Sheryl of Sunder Inn is a formidable human being.
This is the thought that Áesta has while leaving the woman’s domain. His skin is still hot with nerves and embarrassment at the realization she just helped him with: Jarl… that priest… is more than just a meal.
The hairs on back of his image’s neck prickle at the thought; how outlandish.
He practically dives into Cunning’s Bar the moment he sees it.
~
Once inside, it’s like the weight of the passed few days have left him: all the stress about being chained down, beaten until helpful, and bossed around by an overly belligerent priest (of all things, why a priest?) just gone; stuck behind the solidly sordid doors of this seedy estate.
Áesta revels in it. The sheer assortment of joy (happiness, amusement, giddiness, etc.) pervading the place awashes him and seeps passed his false skin to settle into the pitch black void of his true self hidden below.
It’s glorious.
And so much better than the emotionally stifled piety of any church—including Jarl’s.
~
The first thing Áesta does is locate his first drink.
This isn’t a bottle of beer or a glass of wine—it’s not even a shot of whiskey.
No: it’s a human that’ll look at him the way he needs to be looked at.
The way Jarl won’t ever look at him.
~
Áesta finds his first drink in the second room with a corner booth and a circular table.
It’s quaint and cozy and originally occupied by a middle-aged man with moderate muscles and a burly beard. The air shifts when Áesta slides into the seat beside him, all smooth brown skin and playful green eyes.
The man grins and orders Áesta a drink, turning to appraise him.
Áesta’s drinking long before Bobby’s crush comes to serve him.
~
By the time Jarl (and Manus—but mostly Jarl) crashes Áesta’s party, his meal has multiplied by a dozen.
They’ve all arranged themselves around him with their own drinks and conveniently forgotten his full jug. They’re serenading him with their stories, their culture, and their history, completely oblivious to what they’re really filling him with: their own appetite for his sinful flesh, their own desire for his debauched taste, and their own want for his immoral wilds to be tethered to them rather than the prude coming for him.
Áesta’d find it all amusing if it weren’t for the fact that aforementioned prude is being exceptionally prudish.
This is how the holy man almost ruins his evening meal, though; it isn’t that he’s being overly proper: rather, it’s that he’s being completely puritanical; he’s acting like he just went from the most esteemed place ever to the literal slums of the universe; he’s acting like there’s nothing of any value sitting with him in Cunning’s Bar.
(So Áesta goes off.)
~
There’s something different about Jarl when they return to their seats (after a bit of Musical Chairs).
He’s not quieter (although it’s definitely harder to tell if he’s still thinking of the bargoers as just drunks) and he’s not warmer either (he’s really warm with his own parishioners but that could just be a familiarity thing—humans have that problem a lot, Áesta’s noticed). Instead, he’s almost repentant—like he’s sorry.
He’s meek and thankful and it’s strange.
It isn’t until Jarl starts asking—actually engaging with the bargoers—about Jasey that Áesta figures it out: Jarl, for all his boldness and strong will, is actually an introvert and not at all comfortable in strange crowds.
(How… endearing.)
~
“Male—or a very tall and strong woman. ‘Bout two meters in height. Wore a long but thin cloak wit’ a hood that were always up. Could ne’er see ‘is face; but when the light caught ‘im right, ‘is hair and eyes was red.”
“Red?” Áesta would have said his heart has stopped if he had one. Instead, the smug smirk he had drops and his body tenses as he’s no longer able to delight in the fact that his preferred company is better than Jarl’s.
That description…
It can’t be!
~
“[T]he kid came down with a fright real fast, wavin’ ‘is hands around ‘cause ‘e was sayin’ … [t]hat the fireplace was roarin’ som’in’ fierce; and, when we went ta look, it really were abnormally big.”
Áesta’s certain he’s abysmally pale right now. Even if the skin he’s wearing is fake, it’s still covering blood (well, technically it’s Void but the mechanics are the same) which means it can still be drained.
It doesn’t help that Manus is also thinking what he is (or at least along the same vein).
The more he listens and the more they uncover about this mysterious Red, the more he’s becoming certain: he knows Red; they’re practically best friends.
(But how and WHY did Kane kidnap Jarl’s baby brother‽‽‽)
~
Áesta’s too (afraid? ashamed?) to help Manus explain why the fireplace was so important.
Whenever he tries, he can feel the need to just blurt out—to scream—that Kane IS fire; that he’s based in it like Áesta is in wood; that a fireplace WOULD bend to the whims of someone like Kane just as any wood, including that of Jarl’s spare room door, would bend to the desires of Áesta.
But he can’t.
He can only stay silent and hope Manus doesn’t think of it even as he brings his flame close to Áesta’s wick.
~
He’s shaking as he stands before the entrance to room 102.
Manus is eating his fill at the breakfast bar, fueling up for their upcoming trek and teleport, and—somehow—still hasn’t figured out that it might be Áesta’s friend. The little mint brownie of a daemon isn’t sure if this is because Manus hardly knows Kane or if he just never realized the red devil was a fire based one but…
He’s grateful.
Jarl LOVES his brother. There’s no question of this. The holy man would never have ever thought to even TOUCH a daemon for any other reason but love like this: love like sacrifice and unwavering devotion.
Love like capital g god wants for Himself.
Love like Áesta wants for himself. He won’t lie; it’s part of the reason he ever agreed to this ridiculous deal from the start: Jarl’s capacity for this kind of passion, which most daemons find unpalatable, is immense and tantalizingly satisfying once soaked in to the teeth. Áesta WANTS to eat it—devore it until Jarl’s near empty.
But he can’t: that love isn’t for HIM.
It’s for Jasey.
(And if Jarl finds out Áesta’s FRIEND stole his precious brother…)
~
So, Áesta doesn’t address it.
Instead, he tries to enjoy what little of Jarl’s love he can. It’s tiny in comparison to what he feels for Jasey—like comparing a speck of dust to a blazing star—but it’s there and growing each day that Jarl moves away from seeing him as nothing more than a monster or tool on the pathway to his brother’s rescue.
The shoulder thing was unnecessary and more of an unconscious act of desperation than anything…
But it worked. When Jarl’s fingers brush his skin—fake or not—Áesta can feel that tiny bit of love again.
That same surprising warmth that he’s never actually felt before laying in bed with Jarl.
First in his cabin home. Then a second time just the night before. And now, a third time…
It’s lovely.
He’s going to miss it.
~
In the meantime, Áesta’s going to do his absolute best to make hating him the hardest thing Jarl ever does.
This starts with answering all the questions Jarl seems to be accumulating for him. This isn’t hard: most of it is simple and unincriminating and actually helps Áesta flesh himself out as someONE rather than someTHING.
Jarl’s taking an active interest in who he is and trying to understand him.
It’s enthralling.
~
Enthralling, too, is Jarl’s agony at not being there for his brother.
Áesta wants to reach out, risk feeling the pain of such a disagreeable meal, and touch the shaking man. Comfort him like he would Manus when the mage is hopelessly drunk on his own love for Jasey; or like he’d comfort Kane when he misses being human and all those he’d loved and left behind.
But he doesn’t.
Touching Jarl under normal circumstances isn’t wise; so, touching him now when he’s so vulnerable would be infinitely worse—unless you’re someone he’s known for years and NOT a daemon. Like Manus.
Áesta leaves the hurting holy man to the mage as a result.
After all: chances are the priest won’t find a daemon’s touch to be all that comforting right now… although, Áesta’d love to be an exception.
~
And that was the plan, remember: to be unhateable until the truth got out—then he had to go mess it up.
Áesta’s not sure if it’s the stress of knowing that his own friend took the priest’s precious baby brother or if it’s just the standard hypocrisy of forgiving strangers for the most heinous of crimes while not forgiving the most miniscule of affronts by friends that he swears permeates the whole forgive me father for I have sinned thing but he practically explodes when he realizes Jarl is basically refusing to take the steps necessary to forgive his own childhood friend. It’s like the holy man thinks his only option is to bury and forget his feelings.
How stupid—‽
So, Áesta tells him: tells him it’s okay to be angry, okay to hurt for being hurt, and okay to take out his pain because Hagen will understand; in fact, Hagen will welcome it because it’ll be cathartic for him! For them! (Why don’t humans understand their own feelings anyhow?)
And, to his surprise, Jarl listens to him.
When he and Manus are asked to leave, he does so calmly; but the second he’s outside, he’s squealing gayly: “Did ye see t’at‽‽‽ Priesty Boy listened! ‘E ac'ually took me advice!!!”
~
“You really like him, don’t you?” Manus asks as he sips the cup of coffee Dory, Sunder Inn’s cook, gave him.
Áesta only looks quizzically at him from his spot next to the eavesdropping Bobby. He’s been listening to her talk about her crush—the barkeep practically next door—and snacking on it like a dessert after both the filling meal of this morning and the pleasant surprise of just a moment before.
The mage grins impishly around the rim of his mug, “Jarl; you wouldn’t have bothered to coach him through the healthy management of his emotions if you didn’t like him—and it took you months to do that with ME so you must like him even more—I’m jealous~!”
The daemon scuffs, trying to hide how embarrassed he is, “At least AH aint’ drinkin’ somet’ing Ah don’t like ta feel like me ot’er ‘alf is ‘ere!” He gestures pointedly at the bitter mug in the magician’s hands.
Manus has the decency to blush, “Well, at least you admit Jarl’s your other half!”
The woman around them laugh at their expense, providing the perfect distraction for Áesta to contemplate: if a daemon is a minion of Lucifer like a priest is a representative of their god… maybe they are two halves.
~
More importantly: Manus is right; why IS it so … joyous that Jarl listened to him?
Áesta thinks about it as he basks in Bobby’s love for Cunning’s Bar Keep.
But he can only think of one answer: Jarl isn’t like the others.
He’s not dismissive or blind or pigeonholing like HE was.
(He might even be on the path to trusting Áesta…)
~
He tests this theory later, as they’re leaving Sunder Inn.
Jarl is somehow completely confused by the free food and drinks Sheryl and Dory have personally given them as though he—a bleeding PRIEST—has no concept of… Well, this isn’t generosity, exactly, but it is CARING.
It’s wanting to see someone again.
So, Áesta tells him this.
(And Jarl believes him.)
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