Just binge watched all of Over the Garden Wall! What a charming and delightful experience. Makes me a little homesick. (But, when am I not homesick?)
I love how it’s so respectful of its audience, more kid’s content should be like this. Tasteful, with character, and love in every frame, like a pie your grandmother baked for you from scratch, full of whimsy and wonder. It reminds me of the good aspects of childhood that are so difficult to remember among all the painful memories you’re constantly haunted by.
(... ironic that I feel that way, considering how cold and tragic the show was.)
Title: Shelter from the Storm
Fandom: FFXV
Pairing: Cor Leonis/Nyx Ulric
Rating: Teen and Up
Word Count: 5934
Summary: After Niflheim attacked Galahd, only one Galahdian stays behind in the worsening storm, unshakably sure that his people will return eventually. He makes a deal with a god… and waits. People come into his life as the years go by, but only one of them becomes a constant. A Nyx stays in Galahd AU.
A/N: Inspired by the title of Bob Dylan’s song “Shelter from the Storm” and line “But nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts”. (For reference, Nyx is around 18 and Cor is around 23 the time they first meet.) Please enjoy ❤
AO3 & a sketch I made for this fic
“Nyx, there’s no time to stay any longer, there’s nothing left to stay behind for!”
Those were the last words from Libertus that Nyx remembers hearing before he stopped in his tracks and let his friend continue without him. Libertus had yelled, but his father had just dragged him along.
When he closes his eyes these days, years later, Nyx can still hear Crowe’s angry and desperate voice.
“Nyx!”
*
The storm had picked up as more dropships landed and houses were ground to the ground.
*
He had stayed behind, just a child in the middle of the devastation the Nifs had left behind. The ground was burning and when the fires were eventually extinguished by the rain and storm that never once stopped here in Galahd, the daemons had started to appear from the dust and ashes.
He had started to yell in desperation and anger himself then.
He shouted at Ramuh so long until the Astral had at last deemed to appear.
He hadn’t really been willing to listen to Nyx and had disappeared again mere moments later, but if Nyx was known for something, it was his persistence. He didn’t like giving up easily. Even less so if the matter was something he cared about deeply.
And Galahd was, at the moment, everything he had left.
*
Eventually, Ramuh began to listen to the kid in torn clothes covered in ash and blood that kept yelling at him. A kid who had lost everything and had decided to stay despite it all. Even though he could have followed his friends and people to safety.
They made a deal.
*
At least one person will have to decide to come back and stay here, genuinely wanting to, and make it through the next day.
Nyx thought that this shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. Someone of their people at least had to decide to come back and try to salvage what was left, even if nothing really was left. But it had never been possessions that had made up Galahd after all. It had always been the storm and its people.
*
If not, the only other chance for you and my land is if a single person is willing to return twenty times. If they do, that too will be enough for me to lift the worst of the storm and see to Galahd’s liberation myself.
It was a good deal, a fair deal, Nyx reasoned. He was certain of his people’s loyalty to their home and even if that hadn’t been enough to convince him to agree, it wasn’t like he had much else to lose anymore.
*
There is a hut, facing the rage of the storm even though it shouldn’t be able to, even though it should not have been there in the first place after the Nifs’s thorough devastation.
*
There is a hut in Galahd and none of the people who have seen it and were taken in by a kind yet weary-eyed young stranger are later able to pinpoint where it was located on a map. They wouldn’t even be able to if the storm weren’t as strong as it is these days.
*
There is a hut in Galahd and it appears to all those who need shelter, because they were willing to come in the first place.
*
Nyx isn’t allowed to tell anyone why he wants them to stay. Quite frankly, during the first couple of visits, his firm belief in his land and people has him absolutely sure one of them is bound to stay eventually.
He actively tries to convince them to stay, a few years in, but after a night of nightmares that every single one of them seems to experience, they all leave again.
All seven of them never returned.
The hut has become something of a myth by the time the third of them returned to Lucis soon after.
*
There is a tall man outside the hut. He is breathing heavily and is dripping wet, barely able to lift one foot in front of the other anymore. The storm is raging outside, but Nyx has noticed that he always hears when something or someone passes his home. Always has, over the past ten or so years since he built his hut from scratch with what he had been able to salvage over the course of weeks.
The man can’t be Galahdian, Nyx reasons. The storm seems to threaten to pull him under.
The others who had come had done so in the hope of finding something, anything, that’d make them willing to stay but hadn’t found it.
This one? Nyx doesn’t know what brings him here, but he has a duty, so he gets up from the rumpled blanket on the floor and goes to open the door to the stranger.
“Come in,” he says, trying for an inviting voice even though he has to shout to be heard over the storm. “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
The man practically falls through the door and collapses.
*
When the man is conscious again, Nyx urges him to strip off his soaking wet clothes and take one of Nyx’s self-made blankets to cover and warm himself.
By the time Nyx presses the second mug of hot tea into the stranger’s hand, the other man finally really meets his eyes.
“Huh.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time, so Nyx decides he won’t ask, even though he’s itching to know what brought him here. He watches the man quietly stare into his mug of tea for quite some time. Nyx catches him staring at him a few times as well.
At some point during the night, the man speaks up at last. Nyx and him had both moved on to a glass of something strong and bitter that Nyx had been given by the last visitor before she had left.
The man doesn’t say much, but it’s enough for Nyx to understand.
He learns that the man lost his sister.
She was important to him but apparently important to many others as well and thus he was supposed to hold a speech about her or something.
So he ran away, before someone – it sounds like the man’s friends – would have been able to stop him.
Nyx puts a hand on his shoulder and the man starts to crumble beneath his touch.
When he stops crying, neither of them says a word, but Nyx pours them another drink.
He hasn’t cried about Selena and his mother in a long time now, but now he suddenly can see their faces more clearly again when he blinks and he feels the old wound inside him reopen.
*
The man leaves in the morning, another drink and not many words later.
*
The man returns around the same time the following year.
Nyx doesn’t have a calendar and his feeling of time is shit and Galahd always looks the same, rainy and dressed in an impenetrable storm, but he has a feeling that a year has passed since the man last visited. No one else has come here ever since. Still, he didn’t give up hope.
*
“I am hallucinating, am I not?” Cor – he has learned the man’s name is Cor – mumbles into his drink. He brought it himself, a whole bottle for him and Nyx to share.
Nyx pulls out one of his knives and teasingly presses the blunt edge to Cor’s tight.
“Nope, don’t think you are.”
He stashes the knife away again, always close to his body because that’s just what the place he lives in demands if he wants to live another day, and smirks.
“I’m very real.” He sees Cor’s raised eyebrow. “And very alive.”
He isn’t willing to cut into his finger to prove that he bleeds blood the same as he suspects Cor does unless it’s really necessary, but –
Cor’s shoulders drop.
“It’s alright, I believe you.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.” Cor shakes his head. “You’re too much –“ Cor gestures vaguely before settling on a shrug. “– for my mind to have made you up.”
“Too much of a what?” Nyx smirks and leans in. He can feel the hot air of Cor’s exhausted huff on his face. Huh.
Cor chooses to ignore his question and they spend most of the night drinking in silence.
Nyx doesn’t wake up in time to see him leave, but when he does, there are two additional blankets wrapped securely around him.
*
“I never asked why you are staying here, when really any other place would be a… nicer place to stay at.”
Nyx shrugs and doesn’t explain. He can’t tell half of it and the other half he could, he isn’t sure Cor would understand.
“Alright.”
*
It’s the fourth year since he first met Cor.
“You know, I’ve been thinking you should perhaps start attending this commemoration event for your sister after all. Maybe it’d help.”
Cor leaves in the middle of the night already this time and Nyx isn’t sure he’ll see him again.
*
He arrives later in the year than usual the next time.
“I stayed, this time.”
“Did it help any?”
A sharp nod even though his eyes won’t meet Nyx’s. Then a bottle is handed to him.
Cor falls asleep leaning against his shoulder soon after. It doesn’t seem like he has nightmares, despite it all.
*
The next time, Cor arrives looking grim. He was doing better the last times he visited, but this time, his eyes look especially weary and his mouth is a thin line.
He breaks down moments after Nyx wraps the blanket that has pretty much become Cor’s by now around his shoulders.
He swears and shouts and tells Nyx about a prophecy he despises before he allows Nyx to pull him into a tight embrace on the floor.
Nyx holds on tight and doesn’t let go. He notices he wakes up in the morning that neither did Cor.
*
The seventh year, Cor doesn’t open the bottle he brought that has become kind of traditional early on.
He sits down at the table Nyx has been ornamenting with traditional Galahdian designs over the past two years and looks at him in silence for a long time. Nyx can’t stand the intensity of it and looks away before too long.
Cor sighs.
“You didn’t ask for it, but I guess I’ll tell you the whole story tonight.”
And so, Nyx learns about Aulea Lucis Caelum, née Leonis, a queen and mother to a young prince with terrible destiny. He learns about all of that and slowly, by that, about the place Cor has in his own small world. He has never heard Cor talk so much before, so he doesn’t interrupt to ask questions.
He learns implicitly that night that Cor trusts him more than anyone else or, at least, tells him more and shows him more of himself than even his closest friends.
He tells himself that it’s nothing. That he’s just like the diary Selena used to keep for things she wanted to put somewhere safe and didn’t want anyone else to know. She explained it to him once and he thinks that maybe he is Cor’s safe place for confessions.
*
He prepares himself mentally before Cor arrives the next time.
Cor can apparently tell that he wants to talk and so he lets him.
He talks about Selena and his mum and the day the Nifs destroyed everything they had.
He is a wreck of ugly sobs in the end and can feel hot tears running down his face and the wound is open again, as open and painful as it was back then.
He holds onto Cor as he tries to find himself again in the storm of his feelings.
Maybe the wound will heal properly this time.
Cor hugs him before he leaves the next morning.
“I think I am starting to understand,” he says quietly and Nyx wonders if maybe, to a surprising degree, he actually already does.
*
The ninth year, he realizes that there is a chance, so he prepares himself to ask, no matter whether it’ll turn out to be a hopeless case.
Cor and him are having yet another mug of tea and the night is drawing to a close when he finally dares to speak up, though.
“So, please excuse me for asking so bluntly, but you’re pretty high up in the Lucian hierarchy, right?”
Cor only arches an eyebrow at him, in a way that Nyx has learned means that he is willing to listen.
“I need a favor. Could you please see if you can find two people for me and tell them I’m still here?” Tell them to come back, he doesn’t say, but he can see in Cor’s expression that he understands.
When Cor stands up to leave a while later, Nyx hesitates a moment at the door before he pulls Cor into a tight hug.
He feels hands wrap tightly around him in return and it’s… nice. He hasn’t felt this kind of safe in a long time.
*
When Cor comes back the next year, it’s with an expression that has Nyx slightly on edge when he opens the door to him. He looks like someone who has to deliver the news that someone’s dog died and Nyx waits impatiently for Cor to shrug out of his clammy clothes and shrug over the clothes and blanket Nyx prepared for him as usual.
Only when they both have tea with a shot of whatever Cor brought this time, he tells Nyx.
“They told me that I must have seen a ghost.”
Nyx lets himself slump forward, resting his head on the table, hidden behind his arms.
“These darn, stubborn idiots.” His voice is muffled against the table but the anguish in it is audible. When he sits back again, he lets out a sad, bitter laugh. “I’d have reacted the same if either of them had pulled a stupid stunt like that and had stayed behind in all the destruction. Of course they think I’m dead.”
He sighs, then shakes his head.
“I just hope I’ll see them again someday.”
It’s quiet, but he doesn’t mind Cor hearing. It’s not like he hasn’t already figured that Nyx misses his friends.
He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them immediately when he feels a hand on his shoulder, lighter than he would have anticipated.
“Nyx.”
It’s the first time he’s heard Cor use his name. He cracks open an eyelid to look at him, a light, pained smile on his lips.
“Yeah?”
“I haven’t told you all yet.” Cor takes a breath and looks away when Nyx’s gaze bores too intensively into his own. “I found them fairly easily because they chose an, ah… profession similar to mine. They’re serving as part of the King’s Kingsglaive now, fighting against the Nifs. They’ve both made names for themselves as some of the best they’ve got.”
Nyx sighs fondly and nods, his eyelid sliding close again.
“Of course they did.”
“I could… tell you about Insomnia’s Little Galahd, if… you want.” If it’s not too painful, is what Nyx hears.
He nods.
He can hear Cor taking some steps away again and the other chair being lifted up and put down next to his.
“You need a couch,” Cor grouses in a joking tone before settling down next to him.
Nyx doesn’t notice when he falls asleep, but when he wakes up again, Cor and him are both on the floor, leaning against the wall, covered by blankets, and Cor has an arm around him.
There’s something in the pit of his stomach that wants Nyx to pay more attention to it, but he doesn’t dare to.
His thoughts begin to drift.
He is already grateful for Cor’s annual visits and it’s not even due to the deal he has with Ramuh. He is simply glad to have someone who is so easy to talk to come by every once in a while. He missed that.
He knows very well that Cor is someone who could easily (or, well, not so easily, but more likely than regular people) wind up dead any day and he. He likes Cor for whom he is.
He closes his eyes in annoyance.
Yes, it would be nice if Cor’s returning to Galahd would change anything, but even so.
He just wants him to come back every year and not stop.
Even when Ramuh’s and his deal will eventually be fulfilled. Even thereafter.
And that realization makes Nyx kind of want to slap himself.
He thinks he might have a name for this thing he is starting to feel.
“Fuck.”
(Of course, that’s the moment Cor decides to wake up with a confused, sleepy “Huh?”. Nyx looks at the sleep-clouded blue eyes and knows with a startling certainty that he is starting to fall for Cor. He hides his silent scream behind his blanket.)
*
The eleventh time Cor visits, he reeks of death that even the everlasting rain couldn’t wash off him.
He tells Nyx about the family of coeurls he met when he passed through Leide. A mother and her two young.
Nyx feels compelled to yell at him, but Cor holds up his hand, knowing more about Galahd these years, and doesn’t stop his explanation.
The blood no longer visible on Cor’s clothes belongs to two behemoths that had attacked the coeurls, seeing how the mother animal was injured and slow.
Cor tells him he’d have brought some of the behemoths’ remains to last Nyx for a while but that the rain was too heavy and he had to give up most of it except for a little. He hands what is left wrapped in a piece of cloth to Nyx.
“Sorry I couldn’t bring you more. It’s gotta be shit to hunt in the rain out here. …I feel kinda stupid I never thought about that before.”
Nyx nods, feeling the increasingly familiar warmth inside him resurface, and yet, he can’t help but also feel like laughing a little.
Of course the heavy rain was enough to stop any Lucian – even Cor, whom he knew to be a pretty resilient guy.
The storm has never stopped Nyx before, though. He needs to hunt to survive, yes. But he is also Galahdian. The storm is his home.
*
He makes them food and realizes he hasn’t had much to eat around to offer to Cor before. They had mostly drunk tea or something alcoholic, or both. He guesses he’ll have to change that in the future.
He drops the wooden cooking spoon he is holding when Cor leans over his shoulder to see how the cooking is coming along. Cor has the decency to snicker and Nyx really, really would like to have his blanket to scream into right now.
*
He hugs Cor goodbye automatically this time and shivers when Cor’s lips brush against his ear as he tells him goodbye until the next year. He feels the ghost of that and the touch of Cor’s hand on his shoulder after that for weeks.
*
The twelfth time Cor visits, Nyx is almost sure he’ll manage to tell Cor… at least something. He hasn’t been sleeping well recently, the storms are slightly stronger than usual these weeks, and often when he lies awake late at night, he starts seeing Cor in front of his inner eye and that really doesn’t help with falling asleep again either.
*
But Cor is surprisingly distant this time around, at least for the first few hours. Eventually, Nyx sighs and puts his hands on Cor’s shoulders, attempting a makeshift massage.
“What’s got you in such a mood?”
He doesn’t expect an answer so soon, but then again, Cor is an awfully honest person and has, with only a few exceptions, when he needed more time to mull a question over, almost always answered him directly.
“Regis found a way to perhaps stop the prophecy from coming to happen as it’s intended to.”
Nyx’s hands still.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Nyx realizes with a start that Cor is leaning back into his touch, as if silently asking him to continue his massage. So Nyx does.
“Is it safe?”
Cor laughs.
“Nothing about this whole family is safe – but then, when has it ever been?”
He makes a sound that has Nyx shiver right down to his boots and places his hand on Nyx’s right hand.
“Right here. Could you please do that again?”
And Nyx might be a masochist, because he caves and keeps working the knots in Cor’s shoulders loose and tries not to cramp his hands down when Cor keeps making all sorts of quiet noises.
*
By the time of Cor’s thirteenth visit, Nyx is angry. He hasn’t been sleeping well in months, the storm having remained worse than it was before last year, and he keeps waking up with Cor being the first thing on his mind. So yes, he is angry.
*
Cor looks at him in confusion but follows behind without asking when Nyx all but drags him inside.
He doesn’t even get the chance to change his clothes before Nyx begins, sounding oddly frustrated.
“Fuck you! Just – why – argh.”
What.
Nyx turns away from him and pulls on his hair in frustration, grumbling below his breath, before turning back sharply and accusingly pointing a finger at Cor’s chest.
“You’re the reason I’m always sleep-deprived these weeks! And I’m done not saying anything, because I only see you once every year and it fucking sucks.”
Oh.
Cor can’t stop the laugh from falling from his lips.
“I almost thought you weren’t interested after all, after last time.”
Nyx keeps pointing, his finger waving lightly in the air as he gapes at him.
“You…? Oh, fuck you, Cor, you put me through this intentionally?”
“It’s called flirting, if I’m correct. Not that I seem to be very good at it, but that was the intention.”
Nyx swears up and down more curses than Cor thinks even he has ever heard, but he delightfully shuts up when Cor steps closer and kisses him.
Only when their kisses are becoming handsier, Nyx pulls away all of a sudden.
“Oh, fuck, you’re still wearing your wet clothes. You’ll get sick if you keep them on much longer.”
Cor considers this, agrees and looks at Nyx with his eyes a shade darker than before and a tiny smirk on his lips.
“Mind helping me get out of ‘em?”
He hasn’t seen Nyx blush before, furious red creeping up his cheeks, and he vows to himself that this won’t be the last time.
Nyx just splutters in betrayal but starts freeing him from his wet clothes just the same.
*
The fourteenth and fifteenth year are similar in the respect that they find themselves making out like teenagers all through the night until Cor has to leave again and Nyx has hickeys to prove to the darkness outside that he isn’t alone anymore. He leaves Cor with some of his own, especially when Cor present him with the Galahdian talisman for good luck and safety that he got for him in Little Galahd.
*
Cor has told him that he hasn’t had much of a relationship before either, unless you count a handful of stolen kisses in free minutes he barely ever had in the years before he met Nyx, and Nyx feels relieved none of them is at a disadvantage here.
Even when Cor huffs out a labored “’not playing fair, huh?” when Nyx grinds down against him on top of their pile of blankets, hands all over Cor’s body and not in the least feeling apologetic.
He starts to apologize when Cor starts kissing down his throat, though, and Cor eventually laughs, a full-body laugh, against his skin. Nyx shivers but can’t suppress the laugh at the back at his throat for long.
“Alright, you name the place and time if you wanna take this elsewhere,” Cor says, more quietly, and Nyx names his date.
*
The next time Cor arrives, he arrives earlier in the day. It’s always dark in Galahd these days, of course, but Nyx only had lunch a few hours ago, and he appreciates it when Cor can stay a few hours longer than usual.
Cor takes his time undressing and drying himself off, this time. Then, he stands there wrapped in only his usual blanket and gives Nyx a look that has a shiver run down his spine.
“Today still stands or would you prefer –”
“Yes!” Nyx blurts out. “I mean – ah, fuck.”
Cor is still laughing when Nyx is coming closer, unsuccessfully trying to get off his boots and repeating “Yes, of course I still want this, fuck, why doesn’t this come off?” over and over again.
Once they’re face to face, Cor drops to his knees as gracefully as he can and looks up at Nyx.
“Let me help you?”
Nyx’s helpless, furious blush and nod is all the agreement he needs to start pulling on the damn shoe.
When this endeavor ends with both of them tumbling to the floor in a tangled mess of limbs, blanket and boots, Cor just snorts when Nyx buries his laughing face in his chest.
They’ll be fine.
*
The seventeenth year, Cor comes to the hut looking as close to triumphant as Nyx has ever seen him.
“Regis and the Queen of Tenebrae did… well, they did some magic shit, I guess, and the Astrals themselves apologized to them. The – the scourge isn’t gone, obviously, but they said they’d remove the threat to the prince’s life and –”
“Take a deep breath,” Nyx instructs, when Cor begins stumbling over his words.
Their gazes lock and Cor takes the advised deep breath and another.
“Noctis is safe. He won’t die for their fucked up games, after all. I –”
Cor takes another deep breath, then smiles at him wider than Nyx has ever seen him smile before.
“There’s a chance things will end up fine after all. I just wish I could tell Aulea. She always told me things would be alright in the end.”
He shakes his head and Nyx sees tears of relief and happiness starting to form in Cor’s eyes.
“Tea?” He asks and Cor nods and follows him inside.
*
It’s been eighteen years. Nobody else is visiting these years, has since Cor first started coming, and Nyx is casually leaning on the window ledge waiting for Cor to arrive. He grins when he sees the familiar silhouette approach in the rain, puts the kettle on the stove and opens the door with a smile.
“Hey there.” He leans in and pulls Cor into an embrace and down into a kiss, both of which Cor returns immediately.
“Good day?” Cor asks with a smirk dancing over his lips.
“It’s always a good day when you’re stopping by.”
“Can you attest that to me somehow?”
Nyx snorts and it’s one of Cor’s snorts, he realizes with a start. How about that?
“I think I love you.”
It was meant to be a silent thought, but Nyx finds it feels right once his mind stops racing.
Cor is looking at him and he seems so much closer all of a sudden, his eyes widened.
“I –”
“You don’t have to say it back if this is too fast for you,” Nyx rushes to say, but Cor only shakes his head.
“No, I actually – I actually think I love you as well.”
Nyx’s heart stutters and he can’t look away from Cor as he takes in his words.
Now, how about that?
“Tea?” Cor asks when he has apparently been silent for too long, just gazing at Cor with so many damn feelings.
He nods before the words and the whine of the kettle in the kitchen register. Ten seconds later, when Cor has turned off the stove and is turning to pick up some mugs, Nyx catches his wrist and stops him.
“Got the order wrong, sorry. You first, and then some tea and cuddles?”
Cor snorts and then smiles at him.
“Sure, hon.”
Nyx splutters and blushes before he hides in Cor’s chest and it’s Cor’s favorite look.
*
The nineteenth year, Cor is later than usual. Nyx knows him and his fighting skills well enough to trust him to be okay, so he tries not to worry.
He opens the door quickly when he sees him approach.
“You are late this –”
He interrupts himself, noticing the tight set of Cor’s shoulders, and steps aside after a moment of shock to let the man inside.
There are dried blood stains on Cor’s clothes and it seems like the blood isn’t only his own.
“What happened?”
Cor is quiet for a long moment and Nyx steps closer to put his arms around him. Eventually, he feels Cor’s shaky exhale against his face and the warmth of Cor’s forehead against his own.
“Insomnia fell.”
*
He has already taken care of seeing his nephew – the prince, the only heir to the Lucian throne – off safely on his journey to collect his arms. There isn’t much more he can do to help Noctis and it’s driving him crazy, Nyx can tell.
Cor is angry at himself, angry at Regis.
“I could have been there.”
“You would be dead now if you had been.”
“Regis once said that I attract danger wherever I go. And yet that idiot-“
“Is that true?” Nyx interrupts him.
“What? The danger?” Cor falls silent, mulls it over for a second. “I suppose so, even though I’d never tell Reggie- Fuck.”
Nyx can see the tears in the corners of Cor’s eyes. As he caresses Cor’s back as calmly as he can manage, a plan starts to form in his mind.
“If I told you to attract as many dropships and MT force here, to Galahd, as you can, would you do it?”
Cor looks at him like he lost his mind for a moment, and maybe he has, but if Nyx knows something, then it’s that Ramuh hates the Nifs for what they’ve done just as much as every Galahdian and Lucian does. When he doesn’t say anything further, Cor seems to consider his question.
“I would certainly try, if I knew no harm would come to you.”
Nyx laughs and it comes from deep in his belly.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. It’s the Nifs that won’t be.”
He doesn’t look away when Cor gives him an – understandably, he supposes – worried gaze. But Nyx is Galahdian and it’s not him who will encounter the Nifs. He’ll stay in the back, safe in the storm and out of harm’s way, and watch them fall. He is Galahdian – he doesn’t have to fear the storm.
*
“Promise me you won’t turn around and won’t come back until it’s over. Can you do that for me?”
“I don’t understand why you’d want that,” Cor admits. “I’d rather be by your side through this. But you have my word.”
“Thank you.”
Nyx pushes himself up and pulls Cor into a deep kiss that once again ends up with them both in a tangled mess on the ground between his and Cor’s blankets. He feels the strong urge to crawl into Cor’s skin, not ever let him go, but he needs to for the plan to work.
He just hopes that Cor will return, after it is over, and maybe, maybe stay even when the storm abates.
*
Cor leaves the next morning, wearing a talisman Nyx hastily made for him, nervous despite his faith in his plan and wanting Cor to be safe, the first and only thing he ever wanted in so many years, really.
Cor leaves and doesn’t turn around, and the storm picks up after him.
*
It takes several weeks until the first signs of MTs and other Nif military arrive, but the storm is ready.
He can hear some of them over their radios, volume turned up loud enough for them to be able to communicate over the noise of the storm.
“The prince is said to be hiding here somewhere. All trails led to this… place.”
It’s said with disgust and the storm seems to retaliate by becoming even worse.
*
Two weeks later, it’s only the storm that is howling still. A huge part – at least it looks like it has to be a huge part to Nyx – of the Nif army is destroyed, deformed wrecks on the ashes of the ground they wreaked havoc on over two decades ago. A bitter feeling of irony and satisfaction forms in Nyx’s mouth at the sight and he turns around to return to his hut.
*
Cor returns a month later, as if he was trying to make sure it was really over before he did, and as he walks, the rain around him seems to let up.
He doesn’t get around to asking Nyx about the rain or the victory, though. Because the moment the hut appears in front of him, Nyx comes running through the door and the rain and pulls him into a kiss that is both a promise and a confession.
Nyx drags him inside and out of his clothes and instead of a blanket wraps himself around him. He pulls him on top of their blankets and whispers against every part of his skin as his hands won’t stop running over Cor’s wet skin.
Cor can make out “I love you’s” and “Please don’t leave again” and realizes Nyx wouldn’t hear him were he to reply to him right now.
So he settles on pulling Nyx closer and kissing him – his hair, his face, his lips – until Nyx is willing to let Cor peel him out of his wet clothes as well.
“I love you too. And I’ll stay, if you’ll have me.”
It’s quiet, but it’s enough to make Nyx’s eyes look up sharply and there’s so much relief in them.
“…even though I attract danger.” Cor smirks, the corner of his lip lightly pulled up, and Nyx lets out a teary laugh.
“I really don’t care, as you should know by now.”
So maybe there are still dangers out there that Cor might attract, that might hurt him on some days. Hell, even Nyx has to admit he is guilty of attracting more danger than any other person he has ever known, Cor aside.
But he thinks they’ll be just fine as a lighter rain covers Galahd’s ground outside and Cor wraps his arms around him in a way that makes him feel safe and at home.
*
Cor is standing right by his side when the first group of his people arrives and asks if there is anything they can help with to make the place habitable again, and he smiles when Nyx nods enthusiastically and shows them how to get started.
The storms aren’t as harsh as they used to be for almost three decades anymore these days. They’re much more like they always used to be in Galahd, the same after the war as they used to be before it.
Before long, two figures approach over a hilltop and stop in their tracks for only a moment before breaking into a run. Cor gives him a gentle push against his back and then Nyx is running as well.
It is good to be here. I am in the middle of a book on kundalini. It is written by Kashmiri Pandit Gopi Krishna. The book and the author’s honest perspective of an altered consciousness is changing so much in me. The book has found me at an opportune time. I keep shaking in my sessions. This is the mark of kundalini unspooling. And my dear old friend (from when we were in college together) suggested this book about four months into me shaking.
The shaking itself has changed slightly in these 4 months. The latest addition is the feeblest vibration ever. I mean it would go unnoticed if I wasn’t watchful. And I know that it is a vibration along the spine and not my heart’s beat. It’s a tremor. And things are going to flip for me. Like it has for many before me. Gopi Krishna is surely one such blessed soul.
All of this anger I have felt for Mumbai’s stubborn indifference and inhuman behaviour is a joke. My anger is a joke. Or is going to become one, once I flip. The question about my duties is going to be a joke when the kundalini takes charge of my body. I am scared but so so happy.
