A/N: In which Ral brags, Jace shows Ral some interesting artifacts, and there are many snuggles.

Chapter Fourteen

Ral whistled as he headed for the coffee pot in the large Nivix break room. His head was buzzing with excitement, images and equations flashing in front of his eyes. He nearly ran over Chamberlain Maree without seeing her, dodged past her, poured himself a cup of coffee, and then turned back as he realized she would probably be interested as well. Besides, Ral needed someone else to enthuse to, and he'd left Jace asleep, still draped across the flux machine.

"Maree!" he exclaimed. "You'll want to hear about last night!"

The Firemind's Chamberlain did not appear to be as excited as he was. There were deep bags under her eyes beneath her ocular lens, and she was slouching inside the crumpled, oversized top she usually wore. "Everyone with a lab on the fourth floor heard about last night already, Zarek," she said coldly.

"Hm? Oh, right, yeah, the sex was good, but that's not what I was talking about."

"Oh?"

Ral grabbed her shoulder. "It works, Maree!"

"What?"

"The flux machine! It works! And not only that—"

"The flux machine? How? What did you do?"

Ral slurped his coffee. "It needed another dimension. You wouldn't have thought it would be so simple, but the equations in five dimensions just fall out of the symmetry."

The coffee cup in Maree's hand trembled. "Really," she said.

"Yeah, but that's not the only thing. My subject—"

"There's something you're more excited about than getting the flux machine working?"

"Yes!" Why did she keep interrupting him? "I've never seen anything like it! His mind is—" Ral did a quick swivel. "Listen to me, Maree. His mind must be nearly as powerful as Niv's. Tanit, the patterns I got to see with the flux machine. It was a thing of beauty." He paused for a moment, staring off into the distance, one hand tracing the image in mid-air. "I need a pen."

"Zarek, who on earth is your subject?"

"Oh—just someone," Ral said vaguely, realizing through the haze of coffee and sleepless adrenaline that it might not be a great idea to let news get out that he was fucking the Living Guildpact. "Friend."

Maree made an annoyed hissing noise, but pushed a pen and paper at him. "Honestly, you can't just say things like that and not explain."

"You know a Mizzet curve?" She nodded.

"Okay, start with that. Now imagine that along with a Zarek set. Periodically jumping from one to the other."

"A what?"

He smirked, sketching a few twirling lines on the piece of paper.

"I'd have named it after my friend, but he's—shy. I just need to work out the equations. And this isn't everything. His brain is ridiculous." Ral shook his head gleefully. "The shapes of the mana currents, the patterns, the lightning…" He knew he was devolving into incoherence, but there was too much going on for his mouth to keep up with his brain. He tried to take another swallow of coffee and realized he had already run out. Pausing his scribbling for a moment, he gazed sadly down at the empty mug.

Maree slid another one in front of him. "Go on," she said.

"Well, here we are."

They paused at the end of a hidden passageway in the wall near Jace's office.

"Certainly is quite the hiding spot you've got here," Ral commented idly. Jace had waited until there was no possibility of them being observed to conduct him in here, and had done so only after raising an illusion of invisibility and silence so strong that Ral hadn't even been able to hear his own breathing until they had stepped through and shut the wall behind them.

"And you're the first person I have willingly allowed up here," Jace responded quietly. Ral heard him take a sudden, deep breath, and for a moment he wondered if he should say something, but "thank you for trusting me" sounded stupid, and he wasn't willing to sound stupid for anyone. Not even Jace. He reached for Jace's shoulder to squeeze, but the mind mage was already moving forward into the rooms beyond.

The lights went on. Ral's train of thought took a swan dive off the rails as he saw the beautiful chaos spread out in front of him. "Holy shit," he said, shoving his way past Jace and inspecting the glowing, illusionary pyramid that took up an entire alcove. "What is this?"

"That's a hedron from Zendi—" But Ral had already moved on. There was a map lying on the table, and beside it a parchment covered in scribbled equations, weighted down by a glass paperweight that glowed with some kind of phosphorescent illumination. He could feel the mana emanating gently from it, so it had to be storing energy somehow, but there was no obvious battery. Picking it up, Ral weighed it in his hand and turned it over, but his attention was almost immediately diverted by a soft, familiar humming from across the room.

"That's an Izzet teleportal!" he said accusatorily.

"Yeah, I needed a way to reach a few different places quickly and—"

"Is this why all my goblins kept forgetting their own names, Beleren?" He crossed the room and knelt beside it, following the manalines to where they disappeared into the wall. Not a bad installation, though not as good a job as Ral would have done.

"What? No!"

"Relax, I'm teasing," Ral said distractedly. "What the hell did you do to this thing, though?" Some of the wiring was unfamiliar, leading to a tangled network of faintly glowing runes etched into the walls.

"Uh, not much," Jace responded. "I wanted a way to project illusions through it."

"Interesting," Ral muttered, but before he could be drawn into a proper consideration of just what kind of heresy Jace had wreaked on his precious teleportal, he was distracted by a soft chiming noise. Following it to its source, he found himself staring down at a sprawling, three-dimensional map of what he was almost sure was part of the Tenth District. Someone—presumably Jace—had left a half-eaten chicken leg sitting in the middle of it. Lines of blue-white fire were tracing down the contours of the city, and Ral poked one of them with interest, feeling the mana surge hot around his finger.

"I initially set that up to track the Implicit Maze. I think," Jace said, leaning over his shoulder. "I mean, I had to piece it together again later."

"You have got to tell me how this works," Ral said. The mana clumped up around his finger, swirling in a fat, sluggish eddy that grew slowly brighter.

"Well, if you want—"

"Later," Ral cut him off. "I need to see the things first." That hadn't come out very coherent, but Jace was a mind mage, he'd figure it out. Ral headed over to the table in the middle of the room and traced his fingers eagerly over a thick, curling, ridged horn that lay in the center. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. "Where's this from?" he asked.

"Uh, a place called Shandalar. Have you ever—"

Ral shook his head. "I don't like leaving Ravnica, remember?" All of these artifacts, though—Jace must have carried things off from dozens of planes in the Multiverse, and Ral suddenly felt that maybe if he were traveling with someone—it would be different. Maybe the angry, homesick yearning would ease a little. He hadn't been happy to be on Theros, but then that had hardly been a fun-filled, careless outing.

There was a basket on one of the chairs, containing nothing but piles of strange shells: thin, iridescent crescents that sparkled in the light and felt smooth and delicate beneath Ral's hands. "Why do you even have these?" he asked.

Jace shrugged. "I like how they look," he said. "I like being able to hold things and remember where I got them. If I don't remember, that's a bad sign."

"You don't say," Ral replied dryly. He had a sudden image of Jace's lonely figure curled up in the middle of all this wonder, hunched over the basket, tracing the shells with his fingers. "How long have you been collecting this stuff?"

"Not long, most of it," said Jace. "A few years, maybe. I had more before that, but I—lost it."

"Hm," grunted Ral, suddenly aware of treading on painful territory and not liking it. He should do something, shouldn't he? They were—he didn't want to use the word 'involved.' Didn't know if Jace would appreciate the word 'involved.' But there was a thin cord of understanding that bound the two of them together, that had sprung into existence during the nightmarish escape from Jace's office nearly a month ago—no, earlier than that. During the rush to discredit Project Lightning Bug. He reached out, took Jace's hand, and squeezed.

His attention wavered as he caught sight of a sketch pinned to a cork board at the other end of the table. Curving horns over a pointed, reptilian snout. "Is that a dragon? Goddamn dragons. I hate dragons."

"Yes," said Jace, but didn't say anything else. It occurred to Ral that he hadn't actually been letting the mind mage finish most of his sentences. Oh, well. They could have a proper conversation later.

"Fucking arrogant assholes," he continued irritably. Having had an interview with the Firemind that morning during which he had to explain the importance of the flux project while skirting around the identity of its primary participant, he was not in a mood to sing Niv's praises. "Why are you sketching dragons anyway?"

"That's from a few years ago," Jace explained. "I was trying to track down a planeswalker called Ugin and—"

"Please tell me we don't have to worry about dragon planeswalkers now," groaned Ral.

Jace paused. "I could lie," he suggested.

Ral let his head drop onto the table. "Why is this my life?" he asked the air. "And what's that?" He got up again to get a better look at a large, spiky thing in the corner.

"Don't touch it!" Jace said urgently just before Ral reached out a hand. "I think it's poisonous."

Leaning over to peer more closely, Ral saw that it wasn't a rock, as he'd first thought, but a dense, prickly piece of plant matter, something like a very large pinecone. "How did you get it back here?" he asked.

"A lot of preparation," Jace responded. "And some luck. Oh—and I didn't get it onto the plane myself. That's one of the things left over from the Infinite Consortium."

"Infinite what?"

"Oh, um," Jace said. There was an awkward pause. "It involves even more dragon planeswalkers. Are you sure you want to know?"

Ral very much did, but he heard the reluctance in Jace's voice. Well, the Guildpact wasn't going anywhere. He could tease out the details later. "Nah, I've had enough dragons for one day," he said.

Another soft chiming noise started up. "Does everything in your office make bell noises, Beleren?"

"Damn, that's Lavinia," Jace said tiredly, by way of answer. "I was expecting to have more than two hours to myself, but apparently the Living Guildpact is needed once again." Making a disgruntled noise, he tugged at his cloak and turned to Ral. "You can stay here if you want. Just try not to take anything apart."

Ral sighed heavily. "I suppose I can try, just for you."

"I do appreciate it," Jace said, and then he leaned across the table and kissed Ral on the cheek.

The soft brush of his lips across Ral's cheekbone sent a sudden, strange shock of warmth through him. Before he could fully process what his insides were doing, Jace was already leaving, swirling his cloak around him dramatically as he hurried out the door. Ral stared after him in silence for a long moment before turning back to the eclectic collection spread across the room.

Jace trailed exhaustedly back to his room, mumbling half-formed curses beneath his breath. Not only had Lavinia had about five hundred different documents for him to read and sign, she had been unable to extricate him from an unexpected meeting with the Simic for something along the lines of five hours. Drooping with weariness, Jace halted in front of the door of his apartment and sighed.

It took more energy than it should have for him to raise a hand and call the simple spell that opened the door, and he trudged in, hung his cloak over the back of one of the chairs, and headed directly for the bedroom. It was definitely time to sleep for a century, if possible.

The bed was occupied. Jace sighed. Of course Ral hadn't left, like any sensible person, when Jace was gone until well past midnight. Of course he'd found the bed, and of course he'd fallen asleep in it. If he wasn't actively working on a project, presumably he did actually sleep, after all, though for the past few weeks, Jace hadn't seen him make any concession to weariness other than downing five cups of coffee at a time. Which, come to think of it, might explain how Ral had ended up collapsing in his bed.

Well, it looked like tonight was going to be a floor night. There was a nice rug in the main room, Jace thought vaguely, but he refused to sleep without a pillow, and Ral had both of them tucked securely beneath his head. Sighing again, Jace leaned over to lever one of them out from under Ral's head—and Ral's hand came up clumsily and tugged at his sleeve.

"Sorry," Jace apologized. "I didn't mean to wake you." There was no response, other than a sleepy, incoherent mumble. The hand tugged more insistently. "You can, um, let go of my sleeve," said Jace, awkwardly.

The mumble this time sounded an awful lot like, "stupid Guildpact," and Ral sat up, eyes still shut, took both of Jace's arms and tugged him forward. He overbalanced and fell onto the bed, and Ral writhed around in a way that Jace finally realized was an attempt to pull him into a clumsy embrace.

There wasn't a lot of room in the bed, but it was certainly better than the floor. And Jace was suddenly, forcibly reminded that he hadn't shared a bed with anyone—unless you counted sharing a pallet in Theros when he was out of his mind with manafever—since he had been involved with Liliana. And he had always been the one to curl up around her, not the other way around. Ral wriggled at his back, and one long arm dropped possessively across Jace's chest. A sudden, short sob caught at the back of Jace's throat, and he had to stifle the noise into the pillow.

The arm around Jace tightened slightly, and the tight knot in his throat rose. Silent tears welled up in his eyes, and shivers ran through his body. He didn't know what was happening to him, but as he curled in on himself, Ral followed, enveloping him. Safety, Jace thought sleepily, through the strange haze of tears and tiredness. It was a new feeling, being safe.

Ral was warm, and in a bed. He wasn't used to being in a bed. If he didn't fall asleep at his desk, he usually curled up in a chair at his lab. It wasn't so much that he didn't like the bed in his small apartment as that he tended to fall asleep without meaning to. Furthermore, this did not smell like his bed. The smell of Ral's bed—when he noticed it at all—was usually either the sharp, plain scent of the Eighth District's soap, or, more commonly, the tang of ozone he had trailed home from the lab. The bed he was in smelled softer, somehow. It wasn't a floral smell, though there was a vague whiff of flowers—just something else he couldn't quite identify.

Ral blinked his eyes open slowly and stared stupidly at the blue mound in front of him, which rose and fell softly with the sound of gentle snoring. His arm was trapped underneath something, and he rolled backward, trying to free it, but the blue mound came with him, and he found himself on his back beneath a sleeping mind mage, who was now beginning to stir, but very slowly. Well. This was a new experience.

His first instinct was to pull away, but Jace squirming sleepily toward him was—well, Ral wasn't quite sure what, except that he didn't want to pull away. The mind mage yawned and stretched, then blinked his eyes open slowly and smiled. "Good morning," he said.

"Uh," said Ral. "Morning? Good morning, even."

"Did you sleep okay? I know there's not a lot of room in here."

Ral considered this. "Yes?" he hazarded. He had no memory of falling asleep, though thinking back, he did have a vague memory of someone disturbing said sleep in the middle of the night.

"Good," yawned Jace. "I really hope I don't have too much to do today, and I haven't heard Lavinia calling for me, so either it's early, or some of my meetings got cancelled."

"That's…good." It was good, right? That meant that Jace was happy to have Ral here? Was Ral happy to be here? Jace rolled forward slightly, slid a hand up to Ral's hair, and kissed him gently on the lips. Okay. Yes. Definitely good. Happy. Whatever.

Jace sighed into his mouth, and Ral's arm instinctively tightened around the mind mage's back. Waking up to Jace was good. This was good. His other hand was on Jace's face, ruffling through Jace's hair, and the mind mage was wriggling against him again. Ral felt a shiver run down his spine, and he buried his face in Jace's hair, nuzzling his way down Jace's neck.

Jace made a soft, lazy humming noise that turned a little more breathy after a moment. "R-Ral," he murmured, and Ral grinned and slid a hand up beneath Jace's shirt and across his side.

"That's the first time you've said my name like that, Jace. Do you want something?"

"I r-really should be getting up," Jace temporized, but he made no move to pull away.

"If you really want to, I won't stop you," Ral smirked, leaning backward. Jace made a soft noise of disappointment as Ral's hands left his side, and then followed him. Ral found himself on his back with Jace leaning over him, biting his lip. "Well, Guildpact," he murmured, reaching up to brush Jace's hair out of his eyes, "what now?"

Twenty minutes later, Jace collapsed beside him. Laying a hand on his side, Ral could feel that the Guildpact was still trembling. "So you liked that?" he asked in amusement.

Jace's sweaty face turned to the side. "Didn't you?" he asked, sounding faintly defensive.

"Mmmm," Ral acquiesced, leaning over to steal a kiss from Jace's salty lips.

From the other room, a bell chimed. Jace groaned. "That would be Lavinia," he said regretfully.

"Maybe she'll keep you there long enough for me to regain my stamina," Ral grinned. "Say twenty minutes or so."

Jace gave him a mock glare. "I will almost certainly be gone for the entire day," he said.

"Well, that's more time than I'd need."

"Well, that's too bad."

"I'm sorry it takes you so long, Jace."

Jace sputtered angrily. "That is not—" pursing his lips, he cut himself off. "Joking aside," he said. "Would you, um, like to come to dinner with me again tonight? Now that your current project is at a lull."

"I'd like to come anywhere with you tonight," Ral said, smiling innocently.

Jace narrowed his eyes. "So dinner."

"All right."

Ral watched as Jace hastily pulled on his clothes, amused at the Guildpact's clumsy motions and attempts to ignore his clearly trembling legs. The little noises Jace kept making whenever the cloth shifted against his skin were also immensely entertaining. Slipping his cloak on last, Jace paused in the doorway to smile back at Ral. "I'll see you this evening," he said. "Make yourself at home."

Ral nodded, lying back in the bed as Jace hurried out in a swirl of blue cloth. He yawned and stretched, and then settled back against the pillows. Nothing pressing to do today—not till Jace was free anyway. Heh. Sleepily, he snuggled down in the bed. The soft smell of Jace surrounding him, he felt himself drifting off to sleep again.