Chapter Text
Eiden leaned against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed, watching Rei shuffle through a stack of notes without reading a word. The sorcerer’s fingers kept folding a corner, then flattening it again, the motion too exact to be casual. The air was thick with the scents of smoke and iron, sharp enough to cling to the back of Eiden’s throat. He had grown used to Rei’s chaos—the leaning towers of books, the scattered jars, the careless way papers blanketed the floor—but there was always something magnetic in how Rei inhabited it, as if the clutter formed a deliberate orbit around him.
“Hey,” Eiden said, stepping inside. His voice carried an easy lilt, though his grin skewed toward the suggestive. “You’ve been buried in this wreck all day. Thought maybe you’d want a different kind of distraction.”
Rei didn’t answer immediately. He kept his head bent, eyes on the parchment, as though weighing the folds of the paper mattered more. When he finally glanced back, his pale-green gaze caught the candlelight like glass—bright, cold, unreadable.
“No.” The word landed sharp, clinical. “Not tonight.”
Eiden blinked, caught off guard. “Uh… right. Okay. Just… not in the mood?”
“Correct.” Rei’s attention slid back to the desk. His quill scratched faintly across a margin already crowded with ink, the sound dismissive in itself.
The silence stretched too long. Eiden shifted his weight, laughed under his breath, but the sound hit the air wrong. “That’s new. Usually, you’re the one pulling me in.”
Nothing. Rei’s shoulders didn’t move, his face already bent toward the page as though the exchange had evaporated.
Eiden lingered a second longer, then cleared his throat. “Well. I’ll, uh… give you space.” His wave was half-hearted as he backed into the corridor. The door shut with the faintest click.