Dessert, along with a glass of wine, is brought out for Tobias. He and Lir grow silent. Until now, the two had been reminiscing on the past. Good times. Moments where they were still quite green in the face of their troubles. Though, Tobias did leave out their first meeting—the beginning where neither Lir, nor his family, were sure Lir would ever see the light of day again.

Lir isn’t vexed by this. He understands some things make better topics for small talk, and that his past agora, and anthro phobias, are not one of them.

Tobias takes a sip from his glass. Liquids the color of blood swirl against their feeble, transparent prison like a hurricane would. The ambience around them is somewhat more intimate now, since all the patrons have returned to their rooms. They are alone, and the bartender is too enraptured by her work to possibly hear them with how low they speak.

Lir wonders if he will mention it. A simple question: Are you better now?

Yet, the hushed words Tobias passes between the candle’s firelight isn’t what Lir expects. “You wanted to know about the room,” his mentor says. Even though his glass has barely been emptied, Tobias places it down on the table and ceases to touch it.

Lir nods. It is slow, careful, as if he were walking on the remnants of sharp, shattered crystals. “I did.” He did want to know. He still does; very much so, and the look of despair that breaches out across Tobias’s features doesn’t aid with extinguishing his curiosity one bit. “But don’t feel obligated to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Yes, it is Tobias’s story after all. It does not belong to Lir in the slightest. If his mentor should wish it be, he could absolutely rip out the pages of a chapter in his life, burn them at a stake, and speak of it no more.

For who would Lir be to stop him?

No one—that is who he is.

No one.

“I want to,” Tobias blurts. He reaches across the table. He wraps his palm around Lir’s knuckles and gives them a squeeze. “I want to,” he echoes. “However…” Tobias looks away. “I fear you may be the one who regrets hearing the tale, once all has been said.”

There is a crease in Lir’s brow that was not there before. He does not quite comprehend what his mentor is trying to get at. “Did you murder a man?”

A laugh.

“Sometimes, I forget you aren’t one to mince your words.”

Lir cocks his head to the side. “What is the point in doing so? I never understood.”

His mentor is smiling now. “Then,” he says, “I do hope you will never have to.”

“So…” Lir bites his lip. He wonders if it would be insensitive to ask again. “The—”

“The bed, yes.” Tobias nods, and Lir cannot help but notice the tension returns in the man’s shoulders. “I was engaged once.”

In this moment, Lir is grateful to have no drink left to sip on, for he surely would have choked on the matter upon hearing these words. It is so sudden, so unexpected, that he barely even has the time to feel the flimsy bout of jealousy rising within him before it is gone, like a whisper that never was. “Once?”

His mentor takes a deep breath. “It’s been a little over six months since it was called off.” Until tonight, it hadn’t occurred to Lir that Tobias may also be carrying wounds that bleed in silence. He wishes he could take them away. Make him good as new, so that his mentor wouldn’t have to hurt anymore.

“You miss her,” Lir utters the words without thinking them through, though Tobias doesn’t seem to mind.

“Him,” he corrects Lir. And then, “I do. I miss him very much. But I understand why it did not work, and I know that, even if we were to do it again, it still would not function as lovers are able to sometimes.”

Function. Lir finds his choice of word peculiar—as if relationships were machines, some with all the right pieces, and others missing cogs. “I’m sorry.” Lir is sorry; much to his mild surprise, he feels no rage at all against Tobias’s past lover. He had feared there would be resent for the woman, or the man, if he were to be confronted with such facts, but… Lir is merely saddened. Tobias was unable to find his happiness in the person he deemed would make him the happiest. And Lir wanted him to be happy, he realizes—more than anything else. More than being with him. “Are you sure?” Lir asks. His voice is soft, a strange, unconscious tentative at consoling Tobias, perhaps. “Are you sure you could not make it work?”

Tobias sighs. Although he hasn’t done much to change the way he sits, he seems to be crumbling in on himself against the table. He shakes his head again. “My partner, he… wanted me to stop working. He said I never had enough time for him.” A shrug. “That wasn’t wrong.” Tobias is staring right at Lir now, and part of Lir wish he weren’t, for it is so, so easy to see the hurt in Tobias’s gaze that Lir wants to rise, to reach out, and take the man into his arms.

If they hadn’t been mere teacher and student, perhaps, he would have allowed himself to do so.

“But trying to change you was wrong,” Lir mutters, after a moment.

“I know.” Tobias’s grin is not quite right, not full of joy, as it used to be. “That’s why I left.” He clears his throat. “That’s also why Gale gave me a double bed to share. He doesn’t know yet. But anyway… What about you?” Tobias rests a palm against his chin. “That girl…” He purses his lips together. “Anastasia, was it?”

“It was…” Lir is slightly uncertain as to where this is going.

The candlelight casts shadows that flicker against his mentor’s face. “I remember she’d always chase after you, back when you were still under my tutelage. Did it ever work out?”

Lir tries not to cringe at the idea, though it is not an easy task. “Uh…” He pauses, and scratches the back of his neck. For once, he is the one that averts his gaze. “Not really?”

“Oh.” Tobias picks up his glass of wine again, yet, he does not drink. “Forgive me. I was almost sure she liked you.”

“She did,” Lir tells him. “She did…” he echoes, his voice a tad quieter than before. “But I rejected her.” Lir isn’t sure if he should continue speaking. If he delves further into the matter, Wolf will definitely come up in their conversation, and he has been good at forgetting him so far. Until tonight.

“Are you all right?” Tobias’s palm finds Lir’s shoulder. Lir appreciates the gesture. It makes him feel less alone, as delusional as such a concept may be, since not even magic could explain why that is. “I apologize if I upset you. I didn’t mean to.”

“I left someone behind.” There is a tightness in Lir’s throat that makes him fear he will drown again. “When I died, I left someone. And he was my… I—” Lir’s exhale is sharp. Tobias’s grip tightens around the cleft of his shoulder. “Here.” Lir brings a hand to his barely beating heart. “Whenever I think about it—about him—here, it aches,” he tells Tobias. “And I cannot stand it. Every day, I wish it weren’t so. Sometimes I can forget. Sometimes, I am free. But it always comes back, and each time, it is worse. Each time, I think that I have done something very, very wrong. Because I am breathing, and walking, while he is surely still there, in the village, mourning a man who did not die.”

Lir only realizes he is in tears once he is pressed up against Tobias’s chest, bawling, and grabbing at the fabric of his mentor’s garments with his fists. Warm arms wrap themselves around his back. “I understand,” Tobias whispers. “It isn’t easy. It never is.”

“I—” Lir sniffles. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Tobias’s fond smile rises against the side of Lir’s temple, now clad in a thin veil of sweat. “Cry if you must.” His grasp around Lir’s figure tightens in a way that is grounding instead of being suffocating. “Anyone would be upset.” He threads his fingers through Lir’s messy strands. He rests his head against Lir’s own. “I will not hold it against your person if you do.”

Tobias’s actions remind Lir of the past, where his mentor never let him weep alone, starting from the day he had discovered Lir hugging his trembling elbows close to his chest beneath the steps of his family’s home, to the one where Lir had sobbed into his palms as he had told Tobias he did not ever want to graduate, because then, they would be apart.

It was an innocent wish, Lir realizes, one he would never in a million moons dream of making today.

There is something reassuring about the stability of Tobias’s touch and their predicament. No matter how much time has passed, at least, this is still the same. Yet, Lir does not know how to express such a feeling, so instead, he merely manages a simple, “Thank you, Tobias. Thank you,” before he disappears again, into the shield that is his mentor’s gentle, soothing embrace.