After that, it sort of became a regular thing for the two of them. Niles couldn't be sure exactly what Azama thought about him, because all his invitations to hang out were phrased like insults – 'you probably have nothing better to do, so meet me at The Library at 7', 'you're so uncultured. Come to this art exhibition with me' – but then he would do things like enthusiastically lecture Niles about the fraught academic debates over the meanings of Cyrkensian realist art whilst also mocking art historians for getting so worked up over a bunch of paintings.
Alright, so there was a pretty good chance he didn't hate Niles, but he still wasn't quite sure if that made them friends, if this was how Azama flirted, or if he regarded Niles as some kind of uneducated sloth that he felt compelled to civilise.
A strange thing that Niles noticed was that Azama never talked about when he was a doctor. He referred to it in his stand up routines, but in casual conversation made only vague references to 'when I was at university' or 'before I went into stand up'. Niles tried inviting him to some museum exhibit on 'Medicine Through the Ages' as an experiment, but Azama just said it sounded boring and suggested something else. The weird thing was, Niles's normally reliable gossip networks didn't know of anything embarrassing or salacious. Azama had just quit one day about a few months after Siegbert recovered.
He had the perfect opportunity to inquire further when Leo rang him up and told him that Niles was becoming too hard to find. Niles was excessively tempted to ask Leo what he knew about Azama leaving medicine, but then he realised that if he was at the point of asking Leo if he knew anything about it, this curiosity had become both weird and invasive. Maybe Azama would eventually say something. Maybe Niles, who had been very tempted to punch the last person to ask about his mysterious backstory, was a little hypocritical. Whatever.
It had been a while since Niles and Leo met up just for fun, so Niles didn't even put up much resistance when Leo gave him a date and time and told him he'd already made reservations at an 'authentic' Hoshidan restaurant. Hinoka, Niles was told, had already visited and deemed it 'pretty tolerable'. Since she was incapable of true joy, he took this to mean that dinner would be quite nice.
The first thing Leo asked after the obligatory greetings was, "Are you and Azama dating?"
Niles gave him a sour look. Could he not just go one night without thinking about bloody Azama?
"So, no." Leo handed him a menu in a business-like fashion. "I was just asking. You met a month ago and you've been spending a lot of time together. I've barely seen you!"
"If you've been feeling neglected, you could've just said so," Niles retorted.
Leo looked over the top of his menu with renewed interest. "Wait, are you… trying to date him?"
He grimaced. This was the problem with knowing Leo so well – he could see right through him. "I don't know," he admitted. "I mean, I don't know if he's interested."
It wasn't out and out saying that he was interested, but it was pretty close. You didn't have to be as clever as Leo to see right through that one. "Ooh, I see." Leo smiled and went back to looking at the menu. "Well, make sure you tell me before Hinoka, okay?"
"You've been single for three years, you have no right to look so smug."
"Out of choice," Leo said. "Which you should know, despite the fact you keep helpfully pointing me in the direction of any woman who so much as looks at me twice."
"There were a few guys, too, but I didn't think you'd be interested."
Leo laughed. "Alright, fine, let's talk about something else. How has that panel show been? You have the last one next week, right?"
"They were better than I expected, considering the producer had to practically pay you a bribe."
"Good."
Niles paused. Then he sighed. "Did you sign me up for series two without asking me first?"
"Only one appearance. It's taken off and she doesn't have to shell out for your exorbitant fees anymore."
"You mean your fees?"
He smiled sweetly. "I even managed to get you and Azama on the same episode."
"Leo."
"I'm kidding! The producer arranged that herself because she enjoyed the way you played off each other. She just wanted to run it by me in case you two secretly hated one another or something."
Niles narrowed his eyes, but he couldn't actually think of anything to complain about, so he just mumbled, "A lot can happen in a year, you know."
Leo shook his head. Probably because he knew Niles was only doing it to be contrary.
For the last episode of the panel show, Azama was sat next to Niles. This wasn't quite as much fun as it seemed at first, because he couldn't watch Azama react to things without being really obvious.
The regulars were a bit more into it now and everything seemed to go more smoothly. Orochi, who was the alleged host, actually got to get off some jokes of her own instead of managing everyone.
"Coming out next week is Revelation, a film about the legendary Silent Dragon, in which the protagonist possesses a necklace which gives her singing tremendous power. So my question is, what special skills do the panel possess that would help them if they were in a similar epic movie?"
"Peacefully accepting the inevitability of my own death," Azama said.
Niles snorted. "I wouldn't call you peaceful, you're always going on about it."
He thought it was only an offhand comment but for some reason everyone collapsed in fits of laughter. Even Azama couldn't keep a straight face, and he really should've been used to Niles by now. The corners of his eyes crinkled as a broad grin split his face.
Wow, Niles thought, no wonder Leo noticed.
Azama didn't lose interest in him once filming was over, which was something Niles had worried about. There hadn't been much rationality behind this fear, which was a sign Niles had it bad. How embarrassing.
"What do you do when you're not bothering me, anyway? Take me with you sometime," Azama said. "We'll pretend you already made the sex joke, skip to the real answer."
"You're no fun." Niles thought for a moment. "Let's see, where would I take Azama on a date? …Maybe archery?"
"Is this a secret plan to kill Azama? You only have one eye, you cretin."
"I'll have you know I'm actually a competent archer. But fine, if you're scared, we can think of something else."
He noted that Azama had yet to object to Niles describing it as a 'date', so he didn't want to suggest anything Azama would find truly objectionable.
"Eh, let's just go to dinner," Niles said.
"How uncreative," Azama said. "My dates were at least interesting."
Once again, Niles couldn't tell if he was joking or flirting. He was correct, at least; it was a pretty boring idea. Ugh. He'd gotten too complacent about Azama asking him out. He should've been thinking about ideas already.
Although… there was what Azama had said at the charity thing about stargazing – it was risky, though, because if Azama wasn't flirting, it would probably come off way too strong.
But on the plus side, at least Niles wouldn't have to keep asking the god damn 'flirt or joke?' question.
"Actually… keep your weekend free."
"An entire weekend?" Azama asked, incredulous. "A moment ago it was just one dinner."
"Think of it as an after-dinner treat." Niles blew him a kiss. "I'll text you when and where to meet me."
"This either got more interesting or you have been hiding your serial killer habits very well." After a moment, Azama smiled. "I'm game. See you at the weekend."
"…The serial killer comment was a joke, but now I'm starting to get slightly concerned," Azama said.
"Nearly there," Niles replied in a sing-song voice. "Ta-da!"
Azama looked around carefully. "You're taking me… camping."
"Only out of necessity," Niles said. "See, I was thinking to myself, 'what does Azama love to do most?' – the answer is, of course, 'to explain things to Niles'." He gestured at the night sky, which they were far enough out of the city to actually see properly. He had to admit, it did look beautiful. "So… here you go. I don't think you've had a chance to cover astronomy yet."
Azama didn't reply immediately. He was looking up at the stars with a strange expression on his face. "You brought me stargazing," he said in a low voice.
"Uh… yeah," Niles said, feeling suddenly awkward. Shit, maybe he should've given Azama a chance to refuse before they trekked all the way out here.
But after a moment, Azama turned to look at him. He was smiling – not in his usual way, sharp or pointed, but… softly, his eyes crinkling. He wasn't beautiful, but Niles still could've watched him like that for a long time.
"Thanks," Azama said eventually, causing Niles to realise he had been openly staring at him. And Azama hadn't objected.
He wondered if Azama had been serious when he called the outings he dragged Niles on 'dates'. If so, Niles intended to have words with him about how terrible he was at flirting. What was Niles supposed to make out of that Cyrkensian realism mess—
His train of thought was derailed when Azama put a finger to Niles's lips. He blinked at it. Azama laughed. "Stop thinking so hard."
"You're one to talk," Niles said, but the put the thoughts aside. It didn't matter that much in the end anyway.
Instead, he enjoyed the feel of Azama sitting close against him, letting the sound of his voice wash over him. There was a kind of honest excitement about him which Niles hadn't seen before. Azama seemed to know a story behind every constellation, and some of them he even deigned to describe as 'narratively compelling nonsense', which was uplifting stuff by Azama's usual standards.
"People have told stories about the stars for centuries," Azama said. "They feature prominently in a lot of different mythologies and religions. People have always ascribed significance to them. And yet, they're ultimately just balls of burning gas so far away from us that it would take us years to notice if they went out."
"And yet," Niles said, "they're still nice to look at."
Azama laughed at that, even though he hadn't even been trying to be funny. Well, not that funny. "I suppose that's the main thing, in the end."
Only Azama could get so worked up about something he found to be totally meaningless. "You're so weird," Niles said fondly.
It wasn't a huge, dramatic change or anything. Azama became more touchy-feely. He would grab Niles to steer him in a crowd or whisper with his mouth right next to his ear. Instead of going out quite so much, they would often end up at Azama's place to watch a film, or just talk. After Niles stayed over for the first time, mainly by accident because he missed the last bus, the next time he visited he found there was a spare toothbrush. He'd never asked and Azama never mentioned it. Niles shook his head. You couldn't just say it was fine, could you?
Not all of Azama's flippant remarks were for show. Some of them were a mask. And it seemed he'd gotten so into the habit of making flippant remarks, he found it difficult to make serious ones. Once, Niles caught Azama watching him with a soft expression. "You are—" he began to say, but the words seemed to get stuck in his throat, and he ended up trailing off awkwardly.
"Are you thinking too much again?" Niles said. He didn't want Azama to dwell on it. That's how you ended up getting complexes.
Instead, he beckoned, and Azama smiled and came to sit with him.
"You're never going to let that go, are you?" he said.
Azama didn't have a mask, not really. He was normally very centred, but like a pendulum, if something went wrong with him, it took a while for him to settle.
He also seemed to want to go slow, since it had taken him weeks before he'd even mentioned that he was flirting with Niles.
Whatever. Since Leo was probably going to gloat something awful, Niles wasn't in any rush.
Despite saying that, after another week of Azama seeming on the verge of saying something with real emotion and backing down at the last moment, Niles began to worry that he was the well-adjusted one in the this relationship.
It was tempting to give Azama some kind of push, but there was a risk it would be too much and would just drive him further away. So Niles had to be content with Azama revealing more of himself inch by inch.
After a while, he began to be less unreadable. He was extra vicious and cutting when he'd had a bad day, but turning on old favourites – books, films, shows – for gentle mockery meant he was in a cheerful mood. He teased Niles when he was nervous or tense, but spent more time talking to him when Azama was relaxed. Sometimes it bordered on interrogation.
Niles was startled the first time Azama talked about having been a doctor. It wasn't anything ground-breaking at first, just that he and a few of his colleagues used to hate-watch medical dramas and compete over who could spot the most errors. But eventually the stories got more revealing. Patients he remembered well, for good or bad. Once, Azama actually read aloud an email he'd gotten from a former patient, one who still kept in touch with him. He went around smiling for the rest of the day, even though the main part of his answer had been correcting the guy's grammar. (Niles assumed that anyone who'd known Azama for several years had gotten used to this sort of thing.)
The one thing he never talked about was why he left medicine. Niles found this even more baffling, since it was clear to him by now that Azama had actually enjoyed being a doctor. But since there were things that Niles still wouldn't talk about either, he knew better than to pry.
After a few months it became comfortable. This seemed a strange thing to think about any relationship with Azama, who was constantly sniping and poking at him, but if Niles wasn't a little in love with the banter he would've been long gone by now. He found it made sense to start casually mentioning that he had a new boyfriend. Azama wrinkled his nose and objected to the term 'boyfriend', but then added, "You do what you must, I suppose," when Niles asked how else he wanted to describe their relationship – so he must have been invested in them together, even if he had a hard time showing it sometimes.
Niles complained about this to Leo to cover for the horrifying fact that – whisper it – every moment spent with Azama was such a pleasure that he didn't mind taking things slow.
Leo saw right through this, of course, and smiled warmly. "There's no accounting for taste, but… I'm glad you're happy, Niles."
The first sign that something was wrong was the fact that Azama was drinking. He almost never drank casually at home, and it was whiskey, strong, which meant he wanted to be drunk - if he wasn't already, Niles thought, looking at the bottle. It was three quarters full, and Azama was not a habitual drinker.
The other thing that worried Niles was that Azama wasn't doing anything – just scowling and toying with his glass.
He didn't seem upset to see Niles, though. "Good, you're here." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. "Grab a glass and start drinking."
"...Is there an occasion?"
Azama's expression grew dark, but he didn't answer. Oh boy. Like Niles thought on the day they met - he was totally a morose drunk. Getting him out of his moods was like pulling teeth.
Still, it was good whiskey. Might as well make an attempt if he got a few glasses out of it.
He didn't have much time to enjoy his drink, because nearly as soon as he sat down, Azama started.
"Hinoka wants me to talk to Siegbert about his options." Azama pulled face.
Well, he didn't want to, obviously, but Niles failed to see why. "I mean, he's just a kid. He's not making any important choices yet, but it'll keep him happy."
Azama turned away, but not before Niles caught a glimpse of the sneer on his face. "Sure. Spend more of my time on the child who ruined my career. Why not?"
Ruined? Niles stared at him. "Are you serious right now?"
"What makes you think I'm not?" Azama threw back his drink and grimaced. "If he'd just died when he was supposed to—"
"Azama," Niles said, appalled. "He was like, five."
"So? Cancer doesn't care how old you are, if you're deserving, if you have a family. With how advanced his case was, he should have died. If he'd been an adult, I would've advised him to talk about palliative care options, maintaining quality of life for the last year or so."
Niles was silent but tense, sitting rigidly in the chair. Azama didn't notice. He sank into another chair with a sullen expression.
"Hinoka and Xander wouldn't allow it, of course. Every treatment we could give him, they wanted it. They had trouble finding a donor."
He remembered that. Vaguely, because he hadn't been sure how much use he could be to Leo at such a difficult time, and had stayed away. As Xander and Hinoka had three siblings apiece, you'd think finding a donor would be easy—but none of them were a match. Niles remembered Leo crying when he heard the news. There was no one on the registry. He'd never seen Leo fall apart like that before or since. Gods only knew how bad it had been for Hinoka and Xander.
"But Siegbert lived. It was a 'miracle'." Azama made the word sound foul.
"For gods' sake, can't you just be fucking happy for once?"
"Why should I?" he said. He looked petulant. Like a child. "It was nice for Siegbert and his family. But I totally lost it."
"Azama—"
He held up a hand for silence, looking Niles dead in the eye. "My next patient, she was nearly as badly off. Mother of three kids, dad not in the picture. You know how it is. With palliative care she might've had a few more years, been able to be active, make arrangement for after she died."
Niles had a suspicion he knew how this story would turn out. "But Siegbert didn't die."
"Right." Azama smiled at him again. It was impossible to tell if he was pleased or angry. "So I suggested treatments. Radiotherapy. Chemo. A few other drugs on the side. And you know what?" He gripped the glass in his hand very tightly, as though he wanted to smash it. "It didn't make a blind bit of difference and she spent most of a year with chronic fatigue. She could barely hug them, let alone play with them." He closed his eyes. "And then that was it. She died and all I'd done was given her an unhappier end—"
He stopped and opened an eye when he felt Niles's hands on his shoulders. He seemed mildly surprised. Niles was kind of surprised with himself.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but that's still not Siegbert's fault."
Azama swallowed. "It's not," he agreed, but it took him a moment to say it. He wouldn't meet Niles's eyes anymore. "But after that – I couldn't do it anymore. The next patient asked what he should do and I just froze. I couldn't answer. I had no control at all. I couldn't spend the rest of my career just… guessing what the whims of the universe would be."
"You're feeling sorry for yourself because you lost your nerve?"
"Because that was all I had!" Azama snarled suddenly. Niles jerked back, taking his hands away and reflexively curling them into fists. "I spent half my life learning to be a doctor, and I was good at it. I was helping people; it was what I was supposed to do. And then Siegbert…" He was so worked up that he couldn't finish. "Do you blame me for feeling bitter?"
"Yes," Niles said thickly. "You sound pathetic."
Azama flinched and gritted his teeth. "I don't know why I expected you to sympathise. You were in a fucking gang or something."
He seemed to know it had been the wrong thing to say when he looked at Niles's face.
Gangs, gangs, why did everyone always assume Niles had been in a fucking gang? Maybe because people always thought of gangs as somehow too far gone for sympathy. They didn't like to think about how those gangs recruit if they're so fucking evil. "Oh no, a gang would've been too ambitious for us." Niles downed the remained of his drink, slamming it down on the table. Azama didn't quite flinch, but he tensed in his chair. "We were more like… trailer trash with a shared burglary hobby." Except they'd always meant the world to Niles. They'd grown up together, they were inseparable, they were family. Or so Niles had thought. "Close, though; there was a gang involved. They seemed to think we were muscling in on their territory. They didn't like that."
Niles leaned over Azama until their faces were inches away from each other. Azama finally began to look uneasy. His gaze flickered to Niles's glass eye.
"Oh, yeah, do you want to know how I lost this eye? Well, my very dear friends got scared by the gang's threats, so they set me up as their leader, offered me up like some kind of apology. And the leader, well, he said he didn't like the way I was looking at him, so he—" The echoes of it played again in his head. Pinned, trapped, a flash of steel. Most of the scars were from when he'd taunted Niles first, laughing at his fear. It was difficult to know what had really happened, since in his memory he just screamed; a strange, inhuman noise that he only remembered hearing rather than making.
Azama touched Niles's cheek beneath his glass eye. "Don't," he said softly.
Niles recoiled. He hated the look on his face – the fucking concern. Yeah, he was concerned now, now that Niles counted. Now that he was a person and not some scumbag kid with a record. If someone had been 'concerned' about little ol' orphan Niles, maybe it would never have happened in the first place.
"Shut up," Niles said. "You asked, didn't you? I could tell you what it feels like to feel something pour down your face and not know if it's blood or tears or—"
Azama stood up and kissed him.
Niles kissed him back even though he was still angry. No, because he was angry, because he was angry he still even felt like this and angry that he gave a fuck what Azama thought at all—
He found himself pressed against the wall, Azama's hand fisted in his hair, and then they broke apart breathlessly.
It was quiet for a moment. A part of Niles was still furious. Another part of him wanting to pull Azama to the bed and not come up for air for hours. But he knew that was only because he wanted to feel something else.
"I—I'm sorry."
Niles relaxed his grip on Azama's hips but didn't say anything.
"I'm a doctor, you know," Azama said. "It's not—I do want to help. That's what I do. What I was good at. I don't just say all this shit for fun, I want people to think, but I—" He swallowed Niles could feel his breath against his lips. "When it comes to the important things, I don't know what to say."
"To Siegbert?" Niles said, leadingly.
Azama sucked in a breath. He met Niles's eye. "Not just Siegbert."
"And this is—what?"
"I was angry. I shouldn't have said it like that. What I was trying to say was—you're right. It's stupid and it's selfish and compared to you it's nothing, but I—whenever I look at him I see everything I've lost. I knew you'd see right through me, but…" He winced. "It all sounded better in my head."
"It's not… nothing," Niles made himself say. It still felt that way, sometimes, that if it wasn't grinding poverty and betrayal and traumatic injuries, it wasn't bad enough to matter. But he'd been learning to ease the chip off his shoulder, that suffering wasn't a competition. Niles had never had a calling; he was in comedy because he'd thought he'd be good at it and he could make serious money. He couldn't know what it was like, to have something vital about your identity taken away. "I don't know why you wanted to tell me. I'm still that street trash deep down."
Azama scowled at him. "Don't talk like that. You're important to me, so..." He grimaced. "I couldn't not tell you."
And suddenly, all of Niles's anger left. He just felt tired. He laughed against Azama's lips and kissed him softly. "Good," he said. "You could've looked a little less like it was physically painful to admit, though."
The hand in Niles's hair fell to his neck, and Azama smiled. "I'm charming that way."
"Regretfully, I have to admit that you are."
Once Azama had resolved the issue with Hinoka and agreed to talk to Siegbert, Hinoka bullied him into dragging Niles with him to a family dinner at her house, and then bullied Niles into agreeing to come. Almost joyless she might be, but she was very good at bulldozing past objections. Niles could see how she'd managed to be friends with Azama for so long.
Azama might've admitted that he was wrong, it didn't make the bruising to his ego any easier. Or the part where he actually promised to encourage Siegbert's medical research aspirations. ("Nothing serious, though," Azama had said. "Life is far too short to talk to an eight year old about applying to med school.")
Niles couldn't help grinning when Hinoka greeted Azama at the door with a slightly smug smile. Honestly, he thought her gloating at getting her own way was very restrained, but it still made Azama pout.
"Hello to you as well, Niles," she added. Perfunctory, but he wouldn't have it any other way. "Azama, you know where everyone is, I've got to help Xander in the kitchen."
"Don't help him too much, I want to live!" Azama shouted at her retreating back. He sighed when she was out of sight.
Niles snorted.
"Nice to see you're enjoying my suffering," Azama hissed, as he dragged them through the massive house to the lounge. "Why do I stay with you again?"
There was no heat behind it, so Niles just laughed and kissed him. "Oh, I can think of a few reasons."
"Yes, you're always thinking of 'a few reasons'."
"Are you complaining?"
"I didn't say that."
When they found the door to the lounge, Siegbert immediately spotted them then and brightened. Niles regretfully tucked away his decidedly not-child-friendly response for later. He settled for waving to Leo before the kid could demand their attention.
Siegbert was an awkward little thing, both gangly and chubby-cheeked at the same time. He grinned at Azama and said, "Hi, Uncle Niles."
"Uncle?" That was an unexpected upgrade.
"You're Uncle Azama's boyfriend, so you get to be an Uncle too," Siegbert replied. There was only a very slight undertone of 'duh'.
Niles saw Azama pull a face out of the corner of his eye, but it was hard to argue with Siegbert's logic. "Uh… well, cool, but I just prefer Niles."
Siegbert blinked. "Oh. Okay!" Hinoka suddenly shouted something incomprehensible from the kitchen, but Siegbert seemed to understand, because he looked over his shoulder and said, "Uncle Azama, read a book with me later, okay?" and ran off.
"I notice he knows better than to give you a chance to refuse." Niles nudged Azama, who still had a sour look on his face. "You're going to have to get used to people calling me 'your boyfriend' at some point, you know."
"It's such a childish word!" Azama sighed. "But I suppose you're right, people will say what they like. Especially after we start living together."
Niles stopped. He turned to give Azama his full attention. "Are you… asking me to move in with you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Azama said, smirking. "There's no way all your junk will fit into my apartment. We'll have to get a new place."
Niles was grinning so hard his cheeks ached. He felt very light all of a sudden, almost giddy. "You're right. What was I thinking?"
"If only you'd say that more often!" Azama put an arm around his waist and pulled him closer. His smirk had softened into a true smile. "I'm glad you're here, Niles."
I'm glad we met.
"Yeah," Niles said, "me too."
A/N: This was originally inspired by a prompt from someone on r/fireemblem. I added the stand up comedy elements all by myself, because I am full of self-loathing, apparently. I have been really nervous about posting this and sitting on it for far too long, so I would really love to know any thoughts you have. (And please tell me if you laughed at anything I worked so hard on those jokes.)