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Emil is in love with Lalli, and the worst part is, Lalli knows. Emil is soft with it. Lalli is very aware that he could lace his fingers in Emil’s and it would make him stutter, catch his fluttery heart like the moths in summer, right in his cupped hands. Powder-soft wings ghosting on your skin, the knowledge that one wrong move could pin a wing, squash a leg. He could do it, you know. Lalli had seen mages work with less material, less raw – something.The feeling that Emil is putting out, like a hearth-fire. Like coals under snow, or a house in a blizzard throwing out its windows. Lalli wants, desperately, to tell Emil that he needs to invest in shutters, hide his light. To hide it himself. Lalli would bank the fire if only he could bring himself to do it.
(and even then – what if it never came back again? Lalli is selfish enough to realize he likes the heat.)
It is so strange. He can do his job, and well, and it never usually occurs to him to care about other people’s thoughts about him beyond ‘good job’ or ‘not good enough of a job’. Emil thinks far more than that. He gulps, now, when Lalli strips to his undergarments for a decontamination, pours out all manner of babble when he comes back from scouting missions.
Or Lalli trots into book houses at his heels, too tired to do much of anything but point if there is a troll (there are many) and listen to Emil whisper commentary about the books he picks up. There is always a touch somehow, whether it’s Emil clinging onto him in fear or brushing down his uniform. It’s all useless, but it’s like listening to Tuuri turn pages of books or Onni sing prayers before sunrise. It’s comforting in a way Lalli doesn’t know how to quantify yet. Much later, he’ll recognize that these are small charms his loved ones give to remind him they are alive and well, but at the time, he just shrugs whenever Emil looked at him expectantly. (He feels odd knowing there are expectations of him at all, beyond ‘scout’ or ‘mage’.)
Emil is kind in the same way he is self-absorbed. It is unconscious and maintained only because he is not aware of it. He will bring Lalli soup and clog the shower drain with his hair. He will throw himself over Sigrun and spend the rest of the day taking up the passenger space next to Tuuri while he shines his boots, complaining loudly of mud and ignoring the gash in his side. Lalli doesn’t know what to make of it. (He asks Tuuri if Emil is going mad, and she mutters back in reply that she isn’t sure if Emil wasn’t mad in the first place.) Lalli settles for reciting a good-luck prayer for him and his wound, and is a little surprised that the sweat sticking Emil’s bangs to his forehead clears up some.
They sit out in the woods. It is still sunset and Reynir is cleaning up the dinner fire. Mikkel and Sigrun have their heads together over an annotated map, Tuuri is out walking her cramped legs, and Emil is staring up, up, up at the sky.
Lalli looks over. Emil has blue eyes and a square jaw. Emil is stocky, wears his heart trailing a few inches behind him, and looks at stars like they’ll go out if he blinks. Lalli has never felt hopeless about a person like he has about this one.
He wonders if hopelessness is, strictly speaking, what he is feeling right now.
He taps Emil’s shoulder. He tips his head to one side, forming the v of va? when Lalli leans forward like it is the most natural thing in the world and kisses him.
It is not the most natural thing in the world.
Emil tenses, and Lalli thinks: oh hell. He’s misjudged everything. His grandmother always said he was proud, and how proud did you have to be to think your friend was in love with you? But then Emil sighs into his lips and curls one arm around Lalli’s waist, pulling him closer, and Lalli can’t think much of anything, because he is busy.
No, wait, he can. Emil is smiling so much that he can’t quite kiss properly. Lalli doesn’t know what he did to make this happen, but he does manage to suck a hickey on Emil’s neck, and that, he thinks with no small amount of smug, is pretty good. Emil just keens, and of course he’s loud. Tuuri calls out, starts walking towards them, old snow crusts crunching under her feet.
Lalli scoots backwards, Emil turns up the collar of his sweater, and they spare each other a smile each – Emil’s is too dopey to be cocky, and Lalli’s is too satisfied to be soft – and when Tuuri finds them, Emil is stargazing again and Lalli is humming to himself.
Emil learns how to be quiet. Lalli learns how to open up. Reynir walks in on them and walks straight back out again, his face red and his hands high in the air like he’s burned them, and that’s the only time they try to do anything in the tank.