Work Text:
“You know, the explosion is the easy part,” Wylan says, bent over the scale. “People are always curious about the explosion, but it’s just gunpowder, really. Basic stuff.”
“Hmh?” Jesper makes, fully aware that he isn’t very successful at hiding the fact that he hasn’t been paying attention. It’s always near impossible for him to follow Wylan’s explanations when he’s talking chemistry anyway – most of it just goes way over his head – but right now he is specifically distracted by the small object between his fingers, its warmth, its weight.
“Explosion,” Wylan repeats, looking up from his work, but the reproach in his voice is mild, as if he’s amused rather than offended by Jesper’s absent-mindedness.
“I’m sorry,” Jesper says, and he means it, because Wylan is brilliant and beautiful and deserves attention. “Please continue.”
“If you say so,” Wylan says, indulgently, and turns back to his measurements. “The metal salts are the tricky part. You don’t want everything to just go boom. You want the effects to be timed right. Plus, most of them are toxic, so …”
He goes on to talk about copper chloride and strontium nitrate, his own attention fixed on the various powders and substances under his hands, and the sound of his voice is soothing, fills Jesper’s chest with a diffuse sense of tingly softness, even as his mind is already drifting again despite his best efforts, back to the thing in his hand.
Truth be told, he isn’t entirely sure what it is they are even doing here. There is no immediate demand for explosives: the fighting is over, at least for now, the survivors are recovering, resting, reconnecting. Things are quiet, almost subdued. Non-explosive, so to speak.
But Wylan had asked the prince – or rather, king – for a favor as soon as he heard from one of the squallers that Fort Zvedya was housing the workshop of a (now deceased) pharmacist in the army’s service, and the King of Ravka had clearly been so grateful for their last-minute rescue during the final battle that he probably would have agreed to anything Wylan asked of him. As it was, he just looked a little confused, said “Yes of course,” and didn’t bother inquiring any further about Wylan’s potentially nefarious schemes. Of course, the fact that Wylan begged so timidly, looking up at him with bashful eyes like the world’s most delicate sugar mouse, probably helped convince Nikolai that Wylan wasn’t secretly planning to blow them all up.
Jesper thought it was rather foolish of the new king to be so trusting, but he wasn’t going to undermine Wylan’s professional endeavors, whatever they might be, so he kept his mouth shut and just followed Wylan into the underground workshop to keep him company – to be in his company – while he did what he had to do.
But as much as Jesper enjoys watching Wylan work – as much as he enjoys watching Wylan, period – the actual labor of measuring and mixing ingredients remains rather tedious to him, so out of sheer boredom he started going through the overflowing contents of the late pharmacist’s large storage cabinet, in search for anything interesting or potentially useful.
“Are you sure you should be stealing from the King of Ravka?” Wylan asked him, more curiously than anxiously, when Jesper started pulling open the drawers, one by one.
“I’m browsing, not stealing,” Jesper huffed in half-serious indignation. “And anyway, Nikolai did say you could take what you need, and I’m with you, so –“
He trailed off at that point, because his fingers bumped against a small paper box in one of the narrow compartments, and when he idly flipped it open, he found that it contained a single nugget of gold, unpolished, still in the natural shape that someone, somewhere, had pried out of a rock.
Before he knew it, he was reaching for it.
It’s not very big, not larger than the first knuckle of his thumb, likely meant for a scientific project of sorts, although it’s also surely worth something, no doubt. Yet it’s not the monetary value that draws Jesper to it, that makes him pick it up, roll it around between his palms – it's the material itself, the way it feels in his hands, the way it is asking to be shaped, molded, forged into something else it is not yet.
A piece of jewelry. A replacement for a missing tooth. A bullet. He could use it to save someone, or he could kill them, with the flick of his wrist, just like that.
It’s not the first time the thought occurs to him. Because the truth is, the moment he started to open up to his powers, after his heart-to-heart with Ohval, once he let himself really use them, he realized how difficult it would be not to use them when he could. Perhaps he should not have been surprised by this – he does, in fact, remember the feeling of having his fingertips itch with potential, does remember the rush, the relief of giving in – but he had chalked the memory up to being a child at the time, impulsive, impatient, unburdened.
Alas, it turns out that the sensation has nothing to do with age, and everything with allowing himself to feel what has always been inside of him, and perhaps this is part of what he was afraid of, deep down – that if he allowed himself to feel, really feel his powers, he would come to rely on them, depend on them, be governed by them.
And if there is anything Jesper Fahey dislikes, it’s dependence. Or, at least, that’s the way it used to be.
“Can you read this?”
Jesper jerks out of his contemplation at the sound of Wylan’s voice. Wylan is holding a small glass bottle up to his face, a little awkwardly, like he can’t help being embarrassed but is trying really hard not to be.
Jesper feels a surge of affection and gratitude well up in him.
“I think so,” he says, squinting at the handwritten label. “It’s in Ravkan, obviously, but …uhm … TITANIUM?”
“Oh good,” Wylan sighs, relieved. He plugs the bottle with a cork and sets it onto the worktable. “That’s what I was thinking. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t arsenic after all.”
“Riiight,” Jesper says, slowly, and thinks that there is probably an obvious joke to be made about not letting Wylan cook if there are chemicals in the house, but what comes out of his mouth instead, before he even has time to process it, is: “Aren’t you scared at all?”
Wylan glances at him, a little distractedly. “No, titanium is harmless, mostly,” he shrugs, “as long as you don’t eat it by the fistful.”
“Not the titanium,” Jesper says, exasperated. His fingers clench tightly around the lump of gold in his palm. “Me.“
“You?” Wylan sounds as confused as he looks.
“Because –“ Jesper gestures, vaguely enough to signal anything from a crude proposition to “three hostiles on your left,” hoping against all odds that Wylan will somehow get it anyway.
Wylan stares at him blankly. Jesper swears under his breath.
“Because I’m a Durast,” he finally forces out.
Wylan frowns. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Jesper throws up his hands. “You were there for the battle,” he says, turning away from Wylan’s inquisitive stare. “You saw the kind of things they – we – can do. And I know you said that you want me to embrace it or whatever, but I’ve been in Kerch long enough to know … well. There’s a reason the Kerch like to keep my kind in cages.”
Wylan is quiet for a long moment. Long enough for Jesper to be reminded of why he hates silences so much; long enough that he wonders if he’s gone and messed it all up for good; long enough that he actually startles when Wylan finally speaks again.
“You know, I have seen you shoot people,” Wylan says, and Jesper blinks at the abrupt change in topic.
“I don’t see –“ he starts, then falters.
“I don’t know if it has occurred to you,” Wylan continues, almost conversationally, as if Jesper never said anything, “but if King Nikolai wanted, he could have us hanged tomorrow for theft.”
“Uhm.” Jesper isn’t sure he likes where this is going. “I don’t think –“ he tries, but Wylan is not quite done.
“Kaz could murder us in our sleep for a payout.”
“Now wait a minute,” Jesper protests, holding up a hand. This is going a bit too far. “Kaz wouldn’t –“
“The point is, people are dangerous,” Wylan says, on the verge of impatience. “Anyone can hurt you,” and there is something about the way he says it that makes Jesper take notice, file that tone away for future inspection.
“You can only choose to trust that they won’t,” Wylan says quietly. He takes a deep breath, ducks his head, glances up at Jesper from big, serious eyes.
“I trust you, Jesper Fahey.”
“Oh,” Jesper makes. His heart is pounding. He clears his throat. “I trust you too.”
Wylan actually blushes at that, looking genuinely – absurdly – surprised that Jesper might in fact return the feeling. “Hey,” he says quickly, as if to cover for his embarrassment. “Can you help me with these?”
He taps his fingers against the wooden crate on the counter, covered with a sheet that hides its contents.
Jesper wonders if he should ask what it is they are transporting, but he swallows the question before it can pass his lips. Instead he pushes the small gold nugget deep into the pocket of his coat, then reaches for the right handle of the crate, leaving the other one for Wylan to take.
“Lead the way.”
As it turns out, the crate isn’t very heavy, and they don't carry it very far. Wylan leads them back up the staircase and into the ward, then comes to a halt on a grassy patch near the outer wall of the fort.
“This should do,” Wylan says, lowering his side of the crate to the ground, gesturing at Jesper to do the same.
“It’s almost dark already,” Jesper remarks, inanely, as if Wylan cannot see for himself. But Wylan just hums something like agreement or satisfaction, like it’s what he was hoping for; then he pulls a bundle of matches from his pocket and reaches into the crate.
Jesper has only a brief moment to wonder whether Wylan is perhaps going to blow them up after all before the first crackle catches him by surprise.
The smell of sulfur reaches his nose, the lit fuse flickers, and then the cracker rises up into the air with a hiss and explodes over their heads in a star of blue and gold. The colors of Ravka against the night sky.
A murmur goes through the yard, and only now does Jesper realize that they are not alone. In the dusk, he can make out couples and small groups of people scattered across the grass, the survivors of the battle who are now lifting their heads, rising to their feet, initially in alarm, then in confusion.
By the time the second cracker erupts in the dark, raining Kerch purple down on them, the impromptu audience has recovered, and is responding with “aahs” and quiet cheers.
The next explosion is bright silver, followed by drops of red and green. Jesper stares, in awe, at the choreography of colors Wylan is projecting into the sky.
“You made these?” he asks, incredulously, even though he already knows the answer.
“It’s not that complicated,” Wylan says, pulling up his shoulders as he picks the next cracker out of the crate. “It’s not magic. Just chemistry and –“
“– and metals, yes,” Jesper completes, in a sudden epiphany, and Wylan almost burns his fingers on a lit match when he glances up at him abruptly, surprised but pleased that Jesper remembers.
“Chemistry and metal,” Jesper repeats. He understands now. “Like us.”
Wylan gifts him a smile that is both bashful and bright. “Yes,” he nods. “Like us.”
Jesper follows the path of the next cracker, watches it unfold into a golden blossom over their heads.
“It’s beautiful,” he says.
“Yes,” Wylan agrees, softly, and Jesper really couldn’t say if they are even still talking about the fireworks.
He jumps a little at the sudden feeling of an arm being slung around his shoulders, too big and heavy to be Wylan’s.
“Tolya,” he breathes, half in reproach, half in relief, when he recognizes the man who is suddenly standing next to him. “Don’t sneak up on folks like that.”
Tolya, undeterred, laughs quietly, and pulls Jesper a littler closer to his side before wrapping his other arm around Wylan too.
“Out goes the old year with the sound of firecrackers,” he recites solemnly. “In comes the new with the warmth of wine and spring breeze.”
His voice is steady, but when Jesper glances at him from the side, he sees two tears glittering in the moonlight. He wonders whom Tolya is grieving tonight. He thinks he might be a little drunk.
“Thank you,” Tolya says abruptly, to no one in particular, and squeezes them both one more time. Then he’s gone, swiftly and quietly as he came, leaving Jesper and Wylan to stare at each other through the dark.
“Another one?” Wylan asks after a moment of silence and lifts the remaining matches.
“Another one,” Jesper nods, and on an impulse, he reaches for one of the crackers himself, holds it out for Wylan to light. He watches Wylan strike the match even as he concentrates on the cylinder in his palm, feels the metal particles singing in response, then lets go just in time to save his fingers, watches the cracker rise to the sky in anxious anticipation.
He feels more than hears Wylan’s breath catch in his throat when the first sparkles bloom and then start to rearrange themselves into the shape of a perfect butterfly, outline glowing in deep, warm orange.
“What –“ Wylan starts, then falls silent again when the butterfly flaps its wings, once, twice, before rising to the heavens and finally fading, disappearing into the dark.
“How did you –“ Wylan starts anew, and when Jesper looks over, he finds Wylan staring back at him in wonder.
Jesper shrugs, feeling prickly-hot under this much focused attention. “Got some lessons in chemistry,” he says, and Wylan laughs (sobs) and pulls him in for a kiss, open-mouthed, dirty-sweet.
Jesper wraps a hand around the back of Wylan’s neck and pulls him closer, smiles against Wylan's mouth as he returns the kiss, tastes smoke on his lips.
His other hand slides into his pocket, feeling for the lump of gold.
He thinks he knows now what it was trying to tell him, knows what it is going to be, soon, when it’s the right time.
But here, tonight, they got this kiss and the blaze of fireworks, gunpowder and metal dust.