Archive of Our Own ^beta

“The next floor is my master’s,” Bam says suddenly. The words are strangled and cut off.

“What?” Aguero stops in his tracks. The snow will build up, he told himself, but still he stopped. Bam stops too from in front of him. The lantern swings as he turns around. His eyes look within it for a split second, and then he darts them back up.

“My master lived on the 91st floor.” Bam says this casually, as if he was reading from a book. His head is tilted sideways, eyes off somewhere into the darkness. Aguero turns to look at what he sees. Nothing.

His own lantern shakes haphazardly within his grip. There’s a clunk to be heard clattering within his lantern, but he pays it no mind. He says: “Come on. We should keep moving.”

He starts back up the mountain again. The snow had gathered in front of his feet so it was a bit of an effort. Bam doesn’t move.

“Bam.” He hesitates to slow down again. They’d lost progress to the winds and the slope already. They would never reach the peak at this rate. He says again: “Bam.”

White clings to his lashes, but Bam shifts his feet once more. A cinch in his brow, Aguero leans in close. “We should take a break.” He changes his mind.

Bam’s face remains pristine. Inwardly, he agrees. But he could not bring himself to speak any more. He does not wield ice, but it is he who is colder. His eyes close, and then they open delicately. He nods slightly.

Aguero leads them sideways, around to the rocks they had trudged past. It was just as dark as it was now — as it had been for a while now — but in the combined light of their lanterns there is a small alcove.

“It’s not much,” he starts. “But it’ll block the wind.” He sits them both down on the slab least wet. It’s cold. The sting seeps through his clothing and he’s sure that Bam feels it too. Impulsively, he sets down his lantern and brings a hand up. He should save it for when they might truly need it, he tells himself. But still there is no hesitation when he drags Bam close enough to feel his breath, and lifts his finger up.

Elegantly, a wisp dances between them.

The warmth is fickle, but it is there. A long breath draws out of Bam, and he lays down upon stone. Aguero follows.

“The next floor is where my master used to live.” Bam stares unblinkingly at the stone above them. The wind howls outside.

There was nothing you could do, Aguero wants to say this. The words get caught in his throat and all he can do is swallow. He does. He says instead, past the panic that is so deeply familiar to his bones: “What was he like?”

“Warm.” Bam closes his eyes. “I grew up without parents. He’s what I imagined a father would be like.”

The image is contradicting, this he understands. But he too knows how complicated people are. The Jinsung that had seized his lungs in the dark of sleep was the same as the Jinsung that didn’t kill him because he loved a god like he was his own.

Did Jinsung Ha have any children of his own? He wonders upon this for a moment. The memory of red dahlias and the utterance of a last oath and diamonds upon the floor brushed the forefront of his mind. It does not matter.

“He must have been wonderful.” Aguero does not think of his own sire. Bam does not respond. Understanding is not limited by the unspoken.

“Have you heard of stars?” The subject changes suddenly.

“What?” The feeling of deja vu. He had said something like this earlier, hadn’t he? They had discussed stars once, hadn’t they?

“They’re very bright.” Despite the cold, Bam pulls his hand out of his glove and presses a tip to the stone ceiling. Aguero watches intently. The finger draws two triangles — one pointing up, one down — overlapping each other into a six pointed shape. It’s simple. “They look like that.”

Bam was an Irregular, he thinks. “Have you seen them before?”

It’s a silly question, he knows. If Rachel hasn’t seen any, then Bam probably hasn’t either. Still, he asks.

“No.” The answer was expected, but there is a shared disappointment. “That’s what she said they look like.” Bam pauses. He says, quieter now: “I think my mother told her about stars.”

Silence falls upon them like a blanket. Aguero reaches beside him to settle the lantern into view. That six-pointed shape shudders with the movement. “Do they look like this?”

“Yeah.” Bam reaches out with his naked hand to touch the glass. “I think so.”

The hand falls. Bam confesses: “I don’t think we were supposed to meet up.”

“If we weren’t allowed to meet up we would be out of here by now.” It was curious that they haven’t failed yet though.

“I’m sorry that I held us up,” Bam continues.

“There’s no time limit on when to reach the peak,” Aguero says back. Guilt strikes him suddenly. He shouldn’t have rushed them earlier.

“How do we even fail this test, then?” Bam wonders out loud. The light from the lantern washes out the gold. He considers, briefly, if he could just stay here forever. This moment will extend forever. The warmth of this embrace will not leave and he will not need to think of the wind.

He’s scared to lose another feeling shared.

“Bam, look at me.” Aguero does not feel gentle, in this moment. He plows forward anyways. He tilts Bam’s face towards him so that they are staring face to face. His cheek is cold and pressed flat but he shifts forward to knock their foreheads together.

“We have to keep moving forward.” He had moved impulsively, so now he takes a breath to put his words together. “I know it hurts.” — he doesn’t really, because his pain was not the same as Bam’s —  “Do you want to go back?”

He doesn’t specify where back is, but they both know anyway. Understanding is not limited by the unspoken. Bam glances at the light, and then shakes his head minutely. Aguero’s other hand cups the other cheek. “You can’t stay here, Bam.”

There’s a ripple in the shinsu. The firefish dances.

Bam closes his eyes, and a single tear trails down and over the bridge of his nose. Inadvertently, they hold each other close as one.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again and again. Their hands tangle into their hair. The crooks of their necks slot together effortlessly. They don’t know how long they stayed like that.

When they finally release each other, Bam says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeats. “I’ll move forward.”

Outside, the wind quiets. They walk out to the sun shining upon fields of edelweiss.