't even know if you're alive."
"...I guess you're right."
The noise outside is dying down now. The revelers are heading off to sleep, together or alone, to awaken in the morning with terrible headaches. Heath has no idea what he will be like tomorrow. For the moment, he doesn't even care. Right now he is happy.
"I was thinking of going to Ilia."
"Ilia, hm? I have contacts there. Could be a safe bet."
"Are you that intent on coming?"
"Yes."
"...There's nothing for it, then. Hyperion can carry two. We should be able to make the journey in a few weeks, if we hurry..."
"Why hurry? It's our honeymoon. We should take our time."
"I'll think about it."
"What? No objections? That's not much like you."
"I don't want an argument right now."
"Me neither."
Then they give up conversation in favour of sex.
That night, for the first time in a long time, Heath falls asleep with no worries in his mind. There is only the quiet of the night and Legault beside him. When they are found sleeping up against each other in the medical tent the next morning, he doesn't even flinch, merely takes the shock and awkwardness with something akin to pride.
He's got something to look forward to now. That makes all the difference.
END
(I have serious trouble writing romance, because writing people saying 'I love you' makes me feel like I'm writing a big ridiculous pile of sappy sap, and I burn with shame. This effect is about ten times worse when I write fanfiction. Nevertheless! The world needed at least one Legault/Heath fic where they get to ride off into the sunset, and it was my patriotic duty to supply. Besides, I love to write dialogue for these guys, they play off each other really well, I think.)
WEDDING NIGHT
There has been a battle. They have won.
Outside of the medical tent, people are laughing and drinking, relating stories of the long trip across the continent to the Dread Isle. The voices are filled with exhausted content. There have been great losses, but it is over at last. Somewhere someone has started to play music.
Inside the medical tent, Heath lies on a stretcher, listening half-awake to the celebrations outside. The fire dragon's flame melted his armour like tin and left him with some bad burns. He is lucky to be alive. Only the healer's quick thinking saved him from being trapped forever in the wreck of his breastplate. Still wounded, although not critically, he has been confined to bed while the party rages around him.
He doesn't mind it. Never one for drinking, even under Vaida's notoriously hedonistic command, he prefers the relative quiet of the tent. Here he is alone. Even Nino, who suffered a grave wound to the chest before Jaffar went berserk and killed her attacker, is outside with a poultice in her bandages and instructions not to move too much. He is glad for her but gladder that he has an excuse not to join in the festivities.
In the cool semidarkness, his mind drifts to the aftermath of the journey. Their victory does not change the fact that he is a wanted man. As soon as they reach the mainland again, Bern's soldiers will be searching for him. He will need to find somewhere secluded in which to settle down and avoid them for a while.
Maybe Ilia, he thinks. He wonders how Legault feels about the cold. Then he dismisses the thought with an acute sense of his own weakness. Such a useless idea should not be allowed to exist. It should be banished, as all others like it have been, to a place where it will never trouble him again.
When the tent door flaps open, he assumes at first that another drunken couple have mistaken this for a good place to hold a tryst. It wouldn't be the first time. But there is no conversation, and no sound of fumbling physical advances.
Legault moves silently as ever, but by the very sound of his footsteps Heath can tell he has been drinking. "Heath?" he asks, quietly. "Does it still hurt? ...You awake?" Heath remains silent. Legault takes a seat in the chair beside his cot, carefully, and leans forward as if to kiss him.
"I'm awake," says Heath abruptly, aware that he couldn't take a kiss without reacting anyway. "It's getting better. What about you? Having fun out there?"
The response is one he hadn't intended; Legault looks a little hurt, which is rare, and in the past has never been his fault. "No," he says frankly. "Heath, I need to talk to you."
"Later. I'm trying to sleep."
Gingerly, so as not to dislodge his bandages, Heath turns away from him. He doesn't want to do this yet. He thought he'd have more time. It will still be a few days before the group is ready to head back to the mainland, and even after that, if he is very careful, he could have at least a little while before they have to separate...
At the back of his mind, he has always known that he won't be with Legault for very long. In the army, the real world becomes suspended, and people can do as they please. Life after the battle won't work that way. Legault will go where he has to go. Heath needs to stay on the run. It would be ridiculous to assume things could be otherwise.
Still, even a little longer...
"I need to talk," says Legault, pulling him towards him with a firm hand. "Now. I'm serious."
That's the first warning sign. Legault is almost never serious. Heath lets himself be pulled, smelling for hard liquor, a scent he learned to identify in the army. There is only a faint smell of wine. "You're drunk," he says anyway. "We can talk in the morning."
Legault shakes his head. There is a strange sense of urgency in his gestures. "I'm sober," he says. "It has to be now. By tomorrow I'll lose my nerve and I'll never say anything, and by the time I feel up to it you'll be gone for good."
"I'll... what?" Heath sits up in his cot, confused despite himself. That's the second warning sign. This certainly doesn't sound like any farewell he's ever been through.
"Look," Legault starts, wearing a smile that doesn't fit right now at all, "assassins are cowards. You sneak up on the enemy because you can't win against them face to face. So I've rarely the ability to be honest, because I've gotten used to lying and hiding. I don't say the things I mean to say. Especially to you." He frowns. "...This is difficult. I'm stalling for time."
Having never heard Legault talk like this before, Heath believes he's ready for just about anything. "What are you trying to say?" he asks, almost patronizingly. It's unusual for him to have the advantage in one of their conversations.
Legault takes Heath's hand in his own, which is callused and feels at that moment hotter than the dragon's flame.
"When we get back to the mainland, I want to travel with you. Anywhere you go."
It's possible that Heath could have been more surprised if Legault had revealed that he was secretly Ninian in a clever disguise. Other than that, this was one of the last things he expected. "No, you don't," he answers, convincing himself this is a fever dream before admitting that it can't be. "What?"
"Don't make me say it again," says Legault, still holding his hand.
Heath takes several moments. To his chagrin, he actually ponders the offer for a moment before shaking his head, disgusted at his own weakness. "That's ridiculous. Two people mean twice the chance of discovery. I've already got Hyperion, and he isn't exactly the easiest thing to hide... no, we couldn't do it. The Bern army would hunt us down the minute we entered civilization."
"I'm good at sneaking around, remember?" Legault's response is calm but with an undisguised intensity. "I have contacts from one side of this continent to the other. If I pull in a few favours, I can make it so nobody will even know where to start looking."
It's a good point. He wants to take it. "You'd be putting yourself at risk."
Legault shrugs. "I'm used to risk."
"I thought you said you were a coward." Heath experiences a sense of deja vu. This is starting to sound like one of the conversations they had when they first met, before they knew each other, when they were just strangers. "If you help me, they'll kill you too. Why would you agree to do all that for me?"
Outside, someone shrieks, and the medical tent is surrounded by drunken laughter. Shadows flicker across the canvas sides. Something about the glow of the fires around them makes it seem beautiful.
"Must be this thing called 'love,'" says Legault, very quietly.
Heath's chest tightens. To hear such a thing when he knows it's not true is almost unbearable. "That's not funny," he replies, equally quiet.
But Legault shakes his head, and his eyes are piercing, and his voice is almost anguished. "I didn't mean it as a joke."
The noise outside loses any meaning.
When he fell in love with Legault, Heath made a conscious decision to sublimate his feelings and continue as usual. He wasn't unhappy with that choice. It was far too awkward to do otherwise in his position. He, who had been living as the lowest common denominator of society, had been taken under the wing of a massive army and allowed to meet someone who understood him. The sex was good. He couldn't have found a better friend. Surely if he asked for more than that he would be punished. He pretended not to need more than that.
Now he thinks, why did I tell myself that was enough when I could have had more? Legault isn't the only coward here.
"...I'm... sorry," says Legault finally, apparently mistaking the look on his face for rejection, "if that makes you uncomfortable. I won't mention it again. I don't care how you feel about me. Just let me come with you."
Heath shakes his head, reaches out, grabs Legault's arm and tugs him onto the cot with him. "I'd love that," he says. "I love you. That would be wonderful. I'm just... I'm worried that I won't be able to protect you. It would be better if you were somewhere else and I knew you were alive."
Legault's body relaxes against his. His arm settles lightly on Heath's shoulder, stroking the bandages there, his chest rising and falling evenly. "I'm not the kind of person you have to worry about protecting. They didn't call me the Hurricane for nothing, you know."
"I know. But still... if something happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."
"Don't you think I feel the same way? I want to be close to you so that I can help you. Otherwise, I won't even know if you're alive."
"...I guess you're right."
The noise outside is dying down now. The revelers are heading off to sleep, together or alone, to awaken in the morning with terrible headaches. Heath has no idea what he will be like tomorrow. For the moment, he doesn't even care. Right now he is happy.
"I was thinking of going to Ilia."
"Ilia, hm? I have contacts there. Could be a safe bet."
"Are you that intent on coming?"
"Yes."
"...There's nothing for it, then. Hyperion can carry two. We should be able to make the journey in a few weeks, if we hurry..."
"Why hurry? It's our honeymoon. We should take our time."
"I'll think about it."
"What? No objections? That's not much like you."
"I don't want an argument right now."
"Me neither."
Then they give up conversation in favour of sex.
That night, for the first time in a long time, Heath falls asleep with no worries in his mind. There is only the quiet of the night and Legault beside him. When they are found sleeping up against each other in the medical tent the next morning, he doesn't even flinch, merely takes the shock and awkwardness with something akin to pride.
He's got something to look forward to now. That makes all the difference.
END
(I have serious trouble writing romance, because writing people saying 'I love you' makes me feel like I'm writing a big ridiculous pile of sappy sap, and I burn with shame. This effect is about ten times worse when I write fanfiction. Nevertheless! The world needed at least one Legault/Heath fic where they get to ride off into the sunset, and it was my patriotic duty to supply. Besides, I love to write dialogue for these guys, they play off each other really well, I think.)