Quote:
After Cold Snap
Fire Opal ( 8 ) : On a cold winter night, there’s nothing nicer than burning a nice log in the fire. Looking like any average piece of lumber, the neatly chopped log you selected has no clear indication that there’s something special about it–until the fire gets to it. A typical fire should be red and orange and yellow, and yet this one circles through all colors of the rainbow. It smells fragrant and pleasant, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it–it just burns in beautiful, vibrant colors. As the wood burns, opalescent cracks appear through it, casting a shimmering light enhanced by the flames. By the end of it, only rainbow embers remain, sparkling like dark opals, and even they eventually lose their color and crumble away.
Calder sniffled, a truly pitiful sound for a man of his age and stature.
“So… You’re telling me you were mugged on your way out of the restaurant, and nobody was around to see who did it or help you out, and you still have your phone and keys and wallet?”
Despite the welling of hot tears prickling the corners of his eyes, Calder’s response was sharp as a blade, “Yes,” he snapped. “What’s so unbelievable about that? I have obviously been wounded-” Sniff. “-and you have seen me take a man out. Don’t be so skeptical.”
Calder’s closest friend was a small and skinny thing. Huge round glasses hiding big blue eyes, freckles, and short white-blond curls. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t fancied Silvanus at one point, but their romantic relationship was a distant, if cherished memory. Now they were ‘just friends,’ albeit friends who knew a few too many things about one another.
A scoff. A roll of pretty blue eyes. A sigh. “Did you call the police?”
“No. What would they do?”
“And no hospital, either-”
“Of course not.”
Calder should count himself lucky that Silvanus’ first-aid training was greater than average, being a paramedic. And despite the other man’s extremely strong preference that injured persons seek treatment physically at a hospital, he knew that attempting to force it wouldn’t win him any favors. Especially not with Calder… Who had a tendency to be belligerent and snappish when pressed to do something he was opposed to.
With a noncommittal hum of understanding, Silvanus blotted tenderly at the gash spearing across Calder’s waist, over his hip bone. It was deep, but it wasn’t like his organs were spilling out of him or anything. And it was a relatively clean slice, coming from an alleged ‘mugger.’ Silvanus cleaned the cut, dried it, dressed it, and peered up from where he was crouched on the floor in front of the couch. “You should probably get stitches. Or glue, even. In the absence of that, it’s going to scar. And it won’t be pretty.”
Calder huffed, pressing his palm over the still-uncomfortably-throbbing wound, pulsing as if agreeing with Silvanus’ concerns. “So low,” he grumbled. “Playing on my insecurities… How cruel.”
A shrug as Silvanus rose to his feet and turned away. “I have to use whatever resources are available to me. If it really would make you go in for proper treatment-”
“It won’t. You’re just taking an opportunity to be mean,” Calder retorted, flouncing sidelong onto the couch in a tangle of navy waves. He snatched a blanket from the back cushion and yanked it aggressively over himself, glowering and pouting from beneath the covers as the smaller man sauntered around his living room. First to the fireplace to toss in an extra log, then to the bar counter separating the living room from the kitchen to fetch a bottle of water for Calder.
Who snatched that quite thanklessly too. “Do you have work soon? I can head home if you’re busy.”
“Hm… in about twelve hours,” Silvanus answered. “You can stay as long as you need to.” And then he was swatting his hand near Calder’s head, ushering him to shuffle around so that he Silvanus could sit on the couch, and Calder could rest his cheek on Silvanus’ thigh. Fingers combed through his hair, carefully righting the inky waves. “Such a pain,” Silvanus grumbled. “I can’t believe you won’t tell me what actually happened.”
“I did tell you-”
“You’re a liar.” Ignoring Calder’s indignant sound of refusal, Silvanus pressed on. “No one was around, really? You were the last out of the restaurant? As if that wasn’t unbelievable enough, a mugger went for you-” Calder was not short and not thin. “-instead one of the girls? Was it someone you know? And you don’t want to tell me-?”
“No,” Calder asserted sharply- and honestly.. “I didn’t know her. I’d never seen her before-”
“It was a girl?”
“Yes. It was a girl with a knife-”
“A knife didn’t make a cut like that.”
Calder inhaled a curt breath, because that didn’t seem important- it wasn’t even a super relevant detail, but the girl had actually had a sword, but he didn’t want to say that he’d been mugged by someone with a military-grade melee weapon. Because for whatever reason, that felt like it was disclosing too much. He didn’t want to divulge anything unnecessary to Silvanus. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he huffed at last, curling his arms close to his chest and dragging the blanket tight under his chin. “It was dark, there was a lot going on- this is why I didn’t go to the police, by the way. I’m not looking to be interrogated.”
Silvanus snorted. Calder answered with a quiet huff of his own. “So you would tell me, though. If you knew more? If there was something else going on?”
“I… I’m not sure.” Which felt safe as it was coming out of his mouth, because it wasn’t a lie, but in hindsight, that was probably all Silv needed to know he was right about there being something else in the works. Calder’s expression scrunched as he had that thought-
Which must have been correct, because Silvanus didn’t press further. Just kept petting his hair. “Will Cordellia help you with the dressings? You need to change them at least every day.”
“Of course she will.” She would if he told her, but Calder had no plans of informing his sister that he’d been injured in such a way. She would worry. And ask questions more vigorously than Silvanus did- and he lived with her, so there’d be pretty much no escaping them. …It really did suck that he had to keep all the juiciest secrets to himself.
The television flicked on. Silv turned on the seasonally appropriate Home Alone and didn’t press further about the true cause of Calder’s injuries or insistence that he go to the hospital, which Calder was thankful for. He was also not particularly interested in the flick, and instead turned his gaze toward the crackling fire. If it were up to him, he would’ve preferred just those sounds to lull him to rest, but it hardly took very very long before the oranges of the flames seemed to morph to pretty pinks and purples and blues, warm despite the cool tones.
He meant to ask where Silvanus had gotten such a pretty fire piece, but… He found himself dizzy and dazed, and opening his mouth- and then his eyes, once they drifted shut- seemed too heavy and laborious of a task to be completed. He just hummed out a soft sound, as if letting his friend know that he was going down.
The blanket was pulled a bit higher over his shoulders, tucked close to him, and the movie sounds drowned out, replaced only by crackling fire noises, and Silvanus’ fingers in his hair.
[WC: 1161]
