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Sunset scatters across the sky, melted fireworks all purple, pink, and gold slowly turning a blue sky black, dimmed through Theo’s sunglasses. Freshly fallen snow glitters on the roof of their potions’ shop like stars, even as the light of the city steals them away from the night above.
It takes Theo very little convincing to get them to go back to their home, even as Parrot looked at him, sunset a halo around his shadowed figure, standing weary against the light. Resignation colouring his determined face tired in a way that made that protective streak in Theo flare. Halfway to seeing words form in Parrot’s mind, watching him ready himself as if to say I guess we should get settled for the night, Theo was interrupting.
“Let’s go home,” he had said, something in the words that had Parrot taking pause.
And it barely feels like a heartbeat between the nod he had gotten in return and the crunch of snow under their boots, walking down the stone-and-gravel path to their empty store. Keys are fished out of a bundle hanging off Parrot’s waist, opening the door as silence surrounds them, a comforting chill against the back of Theo’s exposed neck.
It’s emptier than Theo remembers it being, different even in their few weeks away. Not quite foreign, unrecognized, but like walking into a room after someone’s moved all the furniture two inches to the left. Most of the unfamiliarity is because he hauled their brewing stands to the room Lettuce provided them, but Theo finds himself blaming time for the way he stumbles through their dark first-floor, anyway. Parrot lingers by the windows, wincing at the sight of dead plants that were still green when they departed while Theo beelines to the second floor, climbing the ladder like a man possessed, fingers tingling with familiar warning as he does.
What Theo loves about their shared room is the way it always seems to move, living and breathing even when the pair of them depart. There’s a flurry of action written into the scattered pens on the desk in the corner on the left, like Parrot knocked over the tin-can he keeps them gathered in when last leaving. Sleeping bag only halfway under the bed in the back right corner, pile of boxes bracketing the heavy wooden frame against the wall, maps and papers spilling out the one at the very top. Slow-spinning whirligig made of clumsily-bent wires given to them by a child hanging off the side of their window. Their en-suite door rattling in its frame to the desk’s right, muted sounds of whispery-raging wind behind it evidence enough of a window left open on the other side.
He’s entering it without pause, teeth grit and molars grinding against each other as he searches the shelves, ignoring the muffled sound of Parrot slowly clambering up. There’s little time to waste, not as Theo’s hands go from an uncomfortable tingling to a slow-spreading numbness, one that always starts at the pinkies before the rest of his hand would inevitably lose feeling and start stinging, spasming with pins and needles. Explosions haven’t been kind to his ears, either, which ring more than usual, but nothing worse than the baseline he’s gotten used to in the past few years.
His hands are the pressing issue, but they haven’t grown fully numb yet. There’s room to breathe till then. Theo inhales and Parrot enters as he lets the short breath out in a whoosh.
“What are you looking for?” Parrot asks, cutting through any potential small talk. He doesn’t bring up the past twenty-four hours, so Theo doesn’t either, simply grunting in reply to give himself a moment to gather his words.
“Potion,” he says shortly. Not rude, just brief, “For my hands.”
“Right,” Parrot nods after a pause. Theo doesn’t have to see his face to know what expression must have crossed over it; there’s little variety when it comes to Parrot’s focus when putting pieces together, like he’s following breadcrumbs into a forest with nothing but earnest curiosity guiding him. “Which type?”
“Regeneration. Yellow ribbon ‘round the bottleneck,” Theo tells him.
“Right,” Parrot repeats.
A moment later, he leaves their en-suite and Theo hears the same shuffling and sorting through their belongings echoed in their shared bedroom. Boxes shifted against wooden floors and stacks of books and paper moved about. Maybe a quiver or two of arrows; bought in bulk when Theo had snuck himself a portion of their treasure before he and Parrot went around giving it away. When things were harder, conversations traded far less than now, somehow easier and harder for the pair of them to brush past each other without quite seeing.
Theo’s frustration grows as the feeling in his hands lessen. He can’t find the potion here, memory flagging as he tries to remember when he last used it, where and how.
“Can’t find it,” Parrot calls from outside, pins and needles starting to poke at his skin as Theo catches the words through the ringing.
“Wonderful,” he says through clenched teeth. Awful excuse of a smile on his face through it all, Theo forces himself to his feet and kicks the cabinet door closed.
“Could a regular regeneration potion work?” Parrot asks when Theo walks out, steps even and fast as he makes his way down the ladder again, back to their cramped kitchen. The pins and needles he can move through, with gritted teeth and tight, short movements, but the stabbing pain that feels like a knife through the palm has him dropping the large bowl he’s holding, clattering uselessly into their sink with a loud noise that intensifies the ringing in his ears.
“No. Yes. Whatever, just — if we have one, I’ll take it,” Theo manages. He moves from the counter to a chair left half-way pulled out at their dining table instead, slumping till his forehead is pressed against the wood and his eyes are fixed on the curl of the floor’s grain.
A lifetime or maybe a minute later, a hand is on his shoulder, fingers tapping thrice against it. Theo looks up, eyes bleary, stinging a little even in the dark of this room. Finds the glowing potion in Parrot’s hand right by his face after blinking past the black spots in his vision.
“I can’t just drink it, I need — can you —” Theo cuts himself off, when a wave of pain robs him of his words for a few moments too long. He comes back to the present and finds Parrot staring at him with dark intense eyes, boring through his soul despite the lack of light to see with at all.
“What do you need?” He asks, urgently.
“It’s not life or death,” Theo says first, wasting breath, if just to smooth the sharp edge out of Parrot’s tone, one that spells trouble and leaves Parrot looking hunted. “I need — can you get two bowls. Hot water and ice. Pour the regen into that.”
If the instructions confuse Parrot, he doesn’t say a word. Theo blinks and he’s gone, shadow moving through their home like a ghost haunting it. Theo blinks before that sharp, knife-twisting feeling steals his attention again and he’s closing his eyes, face turned to the curling wood grain beneath him, foot tapping, ears ringing, exhaustion trying to glue his eyes shut while rolling pain keeps him from desperately-wanted rest.
Seems like he’s only hearing Parrot come back after a few seconds, but when he looks up at the sound of two bowls being placed on the table, he can see their kettle, recently used, set aside on the counter behind Parrot, and sees the way his hands are red from cold.
“I’ve split the potion between both bowls,” Parrot tells him. Theo’s nodding in thanks, hands moving before his mouth can, The relief that comes from dipping them into the snow, to relieve the burning that’s possessed them, is unlike anything he could describe.
The regeneration doesn’t help much more than a health potion would have; all the pain is from old wounds, nothing that needs immediate attention, but the soothing coolness of regeneration provides a bandaid that he’s learned to lean on. Even if it’s not as potent as his custom mix, lost somewhere in the potions’ shop, yellow ribbon tied around the bottleneck like a present.
Parrot sits across him, a taut line of worry that slowly relaxes as minutes pass, even as Theo doesn’t speak. He finally comments, speaking up for the first time in five minutes when Theo moves, as though he only needed to see sign of life for permission to chime in.
“Seems like you take better care of your bows than your hands,” Parrot comments, once Theo’s dipped his hands in the bowl of water, so hot that steam wafts off the cloudy surface. It’s probably the pain, persistent, that makes him snort derisively.
“You’re saying that to me right now?” He questions. It comes out meaner than he means it to be, Theo realizes immediately, when Parrot’s mouth twitches and his eyes flicker with something indiscernible, going as fast as it comes.
It’s never quite easy to pin down exactly what those looks mean, when it comes to Parrot, even after the time they’ve spent together. Theo’s never deluded himself into thinking they were the type of friends to whom these things came easily, far more understanding of the fact that they both had their rough edges that chafed against the other for a while, until only a few months ago where they finally spoke to one another.
Despite that gap only recently bridged, he’s known what hurt looks like on Parrot, has for a long time. Theo allows himself a moment to be selfish and let Parrot sit in that feeling while he breathes.
He closes his eyes, bites the inside of his cheek till he feels a warm sprig of blood spiderweb between his molars, iron sharp on his tongue. Small throbbing to focus on over the stinging, sharp and pointed sensation of glass stabbing through his palm.
“It’s easier to fight without bulky gloves,” Theo says, conceding this to Parrot as an apology. He tacks a bit more on at the end, “Bad habit of mine. I should be using them, but I got used to not.”
“Couldn’t keep track of them?” Parrot questions.
“Couldn’t afford them. And when I could, I didn’t want them,” Theo says. Leaves it at that, because he and Parrot don’t make a habit of getting into times before the Farlands, beyond passing comments here and there. When the sun’s still beating down on their skin and the sky isn’t dark, birds still trilling in the backdrop and world around them buzzing with life.
“You can afford them now, though,” Parrot says. Less a question, more a statement meant to push, whether he means it or not. He gets like this, sometimes, becoming fixated on one issue until he’s found a solution or moved on.
And Theo appreciates it, sometimes. Definitely not when it’s pointed at him.
“Whatever damage that has been done isn’t going to go away if I put them on. I’ll just be less useful than I am now,” Theo points out.
“I don’t care about how useful you are,” Parrot says, voice a little stiff. Theo blinks at the tone, then winces reflexively when the stabbing pain through his hands escalates, blinking through blurred vision.
When it’s clear again, he’s looking up at Parrot, who’s wearing a neutral expression and sliding over the other bowl; filled with snow, clearly skimmed off the top of the untouched slopes rather than the muddied, brown-yellow and dense snow that was closest from the front door of their potions’ shop.
Leave it to Parrot to go above and beyond, Theo thinks, as he dips his hands into the snow, already starting to melt at first contact with his hot hands. It helps, still. The cold soothes the edges of the stabbing, till it’s less sharp and more stinging, smaller and crawling like ants rather than a knife skewered through the thin bones of his hands. Their back-and-forth lies unfinished in the air between them, taking up far too much room on their dining table when Theo decides to nudge Parrot along.
“Seems like it doesn’t matter how useful I am,” he comments, as if agreeing. When Parrot makes a questioning hum, like he doesn’t know what Theo’s talking about, he continues. “You survived the purge all on your own, man. Nice work.”
It’s one of those compliments that Parrot preens at subtly, when he doesn’t want to make his satisfaction too obvious. “Just because you’re the better fighter from the two of us doesn’t mean that I can’t fight at all.”
Theo huffs in amusement, even hands starting to prickle with pain again, second wave of throbbing rearing its head before it’ll escalate into burning, if past patterns ring true today.
“I know. It’s just been a while since you’ve had to fight on your own, hasn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Parrot agrees slowly. Their conversation peters out in the time it takes for him to come to the conclusion.
Usually Theo is happy to let these things lie, still and undisturbed like mud at the bottom of a pond, but something compels him to muck the waters, clouding clear waves up to his shins with brown. It’s just that the expression on Parrot’s face is one he’s unused to seeing; something that makes Theo prickle with unease, that has him running over the words again.
Tastes the way on your own is bitter on his tongue, in retrospect, as he very suddenly remembers Parrot’s bad days, where the man is uneasy and near-violent at being offered a helping hand. Pain throbbing through his hands. Burning again. He switches bowls, water lukewarm instead of boiling hot, and he can’t get himself to tell Parrot right that moment. Wonders maybe if Theo’s been overbearing in this all, and Parrot only realized today, away from his constant company. And the brief joke about being useful from only minutes earlier doesn’t feel quite as funny.
“This doesn’t happen often,” Theo says, finds the words leaving him easily even when he doesn’t know what he’s going to say next. “And when it does, I can handle it, usually. I know you can handle yourself, too. I never mean to come off like I’m trying to be overbearing.”
“You aren’t,” Parrot says, very firmly. Shutting down that line of thought before Theo can let himself think on it more. The decisiveness is what stops Theo from continuing immediately. He blinks, feeling lost for a moment, before nodding.
“Right,” he says, unconvinced as he feels.
“If you were, I’d say something,” Parrot adds, seeming to pick up on this.
“Right,” Theo repeats.
“What’s different about the potion that you had me looking for?” Parrot asks, leading the pair of them away from anything more delicate. Theo’s grateful for it, in a muted way that makes gratitude stick to the roof of his mouth.
“Just a different mix I learned when I was younger. It’s more potent,” Theo says.
“Oh?” Parrot perks up, clearly interested, leaning closer. As he does, he seems to note the melting snow and the still water, steam no longer wafting from the surface, before his open expression shutters into a frown. “One second,” he’s saying, and Theo doesn’t have a second to argue before the unused bowl is snatched away, Parrot disappearing out the front door.
It swings behind him, rhythmic despite the irrational wind trying to jolt it this way and that. He can see Parrot’s back, spot of blue-and-yellow feathers against white snow and a sliver of black sky. Splash of colour between two opposites, all attention drawn to his small form even in a world so large as the one they live in.
When he returns, the worst of the pain has ebbed, episode reaching its end after twenty, maybe thirty minutes spent fielding the worst of it. But Parrot is focused, in his own world, and so Theo lets him fuss, watching him put the kettle on again before Parrot’s urging him to dip his hands in the snow so he doesn’t scald them once he pours boiling water into the discarded lukewarm bowl. Words have dried up in Theo’s mouth, and the pain is manageable but still there, so he watches Parrot fall into a rhythm that he has countless times before, feeling incredibly selfish for it all the while.
Theo prides himself on how useful he is. Knows that he’s invaluable, repeats it to himself in private and aloud, in front of Parrot, declaring himself his bodyguard and campaign manager and protector and every other role that Parrot needs; a way for him to remind the pair of them that he’s here, rooted. Can’t flee his self-imposed responsibilities as he so easily did once; before, when Parrot hadn’t carried a weight to his shoulders that Theo never quite knows what to do about, how to approach.
All Theo knows is he hates things like this. When the limitations of his body catches up to him, when he’s sitting slumped at a table and can’t bring himself to be everything he promised he would be.
But Parrot, taking it in stride, all fleeting worry masked under brisk and matter-of-fact movements, like he’s trying not to betray the fact he cares (a habit of hiding that Parrot’s admitted once that he’s never quite been able to drop), soothes irrational stress over his uselessness, if just momentarily.
He doesn’t need to say thank you. The pair of them never do it aloud, anyway. Parrot offers gratitude in action and Theo in knickknacks he calls gifts; a rendezvous to a bakery that sells hot chocolate, sets of armour, food when he needs it.
“Thank you,” Theo says, and really truly means it. He imagines the words settling on Parrot’s shoulders, wrapped around them like a warm coat.
“Of course,” Parrot answers without blinking. The absolute lack of hesitation, said without missing a beat, touches Theo. It feels like the spring sun meeting the horizon after a long winter night. Like coming home.