WHAT. Library judging, flirting & firsts. WHERE. Xhorhaus Library WHEN. During the age plot! WARNINGS. Some minor references to bad parenting, but otherwise very soft and fluffy. STATUS. Complete! ART CREDIT.here!
Though it had been a few days since Essek had literally woken up in this world of Vallo, he was still getting used to the knowledge that he was, in fact, somewhere other than Exandria. He knew the theories and truths of other worlds and planes of existences, of course; the latter was undisputable fact back home, where places like the Feywild and Shadowfell and the elemental planes were just a step to the side of the material plane that he called home and could be visited through portals and magic. Still, this world was very different, the visiting of which felt more like a miracle of Dunamancy with manipulation of time and space required to get him there in the first place.
That realization, of course, was the primary reason he had stopped believing himself kidnapped. That and, Essek had concluded, it seemed unlikely for the Empire to kidnap a teenaged noble child of an Umavi by way of a teenaged student of the arcane. The Empire worked in mysterious ways, but even Essek had to digress that this was probably not one of those ways.
Besides, it hadn't taken long for Essek to realize that Bren did not add up to be just what he had always been told to expect. He seemed smart and talented in magic, two things that went very far when it came to Essek's estimations of people. It wasn't often that he found people who were his true peers when it came to both age and talents; it was exhausting to be a prodigy and your talents blamed on a past life you couldn't remember yet by most everyone in Rosohna, while his conversations with Bren were just between two very intelligent teenagers.
Needless to say, it had been an interesting vacation from his regular life, Essek being in Vallo. The company aside, it was the first time he had not had the Umavi or his father interfering in his daily schedule, allowing him to just do as he pleased and be himself. It was freeing in a way he was still struggling with wrapping his mind around, though enjoying every moment of that struggle.
And yet, he still found himself erring toward the familiar at times, which was why had now found himself in the sizable library in the house he'd initially woken in. There were books on all sorts of subjects and in a variety of languages, some that Essek understood and others that he hadn't yet had time to study. There were components on shelves and a lab for creating potions and conducting experiments, but it was the books that were currently keeping Essek's attention. Namely, it was the order of the books that was bothering him, as he carefully slid books off of shelves and rehomed them in other places, in a way that made far more sense for his particular mind.
Surely the owner of these books and this library wouldn't mind.
It was probably unsafe to stay in the house that one woke up in when alternate universes, strange worlds, and time travel was involved. But Bren was curious of nature and there was enough hints around the house that what people had told them had been true. They were out of time and place, and it would only be temporary.
So he made the best of it. By snooping around everything in the house and reading every book he could get his hands on. There was a great deal of magic here, and magical research, and it all gave him hoped or his future.
A future where he was a talented and powerful Wizard, capable of creating his own spells, not just producing dancing lights or turning himself invisible.
Even if the invisibility was helpful in this instance, as he sat in the comfortable chair, magically shielded from prying eyes with a book open in his hands. Until he spotted the Drow, moving things that did not belong to him. After the third reshuffle, Bren finally spoke up from his invisible spot. “Ah- what are you doing?”
Essek immediately started, nearly dropping the book that he was sliding into the correct place in the shelves and catching it just before it tumbled to the floor. He turned, eyes taking in the space that he had been so certain he'd been alone in--the fact that he hadn't been and didn't even know how long he'd been observed tinted the ends of his long ears and sharp cheekbones plum. The blushing in and of itself made him only blush more, having not mastered his emotions like his mother was always telling him to.
His attention landed on the chair, eyes narrowing as he waved his hand and spoke a few words to dispel the magic he had to assume was present there. Sure enough, the Empire wizard appeared there, his own book in hand, and Essek smirked in triumph, caught himself, then let out a short huff of a breath.
"Nothing." The word was sharp, a bit higher pitched in that way his words always tipped when he was caught doing something he probably wasn't supposed to do. Then, he forced the tension from his shoulders and added, "These books are not sorted properly."
Bren made a little noise in the back of his throat when he became visible, and was tempted to cast it again just to be annoying. But he was already running low on fumes from his earlier tests, and there was no guarantee it’d work.
If it failed around Essek, he would have just had to melt in the floor never to be seen again. Embarassing.
For now he would just be smug that he managed to surprise the other wizard, though he wrinkled his nose at the judgement of the bookcases laid out around them. Bren had not found he’d had any issue finding anything, but perhaps his older self had been the one to sort them this way previously, and that was why. His voice was thick with his Zemnian accent. “Not sorted properly? They are by school, which is how it should be. How would you do it?”
"You say that, but some of these books appear misplaced." He gestured with one hand toward Bren, beckoning him to follow with him as he took a few quick steps down the line of shelves. Almost immediately, the tension seemed to flood out of him as he had something different to focus on, something that he could probably chat on about for longer than most people would find interesting. Magic, or just books about magic or just books in general, would always excite him.
"See, here," Essek continued, pulling off the shelf a thin copy of a book that appeared to be about magical healing as it equates to the divine. He pointed toward some of the other books. "These seem more traditionally about necromancy, but then this one is about healing. Why would there not be a separate area for healing? Or something specifically for divine magic? Or even a section specifically about magic as it applies to such casters that can wield such magic, such as clerics or those that devote themselves to a god?
"Also," he went on, not upset but clearly trying to wrap his mind around this filing of books, "none of them are in any sort of order, outside of what I think is meant to be schools of magic. No alphabetization, not by author or title. How would one be able to find anything? It is a bit chaotic, is it not?"
It was about then that Essek realized he had said a lot of words just then, perhaps a longer string than he'd said in one go in a very long time. He swallowed, trying to ignore the voice in his head telling him to feel poorly for that which sounded eerily close to his mother, and instead glanced a bit sheepishly once at Bren and then at the books around them. "Still, it is a very nice collection."
While Bren could see Essek’s thought process - and thought it was cute that he was rambling about magic like this - he still had to make a little thoughtful noise. “Most healing magic is necromancy. But-” He smiled, a tiny thing, not yet hidden behind future burdens. “I like a little chaos, myself. Chaos magic is its own beast, and an interesting one at that.”
Not one he had been able to study extensively, just yet. The academy was not one for deviating from the curriculum and early on had just been easy spells, things that everyone there could understand and learn from. He’d mastered his dancing lights first, and invisibility not too long after, but fire seemed to come the most naturally to him out of any of them.
Bren wasn’t sure what that meant, but it kept him warm during the long nights of studying. “Are you looking for something in particular? I can probably find it.” He had already memorized most of the shelves since his arrival, but it seemed boastful to say that out loud.
Essek looked over at Bren, mulling over his words. Chaos had never been something that he had allowed himself to even consider liking, though he had to admit that in his short couple of days in Vallo, where chaos seemed to be an everyday given occurrence, it felt a bit fun. Back home, he had a lot of expectations on his shoulders and those mostly revolved around propriety and blending in, but also shining, so long as it fell within certain parameters. He got to shed some of that since waking up (in bed with Bren, his mind couldn't stop reminding him) so far from home and it had felt better than he'd realized.
Bren, though, he could envision liking chaos, as he already said. This Empire human wasn't what he'd expected from what he'd been told, but he'd been unexpected in other ways, too. It made Essek's chest feel a bit warm, if he thought about it too long--like in this very moment, in fact.
Essek cleared his throat, looking away from Bren and ignoring his still warm ears and cheeks to look at the books. "I found books that were about my specialties and was curious if there may be more." And then, despite just looking away, his eyes drifted back to Bren. "What is your favorite that you have read so far?"
“Hm.” Bren debated that question quietly, and mulled it over in his head. He knew there were numerous graviturgy and dunamancy books in this library, he’d devoured several of them thus far. It wasn’t magic he’d been permitted to learn, with it being prominent in the Dynasty and not the Empire, but Bren wanted knowledge, he didn’t care about divides.
But then he thought of one. One he’d read last night, well past midnight, when he was alone in his room, the lights dim. No one had been there to see his cheeks flush a ruddy color. It was cute to see Essek turn a deeper shade of purple, though, and only felt fair that he could potentially pull the same flustered reaction out with just a book. So he leaned in slowly, and reached behind Essek’s head to pull out a small tome, Courting of the Crick.
He handed it to Essek with a little smile. “It was very enlightening.” It had been not-good, actually, but there were parts of it that had at least tickled his interest. “In many ways.”
If Essek had thought he was blushing before, it was nothing compared to the way his cheeks flared plum as Bren leaned in--Essek's heart doing a little flip-flop in his chest as he did--and reached for the book. But even that couldn't have prepared him for the immediate fluster that came with reading the title, then understanding the title and all the implications that came with it a moment later.
"Ah." It was an inspired response, one that Essek would have internally chastised himself about if his mind wasn't flailing. He flipped through the pages to confirm that he was holding what he thought he was holding, then immediately snapped the book shut once he got said confirmation through glimpses of prose. Was this flirting? Was Bren flirting with him through a smutty romance novel that used questionable terms for Kryn in the title? Or was this teasing? Was there a difference? Did Essek care?
Essek was still very young, especially since he hadn't yet settled into anamnesis and didn't know how old he actually was. Without those memories, he only had what he'd experienced thus far to fall back on when it came to matters like these. And, well. His experience had been quite lacking.
Even so, he was pretty sure this was flirting. Low experience or not, he'd been on the receiving end despite not really being interested. This time, though, Essek was interested and he made the conscious choice not to think about that too deeply and instead looked up at Bren with a raised eyebrow. The look might have been more effective were he not still blushing, but he nevertheless cleared his throat and asked, "What did you learn, then?"
What had he learned? Nothing good, really. Nothing that was good for either of them, though that hadn't stopped Bren from being interested. He got interested easily enough, as was already joked to him by his friends at the Academy, but never to a member of the Dynasty.
The forbidden side of it was a draw, to be sure, but Bren also just liked pretty people, and Essek was-- very, very pretty.
“I can show you,” Bren decided that too spur-of-the-moment to really be a warning, and leaned in to press a kiss to Essek’s mouth, his impulsiveness taking the reigns this time. He hadn’t kissed very many people in his lifetime, just a few farm girls and one boy, teenage fooling around behind barns when they should all be working. Nothing that truly could be considered experience in his age. So Bren was still earnest and not as smooth as he would have liked, but it was a pleasant, brief thing, not too wet, and he didn’t linger long before he pulled away with a smug little grin on his face.
If Essek had ever been told that his very first kiss would be shared with an attractive Empire boy who possessed a mind for the arcane that seemed equal to his own, he would have laughed. Even now, as Bren pulled away, he wanted to laugh because of how improbable this all should have been. They shouldn't have even met given how opposing their countries were to one another and yet the magic of this place had done it, on top of however they clearly knew one another somehow in their futures given all he'd seen in this house alone.
But, here he was, standing in this nice library and kissed. Verin would never believe it, if he told him.
Still, the kiss had been a surprise, regardless of flirting, and Essek stared at Bren for a few long moments before letting out a soft, "Oh." Yet another inspired choice, he sighed internally as he fought the urge to touch his lips as though there would be evidence there of what had just happened. Instead, he took Bren's grin as a bolster to his lingering confidence and said, "You can show me again." Then, when that confidence wavered just a little, he added, "If you want."
That was a better response than Bren had expected. He’d half thought that Essek would blast him away with something powerful, or sink him into the ground with a gravity well (and he would have to resist the urge to ask for information on how to do that, because learning magic was often more important than one’s own safety). Being asked for another kiss was certainly better than both of those things (except, perhaps, learning a new spell. That would have peaked the situation.)
He’d have to be sure to not repeat this to any of his classmates, though. Or his parents. His cheeks flushed pleasantly and his smug grin gave way to something a little more sincere and interested. “Ja, I do want.” He paused, and the smile grew a little. “The best way to learn something is to practice it.” While he had learned that in school, he did not think this was the practical application that they meant when the professors had said as much.
"With practice comes expertise," Essek agreed, quoting one of his tutors in such an instance that would have probably had the poor goblin falling into fits if she knew. But, that was all right. She never would know, even if Essek was certain that this moment was going to be seared into his memory.
Essek's smile matched Bren's and he wondered, briefly, how the careful life he wandered had led him here, then decided he truly didn't care. Not right now, with promises of more kissing in his future. And so, instead of commenting further, he just huffed a laugh and, in a fit of boldness he had never felt outside of practicing magic, reached for the collar of Bren's shirt, tugging him in as he pushed himself up on his toes and met him in the second of what would undoubtedly be a good many shared kisses.