Under normal circumstances, Gabe could think of dozens of flattering ways to describe Mateo. He was smart, and talented, and incredibly loyal. Gabe couldn't ask for a better friend and rival. And if his heart skipped a beat every time Mateo smiled at him, well, that was his business.
Right now, though, the temple was coming down around them, and the words filling Gabe's mind were far more four-lettered.
"You've been Royal Wizard for how long, and you still haven't learned to check for traps?!" he shouted, ducking away from a crumbling statue.
"I didn't see you checking for any!" Mateo shot back. He clapped his hand hard against his tamborita, and a burst of orange light shattered the chunk of stone that was falling toward him. Dust and debris rained down on him and he flinched, freezing just long enough that Gabe reeled back and grabbed his arm, tugging him forward.
"C'mon, Mateo, keep moving—"
"I am moving!"
Gabe bit down an ugly retort. Focus on the mission: get out alive. Now wasn't the time to argue. Still, as he wove through the labyrinthine tangle of halls, desperately trying to remember the way out, he couldn't help but feel annoyed. Help me look for this lost Maruvian artifact, Mateo had said. It'll be fun, he'd said.
And in fairness, it had been. It wasn't often that they went on adventures alone, with no one to impress but each other. They'd fallen into a familiar banter as they'd explored, the challenge of navigating the maze and the mystery of the ruins egging them forward, and every time Mateo cast a spell, he looked almost ethereal in the dim light. It was easy to relax with each other in a way they often couldn't.
Except then that comfort had turned to negligence. They'd both failed to check for pressure plates before Mateo stepped up onto the dais at the temple's center, and now they were running for their lives as the ground itself splintered beneath their feet.
Yeah, it seemed a lot less fun, now.
A crack tore its way up from a dead end as Gabe doubled back out of it, spreading across the ceiling as he ran.
"Gabe!" Mateo called behind him, but Gabe pressed ahead, spurred on by the rabbit-fast racing of Mateo's pulse where he was clutching his wrist, right until the moment Mateo ripped his arm away with another urgent cry of his name and—
"Ximocu!"
—and the bang of a drum between the smashing of falling stones brought him up short. Magic unfurled overhead, woven like a net, and the entire passage's ceiling crashed onto it with a thud that rattled Gabe's teeth and buckled Mateo's knees like he was physically holding the weight of it. Lips pulled back in a pained snarl and drawing a strained hiss through his teeth, Mateo adjusted the shield so that it sliced a diagonal through the corridor. The rubble cascaded harmlessly down one side, where it piled along the opposite wall, away from where the two of them were safe under the canopy.
Gabe rushed to his side as the spell dissolved, holding him steady. "Nice catch," he said, breathless.
"Thank me later," Mateo replied, shoving him toward the end of the hall. "Go!"
Gabe obliged, leading the way through another set of twists and turns. The light of the spell left afterimages flickering in his vision like ghosts, and he could barely tell shadow from stone as he plowed ahead. He almost tripped as the hall suddenly spilled into an open chamber, cavernous and grand, with doorways dotting the walls all the way around. Relief swooped through his chest—he remembered this room! They'd passed through it shortly after entering, which meant they were close to a way out. Now all they had to do was pick the right door.
The right identical door.
His heart dropped back into his stomach as the building shuddered again, shaking a massive support column loose. It groaned as it fell, and the ceiling above it began to crumble inward, as if drawn toward a sinkhole. They didn't have time for a wrong guess.
"Y'know, that trap, it—it probably wasn't s'posed—supposed to take the whole structure down," Mateo mused between labored breaths. He gestured toward the crumbling ceiling. "But with the age of the temple, it just couldn't—"
"Mateo! Priorities!" Gabe blurted, his hands up in disbelief. "Escape now, ponder later! Do you remember which door we came in through?"
Mateo snapped to attention, quickly scanning the room. "No," he admitted, "but I can figure it out." He raised his wand. Whatever spell he shouted was drowned out by the ominous grinding of stone on stone, but there was a flash of light, and twin sets of footprints suddenly illuminated, leading backwards toward one of the doors.
"Hey, that's—" Gabe started, turning toward Mateo, and then his breath caught, dread smothering the fresh embers of hope. Another column was tipping directly toward Mateo. No time for a warning—Gabe lunged at him, tackling him away from the danger. They landed hard, but the column landed harder with a thunderous boom, spraying grit and stone shards from the impact. Gabe instinctively caged his arms around Mateo's head as a shield. Protect, always protect.
Mateo was mouthing something when he pulled back, over and over, and it took Gabe far too long to realize he was saying something, inaudible over the ringing in his ears and the distant crash of another chunk of the temple. Mateo's brow furrowed further, and he tried again, shaking Gabe's shoulder, still nothing, nothing, until suddenly, "...okay? Gabe, say something, are you okay?"
"I'm—" his own voice sounded faraway, "—yeah." His cheek stung where a piece of flying stone had sliced it, and his whole body ached, but there was no time for that. "You?" Mateo nodded, and Gabe finally clambored off of him and pulled him to his feet. They had to keep going.
Mateo blinked past him at the column's remains. "Whoa."
"Thank me later," Gabe said. "Now, c'mon!"
They were so close to the end. Gabe barrelled down the hall, following the winding path of the glowing footprints and nearly slamming into the wall at every corner, unwilling to let his momentum fall for anything as the building's trembling grew worse. And suddenly, there it was—the literal light at the end of the tunnel, sunshine filtering in through the streams of falling dust. The exit. Gabe let out a shaky laugh, and heard Mateo echo it just behind him. He sprinted for the door, just a little further, just a few feet more—
—and then the ground gave way beneath him. Gabe lurched forward, desperately reaching for the light and grabbing hold of a slab that jutted out over the fresh wound of a ravine. His legs kicked before finding purchase on the stone, and he hauled himself up to solid ground, frantically turning around to check on Mateo.
Mateo had scrambled backward from the dissolving floor as Gabe had leapt forward. He was safe, relatively speaking, but when they locked eyes across the chasm, he looked as terrified as Gabe felt.
Gabe glanced behind him at the door. So close. If he'd just taken Mateo's hand again, if he'd just kept them together—but Mateo needed both hands free for his magic, and he hadn't thought—
"Can you make the jump?" Gabe called, turning back.
Mateo puffed out his chest in an attempt at bravado. "I don't need to! I have a floating spell!" He brandished his wand and made to cast, but a section of the wall caved in nearby, sending him another several feet back. A nervous laugh wrung out of his mouth. "I just have to time it!" He tried again, actually casting the spell, but he could barely get himself out over the gap before another piece of falling rubble had him throwing himself back to dodge it.
Something constricted in Gabe's chest. Mateo's magic was versatile, but he couldn't maneuver himself fast enough to clear the distance with how quickly everything was falling apart. "Just hang on, okay?" he said, looking around for something, anything they could use. "We'll figure something out."
"'We'—Gabe, the door is right there! Get out of here!"
Gabe snapped his head up, incredulous. "Are you serious? Am I supposed to just leave you here?!"
He wouldn't. He couldn't.
A distant roar was growing louder and louder, the final death bellow of the collapsing temple. They were out of time. "I'm coming back across," Gabe decided.
The terror on Mateo's face slid into alarm. "What?! No! The door—"
"I am not leaving you behind!"
Mateo made a sound, frustrated and frantic, casting his eyes about for a solution until they fell on Gabe, gearing up to make a running jump. "Wait, wait, wait! I have an idea!"
Gabe paused, and his breath stilled at the sight of Mateo leveling his tamborita at him.
"Sorry about this," he said, his face twisting in apology, and before Gabe could shout out a protest, his hand struck the drum. "Vetzi!"
The spell hit him like a sucker punch, knocking the wind out of him and hurling him backward. He tumbled out onto the grass with a raw gasp and he coughed, trying to pull himself together. Outside. Fresh air. Disoriented, he managed to sit upright, propped up on his arms, just in time for a mass of stone to slam down over the threshold, and for the rest of the temple to follow, whatever stubborn support that had been keeping it upright gone. It all came crashing down in a wave of cacophonous sound and flying shards that shook the ground like an earthquake. Gabe ducked his head, scrambling away on hands and knees to put any meager amount of distance between him and the hazard. He finally curled in on himself, covering his neck and riding it out, wincing at every deafening crack and at every chunk that sailed past in his periphery.
It could have been a minute, or an hour, before it finally ended. The ground went still and the world went silent, save for the persistent ringing in Gabe's ears and the final sigh of shifting stone and skittering gravel. Dust hung in the air like smoke, thick enough to turn the bright daylight hazy, thick enough to choke on as Gabe found his footing again.
He stared at the pile of rubble, his heart in his throat. "Mateo?" he croaked. The debris didn't answer.
The world was shaking again—no, Gabe was, trembling like a frightened child from panic and adrenaline, and he couldn't stop the pained sound that escaped him as he stumbled forward into the ruins and began to haul chunks of stone away.
"No, no, please no," he chanted, clawing through the wreckage, numb. "Please don't do this."
They'd been close to the exit. Mateo couldn't be that far under. He had to still be okay. Gabe knew what was realistic—he wasn't a fool, and he knew how to measure the odds of a battle—but he clung to the dim hope anyway, too stricken to think of what the alternative would mean.
His hope was rewarded when he heaved aside a statue's cracked face to see orange light staining the smog, leaking out between the gaps in the destroyed stonework. His strength surging, Gabe dug through the rest with a desperate fervor until he uncovered a small dome of magic, arching over Mateo. He was on his knees and bent forward, as if in prayer, hunched to be as small as possible under the shield. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he clutched his tamborita in a shaking grip, with light wisping upward from it as he maintained the spell.
"Mateo," Gabe breathed, and Mateo snapped his head up, meeting Gabe's eyes through a film of orange. The spell fell away, and with a ragged laugh, Gabe reached down to pull him up, almost falling over as the two scrambled back to solid ground. "You're alive," Gabe finally said, gripping him by his arms as if he might drift away otherwise. "You're actually, you're, you—"
A tentative smile was making its way onto Mateo's face, dampened by lingering concern. "Yeah. Are you okay?"
"Am I okay," Gabe repeated. "An entire building just fell on you, and you're asking if I'm okay?"
"Well, that spell can hit pretty hard…"
Gabe didn't care about that. The pain from the blow was nothing next to the ache of heartbreak. Unable to take it anymore, he swept Mateo up into a hug, clinging to his back, his shoulders, burying his face in his curls. He reveled in the warmth of him in his arms, the pounding of his heartbeat against his chest, the way he could still catch a trace of ink and old books under the smell of dust and sweat. Mateo laughed in his ear, a bright sound, a wonderful sound.
And then as quickly as the elation had come, it was gone, chased away by another pulse of deep-seated horror.
"What were you thinking?" Gabe demanded, holding Mateo back to look him in the eyes again.
Mateo frowned, puzzled. "Well, I was thinking that I couldn't shield us both with you on the other side of the gap, and I wasn't sure if it was safe for you to jump—"
"And you couldn't warn me what your plan was? You scared me half to death!"
Mateo's face scrunched up. "Well, what about you? The door was right there; you could've gotten out at any time!" Breaking the hold on him, he stepped back, putting on a mocking imitation of Gabe's voice. "'Oh, I'll just jump to certain doom and get myself pointlessly killed, that seems like a great idea!'" Gabe ground his teeth at the impression, but Mateo spoke again before he could retort. "You just had to be the hero, didn't you?"
"I wasn't trying to be a hero! I was just—" The fight drained out of him as he remembered why he was fighting, and he reached up, brushing his knuckles against Mateo's cheek. Warm. Alive. Exhausted and covered in dust, but he was okay. "I was just trying to protect you," he finished, feeling foolish. It sounded absurd in hindsight. Mateo was the wizard, not him, and there wasn't anything else he could've done. He hated that feeling of uselessness, like he couldn't even do one of the most basic tasks of his job.
Face softening, Mateo glanced at Gabe's hand. He lifted his own for a moment, like he wanted to take Gabe's in his, and then seemed to think better of it, letting it drop to his side. "You did, though," he said, tilting his head toward the ruins. "I would still be buried under all that if not for you. And honestly," he gave an embarrassed chuckle, rubbing at his neck, "I'm not sure I would've even made it out of the dais room if you weren't here."
"Still." Gabe adjusted his hand, shifting it around so he was cradling Mateo's jaw instead. Another day, he might've tried to laugh off the forwardness, to play it as platonic, but with the fresh threat of loss hanging over them, he felt emboldened to be honest, or at least scared to let the moment go. "I don't know what I would do if something happened to you—if I let something happen to you."
Mateo had leaned into the touch, but his mouth pulled into a scowl that had Gabe second-guessing if his feelings were requited. "'Let' something? It's not your job to—"
"It is, though! I'm a royal guard, preventing things like this is the whole point!"
"Well, If you're protecting everyone else, then who's protecting you?"
Gabe shook his head. "It doesn't matter—"
"It matters to me." He finally reached up and curled his fingers around Gabe's, not to remove his hand, but just to hold it, slotting them together. His lips pursed in thought, and Gabe found himself watching them. He'd only just noticed how close their faces were.
It was Mateo that closed the distance. Leaning in, eyes fluttering shut, he brushed his lips against Gabe's in an impossibly gentle kiss. It was soft, and chaste, and brief—in all the time it took Gabe to realize that oh my God Mateo was kissing him it was already over. Mateo leaned back again, searching his face expectantly.
Warmth bloomed in Gabe's chest, tickling between his ribs and up into his throat. It mixed with the last dregs of hysterical relief, and before he could stop it, the first breathless laugh had slipped out, and then another, and another.
Across from him, Mateo flushed and recoiled. "What? What's so funny? What happened?"
The unspoken what did I do wrong, was it bad, I thought that was what this was leading to was obvious in his pleading tone, and Gabe felt a twinge of guilt for making him worry about it, but he just couldn't get himself to stop laughing. There were a thousand things he could say. It was funny it had taken disaster for either of them to make a direct move. It was funny that Gabe had somehow never realized that his feelings were reciprocated. Nothing was funny at all, he was just excited beyond belief. Relieved. Overwhelmed.
"Was that your first kiss?" was what came out instead.
Mateo gasped, affronted, and turned his head sharply away, the quiet intimacy evaporating in an instant. "You don't know! I could've kissed loads of people before you!"
"Ah, Mateo," Gabe started, reaching for his face again and trying to gently turn his head back.
"Maybe I was keeping it simple for your benefit," he sniffed, brushing Gabe's fingers away.
"No, no, I thought it was cute," Gabe tried to explain between giggles.
Mateo crossed his arms, still not looking at him. "Yeah, well, let's see you do any better."
His brain finally caught up with his mouth a split second later, and his eyes went wide at the implication, glancing back at Gabe with a mortified expression.
Gabe lowered his voice as he finally reined in his laughter, aiming for suave, though he knew he sounded far too eager as he asked, "Is that an invitation?"
Mateo pressed his lips together, considering it. "Yes?" he said, hesitant, and then, "Wait, no," quickly shaking his head and crushing the swell of hope in Gabe's chest. It didn't stay down for long, though—Mateo straightened up, arching an eyebrow in a dare. "Actually, it's a challenge."
Gabe's smile grew wider. "Is that so?" And when Mateo nodded, his own grin betraying his excitement, Gabe carefully took his face in both hands. "Well, challenge accepted."
He pressed his lips to Mateo's, moving softly against them. He felt the catch in Mateo's breath, and suddenly, Mateo was smiling again, so broadly that Gabe bumped into his teeth. It took restraint to not laugh directly into his mouth; instead, Gabe kissed the corner of it.
"Quit smiling," he said, "I'm trying to kiss you."
"I don't know," Mateo said, his tone teasing and his smile turning sly. "Is that the best you can do?"
Gabe winked. "You'll have to kiss me again to find out."
And Mateo, it seemed, was happy to oblige.
The duality of the gabteo dynamic - the two of them are, at any given moment, 100% prepared to die for each other, and also 100% prepared to throw down. It's the rivals-to-lovers effect. Not pictured: Mateo freaking out halfway back to the palace as it finally clicks that he and Gabe just destroyed a piece of Maruvian history. Mendoza sets up an archeological site at the ruins to try and salvage what she can, and takes immense pleasure in banning both of the guys from helping.
Loosely inspired by a convo in the EoA discord from several years ago that's lived rent-free in my head ever since.