No Compromises

It’s not as if any of them expect the high life—it’s something you basically waive all rights to as soon as you take a freelance job from a city noticeboard, and Atticus, for his part, had been making himself at home in wagons since long before then. While there’s plenty to complain about on the road, it amounts more to commiserating by the fire than anything else; nobody actually expects any better.

However, given how many of them had almost died in the last three days, when Atticus announced they’d reach the outskirts of Ragni by nightfall, the rest of his party declared a unanimous vote to sleep in an actual building for once.

Right in the lap of luxury!, Liu had crowed, though he was either considerate or exhausted enough to refrain from waxing poetic about the extravagant splendour of bare necessities for the rest of the journey.

Which is how they found themselves in the lobby of the first inn they came across, counting coins and killing time while they wait for their bard to finish doing… Whatever he’s doing at reception. Atticus had initially volunteered to do the talking, but Liu informed him that he had “the social grace of a brick” and nobody had disagreed. Atticus had left him to it; any argument wouldn’t be worth the effort of speaking.

Still, he keeps a bare-minimum eye on the front desk, just in case. Liu’s approach tends towards high-risk, high-reward—it’s not so much that things go wrong more often, but it’s worse when they eventually do. Still, their bard saunters back without incident, keys jingling victoriously in his grasp, and he drops them on the table with a surprisingly non-zero amount of flair.

“Got us five percent off, everyone say thank you, Liu.”

“Go fuck yourself, Goldwood.” Ferro tells people to go fuck themselves so often it no longer qualifies as an insult.

“Close enough,” Liu says, though—fuck, it’s Wilkas now, isn’t it? He only heard it secondhand from Ferro, and he did just call himself Liu, so Atticus isn’t entirely sure what the situation is. He makes a mental note to double-check; whatever it is, it’ll take some getting used to.

Wilkas. Wilkas. Goldwood, was it?

“What’d you do for the discount?” Baxter asks, in that accusatory kind of way where he assumes underhandedness as a matter of course.

Wilkas merely shrugs—Atticus can almost hear the my very presence, darling—and slides a key in Baxter’s direction; Atticus does a quick count.

“Couldn’t get a fifth room?” he asks; Wilkas looks at him like a deer in the spotlight. “If you didn’t have the money, you could’ve asked.”

Even before he’s done speaking, Wilkas scoffs. “Look at how nothing this place is and tell me money is the issue here,” he says, gesturing just dramatically enough to get the point across without getting the wrong kind of attention from staff. “Place is crawling with people, I got the only rooms they had left.”

“I could be a mouse tonight?” Meek suggests, euonymically.

“No, no, no.” Wilkas picks up a key and presses it into Meek’s hands, flashing him that easygoing smile as he does. “No compromises tonight. Everyone gets a room with an actual bed, including you.”

Meek looks skeptical. “So, who’s missing out?”

“Nobody’s missing out, really,” Wilkas says. “All of you have rooms here, and I’ve got my own arrangements.” He picks up the remaining keys and hands one to Ferro, who looks distinctly unimpressed.

“You’re hooking up with someone and bagging a room that way?” she deduces. Wilkas makes no attempt to defend himself—because of course he doesn’t—and Ferro sighs. “Not my problem… Get their wallet if you can,” she says, getting up to go search for her room.

“I’ll try my best. Have a good night,” Wilkas calls. “That goes for everyone, actually—we’ve been pulling like, 14-hour days, and we don’t need to be anywhere until…” He furrows his brow, turning to Atticus and holding out the last key. “What’s the plan, Kell?”

Atticus doesn’t take it. “We’re ahead of schedule, so we can afford to spend a day or two here. I won’t chase anyone up until late afternoon, probably,” he says; he watches Meek and Baxter leave in his periphery, but keeps his eyes fixed on Wilkas.

Wilkas, for his part, stares right back. “If you really wanna sleep in the wagon, you can just tell me,” he says, “but the room is yours if you want it.”

“Nobody’s sleeping in the wagon,” Atticus says, “or with random guests.”

“You’re no fun,” Wilkas complains. “You’re also not in charge of me, actually.”

“You’re lucky none of your ribs are broken from yesterday.”

“What, you don’t trust me to take care of myself?”

It may be a rhetorical question, but it’s still among the stupidest Atticus has ever heard in his life. “…No.” He makes a start for the stairs; fortunately, Wilkas follows him, instead of sweet-talking his way around the bar until he reaches someone with more libido than brains.

Unfortunately, the next thing out of his mouth is, “You want me to sleep with you instead?”

It takes Atticus halfway up the stairs before he consciously registers what the hell Wilkas just said; when he looks back, the bard is smirking up at him like he’s won something.

“I didn’t say that,” Atticus tries, but experience tells him there’s no point in doing anything but change the subject and keep walking; Wilkas will carry on being infuriatingly smug until he’s distracted from it. “There’s probably a couch—”

“You’d put me on a couch? With my injuries?” Wilkas accuses, catching up to Atticus at the top of the stairs and swiftly overtaking him to hunt down their room. “As if I’m not wounded enough—you treat me so poorly.”

“Fine, I’ll take the couch, you diva.”

“Diva?”

“I didn’t think it was that obscene of a word.”

“It’s not, I just didn’t think you were cultured enough to have stumbled across it.”

“Culture has nothing to do with it. Besides, it’s not as if you represent high art here.”

Wilkas barks out a laugh from down the hall, apparently having found their room. For a moment Atticus thinks he’s won the argument—Wilkas tends to concede if the loss is entertaining enough—but then he follows up with a sing-song “Hey, Atticus˜!” that can only mean trouble.

Atticus approaches the door and the end of his tether in rough sync.

Wilkas is leaning against the door frame, making no effort to get out of Atticus’ way as he surveys the room. It’s all very slightly nicer than he expected; aside from the bed, there’s a rather ornate writing desk and chair in one corner, and the curtains are less moth-eaten than anticipated, but—

“So there’s no couch.”

“Yes, Liauro, I can see that.”

With his point made, Wilkas makes a beeline for the desk and carefully sets his viol and lute on it, allowing his remaining bag to slip unceremoniously off his shoulder and onto the floor. There’s something out of place about him—but there always is, somehow, he so rarely fits with his surroundings. Maybe it should be dissonant, but he instead manages to be perpetually striking.

Atticus clears his throat. “I’ll come get everyone at about three. Sleep well.”

Wilkas looks at him like he’s got three heads. “You’re not actually gonna sleep in the wagon, are you? No compromises also includes you.”

“Last I checked, ‘no compromises’ was your idea.”

“Doesn’t sound like a problem to me,” Wilkas says, walking over to stand far, far too close to Atticus, “and I don’t think it actually sounds like a problem to you, either.”

Maybe it’s the exhaustion finally catching up to him, or maybe Wilkas is just that persuasive, or maybe—god forbid—he’s actually right.

“You do realise that’s a single bed?” Atticus says, but sets his bag down anyway.

Wilkas grins, mercifully taking a step back. “You won’t even notice I’m there, promise.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“Ah, well. I’m sure you’ll survive,” Wilkas says, taking another step back and falling lazily onto the bed. He hums something to himself, which gives Atticus just enough time to realise he’s casting something before the door slams into his back.

It’s a small victory, but Atticus takes a little pride in keeping his footing; he takes less pride in how pleased the bard looks with himself. “That door has a handle.”

“I know.”

“You could’ve closed it yourself. Or asked me to.”

Wilkas shrugs. “Didn’t feel like it.”

There’s a horrid little moment of eye contact, a mutual stare-down as Atticus ponders just how much audacity a single person can have. “You’re impossible,” he eventually says, with the most you’re-better-than-this tone he can muster.

That sends Wilkas into a fit of giggles, so Atticus mentally marks the conversation as over and sits at the foot of the bed to contend with his boot laces. He’s heard the bard laugh so many times, low and pretty and dripping ulterior motive, that he’s just about sick of the sound—but this is a different laugh entirely, jagged and choked, one he can’t imagine being rehearsed. He must be too tired to keep up his usual act; he’ll be back to his normal routine in the morning, surely.

“What should I call you, by the way?” Atticus asks, glancing back at Wilkas.

Wilkas—who had apparently let his hair down and gotten halfway out of his shirt while Atticus wasn’t looking—winks. “Anything you like.”

Atticus resists the urge to roll his eyes. “No, really. It’s Wilkas, right?”

The smile drops from his face. “Oh, it’s… Still up to you, really. I don’t mind either way.”

“But that is your name?”

“Sure.” He shrugs the rest of his shirt off and turns to Atticus. “I’m starting to think Ferro didn’t explain… Literally anything.”

“No,” Atticus agrees. “Though I’ll admit, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything other than the road,” he adds.

“That’s fair,” Wilkas says. “So, uh… Liu Liauro is a stage name,” he explains, “but I spend enough time doing that stuff that I don’t really use my real name?” It’s hard to tell, but there’s a definite flush to his face.

“So why tell us?” Atticus asks.

“Because I thought I was going to die yesterday,” Wilkas says bluntly, “and I didn’t want to get buried as Liu.”

“Oh.”

Because what else is he meant to say? That he understands? That he doesn’t? He can’t imagine using any name other than his own—he spots twin scars on Wilkas’ chest and thinks he understands even less. Below them are deep, black bruises, all crowded together the size of an owlbear’s paw—and really, what was he thinking, getting into close range with it?—and he can count his ribs by their pattern.

Thank you for telling us. I also thought you were going to die yesterday.

Thankfully, Wilkas is much better at talking than Atticus is. “So if I do die, you put ‘Wilkas Goldwood’ on the stone, yeah?” he says, smiling like he isn’t talking about his own funeral. “But otherwise, you can call me what you like.”

“Right…” Atticus says. “It’s… A good name.”

“Thank you, I picked it myself!” Wilkas says, grinning like he’s waited his whole life to say it—although, now that Atticus thinks about it, maybe he has. “Well, Ma helped me out, but still.”

“Did you pick Liu, too?” Atticus asks, before he can stop himself.

Wilkas shakes his head. “Nah… It’s Elvish, so it didn’t matter as much when I realised I wasn’t a girl,” he explains, casually leaning back against the headboard. “Though, even if it did… Rebranding sucks.”

Atticus snorts. “I can imagine,” he says, getting up to turn out the lights. He double checks that the door is locked, before he flips the switch and his vision settles into dim, comfortable monochrome.

Wilkas, politely, shifts to the edge of the bed to give Atticus enough space to settle. “If this is how I find out you snore, by the way, I’m killing you,” he declares, snickering at his own joke.

“In that case, I have good news for both of us,” Atticus says; in the back of his mind, he marks light sleeper next to the bard’s new name. As soon as he lies down, Wilkas curls into his side like he belongs there, pulling the blanket over them both.

“What happened to you’ll barely notice me, hm?”

“I lied,” Wilkas yawns. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Atticus finds he doesn’t, really; Wilkas is fairly tolerable even at his worst, and this doesn’t even register as close. “I’m sure I’ll survive.” 

Maybe it would have been worse about a month ago, when Atticus was still under the impression that Wilkas actually meant anything he said or did, but now? He knows the flirting is reflexive, that he spends all his energy to seem at ease—hell, that less than an hour ago Wilkas was planning to warm a stranger’s bed rather than stay with someone he knew.

None of it matters; that’s survivable. 

“Mhm. G’night,” Wilkas mumbles, already barely audible; either he’s that quick to tire or he’s putting it on for some reason, and Atticus doesn’t really want to know which is correct. He doesn’t care, anyway. He doesn’t.

“Goodnight, Wilkas.”

(And if he does, nobody can say.)