A/N: And with this offering of slash I hereby declare the trinity complete. This chapter contains some not-terribly-explicit sexual content.

"D'you, d'you love me?"

Right at that very moment, Onmund decided he did not. Brilliant, Breton, and undeniably handsome notwithstanding, Jase was a terrible drunk. And as usual Onmund had drawn the short straw (alright, he volunteered) to go and fetch his fellow student from The Frozen Hearth. Not many mages felt welcome enough to leave the College to drink, but Jase made friends very easily; a lot more easily than Onmund did.

So the pair of them were staggering back up to the College, Jase's arm draped around the Nord's shoulders while he breathed mead fumes into his ear.

"You know, most people wait until after their exams to celebrate," Onmund pointed out, trying to change the subject. The potential intersection of his and Jase's love lives was not something he felt comfortable thinking about, let alone discussing.

"Mmm. I was lonely," Jase said. "Where were you?" He flung his other arm around Onmund's neck, nearly pulling him off balance.

"I was studying."

He could practically hear Jase roll his eyes. Jase never studied, at least, not for exams. He did 'research' instead, which sometimes took him to the library, and sometimes took him to the bottom of the most disgusting caves and tombs in Skyrim. And all too often, Onmund found himself unable to decline the invitation to accompany him on these 'field trips.'

When he wasn't drunk, Jase was not so blasé about Onmund's grades. One morning the Breton had practically dragged him away from the breakfast table to the library, sat him down with their textbooks and fiercely informed him that he was going to be tutored. Whether he liked it or not. It took Onmund a few hours to finally get the truth from him; J'zargo had referred to him as a 'foolish oaf' and Jase had taken it upon himself to prove the Khajiit wrong.

It was only after the exams that he discovered Jase had wagered two hundred septims on the matter as well. J'zargo lost his wager, Jase got half the tavern extravagantly drunk, and Onmund got a happy memory of Jase's patient voice in his ear, his thin fingers flipping through the textbooks, and the sense that someone, finally, wanted him to be a mage as badly as he did.

Onmund was sometimes frustrated by his own abilities, or lack of them, but Jace was on another level; he was frustrated by magic itself. He could rail for hours about it, or sulk, and then he'd get an idea and spend weeks furiously trying to make it work. Onmund was afraid that one of these days he was going to jump off the College roof in an attempt to fly.

He managed to steer them onto College grounds at last, while Jase tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

"Now be quiet," he admonished. "Everyone else has gone to bed."

"We could go to bed," Jase said, with a crooked grin. "Yes, let's do that." Emboldened by this idea, he staggered on to the Hall of Attainment, and fumbled uselessly at the door until Onmund opened it for him. "Yes! Quickly quickly, it's cold."

"Oh for the sake of the Divines." That sounded like Brelyna, her voice blurry from sleep. "Shut up! We have exams." A shoe was flung out of her room and it hit Onmund on the chest.

He didn't take it personally; she clearly wasn't aiming at him.

Jase dragged him over to Onmund's own room, and gleefully face-planted on his bed and started snoring. Onmund frowned. He was not going to join him. Instead he took himself over to Jase's own room, picked his way around the piles of books and weapons that littered the space, and crawled into his bed. It was cold. It smelled of Jase.

Stupid question, he thought as he buried his face in Jase's pillow; of course he loved him.

As usual Jase awoke apparently blessed by an immunity to hangovers, aced his exams, finished them early and was gone before Onmund had even finished the first section.

And he came back with the Staff of Magus. And then Onmund couldn't keep track of the terrible things that were happening, but when it was all over Jase stood alone and grim and suddenly ten years older. He moved into the Archmage's Quarters.

And then he moved out.

Onmund found the Librarian utterly swamped under the stacks of books Jase had suddenly donated to the collection and J'zargo found the Staff of Magus resting on the end of his bed one evening; almost everyone in the College was suddenly showered with gifts, anonymous but clearly from the new Archmage.

Everyone except Onmund.

He waited for a day or two, fretting and worrying, and then worry turned to annoyance, and he held onto that until he had the courage to storm up the stairs to the Archmage's quarters and knock politely.

"Who is it?" Jase called.

Onmund chose to hear 'please come in' and did so.

The Archmage was sorting through a huge chest of soulgems, holding each up to his ear and shaking it to see if it had a soul inside it or not, and sorting them into little piles. He looked up from his work with a gratifyingly guilty expression.

"Jase, I mean, Archmage, with all due respect," he was slightly out of breath from all those stairs and sheer nerves. "What are you doing?" And why are you ignoring me?

"I'm deciding what to keep. And don't call me Archmage, please."

Onmund looked around the room at the empty baskets and chests and wardrobes. He'd never seen Jase without at least several hundredweight of objects in his general vicinity. These bare surroundings made Onmund uneasy.

"Why?"

"I don't need them."

"Why?" He hated sounding like a petulant child, but until Jase told him what in Oblivion he thought he was doing, he was going to keep asking.

"What do you mean why? Are you angry I didn't give you anything?"

Onmund flushed. When he put it like that it sounded so avaricious.

Jace's gaze softened some, "It's just junk, Onmund. I couldn't think of anything to give you. I suppose I should have come up with something-"

"It's all right," he said. "Just, please, tell me what is going on."

"Oh, that, right." He flashed him a grin, with lots of teeth, and got to his feet, dusting off his knees. "I'm going to continue my research. Somewhere else. I can't think here. Archmage this, and Archmage that. Bah."

"Where are you going?" Onmund heard himself say faintly.

"I don't know yet. Dwemmer ruins are fun and all but they're dead ends. Caves are full of bandits and really cold, and tombs? Don't get me started on those. A keep would be nice."

"Jase," Onmund took a step forward. "Please don't do this."

"Why in the world not? I have to know, Onmund. I have to know what happened to magic. Why can't we fly any more? Why can't we transport ourselves, instantly, across the continent? Look at what we've been reduced to!" he snarled, and Onmund could see the waves of power rippling up his arms. "Those Psijic bastards," he continued. "I bet they know." His hands bunched into fists, "I should have broken the milk drinker's teeth the first time he opened his mouth."

"Jase, listen to yourself. Is this really what you want to do? You know, you know what happens to mages who leave the college to live in the wilderness. You know that in ten, or twenty, or a hundred years time, they'll send someone to get a book or something and they'll find another monster."

Jase looked at him, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes gleaming, "You think I'm a monster."

Onmund shook his head, "No, not yet."

Jase narrowed his eyes, "Get out."

That's why they call it heartbreak, he realised, because it actually, physically hurt, like someone was twisting something in his chest. Not someone, Jase. He looked too young and too old and he'd noticed that Onmund hadn't made any move to leave.

"What is it now?"

"I...I just..." He shrugged helplessly, grabbed a fistful of Jase's shirt and kissed him. It was more a colliding of mouths, really, and he was pretty sure Jase's tooth had bruised his lip. It wasn't what he'd hoped for at all, nothing like his daydreams. He shoved him away again, Jase's expression one of open-mouthed bewilderment. "I hope you're happy."

And with that he turned and marched out.

His ears were ringing, or burning, or something, and his hands appeared to be all thumbs – another of Brelyna's spells gone awry perhaps. He threw a spare robe and some apples and his boots into a satchel, realised he'd need his boots, unpacked them, packed a blanket instead that probably belonged to the College, put his boots on and stormed out, intending never to return.

Gods, what a fool he'd been.

He was on the road somewhere north of Windhelm after being chased by bandits and given the stink-eye by a guard outside a mine when he heard hoof beats. He looked over his shoulder to see Jase astride his bad-tempered gelding, Ulfric (whom he loved to refer to by name, loudly and often.) He wasn't dressed for travelling; his head was bare and he carried neither weapons nor provisions.

He slid from the beast's back before it had come to a halt, automatically stepping out of the way as it tried to bite him.

"You can move fast when you want to," he said.

"I learned that from you," Onmund replied, his heart pounding partly from sheer shock.

"Where do you think you're going?" Jase asked.

"Away. From you."

"But I'm leaving! Wouldn't it make more sense to stay, in that case?"

"No! Not when ever.y. Single. Flagstone. Would remind me of you." He jabbed his finger against Jace's chest with every word, suddenly feeling wild and reckless. What did it matter now?

There was that surprised look again that collapsed into a thoughtful smile, "You know, they told me Nords weren't good with words. Untrue, it seems. They're just very, very slow to say them."

Onmund didn't quite know what to say to that and he fixed his gaze on his boots. He heard Jase sigh, and when he looked up he was running his hands over his head distractedly.

"Well I don't know, now," he said.

"Don't know what?"

"What to do." He raised an eyebrow. Onmund knew that look, it meant he'd had a stroke of inspiration. "Ah, yes I do." Onmund caught Jase's grin and then lost his own breath as the man stepped up to him, bold as brass, and kissed him. Cold hands cupped his face, and that tooth was back, this time scraping over his lip and then he felt his tongue-

He clamped his arms around the Breton, squeezing him perhaps a bit harder than necessary. Jace wheezed slightly, and pulled back.

"You are not living in a cave. Or a keep," Onmund said, proud that his voice wasn't cracking.

"Oh," he slid his hands down to Onmund's chest. "Fine." He took a deep breath, "Watch this!"

He watched flakes of magic, like a blizzard, settle on Jace's hands for a moment, and then whirl around them both. He could feel the hum of approaching magic, like a storm, but he couldn't identify it; the spell was like nothing he'd ever seen before. The world lurched sideways. And then he was falling; instinctively he grabbed Jase as the only solid thing in the universe and then they thumped into a pile of furs.

Onmund sneezed.

They were...in the Archmage's Quarters. On the bed.

Jase was sitting on him, gazing around like they were in the Imperial Palace, his jaw slightly open.

"I did it," he said. "I did it!" He broke into the widest, maddest grin Onmund had ever seen. "We were there and now we're here. We have to go back. There might be residues- and Ulfric."

Onmund grabbed Jase's arm. "Jase. You don't have to go. You'll do it again. Believe me."

He could sense he still wanted to go, tensed like a half-wild bird. He gazed up at him; he wasn't going to beg, Jase had to decide.

He sighed.

"I suppose you're right." His grin turned wicked, "But you're going to make it up to me."

Onmund felt heat thrum through him, "I promise I'll do my best."

Jase chuckled and let himself flop forward.

Onmund considered himself rather inexperienced and not all that adventurous but Jace wasn't hard to figure out. He was just like him, he bared his neck for biting, and laughed when poked in the ribs and groaned when Onmund squeezed him just hard enough.

Onmund was dinner, devoured messily, finger food, slick and salt and squirming. Jase was dessert, hissing through his teeth, curled over Onmund's head, tugging on his blonde hair hard enough to hurt. And they flopped back, sated, and grew cold and dug under the blankets. Onmund dosed off for a little while and then he found his hands drifting, and Jase pressed his leg up between his. They threw the blankets off, generating more than enough heat.

Onmund didn't want to make noise, whimpering and gasping, while Jase made enough to wake the dead.

When Onmund cracked his eye open the next day, Jace was sitting up in bed, scowling and scratching the stubble on his chin.

"I need to get all my stuff back," he said, when he noticed the Nord was awake.

"Forget it," Onmund rolled over. "It was just junk anyway."