chch, short, character study, pre-relationship:
It’s difficult not to get caught up in the whirlwind that is Cale Henituse.
/
Choi Han remembers what it was like. He remembers slinking through the forest, dodging and slashing. He recalls raking through the monsters because fighting was all he had, survival all he aspired to acquire. He remembers taking care of his own wounds, cauterizing them with a fire hidden in a cave because to light one out in the open was just inviting more trouble - and remembers sleeping with one ear open, always on the edge of springing up. Of securing his own wellbeing.
Things aren’t so harried now. He can breathe, he can look around and smell the roses. He can live, beyond the mere barebones that is his survival - he can enjoy life and all the people he’s learned to surround himself with, learned to create relationships with and now protect, because he’s been told and now recognizes that his strength can be used for more than simple violence. He protects, and he loves. So he doesn’t know why that now - when he’s out of that darkness that is the forest he once fell into and was lost in - he feels so on edge. Like he’s tiptoeing around a monster’s new nest and holding his breath in case he wakes it.
“Cale-nim.”
Cale coughs, waving away his concern before he appears to think better of it. He reaches out a hand, one instantly grasped by the master swordsman as he tugs the other man up. The redhead wipes his mouth, his hand coming away bloody.
Again, Choi Han feels that damned feeling. His heart thunders in his chest and a knot of something curls up just under it as he watches helplessly as Cale shakes in place.
“I-” the redhead scowls, before resuming his blank expression, “-am in pain. Ugh, what I wouldn’t give to have a shower right now.”
“If I could I’d bring you back home-”
“Wait,” Cale held up a hand, blinking owlishly. Choi Han waits, as ordered, as if the man’s word is gospel and it might as well have been to the dutiful swordsman, and the redhead drops his arm, looks over at Choi Han and very seriously says, “I’m going to pass out now.”
“Cale-nim!” thankfully, Choi Han is right beside him and can catch him as the redhead drops. The enemy is still haranguing their allied forces upon their battlefield, but thanks to Cale Henituse, their numbers have halved.
In any case, the man is in no fighting condition, and as Choi Han quickly resituates him in the small tent they erected towards the back of their army lines, he feels the knot in his chest grow larger and more pressing, his heart thundering as if it’s been insulted.
Am I mad? Is this anger?
It doesn’t feel quite like it, but Choi Han knows one thing. He hates this feeling, and for making Cale this way - and therefore for making Choi Han feel this odd, disastrous emotion roiling even now in his body - the enemy will pay. They will pay dearly for this.
“Please rest, Cale-nim,” he murmurs to the sleeping man, breathing evenly on the bed in the tent. He lets their mutual friend and healer elf Pendrick tend to their general as he leaves the tent and palms the hilt of his sword. He leaps into the fray like that, confused and storming with that ugly feeling, and shoulders any other thought for now except the resolve to raze these demons to the ground and bring their side a victory worthy of the sacrifice their Cale has made for them.
It promises to be a fight their enemy will never walk away from again.
