Work Text:
When Qifrey wakes up he knows it's going to be a bad day.
Not one of the worst days. There are days where he opens his eye to a migraine already sitting somewhere between the back of his skull and his empty socket, and he has to draw an extra light blocking spell on his glasses just to be able to get out of bed. By comparison, this is just a bad day, where that level of pain hasn't quite hit yet. But it's not the worst kind of day, because even though he feels like one of Olly's misshapen not-quite-there-yet attempts at a new contraption, he can pull himself together enough to start breakfast for his apprentices.
His hand stutters trying to complete the seal around the fire spell, flames flaring sideways before they sputter out.
Qifrey frowns, absently, and crumples up the paper to draw another. His next attempt goes better, even though the concentration it takes makes the pain take shape for real behind his eye.
He toasts enough carapace yams for four servings. He'll claim he's already eaten if the girls ask; and they will, he thinks, fond and exasperated but mostly tired.
He at least has enough energy left to start a pot of erbe tea.
He gets the impression breakfast must be starting to smell good when soft footsteps sound on the stairs. He can't really tell through the nausea.
"Morning, master Qifrey," Agott says through a yawn.
"Good morning, Agott," Qifrey responds. He's pretty sure he manages a smile for her, though the spots lighting up his vision blot out some of the face Agott makes in return. It's probably fine—she's really not a morning person, unlike him, so she won't pick up on his being a little off. Her slouch into the chair warms him; it's good that she feels like she can be unguarded here, about a trait that her family might consider a fault. He knows some ateliers insist on early morning classes for all ages.
The spots in his vision don't go away when he blinks. Qifrey turns to grab more cups for the table, thankful again that he's spent enough time in the kitchen to know it by touch.
The cups clink unsteadily in his hands. He might have to declare an independent study day if this keeps up. Any lesson he tries to give will come out garbled and nonsensical, and his apprentices deserve better than that.
Coco and Tetia come in, one after the other in quick succession, serving themselves toast and jam. Richeh drags herself in not long after, heading straight for what's left of the bacon.
She pauses, then begrudgingly adds some preserves to her plate to round out the meal. The spoon scrapes the bottom of the pot. The sound hits his ear like a punch and adds to his building headache.
"Are you alright, master?" Coco asks.
Qifrey blinks. "Hmm?"
The girls exchange a look. "I wanted to practice etching spells into stone today," Agott says, instead of whatever they might have been asking before.
"Ah, yes," Qifrey says. "Yes, actually, I think a primer study day would be good. —No, Coco, Tetia," he continues, "I know you wanted to keep working on directed fire spells, but that should wait for a day outside. Perhaps when Olruggio is back."
"Wasn't he supposed to be home today?" Tetia asks.
Qifrey looks down at his tea. Or, rather, his empty cup. If he keeps looking down, maybe the light from the window will stop drilling directly into his eye. He would like to keep the one he has left. "I believe you know his schedule better than he does," he says, smiling to invite her in on the joke, letting his eye crinkle up with it. A nail hammers into his skull in time with the pulsing so-black-they're-white specks that haven't gone away.
Tetia giggles, just a little thing, but Qifrey will take any sign of joy as a point in his favor. "What are you going to be working on today, master?"
Not throwing up.
"Could you show me more of those signs for hardening stone?" Richeh asks.
"It's a study day, Richeh—" Agott starts.
"That's alright, Agott," Qifrey cuts in. Richeh doesn't often ask outright to learn new things; he doesn't want to discourage her. "Perhaps this afternoon? This morning I need to—"
Ah. Yes. Lunch.
He knew he was forgetting something.
"… Do some cooking," he finishes, after an awkward pause. He doesn't want to promise anything creative, but it is his responsibility to keep his apprentices fed. (More than a responsibility: He wants to keep them fed, and healthy, and happy.) He'll figure something out.
Richeh nods.
He'll need more tea, if he's going to have any reasonable chance of making it to lunch, instead of just curling up in a ball in his room with the curtains drawn and his face pressed into a pillow so he doesn't give in to the impulse to rip out his eye. Though, really, that option does sound quite tempting.
—Tea. Yes. Tea will help.
Qifrey stands.
"Master!" Four voices yell, but it bursts in his ears like a crowd.
Well, that's not good, Qifrey thinks, slumped back into his chair. The cup he'd been holding rolls to the side. It isn't broken, though at least he could have fixed that. He can't do anything about the throbbing of his head.
He clears his throat. "I'm alright," he tries. The concern does not abate.
Coco and Tetia, especially, seem more worried, not less. That's fair, he supposes. They've seen him try to brush things off that are quite worse. The loss of trust—or maybe not trust, exactly, but faith, or—whatever it is they've lost, a shedding of childhood. It hurts, whatever it is, an entirely different kind of pain. He would have liked to spare them that for another few years, if he could.
Qifrey brushes a hand over his face, letting it rest over his eye and pushing his glasses up into his hair. He can't help the relieved slump of his shoulders as the world goes dark. "I fear I may have picked something up on our last trip to Kalhn," he says, aiming for apologetic confession.
"You should be in bed, master!" Tetia yells. Qifrey doesn't know what his face does, but her next words come out somewhat quieter. "You always say not to push ourselves when we don't feel well."
His first instinct is to hedge, something about staying hydrated, or maintaining a routine, or not letting one's chronic physical limitations get in the way of passion and responsibility.
A number of voices—Olly, Alaira, Beldaruit—sigh in unison in the back of his head.
"I do say that, don't I?" Qifrey says instead. He removes the hand from his face so that he can give Tetia the full fond smile that she deserves. "I must be lucky, that my apprentices listen to all of my lessons, even the ones that aren't related to magic." The corner of Tetia's mouth kicks up in a little smile.
"Really, master, we'll be alright for the day," Coco says. There's a tension running through her shoulders that Qifrey wishes he could soothe. Coco, more than the others, knows how infallible adults aren't. Fears it, in a way the other girls don't yet know they should. "If master Olly's not back by tonight…"
"I'm sure I'll be alright by then," Qifrey reassures them. "With all of you to care about me, I'm feeling better already." He levers himself up, reaching for the cup only to have Agott—Agott, of all people—take it from him.
"We can make more tea," she says, not making eye contact. She glances at the other girls, then back to the cup in her hands. "I can make sure they don't set the atelier on fire."
Richeh huffs, and Coco blushes bright red.
"I set my room on fire quite a few times as a young apprentice," Qifrey says. Coco startles, looking up. He winks at her. "Far less often than Olruggio, though." That gets him more smiles, even though Agott looks away now, clearly feeling chastised.
"I leave the kitchen in your capable hands," he says, swallowing against the nausea, and nods at Agott.
She nods back. He'll have to remember to give her feedback on her stone spells later, to make sure she doesn't feel overly criticized or left out.
(Agott prefers constructive criticism to praise of any sort. He's been working on it. Richeh is the opposite—he always tries to phrase suggestions of what she might try next as a way of building her skills towards what she already wants to do. Though after Romonon, perhaps she might be more amenable to other sorts of feedback… Tetia takes well to both praise and criticism, but both must be delivered calmly, to balance her runaway enthusiasm.
He's still learning Coco's preferences. She's so hungry to learn. She reminds Qifrey of himself in this way, in too many ways for comfort.)
Qifrey manages to get himself back to his room, despite the nails hammering themselves into his eye socket. He can't ignore it the way he'd been trying through breakfast, but any distraction would bring more pain than it'd be worth.
He cocoons himself in bed under the watchful eyes of his apprentices. The next hours are a blur, every moment of relief almost worse than the pain, the absence of it leaving a hole in his head that feels tender with the anticipation of its return.
A knock comes, a fresh cup of tea left next to his bed. When he manages to untangle himself from the blankets enough to drink it, he almost cries at the wobbly little warming spell left underneath.
Coco stops by, some time around when the sun has risen enough that it's not shining directly into his window, to ask him if it's okay for them to use up the leftover ham for lunch, since Richeh liked the sandwiches they had the other week so much, and really, master, it isn't any trouble at all, even Agott says that I can manage a spell to toast bread. When he nods, she closes the door quietly behind her.
At some point, the nausea recedes enough for Qifrey to nibble at the crackers they'd left with the tea.
His apprentices are so thoughtful.
Olruggio finds him back in his blanket cocoon at… some even later point. Qifrey isn't sure what time it is, though the little glances of light that make it through the curtains are starting to take on the golden hue of late afternoon.
Olly frowns at him. At least the impending mother-henning will be something new. The worst thing about these headaches is how boring his days become.
(How much time they steal from him. Time that he doesn't have to spare.)
"You don't feel warm, but you're flushed," Olly says. Qifrey looks up at him from under the hand resting on his forehead. "Did you spend all day in here?"
"… The girls insisted," Qifrey says, mouth ticking in a smile. He lets his eye drift away from Olly's, dislodging his hand when he looks away.
"Good." Olly's frown becomes, somehow, even more stubborn. He crosses his arms. "If you look like this now, I can't imagine how bad you looked this morning. Must've given them a scare, coming out of your room whiter than a sheet."
"Olly," Qifrey protests.
Olly rolls his eyes, with all of the exasperation of someone who has been on the receiving end of this argument too many times for either of them to count. "C'mon," he says, grabbing for Qifrey's shoulder. "I'm makin' stew for dinner. And no," he interrupts, loudly enough that Qifrey has to hide a wince, "you can't help. You're going to sit at the table. With a pot of tea. That I will make."
Qifrey doesn't want to argue. He… should. He needs to. He wishes he could unburden himself on Olly, have the conversation they've had too many times before Qifrey has to take it back, wipe it from the ledger of their relationship, make sure Olruggio can keep going on the right path when Qifrey inevitably has to step off of it, if he hasn't already. (He has. He can't tell when he did, and that scares him, scares him as much as what he's doing—done—to Olly.)
He wishes he could always let Olly take care of him like this. Olly lets Qifrey maneuver his way into taking care of him when he's worked himself sick, staying up too many nights in a row to make absurd deadlines set by unreasonable patrons and trying to help even more people on the side. That Qifrey doesn't let Olruggio do the same…
—He can, though. He can let Olly do this today.
"… That sounds nice," Qifrey says. Olly smiles and leads him towards the kitchen, full of apprentices tired from a day of studying and worrying.
He'll have to be careful that this doesn't happen again. He'll get up earlier, keep track of how he's feeling so he can work around the symptoms before anyone else notices them. He can't let Olruggio catch on, not again. His apprentices deserve as good of a learning environment as he can provide; he's supposed to worry about them, not the other way around.
Qifrey can't deny the warmth that has nothing to do with the crackling fire in the hearth at the way worried faces light up when Olly ushers him into the kitchen.
It's… nice. Even through the lingering tenderness of his head and the nausea all that tea hasn't done more than take the edge off of.
It's nice. He wishes he could afford to get used to it.