Archive of Our Own ^beta

Soren got sick every winter like clockwork.

It was something that Ike had learned to anticipate like the season’s first snow. When winter arrived and Soren began trying to hide every cough and sniffle, Ike steeled himself for the inevitable. He piled the firewood high and did his best to keep Soren from working himself into exhaustion.

It wouldn’t do any good. Still, Ike had to try.

Three years after the Mad King’s War, winter arrived early. They were staying an abandoned keep up in the mountains, close to the Daein border. Ike had wanted to put distance between them and the capital, even if only for a while. Melior had been stifling. He hadn’t realized just how much until he’d renounced his title and left. It seemed like with every mile, more tension fell from his shoulders.

When the wind picked up and the sky turned white, Ike and Boyd went through the building, locating every draft and doing their best to patch it. There was no grumbling about the task anymore, not like when they were younger and tasked with doing the same at the Greil Mercenaries’ fort.

“Want to place bets?” Boyd asked.

“Why bother?” Ike said. “Rhys will go down first.”

He’d already looked ready to faint that morning, for reasons that probably had little do with Mia proudly showing him a nasty bruise on her arm from yesterday’s training.

“Sure,” Boyd said noncommittally. “But then…”

He shuddered, raising his eyebrows. Ike couldn’t blame him; Soren’s sharp edges only got sharper when he wasn’t feeling well, and Boyd had been on the receiving end more than once. Ike had never seen any reason to come to his rescue.

“You’re going to be busy is all,” Boyd said, shrugging. He looked a little nervous, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to say it.

“I don’t mind,” Ike said. He ignored Boyd’s disbelieving look and returned to the task at hand instead, throwing himself into it with the same intensity he’d used to throw himself into battle.

Ike wondered, sometimes, whether the weakness to the cold was something Soren had inherited from his laguz ancestry. He had no way of knowing; Soren knew nothing about where he came from, or who his parents were. He would not know – and would not care to know – what laguz tribe he was descended from. Ike wondered, though. He found himself staring at Soren sometimes, tracing his delicate features for some kind of hint.

He stared at Soren all the time these days.

Soren would catch him half the time, and look up at him with a raised eyebrow, a silent question. Ike would shake his head and smile at him. Soren would sigh, roll his eyes, and return to his book, a shadow of a smile tugging at his own lips.

It was the same that night, after Ike and Boyd had finished with the keep, after dinner had been served and eaten. The hour grew late, and the others all slowly retired. Even Titania left, giving Ike, still sitting there with Ettard resting across his knees, a knowing look on her way out.

(Ettard was a fine sword, and he had no complaints, but some days he missed Ragnell. He missed the way she’d seemed to hum in his hands.)

Wordlessly, Ike got up and fetched a quilt. He draped it over Soren’s thin shoulders, his hands lingering.

“Go to bed soon,” Ike said. He squeezed Soren’s shoulders gently.

Soren glanced up at him, his eyes unreadable.

“As soon as I finish these accounts,” he said. “There’s so much to do now that we’re mercenaries again.”

He reached up to pull the quilt tighter around himself, and his fingers brushed Ike’s. Ike could have let the touch linger, as theirs often did, but instead he turned his hand over, covering Soren’s with his own.

“I’ll wait up for you,” he said.

He resumed his spot, inspecting his armor. They had a job coming up in a few days and, while it didn’t seem like anything challenging, Ike wanted to be ready. It was difficult, though, to keep his mind and his eyes on his equipment, and not on Soren’s form, the line of his back and the fall of his hair, his eyebrows knit together as he balanced the budget.

Ike watched out for Soren, just like Soren watched out for Ike. It was what they had done for years.

“You’re not coming,” Ike said, crossing his arms.

Soren, wrapped up in a cloak so thick that his face barely peaked out from underneath the fur-lined hood, sounded both stuffy and offended.

“Pardon me?” he said.

“You’re sick,” Ike said. “You can barely stand. You definitely can’t fight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Soren said. “It’s only a few bandits. Hardly more effort than walking across a room.”

Then he sneezed.

“That’s right,” Ike said. “It’s only a few bandits, so we don’t need you today. Go back to bed.”

Soren hadn’t looked so offended since Mia had decided to demonstrate her recent training progress by sneaking up on him and sweeping him off his feet and over her shoulder. Ike bit the inside of his cheek to keep from snorting.

“This is an inane discussion,” Soren said. “I’m coming with you, and that’s final.”

He took a step forward and swayed.

If Ike reached out and shoved with one finger, he was sure he could topple Soren right over. He kept his arms folded so he wouldn’t be tempted to try and make a point.

“I’m still your commander, aren’t I?” Ike asked, raising his eyebrows. “You still trust me to make decisions?”

Soren visibly wavered.

“Yes, but, Ike –” he said.

“Then you’ll do as I say, for the good of the company,” Ike said. “I won’t risk you. You’re too important.”

Soren gaped at him like a fish. Ike knew him well, though, and if he gave Soren another minute, he’d come up with some counterpoint. Ike didn’t intend to give him the chance.

“That’s an order, Soren,” he said.

He stepped close, adjusting the hood of Soren’s cloak. He lowered his voice so he wouldn’t be heard by Shinon and Gatrie, waiting up by the gate. He didn’t intend to be mocked all the way to town.

“Go back to bed,” he said, his voice gentler. “I’ll be home soon.”

Soren pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said.

Snow had started falling, thick white flakes that landed on the hood of Soren’s cloak and on his eyelashes. Ike wanted to reach up and brush them away. He wanted to do other very foolish things.

Before he could do anything impulsive, Soren turned and walked back to the keep. He didn’t look back. Ike’s chest felt tight with too much fondness. Twenty years of not understanding romance or fairy tales, and he hadn’t known it would feel like this: like the sun rose and set behind the skinny shoulders of his strategist.

When he turned to walk away, he also didn’t look back, because he didn’t know what he’d do if he did. He wondered if it was the same for Soren.

“You okay, boss?” Mia asked, falling into step beside him.

When Mia had first decided to stay with them after the war, Ike had been not concerned, exactly, but wary about how she would fit in. The rest of them had been a family for so long – even Shinon, in his own way. But her exuberance and her shared love of a good fight made it feel like she’d always been there and now, sometimes, it was strange to think the Greil Mercenaries had ever existed without her.

“Fine,” Ike said. He nodded at her. “We get in and we get out. No distractions.”

“Got it,” Mia chirped. She bumped her fist against his arm. “If the villagers try to talk your ear off again, we throw Gatrie at them and run.”

“Hey,” Gatrie said from behind them.

“You never know!” Mia said, turning to walk backwards. “You could meet a nice country girl.”

Gatrie made a considering noise.

“What’s the use, though?” he said. “It’s not like all the beautiful girls look anywhere else with the dashing young commander around.”

“I don’t know why they bother,” Shinon said. He snorted unkindly. “We all know buxom young country girls are not where he’s looking.”

Gatrie hushed him, but Ike just shrugged.

“He’s right,” he said. The for once went unsaid. “That’s not where I’m looking.”

Two truths existed simultaneously where Ike and Soren were concerned.

They were friends.

They had been something more than friends since the Mad King’s War.

Ike could not pinpoint a moment where things had shifted between him and Soren. He had not looked up one day and known. He wanted there to have been some point in time, some reason – but even when Soren had tearfully confessed to him that he was one of the Branded, a child born of both beorc and laguz, when he’d sobbed that, in Gallia, Ike had been the only one to help him, Ike could not say for certain that that was when he’d begun to feel the way that he did.

At the end of the last battle, when Soren had said his place was by Ike’s side, Ike could still not say that he had known. It had come to him sometime after that, a slow, creeping realization, created out of a kaleidoscope of little moments, the sunlight glinting off Soren’s long dark hair and the soft brush of his skinny fingers against Ike’s wrist. The glimmer of tears on his cheeks when he’d confessed everything.

“I’m Branded. I’m one of the Branded.”

Ike never wanted Soren to cry like that again. Quiet, muffled, his lip caught between his teeth as he tried to stifle himself. Like his heart was breaking. Like Ike would reject him.

It wasn’t like those books Mist, Oscar, and Rhys passed around furtively, all heroines with heaving chests being rescued from pirates by dashing heroes. Ike had no patience for that kind of thing, and Soren never would have breathlessly thanked him for a daring save by ripping off his robes.

(“In the middle of a battle?” Soren had snorted, flipping through the pages of one such book once while Mist squawked and tried to grab it from him. “Unprofessional.”)

But something had changed. He could feel it, as sure as the turning of the seasons.

Soren had never had anyone to care for him, not until he had turned up on the Greil Mercenaries’ doorstep. Ike might not have remembered the childhood meeting Soren spoke of, but he remembered that day in Crimea with perfect clarity. Soren, so young and so tiny, eyes piercing in his pale face, delivering a laundry list of reasons why a mercenary band should hire a child as a strategist.

His enunciation had been crisp and perfect. Now, knowing what Ike knew about his childhood, about the old woman and the sage, both of them uncaring that the child under their protection was unable to speak, Ike’s chest hurt thinking about every sharp syllable on Soren’s tongue, about the effort it must have taken.

Ike’s father had been amused. Titania had smothered her laugh behind her fist.

(And Ike, seeing Soren then for what he thought was the first time, Soren with his piercing stare and his long hair and the mark on his forehead, thought that he was pretty. He’d always thought that Soren was pretty.)

Soren had quickly proven himself, and the rest had been history.

Before that, though, there had been no one. The sage who had worked him to the bone would not have taken the time. The woman before that who had cared for Soren, as Soren said, out of some sense of duty she didn’t really possess, would not have been kind to a sick child.

(Ike wondered, sometimes, about that sense of duty. About who she must have felt it for to have taken care of Soren, even as badly as she’d done it, if she’d hated it so much. Why care for a child you could not stand to look at? If he were a researcher like Soren, he would try to find out, he thought. He’d confessed as much once.

“There’s no point,” Soren had told him, blunt but never unkind when it was Ike he was speaking to. He’d glanced away from Ike’s face, eyes faraway. “A Branded child is a curse, Ike. She would have felt the same towards me or any other.”

“You’re not a curse,” Ike replied. When Soren refused to answer, he said, “Soren, look at me. You’re not a curse.”

Soren’s eyes had lifted, along with the corner of his mouth.

“It’s enough for me that you think so.”)

Still, that was what Ike was thinking about as his small band took care of the bandits. Not Soren ripping off his robes in the middle of a fight – not especially, anyway – but Soren. Always just Soren.

“Hey, boss, I know it’s hard, you being so tall, but get your head out of the clouds!” Mia called.

Ike lifted his sword, easily blocking the swing of an axe. He grunted and forced the bandit back, shaking his head.

If Soren were here, he’d snap at him for getting so distracted in the middle of a fight. Ike could practically hear him scolding now, and see the dismay in his eyes. He grit his teeth and thought again of Soren.

Soren, so little cared for in his life, waiting for Ike to come home to him.

He raised his sword again.

It had started, maybe, when they began sharing a bed.

They had shared beds before, of course. Ike had suffered from nightmares when he was younger, strange dreams that left him gasping for air, his throat so tight he could barely breathe and his heart pounding beneath his ribs, but whose content he could never remember upon waking. All he knew was that the dreams were frightening, like a dark void just beyond his reach.

He was old enough by that point that he refused to go to his father for comfort. He’d been so desperate for Greil to see him as grown enough to join the mercenaries. Running to him just because of dreams he could not even remember would ruin that.

(The dreams had also left him feeling strangely uneasy at the prospect of seeing his father’s face. Ike had never told anyone that, and never would. The feeling had always faded by morning anyway, and Ike’s strong, dependable father had never been someone he’d had to fear.)

Soren, so attuned to him always, had noticed. Ike remembered trying to swallow down his sobs, to not make any noise that might wake the others, when a small hand had hesitantly reached over to touch his own. He’d looked up to find Soren staring back at him, quiet and solemn.

On nights like those, Soren would sit up with him silently until Ike fell back asleep. As Ike got older, the dreams faded, but he never forgot the comforting touch of Soren’s hand.

Then, during the beginning of the reconstruction, there had been plenty of times when beds had been limited. They’d doubled up however they could. Shinon had spent days ranting about Gatrie snoring. Ike had no complaints about sharing with Soren, who took up little room and was often the last to bed and the first one up.

Slowly, Crimea had been rebuilt. Things had appeared calm. But in the court, storms were always raging. No matter what Elincia said, it was clear that Ike’s presence made things worse. The common mercenary who’d led her army, the boy who’d killed a king.

Finally, Ike had had enough. He’d renounced his title. They’d left Melior.

They began to take jobs as the Greil Mercenaries again. It was difficult, at first, for people to see him that way, as the leader of the Greil Mercenaries, not as the hero of the Mad King’s War. Not as the man who’d slain Ashnard, King of Daein. They traveled far, but Ike’s reputation followed.

People had been reluctant to ask them for help. Surely they had better things to do than fight bandits.

It was a sentiment some people within the group had expressed as well. Ike had made it very clear, right from the start: anyone who wanted to walk away, could. He was not holding anyone to anything. Not to promises made to him during the war. Not to promises made to his father.

Everyone had stayed. Even Shinon, though he grumbled about it. But it was still hard, even far away from the capital. Harder than Ike had thought it would be. Hard for him to live in what were relatively peaceful times.

“You could have a royal post, if you wanted,” Soren said one night.

Ike settled his elbow on Soren’s desk, resting his cheek on his hand. Soren was going over the accounts with him, dismal though they were, and the hour was late. The candle on Soren’s desk threw flickering shadows across his face, painting him both strange and beautiful.

“Why would I want that?” he asked.

“Hm,” Soren murmured, noncommittal. “Perhaps because Queen Elincia would be glad to see you again. I’m sure she’s missing you.”

“Elincia’s doing just fine on her own,” Ike said. “She doesn’t need me.”

Soren glanced at him and didn’t answer. There was a prickly air about him when he spoke of Elincia, just like always. Ike didn’t completely understand it; Elincia had done nothing to earn his ire. She’d been nothing but understanding when Ike had renounced his peerage. But it was cute, Ike thought, the way Soren glared.

“But you should,” Soren said. He stopped and swallowed, glancing away. “You should want things, Ike. You should strive for what you want.”

Ike stared at Soren’s profile, the slope of his nose and the faint tremble of his lower lip.

“The things I want, I won’t find in a palace,” Ike said.

Soren looked at him again. The flickering candle flame was reflected in his eyes.

I could kiss him, Ike had thought suddenly. It blindsided him; he had never thought that about Soren, or really anyone, for all everyone had teased him during the war about Elincia. He could lean in and cup his hand to Soren’s face and just kiss him.

He curled his hands into fists at his thighs to keep from doing just that.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?” Soren said, looking surprised.

“You’re brilliant,” Ike said. “I mean it. We never would have won without your tactics. You could have any position you wanted, too.”

Soren made a derisive noise.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, glancing down again. “My place is by your side.”

It got easier, eventually. Or at least, it got busier. It was the same thing where Ike was concerned. People didn’t forget that they were war heroes, but there were always jobs that needed doing. The Greil Mercenaries made themselves available. Mercenary work was easy. It was earning trust that was hard.

Mending broken fences. Tracking down a lost dairy cow. There was no job, Soren said with an immense sense of fatigue, too small.

(Throughout it all, Ike kept thinking about kissing Soren.)

“Don’t you have any pride?” Shinon asked him once. “We’re the Greil Mercenaries. Without us, that bastard Ashnard would still be sitting on Crimea’s throne. And now you have us helping every war widow in the country with hanging up their saggy unmentionables and weeding their vegetable gardens.”

“Go back to the capital if that’s how you feel,” Ike said. “I’m sure you can find suitable work there.”

Shinon spit on the ground.

“If I have to chase one more stuck up noblewoman’s drunken son-in-law out of her garden maze, I’ll put an arrow through my own eye,” he said. He eyeballed Ike. “This is still beneath us.”

“You want to eat, don’t you?” Ike asked. He crossed his arms, surveying the situation. “Feel free to turn down the job, but I’ll let you be the one to explain to Rolf why he’s starving next month.”

Shinon sent him a nasty look, but then he sighed, nocked an arrow to his bow, and took aim at the kite sitting high in the tree.

The memories of the war didn’t fade with time, exactly. But they became less vivid. Ike had to stop and think, sometimes, count backwards, to place himself in the past. What battle had happened on which day, what victory, how narrow it had been.

Some memories stayed clear and sharp, the edges jagged in Ike’s mind. They weren’t all bad. Sanaki, up on his shoulders, squawking in indignity, rendered in that moment not the apostle -- not that he’d known she was the apostle -- but just a little girl, younger than Ike’s own sister. Elincia’s brilliant smile when she’d been reunited with Lucia and Geoffrey, her hands clasped to her chest. Leanne, slung over Ike’s shoulder, her wings obscuring his vision as he fought. The first glimpse of Reyson’s furious beautiful face in Duke Tanas’ manor, and then later, Reyson and Leanne’s voices melding together, bringing a once dead forest back to life. The wonder on Ike’s sister’s face as she watched the trees turn green.

The time Mist had managed to goad him into a snowball fight, one afternoon making their way through the Daein wilderness.

(“Please, Ike?” she’d begged, latched onto his arm. “Please, please, please? You’re better at making them than me!”

“We don’t have time for this, Mist,” he’d replied, a headache growing at his temples. Only his sister could try to stop war preparations in favor of playing in the snow.

“But Princess Elincia’s never been in a snowball fight!” Mist said. “I really wanted to show her!”

Ike had glanced over his shoulder at Elincia, standing a few feet behind him. Her cheeks were pink, not entirely from the cold.

“My lord Ike, you don’t have to,” she’d stammered, her hands clasped in front of her. “I was only curious! Mist was just indulging me.”

Reyson stood just behind her. He’d been aloof in those early days, and almost blindingly beautiful with the snowflakes settling in his gold hair.

“I would like to know,” he said. “It doesn’t snow in Phoenicis.”

They all stared at Ike, Reyson with a practiced haughty indifference and Elincia with hope and Mist with a look that said if Ike didn’t do what she wanted she’d put a frog in his clothes again. Ike sighed, crouching down and beckoning for them to follow as he began to pack snow together.

It hadn’t been that long since he’d made a snowball. Only a year since snow last fell in Crimea. He felt so much older.

Reyson and Elincia crouched down to copy him, and Ike had to try not to laugh at the way Elincia carefully lifted her skirts or how Reyson shook out his wings, a fierce scowl on his face as he followed Ike’s hands.

Feeling furtive, Ike looked around for a target. He could throw it at a tree, he supposed, but that seemed half-hearted, and the idea of tossing snow at either Elincia or Reyson was out of question. Mist deserved to have it dumped down her collar, but then he’d have to listen to her whine at him for the rest of the night.

There, though, not too far away, was a familiar head of dark hair. Ike’s fingers itched. There had always been something about Soren that made him want to mess him up just a little. Young and impulsive, he’d never thought too much about that urge back then.

If Soren had been sick that winter, he’d cared for himself on his own. Ever since Begnion, it seemed Soren did everything on his own. It had been what felt like weeks since he’d said anything to Ike besides his usual reports.

Ike had so many things to focus on, but instead he kept coming back to Soren. Soren and the lingering unnamed thing he could not bring himself to talk about, not even to Ike.

It set Ike’s teeth on edge. It made his chest feel strangely hollow.

Mist caught on to what he meant to do first and her eyes went wide.

“Oh, Ike, don’t,” she said, but she was giggling, ducking behind him. Elincia realized next, and she cupped her hands over her mouth.

Ike took aim.

Soren whipped around when he was hit, the snow already melting in his dark hair, a furious scowl on his face. His frown deepened when he spotted Ike, who could only wave guiltily, his sister, the princess, and the heron prince all hiding behind him.

For a moment Soren’s fingers twitched, and Ike half-expected him to retaliate, like he always had when they were younger and he’d managed to drag Soren outside to play. Then he turned sharply, his robes fluttering and his hair soaked with snow, and stormed off.

“Oh,” Mist said, gripping Ike’s arm. “You’re in trouble.”

Soren had been in a horrible mood since the Begnion capital. It had followed them to Daein. Ike felt cold all over for reasons that had nothing to do with the snow.

He’d planned on apologizing, but he didn’t see Soren until the next morning, when Soren delivered his daily report on their forces. Ike lifted the flap of his tent to let him in and was promptly nailed in the face by a snowball.

Spluttering, it took him a moment to recover, wiping stinging snow from his eyes. Soren stood before him, his eyebrows raised.

“Unfair,” Ike finally managed to say.

“All’s fair in war, Commander,” Soren said.

“I’ll get you back for this, you know,” Ike said, flicking snow from his hair.

“I look forward to it,” Soren said, pushing past him into the tent.

It was the first time Ike saw him smile since Begnion.)

Those memories, little moments of light among all the bloodshed and the chaos, were not the ones that kept him up at night.

The Black Knight’s ghost haunted him. Ike replayed their final fight constantly. Every swing of his sword, every step he took. Advancing, retreating. Ike had memorized it all like a dance between the two of them. They’d both had the same teacher, but the Black Knight had had so much more time to study underneath Ike’s father. Time that he had then stolen from Ike.

“Do you think,” Ike had asked once, in the days after that final fight, “that he could still be alive?”

The idea had so visibly shaken Titania that he’d regretted saying anything at all. He never brought it up out loud again. It was a foolish idea anyway.

The Black Knight was dead. Nados Castle had collapsed on top of him and no man, not even the Black Knight, could have survived its crumbling walls.

That Ike felt strangely unsatisfied had nothing to do with that truth.

So instead, he trained. He went out to the woods and he relived that fight, mimicking the Black Knight’s moves until he had them down perfectly. Through the Black Knight’s swordplay lay his father’s legacy, the lessons Ike had not yet been strong enough to inherit when his father had died. Ike intended to learn them anyway.

One night, Soren came out to watch. He didn’t approach Ike. He didn’t say anything. He just lingered by the line of the trees. Ike had no problem being watched, especially not when it was Soren.

Soren didn’t say anything. Neither did Ike. He just kept going through the motions, repeating the Black Knight’s moves, over and over again until his arms ached and his breath came in hard pants.

It still wasn’t enough yet.

“Titania sent me to get you,” Soren said, ignoring the fact that he had been standing there watching Ike train for almost an hour.

Ike raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“I’m coming,” he panted.

Soren waited, patiently, while he pulled himself together enough to return to the keep.

“You’re getting better,” Soren said as they walked. Ike threw him a curious glance, but Soren was looking straight ahead. “You’re moving more like Commander Greil.”

“You think so?” Ike asked. Titania had said much the same recently, as had Gatrie. But Ike didn’t trust them to be objective in the same the way he trusted Soren.

“Don’t exhaust yourself too much, Ike,” Soren said. “You… there’s plenty of time, now, to get stronger. Remember that we need you.”

He remembered, after he’d killed the Black Knight, stumbling out of the castle with Mist’s shoulder wedged underneath his arm, her arm trembling and tight around his waist. He’d had to lean on her to stay upright. Soren had been so silent when they’d reunited, his jaw set tight, his eyes rimmed red.

Ike knew how much he’d scared him.

His fingers peeked out of his long fluttering sleeves. Ike reached forward to brush the back of his own hand against them. Soren’s gasp was a small, stifled thing, and Ike smiled even as something in his chest clenched painfully.

“I’ll remember,” he said.

But he still dreamed of that night. The walk with his father, and the feeling that something was wrong. The fight under the moonlight. The look on his father’s face when the Black Knight had run him through.

Ike’s father, slung over his back, and how Ike had stumbled every step of the way, sinking ankle deep in the mud under his father’s weight. He’d been so heavy. Ike had almost crumpled underneath his body.

(Would he have been able to carry him now, he wondered? He was so much taller and so much stronger than he’d been on that night. If it had all just happened a little later, would he have been able to carry his father? It wouldn’t have changed anything, Ike knew that. The Black Knight’s strike was true. But still, to have been able to bring him back to the castle – to let him see Mist and Titania – would have been worth everything.)

Everything that had happened after that. A hundred other memories that kept Ike up at night.

Mist, crying at their father’s gravesite. Titania, weeping silently where she thought no one would see. The knowledge of what had been done to the laguz in Begnion, and the reality of the Serenes Massacre. Every single time Ike had nearly lost someone in battle.

It had almost been Soren, once.

Ike had been distracted and careless, taking on two Daein soldiers at once. One had gotten in a glancing blow, and with the blood streaming down his face Ike could barely see. He didn’t have time to push Soren out of the way.

Soren was fast and his magic was strong, but he wasn’t built to withstand a sword’s blow. He’d crumpled with barely a noise.

Ike had seen red. When the fog had cleared, both soldiers were dead, but Soren was still bleeding on the ground. Ike knelt beside him, shouting for Mist. She’d fumbled her staff, panicking, and he remembered how wide her eyes had gone when he’d shouted at her, his own sister. But it was Soren, and if Ike couldn’t save him — he’d been lost, in that moment. Even as Soren curled bloody fingers in the fabric of his shirt.

(Had he really not had the time to push Soren out of the way? Or had Soren, quick and clever, darted in front of him to take a blow meant for Ike?)

Ike had been sitting up for hours, replaying the memory. It was stupid of him. He knew where Soren was, just down the hall, safe and whole and probably still burning the midnight oil.

If Ike could just see him, maybe it would put his mind at ease.

He wrenched open his door to find Soren standing just outside it, one hand raised to knock. Ike had always been taller than Soren, but he wondered just when Soren had had to start looking so far up to meet his eyes. It hadn’t been like that in the Mad King’s War.

Ike gripped the doorframe to steady himself.

“Ike?” Soren said, his voice quiet. “Are you all right?”

Ike forced himself to relax his fingers. Soren was here, real and alive in front of him. Ike could have reached out and pulled him into his arms.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse to even his own ears. “Did you need something?”

“I… No,” Soren said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I…”

Ike had been so relieved to see him standing there that he hadn’t really looked at him. Soren was pale in the dark hallway, his mouth a thin grim line.

It was possible Ike wasn’t the only one kept up at night by memories.

“Soren,” he said, just as Soren made to turn around. “Come inside?”

Soren hesitated. Then he nodded.

Once inside the room, though, Soren didn’t relax. He paced restlessly, moving to Ike’s desk and straightening the few papers there, then turned towards the window. He crossed his arms and uncrossed them. His hair was loose, flowing down his back, and Ike’s fingers itched to gather it up. It had grown since the Mad King’s War, falling past Soren’s waist.

(Ike liked it. He’d said as much once, when Soren had been examining the ends.)

“What’s wrong?” Ike asked. “What happened?”

Soren took care of so much for him. If he could fix something for Soren, he wanted to know what it was. Soren turned to him wordlessly, his lips slightly parted. The moonlight revealed a smudge of ink across one cheek, like he’d fallen asleep while writing. Unusual, for Soren, but then they were all working around the clock. Soren worked more than most.

Ike reached up to brush it away and Soren stepped back. Ike’s stomach twisted, a feeling not unlike the early days of the Mad King’s War when he stepped wrong in a fight, weighing in that split second whether he could recover or whether it would cost him.

“You know you can tell me anything,” he said.

“Of course I do,” Soren said. But his fingers gripped his arms so tightly Ike wondered if it hurt. Quietly, he added, “I do know that – now.”

“Was it a dream?” Ike asked. He took in Soren’s appearance again, the robes that looked hastily thrown on, the smudge of ink on his cheek, his hair long and loose, softening the angles of his face.

Soren gave him a sharp look.

“I’m not a child,” he said. “Bad dreams are just that: dreams.”

His words were dismissive, but there was a haunted look in his eyes that Ike knew well.

“I have them too,” Ike said, his voice low. Not quite a whisper, but quiet enough to keep it a secret, just between them. “All the time.”

“You’ve never said,” Soren said, a slight accusation in his voice, as if he suspected Ike might be lying to get him to talk.

Ike shrugged.

“Who would I tell except for you?” he asked.

Soren stared back at him, his gaze heavy. Ike could see him weighing it over, always wondering what it would cost him. When it was Ike, the answer would always be nothing. Ike would give him everything that he could.

“The Black Knight,” Soren said at last. “I only meant to rest my eyes for a moment, but then I dreamt you – oh.”

He broke off, shaking his head. He sounded like he’d been hurt. Like when the Black Knight struck Ike in his dreams, it was Soren who felt the blows.

“Soren,” Ike said softly.

“Like I said,” Soren murmured. “It’s nothing. Just a dream. But then I saw the light flicker under your door and I…”

“You can tell me,” Ike said. “It’s the same for me, you know.”

Soren lifted his gaze, and the look on his face was painful to behold. Not disbelief, not exactly, or not disbelief in Ike. It was something deeper than that. Like Soren could never conceive of someone feeling for him the way that Ike did.

“Soren,” he said. “It’s the same.”

“If something had happened to you,” Soren said, his breath hitching, and Ike could hear the hidden words underneath: if the Black Knight had killed you. “I don’t know what I would have – what would I have done, Ike?”

Ike reached up, palming his cheek. Soren wasn’t crying, but he looked like he wanted to, his eyes shut tight as he leaned into Ike’s touch.

“I’m sorry,” Ike said. He hoped Soren knew what he meant – he wasn’t sorry for fighting the Black Knight. He wasn’t sorry for running off to do it alone. It had been his fight, and his alone. But he was sorry that he had hurt Soren. He was sorry he had scared him.

He was sorry that he couldn’t promise, if some other situation arose someday, he wouldn’t do it again.

“When Father sent you to Melior, to study with that other mercenary group,” he said, then stopped. He’d never told anyone this before, least of all Soren. He took a deep breath as Soren’s eyes drifted open, confusion written all over his face.

“Ike?” he said.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back,” he admitted.

Soren’s brows drew together.

“I thought, Soren’s so brilliant,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Surely everyone else will see it too. Someone will offer him more money, a more valuable position, and then I’ll – the company will lose him.”

“Oh,” Soren said softly.

“Even when you wrote to me, I still worried,” Ike said.

The first letter had surprised him, even though Soren had said he would write. Ike figured it was just something people said when they were leaving. Then the second had arrived. He’d eagerly waited for the third in spite of Mist’s teasing.

The letters hadn’t said much, Soren not inclined towards unnecessary details and well aware Ike had even less patience for that sort of thing. But they’d been a comfort. Something from Soren, for Ike to hold onto until he returned.

“At the time, Commander Greil said it was my choice,” Soren said. “That he wouldn’t force me to go if I didn’t want to. But I always knew you were going to inherit the company someday. That was my reasoning. I needed to be useful to you.”

“When have you ever not been?” Ike asked. “Who else always had my back?”

He’d long lost count of the number of arguments Shinon and Soren had gotten into all because Shinon had made some snide remark about Ike. He had a sudden memory of Soren when he’d first arrived, tiny as anything, practically spitting poison.

Ike hadn’t understood it at the time, why Soren, who distrusted everyone, treated him so different, but he’d never questioned it, either. Somehow it had always made sense that he and Soren should be different.

“It’s not the same thing, Ike,” Soren said, but there was fondness in his voice.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I worried. You’re just so…” he broke off with a little laugh, shaking his head. He had said it already, but it couldn’t be said enough. “You’re brilliant.”

Soren reached out and gripped Ike’s wrist, the suddenness of the move making Ike blink.

“You’ll never lose me to any other company,” Soren said. “I’ll never pick anyone else.”

It took Ike a moment to speak.

“Well,” he said. “It’s the same for me. Understand that now?”

There was something like a smile flickering on Soren’s face, but it was small and very sad. He closed his eyes and shook his head, more, Ike thought, an unconscious motion than a true denial.

“Wherever I go, you go,” Ike said. “And wherever you go, I go. It’s that simple.”

“Ike,” Soren said, his name a bare whisper.

“I will always come home to you,” Ike promised.

The clouds shifted, revealing the moon, and the soft hazy light caught on Soren’s hair. Soren’s eyes drifted open, his gaze catching Ike’s. For a long moment, they just looked at each other. Neither of them moved except for the restless motion of Ike’s thumb across Soren’s cheek. If he leaned in, he could kiss him.

He thought it now roughly a dozen times a day: in the mess hall, after training, catching a stray leaf in Soren’s long dark hair. Suddenly it seemed more real.

Then Soren stepped back. He raised a hand to his face, his fingers brushing over where Ike’s had been a moment ago, his gaze averted.

“I’m being foolish,” Soren said, as if he had ever been foolish a day in his life. “I’ll go back to my room.”

Ike wanted to kiss him, but he didn’t want it to be like this, Soren so quietly devastated.

“Or you could stay,” Ike said, his voice steadier than he felt. “It’s late.”

Soren looked up at him, his lips parted just so.

“It’s just down the hall,” he said.

“The halls are drafty,” Ike said. “There’s enough room in the bed.”

Soren gave him a look. Ike expected him to point out the obvious: the beds in the old keep they’d taken up residence in were terrible. As if Ike didn’t know that. Still, he wanted the comfort of Soren beside him.

“Soren,” Ike said, closing his hand over his. “I want you to stay.”

Soren swallowed hard. Then he nodded.

They squeezed into the bed together, far too narrow, after the candles had all been blown out. Nose to nose in the dark, Ike could make out Soren’s profile by moonlight, and he could hear the sound of his breath, feel the comforting warmth of him.

“What are you,” Soren whispered. He stopped himself, swallowed, and then said, “What are you thinking?”

“That we need a bigger bed,” Ike said.

Soren’s huff of laughter was sharp and surprised. He reached out and touched Ike’s chest, his fingers hesitant. His hands were trembling, as if he was cold. Ike wanted to cup them in his own larger ones, gather Soren’s hands up and breathe on them until he was warm again.

Instead, he brought the blanket up over Soren’s shoulders, then left his arm there for good measure. Ike always ran hot; as long as Soren stayed with him, he wouldn’t let him get chilled.

After Ike had killed Mad King Ashnard, while he was still splattered with his blood, Soren had told Ike that his place was by his side.

He wanted Soren beside him in this way, too.

“I like this,” Ike murmured into Soren’s hair. “I like you here.”

Soren was quiet for so long that if Ike didn’t know better, he’d have thought he was asleep.

“Then I’ll stay,” he finally replied.

They parted ways by the keep’s gate, Gatrie and Shinon off to town to spend their share of the gold, and Mia heading towards the training yard, complaining loudly that the bandits hadn’t given her nearly a good enough workout. Ike continued inside alone; no one met him at the door. Not unusual, necessarily, but given the illness going around the keep, it was concerning.

He stopped in the kitchens first.

“Oh, you’re back!” Mist said. “Here, hold this.”

Ike put his hands out automatically and Mist hoisted a huge pot of water off the counter, visibly straining under its weight, and into his arms.

“Stove, please,” she said, dusting off her hands. “I’m making soup.”

“I hope it comes out better than the last time,” Ike said.

“I’m following Oscar’s recipe!” Mist said, huffing. “Last time wasn’t that bad.”

“It was impressive, actually,” Ike said, setting the pot down on the stove. “I didn’t realize you could burn soup.” Mist squawked, trying to hit him, and Ike pretended to feel it. “Oof, watch it. Where is everyone?”

“Rhys is in bed, and Rolf started sniffling. Boyd, too, but he’s being the biggest baby of all about it, and Oscar went to town for more supplies,” Mist said. She eyeballed Ike. “I know you’ve got the constitution of a bear, but you should be careful you don’t catch it. Titania’s already exhausted herself taking care of everyone.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ike said. “How’s Soren?”

A wolfish grin spread over his sister’s face.

“How’s Soren?” she trilled, leaning forward and batting her eyelashes.

“Why are you saying his name like that?” Ike asked, wrinkling his nose.

“No reason,” Mist said sweetly. She set about chopping vegetables, humming a little. “Soren’s in bed, too. He must have tired himself out earlier with all the moping and sighing he was doing. You should take him some tea.”

“I’ll do that,” Ike said.

He wasn’t much of a cook, but tea he could do, and he knew Soren would appreciate it more if Ike made it himself. Mist watched him with curiosity.

“You know, Ike, you can tell me anything,” she said.

“Of course I know that,” he replied. “It’s the same for you.”

“Oh, I know,” Mist said. “But I don’t have anything to tell you.”

Then she settled her elbows on the countertop and stared at him pointedly. Ike lifted one eyebrow.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Waiting,” she replied, blinking innocently up at him.

He snorted, turning back to the tea.

“You know how I am, Mist,” he said. “You want to know something, ask me directly.”

“You’re impossible, you know that?” she huffed. “You know exactly what I mean, you just don’t want to tell me about whatever’s going on with you and Soren. If I do ask you directly, you’ll just act like nothing’s changed.”

Ike shrugged.

“Tell me when the soup’s ready,” he said. The tea brewed, he took the pot and a cup and saucer and neatly sidestepped Mist, still fuming at him.

“You could at least pretend to take it to Soren’s room and not yours!” Mist called at Ike’s back.

He ignored her.

It didn’t bother him that his sister suspected. Ike had prided himself throughout the war on wearing his heart on his sleeve. It did bother him that others might know the depths of his affection before Soren did. That didn’t seem right.

Soren needed to know how loved he was, but it wasn’t something Ike felt he could put into words. He worried that with his clumsy attempts, Soren might not believe him.

He was worried that he might do more damage than good. Winning a war had seemed less daunting at the time than telling Soren how he felt.

“Oh, you’re back,” Titania said, nearly bumping into him in the hall. True to Mist’s word, she looked exhausted, her hair escaping its long braid. She stifled a yawn into her fist. “I’m glad. If you’d taken too long, I would have had to come to get you.”

“It was just a few bandits,” Ike said. “I think you can trust me to handle that sort of thing by now.”

“I do trust you, but you should know that no matter what, part of me will always see you at six years old, playing with sticks instead of swords,” Titania said, looking at him with tired fondness.

Ike scowled and she laughed. When he’d been a child, Titania had always seemed so tall to him, second only to his father. It had been two years now since she’d had to start looking up to meet Ike’s eyes. This past summer she’d started complaining during their sparring matches that Ike had no mercy.

“Besides, it’s not so much about trusting you to get the job done so much as… other parties,” Titania said. “If Soren nitpicks the budget one more time I might strangle him.”

“Has he been making things difficult?” Ike asked, biting down on a smile.

“You know him,” Titania said.

“It’s fine,” Ike said, glancing at the door at the end of the hall. “I’m home now.”

Titania’s gaze softened.

“So you are,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

Ike glanced back at her, an eyebrow raised.

“What for?” he asked. “Like I said, it was an easy job.”

Titania shook her head, planting her hands on his shoulders and turning him towards the end of the hall.

“Go,” she said. “Before I really do have to strangle him.”

Snorting, Ike shook his head and went. He entered the room as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb Soren if he was resting, closing the door behind him and turning to the bed.

The sight stopped Ike in his tracks. Soren, asleep in his – in their – bed. His long hair fanned out against the pillow, his lashes dusted his cheeks. The covers had fallen to his waist, and he was wearing one of Ike’s old shirts. He was beautiful, Ike thought. It was rare that he got to see him like this. He wanted to stop the world just for a moment, so he could look his fill.

Soren frowned even in his sleep. Ike hadn’t known it was possible to love someone like this, where even the sight of Soren’s scrunched brows filled him with so much fondness he didn’t know what to do with it.

Ike had actually built a bigger bed. He didn’t mind waking up with Soren half underneath him, but he thought Soren might get sick of it before long, and besides, the old bed really was too small for even him alone. So one morning he’d taken an axe and gone out to the woods behind the keep and, without much of an idea how to actually build anything, set about doing it anyway. He’d helped win a war that way before.

Oscar had helped some, after he’d caught Ike sneaking back into the keep with lumber, on the order to keep quiet. If Mist learned what he was doing, he’d never hear the end of it until he built her a new bedframe, too. But Ike did most of the work himself, Soren hovering over his shoulder and pointing out every time he made a mistake.

The bed wasn’t a masterpiece. Certainly no Begnion noble would have ever dared to sleep on it, would have probably fainted straight away at the thought. The headboard was crooked, the woodwork far from perfect. But still, Ike liked it.

It had felt good to build something with his own hands. Ike could see a life like this in the future.

“I’ll build you a house next,” Ike had said to Soren as they stood there, in front of the bed.

“And have it collapse in the first storm?” Soren asked. There was a smile tugging at his lips. “I think the bed is enough for now.”

“I will one day,” Ike said. “Build you a house. Or anything else you want.”

Soren stared at him, stunned.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, Ike.”

He hadn’t said anything else. That didn’t matter. Ike was a man of his word.

The bed might not have been perfect, but it was big and it was comfortable. And Ike liked the look of Soren, sleeping in it. He liked that when Soren tensed in his sleep, in the grip of dreams he wouldn’t yet reveal to Ike, Ike could tuck Soren’s head under his chin, rub his back and murmur that he was there. He liked that when he woke up, his own chest heaving, Soren’s comforting warmth was right beside him, one of Soren’s hands resting tentatively on his chest. He’d been there every night since Ike had asked him to stay.

Ike wanted him there every night to come.

Soren had always been a light sleeper. Ike had barely lingered in the doorway more than a minute before his eyes flickered open.

“You’re back,” Soren mumbled, moving to sit up.

“Careful,” Ike said. He sat down on the edge of the bed, setting the tea on the little bedside table.

“I’m not an invalid, Ike,” Soren said.

He did look better, or at least, he looked more rested. Ike was never sure how much of Soren’s yearly collapse was due to the cold and how much was due to exhaustion. The fever color had fled his cheeks and his eyes were clear and bright.

The collar of Ike’s shirt slipped down Soren’s shoulder. Ike reached up to fix it, his thumb brushing over the sharp jut of Soren’s collarbone, and Soren stifled a gasp.

The shirt had fit Ike a few months ago, but no longer. Mist complained constantly that he was still growing, inches taller now than he had been during the war, his shoulders broader than before. Steady mercenary work had built up the muscles in his arms to the point he’d busted the seams of a sleeve in a fight.

(“You take after your father,” Titania had said with a sad smile, examining the rip.)

Soren said it was a waste of fabric and money to throw it away just because Ike could no longer wear it. He’d taken to wearing it to bed instead, practically swimming in the fabric, the hem hanging down to his thighs. Ike had been rendered speechless the first time he’d seen him in it, a hot clenching want fiercer than he’d ever felt in his gut.

He wanted Soren to keep wearing his clothes almost as much as he wanted to take them off him.

“I told you before,” Ike said. “I’ll always come home to you.”

Soren cleared his throat, reaching up to clutch at the neck of Ike’s stolen shirt. His cheeks were flushed red again.

“Report,” he said. His voice was crisp and clear and all business.

Ike groaned.

“Seriously?” he said. “Right now?”

Soren nailed him in place with a look.

“Yes, right now,” he said. “You can stop me from going with you, Ike, but you can’t keep me from doing my job.”

He reached for his tea, raising his eyebrows at Ike.

There wasn’t very much to report, it being such a small job, but Ike dutifully went over the details anyway. He always liked watching Soren as he absorbed information, liked watching that sharp mind work as Soren filed away details.

“No injuries?” Soren asked.

“Gatrie tripped over a fallen log,” Ike said.

The corner of Soren’s mouth twitched. It always felt like a victory when Ike could make him smile.

“Any injuries besides Gatrie’s two left feet?” he asked.

“Everyone’s fine,” Ike said. “What about you?”

“Fine, as well,” Soren said. When Ike raised his eyebrows, he earned a scowl. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ike, it’s just a winter cold. I’ve been inside all day, on your orders -- of course I’m fine.”

“You’re flushed,” Ike noted, pressing the back of his hand to Soren’s reddened cheek.

Soren made a noise not unlike a squeak.

“That’s – that has nothing to do with anything,” he said. He cleared his throat, brushing Ike’s hand aside as he raised his cup. “It’s warm in here, that’s all.”

It was not warm in the room. Ike hummed noncommittally.

“This happens every winter,” Ike pointed out. “As soon as it gets cold.”

“Yes, Ike, thank you, I’m well aware of my own limitations,” Soren muttered into his cup.

Ike didn’t think that was true, but then he wasn’t exactly one to talk. If any of them – Ike, Soren, Elincia, every one of them -- were aware of their own limitations, Crimea would have never won the war.

“I should take you someplace warm,” Ike said.

“Where, like Gallia?” Soren said, disdain dripping from his voice.

“I was thinking Goldoa,” Ike said. He kept his face perfectly straight until Soren glared at him, and then he smiled, reaching out to tuck a lock of Soren’s dark hair behind his ear. He wanted to reach up and brush his thumb against the brand, but he knew Soren didn’t want to be touched there. One day, maybe, but not today. Not yet.

One day, he would prove to Soren, bit by bit, that not one inch of him could disgust him.

Soren’s cheeks flushed pink. He averted his eyes as he set his cup down.

“Don’t even joke about it,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Ike murmured. He brushed his knuckles against Soren’s neck. “I won’t.”

“I’m fine here,” Soren said.

“I know,” Ike said.

“With you,” Soren added, his eyes flicking up to Ike’s face. “My place is with you.”

It was as good a moment as any.

“Soren,” Ike said. That one name, like a prayer. He cupped a hand to Soren’s flushed cheek and leaned in.

Soren slapped a hand over Ike’s mouth before he could get very far. His eyes were almost comically wide in his face.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his voice high and breathless. “Did you get hit in the head?”

“Not recently,” Ike mumbled, his lips moving against Soren’s delicate palm. Soren snatched his hand back, cradling it to his chest.

“Then what were you thinking?” he demanded. There was a fierce blush across his face, redder than Ike had ever seen him before.

“Do you not want to?” Ike asked, his eyebrows creasing.

“I think I’m hallucinating,” Soren said faintly. “The fever must be worse than I thought.”

“It’s not the fever,” Ike said. “I want to kiss you.”

Soren made a noise something like a squeak.

“Are you feverish?” he asked, his hand flying to press against Ike’s forehead, fingers slipping beneath his headband. Ike let him feel, his eyebrows raised.

“Soren,” he said.

“You’ve got to – something must be wrong,” Soren murmured. “Were there any mages with the bandits? Any priests with strange staves? Someone hit you with something. Where’s Shinon? I’ll make him talk or I’ll cut out his tongue –”

He made as if to climb from the bed. Ike caught him with one arm around his waist, shoving him gently back. The action brought them even closer together, Ike hovering over Soren, caging him against the bed with his body. He kept his hand on Soren’s waist.

“Soren,” he said again. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

Nothing’s wrong with you, he wanted to say.

Soren brought his fingertips up to his own lips. For a long moment, he was silent. Ike sat there and let him think, trying to ignore the desperate swoop of his own stomach.

“You tried to kiss me,” he said at last. He sounded suspicious. Ike had heard that tone in his voice what felt like a hundred times before, when he was trying to put together what some enemy army was doing, trying to discern the details of their strategy.

Ike had no strategies, not here, not on this battlefield. He had only his heart. He would lay it at Soren’s feet every day if that was what it took.

“Is my wanting to kiss you that strange?” Ike asked.

“Yes!” Soren said desperately, his eyes wide. Ike almost wanted to laugh.

“Why?” he asked. He got down nose to nose to with Soren, staring at him unblinkingly, and watched as Soren swallowed hard.

“That’s… Ike,” Soren said, his voice both shaky and stern. “Don’t.”

“Soren,” Ike pressed. “Why?”

He took Soren’s hands in his own and was gratified when Soren didn’t pull away.

“You know why,” Soren whispered.

“I do,” Ike said. He squeezed his hands. “But the thing is, that’s not good enough. You know it’s not. Not where I’m concerned.”

Soren swallowed again. His grip on Ike’s hands was tight and desperate, his fingers trembling.

“I stare at you when you’re not looking,” Ike said. “I worry when you don’t eat. I imagine pulling the ties from your hair and sinking my fingers into it.”

He reached out and wrapped a lock of Soren’s long dark hair around his finger, tugging very gently.

“I trust you more than anyone, because you always tell me the truth, even if you think I don’t want to hear it,” Ike said. “I value your advice more than anyone else’s because I know at the end of the day you’ll do everything you can to help us forge ahead. Soren, I built a bigger bed so you could share it with me. Have I not been clear enough?”

“You have terrible timing,” Soren whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Ike said. He rubbed his thumb over Soren’s clenched knuckles. “I can wait. I can wait as long as you want. As long as you waited for me, even.”

“I never expected anything,” Soren said after a painful, silent moment. “I only wanted to see you again. To be close to you, if I could. I didn’t — wanting more would have been foolish.”

Ike wished, with a fierce longing, that he could remember meeting Soren that first time. He wished he could remember anything about his childhood in Gallia. It was worse, he thought, not remembering. His imagination tried to fill in the blanks for him, conjured up images of Soren as a child, scared and abused and alone.

He had tried to speak to Soren about it, about the meeting he did not remember. Soren wouldn’t discuss it. Ike supposed some things were just too painful when he himself didn’t remember.

“You told me something once,” Ike said. “You told me I should want. That I should strive for the things I want. Soren, what do you want?”

Soren’s intake of breath was sharp. Ike waited, just like he promised he would.

“Hold still,” Soren whispered.

Soren was his strategist, on and off the battlefield. Ike did as he was told, keeping himself braced over Soren. Their faces were so close he could count every single dark eyelash.

“Close your eyes,” Soren murmured, tilting his face just so. Their noses brushed softly.

“I want to look at you,” Ike said.

“Ike,” Soren said, and his tone brooked no arguments. “Close your eyes.”

Heaving a sigh, Ike closed his eyes. Soren’s cool fingers slid along the edge of his jaw. His touch was careful, like he was trying to map Ike by feel, to commit him to memory. Ike held still and let him touch as much as he wanted. He felt it when the bed shifted and Soren leaned in.

The first brush of Soren’s lips was shy and tentative, punctuated by his sharp intake of breath. Ike’s chest clenched. Still Soren thought he might reject him. Still after everything, he was afraid of it.

Ike would have to prove to him that he wasn’t going anywhere. At least, not without Soren.

“Oh,” Soren whispered against his lips.

Ike had only ever kissed one person before. He had been fifteen and desperate to prove to his father that he was ready to be a mercenary. His father, with his secret sense of humor, had sent him instead to wrangle escaped chickens from a nearby farm. Ike couldn’t complain, not out loud, not if he ever wanted to be a mercenary, so he’d resigned himself to a long hot summer day of catching angry chickens. Worse, he’d had to take his sister with him.

The farmer’s granddaughter had been his age. She’d blushed every time Ike so much as looked her way.

When all the chickens had been returned the coup, Ike had wiped the sweat from his forehead and prepared to leave, only to be stopped by the girl’s hand on his arm. The farmer’s granddaughter, her face beet red, leaned in and kissed him, then told him it was thanks before she’d gone running back to the house without a single look back. Mist yelled so loud she’d sent all the chickens squawking.

Mist had told everybody, of course. Gatrie and Shinon had mercilessly teased Ike, while Boyd had wanted to know if the girl was pretty. He’d rolled his eyes and declared Ike thicker than a castle wall when Ike had only shrugged.

Soren had sulked for weeks. At the time, Ike couldn’t understand why.

After all, Soren was prettier than any farmer’s granddaughter.

Soren kissed him slow and sweet and lingering. His lips were soft and slightly chapped, his hands reaching up to rest on Ike’s chest, fingers knotted in the fabric of his shirt. Ike was sure he’d never kissed anyone before, and it made his chest ache, thinking that this was Soren’s first. He wanted it to be good for him. He wanted it to be perfect.

It was over far too soon, Soren leaning away and back with a shaky little breath. Ike opened his eyes and took him in. The flushed cheeks, the messy hair, the wary look in his eyes like he couldn’t trust what was happening.

“My turn?” Ike asked.

Flushed and dazed, Soren nodded.

He curled one hand around Soren’s hip and slid the other into his hair. Where Soren’s kiss had been chaste, a sweet brush of their lips, Ike deepened it, tilting his head and cupping his hand to the back of Soren’s head to guide him. The kiss drew a gasp from Soren that turned into a muffled moan, his hand coming up to frame Ike’s neck as Ike bit gently at his lower lip. His whole body was tight like a bowstring.

The hand at Soren’s hip tightened and Soren gasped again, his own fingers flexing at the curve of Ike’s shoulder. Ike had never been so acutely aware of the differences in their sizes before, how delicate Soren felt under his hands, and it lit something warm and possessive in the pit of his stomach.

Soren sighed when they broke apart, his breath ghosting over Ike’s lips.

“You know I’m not good with words,” Ike said, his forehead down against Soren’s. “How was that for actions?”

Soren’s whole body felt like it was trembling, his lips parted and his eyes wide. It took him a moment to answer.

“It was sufficient.”

Ike burst out laughing.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m good at practicing.”

It was like fighting, Ike thought. He had to learn this, the feel of Soren’s slight body against his, the press of his lips, the little sigh when Ike squeezed his hip, the same way he’d learned everything else. One step at a time, no looking back.

He wanted to learn all of Soren by touch. Every inch of him, mapped by Ike’s fingers.

He leaned in and kissed him again. Slower this time, softer, sweeter. Ike was not good at any of those things, but he wanted to be, here, like this, with Soren. This time Soren met him, tilting his head to better the angle, his lips parting under Ike’s onslaught. His hands slid up Ike’s chest to clutch at his shoulders, a bitten off whimper in his throat. He gasped when they broke apart, his lips red and bitten.

Ike had never seen anyone more beautiful.

Soren knotted his fingers in the back of Ike’s hair, panting against his cheek. Ike switched targets, kissing the corner of Soren’s mouth, his cheek, down the line of his jaw.

“You’ll get sick too,” Soren murmured. His fingers ran through Ike’s hair restlessly; Ike had started keeping it shorter a few months ago, when his headband had stopped properly keeping it out of his eyes.

“I’ll be fine,” Ike said. “You know me.”

“Mm,” Soren acknowledged. “You’re sturdy.”

He sounded like he was reassuring himself. He sounded tired, too, in spite of the way he was still leaning into Ike, one arm around his neck.

Ike pressed one more kiss to the corner of his jaw before he eased off of him, stretching out on the bed. He pulled Soren against his side, one arm behind his back, fingers idly playing with his hair. Soren, still looking dazed, went easily with the motion, settling his head against Ike’s shoulder. His hand came to rest on Ike’s chest.

“What happens now?” he asked after a moment.

“What do you mean?” Ike said.

Soren gave him an unimpressed look. Ike wrapped a lock of his hair around his finger, tugging lightly.

“We do our jobs,” he said. “We continue to reestablish ourselves as mercenaries. And we come home to each other. That’s what happens next.”

“It won’t be that simple,” Soren said. His eyelashes fluttered as Ike continued to run his fingers through his hair.

“It could be, now that the war is over. You know the saying,” Ike said. His jaw cracked on a yawn. “No matter how harsh the winter, spring will ever follow.”

“Crimean proverbs, Ike?” Soren said, startled into a laugh. “Really?”

“Well, we’re in Crimea,” Ike said. He regarded the ceiling. “For the moment, anyway.”

Soren went tense against him and Ike rubbed a hand down his back, soothing.

“Where I go, you go,” he said. Soren sighed, his fingers knotting in Ike’s shirt. “Not that we’re going anywhere for the moment. I’m just… thinking.”

“I see,” Soren said. “Try not to sprain anything.”

He buried his face in Ike’s shoulder when Ike shot him a look, but Ike could see the slight happy curve of his lips. He spread his fingers out, palm in the center of Ike’s chest, and Ike pressed his lips to the top of Soren’s head. The kiss was soft and lingering.

For a long moment, everything was quiet. Outside the window, the snow began to fall again. Ike’s fingers raked rhythmically through Soren’s hair, occasionally catching on a knot, and then he’d slow his pace and gently work it free, then begin again.

The next Soren spoke, it was so quiet that Ike barely heard him, the words muffled into his shoulder.

“Where you go, I go,” Soren murmured back.

It sounded like a vow.

Two months later, the Count of Fayre showed up at their door. He had terrible timing. Mist and Rolf had heard about some festival in town and dragged everyone out with them. Ike and Soren had made their individual excuses, which no one had bought, but they’d been left alone anyway. Ike had been expecting to enjoy it.

He’d only just pinned Soren up against the wall when a jaunty knock echoed through the keep, along with a familiar voice.

“Huh,” Ike said, still holding Soren’s waist. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Don’t make it quick,” Soren said.

Bastian looked much the same as the last time Ike had seen him, back in the Crimean royal court. If Ike had thought he looked like a ridiculous fop on the battlefield, then it was nothing compared to his fashion in peacetime. Ike hadn’t been aware anyone could get one pair of trousers in so many different colors at once.

“My brave Sir Ike!” Bastian said, spinning around to face him. Ike had no idea why he couldn’t just have kept facing the door like a normal person. “When first I met you, you were but a sapling. And now behold! A mighty oak.”

“Oh look,” Ike said, settling in the doorframe and crossing his arms. “It’s Bastian.”

“Lord Ike,” Bastian said. When he bowed, it was with a flourish that felt distinctly sarcastic.

“Not a lord anymore,” Ike said. “I renounced all that, remember?”

“Who could dare to forget? It made such a stir among the court,” Bastian replied. “To mention it even now can make a fine lady of noble blood faint on her feet.”

Ike snorted.

“You’re reminding me why I left,” he said. “Come on, Bastian. This isn’t a social call.”

A smirk curled at the corners of Bastian’s lips. Ike knew that look; for all he played the fop, the Count of Fayre was as sharp as they came.

“I have a business proposition for you,” he said.

Ike didn’t have to look at Soren, standing behind him, to know that his interest had been piqued. He stepped back from the door.

“Then you’d better come inside,” he said.

Sitting at their rickety table, Bastian told him the whole story. The Duke of Felirae, a planned coup, Elincia and the country both in danger. Ike’s eyebrows rose a little higher with each new detail, but Soren hardly looked surprised at any of it. He’d called the nobility a nest of vipers shortly before they’d left, and Ike had agreed, but perhaps he hadn’t realized the extent of it.

Elincia was so good, and she wanted what was best for the country. Ike would help her if he could.

“For my ruse to work, you’ll have to disappear,” Bastian said. “Enemies and allies alike, none can know where the brave Greil Mercenaries have gone. And you must remain gone until Ludveck has shown his true face, and all of his cards. No matter how dire it looks.” He smiled winningly. “Do we have an agreement? I’ll pay handsomely for your services, of course.”

Ike, leaning in the kitchen doorway, raised his eyebrow. He glanced at Soren, even though he’d already made his decision. He met Ike’s eyes evenly and gave a tight little nod. Warmth bloomed in Ike’s chest.

“All right,” Ike said. “You’ve got the Greil Mercenaries.”