Genre: fantasy
Language: English
Length: 2153 words
Published: 2023

The twenty or so seconds the transference spell took could have been an eternity. Zsiga felt boneless in Béla’s arms, the rising and falling of his chest laboured, and for the first time ever Béla realised how small, how fragile he really was. He’d always been slim and short, good four inches shorter than Béla, and his posture made him look even shorter. Carrying him felt like carrying a chick that had rolled out of its nest; a frail little flame barely clinging on, just moments away from being doused forever. He weighted next to nothing and Béla felt a familiar dread settling deep in the pit of his stomach, a dread he hadn’t felt in full force for nearly two decades.

Afterwards, he couldn’t tell how he got Zsiga in the house or combed through the kitchen cabinets without smashing everything with his shaking hands. The survival instinct that had carried him through the previous attacks never kicked in. He went through the motions almost feverishly, with the vague voice of his old potioneering professor and flashes of chalk on the blackboard providing him guidance inside his head.

Basic remedial tinctures for injuries and accidents, he repeated to himself, come on, you know what you need… Zsiga was the potioneering genius, not him. He wished now he’d paid more attention in class all those years ago.

“Stabilising Draught,” he read out loud when his eyes at last fell on a familiar, stoppered vial on one of the shelves. All the labels were in Zsiga’s cursive: he always kept the cupboards well-stocked. Béla grabbed the vial and rushed back to the first floor bedroom, which was his.

Béla’s hands shook as he tipped Zsiga’s head back gently, and watched with mounting anxiety as he emptied the potion vial down to the last drop. The liquid stained his lips, already worryingly pale, an unhealthy tint of purple, but his breathing eased as soon as he’d swallowed the potion. His hair was sticky at the back of his head, but Béla could feel skin knitting together underneath his fingers.

“Well done,” Béla managed. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. He set the empty vial on the nightstand and lowered Zsiga back on the bed slowly and carefully, upper body propped up by every pillow he had managed to gather. “Zsiga? Can you hear me?”

Zsiga made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat. It was faint, yes, but Béla’s heart leapt at the sound of it.

“What do you need?” Béla asked.

“Red, round bottle, middle shelf,” Zsiga mumbled. The words were slurred and he clearly struggled to get the words out. “Label says ‘Ibamihr‘.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“A knife.”

Béla gave his hand a tight squeeze and hurried back to the kitchen. He returned with a fruit knife and the bottle, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Zsiga forced open one eye when he felt the mattress bounce under Béla’s sudden weight.

“Knife,” Zsiga rasped, holding out his hand. “It needs blood to activate.”

“How much?”

“Four drops.”

Béla unstoppered the bottle and shook back his sleeve. “I’ll do it. You need to keep yours where it is.”

“Béla…”

He nicked his fingertip with the knife and barely winced as it drew blood. He held the finger over the open bottle and measured four drops exactly. “My blood will work better when it’s your concoction. I never aced my exams like you, but I know how the Law of Kinsman’s Blood works.”

Zsiga managed a crooked smile. ”Good memory,” he said. ”Now stopper the bottle and shake it. I’ll need to drink all of it.”

Béla edged closer to him and negotiated an arm below his neck for support. Even with Béla taking his weight Zsiga shook from the effort of sitting up, whatever damage the explosion had done to him aggravated by the sudden movement. It brought the taste of bile in his mouth, but he ignored it, forcing down the potion to the last drop though the taste laced with iron was nauseating. The pain dulled with every mouthful, and when he’d downed the potion entirely, the only thing left of the injury was exhaustion. Béla prised the bottle off his hands and set it aside.

”All right?” Béla asked quietly, his breath tickling the top of Zsiga’s head.

”Good as ever. Thank you.”

Béla didn’t let go of him. Zsiga felt something wet land in his hair once, twice, felt how Béla’s arms trembled around him, and realised he was crying.

”Béla?”

”I thought I’d lost you.” Béla’s breath hitched. ”Back there, I thought… I thought…”

Zsiga patted him on the shoulder, awkwardly; he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Béla just held him more tightly, slowly rocking him back and forth to the rhythm of his sobs.

”I’m all right now,” Zsiga tried. It had no immediate effect. ”Really, I’m okay. You’re squeezing the air out of me, though.”

”Sorry,” Béla said and loosened his hold enough so that Zsiga was able to take a proper look at him. He looked about every bit as awful as Zsiga felt. His eyes were bloodshot, and tears had left streaks on his soot-stained face. There was dust and plaster stuck in his messy hair, and dried blood – not his own, Zsiga guessed – on his sweater that was unlikely to ever come off. Being this close to him felt overwhelming after the argument they’d had when they saw each other last.

”I think I need to lay down,” Zsiga mumbled, looking away from him.

”Oh. Right. Here, let me help you.”

The room was swaying gently as he laid down on the bed. He let his eyes slip shut, which made the worst of the vertigo calm down. It got warmer all of a sudden when Béla draped a quilt over him. Zsiga heard him moving around the room, putting things away, and one loud sneeze when he blew his nose.

”The hell does Ibamihr even mean?” Béla said, re-reading the label on the now-empty bottle.

”It’s short for “internal bleeding and moderate injury home remedy”. Didn’t fit in the label.”

”Oh.”

Béla returned the bottles and the knife in the kitchen, turned on the lights, then went back to the bedroom. The floorboards creaked underneath his weight, unusually much in comparison to how quietly he usually navigated the old house, as if he was making sure to make as much noise as possible so as to not startle Zsiga.

”You didn’t get hurt in the explosion, did you?” Zsiga asked, knowing he was within hearing distance.

”No. Not so much as a scratch.”

”Lucky you.”

The mattress dipped again. Warm fingers brushed hair off his face and Zsiga felt himself instinctively leaning in to the touch, no matter how much he told himself clinging on to these rare moments was pathetic.

”I’m sorry,” Béla said softly, still brushing his hair.

”For what?”

Béla was quiet for a long time. ”I should have come home much sooner, apologised. Instead of, you know, leaving you here alone for days. I can’t stop thinking about what if… What if the last thing I ever said to you was that I didn’t want to see you.”

”You didn’t, though,” Zsiga reminded him. ”You just said you needed time.”

”Comes down to the same thing, really. I just ran away and left you, when it must have taken you so much courage to confess something like… You know. Like that.”

Zsiga remained silent. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t just reignite the argument all over again, not when the only thing he could think of was that Béla was, obviously, still not even remotely okay with the facts. That he still danced around the subject of Zsiga loving him, loving him the entirely wrong way, unable to even say it out loud.

It was every shade of unfair, he knew. He’d had eighteen years to digest the ugly truth, come to terms with it, and Béla’d had what, five days and some hours? It was unfair, and it still made Zsiga want to scream at his face.

The urge died as soon as he felt Béla take his hand and hold it tight.

”Do you want to talk about it?” Béla asked.

”No.” A pause. ”I don’t know. Depends.” Zsiga had no courage to squeeze his hand back. ”Promise you won’t run away again if I do?”

”I promise.”

He brought Béla’s hand to his lips and kissed it, soot and all, ignoring how Béla twitched. He didn’t open his eyes when he said, ”I love you.”

Béla’s breath hitched audibly. ”I know.”

”I love you,” Zsiga repeated, more fiercely.

When he cracked open his eyes, Béla was staring at the floor. He could have been a million miles away, despite the warmth of his skin against Zsiga’s. Zsiga tugged at his hand, which shook him out of his private bubble and finally made him meet Zsiga’s eyes, however furtively. Dark brown eyes, long, black lashes, laugh wrinkles in the corners softening his expressions. They were stupidly much like Zsiga’s own, almost identical down to the lighter, coppery flecks around his irises. The one difference was that unlike the ones that greeted Zsiga in the mirror every morning, he didn’t hate them on Béla’s face. On him, they were soft and gentle, something songs on the radio might have described as ‘soulful’. Zsiga’s own were steel, as hard and rough as the rest of him; Carl had called them serial killer eyes.

They were made of the same ingredients, but the results couldn’t have been more different. Zsiga was all the leftovers, the discarded, unrefined parts. The cold, the ugly and the rough. The second, unwanted son.

Béla just looked at him, long and silent, and eventually laced their fingers together. When he spoke, it was strained, as if the words cost him something beyond measure. ”I love you, too.”

Not the same way you do, Zsiga finished for him inside his head.

How could two people be so different while being so similar, he thought.

Béla got up and pulled his hand free. ”I should go get us some groceries. Will you be all right for a bit?”

”Sure. Turn on some music for me before you go?”

”Any requests?”

”I just want some background noise. Whatever’s in the CD player will do.”

Béla turned on the player, hit ‘play’, and walked out of the room. One of his compilation CDs of 90’s radio hits, Zsiga guessed as a familiar tune started playing. A minute later he heard Béla’s footsteps come down the stairs and back towards the room.

He was holding Zsiga’s phone. He placed it on the bed next to him, within arm’s reach. ”Call me if anything happens. Or if you need anything, okay?”

”I’ll be fine.”

”I mean it. I’ll rush right back if—”

”Béla, seriously. I’m okay.”

”Okay. All right.”

Zsiga closed his eyes, pretending to rest, as Béla lingered indecisively at the doorway, which seemed to do the trick. Zsiga heard him gather his things and take out a coat from the rack, and the door to the foyer creaked a while later.

”I’ll be back soon,” Béla called out to him.

You’d better, Zsiga thought. But what he said instead was, ”get going already.”

The front door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock as Béla left.

The rain that had started during the afternoon showed no signs of stopping. Zsiga heard the pitter-patter of raindrops falling against the window panes as a new track started and Toni Braxton’s voice filled the room, and he glared up at the ceiling, vision going blurry.

He’d finally got the words he’d wanted to hear for all those years. And he hated them.

I love you, too.

The thing about Zsiga was, he never cried over anything. He hadn’t even cried much as a child. Instead he got angry. He shouted, he screamed, he threw things just to hear them shatter. He hadn’t shed a single tear over the course of eighteen unbearable years of Béla in his life but never in the right way, but something that had burrowed itself deep within the parts of himself that he hated looking at the most finally dislodged itself one little shard at a time. That single ‘I love you, too’ played on repeat in his head and blended into the chorus of ”Un-Break My Heart” until Braxton was singing in his own voice. His, and Béla’s.

How was it possible that two people could have the same memories, yet see them so differently that they might as well have been watching different channels? He imagined Béla’s touch lingering in the warmth of his skin, and punched the mattress so hard that the phone bounced.

The silence had been better, after all.