notapaladin

Acatl spends his birthday finding his first gray hairs and getting attacked by the local wildlife. But with Teomitl by his side, it's not such a bad day after all.

-

Acatl woke up cold, alone, and with a nagging feeling that he’d forgotten something. The first two were normal—it was the tail end of the dry season, after all—but the third wasn’t. His memory was usually a reliable thing.

The conch shells were still blaring outside, heralding the dawn. He made his devotions to the gods, hoping the pain would jar loose whatever it was. There were no festivals he needed to prepare for, it wasn’t market day or any of his siblings’ birthdays, and his temple had been refreshingly free of any suspicious deaths for a while, so what...?

Nothing sprung to mind. Pinching his ears to stop the flow of blood, he went to wash his face and hands. There was a thin skin of ice on the surface of the basin, and he broke it with a muttered curse. As he bent his head, a lock of loose hair fell into his eyes.

There was a sliver of white in it. No. I have to have seen wrong.

He hadn’t.

He scrubbed at his skin quickly and rifled through his hair until he’d separated the offending strand—no, two strands. Two. He would have bet a fistful of cacao beans that neither had been there yesterday. He heaved a disgusted sigh and yanked his hair back, tying it tightly out of his face and his sight. But not being able to see it didn’t mean he could forget it was there. I’m getting old. The thought was disquieting. He was barely into his thirties, for the Duality’s sake, and surely it was too soon for him to become decrepit.

When he rose to his feet, his knees complained. Apparently it wasn’t. Wonderful, he thought sourly. Just wonderful.

But then he stepped out into his courtyard and found it occupied, and despite himself his gray mood started to lift. Teomitl sat under the tree, looking fresh-faced and lovely as the dawn, and when his gaze lighted on Acatl he beamed. “Good morning.”

He frowned back at him. Yes, of course he was happy to see him, but there really wasn’t a reason he could think of for the man to be here. It was far too early for his usual lunchtime intrusion—which, admittedly, had become less of an intrusion and more of a pleasant routine reminder that he was indeed supposed to eat something, even if Teomitl did keep scowling when he told him that. There had been no recent damage to the boundaries, and if anything had happened to Mihmatini he knew very well that Teomitl wouldn’t be smiling about it. Maybe he just wants to see you, whispered a voice in his mind. He ignored it, as well as the resulting butterflies in his stomach.

“...Teomitl, what are you doing here?”

Teomitl all but bounced to his feet. That smile was downright infectious, and he had to look away before it caught him too. Then Teomitl spoke, and all chances of that were over. “I wanted to be the first to wish you a happy birthday.”

“A what.” Acatl blinked at him, hearing the words but not understanding them. Wait. Wait. Yesterday was Five Grass, which means today is...oh, gods. He’s right. At midnight, he’d became another year older. And it had slipped his mind entirely. I am getting old.

“...Did you...” Teomitl stared back incredulously. “You forgot your own birthday?”

He dropped his gaze to the ground, feeling his heart thump hard against his ribs. “It’s not important.” It was never important. He was a priest, sworn to give his life to the gods; ever since the day he’d announced his vocation, even his own family hadn’t done more than mildly remark upon it. It would have bothered him more if there hadn’t been so many other, worse reminders of their disapproval.

“Of course it is.” Teomitl drew himself up to his full height, eyes narrowed in a way that dared Acatl to say otherwise

He didn’t. His heart was hammering too fiercely. He cares. And yes, he’d known that—it was hard not to, with all the little reminders that Teomitl had no intention of leaving his life unless Acatl threw him bodily out of it—but it felt more real, now. The hope that he’d ruthlessly beaten back was cautiously trying to raise its head again. “I...”

Teomitl smiled, faint and victorious; clearly, he’d realized there would be no arguing on this point. “You’ve survived another year of everything Tizoc’s reign has thrown at us. That’s deserving of celebration.”

“...That explains it,” he muttered. Even without any major catastrophes, the constant awareness of paper-thin boundaries and a singularly unworthy Emperor were enough to turn any man’s hair white.

“Hm?”

He felt his face heat. “Nothing.”

And now Teomitl was scowling lightly at him. “Acatl.”

He’d promised himself that he would never lie to him, even over something as embarrassing as his own vanity—and it was vanity, which seemed even more ridiculous now with the pulse point of Teomitl’s presence beating under his ribs. “...I thought I was too young for gray hair. I was mistaken.”

Teomitl shook his head dismissively and stepped closer. Acatl suddenly noticed that his courtyard was much smaller than he’d thought it was; from this distance, he could pick out the myriad shades in Teomitl’s dark eyes. He hastily averted his gaze, but not before catching the edge of Teomitl’s frown as the man informed him, “You’re only thirty-two. That’s not old.”

“Older than you,” he pointed out with what was perhaps a bit of a justified huff in his voice. There were times it didn’t bother him. There were even times he forgot entirely; Teomitl swam in the political currents of the palace like an ahuitzotl, and it always made him question which of them was the younger. But a man was entitled to feel his age when his hair started showing it, Duality curse him.

“...I don’t mind. Gray hair makes you look distinguished.” Teomitl shrugged with feigned carelessness, a faint tinge of color in his cheeks. Before Acatl could ask what on earth he meant by that, he continued, “Anyway. I, uh. I thought maybe...I could buy you something to eat? If you’re not busy. Today should be the day that Cozcatl’s running her mother’s tamale stall, and I know you love her cooking.”

Cozcatl made tamales that could wake the dead. She did things with chilies that would have made the head imperial chef weep for joy. They weren’t expensive or extravagant, nothing that would make it onto the palace banquet tables, but if Acatl hadn’t been a priest, he thought sometimes that he might have married her for her food alone.

He found himself smiling. “...Thank you.”

The temple could manage without him for a single morning. It was his birthday, after all.

The Sacred Precinct was busy as it always was, but the city beyond it was even more so. Neither he nor Teomitl had dressed formally—though Teomitl’s crimson cloak and the gold in his ears marked him as a man of imperial blood, drawing more admiring eyes than just Acatl’s—so the jostling crowd meant they had to stick close together. Even though it warmed him from the inside out each time their arms brushed, he didn’t mind.

He should have minded. He was being selfish, wanting what he couldn’t have; his face burned all over again when fingers brushed his arm and he thought fleetingly of catching them in his own. Teomitl was a dozen years younger than him, soon to be Revered Speaker, and married to his sister. It wasn’t so very long ago that he’d been Acatl’s student. That had mattered once.

Teomitl cast him a sideways, smiling glance. “I know you don’t want a celebration, but I should probably warn you that Neutemoc is going to invite you to dinner.”

Neutemoc’s favorite way of celebrating birthdays when they’d been children had been to heave him into the nearest canal and run away laughing before he could wrestle him in too. He closed his eyes briefly. “Ah.”

“I thought you probably wouldn’t like it. I wanted to treat you to something from the palace kitchens instead.”

He shook his head, redirecting the little bubble of joy from the idea of Teomitl thinking so much about him to something more appropriate. “No, that’s fine. It will be good to see the children again.”

“Mm-hmm.” Teomitl’s smile turned fond and wistful, as it always did when they lit on the topic of Acatl’s nieces and nephews; though the age gap between him and his brothers meant he’d been an uncle himself practically since birth, evidently it was a different matter entirely when it involved the family he’d married into. The first time Mazatl had called him Uncle Teomitl unprompted, he’d beamed so happily that Acatl had fallen in love all over again. “I can’t believe how tall Necalli’s getting! Soon he’ll be looking me in the eye. Time’s flown.”

Strands of silver in his hair. Teomitl smiling on the temple steps, meeting him as one man to another. The tidal shift when he’d looked at him—gods, he couldn’t even remember what the occasion had been, some meal where Teomitl had been wiping crumbs off his hands and chuckling at Acatl’s first truly honest description of what he thought about Quenami—and instead of garden-variety fondness he’d thought oh and Duality preserve me, I love you.

“It has.” Things changed, and sometimes it was for the better.

The sun was warm, but not as warm as the look in Teomitl’s eyes.

He had to turn his face away again; the crowd around them and the noise of a living city in his ears wouldn’t let him forget they were in public, and he focused on that and not the occasional slide of their cloaks against each other’s limbs. Gradually he became aware that they weren’t alone—that as they made their way through the markets to Cozcatl’s stall, a group of men with the bearing and battle scars of Jaguar Knights were attempting to follow them unobtrusively and not doing a very good job of it.

He cast a glance in Teomitl’s direction and saw him unbothered. It didn’t help. “Are the guards really necessary?”

“For you? Yes.” Teomitl’s quick smile was far too innocent. “You can’t deny you tend to attract danger.”

“Hmph,” he muttered, and forcibly bit back the part of him that wanted to ask is that why you’re still around, then? It felt too close to flirtation for him to risk. Remember Mihmatini, he thought—but remembering Mihmatini didn’t help, because then his memory was happy to dredge up the conversation with her where she’d maintained unwavering eye contact as she’d told him that she and Teomitl had come to an agreement and she didn’t care if her husband had feelings for anyone else, and her gaze had been far too searching for comfort.

Before Teomitl could say anything else that could make his heart feel dangerously soft and open, he spied a familiar striped awning set over a broad window and made a beeline towards it. He could have found Cozcatl’s stall if he were blind and operating on smell alone, but the awning did help.

The woman herself was indeed setting out the morning’s selection of flatbreads and tamales, and beamed at them as they approached. Cozcatl was a little older than he was, a widow with three young children and a wide streak of gray in her hair, but her crooked-toothed smile made her beautiful. “Good morning, my lords! Will you be having your usual?”

He took a moment to look over the steaming pots and their maize-wrapped offerings. “If you have it, yes.”

She looked very much as though the idea of her not having their usual orders—fish with chili for Acatl and cactus fruit with honey for Teomitl—was laughable, but only smiled as she handed them over and Teomitl, as was his custom, paid her far too much for them.

Acatl blinked at the two tamales in his hands; he’d accepted them without thinking, but he was sure he’d only ordered one. “Ah, you gave me an extra.”

She waved him off. “It’s a gift.”

As they walked away, Teomitl grinned at him. “I think she likes you.”

He unwrapped one tamale and took a bite, closing his eyes in bliss. Ah, there was the flaky fish, the shreds of bitter greens, the sharp heat of the chilies. Delicious. Then Teomitl’s words registered, and he glared at him as he swallowed. “She does not. She was just being polite.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Teomitl huffed. “You’re a likable man, Acatl.”

“I...” It was rank flattery, just on the verge of being an outright lie—even if Teomitl seemed to be fond enough of him, it was hardly as though anyone else was lining up to agree—but it wasn’t anger that made him flush and fall silent. Teomitl’s tone hadn’t been teasing or mocking in the least; he’d said it as simply as he might have remarked on the weather, and it struck him to the core. I am short-tempered and petty and pessimistic, and he looks past all that and calls me likable. He could have melted on the spot.

Of course, then Teomitl commented, “I wonder what she would have done if I’d told her it was your birthday?” and that effectively slaughtered the moment in cold blood.

“Gods, please don’t.” Even the idea made an embarrassed flush crawl across the back of his neck.

“I won’t!” And Teomitl smiled, all sunshine. “What do you want to do now that we’ve gotten something to eat?”

He took another bite of his tamale, humming in pleasure at the bright burst of chili across his tongue. “I should check on my temple.”

“Alright, then we’ll go back there and—” Teomitl cut himself off as they turned a corner, the indistinct shouting they’d been hearing suddenly much louder and immediate. It seemed that a pen full of turkeys had gotten loose; since they were disinclined to remain caged, half the market was now engaged in either trying to catch them or figuring out who to blame for it. “...It’s a nice day. Let’s take the long way around.”

“...Good idea.”

The alternate route past the markets took them along a narrow canal that would fit perhaps two boats abreast. The streets were narrow here too, which meant that though there was no one around he still had an excuse for walking closer to Teomitl’s side than propriety dictated. He was happily listening to a tale of how hunters in Maya lands had brought a black jaguar and a white crocodile all the way to the House of Animals and agreeing that yes, he would like to see them when something in the water caught his eye.

“Is that—” he began.

And then the tlilcoatl latched its jaws around his ankle and pulled him into the canal.

“Acatl!”

Teomitl’s scream followed him, but he was in no shape to respond. Tlilcoatls were massive black serpents, a full armspan around with venomous fangs and jaws that could swallow a person whole, but the real danger was in their coils. If it pinned his arms, it would crush him to death. Frantically he tried to reach his knives, but the serpent had dragged him under before he could even take a breath, and his lungs were already burning.

And then it looped a coil around his chest, and he knew he was doomed. He still struggled, but it was the uncoordinated flailing of a desperate, dying man.

Pain.

Black spots in front of his vision.

The sudden bright bloom of ichorous blood in the water, and the coils around him jerking as something struck them. Teomitl...?

He renewed his efforts, but the snake weighed more than he did and its throes of pain were churning the mud at the bottom of the canal, making it impossible for him to tell which way was up. But there was Teomitl’s hand holding a knife and glimmering with Huitzilopochtli’s power, and there was another crimson bloom in the water, and suddenly the serpent’s coils went slack and his limbs were free.

Strong hands grabbed him under his arms and hauled him towards sunlight, and he broke the water with a gasp. Nothing felt broken, but everything hurt. His leg was a snarl of pain, and if Teomitl hadn’t been supporting him he never would have made it to dry land. Even when he did, it was some time before he could finish coughing up water and get back on his feet. It was early in the season for tlilcoatls; they usually came with the rains, and ones this size were thankfully rare.

He looked down at his ankle. Painful and bloody, but it bore his weight and wasn’t turning black, and he could still think clearly enough. A dry bite, then. The snake’s forked tail had caught Teomitl across the ribs, leaving two nasty-looking slashes he was currently prodding clinically at; it made Acatl bite his lip in agitation, but since he wasn’t wheezing or clenching his teeth in pain he probably hadn’t broken a rib. Probably. Gods, let him not be too badly hurt. I couldn’t bear it if he was.

Teomitl clearly had other concerns. He pressed his cloak to the wounds and huffed, “Well, that wasn’t the birthday present I’d had planned for you. Are you alright?” and all Acatl could do was stare.

The words flowed like tar through his mind. A birthday present. That’s right. I’m thirty-two today. I found gray hair this morning. Today’s my birthday, and Teomitl...Teomitl wanted to celebrate...

And then he burst out laughing. He was aware it was vaguely hysterical, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “A birthday present —” His laughter was a wheezing, near-silent thing that turned his face red and had been known to startle small children, and he literally couldn’t remember the last time it had been startled out of him. He might have snapped or screamed or stormed off, but Teomitl’s words had jarred him into hilarity instead. It was just too much, the last straw for his mind. Oh, my sweet man. My beloved.

His legs folded under him, and he crumpled slowly to the ground—now Teomitl was looking concerned, but he could no more have stopped laughing than he could have flown. It felt like an eternity before he could wheeze anything reassuring through an aching stomach and too-tense ribs. There were tears in his eyes. “Ah... hah, forgive me...it was just...the snake on top of everything else, and the way you said it—”

Teomitl smiled at him, warm and...gods, he could almost call that look tender, and it made his heart flutter. “It’s more than alright. Come on, let’s—”

“My lord!”

Ah. There were the Jaguar Knights, far too late to be of any help. They took in their charges’ soaking wet and bloodstained appearances with shock that only lasted a moment before they registered that Teomitl was deeply unhappy with them, and then it was replaced by very sensible and appropriate terror. After angrily commandeering their cloaks, he ordered them into the canal to drag out the tlilcoatl’s corpse before it could pollute the waters and then dropped to his knees by Acatl’s side, slicing the thick cotton for bandages and muttering viciously under his breath. There was some truly impressive profanity involved. As Acatl let himself be bandaged, he found himself smiling despite the pain. Some things didn’t change.

“There. How do you feel?”

Teomitl didn’t quite look at him. Acatl hoped he wasn’t blaming himself. But he flexed his foot and it didn’t hurt any more than it had already, so he couldn’t see why. They were both reasonably unhurt; Teomitl’s side had already stopped bleeding. There was nothing the man should have been castigating himself for, not after saving his life.

“I’m fine,” he said, and meant it.

Teomitl didn’t speak again until they made it back to his house, though Acatl could feel simmering frustration pouring off him in waves. It felt a little like walking next to an unleashed jaguar, though the growling was replaced by stony silence and a steady flexing of his hands as though he’d like to wrap them around someone’s throat. Acatl wasn’t sure whether to comfort him or keep his distance.

Then they limped into his courtyard and Teomitl stopped, turning to meet his eyes directly. “...Acatl, I’m sorry.”

He blinked, trying to remember if they’d had a disagreement recently. He’d said he was fine. “For what?”

“Well, my guards are incompetent, for one thing. And...” Teomitl dropped his gaze. As Acatl watched, he started to blush. Gods, it was so much more appealing than it should have been. “I wanted...” He gestured helplessly, nothing at all like his usual stabbing motions, and visibly groped for his next words. “I wanted the day to be good for you.”

Oh, he thought. He felt like he was melting all over again, and for a moment he wavered on his feet with the sheer force of the love that pulsed through him. “It was.” He was bloodstained, sore, and still hungry, but he remembered the sweet pain of that laughter and all the myriad ways Teomitl had shown he cared for him.

“But—” Teomitl bit his lip and fell silent, looking so disappointed that it yanked on all of Acatl’s heartstrings.

He couldn’t blame what he did next on pity. Love and desire, yes, but not pity. His mind simply went from I want to make him smile again to the lightning-flash realization of I can do that in an instant, and without a second thought, he reached over and took Teomitl’s hand in both of his.

He felt his heart skip a beat as the man met his eyes and slowly—so slowly—started to smile. He’d been right. Words spilled out of his mouth, raw with the truth. “You were there by my side. So far, I’ve had a wonderful day.”

The very edge of that slow smile turned teasing. “...Only so far?”

He huffed, feeling impossibly fond even as a spike of honesty prompted him to murmur, “Well, it could always get worse.”

Teomitl took a step forward, well into his personal space, and lowered his voice. “It could get better, too.”

He still hadn’t let go of Teomitl’s hand. It could get better was a meaningless platitude, the sort of thing that was easy to dismiss—but not when Teomitl was looking at him like that, with so much warmth in his gaze that even the thought of it heated his blood in return. He would have dismissed flirtation; he wasn’t someone to be played with and set aside. But Teomitl’s gaze was as steady and direct as it ever was, and it made him swallow hard. “...How so?”

“Well, I was going to take you on a tour of the palace gardens, but now...I’m not sure.” Teomitl shrugged almost carelessly, but the spark in his eyes was anything but. “Maybe we could find out. Together.”

The coward’s way would be to drop Teomitl’s hand and this line of conversation, to go inside and lay down before he fell over. He was done with being a coward. Amazed at his own daring, his heart hammering against his ribs, he whispered, “Maybe we could. I’m sure you have a few ideas.”

“Mmm. I do. Do you want to hear them?” They were very close now, and Teomitl leaned in closer. Warm breath puffed gently across his face.

He wasn’t sure he was breathing himself. He had to lick his lips several times before they were moist enough for him to speak. “Yes.”

The brush of lips against his own felt like a hummingbird’s wings—that soft, and that fast. By the time Acatl blinked, Teomitl had already pulled away. His voice was barely audible as he breathed, “Well?”

So this was what it felt like to live in a world where Teomitl had kissed him. The breeze was cold, but the sun was warm on his back and the hand in his was warmer yet. His ankle still throbbed, but the pain was bearable. A loose lock of hair in front of his face showed him yet another gray strand. His breath came slow and measured, his heart thumping like a great drum in his chest.

“I think,” he murmured, “that we should continue this inside.”

They did.

All in all, it was an excellent birthday.