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Saint-14 wakes slowly from a dream that he won’t remember. Something about trying to hold onto the sun. He cannot see the clock but it must be the depths of the night, because the room is still dark and slightly cool, the way Osiris prefers. His mind half-heartedly tries to bring the dream back to him. But he is warm and dream-sluggish and content so he just turns and reaches for Osiris, to hold onto him. To feel the sleep-warm softness of him against his chest and fall into dreams again. To listen to the steadying beat of his heart and feel the little twitches and snores that Osiris makes when he’s dreaming, when he’s no longer the warlock scholar, once Vanguard, blazing hope of the city, but the man Saint loves.
“Osiris,” he mumbles sleepily, grabs out for him. Reaches, no longer, across seas of time and space, but across the inches of bedsheet that nonetheless feel too far.
And feels panic jolt down the synapses in his spine.
Saint startles, opens his eyes, fills the room with a haze of purple. Osiris’ side of the bed is empty. When Saint touches the sheets they are cold.
“Osiris?” he calls, his vocaliser still fuzzy from sleep, and then, a little louder, “Osiris?”
There is no reply.
Panic seeps into his mind like water through a broken hull - slowly, at first, then a great, cold, overwhelming rush that seeps down into his chest until he feels he might drown in it. Saint is on his feet before he can think otherwise. Thinks of plague-green Hive light eyes, thinks of wings, thinks of cold, cold, cold-
“Osiris?” he calls.
“Brother Saint.” Gepetto chirps from outside the bedroom door. “I have located Brother Osiris.”
Saint rushes out of their bedroom to the living room, panic still flaring in his system.
And there he is: slumped over the desk that looks out over the view of the city, where thousands of tiny lights are twinkling in the dark. He is surrounded by projections, illuminating him in blue-green light, casting shadows across the crease of his elbow, the bridge of his nose, the deep lines of fatigue under his eyes. His datapad is still blinking where it lies under his face.
“He has once again disregarded his needs,” Gepetto declares, a little primly.
Saint feels the fear draining out of him: not stolen, not lost, just asleep. Osiris makes a little snoring sound that makes awful, painful fondness well in Saint’s chest cavity.
“Osiris,” he says quietly, reaches to touch his shoulder, to feel how he is warm and human and alive. “My love.”
Osiris makes a soft, sleep-slurred noise at the back of his throat. Opens his eyes. Blinks.
“Saint?”
“It is me,” Saint confirms.
Osiris rubs a hand across his face. Sits up, a little unsteady. Squints at the lines of text on his datapad. Frowns when he realises that it is impenetrable nonsense crafted by his face pressing into the keyboard in his sleep. Looks up at Saint. His expression softens, then.
“I apologise,” he says, “I have caused you concern.”
“Brother Saint was indeed-”
“A little,” Saint says quickly, hushing Gepetto. “I woke to find you missing. Bed was empty.”
“I still tire more easily than I once did,” Osiris admits, and an edge of bitterness creeps into his voice. “I intended to join you once I had analysed the data the Guardian collected from Nessus, but-”
He yawns, then. Stretches. Hums softly as Saint massages the tight muscles of his shoulder.
“Will you come to bed?” Saint asks, kisses the top of Osiris’ head.
“Soon,” Osiris reassures him. Reaches for Saint’s hand and tangles their fingers together. Kisses Saint’s knuckles, reverent and careful. “I just need to finish these projections, identify what threat might be posed. The radiolaria is… unusual. Some kind of replicating failure. I have my theories, of course, but-”
As Osiris continues to postulate on the ways that networks might paracausally cascade or other such things that Saint does not really understand, Saint looks around the desk. There are no fewer than four different cups of once-coffee in various degrees of half-consumption.
“Osiris,” he says, gently quieting Osiris’ torrent of speculation, the little jerking movements of his hands as he gestures in the air.
“Hm? Yes?”
Saint gently presses his palm to the side of Osiris’ face. Turns him to look him in the eye. Takes a good, hard, long look at him.
There are dark shadows under Osiris’ eyes that betray long nights of little sleep. A slight unsteadiness to his voice that only Saint would recognise; a minute, near-imperceptible twitch at the corner of his right eye. Exhaustion is painted across his face in ways that make Saint’s chest ache.
“I also have been running important projections,” Saint says, strokes his thumb gently along the line of Osiris’ cheekbone. Feels warmth as Osiris leans into it. “I have observed increased ignoring of Osiris’ hierarchy of needs and conclude that he is tired and works too hard.”
Osiris snorts.
“Nonsense,” he says, already fidgeting at the datapad in his hands, like the urge to solve, to master, to untangle is an itch that his fingers might only scratch if they keep flickering over the keys. “I used to do much more. You’re making me lazy, Saint. I offer very little practical assistance in the field these days.”
“Very lazy. So lazy that you forget to eat. I feel you will starve if I do not remind you.”
“I eat whenever I feel hunger,” Osiris complains.
“Do not lie. Gepetto does not like it.”
“I don’t see why my nutritional intake is any of Gepetto’s concern.”
“You are being obtuse,” Saint chides, gently. “You forget to eat when you are working, and you are always working. Once it was little cubes. Always the little cubes. Now always data, projections.”
“They are prophecy tablets,” Osiris reminds him for the thousandth time, as though Saint genuinely does not remember and does not simply enjoy seeing Osiris so fired up about something so trivial, “And the data and projections are vital if we are to fully understand what is happening in the wake of the Witness.”
“This is true,” Saint concurs, because of course, the work is not just about data but about Osiris’ pride, and he will not deny him that. “But sleep and food are also very important.”
Osiris makes a noise of frustration.
“If you really insist on keeping me out of the field with you then at least I might understand what it is that you are fighting. To keep you safe that way.”
And there it is: so simple, really. Pride and desperation both. Love. Saint feels something hungry and fond yawn inside of him.
He has a fierce intellect, Saint’s beloved. Saint does not always understand Osiris’ theories and ideas, the sprawling tangle of it all - at least not until Osiris can slow down enough to explain it. But he loves to watch Osiris at work, to see the little creases in his forehead as he thinks, to see the half-manic joy he gets from finding a solution, to see the way that his mind unravels problems like balls of string. He thinks, often, that nobody else has a mind quite like Osiris. And yet, for all of that, he can be obtuse and stubborn to the point of utter stupidity over things any child might find simple. It is one of the myriad reasons that Saint loves him.
“Osiris,” he says, “my love. If you were in the field you would kill anything that stood in my path.”
“Naturally.”
“And if you were in the field you would die for me. You have done so many times.”
“Of course,” Osiris says, although Saint doesn’t miss the flicker of sadness in his eyes. “I wish every day that I still could.”
“So you would kill for me and die for me,” Saint says, carefully, “but you will not take care of yourself for me.” And then, before Osiris can come up with something clever and stubborn to fight his way out of it: “The way you wish I will take care of myself in the field for you.”
Osiris stares at him. Blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes it again. Frowns.
“Hrm,” he says, finally. A kind of agreement that he is too proud and too stubborn to make more clearly.
Saint kisses him then. Feels the real, solid warmth of him. The tenderness of him that he will not permit anyone but Saint to see. The tenderness that even Saint had to fight and bicker his way into getting just a glimpse of.
“Come to bed,” Saint says, eventually. Rests his forehead against Osiris’ own. “Please. Allow yourself rest. For me.”
“Alright,” Osiris says, finally. Lets himself be led to their bed. Allows Saint to undress him, to press kisses into the lines of tattoo at his wrists, his collarbone, the back of his neck like a ritual. Concedes to the utter indignity of getting into clothes suitable for sleep in the middle of the night at a time when he should be sleeping and lying down in their bed where they are meant to sleep together. Permits himself to tuck into the space beside Saint’s chest, where he is close and warm and safe. Lays his hand across the synthskin on Saint’s middle, where Saint can tangle their fingers together.
“I will discuss my theories with Failsafe tomorrow,” Osiris says, into the dark. His voice is low and quiet.
“After breakfast,” Saint says. “We will get pastries. You will eat them.”
“Hm,” Osiris says, as though throroughly unimpressed by this idea, but he presses closer into Saint’s side all the same. Nestles into the space he belongs in.
“You cause me concern only because you are precious to me,” Saint says.
“You are precious to me too,” Osiris says, sleep-slurred. “Saint. My love.”
“I love you,” Saint tells him. “Rest.” Rubs idle circles into Osiris’ back with his free hand. Kisses the top of his head. Feels the slow, calm rise and fall of Osiris’ chest tucked against his own as he falls asleep. Dozes to the sound of Osiris’ breathing evening out, to the firm, real weight of him. As he falls asleep, he holds onto Osiris, onto the blazing, brilliant light of him, and feels all the warmth of the sun.