The hushed reverence of the Sunstone Archives usually calmed Cassian, a balm to his perpetually restless spirit. Yet, even amidst the towering shelves of ancient lore, a nascent curiosity pricked at him. He found himself wondering, with a strange, almost shameful intensity, about Valerius and Lucien. Not about the scrolls they consulted, nor the texts they transcribed, but the unspoken dance between them when they believed no one watched, particularly after the grand gates closed for the day.
From the rare glimpses he’d caught, Lucien trailed Valerius. Never quite abreast, never truly side-by-side, but always a respectful, almost deferential, distance behind. It was a simple observation, one a casual archivist might dismiss. But for Cassian, it etched itself into his mind: the image of Lucien, a young man of surprising resilience, following Valerius with an air of profound, almost desperate, devotion.
As the thought deepened, a chill ghosted across Cassian’s skin. It was the feeling of a precarious lid, lifted just a fraction. He knew this sensation; it was the whispered warning of a sealed box, brimming not merely with despair, but with a cruel, intoxicating hope that promised to unravel him. Even knowing the danger, the lure was irresistible. The urge to peer inside, to truly understand, tightened in his chest.
“...This is madness,” he muttered, the words lost in the vastness of the Grand Scriptoria. His hand, poised over a vellum sheet, trembled slightly.
His judgment, he acknowledged, had frayed at the edges. But even with that clear understanding, he found his feet carrying him away from his assigned work. He sought a vantage point overlooking the Archives’ ornate public square, where the city’s populace mingled before retiring for the evening. He wanted to see, just once, how their departure unfolded.
He positioned himself discreetly, partially obscured by a decorative stone pillar, its carved frieze depicting ancient Veridian scholars in dignified pursuit of knowledge. He watched, breath held, as Valerius emerged, his posture radiating the effortless authority of his noble lineage. A moment later, Lucien followed. Lucien’s gaze, Cassian observed, was fixed on Valerius’s retreating back, a silent, almost desperate plea in its intensity. Around them, the city’s pulse thrummed – the worn cobblestones reflecting the last vestiges of twilight, the grand, albeit chipped, marble facades of lesser guildhalls, the dusty glint of merchants’ wares being packed away. A tableau of everyday life, rendered sharp and poignant by the two figures at its heart. Valerius in front, Lucien a devoted shadow. And Cassian, a silent, pathetic spectator in the distance.
His stomach twisted. Everything about the scene, and his own part in it, felt vulgar, utterly idiotic. He turned away, the polished stone cool against his clammy palm.
---
Later, within the secluded opulence of his private study, the chamber cloaked in shadow save for the flickering candlelight, Cassian sat at his desk. The rich scent of aged paper and sandalwood filled the air. He found a peculiar satisfaction in his decision to retreat. Curiosity had gnawed at him, yes, but what horrors might he have unearthed had he continued? Better this way. Better not to know. He wasn’t so foolish as to pry open that cursed box for a mere flicker of interest.
Lucien’s quiet devotion to Valerius, he noted, had only intensified since his return to the Archives. Valerius, in turn, seemed to regard Lucien with a mixture of suspicion and thinly veiled dislike – or perhaps, outright disdain. No, it was undeniably disdain. And justly so. How could Valerius feel anything but scorn for someone who had once, however briefly, been the object of his family’s punitive ire? A bitter satisfaction curled within Cassian. At least he hadn’t intervened sooner, hadn’t tried to shield Lucien from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps that too, in its own twisted way, was for the best.
He laced his fingers behind his head, leaning back against the plush velvet of his high-backed chair. His gaze drifted to the ornate, crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling. Its intricate artistry served as a stark, glittering reminder of his own fortunate existence. Born into the Thorne House, an ancient and esteemed lineage, cherished as an only child, never once denied a whim or a desire.
“...Damn it all,” he breathed.
He had once believed himself invincible, capable of achieving anything. Until Valerius, that is. Until the insufferable Valerius had inadvertently exposed the cruel reality that life, even a gilded one, rarely bends to one’s will. And Cassian was certain that Lucien, in his own way, was now learning that same bitter truth.
Ah, the world could be so mercilessly cruel in its lessons.
At least Cassian had learned to master himself, to construct a formidable façade, to bury his inconvenient affections beneath layers of cool indifference. Lucien, on the other hand, was a raw nerve, so consumed by his turbulent emotions that he remained oblivious to the transparency of his gaze when it settled on Valerius. That sudden, abnormal intensity must be unsettling for Valerius, a violation of his carefully curated space.
Cassian knew the feeling intimately. He had experienced that same unsettling surge of possessive desire. But where he had learned to endure, to conceal, Lucien seemed incapable. That was why, instead of subtly wooing Valerius, Lucien had acted in ways that only cemented Valerius’s animosity. For Cassian, this arrangement suited him perfectly.
“Please, just remain ignorant,” Cassian murmured to the silent, echoing walls of his study.
Or better yet, let Valerius grow weary, let him simply vanish from the Archives. Cassian harbored no desire for Lucien to turn his affections toward him. If anything, this kind of fervent, unyielding devotion terrified him.
He wanted only one thing: for a day to arrive when the ache for Valerius no longer consumed him, and for Valerius to find solace, or perhaps, simply a distraction, elsewhere. That was all. But of course, the world rarely granted such simple mercies.
---
Another shift, subtle yet discernible, had altered the atmosphere of the Archives. Valerius, once known for his frequent escapades into Veridia’s more decadent art houses and clandestine midnight salons, had curtailed his late-night pursuits. Or so it seemed. Whispers, carried by Lysander’s ever-present network of contacts, suggested he hadn’t ceased entirely. But the overt boasting of his conquests no longer sullied the morning air in the Archival commons, nor did the faint, cloying scent of cheap perfume and stale wine cling to his robes. For Cassian, this was a small, yet significant, relief. He no longer had to endure the close proximity of Valerius’s lingering debauchery.
“Still abstaining, Valerius?” Lysander drawled one afternoon, leaning back against a priceless scroll cabinet, a smirk playing on his lips. He mimed a crude, suggestive gesture with his hand. “No more late-night patrons in your private salon?”
Valerius’s usually composed features tightened, a flash of irritation in his eyes. He glanced pointedly toward Lucien, who was meticulously cataloging scrolls nearby. “Lysander, I have repeatedly requested you refrain from such vulgar displays, especially within these hallowed halls.”
“Why the sudden decorum?” Lysander persisted, his voice dripping with mock innocence. “Have you found a new, more… wholesome hobby?”
“If you breathe another word of this, Lysander, you will regret it,” Valerius warned, his voice low and dangerous.
“My, my, a true gentleman now.”
“Silence!”
“...As you wish.” Lysander shrugged, feigning nonchalance. The other junior archivists and scribes within earshot exchanged knowing glances, clearly disappointed. Valerius, with his striking presence and air of forbidden allure, had once been the perfect conduit for their own unarticulated curiosities regarding the city’s underbelly. While many had indulged in their own clumsy forays into Veridia’s more illicit pleasures, Valerius had always been the one with the truly scandalous tales.
Now, with Valerius’s exploits curtailed, their attention sometimes drifted to Lysander. But Lysander merely bared his teeth in an expression of pure disgust. “You filthy perverts,” he’d snarl.
“Ah, there he goes again, Lysander with his sanctimony.”
“He’s just a fanatic, really. Such a waste of potential.”
Laughter rippled through the space, quick and fleeting. Most of their peers had, at some point, ventured into forbidden territory. But for some inexplicable reason, Lysander had not. Though they teased him, calling him the “Archivist Celibate,” no one truly disrespected him. He was Lysander, after all—sharp-tongued, quick-witted, and possessed of an unwavering self-assurance. He carried himself with a lighthearted, almost flippant attitude that made his sharp words tolerable, even charming. People often remarked that his approachable demeanor belied his formidable intellect.
“Don’t glare at me like that, you overgrown gargoyle,” one scribe jested. “You’ll make me drop my stylus.”
“Indeed, his face is quite fearsome.”
“Do you imbeciles wish to spend the rest of your days transcribing funeral dirges?” Lysander scowled, and the group dissolved into another burst of laughter, though the joke was hardly humorous. Cassian, seated among them but detached, stared blankly at his lap, lost in thought.
If memory served, his own body had never truly stirred for a woman. By default, it made him what he was, from birth: a man drawn to other men. He had felt arousal, certainly, when encountering depictions of intimacy between men and women, but never had he once fantasized about a woman’s form during his private moments. The former felt more about the raw intensity of the situation, the latter simply… absent of desire.
He had once, long ago, been dragged by Valerius to the entrance of a renowned pleasure house, only to be turned away for lack of proper identification. He’d waited outside, enduring the biting night air, until Valerius emerged, flushed and triumphant. Brothels? The thought sickened him. He couldn’t comprehend why anyone would willingly enter such a place.
Because of this, his peers occasionally, jokingly, dubbed him “Austerity Thorne.” But in truth, his abstinence was less a choice, more a forced reality.
He let out a small, almost inaudible sigh.
The others were too preoccupied with Lysander’s witty retorts to notice. Seizing the moment, Cassian glanced at Lucien, who sat silently across the scriptorium, his eyes fixed on the back of Valerius’s head as Valerius reviewed a complex astrological chart. And, as always, a familiar pang of regret. Why did he look? Why did his curiosity persist? To distract himself, he posed a pointless question to Lysander.
“So, are you genuinely committed to celibacy until you’re married, Lysander?”
Lysander, who was lounging in his ornate chair with an almost insolent air, suddenly fixed his piercing gaze directly on Cassian’s lap. The intensity of it made Cassian instinctively cross his legs, a defensive gesture. What in the blazes?
“You are not my intended, Cassian Thorne, so why does it concern you? Or are you, perhaps, offering your services?”
“...” Of course. Lysander always found a way to turn every conversation into a malicious jest. The others chuckled, and Cassian discreetly kicked Lysander in the shin under the table. Such was the monotonous rhythm of his days—over and over again, the same patterns, the same unspoken tensions.
---
Alone in his chamber, where the silence often amplified his thoughts, Cassian frequently found himself lost in contemplation, weaving elaborate scenarios in his mind. Inevitably, these stray fantasies sometimes veered into strange, unsettling territory.
Today, he wondered what it might have been like if he had fallen in love with Lysander instead of Valerius. It seemed, in the abstract, a far more tolerable situation than his current predicament. If his heart ached for Lysander, at least he wouldn’t have to endure the particular torment inflicted by Valerius’s volatile and possessive affections for Lucien.
Even so, the heartbreak would remain. Neither Valerius nor Lysander, he knew with stark certainty, would ever return his feelings. But at least his heart wouldn’t twist with a peculiar jealousy over Lucien. That train of thought quickly devolved into feelings of profound inadequacy and suppressed anger. In the end, he simply yearned for the day he could complete his probationary period within the Archives, shed this gilded cage, and become a mere stranger to Valerius.
---
At some point, an unconscious habit had taken root: his hands would instinctively slip beneath his desk whenever he sat down. This particular inclination had first manifested during his early years as a junior scholar, and the cause was always the same – other men.
As he idly fiddled with the ornate buckle of his breeches, his mind drifted. Should he? Or shouldn’t he? The faint, metallic click of the buckle against his nail filled the quiet room, a small, insistent rhythm. Just as he applied a hesitant pressure with his thumb, preparing to undo the clasp, a sharp knock resonated from his chamber door.
“Cassian! Are you deep in your studies?” Master Archivist Elara’s voice, clear and precise, cut through his haze.
“...Ah, no! I mean, yes! I am!” he blurted, his heart leaping into his throat. Today, clearly, was not the day for such indulgences. Mortified, he buried his face in his arms, cursing his terrible timing. Damn it all.
---
Lately, Valerius had grown increasingly aggravating.
Sometimes, when Lucien would glance in Cassian’s direction, perhaps seeking confirmation or merely acknowledging his presence, Valerius would deliberately interject, steering Lucien into conversation. Lucien, caught awkwardly between them, would flick his eyes toward Cassian, his lips parting as if to speak, only to close them again. Then, as if keenly aware of Valerius’s scrutinizing gaze, he would lower his head, answering Valerius in the faintest of whispers.
“Y-yes, Valerius…”
Just like that. Lucien had even begun to subtly seek out Cassian, tentatively addressing him as “Cass.” Aside from the few trusted elder Archivists and his immediate family, almost no one used such an informal address for Cassian Thorne. The change was palpable, a quiet rebellion. Lucien, in his innocence, seemed to believe he was being discreet. He wasn’t. The most infuriating part was how Valerius struggled to mask his acute discomfort whenever Lucien dared to show Cassian even the slightest familiarity.
“Lucien, cease distracting Archivist Thorne while he’s engaged in his work.” Valerius’s voice was clipped, his jaw tight.
“What?” Lucien blinked, genuinely bewildered.
“Stop bothering him. Do you not understand?”
“Oh… uh, y-yes, Valerius…” Lucien stammered, avoiding Valerius’s sharp gaze. Valerius, childishly, slammed his fist against the leg of his own sturdy desk. Cassian pretended not to notice, his gaze fixed on the intricate patterns of a scroll. Annoyingly, the utterly clueless Lucien seemed to interpret Valerius’s outburst as a sign that no one truly cared about the use of “Cass” anymore. He grew bolder, using it with a casualness that grated on Cassian’s nerves.
“Uh, Cass… forgive me for disturbing your focus.”
Cassian stiffened, staring at Lucien in disbelief. Was the man insane? Valerius was seated mere feet away, radiating thinly veiled menace. Sure enough, Valerius’s fist pounded against the desk again, the sound reverberating through the otherwise quiet scriptorium. Damn it.
“Hey! Lucien!”
“...Huh?” Lucien jumped, startled. The atmosphere instantly soured, growing thick with unspoken tension.
“I told you.” Valerius’s anger was raw, unapologetic. “I told you not to call him ‘Cass,’ didn’t I?”
“...W-well…” Lucien floundered for a reply.
“His name is Archivist Thorne. Use his full title—Archivist Thorne.” Valerius’s gaze sharpened, almost predatory, as he turned his full attention to Cassian. Cassian hated that look, the possessive glint in Valerius’s eyes, and instinctively lowered his head, feigning intense concentration on his scroll. At that moment, Lysander, seated beside him, casually draped an arm over Cassian’s shoulder. His low, distinctive voice murmured conspiratorially near Cassian’s ear.
“Valerius, if you continue down this path, you will truly ruin yourself.”
“What in the blazes are you talking about, Lysander?”
“I am merely suggesting,” Lysander smirked, squeezing Cassian’s shoulder lightly, “that you will live to regret this.” Cassian felt a flicker of irritation, though only for one reason: Lysander’s too-knowing amusement, his casual appropriation of a moment that felt entirely too intimate.
“Valerius, his name is Archivist Thorne.”