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When Wicander was very young, he was often scolded for wearing his heart on his sleeve. It was unbecoming of the one to become the Scion of the Candescent Creed in the very near future, though the notion confused him greatly.
When he told his mother about his worries, she only smiled at Wicander with the sort of sadness etched into her features he would not understand until very late into his adulthood. “It’s not that you are unfit for the world because of your kindness, Wicky,” she then said. “It’s the world that is unfit for someone with so much heart.”
It’s now that amidst the lush forestry in the middle of the fey battlefield, trespassing on what one of the protective beings called Hawthorn’s Glade, that Wicander thinks he may understand what she meant.
He doesn’t think, not rationally, not in a way a Scion of the Candescent Creed should. Wicander just wants the violence to stop.
And he reaches for it, the very heart once sewn so gently onto his every sleeve and then torn from it, and he remembers the reason why he prayed to the Light. Perhaps foolishly so, but all Wicander has ever wanted was to be good and to do good, even if he has so far proven spectacularly awful at it. He reaches for his heart, and it calls to him, and it responds, and Wicander is too entangled in weaving and caressing the light that beams through his blood flow like the glow of the sun above to notice that he is floating. It hammers against his ribs, something free, something alive, something earnest, and then he feels the weight on his back, and Wicander’s eyes widen.
“Shit,” he whispers softly in awe and horror, and also shame because he isn’t supposed to swear.
And then he drops down like a dead weight, and the latch on his heart snaps shut. Still, something tells Wicander that the lock on it may have been broken.
The wings don’t stay. It’s a shame, since his new friends have many questions, and Wicander feels like he can answer none of them. It’s a feeling he may have to get used to; not just the inability to give someone anything of substance but generally feeling, well, incompetent. And useless. Among other, decidedly not very pleasant things.
Wicander’s legs hurt, and his back aches, and he has been walking through the forest for far too long. He regrets the fact that he is so picky with his food because by the point in time when they finally start settling down for the night he is starving.
Still, Wicander is far from a complete fool, no matter what his family may think of him. He can distinguish some very important things, especially when people dislike him. Most of the time. If he actively attempts to do so. And this party may feel many things for him, — irritation, bewilderment, pity, if he had to guess, — but Wicander also knows that they keep him around because he is useful. Attached to his family name there are opportunities, as long as he can keep up with the part of the performance he is given. It’s unspoken that Wicander’s main part is to be silent and do his best to no longer be an inconvenience with such things as his crisis of faith and mourning the lavish lifestyle he was so used to.
Wicander was never taught how to, colloquially speaking, suck it up. But he has spent quite many years desiring things and promptly burying said desires, no matter how inconsequential or how insistent, deep into the parts of his soul that never see light. It’s simple, really.
You simply do not talk.
It proves to be a challenge, especially when his companions try to keep and talk to him about things he doesn’t even know how to begin processing. “So,” Thimble, the little but impressively ferocious fairy, prompts, “you have an angel chained in your basement. Can we come back to that?”
Wicander coughs. “My family has an angel in their basement. I was previously unaware of that.”
He’d think of himself as naive for it. But, truly, is a chained up being that is considered nearly extinct trapped beneath your household anyone’s first guess when it comes to the origin of their beliefs? Wicander would like to think that he was appropriately baffled.
“Yes, but,” Thimble huffs, impatient, “is your wing situation connected to the basement angel? I feel like it’s pretty safe to assume it does.”
Wicander goes a little cold at the way the rest of the party around their little campfire begins to perk up in curiosity. Most of them simply want to know more, except for Tyranny who knew the entire time, but she seems to never quite miss a single chance to make fun of Wicander’s troubles. Her pink skin looks smooth and warm under the light of the flame, like she belongs to them. In a way, she does, but Wicander struggles to see primordial evil in Tyranny when she sticks her tongue out in concentration as she rummages through the red-hot cinders.
“I…” Wicander stutters. He will not lie, but he also can’t be sure he is telling the truth - his own knowledge is quite limited on the matter. “I think it may be, yes.”
His unsure, hesitant intonation seems to only stake the flames of the group’s curiosity. Wicander wants to tell them that he doesn’t know, that he is frustrated and afraid and confused with his own body in ways he wasn’t since his teenage years, but he knows his words will be in vain. They’ll simply think he deceives them again.
“Can you pop them out now?” Thimble suddenly asks, excited, and even makes an exhilarated circle around him, fluttering her own pair of wings as she does.
It’s unfortunate that now everyone seems invested in the conversation. Even Teor, the most level-headed man in their company, decides to courteously insert his opinion. “I believe what Thimble wants to say is,” he pauses, slow and measured, not condescending but something far worse — considerate, “that if you truly have the ability to manifest wings at will, it could be very helpful in a battlefield situation.” Teor looks at Wicander with understanding — and it makes him feel hot and clammy in his skin. “Even if today you have used it for non-violent means.”
Teor is right. Of course, he is, that seems to be the case with most things that the man says. It’s only making Wicander feel worse, and he despises the pink flush that rises to his cheekbones, as he has to disappoint them. “I… I don’t believe I know how to do that,” he admits, turning his head to the side so he doesn’t have to face them.
Even then, he can practically sense the silent and yet entirely audible disappointment radiating from the group. Kattigan, who has so far been simply a silent observer, nods. “Happens to the best of us,” he says solemnly, his mouth twitching with effort. It takes a moment for Wicander to realise, only after what follows, that he is suppressing laughter. “You wouldn’t be the first one to struggle keeping it up.”
Wicander frowns. “Keeping it—” he falters, confused. And yet everyone around him seems to break into little fits of laughter. Judging by the huffing and the eye-rolling and the deeply self-satisfied expression on Kattigan’s face, it was a rather crude and not very tasteful joke. Still, everyone seems to understand it instantly. Thimble giggles, even Teor seems to be hiding a smile, though it appears to be an exasperated one, and Tyranny snorts ungracefully, tail thumping the ground as she swallows down a cackle at, what appears to be, Wicander’s expense.
It takes him too long to figure it out but… Oh, it was a sexual innuendo. Of course.
From the gentle brush of pink, Wicander’s face now grows into a genuine blush, and he isn’t enjoying being the butt of the joke. Even if—
Even if Tyranny looks so comfortable, pressed against his side despite it all, and at the sight of him confused and sputtering, red in the cheeks, she spares him some compassion in a consolatory pat on his thigh. Wicander twitches underneath the touch, but he is mostly unexpectedly grateful for her presence, even if it means he is made fun of yet again. Her attempt at comfort is not particularly graceful but it’s almost endearing.
It’s a thing that is improper to call your Aspirant. But Tyranny is no longer that, is she? Still, she is mostly just a demon from the Pit now, which makes the thought of her as endearing almost worse.
“Aw, he is blushing,” Tyranny coos, and Thimble snickers. Wicander wishes for the ground to swallow him whole.
Kattigan grins at him, wolfish, in a way that makes his insides twist. “Ah, yeah, ain’t he a virgin too, like the Tachonis boy?”
Before Wicander can even process the full mortification of this entire conversation, Tyranny breaks into it with gleefulness appropriate only for a demon. “Oh, yeah, he is, like, super pure, you know. No premarital and everything, it’s nuts.”
Wicander would like to die, now, preferably, if it wouldn’t inconvenience the Light too much. He is hot and and Tyranny is so close to him that he can catch a whiff of sulfur and sweat from her skin, and for some reason Kattigan raises his eyebrows so high that it shouldn’t be anatomically possible. “Wait, for real?” he asks, like it’s possibly any of his business. “So, you and him, you never—”
Wicander both pales and flushes. “We? No, never—”
“Nah,” Tyranny responds easily, unbothered. The series of various noises of surprise makes the tips of Wicander’s ears burn.
Thimble seems to be the one having the most trouble believing his words, and Wicander almost takes offence to that. Is there something about him that seems impure? Like he’d follow the very first call of carnal desire, fall to temptation? Like his eyes have lingered on the gentle curves of Tyranny’s body and wondered what her skin would be like to taste? “What, never? Not even a little?”
Tyranny eyes him with almost concern but Wicander doesn’t want her to think he is so easily disturbed by some… deeply intimate and personal conversation he’d rather not have this publicly.
Technically, he probably doesn’t have to adhere to the standard of purity anymore, not after what he has seen, not after leaving his family behind. Still, Wicander finds that everyone around him is just so relentlessly, shamelessly sexual. It feels like being bombarded by pure crystalline reminders of the things he would really, really rather not address. Still, Wicander’s shoulders tense but he doesn’t stop the conversation. A mistake.
Kattigan seems to catch up with the humor of teasing Wicander to death. “What, nothin’? Not even a sneaky handjob or two?”
Wicander doesn’t look at Tyranny, because her face is so gorgeous in the orange of the flames, and he’d never think of her and the ways she’d move alongside him, and the way sweat collects in the dips of her collarbones or—
Wicander’s face hates the visceral response that causes in him, partially because Thimble doesn’t let up. “Not even a little bit of dryhumping?”
“Enough!”
The loudness of his own voice startles Wicander so badly that he falters, processing he is standing tall, his hands crumpled in fists on his sides. His face is the exact shade of a ripe strawberry — entirely, brilliantly scarlet — and the heaviness in his chest that he felt was more than just a spiral of embarrassment. His wings stand tall and proud, spread behind his back and trembling with what can be only called indignant mortification. Wicander trips over the very log he was just sitting on a minute ago, and staggers away from the campfire. “I— I have to go. For a while.”
As he petulantly stumbles away into the twilight of the forest behind them, the span of Wicander’s wings is embarrassingly large, feathers fluffed up in a defensive stance. He stands there, burning face hidden in his palms, and he has to remain in place until the sharp edge of it passes and the wings flutter out of existence by their own volition.
“Huh,” Thimble says at Wicander’s retreat. “So he can get it up, after all.”
Wicander doesn’t think too much of that encounter at first. Mostly because it’s humiliating, but he also doesn’t quite connect the appearance of his wings to anything more than an intense wave of emotions — in that particular case, embarrassment.
He still has very little to no clue how to navigate his origins or how to utilise them reliably, and it drives him a little bit insane.
It’s a long time before they can actually indulge in sleeping in a house with four walls and a roof and not somewhere in the middle of the forest, huddled up against a campfire. Though, Wicander has to admit, he finds a fondness in himself for spending nights like that, a sort of longing thinly veiled through his soul, for companionship, for connection. He has never realised the extent of his loneliness until he met these people, and isn’t this such a sad thought?
But an elderly woman in a cabin somehow by the miracle of the Light not only finds them, battered, bruised and weary after another fight they are barely equipped to weather but offers them a night of rest.
At first, at least half of their group is convinced she is some sort of a creature intending to trap them or otherwise accelerate their doom. Fortunately, it turns out she really is simply a retired adventurer who offers shelter to lost souls from time to time. Wicander couldn’t be more grateful; as much as he has grown a liking to their travels, he still longs for nothing more than a warm meal and a proper bed, and he is delighted to finally have them, even if they bargained to do some housework in return.
Wicander is… not suited for housework.
Teor and Kattigan spend their time doing chores that require brute strength, like working on firewood. Wicander only has a glimpse of Teor’s massive, firm figure, easily wielding an axe with the effortlessness of a toothpick, and he nearly drops the soup pot he is carrying, firmly determined to look no longer. Tyranny helps out in the kitchen, which she is surprisingly not half-bad at, but she mostly tends to the fire in the furnace and dangles her legs on the bench. Thimble is the only one who can fly in this relatively small house, so she heads to sort out an issue with the roof - presumably, a wasp’s nest. Wicander is only glad that he at least can provide some help, even if it’s simply balancing on the ladder, keeping his light spell up so Thimble can concentrate properly.
He has been doing a decent job so far, and he would have kept at it, but the heavy steps of their bigger companions attract his attention.
Wicander just wants to turn around slightly and greet them, but the ladder is old and unsteady, and he has never been the most agile or dexterous, despite his lean silhouette. So, Wicander shouldn’t be surprised that the moment he shifts even an inch on his feet, the balance immediately falters and with the most indignant squeak Wicander feels the wood slip from underneath his feet and he topples back several feet, which could have probably broken a bone if he was unlucky. And, judging by his history, he’d never think of himself as particularly fortuitous.
Wicander is, however, lucky. Because instead of the wooden floor, his body meets another body, a much firmer, hotter body, and it’s covered in silver fur that is deeply familiar.
Teor Pridesire catches Wicander mid-fall, his massive muscular arms holding Wicander in a bridal carry of all things, and even though he is far from a small man, Wicander feels absolutely dwarfed by the sheer size of Teor and the unexpected gentleness of his hold. By Light above, Wicander has never in his entire life felt so small, and it’s rarely a good thing to feel, being overpowered, being underprepared, being vulnerable and exposed even if he is baring no more skin than usual. Wicander doesn’t know what to do with himself, and for a moment, he just stares at Teor with wide, blown-out eyes like a complete awestruck fool.
“Are you alright?” Teor murmurs, low and concerned, in that smooth baritone that always somehow catches his breath.
Wicander can’t look away. “Y-yes, I think,” he whispers, pink blooming in his cheeks.
Whoosh. Crash. A pair of bright, white wings splays itself nearly instantly over the span of the small room they’re in, right wing fluttering right behind one of Teor’s arms. The left wing opens just as swiftly, smashing against the shelf on the wall beside them, pottery carefully placed on its surface shattering loudly with so much noise that Thimble rushes down from the roof, bewildered at the image. Teor is a military man, and yet he is so startled that he nearly drops Wicander on the floor. It doesn't matter because Wicander drops himself.
“I’m— I’m so sorry—” he panics, scrambling from the floor to stand up and dust himself off, his panicked spinning nearly causing more destruction as the wings’ antics refuse to cease. “I’ll— I’ll fix this right away.”
A deep, rolling purr comes from somewhere in Teor’s direction, as Wicander almost halts thinking entirely, because the man seems to be laughing. It’s not at his expense at all, it’s… almost fond. “It’s alright, Wicander,” Teor says, amused. “I’m sure this is merely a minor inconvenience. Don’t worry yourself about it too badly.”
Wicander feels the blush burn even brighter on his face, wings behind his back trembling in a way that’s just humiliating. He can’t seem to find his words again until Teor leaves entirely and Thimble retreats back to the roof with a huff once she knows there is no danger to be taken care of. It’s only him and Tyranny left now, and Wicander feels his throat going dry as eventually the wings shrink back into the ether.
“Tyranny,” he says, dazed, “I think I am attracted to men.”
“No shit,” she snorts, chewing leisurely on a piece of rye bread. “It’s funny it took you that long to notice.”
Wicander feels so guilty that he exhausts his magic by sitting on the ground and diligently mending every single one of the broken pots piece by piece.
So, he has to admit, he may need help. He simply thinks it’s not particularly fair that Tyranny is the only person he feels close enough to that he can even remotely conceptualise bringing it up to her.
Of course, she laughs. “So let me get this straight,” Tyranny says, trying and failing to suppress her snorting as she walks alongside him, the two of them on the forest path and behind enough from others to speak freely, “you keep popping wing boners… and you don’t know how to control it.”
Wicander sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He feels weary. “Please— Stop calling them that.”
Tyranny blows a raspberry at him, but at least now she attempts to actually help him, which is unexpectedly nice of her. Maybe she really has been stepping onto the path of the Light recently. It warms Wicander to think so. “Well, you do tend to, like, whip it out when it comes to people being sexy, no?”
Admitting that would be an equivalent of admitting outright that he thinks that Tyranny is sexy, with her full lips and strong thighs and— Wicander coughs loudly, turning his face away to hide his blush. “Perhaps. I’m— I’m not quite sure, to be honest.”
He isn’t lying. There aren’t enough cases for these things to have a discernible motive yet, with the exception of Wicander privately having a sexuality crisis, but those things may be for him and him alone. Tyranny seems to already know the things he never seems to catch on time, and for the first time Wicander is just happy it saves him an awkward conversation. Perhaps, he also likes men. He would like to ignore both directions of his attraction now, thank you very much.
Tyranny makes a frustrated noise, tail swishing. “Well, sorry for being crude, but… What do you do with a regular boner?” She looks at him, trying to catch his eye, incredulous. “Please, don’t tell me you pray it away.”
Wicander doesn’t respond, and it’s a death sentence because it’s all the confirmation she needs. “Oh gods, you do pray it away.”
It seems like every time this conversation heads anywhere, Wicander’s cheeks set out on a path to invent a new, never seen before shade of red. This isn’t a talk he’d like to have ever, with anyone, or maybe if he does want that, only a little bit and sometimes when no one sees, he certainly isn’t ready to do it without bursting into flame. Wicander presses his ice cold palms to his burning cheeks, resolutely ignoring Tyranny’s smug little smirk.
“I don’t understand how this is relevant,” he hisses, and she grins wider.
“Have you ever tried, well…” Tyranny makes a crude gesture with her curled palm, up and down, and Wicander nearly feels his soul leave his body right there. “The old-fashioned way.”
“Tyranny!”
Surprisingly enough, she simply shrugs, unbothered. “I’m not even making fun of you now, I swear! I’m just saying.” Tyranny picks up the pace now, skipping ahead to join the rest of their companions, only throwing her last words over the shoulder. “Maybe you’re pent up. Maybe you just need a little bit of relaxing.”
Wicander can only helplessly look as she kept walking, until her laughter dissolved into the chatter of their friends.
Kattigan is the man of the wilds, so he knows nature intimately like a lover. So, when he brings them to a concealed little paradise deep in the woods with a forest waterfall on a jagged cliff, rock and moss embraced by rushing streams, it’s not a surprise but a wonder.
The place is beautiful.
The water is clear like liquid crystal, and it throws rainbow glints of light on the party as Wicander looks around with wonder. It's a gorgeous, perfectly hidden spot and he can't resist the urge to sit on the closest available cut of the rock, shoeless feet dangling down into the stream. It’s been a long time since he allowed himself such childish pleasures, but it’s freeing in a way very few things can be.
Tyranny immediately skips around picking up rocks and digging for possible hidden treasures. Thimble mingles with the local flora. Teor retreats a little deeper into the woods, preparing to set up camp. Wicander himself prefers to stay here and rest, and for the first time in a while since their journeys began he feels no hurry or urgency or stress. It’s an uncommon moment of stolen peace, and he relishes it for maybe a moment too long because the Light comes to punish him for his sins.
Because Kattigan Vale is bathing naked in the stream in front of him.
The man turns his back on Wicander, likely unaware of his gaze from the upper side of the cliff above him, the tan planes of rolling, scarred muscle gleaming with countless silver paths of water drops sliding slowly down the entirety of Kattigan’s back. His long dark hair is soaked, and it streams down his defined shoulder blades, the strong curve of his spine and dips right where there begins the shape of his backside, and—
Wicander, he— It's shame, and it's lust, and he can barely breathe— And then Kattigan turns around, and it’s worse.
Kattigan's body is just as sinful drenched in water when he is facing Wicander. There is the broad expanse of his tan, sculpted chest, descending down into equally chiseled abdominal muscle and a hint of dark hair trailing all the way down where the man’s modesty is, thankfully, covered by the water’s edge. Wicander sees everything in such pristine detail that his mouth dries instantly at the sight. He doesn't even know why, all he knows is that it's imprinted into his brain forever, carved like a scar in the places for all the things he shouldn't want and can't have, and heat spreads through him so quickly he can barely swallow a scandalised little gasp—
And then Wicander processes what he must look like, gaping like a harlot at a fellow man's body. Kattigan looks just higher than line of sight, directly at him, and he winks.
The wings spring out of his back as quickly as Wicander springs up to his feet, his cheeks such intense, filthy shade of red that he thinks every wolf in the forest must be heading in his direction at the scent of fresh blood. And it’s not the only place his blood rushes in. Horrified, humiliated, Wicander swears he only wants to escape, but he has already established that balance is not his thing, and he isn’t sure why he expected anything else to happen as the ground slips away from his feet.
Now, he'd probably be fine if it wasn't for the fact that he was flailing like a spooked pigeon, and as all of his limbs betray him at once, Wicander careens into the river with a yelp.
Thankfully, the water is deep enough that he isn’t harmed but not enough for him to be at risk of drowning. Wicander is also a decent swimmer, if he didn’t have several pounds of weight in wet feathers dragging behind him as he finally pulls himself on the shore. He hears several concerned voices, but his ears are pounding with blood. At least the cold water saved him from one of the two visible problems he was sporting just now.
“I’m— I’m fine—” Wicander responds to whatever people are asking him, teeth clattering as his clothes stick unpleasantly to his skin. He must be decidedly less seductive than anyone would be in wet fabric, looking at best as a shot ptarmigan and at worst like a botched taxidermy of one.
Shame clogs his senses. He doesn’t have to stay pure any longer, he is very aware, but it doesn’t mean he has to immediately start gawking at every person in his proximity. Wicander is better than that, surely.
It doesn’t mean he won’t feel like the image of Kattigan’s bare body just might haunt both his dreams and his nightmares.
It’s Tyranny that finds him alone at their little campfire, the rest of the party choosing to also bathe while they have the chance with Kattigan watching their backs for trouble. Wicander stays behind. He has had enough water for the foreseeable future.
“Don’t make fun of me,” he mutters petulantly, and he barely recognises his own voice with just how childish and exhausted he sounds.
Tyranny is surprisingly gentle with him as she plops down, wrapping him tighter into the massive coat Teor graciously lent him as he dries. The wings are gone and so is the unpleasant dead weight of them, but Wicander is still vaguely aware of the deeply uncomfortable dampness on something that he can’t see. Yet another issue to solve later. “I won’t,” she promises.
He can’t decide if her earnestness is paranoia-inducing or comfortable and endearing. Wicander thinks it may be both. “I don’t like feeling like this,” he admits, almost reluctantly. He can’t remember when was the last time he felt this vulnerable with anyone. “I thought the worst of such things ended when I was sixteen.”
Tyranny stares at him with her rectangular pupils. “I don’t know what to tell you, I was never sixteen like you.”
Wicander sighs, disappointment sagging his shoulders. “Of course, you weren’t.” He’d almost hoped this earnestness may lead somewhere, be something, but he was presumptuous as usual. Wicander should probably stop doing that.
There is a pause, before a tentative rubber of the tail wraps around his wrist. It’s gentle, soft, so unlike Tyranny but also the most authentic action he’d seen her do in a long time. She looks at him, not with pity but with a sort of camaraderie. And, honestly, right now Wicander could really use that.
“It’s okay,” Tyranny says. “I might not know what it feels like or anything, but… I think it’s not that bad. It’s cute, actually.”
Humiliating is a better word for it, but because it’s Tyranny saying it, the demon from the Pit that he’d spent so long trying to guide to the Light as well as he could, Wicander’s heart flutters uselessly against his ribs. He feels soft, and it’s dangerous and exhilarating. “You think?”
She snorts. “Don’t get me wrong, you look a little stupid,” Tyranny says, the tip of her tail twitching. “But earnestness is just one of those traits that make me like you. So, don’t lose that, all I’m saying.”
Wicander can’t help it. He smiles a little bit at her, grateful for this little sliver of comfortable coexistence between them. Then, Tyranny speaks again.
“If you want, I’ll drench you in cold water every time you look like you want to pop a wing boner. Maybe it will help you again in the future.”
Wicander doesn’t know why. But he laughs. And he laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs until Tyranny is looking at him like he is a complete idiot, and maybe he is, it’s hard to say. But there is something about her, something about the specific ways she shows care that she tries so hard to disguise as mischief and trickery that makes him think of her in the light of the flames and consider that maybe she doesn’t belong to them at all.
Eventually, Wicander falls asleep on her shoulder, and Tyranny doesn’t stop him.