It's Christmas night, and they meet again after the events of Hear the greater call.
Íþróttaálfurinn's past makes it back to the surface, Glanni has his own old and new problems to deal with, and they both are confronted with everything they'd rather avoid.
In which Íþróttaálfurinn tries his best to help, because of course he does, and Glanni (to everyone's surprise but especially his own) find himself helping right back.
(Or also: an one-night stand with a slowburn pace, four different heart-to-hearts, and no sex. Because why not.)
(TW: Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault (not between the two of them), Aftermath of Violence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Discussion of Assault.)
The tall, blurry human shape advances towards him.
The falling snow whirls soft around Glæpur's long, lean figure, as the whole of winter walks with him: the sweep of wind and blizzards, the air new and crisp, the warmth of sleeping seeds.
Haloed in the light of a streetlamp, the man's contours shine and glimmer, a woodland apparition in the silent town square. The icy wind makes shards of the tears in Íþróttaálfurinn's eyes, and if the elf felt brave enough to even try, he would struggle to meet his nemesis' gaze.
It is no mistake, nor chance that finds them there, Íþróttaálfurinn knows. Not too fast, not a march or a chase, but Glæpur is coming to him. It is a driven, unavoidable hunt.
What a hunter this one makes, with his mouth already red, with his strange gleaming eyes. As he draws closer, Íþróttaálfurinn's elven ears start to pick up the crunch of his thick-soled boots on the powdery snow, fracturing the stillness of the rarefied, snow-bright air. Step by step, louder and sharper, and isn't it sweet irony, that he be the one pursued this time?
But he, too, wasn't hiding, wasn't running. Even if he tried, he couldn't conceal the aching relief of finally being found.
Trails too easy to follow have always been nothing but invitations, after all. This is their language, and they could build a literature if they so pleased. Limericks of gesture, poems of duels and dancing glances. Novels of long, breathing stretches of silence, leaden in their emptiness.
It is a known fact that elves urge to move. Thrumming with energy in their every waking hour, they have trouble staying still. But now, he watches the man come towards him, and it all crystalizes in this moment, sharp and crisp and inexorable, in the fear and guilt that mount in his gut with every steadfast step, rooting Íþróttaálfurinn where he sits, on this damp wooden bench. He cannot move, cannot run. He doesn't want to run.
He knows he has been unfair. He knows he has done him wrong, that this night―Christmas night―deserved better. That Glæpur himself deserved better. And he can't help but wonder if the man has come to take his revenge, to repay him with the same coin. Because he would let him. He would absolutely let him.
Across the town square, the clock tower strikes eleven and thirty. Glæpur waits for the peal to quiet, and reality trickles into place as the many facets of him reunite into one, splintered mirror coming whole. The air grows still again.
The apparition opens his red grinning mouth, and speaks.
"What are you doing out here," Glæpur says, voice carried in the icy wind that cuts the damp eye, "all alone like a piece of shit?"
Basically the Hear the greater call spin-off nobody asked for but I felt compelled to write anyway.
Set during Jól í Latabæ.
Title from Eliza Rickman's Coming Up Roses