#halcaz

[maharlika]

petrichor

a little ficlet for @elysiicns for the prompts "petrichor and tadpoled!caz." this ficlet features tadpoled spawn!caz (i.e. slave era caz), halsin/cazador, and some implied cazador/vellioth

Halsin knows what Cazador is the moment he sees him. The undead have a certain smell about them—the faint, cloyingly sweet scent of overripe fruit, right above the edge of rotting. It is this same sweetness Halsin smells when he first kisses him, in the woods, with his own blood still fresh on Cazador’s tongue. 

The kiss is barely a press of their lips together, but Cazador pulls away as if scalded, his red eyes wide and bright. He brings a trembling hand to his mouth and presses his fingers to his lips.

“You kissed me,” he whispers, then looks around furtively, as if someone will hear, but the camp remains silent. It is a parched summer’s day, and everything is so still it is as if the air has been sucked out of the world. Their companions have taken refuge in their tents while Halsin has allowed Cazador to feed from him under the shade of a large beech tree in an attempt to find a cool breeze.

“Should I not have?” Halsin asks. “If so, I apologize—”

“No!” Cazador says, too loud and too sudden. He lowers his head and speaks quickly, like he is forcing the words out before they are swallowed by the darkness. “It is only—no one has kissed me but my master. I have never—he is the only one who—” 

Halsin sees his throat working, bobbing. Watches as he screws his hands into the material of his trousers, fingers working, knuckles white. 

“I know what it is like,” Halsin says softly, “to belong so wholly to someone. To believe that you will always be theirs.”

Cazador’s eyes squeeze shut and he nods. “Even though things have changed. Even though I can walk in the sun now, stand in running water, enter houses without invitation…to allow someone else to touch me seems…wrong. I’m sorry.”

“He no longer owns you.”

Cazador shrugs, the gesture helpless. “But part of me still wants him to. I do not know whether it is larger than the part of me that yearns for freedom.”

Halsin nods, a solemn thing. “There is a comfort in being owned. It is difficult, I know, to not understand your place in the world.”

“He is all I have known for so very, very long,” Cazador murmurs. 

“He does not need to be,” Halsin says. “Not anymore.”

Again, Cazador only shrugs. Halsin can see his expression closing off, his shoulders almost up to his drooping ears as he hunches in on himself. He’s a tall elf, almost as tall as Halsin, but the way he carries himself makes him look so small. 

“Would you walk with me, Cazador?”

“You know that I love walking,” Cazador sighs. “How many mountains have we crested at this point? How many miles have my poor feet trod? I’m not built for this life—my master preferred for me to stay in his bed, you know.”

“And here I am, making you suffer,” Halsin replied. “But worry not, little one. It is a short walk.”

“You’re lucky I enjoy your company, druid,” Cazador grumbles. 

“At least,” Halsin says brightly, “it is not raining.”

–

Of course, rain starts as soon as they have made good headway into the forest. The wind gusts through the leaves, which sigh as if in relief. Halsin quickly murmurs a Control Water spell, and beckons Cazador closer. 

“Wouldn’t want you to get wet,” Halsin says, when Cazador is tucked against him, protected from the rain. 

“First the walking, now the rain,” Cazador grouses. He primly tucks a wet strand of hair behind his ear. 

Halsin huffs out a laugh. 

Cazador reaches out, past the boundaries of Halsin’s spell, and lets water trickle down his fingers. Then he shakes his hand and tucks it back between their bodies.

“You should teach me this spell,” he says. He is voracious for these kinds of things, Halsin has noticed. New spells, new stories. After a life cloistered in his master’s dark palace, he tends towards knowledge as a plant tends towards the sun. 

“Gladly,” Halsin says. He leads Cazador to sit on a fallen log, and for once Cazador does not complain about wasting time, or getting his clothes dirty, fastidiousness lost, replaced by the wonder in his face as the rain pours around them, feeding life. 

“Is there a lesson to be had here?” Cazador asks eventually. “Something about nature, and how everything finds its place?”

“If that is what you wish,” Halsin says. “Truth be told, I only wanted to spend some time with you.”

If Cazador could blush, Halsin thinks he’d be beet-red by now. But there are other tells: the way his mouth parts and his ears twitch, the way he looks down and away. Thinking of his master again, perhaps. 

“I do not know exactly what my place is, or who I am meant to be, or what I am without my master,” Cazador says, looking down at his hands. “But I am quite certain of one thing.”

“Oh?” Halsin asks. “And what is that?”

“That I would very much like for you to kiss me again.”

When Halsin inhales, he takes within him the earthy smell of well-watered soil and the sweetness of Cazador’s breath in his mouth.