It was well after three in the morning by the time Mirk stumbled back to the quarters he shared with Genesis. He paused outside the door for a moment, looking hopefully to the lock. But it showed no signs of budging, no wisps of shadows played around it, hinting that the door might be inclined to open on its own. Sighing, Mirk leaned against the wall as he searched his pockets for his keys.
Genesis was still gone. And it was silly of him to hope otherwise. He was too old to be thinking of Christmas miracles.
Once he'd finally dug his key out of the very last pocket he checked, Mirk let himself in and waved on the magelights. Everything was exactly where it'd been when he'd left; there was no sign that Genesis had returned. Nevertheless, he still found himself going to Genesis’s desk to check its contents once he'd toed off his shoes. All the things there were in order — the same books were piled off to one side, the same sheets of mage parchment and pen and inkwell and bits of pencil, perfectly sharpened, were on the opposite. And his own potions kit was still in the middle, at the rear edge of the desk, all the bottles and vials filled evenly to the top. Just as Mirk had been expecting, he wasn't the one who'd been keeping the kit stocked. Before Mirk could ever remember to pick up a fresh bottle of this or that from the infirmary or the apothecary, the components were replenished, without comment.
The desk wouldn't have given him any hints regardless, Mirk knew. Genesis was the sort of man who always left time before he went out to tidy things, so that everything would be to his liking when he returned. And Mirk did his best not to disturb anything while Genesis was away. It made him feel like a part of Genesis was still there, to keep everything in its meticulous rows. Sighing again and shaking his head, Mirk waved off the magelights and shuffled off to the bedroom.
K'aekniv really had talked him into having too much to drink. He was being especially silly that night.
At least he wouldn't have to fumble through the magic bath's array of control runes half-drunk if Genesis still wasn't there. Mirk had done his best to remember to wash thoroughly every night before bed, even when Genesis wasn't there, but his old habits were catching up with him. Mirk only ever bothered now when the infirmary made such a mess of him that he was likely to leave blood or other, worse things, behind on the blankets if he wasn't careful to scrub every last inch of himself.
Mirk undid the clasp on his cloak, tugging it off his shoulders and tossing it aside across his trunk before sitting down on the edge of the bed. Only his mother's trunk remained at the foot of the bed. He'd tried edging his father's trunk underneath it so many times, to put it out of sight and out of mind, that the bed grudgingly decided to accept it into the shadows lurking around its underside even though it logically shouldn’t have fit. The fact that all of Genesis's personal possessions tended to develop a certain disgruntled personality after a few weeks had concerned Mirk at first, but he was growing accustomed to it. As long as he took a firm hand with them, they seemed inclined, for the most part, to listen to him. Mirk didn't know what that said about their owner's opinion of him.
Fatigue washed over him now that he was off his feet. He really needed to change out of his good clothes, lest he wrinkle them beyond salvaging. But his night at the tavern with the Easterners, though more enjoyable than one spent alone in the empty quarters, had drained him. Their merriment grew stronger the more they drank, leaving no room in his head for him to dwell on his own thoughts, especially once he was half-drunk as well. Now that he was alone, Mirk's worries were creeping back up on him, just like the shadows curling out from underneath the bed, playing about his ankles, testing him, confirming he was who he seemed.
What kind of gift could Genesis possibly want? The Easterners were easy enough to handle — drinks all around, an extra pair of boots, a second warm coat for Ilya who kept burning holes through his and who really needed the protection from the cold, unlike K'aekniv. And he'd promised K’aekniv that he'd go with him to the market in London on the best day off they had near Eastern Christmas to buy enough food for the half-angel to cook all the special dishes that the men would be missing from home. But Genesis? It couldn't be anything pricey; he'd surely have something to say about putting his "royalist blood money" to better use if he did that. And Genesis wasn't fond of food, and he made all his own cleaning potions, and he bought all his uniforms in bulk as soon as the Seventh got paid from their contracts.
Despite being fully dressed, Mirk found himself shivering. Being drunk always made him feel cold, though his cheeks were always hot and flushed when he pressed his hands against them. And winter had truly come to the City by then. It wasn’t unbearably cold, but it was much worse than the weather on the other side of its walls. Mirk blew on his hands a few times, then rubbed them together fast. It was no use. He wished he had something decent to wear still, one of the special sets of gloves or socks or shirts that he'd had at home with magic woven in among their fibers to make them self-warming.
The thought of them sparked a memory. Mirk scooted down to the foot end of the bed, pushing his cloak off the top of his mother’s trunk and opening it. There was nothing in it but odds and ends, sentimental things that Genesis wouldn't appreciate cluttering his immaculate quarters. And all of his spare quilts. Mirk dug through them, down to the very bottom of the trunk, until he found it.
It was, admittedly, a fairly ugly blanket. He'd sewn it himself out of scrap ends of this and that, to pass the time when a particularly nasty winter had cut the social season short. He'd been saving its special qualities for the dead of winter, though he’d already been tempted several times to use it. Mirk searched the border of the quilt, turning it around and around in his lap, until he found the activation rune stitched in yellow thread near one of its corners. Mirk pressed it. With a few sparks of reddish gold magic, the blanket began to warm itself. He hadn't made the spell himself, of course — that was the kind of thing one purchased, provided one knew who to ask — and it was nearly five years old by then. Nearing the end of its potency. He disengaged the spell, balling the quilt up in his lap and thinking.
A mage like K'aekniv or Ilya, who didn't have any formal training, wouldn't know the right spells to renew its potential. But to a mage like Elijah, it would be as simple as breathing. And now that they were good enough friends...and now that he knew where all the better fabric shops in mortal London were, from talking with Madame Beaumont...
Smiling to himself, Mirk wrapped himself up in the blanket and slouched sideways on the bed. He needed to undress. But the will to bother was leaving him fast. Surely Genesis would be able to get the wrinkles out of his suit, if it came to that. And as long as he was wrapped up in his own blanket, there was no risk of dirtying Genesis's bedclothes. Instead of getting up, Mirk swung his legs up onto the bed and waved off the magelights with the same gesture and settled in to sleep.
Having one less thing to worry about made it ten times easier, even if he wasn't going to waste the blanket's last bit of warming potential on himself.
- - -
Mirk had thought he would need to be cunning about things. There was nowhere in their quarters he could leave the half-finished blanket without Genesis taking note of it, even if the commander didn't guess the ultimate aim of his sewing. He'd thought he might have to take it to the infirmary, stashing it in the room his family had vacated two days after Christmas, when they'd set off back to Bordeaux with Kali and a group of ten ladies in tow, all of whom were much more excited and intrigued by their assignment than Kali herself.
He needn't have worried. Genesis was well and truly gone, and K'aekniv had no idea when the commander would return. All K’aekniv knew about where Genesis had gone was that Comrade Commander North of the First Infantry had been hounding Genesis lately about some favor he owed him. Mirk had been a little put out by the fact that Genesis had forgotten to tell anyone he was leaving, yet again, his melancholy compounded by not having his family's company any longer, but he tried to look on the bright side of things. He could work on the blanket out in the open, without fear of being discovered. And if it took him past Eastern Christmas to finish it, there were good odds that Genesis still wouldn't be back in time to notice he was late.
The quilt got left in plain view atop the bed while Mirk was off working his shifts at the infirmary. He had struggled to remember the spells, but a bit of trial and error had done the trick. Making self-sewing charms continue to run at a distance was a boon to anyone working on a large project. A small convenience his mother had taught him, the only way to get basic needlework done while maintaining a busy social calendar. Every morning Mirk laid out the next batch of blue, gray and black pieces he'd cut out the night before at the bottom edge of the blanket, then set the charm to work and hurried off. When he came back, the blanket was a foot or so further along. It was turning out better than he'd expected. He only needed to redo a few sections of it where the stitching had veered slightly off-center.
If he was going to sew something for Genesis, it was imperative that the stitches be perfectly aligned. Otherwise Genesis would undoubtedly pick them all out and try to fix them himself. And Genesis was terrible at sewing.
Mirk finished the blanket right on time, the night before when the Easterners had decided to celebrate their Christmas. All that was left to do was stitch the renewed warming spell into its corner. Elijah, as he'd expected, had been happy to fill it near to combusting with his magic without asking for anything in return other than answers to more of his odd questions about Genesis's opinion on things. The part of Mirk that was spending too much time listening to the other healers of the Twentieth gossip in low tones about K'maneda ruthlessness warned him to be suspicious, to suspect plots and backstabbing. But his empathy convinced him to ignore it. The degree of enthusiasm Elijah had over what brand of mage parchment Genesis favored would have taken a master mind-mage to fake.
Once he had the spell sewn back into place, all that remained was to fold it as square as he could and wrap it up in brown paper — Genesis would protest anything prettier, as unwarranted finery — and set it aside for when the commander returned.
He was even more drunk the evening of Eastern Christmas, finally reeling back from the tavern nearly at dawn, than he'd been on his own. But that time, the door to his quarters had come open on its own the instant his fingers closed around the knob. Cheered by this, Mirk stumbled in, doing his best to compose himself. "Genesis?" he called out into the darkness past the threshold. "Are you back?"
"One would think that to be...evident."
Mirk elected to wave on the magelights rather than slapping about on the wall for their control rune. What he saw when their yellow glow filled the room made him give a hiccuping gasp.
"Gen! What's happened to you?"
Genesis was too distracted to comment on his shortening of his proper name. He was seated in his armchair, his attention focused on his entirely bruised and broken left hand, fiddling his index finger this way and that in an attempt to straighten it. That wasn't even the most concerning of his injuries. Genesis's neck was wrapped up from collarbones to chin in thick black bandages that had been so saturated with blood for so long that Mirk could smell it from across the room. From the sparks of pain escaping through his hissing, chaotic aura, Mirk judged that the commander had done absolutely nothing to treat either the wound on his neck or his injured hand other than the bare minimum. "A minor inconvenience," Genesis said, without looking over at him.
Mirk hastily pried off his shoes and whipped off his cloak before going to him. Something about the sight of Genesis in shambles always had a sobering effect on him — Mirk didn't feel entirely himself, but he no longer felt like he was capable of doing nothing more than stumbling to bed and collapsing. He didn't even have to concentrate too hard to keep moving in a straight line as he crossed the room to Genesis's side. "How are you always breaking your hands, messire? It doesn't seem possible..."
"Attempted disarming spells. They can be deflected, but there are...consequences."
"Tiens, let me look at it."
Genesis finally looked away from his hand, regarding Mirk with one of his odd, bared-teeth frowns. "You're drunk."
Mirk brushed aside Genesis’s concern, using a bit of magic to call his work bag over to himself from the desk across the room. He got it on the first try; that should be proof enough for Genesis that he was still capable enough, even if he was tipsy. Then he sat down on the edge of the malevolent ottoman in front of Genesis. The commander had to be badly drained. The ottoman didn't even try to dodge out from underneath him. "I need to be like this to heal most of the time anyway," Mirk said, when Genesis didn't extend his hand out to him. "Please, let me see it? You know how hard it is to break your bones again once they've settled crooked."
Sighing, Genesis finally held out his hand. Mirk took hold of his wrist and pulled his hand closer, though he didn't manage to catch himself before he could roll his eyes over Genesis's intransigence. The shadows curled weakly about Mirk’s ankles, ready to squeeze or jerk should they decide his meddling with their master became intolerable. Though they weren't strong enough that night to be much more than an annoyance. If he was honest with himself, Mirk barely even noticed them any more, even when they had the power to whip him off his feet.
Starting with the littlest finger, Mirk began to work at straightening the bones of Genesis’s hand and healing them back into place. Thankfully, the past few days at the infirmary had been easy. And healing Genesis had become so commonplace for him, so depressingly mundane, that it didn't take nearly as much of his life-giving potential as it once had.
"I do hope you are...not so intoxicated you can't keep them straight," Genesis said, crossly, as he watched Mirk work. But he didn't try to pull his hand back either.
"Don't worry about it," Mirk said. "Where have you been? You were gone almost a whole month this time. Niv said something about Comrade Commander North..."
"A certain mage on North's present contract had been causing him...undue trouble."
"Oh? We haven't been getting many men from the First at the infirmary."
"They are not living long enough to be transported back. Nor are there sufficient...remains to be returned to the basement."
Mirk swallowed hard, trying to put the thought of it out of mind. "It's a good thing you went to help him, then."
"A...tactical decision. North can only hold on for so long. And after he fails, it will be the Seventh that is sent out. Though I suspect...we will be sent regardless. We avoided being involved in the last contract spoiled by...noble idiocy. It is only a matter of time."
"Well, hopefully it makes things easier for everyone at least," Mirk said, not lifting his eyes from Genesis's hand. His middle finger was crushed, its bones jumbled and nearly poking through his skin in places. Probably because Genesis had forced himself to keep using it as if nothing was wrong until he'd been able to return. "Though I would appreciate it if you'd tell someone when you're going to be gone for a long time. I always wonder if you're trapped somewhere..."
Genesis's voice was puzzled. "You can't leave Earth. It's...irrelevant."
"Still. Methinks it wouldn't be hard to get one of the combat healers to find you and bring you back to the infirmary, even if they can't heal you."
"There's no reason for concern. If I am too injured to return, then there are...little odds of the healers returning either. It's pointless to waste them."
The brandy in his veins made it easier to push the dark implications of Genesis's statement out of his mind before they could settle and ruin the pleasant afterglow of the Easterners' Christmas party. But Mirk still didn't appreciate it. "I just worry about you, messire. I'd feel better knowing where you are, even if I can't do anything."
"I...see."
From the lengthy pause between the two words, it was clear to Mirk that Genesis didn’t.
Silence fell between them, punctuated only by the crunching of bone. Mirk worked through all four of Genesis's fingers slowly, his mind growing more focused and the world growing less golden the longer he worked at them. Genesis's hands were such fragile things, when the magic they could wield was taken out of the equation. It really shouldn't have come as a shock that he broke them so often. There was barely any flesh on them to offer them protection. Just sinewy muscle and tender cold, white skin. Genesis’s fingers were delicate, finer than the best eastern porcelain. And yet they were capable of so much force, much more than his own sturdy, stumpy warm fingers could manage.
It took a good half hour, but Mirk got all of Genesis’s fingers straightened out to his satisfaction. He held onto his hand for a minute or two in a futile attempt to warm it before releasing him. "Does everything feel right?"
Genesis lifted his hand, flexing his fingers in an arcane gesture and peering at it critically. "Fully restored."
"Good. Now, come here so I can take a look at your neck."
Though Genesis shifted his armchair closer, Mirk found that he couldn't reach the commander's neck without making him hunch over. He decided to stand instead, reassured by how easy it was to lever himself to his feet. Mirk picked at the end of the bandages around Genesis's neck, doing his best not to disturb any clots that'd formed beneath them. The bandages were wrapped tight, so tight it was a marvel Genesis could breathe. Did he even need to? The fact that Genesis drew in a deep, watery breath as soon as the tightest coils were undone made Mirk suspect that he did.
Once all the bandages were undone, Mirk could see the breath in Genesis's ruined neck as well as hear it. It had been viciously slashed open, weeping blood and serum now that the bandages had been removed, though Mirk had succeeded in not breaking any of the major clots. Upon closer inspection, Mirk realized the wound been open long enough for Genesis's body to attempt to heal it on its own. The blow had been deep enough to sever vital arteries and veins, but Genesis's body had repaired them to the point that they were no longer at risk of gushing open. It'd done it in its usual backwards, fractal, disjointed wy. That explained why his pulse was so quick — not from pain, but from Genesis's heart compensating for the extra kinks and turns it now had to force blood through to get it to his head.
Mirk sighed. "How long has this been open?"
"A day. Perhaps ten hours more."
"You could have bled to death just leaving it open like this," Mirk tisked, resisting the urge to put his hands on his hips, knowing that Genesis would balk at him touching his neck afterwards. "You should have come back as soon as this happened."
"The work wasn't finished."
"You can't do more work if you're dead, Genesis."
"It's fine. I...appreciate my limitations."
Mirk sincerely doubted that. But it was pointless to argue. Better to get the wound healed and get Genesis to bed than debate the finer points of the commander's limitations, as he so put it. He set to work, beginning with the delicate and complicated task of healing anew the parts of him that had healed themselves wrong. It was tricky undoing the damage without creating fresh holes that would have released all the spare blood Genesis's body had managed to regenerate all over them both. But Mirk made do. With Genesis's magic so weak and cooperative, even though Genesis himself was as intransigent as always, it wasn't as much of a nightmare as it'd seemed at first glance.
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He was starting to feel weak once he'd set all the internal structures straight and could turn to the task of closing the wound. That took more potential, but less concentration. By the time Genesis's neck was fully whole again, Mirk didn't have the strength left to deal with the resulting scar with his own magic. Instead, he rummaged around in his work bag for the jar of scar fading balm he'd tailored to Genesis's strange magic and body after the incident with Samael and the binding spell on Genesis's forearms. It hadn't worked on those scars, but it got the job done everywhere else.
On most patients, leaving a scar behind for later, or never attending to it all, was a given. But Genesis's magic worked on scars too, albeit with the ones on his forearms excepted. His body would turn the scar into an ugly, purple, raised and twisted thing. Genesis wasn't the sort to be bothered by being disfigured — vanity was the least of his vices — but Mirk knew that his hatred of unevenness would eventually make Genesis start picking at it, trying to make it level and straight until the wound was perpetually half-open again. It'd be better to get rid of it now, with the balm, before his body could wreak havoc on it.
Mirk scooped a generous amount of it out of the jar, rubbing his hands together to activate and warm it before setting in on Genesis's neck. He worked it into the scar that stretched from ear to ear slowly, pressing the balm into it in smooth, deliberate circles until it faded. After another fifteen minutes, Genesis's neck had returned to normal: slender, pale, long, just like the rest of him. Mirk did his best not to dwell too long on the appeal of any of it, though he couldn't keep himself from lingering a little, marveling at how soft his skin grew back, and how little difference there was between the fresh parts and the rest of it, kept conditioned by Genesis's ritual baths. Drawing in a deep breath, Mirk forced himself to take a step back, crossing his arms now that he wouldn't be touching Genesis's skin again. "There. Does everything feel right? Can you breathe well? Heart beating better?"
Genesis nodded. "You have corrected things fully. As...always."
"Thank you for the praise, messire," Mirk replied with a chuckle.
"I am being honest. Not...praising you."
"Oh, I know. But it ends up the same, non?" As Mirk turned his thoughts to the problem of forcing Genesis to go to bed instead of letting the commander use his recovery as an excuse to stay up until dawn at his desk, the memory of the blanket he'd left wrapped in brown paper atop his trunk in the bedroom came to him. "Stay there," Mirk said, as he left to go fetch it. "I have something for you."
Though Genesis seemed confused, he stayed put. The commander's confusion only deepened when Mirk returned from the bedroom and presented him with the package. He turned it over slowly in his hands, face going blank as he studied it. "What is this?"
"A Christmas present! I know you don't celebrate, but it felt a little rude to get something for everyone else but you. And I missed your birthday already. Why didn't you mention it?"
"I was not aware knowing my exact date of birth was...important to your spells."
Mirk caught himself before he could roll his eyes that time, though he wrung his hands together behind his back instead. "It's not. But it's nice to have a day where you get to feel special, isn't it?"
Genesis shook his head, his frown returning at the thought of it. "I would rather not."
He supposed he should have anticipated that sort of response. Another thing not worth arguing over. "Alors, go ahead and open it."
Rather than ripping it open, Genesis carefully undid each of the bits of tack Mirk had used to close the wrapping, unfolding the brown paper as if he expected it to explode if he handled it too roughly. Mirk thought the blanket had turned out well. It wasn't the work of a professional, and not even half as good as his mother's, but all the stitches were straight and equal. And he felt like he'd arranged the different colored fragments into a pleasing design, balanced half-curves of the two lighter colors against black. Though Genesis probably would have preferred for it to be all black, like everything else he owned, Mirk knew his vision would have gone permanently crossed from staring at nothing but black thread on black fabric for hours on end.
Just as carefully as he'd unfolded the paper, Genesis did the same with the blanket, spreading it out across the top of the ottoman Mirk had vacated. "This is magicked," he said, after studying it a moment longer.
"It's self-warming." Mirk leaned down and pressed the corner of the blanket where the activation rune was stitched, worked into the motif so that it wouldn't stand out too much. "Can you feel it?"
Genesis slid his fingertips between the folds of the blanket, his frown lightening, just a fraction. "Yes. It is...warm."
"So? What do you think?"
He considered the question with more seriousness than it deserved, choosing his words carefully. "I...own several blankets."
"But do you own a warming blanket? I know a normal blanket doesn't do much for you, since you aren't very warm to begin with. This should help more. And it's always so cold in here..."
Genesis deactivated the warming spell and folded the blanket back into a compact square, one that was much more even than what Mirk had managed. "Exactly how much gold did you spend on this?"
"Not that much. Honest! I had the warming spell on an old quilt of mine, so I just needed to take it out and have a mage renew it. And the fabric...well, I know how you are, messire. I knew you wouldn't like anything fancy. It isn't as if those are the most fashionable colors. And I did all of the sewing myself."
Genesis had moved on to folding the brown paper, after first using the dregs of his magic to get rid of the spots of tack left on it. But the last bit of Mirk's rambling gave him pause. "You...made this?"
Mirk nodded. "I did cheat a little with magic to keep the straight stitching going while I was at the infirmary, but the rest I did by hand."
"I wasn't aware you knew this skill."
"Maman would have rather taught Kae to sew, I'm sure, but Kae could never sit still long enough. I can sew...embroider...tat...knit..."
Glancing back at the blanket, Genesis ran one finger over a line of its stitching, as if testing its regularity. Mirk wasn't certain whether the pursed-lip expression he made was a sign of approval or not. "It seems...frivolous to teach such things to an individual with so many servants."
Mirk shrugged. "What else are noble ladies to do? Enchanting and needlework is really all there is. I suppose I should have been taught to fight instead, or ride better, but you know how that went. My father and his guard couldn't get even the basics into me. And I was too gentle on the horses to do well at riding, at least, that's what my tutors said. So I learned this instead. Even you have to admit, Genesis, that being able to mend your own clothes is a useful skill to have. You're always saying it's not good to be wasteful."
The commander didn't seem to know what to do with this information, or with the blanket, or even with the brown paper, which he'd fiddled into a perfect square and placed exactly atop the center of the folded blanket. "Thank you," he finally said, after a lengthy pause.
Smiling, Mirk ducked his head. He knew he'd get a thanks out of Genesis eventually — it was just a matter of him taking the time to first understand what he had to thank Mirk for. "De rien. Happy Christmas. Or, well, everyone says it's the Festival of Shades that you do celebrate, so consider it a gift for that, if it makes things easier."
"I assume this exchange implies that I...owe you some future debt."
Mirk laughed. "Pas de tout! It's a gift, Genesis. The whole point is to give something to someone to show you were thinking of them, not to get something in return."
"You would understand this tradition better than I do." Nevertheless, Genesis still looked deeply uncomfortable with the whole exchange, uneasy. It wasn't the reaction Mirk had been hoping for, but he assumed Genesis would get over his hesitation eventually. Probably once he felt how nice it was not to be freezing half to death the whole night.
"Well, I should take a bath," Mirk said, picking his work bag off the floor beside Genesis's chair and hooking it over his shoulder. "You know how it is whenever you go out to the tavern with Niv and the rest. No matter how careful you are, you always end up a mess by the end of the night."
"...vividly."
Yet he lingered beside Genesis still, his eyes drifting from the frown that'd come onto his face at the mention of the tavern down over his healed neck. "Try to sleep a little tonight, messire? I may have healed all your wounds, but your body still needs rest. You don't want to catch a cold."
"I will...endeavor to make an attempt."
It was the best Mirk could do, short of physically hauling the commander to bed and tying him down. But Mirk had a feeling Genesis would go along with things for once. As he headed off toward the bedroom to collect his towel and nightshirt, Mirk saw Genesis lean forward in his chair again to fuss with the blanket again, tugging at one of its corners. It wasn't much, really, but Mirk was accustomed to getting only the most muted displays of approval from Genesis. And even if it was only a slight acknowledgement, he had given his thanks and praise. And that meant a lot, coming from Genesis.
At least, it did to him. And it made all the pricked fingers and the crick in his neck from the hours of stitching worth it.
- - -
It was cold.
It wasn't the normal sort of cold, the lingering, cloying kind Mirk had grown accustomed to over his months spent in the City. That night's cold was bitter and hard, bone-deep and demanding. The spells on the infirmary meant to keep the heat in hadn't done much to ward it off all evening. And what little comfort he'd found hidden in its depths, shut up in a workroom far from any outside windows or doors until long after when he was supposed to have left, had been ripped away the moment he was down the front steps. By the time he'd made it back to the low-born officers' dormitory, Mirk's hands and feet had gone numb.
How could it be so terribly, impossibly cold, only two weeks after the new year? Mirk knew the logical explanation for it: the City's chaotic magic warped the weather that passed over it, making both hot and cold snaps and dampness in every form worse than it was beyond its walls. But that didn't make it feel right. Or fair. Or bearable.
All those things had been in short supply around the City for the past week. Genesis's efforts to help the men of the First hadn't been in vain, but they hadn't exactly fixed anything either: before he'd locked himself in the workroom, Mirk had spent the whole afternoon up to his elbows in innards, filled to the brim with blockers and alcohol that didn't really help take the edge off. Mirk tried to convince himself that it was better than before. Men were making it back, even if half of them still died on the table. But that didn't change the fact that all he saw when he closed his eyes was blood and ripped flesh and Danu releasing another man's soul to eternity, shaking her head.
His patients' pain lingered in his mind even once he’d collapsed into bed, working at him steadily, leaving him staring into the pitch blackness of the bedroom rather than drifting off to sleep. With the cold on top of all that, Mirk didn't know how he could be expected to be up and ready to help with the aftermath of yesterday's wounded at dawn. Mirk had already tried all the tricks he knew to get to sleep. He'd piled on all the spare quilts from his trunk, had an extra nip of brandy, recited a few passes of his mother's rosary. None of it helped. Which meant he was still freezing and wide awake when Genesis finally appeared, at some ungodly hour of the morning, to try to get some sleep as well.
Rather than turning over to greet him, Mirk elected to stay still under his pile of blankets, listening. There wasn't much to hear. He'd only noticed that Genesis had returned in the first place due to the feel of his magic playing at the edges of his senses, the chaos's cold static practically feeling warm in comparison to the chill in the bedroom. There was the muted sound of the commander double-checking the lock on the door. Then there was nothing but absolute silence and stillness, until he felt the other side of the bed give slightly under Genesis's weight.
Part of Mirk wanted to turn then, to ask Genesis where he'd been and if the First's contract was as bad as it seemed from the infirmary. But he'd decided against it. If Genesis had wanted to talk, he would have. Mirk had no doubt that Genesis knew he was still awake, still able to hear the cadence of his breathing and the tempo of his heartbeat despite being mummified in quilts.
More stillness. More silence. Mirk squeezed his eyes shut tight against the dark. Though he tried to quiet his mind, Mirk still found himself wondering. Did his being awake keep Genesis from falling asleep? Despite having shared a bed with him for weeks now, he'd never actually seen Genesis sleep. The commander's ritual was to come to bed early in the morning and leave a scant few hours later, before Mirk woke up. If he'd been the kind of person who woke up in the middle of the night, Mirk supposed, he might have glimpsed it once or twice. But he'd always been a solid sleeper. Once he fell asleep, that was.
Which still wasn't happening. Lifting his hands to his mouth, Mirk blew on them as quietly as he could in an attempt to warm them. It did nothing. The room was so cold that Mirk had no doubt he'd have been able to see his breath hanging in the air, had it not been so impossibly dark. Miserably, Mirk double-checked to make sure there weren't any gaps in his armor of blankets, then clasped a pillow over his head in frustration. And in search of every bit of spare heat he could conserve.
"...Mirk."
He startled at the sound of Genesis's voice, uncurling a little, but unwilling to throw back the blankets and flop over to look at him. Not that Genesis needed his face to be bared to the cold to be able to hear him. "Euh...yes?"
"You're shaking."
Mirk hadn't noticed it. Curious, Mirk tapped the magelight around his wrist and held a hand out in front of his face to check, wondering if it was something anyone could perceive, or if it was yet another trick of Genesis's inhuman senses. His hand wavered in front of his nose, no matter how hard he tried to keep it still. Sighing, he tapped the magelight off, clutching his pillow to his chest instead, hugging himself. "I'm sorry, messire. It's just so cold..."
"It is...worse than usual."
If Genesis was willing to admit it, then it had to be truly awful. "I suppose I can go somewhere, if it's bothering you. Methinks I'm not going to fall asleep here anyway, I've been trying for hours. The infirmary is at least a little warmer...and there's the spare cots in the anatomical theater..."
Genesis made a hissing noise through his teeth after a long pause, a frustrated approximation of a sigh. "...come here."
That was enough to get Mirk to flip over and throw the blankets off his face. He tapped his magelight on again; he needed to be able to see Genesis's face to tell what he meant. Despite the cold, Genesis was positioned exactly the same way he always was when he attempted to sleep, his blanket folded neatly across the midpoint of his chest, leaving both his arms and his face exposed. Mirk didn't know how he could stand it. "Euh...pardon?"
Genesis glanced in his direction without moving his head. He'd illuminated his magelight for nothing. The commander had that forcibly blank expression on his face again, the one that could mean dozens of things, depending on the context. But, for once, Genesis elected to explain himself rather than simply continue to stare at him. "Though you meant well with this blanket, there are...limitations on its effectiveness. However, I believe it may be of some use in this situation were it...employed by someone who is...generally warmer than I am."
Mirk propped himself up on one elbow, shaking his head. "No, you keep it. I'll fall asleep eventually. You'd freeze to death without it."
Another strange, drawn-out hissing noise. "That is not what I am...proposing."
"Hmm?"
His blank expression unwavering, Genesis lifted the edge of the blanket nearest Mirk. "Come...here."
Realization washed over Mirk in a wave of heat that was more imagined than real. Could a person get so cold that they lost the ability to red in the face? He hoped so. "Ah...are you sure?"
"Yes."
Still, Mirk hesitated. There were a few ways he could approach things. He could stay cocooned in his stack of blankets, but draw over closer to Genesis. That defeated the whole purpose, though. None of his warmth would reach Genesis, and none of the magicked warmth of the blanket would get through to him. And the self-warming blanket was too narrow for the arrangement to work. Mirk had purposefully made the blanket suited for one person rather than a whole bed, both to make the sewing go faster and because of the dark voice murmuring in the back of his head the whole while he was making it about how nice it'd be to curl up next to Genesis underneath it.
Apparently, his efforts at avoiding it had been for naught. Making the blanket smaller only meant that he'd have to practically lie on top of Genesis for them both to fit underneath it. Mirk reluctantly peeled back all his blankets and slid across the wide gap between them.
"How do you...?"
Genesis was no longer looking his way, staring up at the ceiling instead. "However is most practical."
The sensible thing to do, Mirk knew, was to press close against his side, pull up all of the blankets, and be done with it. Nevertheless, he spent a good ten minutes fussing with things, trying to get his head in order along with the quilts. He shook them out one by one, layering them on top of the self-warming blanket to help keep in the heat, then settled in beside Genesis. At first, Mirk tried to keep some space between them. But it left his whole back hanging out from underneath the stack of quilts, letting in such a draft that his teeth soon began to chatter. Ready to pull back at the first sign of resistance, Mirk turned onto his side facing the commander and tried rearranging the blankets again.
He had to plaster himself against Genesis's side to tuck them both in fully. All the while, Genesis didn't stir. But there wasn't any tenseness in his body either, none of the rigidity that usually seized him whenever someone touched him with more than just their hands. There was still something there, though, something slightly off. Mirk pressed the back of one hand to Genesis's chest. He was also shivering, albeit to a degree that wasn't so easy to see or hear.
Mirk sighed. "You're freezing, messire."
"...it's cold."
"Here," Mirk said, tugging on the arm that Genesis had slid out from underneath the pile of blankets, despite all of Mirk's rearranging. "Cover up all the way. No one's going to come for you in the middle of the night, methinks. Even if someone did, you wouldn't have to get up to deal with them anyway."
Genesis pulled his arm under the blankets, reluctantly. As for the other one, Mirk was practically laying on top of it. It couldn't be comfortable, but Mirk decided to let Genesis do as he wanted with it, as long as it stayed tucked in. At least it'd be warm underneath him, even if his weight pressing down on it put it to sleep.
Once that was sorted, Mirk scooted up against Genesis's side, resting his head on that one particular spot on his shoulder, the one that he'd found the first time they'd shared a bed and that he thought of often with mingled wistfulness and regret. The only spot on Genesis's bony frame that was comfortable enough to sleep on, short of rolling on top of him and cushioning his head with own folded arms against Genesis's chest. Mirk dismissed the thought instantly. Things were already bad enough as they were.
Extinguishing his magelight, Mirk pulled all the blankets up over his head, both hiding himself from view and covering Genesis all the way to his chin. "It'd be warmer if you covered your face too, but methinks that'd be a bit much for you..."
"Correct," came Genesis's muffled, flat reply from beyond the barrier of the blankets.
Mirk knew what he had to do. It was what he'd wanted to do — what he'd longed to do — ever since he'd started sharing a bed with Genesis again. It was only practical, he reminded himself. It was a simple matter of keeping warm, and nothing more. Mirk wrapped one arm around Genesis's narrow frame and took hold of his hand. It was like ice. "You're still so cold," Mirk murmured.
"It's like this every winter."
"That's a little sad..."
Genesis had nothing to say in response. But after a moment, he shifted the arm pinned underneath Mirk, sliding it out and wrapping it around him in turn. It was just more comfortable like that, Mirk insisted to himself. No more, no less. There was no good in seeing anything more in it than practicality, in constructing elaborate fantasies that had no resonance with reality, in trying to see something more in it beyond two friends trying to keep warm on a brutally cold night.
Mirk could feel the chill of Genesis's hand on his back through his nightshirt. The words were out of his mouth before he could think better of them. He was too tired, both physically and mentally, to resist any longer. "You can put your other hand where it's warmer if it'd help you get to sleep. I don't mind."
It took Genesis some time to process this, to puzzle out what Mirk meant by it. He wasn't even certain what he meant by it. Slowly, Genesis slid his hand up his back. A moment later, Mirk felt thin, cold fingers slip under his hair, curling around the back of his neck. An involuntary shiver raced through Mirk. Not from the cold, but from the implication of it.
That hand, so often broken and bloodied and wielding magic that could rip men limb from limb, was curled so lightly around his neck that Mirk wouldn't have even felt it, had Genesis not been so cold. There wasn't a single ounce of strength in his hand then, the slightest hint of a threat. Or of possession. Instead, it only felt...protective. Safe.
Mirk felt like it would have been enough to undo him, if only he'd had the energy left for it.
He let out a deep sigh, closing his eyes and allowing his forehead to rest against the curve of Genesis's neck. "Do you feel better now?"
"...marginally."
"Then try to sleep. At least a little."
"I will...make an attempt."
It was as if some switch had been flipped in Mirk’s mind. All the hours he'd spent struggling to sleep, all the pain still lingering in his mind, all of it drained out of him easily as water through netting. It wasn't terribly warm under the blankets, even with both of them wrapped up in them. Genesis's body was still cold beside him, limp and unnaturally still. But it was enough. Genesis was enough. The cold could do nothing to Mirk's body, not when his heart suddenly felt so warm and full. "Thank you," Mirk whispered, not expecting a response.
But it came nevertheless. "It is...no trouble."
In less than a minute, Mirk was asleep, lulled into darkness by the feel of Genesis's slow, immaculately even pulse against his forehead. And the touch of his hand around his neck.