The Final Nights

They'd known each other long enough for them to have their patterns, and longer still to know when something was amiss.

Rohan laid awake. Not restlessly, but relaxing. It'd been a dull day for them - pleasant, yet boring - and so this wasn't unexpected. Sleep would come in its own time.

Until it did, he would lightly stare at the ceiling of their hut. He liked it. He could wait like this 'til morning. There was no one to talk or to interrupt his thoughts, nor any pressure to convince a crowd he was what they said he was. The only improvement to be made was being under the stars, but they'd spent so many nights that way as boys, Rohan could imagine the sky well enough on his own. The grass as well, damp with dew that glistened under the moon, prickling at his skin in light touches. With his arm behind his head and that vision in his mind, he could've laid there forever and been happy.

Angus was different. His friend brought a limpness to how he slept that made him look like a gentle corpse in his cot. He'd start the night being stiff, but as went it on, he'd melt wherever he was laying and be lost. Rohan would hear the change in moving from sharp, impatient breaths, blown through Angus' nose as he hurried his rest to come, and into a long, deep sigh that seemed content to empty his chest. From there, at a higher pitch, there'd be slower breaths from his lips until he woke. Rohan liked that too. No matter what had happened in the day, Angus was most himself when he was dead to it again.

It was a sight, and one Rohan had memorized as well. The tension would leave Angus' face as he made the change. Any hunger would be set aside for dawn. Panic, nervousness, and fear would fade against slumber. And he'd look lighter, as if he'd made the perfect choice to rest and dream. Rohan was happy seeing it every time, and to watch him go where he'd be safe. It felt like victory. Angus wouldn't sleep if something was wrong, and there'd been so many nights like that while growing up. Here, in a village and a home together, nothing was out of place. Not even if it was untidy.

Rohan was old enough to wonder now if their good nights outnumbered their bad.

But it wasn't what he asked.

"You're alright?"

"Nngh. No."

Of course not. Because he hadn't heard that long, deep sigh of change yet. On the chance he'd missed it, he still heard Angus' sharper, impatient breaths anyway. So Rohan didn't bother with lowering his voice when he'd called to the other cot. He knew Angus was up. Sleepy, from the sounds of it, but uncomfortably stuck on the other side of any restful dreams.

"What's wrong?"

Angus took more time to answer him then, as though redoubling his effort to sleep. It never worked. If something around him was keeping him up, then it had to be fixed. Rohan could lay awake all night and feel refreshed in the morning, but Angus was going to be in a mood tomorrow unless this changed.

"It's cold," Rohan heard his friend mutter.

He must've been facing away, towards the wall. That meant he was on his side, and if Angus was on side, he'd be curled up in his stubborn pile that meant the problem was in him. With noise or light, he would've buried his face. Fullness and drink put him on his belly. Heat and restlessness was him on his back and dangling off the edge, upside-down and watching everything that moved to comment on it. A busy mind had him on his side facing into the hut.

Rohan had never shared this. It was nice having a way to know his friend that was private from even Angus himself. It felt like another victory, and a small way to be heroic, when Rohan first untangled that map to Angus' habits.

Untangling it was easier when they had moved to lay on cots. As children, having to cling to each other, it'd been harder to tell the moods apart. Rohan had managed anyway, making a game of it, but there, the language was more subtle and harder to notice. It was buried in how Angus sank his nails in Rohan's shirt. That'd been enough to eventually cue Rohan to nudge their shoulders and pull Angus from his nightmare.

Still, though.

"It isn't that cold," he noted.

"Good for you."

Right. Fair enough. Angus didn't wear his furs because he was warm, after all, and the changing season was bringing more of his layers out and onto him. Tonight was crisp, if Rohan needed to describe it. He'd pulled his own blanket over his legs that evening. Angus, though, judging from how the shuffling went a while earlier, must have pulled his blanket fully over himself, yet was still balled up below.

One more piece. Then Rohan would look to be sure.

"You want mine?"

"Your what?"

"My blanket," Rohan said.

Angus would move to lumber and stomp to Rohan's side and snatch it away, then irritably drag the blanket back to his lair. He'd be annoyed Rohan hadn't simply delivered it to him in his greatest time of need, but he'd be a bright-eyed angel in the morning, waking up twisted under his nest. Or he would drag himself to Rohan and land in Rohan's cot, and plummet to sleep in gratitude and milder annoyance that he wasn't invited sooner. Or...

"No," came Angus' grunt.

Rohan got up and looked.

"You're sick," he said, bundling his blanket in his arms and carrying it over. "Time to sweat it out."

"No," Angus tried complaining - on his side, in a ball, facing the wall of the hut, exactly as Rohan had predicted. "I'm just cold -"

"You always hate it and it always works," Rohan said. With a snap of the blanket in the air to open it up, the cloth drifted to delicately snuggle around his friend. Angus, the coward, turtled farther away and pulled his head below his blanket too. It wouldn't matter. "We'll try with this. If you don't sweat enough, I'll get you dressed as well."

"'I'm sick' - you're sick," Angus snapped, ruining it with being muffled under there. "Cathbad does it to me once, and suddenly you're the expert on this."

"I am," Rohan said. "I'm his apprentice."

"Were."

"Only because I had to leave to bring Kells a hundred lifetimes of peace." And before Angus resumed his whining over when 'his own peace would start', Rohan lifted the blankets and crawled in. "I'll wake you for water."

Crawling in was important, both for the added heat, and to grab onto Angus so he didn't wriggle away and cheat by cooling down. It'd only make everything take longer. As much as he liked to pretend Rohan did this for fun, they both knew Angus knew that Cathbad would tell them to try exactly this if they brought Angus in for a different cure. So it was best to get this over with.

"Water," Angus hissed. "Like I'm a plant."

"Hush."

Angus was right, though: he was cold. And for his protests, he didn't hesitate in turning over and stuffing himself against Rohan, greedily trying to steal the heat and enjoy it before it got worse. Rohan welcomed that. He stuck his arm under Angus' neck to give him a pillow - Angus only just skimmed Rohan's chin, barely aiming that headbutt at his shoulder - and locked his other arm around Angus' back to begin the entrapment.

There was another step to it, but it'd need to wait for Angus to lower his guard. That granted Rohan the rarest of permissions: with the rest of his arm freed from needing to prop up Angus' neck, Rohan was allowed to fold his elbow until he met an angle that reached his hand past his friend's temple. Normally, Rohan would be stopping there, rubbing circles to help let Angus relax. But since Angus wasn't going to sleep while he was being overheated, noise - for once - wasn't the problem. And by 'noise', Rohan meant 'the sound of his own hair rustling about on his head', which was otherwise enough to ruin the rest Angus would try to get. He wasn't a light sleeper so much as a light fall-asleeper; Ivar wouldn't've had a fight over snoring if he'd waited for Angus to go first. Rohan snored, and he could snore directly in Angus' ear - after Angus was already lost to the world. Explaining that to a prince who'd just been called a donkey...

"That's loud," Angus mumbled into Rohan's shirt.

"You're not sleeping yet," he said. "It's fine."

There was a soft grunt and a shuffle to bury more of his face, but no other interruptions came for Rohan lightly scratching at Angus' scalp.

This was all a change from how they'd been as boys. Angus felt small in his arms. He'd always been smaller, but feeling that way to Rohan was something else. They laid quietly there as he thought through that emotion. He didn't usually try to, but Rohan supposed he had the time.

He stayed alert until Angus finally shifted to lean away, about to sprawl onto his back... and quickly rolled him in the other direction, pulling Angus to land on Rohan, belly-first.

And that was it. Rohan's work was done. What once took Cathbad hours and finally a potion to shut Angus up during the only time the druid tried helping directly, had taken Rohan a head rub for a few minutes, and admittedly, a decade of knowing his friend. Dizziness and wanting to move could have been the heat - or, since Angus was clearly on his stomach, not his back, he must've been drunk. And that made sense in Angus' head. So came the sigh, as his 'drunk' friend promptly began to 'sleep it off'.

Now Rohan could let him go. Angus wasn't about to be moving anywhere. In fact, he'd planted his throat gracelessly over Rohan's bicep, slowly dying as he choked himself, and staying that way until he was put back onto Rohan's shoulder. Amazingly, he could breathe again, and went on with that without ever knowing what had happened.

"I don't know how you'd make it without me," Rohan observed.

But the war was over, wasn't it. And Rohan now was a prince. They'd be finding out the answer to that soon.

Draganta couldn't keep dragging his friend around forever.

And he wouldn't. Angus had to have his own life to live.

Morning intruded sooner than Rohan had wanted. The day broke with an air of finality, counting down to the last of their days like this. Perhaps it wasn't the beautiful start that others might have pictured, but it was a usual one for them - in this scenario anyway. Angus, soaked with sweat but no longer shivering, had moved during the night after all. Rohan woke tucked against him instead - disgustingly soaked in that sweat as well, and already expecting Angus to haul them both to a bath once he was awake. The pond they'd usually visit would be too cold at this time of year, but they could go to the castle. They'd earned it.

Rohan didn't move. The damage was done on that front anyway, so what did it matter now? He spent his dawn listening to Angus' heartbeat, and after that, to his steady breathing. Then Rohan stilled and felt the rise and fall of his friend's chest. That was a pattern as well - one of his own. One that whispered to Angus that something with Rohan was wrong. From his sleep, possessed by the spirit of a nagging aunt, Angus returned the night's gesture of lightly scratching through Rohan's hair.

He tried remembering this, closing his eyes to trap the feeling in his mind. It'd be all he'd have when he left, along with the habits and patterns.

Memorized for nothing.