#hey guys young harfuse drabble get it while it's hot

[roetrolls]

Simpler Times

“Orfuse!” His name, called as a greeting, is laced with just enough exasperation to alert the oracle of what he is about to hear next. “You forgot to lock the door again.”

“Hello to you too, grumpy-pants!” He chirps back, scribbling a note in his journal and listening for his moirail’s familiar, heavy footfall in the hall.

“What if someone wanted to kill you?”

“Well, I don’t think the door’s persuasive enough to help me there.”

“Orfuse.”

“I’m sorry!” he concedes. “I forgot.”

“How?” 

The word comes out with such incredulity that it breaks in two, and Orfuse beams into his notebook. He can’t get enough of the adorable cracks that have begun to grace that ever-deepening voice, as embarrassing as his moirail seems to find them.

“Maybe my hands were full!”

“You’re a handful,” Harlan says fondly, finally coming to a halt in the living room’s entrance.

With a twinkling laugh, Orfuse lifts his head to greet him proper. At once, though, his mirth is stymied, replaced by a horrified gasp and his heart in his throat.

Harlan leans against the doorframe with his clothing wrinkled and his facepaint smudged to nothing, dried blood spattered across his skin. His lip is busted and his cheek is swollen, with a fresh bruise already blooming at his temple.

Orfuse nearly falls from his chair with how fast he leaps from it. “Harly!”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re hurt!” He counters, taking his moirail by the arms and dragging him to sit on the couch for a better look at the damage. His fists seem to have had the worst of it, with knuckles split to bleeding and bruises on his fingers. “What happened?”

“There was a fight,” Harlan answers simply, sitting still and allowing Orfuse’s worried hands to comb through his hair in search of hidden wounds. 

“I can see that,” he says, and it is his turn to be incredulous. Though he can’t seem to find any evidence of injury, there is certainly blood, dried into his tresses in such a way that it crunches between the oracle’s fingers. “Is this yours?”

“No.”

He draws back, relieved.

“But this is,” Harlan adds, raising one sharp, shiny tooth into view. Orfuse gapes, eyes widening into saucers, and the purpleblood grins wide enough for him to see the gap where his canine should have been.

Orfuse tries in vain to lift his jaw off the floor.

“It’ll grow back,” the young subjug shrugs, still flashing him that dimpled, toothless smile. “Faster if you kiss it, maybe?”

“Harly!” He admonishes through a bout of suppressed giggles, shoving at his face with a hand. “What is wrong with you!?”

Harlan guffaws, reaching up to pull the oracle’s arm away. His grip is weaker than Orfuse is used to, and the awkward way he holds the bronzeblood’s wrist to lay a kiss upon his palm belies just how much pain he’s really in.

Pity swells in the oracle’s chest, and he takes one of Harlan’s hands in his to assess the damage once more. He’s not so naive as to be unaware what an injury of this nature means. He has a feeling he doesn’t want to see the other guy.

“I’ll get you some bandages,” he says softly, stifling the instinct to give his palm a squeeze. 

“Thank you.”

It doesn’t take him long to return with the first aid supplies, but a few minutes alone is all it takes for whatever adrenaline carried Harlan here to finish filtering out. By the time Orfuse settles back in to begin cleaning the wounds, his moirail looks exhausted.

“Does anything else hurt?”

Harlan exhales through his nose. “Apart from everything? No. Not from the fight.”

Orfuse flashes him a sympathetic look, pausing his medical ministrations to put a comforting hand on his knee. “Achey?”

“Sharp. The growing kind.” He sighs wearily, his eyelids heavy. “I’d like to be done with it already. I don’t need to get any bigger.”

A silence lingers between them for a moment. Orfuse hopes it’s the welcome sort.

“I’m going to use the alcohol now, alright? It might sting a little.”

Harlan nods in acknowledgement, then looks away, likely hoping to hide whatever reaction he may have when the liquid meets his cuts.

“What was the fight about?”

“You.” His shoulders relax as Orfuse begins wrapping his knuckles, the worst of the process finished. “Krivek wanted to run his mouth again. He called you a leech. Said you made me weak.”

“Harly…” Orfuse frowns. “You can’t go picking fights every time someone says a bad word about me. I don’t want that.”

“You don’t understand the church, Orfuse. There’s no place for weakness in that world. I needed to prove him wrong, for both our sakes.”

“What did you even prove?”

“That you make me strong.”