Nash

Nash stands guard in the doorway where Niko positioned him, his nose twitching as he inhales the potent mix of magic and desperation that permeates these halls. Tonight's job has brought them to a boarding house that caters to all things not-quite-vanilla-human.

The guy they’re here to help, Corrin, keeps shouting about how he has unlimited power thanks to a cursed ring he somehow acquired, but he sure didn’t do much while they dragged his bed away from the wall, or while Nash held him down on it while Niko drew a circle of runes around it. He can’t leave the bed now, but he’s still cackling while Niko draws more runes.

A door slams open across the hall, and all Nash can do is stare at the expanse of bare, tattooed skin and shiny jewellery he’s confronted with. Worn cotton boxers hang precariously low on narrow hips, creating an odd juxtaposition with fingers adorned in jewelled rings and wrists draped in beaded bracelets.

Brown ink tattoos, their rough lines suggesting an amateur hand, wind their way up a lean stomach and across a flat chest. Webs and overlapping circles of runes hint at some magical purpose, but they mean nothing to Nash. What catches his eye is the way one of the circles rings the dark pink of a nipple.

A sharp sigh heaves the chest he's been staring at, jolting Nash out of his trance. His gaze snaps up to meet cold blue eyes, narrowed in annoyance and set in a face framed by wavy, chin-length pale blond hair.

Nash steels himself for a well-deserved tongue-lashing over his inappropriate ogling, but the newcomer seems to have other priorities. He shoulders past Nash to share the doorway, his attention fixed on the man Niko has contained.

"Corrin, you fuck," the guy spits, his knuckles whitening as he grips the doorframe. “I’d like to fucking get some sleep one of these days, you know. I don’t need a cursed artefact and a bunch of strangers in here in the middle of the night.”

It takes Nash a moment to realise that they are the strangers, and apparently this guy considers them to be an equal annoyance to the very dangerous cursed ring Corrin is currently twirling on his finger. After the leering introduction Nash just gave him, he can’t really blame Aster for the sentiment.

Corrin laughs, his back arching off the bed. “They can leave. I’m fine! Better than fine, Aster. I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for.”

Aster rolls his icy eyes. “What I’ve always told you is still true. Power is never easy. It’s never free.”

“It’s easy for you!” Corrin hisses back.

Nash places a hand on Aster’s shoulder, not liking the rising tension in the room, but the look Aster shoots at him is so affronted that he immediately removes it.

Niko’s dark blue eyes flick to them momentarily before returning to his rune work, narrowing in concentration. He still looks completely unruffled, not a single dark brown hair out of place. He always does. Well, almost always. By this point, Nash has discovered that it is possible for the perfect mask he wears to be disturbed, but it doesn’t happen often.

Nash spent their first few months of living together thoroughly convinced that Niko just used magic to keep himself looking sharp, but then one day he needed to talk to him in the morning and he caught him in the middle of doing his hair. He really does just use a blow dryer and hair product.

"Yeah, it's so easy for me," Aster retorts, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I could do anything I want, but I guess I just choose to live here and deal with everyone's drama every single fucking day."

Corrin scoffs. “I don’t care anymore. I can do anything I want.”

“You wouldn’t still be here if that were true.”

“They can’t take it from me. All this…” Corrin gestures at the salt circle surrounding his bed, the runes Niko has drawn in chalk on the carpet, “it’s just temporary. They’ll let me go eventually, and then I can do whatever I want.”

As Aster opens his mouth, another biting remark clearly on the tip of his tongue, a hairy hand grasps his arm. The venomous look Aster shoots the man it’s attached to—Sable, the house manager—is a match for the one he gave Nash, and it has the same effect. Sable yanks his hand back as though he just touched a hot stove.

Nash originally took Sable to be a satyr, but taking in his soft features and wispy beard, the gentle look he levels Aster with, Nash realises that he’s actually a faun. The two are similar in appearance, but quite different in the ways that matter.

“This fucking junkie,” Aster says, his bracelets clacking together as he flings an arm out to indicate Corrin. “I’m sick of this shit. After this is dealt with, you’re moving him to the end of the hall.”

Nash winces at the use of the word ‘junkie.’ Addiction is complicated and attitudes like that aren’t exactly helpful. But that’s easy for him to say, when he gets to go home to a nice, big house that he shares with a roommate he chose. Despite all his rage, all Aster is even asking is for this guy to be moved a few doors down.

“We’ll move him,” Sable promises.

“Aster,” Corrin coos from where he lays sprawled out on his bed. “Is this how it feels to you all the time?” He writhes, as if settling into an invisible, cosy embrace. "All syrupy and warm?"

"No, you dipshit," Aster snaps, taking a step into the room. "When the fuck have I ever given the impression that I'm all warm and fuzzy inside?"

From his position kneeling beside Corrin's bed, chalk still gripped in his hand, Niko catches Nash's eye and gives a subtle shake of his head. Nash doesn’t have much of a sense for the magical forces at play here, but it isn’t hard to tell that Aster has the potential to be a greater threat than Corrin. With his stubbled face and hair badly in need of a cut, Corrin looks like your average guy who’s down on his luck. Aster, on the other hand, exudes an aura of barely contained chaos. Nash suspects every tattoo and piece of jewellery serves a purpose.

Nash reaches out a hand to pull Aster back out of the room, but the closer his fingers get, the deeper a feeling of chill dread sinks in around his bones. Aster radiates danger like a coiled viper, and Nash isn’t sure he’ll get a second warning. He’s not normally one to back down in the face of fear, but this sinks into his gut and roots him in place.

Corrin slips the ring off, turning it between his fingers. The smooth metal catches the light. “Maybe you need a trinket like mine. It can be easy, Aster. It can feel so good.”

"Maybe," Aster murmurs, swaying half a step closer. Shit.

"Hey," Nash coaxes, his voice low as if soothing a wild animal. "Aster, come on. Out of the room."

Aster ignores him, eyes locked on the ring. Nash's mind races—if Aster grabs for it, all hell will break loose. Will it just be them against Aster and the spirit in that ring, or is Corrin going to join the fray as well? Nash toes off his shoes, inching closer to Aster, ready to strip down and shift if he has to.

"It's amazing, Aster," Corrin breathes, voice dreamy. "Like I'm floating on a cloud. Nothing can touch me. I can do anything."

Without warning, Aster lunges forward, hand held out, and Nash abandons all caution and grabs him. Whatever retaliation he expected doesn’t come, and when Aster tries to pull away, Nash easily holds him in place. For a moment, the situation seems to be contained, but then Corrin pulls his arm back and tosses the ring.

Nash yanks Aster backwards, but Aster leans forward, reaching out. His hand closes around the ring mid-air. A moment of stillness, then a loud pop and Aster's muffled cry of pain. He opens his hand; bloody, broken pieces of metal fall to the carpet.

"You stupid fuck," Aster hisses at Corrin, blood dripping onto the carpet. "It felt good because it doped you up, you idiot. It wasn't giving you shit. You really thought you were just all-powerfully sitting on your bed, patiently waiting for these guys to get bored and go away? Really? It was draining you. You're lucky that stupid piece of trash thought I wanted any part of that."

Aster whirls towards the doorway, jabbing the finger of his bleeding hand at Sable's wide-eyed face. "You're giving me two weeks of free board for this."

Sable raises his hands in surrender. "A month."

That seems to temper some of Aster’s rage. Nash grabs the square of null-cloth from the bed—originally meant to wrap the ring once they got it off Corrin—and uses it to stanch Aster's bleeding hand. When Nash gives him a gentle tug in the direction of the adjoining bathroom, he follows without resistance.

The bathroom is cramped, forcing them to press close as Nash helps Aster wash his hand in the sink. Even in his human form, Nash's heightened senses pick up Aster's scent. It’s mostly blood right now, but beneath that he smells herbs and the heady, masculine scent of Aster’s body. A primal urge to bury his face in Aster's neck and inhale deeply rises within Nash, but he quickly shoves that down. Some werewolves are frankly just kind of weird freaks, and he doesn’t want to be like that.

Focusing on the task at hand, Nash examines Aster's palm. While no bones seem broken, the mess of blood and torn flesh makes it hard to gauge the full extent of the damage.

“You really should have let Niko deal with it,” Nash murmurs as he carefully rinses the cuts, pulling out a tiny slither of shiny metal. “That’s what we’re here for. You didn’t have to get hurt.”

Aster responds with a noncommittal grunt, his attention on the bloodied null-cloth Nash left draped over the sink's edge. After a moment's consideration, he tucks it into the waistband of his boxers. "I'm keeping this."

Nash considers objecting, already anticipating the earful he’ll get from Niko about how expensive that thing was, but it really is Nash’s own fault for using a powerful magical tool like a cleaning rag. It’s covered in Aster’s blood now, and though Nash has never been too careful with his own, he can’t blame a magic user if they’re less than comfortable with handing a sample of theirs over to strangers.

"Yeah, okay," Nash concedes. "You have a preferred healer? We can give you a ride."

Aster makes a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Will you? If this scars, it's going to fuck up the range of motion in your hand. It'll be a lot more expensive to heal later. You might be waiting a few hours at the free clinic, but then it’ll be dealt with.”

"I'm good, thanks," Aster replies, his tone clipped.

Nash frowns. "See, now I don't know if that means you actually have some way of getting this seen to or if you're just dangerously self-destructive."

Aster pulls his hand away, wrapping it in the null-cloth and solidifying its new role as a convenient rag. “And that’s a fun guessing game that you can play with yourself for the rest of your life. Or at least as long as it takes you to stop caring about this after you leave.”

"That's your choice, but—" Nash starts, but Aster's already turning away.

He walks out of the bathroom, pausing only to shoot Corrin an irritated look before crossing the hall to his own room. The slam of his door echoes through the quiet hallway.

Niko is already on the floor, brushing away the runes drawn on the carpet. Their handheld vacuum lays nearby, ready to clean up the salt. Corrin sits curled in on himself on the bed, looking appropriately chagrined.

Niko holds out a tissue containing the shattered remains of the ring for Nash to see. "It's completely inert," he explains. "As far as I can tell, the spirit thought it could get its hooks into Aster and tried to jump hosts, and he took the opportunity to slap it down. Why he thought destroying half his hand along with it was the way to go, I don’t know.”

If Aster is really so worried about who has his blood, he should have taken the broken bits of the ring as well, because the tissue is red with it. But whatever. Technically he did their job for them, so if he wants the null-cloth as payment, that’s fine. Niko might not agree, but Nash still feels bad about not doing more to prevent the whole situation. His one job was to guard the door, and he failed.

“Sorry I kind of dropped the ball on guarding the door,” Nash says. “I don’t know why—”

Niko waves him off. "He was using some kind of passive magic to give himself a certain... prickliness."

“Yeah, I definitely felt that. I still think I could have stopped him. I wasn’t that afraid of him, just…”

"Maybe you could have," Niko concedes. "And maybe he could have pushed back harder if you'd tried. Often, the most artful use of magic is nothing more than a carefully directed nudge. He had more of an idea of what he was doing than you might expect from someone who barged in wearing nothing but his underpants to yell at everyone."

“Do you think he’s competent enough to know what he’s doing about his hand?” Nash asks. “He wouldn’t let me drive him to a healer.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Niko turns to Corrin. “What do you think?”

Corrin lets out a bitter huff. “I think I won’t see him for three days and then he’ll come out of his room to shout at someone, and his hand’ll be fine. He acts like he can do anything, but he’s right. If he’s so great, why does he just sit around here being cranky?”

That’s a great question. From what Nash has seen, power tends to go hand in hand with money. It’s not like Aster is some blunt weapon with no control. He’s a skilled magic user. He shouldn’t be in a place like this. But none of that is Nash’s business.

They vacuum up their salt, leave an invoice with Sable on the way out, and head back to their car. Nash is still thinking about Aster and his busted up hand on the drive home. He hopes Aster will be okay, but as Aster pointed out, Nash will never really know. He has to accept that, no matter how much it gnaws at him.