Chapter Text
To put it simply, I'd say he has a new crush every half hour, Finn judged, sprawled on the beat-up sofa, his Guinness in one hand, the other playing with Heather's dreadlocks. She was half-lying on top of him, her waist nestled between his legs, her feet propped up against the arm of the sofa.
Yeah, it's something like that, I'd say. He's always falling in love, and each time he's really emotionally invested, you know? So yeah, from the outside it mainly looks like he's just trying to get laid with anything that moves, and that's pretty much true, but I'm sure he loves even his one-night stands.
That being said, I think it's still a bad idea to go out with him. It's doomed to fail; he can't maintain a stable relationship for more than ten minutes. I know, I've seen him try to stay monogamous before; his average fidelity span is usually six months. After that, he cracks and starts squitching around again, and he gets up to all sorts of dumb stuff. He'd need a really permissive kind of open relationship, and I don't know many people who would accept that. Besides, he's a damn child, he gets offended super easily, he's all over the place, every day a new whim: "Finn, let's go trekking," "Finn, let's try falconry," "Finn, what if we did the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage on foot, but continuing all the way to Morocco?" A wee bit of an exhausting guy, you know.
I love him, though; if he weren't my mate, I wouldn't still be hanging out with him after all these years we've known each other, but damn, he can be such a pain.
So, sure, right now he's asleep, he looks cute, but really, dating Angelo is a bad idea. Bonking him without getting too attached seems like the best compromise, from what I gathered. I mean, I've only heard good things about his hookups. You should see how he cooks for them and everything afterwards; honestly, it seems pretty cosy. Well, if he could do it somewhere other than the gaff, that would suit me fine. The walls are paper-thin, I've heard him shagging half our year group, and that's starting to make quite a crowd. Hard to look people in the eye in the lecture hall after that.
Heather had laughed. She'd said, "Okay, I'll keep that in mind, just in case the opportunity arises," and Finn had mumbled a chuckle as he finished his beer.
And Angelo, feigning sleepiness curled up in his armchair, had thought, ah, I see, I see. That's how he talks about me to his girlfriends when he thinks I can't hear him. It's not true that I get offended super easily. Besides, I'm not at all offended by these outrageous comments about me.
Truly, try spending five centuries with a moron like that, showing him the world on someone else’s dime, and see how he thanks you.
And then six months later, a few months after Finn got dumped, he’d actually slept with Heather, and the next day he made the best breakfast ever, half for Heather and half for Finn, who had heard some of it. At the same time, that idiot wasn't supposed to be home from work so early.
In the morning, when he recognized his ex at the breakfast table, he frowned and huffed through his nose, like he always does when he's annoyed.
She apologized profusely, saying she thought he wouldn't be back so soon and that Angelo had said no one would be there, and he shrugged and started on the food. She can do what she wants; they're adults, they can do what they want. He devoured his portion of focaccia with a badly concealed pleasure, and grumbled that it wasn't exactly the height of gallantry on Almaviva's part. Not that I’m jealous, but with all the running around I'd been doing, I needed to sleep. Next time, at least try to hide a little.
He never slept with any of his exes after that. Well, Finn hasn't had a lot of relationships; most of them end when girls realize that this kind of sexy, mysterious magician is also a hot-tempered, messy moron who brings home every half-dead creature to nurse back to health, unable of holding down a paying job for more than three minutes, so he's always more or less panhandling just to be able to take his clothes to the laundromat, not particularly good in bed from what he's gathered, and to top it all off, periodically ruining himself on whiskey. Generally, his flings don't last much more than a night or two.
And besides, Finn isn't like him, well, he might have one relationship a century, sometimes less. He has trouble relaxing enough to take the plunge most of the time, and you can't exactly say he has an insatiable need for lust. Although, he isn't entirely sure. The last eight centuries have been rather strange; he hasn't seen much of him. It has been rather unpleasant, actually.
Quite unpleasant.
He hadn't thought it would be this unpleasant.
He feels whole when he’s there. When they are together. At the same time, he’s his oldest friend, Finn. He was barely a century old when they met, and it had been a pleasant surprise to realize that his new servant was almost as resilient as he was, and alive to boot. He was valet and pantry, truly all in one. And it hadn't taken long for them to realize they got along well, aside from a few unfortunate slip-ups.
They had spent almost eight centuries, nearly uninterrupted, roaming the world together, almost always with each other, before finding themselves separated abruptly and for far too long, far too long. The last time, too, it was entirely his fault.
Not a very good time. Eternity is long, especially towards the end, as someone once said.
Angelo, or rather Varen, as he's been called lately, isn't proud of what he becomes when he's separated from Finn for too long—no, not very proud. You should see what he did to Shaÿame, because she refused to tell him where he was hiding. Well, to be fair, she was afraid he'd kill him, and that was perfectly understandable, given the circumstances. But still.
Still.
And now that he's reunited with Finn, and regained his composure, when he thinks back on it all, he's heartbroken, utterly heartbroken. Shaÿame, now his Blood daughter as a result of that regrettable incident—a first. Still alive, though, which is odd. Every time he tries to change someone, it doesn't work as it should, it seems. And now she's got a strange, scaly thing, emerged out of her body, too. Scaly thing, who, de facto, turns out to be his Blood son? His son. That's quite odd too. Luckily, most of the time K'Hanad is wandering around the rooftops eating pigeons, and we don't see him much. Hopefully, she's forgiven him now. You can't say she's hard-hearted, that girl, even though she really saw him at his worst.
Furious, uncontrollable, criminal.
How can he put it? It's as if Finn's presence anchors him. Keeps him from losing himself.
Unlike his cunt of a brother, who tends to have the opposite effect.
No, he never gives his best when he's near Castelviel, especially lately.
What a cunt, really. Arrogant, contemptuous, and megalomaniacal, when he was so decent when he was alive.
It's Isabel's blood, that's for sure. No wonder he's so prone to going off the rails. That's what it's like being a vampire.
Anyway, Finn.
Finn, who has been consumed by love lately for the beautiful Ydris—ethereal, brown-haired, with large, light brown eyes—has done everything, absolutely everything, to keep her from falling into Byron's clutches, but she fell anyway.
Then he did everything to keep her from falling in love with Silence.
She fell again.
And he desperately tried to pull at the threads of fate, which only he could ever see, trying to avoid what he knew was inevitable, but he failed. That bastard Byron changed Ydris, and it was a complete disaster. She ended up transformed into a soulless vampire, most of the time, a kind of pretty doll that you walk from from place to place, only regaining her senses when she ate, which was once every two or three weeks, for a day or two. Hardly a life.
Well, literally not a life.
Finn was depressed, quite depressed.
After a few years, he managed to get her out of Byron's clutches, but most of the time she was just sitting on a couch with a blank stare, and on top of it all, she still didn't love him.
And then Finn gets on everyone’s bad side. Things start going haywire, Varen doesn't understand everything, but the result is that Finn loses all his powers one by one, loses his prescience, and loses his Luck—which he didn't have much of to begin with—and above all, he loses something much more important, something much less noticeable at first.
His hair and beard grow faster than usual.
He takes longer to heal than what’s normal for him.
The dark circles under his eyes deepen.
His blood, when Varen drinks it, tastes different and no longer nourishes him as much as before.
He becomes human.
He becomes mortal.
Varen feels an immense unease from it. More than unease, in fact, a kind of anguish, a nameless panic that overwhelmed him the moment he realized it.
They have travelled, they have fought, they have smiled at each other, they have raised hell, they have laughed together. Varen has struck him, healed him, held him in his arms, held him by the edge of his sword, saved him, kissed him. Finn has struck back, covered for him, fed him, waited for him, forgiven him. They have known each other for so long. A millennium and a half.
Finn has been everything to him: translator, guide, valet, servant, travelling companion, assistant, skipper, fellow student, friend. Above all, friend.
Always friend.
He is his anchor.
Without him, he’s only half a brain.
He has always been immortal, they have always been immortal together. When Finn dies, all you have to do is put him in his stone at Stonehenge, wait a bit, and it starts all over again.
And now he's no longer immortal. He's going to die like everyone else, like all the others.
He's going to leave him alone, like everyone else.
He can't leave him, it's impossible, he can't.
And to top it all off, this idiot goes to Dublin to see his former boss, and he trades half of his remaining life for Ydris's life, and he trades his violin and a dance for some of his powers back, and the promise that he’ll be able to go to Tír na nÓg when the end comes.
The end that will come in fifteen years, then.
They've known each other for a millennium and a half, and all of this will end in fifteen years.
At first, Varen doesn't know where this anxiety comes from.
Everyone dies.
It happens.
Castelviel, too, has known him for a millennium and a half, and if that cunt kicked the bucket now, it wouldn't sadden him all that much.
But Finn, he can't bear it. The idea is too awful.
Shaÿame told him that everyone dies.
There's an end to everything.
But not Finn.
Not Finn.
He can't go on without Finn.
One night they're both drunk. Everyone's at the apartment, plus Shaÿame.
Really drunk, for once. Well, Varen less so, but Finn, with his recent mortality, can't hold his liquor nearly as well, and he's having trouble getting the proportions right.
And Finn's sulking, he's a bitter drunk, and between snide remarks, he finally rants that he's fed up with Varen always going off to see his nice vampire buddies without ever telling anyone, and that he's not fucking dead yet, damn it.
Varen doesn't think twice—it's a common problem—and he punches him right in the jaw.
Finn takes two steps back.
Varen grabs him by his t-shirt before he can waltz in his chair, and without really knowing what he's doing, he kisses him.
This isn't the first time it's happened, but the other times, he'd made it seem like something else. A joke. A diversion. An accident.
This time it's neither a joke nor a diversion nor an accident nor anything else.
He kisses him, and it lasts three, four, or even five seconds of confused disbelief for Finn, who completely forgets that he got punched a minute before.
When Varen realizes what he's doing, in front of everyone, he breaks the kiss, lets go, pats the front of his t-shirt to smooth out the creases he made when he grabbed him, and storms out of the apartment.
He doesn't understand.
He's not attracted to Finn, he's really not his type, Finn, well, not quite, well, no.
He's just his friend.
Only his friend, right?
He really doesn't want him to die.
He's not attracted to him, he loves him.
That's even worse.
He loves him, this bag of bones shaped like a human being, who sees everything coming without ever saying a word, mocking, efficient, never happy, always tender.
He must have loved him for a while, ever since they started hanging out together, but he couldn't say when it began. Maybe from the very beginning. In fifteen hundred years, there's plenty of time to fall in love with the same person at several occasions.
But he doesn't love him, he loves Ydris, and besides, he's never been even remotely attracted to men, he's only ever been with women, and always rather feminine ones at that.
So, well.
No chance of anything happening.
And then one day, relations with the Guild are getting worse and worse, and he receives a package containing Marie-Ange's head, the mummified head, a little over a millennium old, of a woman he has loved. He has loved her so deeply; he was young, so very young.
That's his life. He loves people, and people die.
Finn will die in fifteen years.