Lidea slid eggs onto a plate with some toast and a sliced pear. Ey settled it on the table just as Sunny was coming down the stairs. Ey had learned quickly — the first lesson of cohabitation perhaps — that ey didn’t know how to cook from raw ingredients. Sunny had always been the cook between them. When they knew they were traveling together, he was in charge of travel rations. He was the only person ey had ever met who could make a mixture of dehydrated fruits, nuts, and nutritional yeast feel like an actual meal. At home with a full kitchen at his disposal, he put together the kinds of meals a person spent all day looking forward to.
Ey wasn’t incompetent around a saucepan by any means, but the gap in skill was immense. Eggs and toast ey could do, though.
“How do you get the eggs perfect every time?” Sunny asked, dropping into his chair. Lidea joined him, taking eir chair across the table.
“I can manually manipulate the heat distribution across the bottom of the pan.” Lidea broke eir yoke, tore a piece of bread away, and dipped it into the center.
“Wait, are you serious?” Sunny paused with his fork hovering over his egg.
“Yeah…that’s…how I learned to do it. Throw a little magic in there. It’s actually slightly easier with these things.”
Lidea nodded down to eir fingerless gloves.
“I’d never thought of doing that,” Sunny murmured. “How are those working out for you?”
Lidea flipped eir hands over a few times, flashing the cloth and filament gloves from all angles.
“I’m getting used to them, for sure. I don’t know that I would ever want to change over completely.”
“It’s too difficult to go back and forth, though,” Sunny said.
“I’m aware,” Lidea snapped back. Ey tapped eir fork on the edge of the plate, and Sunny didn’t push the conversation.
Ey had always used some kind of staff or staff-like instrument. Ey, like a lot of young magicians, started with a big, bulky staff that strapped across eir shoulder blades. When ey first started traveling, ey switched to a small cudgel that ey could beat someone with in close combat, if ey needed to. Now ey preferred something in between, a thick rod that could extend like a combat baton with a flick. They must exist, but Paul was the only greenwitch ey personally knew that didn’t use some kind of rod or staff.
Sylvan magicians preferred gloves, finger cots, hand chains, and stacks of rings and bracelets. Anything that positioned the focus of magic directly in their hands.
Humans weren’t so uniform. They learned on a few common artifacts, then branched into an entire array of different devices. There was the typical stock of bracers and pendants and staffs, but if something could be safely turned into a focus, someone had done it.
Eir staff had always been cumbersome on public transport and tight spaces, but it had never been a problem ey had to deal with for long stretches. Going back and forth to a workplace, though, this minor inconvenience was turning into a genuine hassle. Fingerless canvas gloves in the sylvan style were Sunny’s first recommendation if Lidea wanted to try something new. They just didn’t work the same. In the field, ey wasn’t sure they’d be able to keep up with em.
But then maybe that was okay. Maybe in-town the gloves were enough. But if that was the case, why would ey need to get accustomed to them at all? Not like ey was staying here, in the city, forever. This was Sunny’s last day of classes, and ey had two more weeks on eir contract after that. Then they were back on the road.
Surely, they’d be back on the road.
The fact was, they hadn’t talked about it. Normally, Lidea would have started looking for eir next contract already. Ey just…hadn’t…Ey didn’t really know what was stopping em. Ey could have gone back to eir room at the guild within a week of being back and just…didn’t. Ey hadn’t given it up, either, not wanting to lose access to a space that belonged to em alone.
Sunny glanced up at the clock, then gobbled down the rest of his breakfast quickly. He moved to the freezer and pulled out a hank of steak, throwing it into the sink.
“Gonna make that for dinner.” He moved toward the door, grabbing his work bag from the hook, then doubled back to peck Lidea on the cheek. “See you tonight.” Then he was gone. Lidea pressed the tips of eir fingers to eir cheek. It was a weird passing thing he had started, brief glances across eir cheek that barely touched. It wasn’t an unheard of neutral greeting between all different people ey had met, especially sylvan, so it had taken a couple of days for em to notice Sunny had picked up the habit for himself.
Systematic desensitization to domestication.
Ey finished up eir own breakfast, then mentally worked through the couple of things in eir chore list that needed to happen before ey left. Sunny would have made the bed already, but ey needed to start the automated dish-washing machine and put the bags out for the laundry service.
Ey sighed. Was this the shape ey wanted eir life to take?
*****
“Sunny.”
“Yasira.”
The stone elf slotted in to walk alongside him as he walked out of one of the small restaurants near campus. It was a little too expensive for the average student, so it was one place faculty and staff could catch a meal with a reasonable chance they wouldn’t run into any students.
The school wanted to take full advantage of having him for lectures, so they packed him for four ninety-minute lecture times a day, four days a week. Fridays were more open-ended study halls and times for one-on-ones. He didn’t have a huge number of students across his courses, which made up for the tight schedule. This morning had been full of practical exams, though, so this lunch was particularly precious.
“Come out for drinks tomorrow night with some of the other staff. Bring Lidea.”
“Don’t you have a baby due any minute?” Sunny asked.
“Not here, yet, and with Indy already in the maternity spa…”
“You don’t like being home without her.” Sunny had lost track of Indy’s pregnancy until, suddenly, Yasira had them over to help with some minor remodeling of the kitchen. He had waited until Indy went into prenatal seclusion so it’d be a (welcome) surprise when she got home after her thirty-day postpartum period.
“I get it,” Yasira insisted. “It’s tradition. It’s healthy. But, you know…visiting hours stop at eight, and I miss my wife.” He pouted a little then threw his arm over Sunny’s shoulder. “How has Lidea found eir little break?”
“Difficult.”
“Oh?”
“Ey hates it.”
“How so?”
This was one of those times where, as much as he liked Yasira, he wished he was having this conversation with Lidea around. Ey knew how to frame things so he didn’t have to talk so much, to explain himself with his own words. He got through his lectures because they were pre-planned.
“Ey’s not used to being in one place for any real length of time. Ey’s getting restless, but ey won’t admit it because ey doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.”
“But otherwise, ey’s having a good time? Exploring the city? Spending time together?”
“Uh…yeah…actually, yeah.” All other things considered, he was enjoying being able to plan things with em more than a few days out. And he was pretty certain Lidea was happy with that turn of events, too. Probably. Right? Right.
“Professor Childress?” A student, a first-year from one of his intro rockhounding classes, appeared vaguely from the side. “Can I ask you some more detailed questions about being a mercenary auxiliary?” Sunny looked her over, a young human woman. Slim. Maybe athletic, but very little muscle mass. If he recalled exactly who she was in the sea of faces, she had made a good grade on her written test but her short practical yesterday had been lackluster.
Mercenaries would eat her alive. The smart thing would be to convince her not to go down that path if that’s what she wanted to do. But then, that hadn’t worked on him. And if he hadn’t joined up with mercenaries, he never would have met Lidea.
“Alright, kid, what do you want to know?”
*****
Lidea wandered the printing floor, staying just the other side of the yellow tape that kept em safe from swinging arms. They had been feeding em middling administrative tasks that no one else wanted to do to keep em busy. And ey liked those tasks, that was the weird part. Ey could sit in a corner and just listen to a radio show while ey transferred and sorted data. If anyone could be good or bad at that kind of repetitive task, ey was performing well. Dana was regularly impressed with how quickly ey got through things.
They also only needed em in the building when they were running a magical ink print. Those weren’t happening all the time, so ey’d taken to doing stock runs for the snack cabinet in the break room.
Late the week before was the first time ey actually had to really pay attention to the magic ink machinery. An arm had come loose that offset the intended print, and two veins of ink that should never touch overlaid on each other. Ey caught the spark of conflicting magic immediately and had the machine shut down within a minute, long before any permanent damage to the machines or the people nearby.
The printing mechanic fixed it within the hour, but Lidea questioned why these two inks were being printed this close together to begin with. This kicked off a week-long audit of their graphic design and production department. Were they adequately aware of the mechanical limitations and implications of the printing machines? Why were they designing products with such a narrow margin of error for magical blowouts? They were working with such small amounts of the magic-shift ink that the danger was low on an individual basis. Magic issues snowballed on top of each other, though, faster than you could typically anticipate. Better to cut them out at the source.
The designers drew up their designs on specialized art machines made up of a giant television-like screen and a fancy pen. Lidea was terrified of them. They showed em how to navigate the “files,” though, and see which ink mixes they used to get which effects with which colors. Ey could then take that list of composite materials and make recommendations on what two things should maybe not touch.
Next week, ey would start writing up the proper, formal safe process manual that should really have already existed and hopefully get it done before the end of the contract. Now, ey needed to stretch eir legs.
“You’re really good at this, you know.” Dana caught em from the doorway as Lidea passed on one of eir circuits.
“Good at what?”
“Everything; that’s kind of the point. You’re doing the work of five people.”
Lidea shrugged, fingers drifting to the back of eir neck.
“I just do what needs to be done, I guess.”
“How does it compare to being on the road all the time?”
“Ah…well…” Lidea flapped eir hands on eir thighs then leaned against the wall next to the doorway. “I don’t know. The predictability is nice. Sleeping in a bed every night is really nice. But…don’t you ever get bored? Of just all this over and over and over?”
“Have you gotten bored in the last six weeks?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Dana pressed her eyebrows together in confusion but gave a guffaw.
“And has it been that bad? Being bored?”
“Honestly, not really. It’s been fine. I can admit to that.”
Dana lightly smacked em on the shoulder with the back of her fingers.
“We don’t really have anything open after your current contract is up, but I know a lot of people who would love to have you around to cover their ass. Just tell me.” Dana moved back through the doorway. Lidea watched her go, and realized, with some dismay, the concept didn’t horrify em.
*****
“Good evening, George.” Lidea let the viney tendrils near the door curl up and over eir fingers. When Sunny talked to the plants, he always left little pauses as though they could answer. Lidea started doing the same, and sometimes ey felt the same thing that Sunny must. Little electro-magical prickles that glided over eir skin. Ey hadn’t found the pattern to it, yet, but ey could see the seeds of language in it.
The scent and sound of garlic and onion just meeting the surface of the skillet met em as ey entered through the front door. Sunny was chopping squash on the counter next to the stove, standing on the low wooden stool that brought him to a more comfortable height. He half-glanced over his shoulder at Lidea.
“Running a little behind on dinner prep. Could you feed the plants?” He nodded to some more gristly bits of meat on a plate.
“We’re not on a schedule, Sunny honey.” Lidea hung eir bag on the hook next to Sunny’s. He made an odd little face, and ey moved it over one hook on the bar. It was a weird little quirk of his that ey was still getting used to.
“There’s a show I want to watch tonight. To have enough time to eat dinner then go for a walk…”
“We can always skip the walk.” Lidea moved up to the counter to get the meat scraps.
“Would prefer not to.”
Lidea ran a hand along his back then moved to the stairs.
Anyone who wandered for a living had to have a level of organization to them. You didn’t survive long juggling contracts and travel plans without an eye toward detail. Everyone picked up their own little compulsions and habits to fall back on to create a sense of continuity from contract to contract. So Lidea had gone all this time not realizing just how intense Sunny was in his own space when he was at his most comfortable.
Sunny had offered to make space in his workshop for Lidea to set up eir own workbench. Ey didn’t really have any hobbies, though. At least not the kind that required large amounts of space. Ey needed space for eir stuff, though. So they collapsed enough of his workspace to make room for a wall of stacked boxes, and a second-hand lounge chair for Lidea to sit and read in while Sunny tinkered. Outside eir clothes in the closet, this was the only room that had any of eir meager belongings. Ey hadn’t really pressed to move more of emself into the house but neither had Sunny.
Lidea popped inside the workroom to grab eir cardigan off the back of the chair before moving onto the bedroom.
“I’ve got dinner, Josephine.” It rustled out of its thorny coil and rolled across the floor toward em. A vine with a bulb spiraled up eir leg. A green bloom split down the middle and opened up a small, toothy mouth. Ey dropped a piece of meat into the pink interior. An opening filled with even more tiny teeth brought it down through the thick, green stalk. Another vine moved along the wall to drop on eir shoulder, and ey fed this mouth another piece of meat. It was a long, once a week process, feeding little chunks of protein into the myriad gullets that opened up before em.
Ey saved a piece for George and headed back downstairs. That one didn’t need the hand feeding, plenty able to catch bugs on its own. It got “jealous,” however, if it didn’t get the same treats. Sunny hadn’t quite been able to explain how he figured that one out.
Sunny was plating up as ey came back inside. Tabberey flank, a squash and spinach saute, and blended potato from a powdered mix.
“It’s about to expire,” Sunny explained when Lidea gave the soup a less than enthusiastic once-over.
It was a well-worn joke that the first few days home were a gastrointestinal disaster as your gut readjusted to “real food.” The joke felt a little burned around the edges when your “home base” was Latolan.
There were local farms, ranches, and apiaries to support a massive honey industry, but not at all to the scale and diversity to fully supply a city-state of this size to the expectations of its populace. There were fishing fleets, but the sea was up to a couple day’s travel away, depending on the weather. Tabberey — a small four-legged furry animal with a short reproductive cycle — had become an option through adaptive breeding, but they weren’t a native species to the planet. One communicable disease or bad genetic mutation could wipe out half the local population before they caught it, and the prices skyrocketed in response.
And that happened a lot on this world. More than their world of origin.
If you could live on insect protein, leafy greens, and millet, you could reliably put together a fresh, wholefood diet. Some did. Otherwise, you were relying on imports, and most of those were more processed, shelf-stable products.
So there wasn’t a tremendous change for either of them when they came “home,” but the powered potatoes were the worst of it.
“So, how was your day?” Lidea asked as ey dug into the flank.
“Fucking teenagers,” Sunny said. “I hate that I have to give them a test. Doesn’t feel worth it. Showing up should be enough.”
“They need some kind of grade.”
“Give ‘em all top scores. It’s already a GPA padding elective.” Sunny scooped a bite of potato into his mouth.
“You’re becoming anti-academic in your old age.” Lidea swallowed down a bit of potato, too, pushing through eir distaste for it.
“Just pragmatic. You hated school.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get why it exists. Think they could do some things differently.”
“Hm,” Sunny decided.
Lidea waited for him to ask about eir day. They were both through their flanks before ey decided ey was tired of waiting.
“The printer is looking at completely overhauling their design philosophy because of some of the stuff I pointed out.”
“Oh?”
Lidea tapped the tip of eir fork to the plate.
“Yeah. When the company set up their design reference procedures, they never actually talked to an artificer or a chemist or anything. They were just coming at it from an art perspective.”
“Hm.”
Would he give a shit how different pigments were made from their component parts? How the color looked to the eye depended on what interactive property you needed to create. The way the actual shape of the printed image affected the way the magical effect came through. Ey was only just learning a lot of it emself, but ey was jumping to talk about. And Sunny just…he didn’t know how to bounce. How to reciprocate. They were supposed to be working on this, and yet there’d been so little change in the past six weeks.
Ey pressed eir fork into the soft flesh of a piece of squash, testing its resistance. The fork made a little clinking sound as it pierced through to the plate. Sunny cringed at the sound.
“I think maybe I’ll skip the walk this evening. I’ll just put the dishes in the washer. Pick up around the house a little.”
Sunny cocked his head.
“Are you sure? We really need to make sure we stay conditioned.”
“I think I can skip one walk and be okay.” Lidea shifted eir focus back to eir plate.
Sunny looked at eir, searching eir face, but didn’t say anything to press the matter.
*****
Lidea felt better by the time Sunny came back from this walk. The dishwasher was going then ey’d put some clothing away and did a once over with the broom on the hard tile floor.
The show Sunny wanted to watch was an Areylan space movie about a woman who receives schematics for a space machine through radio waves from another planet. Areylan was locked off from the rest of the connected worlds, but there was a robust underground trade in their media. Enough that, eventually, it made its way to broadcast television a few decades after the fact.
It was a captivating character movie, but slow with a lot of technical jargon. By the end, Sunny had found his way into Lidea’s lap, head resting on eir thigh. Ey moved eir fingers through his hair, and the irritation from before didn’t feel so raw.
Sunny looked up, stretching his head into Lidea’s hand, finding his eyes fluttering shut. Sunny wrinkled his nose.
“I should put the dishes away before bed,” Sunny said.
“That’s my job; I got it.”
Sunny was already getting up.
“You fed the plants and put the dishes in the washer. I can unload them. No problem.” He was already at the under-counter appliance by the time he reached the end of his gentle protests. He opened the hatch and hummed, examining the mesh drawers. He sighed. There was just something about the way Lidea arranged things inside that bothered him. Everything was kind of…scattered.
“Everything okay?” Lidea called from the living room.
“Just…the way you put the dishes in here.” He started unloading from the top row.
“Did I do something wrong? Yours is the first automatic dishwasher I’ve used.”
“No,” Sunny replied.
“Did they not get clean?”
“No, they’re clean.”
“Is there a more economical way to arrange them? Did a plate slide sideways or something? Increased chance of cracking that I didn’t notice?” Lidea’s voice was getting steadily sharper as ey sat up.
“No,” Sunny said, more quiet in contrast.
“Okay then.” Lidea surged up off the couch and trotted into the kitchen, stopping a few feet away. “Then what’s the problem?”
Sunny pressed his palms to the counter and leaned on them. He had been trying to avoid this, but it had been building slowly, sand piling on sand.
“Nothing. Just like the chores to be done right.” The instant he said it, he knew he’d fucked up.
“What did I do not ‘right?’” Lidea’s energy was puffing up, rolling and spinning. Ey had been waiting for this, too, but hoped Sunny would have come up with something more specific before it came to this. Why didn’t he stop this before it got this far? It was his house, after all. His stuff, as he liked to remind em.
“Nothing.”
“Okay, then if they got clean, then why does exactly how they’re stacked matter?”
“It doesn’t.” Sunny dug back into the dish racks.
“So it’s just a problem because I didn’t do it the same way you did. It has to be done your way.”
“And why shouldn’t it?” Sunny put the cup he was holding back in the rack to avoid dropping it.
“I’ve lived in this house for years. I’ve already figured out how to fold the towels so they fit in the linen closet the right way. I’ve put my video tapes and books in the order they’re in for a reason. I’ve already had to squish all of my workshop into half the original space. I shouldn’t have to change everything else if it doesn’t need it.”
“You asked me to marry you.” Lidea lost all eir energy, collapsing from the inside until eir voice choked and faltered. “That comes with combining lives. Living together. This is supposed to be my home, too, according to your big-picture plans. I should be allowed to put the dishes in the dishwasher any which way I want as long as the job gets done. What the fuck does marriage look like to you?”
Ey hadn’t stormed off since ey was a teenager, but now eir legs were moving up the stairs to their shared room. Ey stood in the middle of the bedroom. Ey paused. Ey grabbed a pillow and eir blanket off the bed and went into the workshop instead. Ey curled up in the chair and stewed.
Sunny laid in bed alone for the first time in six weeks. He hadn’t realized how accustomed to having Lidea there he had become. Bedsharing had gone from an occasional, novel treat on the road to an everyday expectation. He like having it as an everyday. He liked waking up and going ti bed next to Lidea, of the quiet ease of going about their days together. He loved it.
Fuck. He loved it. He loved Lidea. He loved Lidea, and he was fucking it all up. He should have kept things the way they were. The way they were had been working. They were both happy.
Josephine dropped a vine down from the window, across the floor, and over his shoulder. One of the thornier bits poked him hard in the fleshiest part of his cheek.
“Yeah, I know you like em.”
The plant poked him again.
“Yes. I’m going to fix it.”
Another vine reached underneath his body and pressed at his shoulder blades.
“Okay, I’ll do it now.”
The plant half rolled him out of bed, and he padded out of the room and down the hallway. He knocked on the workroom door, hoping ey was still awake.
“What do you want?” Lidea answered, hoarse.
“To apologize,” Sunny said. If he was upfront, maybe he could press right through to the core of the issue. Lidea didn’t hesitate.
“Come in.”
Lidea was curled up in the lounge chair, blanket pulled up around eir shoulders. Ey was really too tall for it, and eir legs stuck out weirdly over the arm. Sunny grabbed his rolling stool and moved it across from eir.
“I’m a dumb ass,” he opened with.
“Yes. You are.”
“Can I explain why I’m a dumb ass, or should I just jump right to groveling?”
“You grew up in a sylvan commune where you didn’t have any control over your environment. So when you finally had something that was yours and only yours, you over-corrected. Now you’re an asshole about it.”
Sunny stared at the bit of Lidea that was peeking over the top of the blanket.
“Well, then I’ll just leave if we’ve got it figured out.” Sunny stood, rattled, feeling it in his knees. Lidea grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back, the force swaying him back just enough he missed his chair and thumped lightly to the floor.
“Just because I get why you are the way you are doesn’t mean I like it,” Lidea said. “Or that I’m going to put up with it.”
“Sorry.” Sunny leaned against the arm of the lounge chair.
“I told you if this was going to work, I needed to feel like it was my home, too. Are we going to keep having this conversation?”
“No…maybe. I don’t know.”
Lidea threw eir head back and brought eir hand over to settle on Sunny’s scalp. Ey scratched it absently.
“I don’t have a problem doing things your way. I don’t actually care about most of it. And I don’t want you to feel like you can’t make recommendations. So I’m sorry for blowing up at you.”
“You shouldn’t be apologizing for anything,” Sunny sighed.
“Maybe.” Lidea scratched his scalp. “I’m not so naive to think we won’t have this conversation again. This is just going to be one of those things we have to keep coming back to. So I keep thinking…why? Why get ourselves into that cycle when everything was so much easier before?”
“Because I love you. I’m in love with you.” Sunny pushed his head up into Lidea’s hand. “I don’t know how you feel, but for me that’s worth it.”
Lidea kept scratching his head as ey thought.
“Something we don’t talk about, but elves don’t really…hm…I don’t know why elves get married. I mean…I know, but…” Lidea pulled eir hand back to scratch eir own head, trying to think. “My dad did his genetic due diligence, but he still chose my human mom as his wife, in the end. When I was a teenager, I asked him why? When everyone was so shitty to him about it. He said because he loved her. Grandmother has always said ‘that’s a stupid reason to do anything.’ The upper echelon get very careful with…breeding?… Pedigrees. That’s the word I’m looking for. So I just…My grandparents like each other well enough, but I don’t know if they love each other. And I don’t think I know the difference between the two.”
“Does that matter?” Sunny asked.
“I kinda feel like it should,” Lidea replied. Sunny clucked his tongue.
“I come from three generations of ‘I don’t know which one your bio-dad is, and it doesn’t really matter.’ Sylvan are raised by the collective and everything just…is…”
“So maybe we’re not designed for this sort of thing, you and me. If we’re not sure-“
“But I am sure,” Sunny insisted. He so rarely had such strong words, but here they were. “I’m sure that I want to spend my life with you. Is that enough?”
Lidea sighed.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lidea flicked eir fingers through Sunny’s hair again. “Do we have any plans this weekend?”
“Yasira wants to go out for drinks tomorrow night.” He glanced at the wall clock. “Or, tonight, I guess.”
“We should do that,” Lidea said. “I think it’ll be good to be around other people together…if that makes sense.”
“Are you feeling-“
“Just…let’s go out for drinks. Then think about things.”
*****
“Holy shit, you actually came.” Yasira threw his arms around Sunny’s shoulders and lifted him a little off the floor. “Lidea.” He offered eir a hug, as well. Yasira guided them toward a group of tables at the back of the pub. There were a lot more people than Sunny expected, but he at least recognized most of them. Lidea gently touched his hand but didn’t take it.
They had been dancing and flitting around the central conflict all day, but they didn’t feel steeped in dread. Not yet. For Sunny, at least, something had clicked over in his brain. He wasn’t going to lose Lidea. If ey hadn’t gotten tired of him during this six-week intensive after all the years that preceded it, then ey was in it deeper than he realized. They would get through this minor hiccup.
You didn’t have to be a magician to work at a magic-craft oriented school. Yasira wasn’t one. But it certainly attracted that population. A group of any manner of magicians in one place made the ambient energy pulse and vibrate. They both sat in it, awash, letting it wrap warm and snug.
And neither of them had to carry the conversation. It was nice, Lidea thought, that ey didn’t have to do anything. That ey could just listen to other people, take in their stories as a nice little background narrative. Maybe ey had given Sunny a harder time that he deserved. Ey thought of themselves as an extrovert, a talker, but maybe that was only when ey framed themselves in terms of Sunny’s behavior. Here, ey was happy to sit next to Sunny and have everything sort of happen around them. Ey still wanted to know about his day and wanted him to be interested in eirs and actually talk about stuff, but had they really had a problem with that before? Ey had maybe started imagining a different version of their life together instead of just adjusting it to new circumstances.
“So you’re friends with Sunny?” A human woman took the seat next to em and leaned in. Margot, a telekinetic magician that Lidea had only just been introduced to that evening. Sunny had temporarily moved to the other end of the cluster of tables to confer with a colleague on something that had them laughing softly.
“Yeah,” Lidea replied. It was such a nothing question. Where the hell was ey supposed to go with that kind of opener? This was the reason Sunny didn’t talk to people.
“I’m a guild mage,” Margot said. “I always thought I wanted to travel and work, but…”
“Not for you?” Lidea prodded.
“Joined Guild Tessiar in college, but my parents encouraged me to keep after my degree. Decided I’d get the teaching certificate, travel, then do magework and teach in the field. But you really need more traditional teaching experience before trying to do travel teaching. Then I met my spouse, and they weren’t really interested in being with someone who traveled for work. I made the choice to stay home. Then we got divorced. So…now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“If you’re looking for encouragement, it’s never too late to do traveling work.” Lidea took a sip of eir wine. Ey was midway through the second glass, working through them slowly. Still, there was a buzz in eir head and a warmth in eir cheeks.
“Hm. Maybe.” Margot finished the last quarter of her mixed drink in one swallow. “What’s the love life like on the road? I’ve heard some of you guys can really get around.”
“I…um.” Lidea hid from the question behind a sip of wine. “You’re not wrong, I guess. Not really something I pay a lot of attention to personally.”
Margot leaned in a little closer, arm skating along the back of Lidea’s chair.
“I mean,” she said, “If you’re never in one place for too long, not like there are consequences. You can just…hook up and move on. No attachments.”
“Yeah. That’s an advantage for some people.” Lidea leaned away. Hard. Was this flirting? Ey had never been good at noticing flirting and was terrible at doing it back. Ey cast down the table at Sunny, but he had moved.
“Margot!” Sunny was over eir shoulder, close to eir ear. “Back off. Lidea’s not interested.” His body was coiled in like a spring ready to pop. He wasn’t drunk, yet, but the tops of his cheeks were peachy with inebriation. A few people half-looked down the table but glanced off before it could turn into staring.
“We’re just talking, Sunny. Calm down.” Margot moved away, and Lidea realized how close she had actually gotten over the course of their brief conversation. It wasn’t a threatening or even necessarily unwanted closeness. There was a point in eir life, a younger age, when ey would have welcomed a little of this kind of attention. Right now, though, it was too much. A pressure that made eir skin crawl.
It also felt like a betrayal.
But to whom exactly?
“You’re not just talking,” Sunny insisted. “You’re flirting, and Lidea doesn’t like it.”
“Lidea can speak for emself.” Margot had kept her voice level, but now it was lifting a little.
“Ey’s trying to be polite.”
“Okay,” Margot turned back to Lidea, more serious this time. “I recognize that Sunny’s an intense guy, but you let him speak for you like this? He’s not your father, and he’s not your husband.”
Sunny’s fist clenched. Lidea’s reflexes kicked like a flash of lightning shooting down eir limbs. Eir fingers circled Sunny’s wrist, pinning it in place.
“Let’s go. We’re going.” Lidea threw enough cash to cover both their drinks on the table, then surged up, dragging him outside into the cold of the night. Ey moved quickly, pulling him away from the pub and down the street.
This part of the borough nearer Giddington Academy was dotted with small, partially walled-in parks, and Lidea yanked him around through an opening. The chest-high walls blocked off enough of the sounds for it to almost seem quiet. Ey found a bench under a streetlight and dragged Sunny in front of em until they were eye level with each other.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” ey asked. “Were you actually going to fight her? Do you know how insane that is?”
Sunny raked his hands down his face then locked them behind his head.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” he mumbled.
“You sound like it, too, so…I don’t know…maybe get your shit together.”
Sunny did a small turn, hands still clasped behind his neck. He huffed and puffed a few times. His guts were ready to rattle apart, the bile ready to bubble up his throat at the slightest provocation. There was no going back from any of this. Only through. He took a few steps back toward Lidea and let his body take over the last half of the motion.
When his lips met Lidea’s, whatever pressurized thing that was living in his chest burst and boiled out, burning his muscles and bones. He put his hands around Lidea’s jaw, terrified ey would pull away.
Ey didn’t.
The initial surprise of Sunny kissing em like this clipped quickly through a constellation of emotions. Confusion that it was happening. Anger that he had done it without express permission and consent. Acceptance that Sunny, of all people, kissing em wasn’t really that big of a deal considering everything else that came before it. Then confusion again that ey liked it. Ey liked it a lot. Enough that ey started kissing him back within half a moment.
Eir hands touched the outside of Sunny’s hands where they were resting on eir face and neck. Ey pulled them loose and dropped them down, weaving their fingers together. Sunny moved forward until he was standing between Lidea’s legs. They didn’t know what to do with their hands, trying to break away in various turns before settling back into the grip they were currently holding.
“Fucking finally, damn.”
Sunny sighed as he pulled away gently. Yasira had tracked them down in the brief span of time since they had stormed out.
“We’re gonna go home,” Sunny said.
“Yeah, you are,” Yasira winked.
“Shut up, not like that.” Sunny pinched his nose. “Can you smooth things over with the others?”
“Why do you care? Your contract’s over, for now.”
“Just…please.”
Yasira gave a flick of his hand and moved off beyond the wall.
Sunny turned back to Lidea and kissed em on the forehead. Through, not back.
*****
“This doesn’t suddenly fix everything. A little kissing in the park.” Lidea sat at the table picking at eir oatmeal while Sunny puttered around the kitchen.
“And back at home on the couch. Then this morning in bed.”
“That’s all been you.” Lidea pointed a spoon at him. “You broke the seal, and now you’re getting overly bold.”
“You’re not stopping me,” Sunny countered.
“Shut up.”
“No.” He moved away from the counter specifically to place a series of kisses and up and down eir jaw. “I found us a job.”
“Wh-what?” Lidea moved all eir focus back to Sunny.
“Monday after you’re done with the print shop. Ruins research group needs some extra mages on hand to help with equipment management. Artificer college put me onto it.”
“I’ve never really been out in the jungle.” Lidea considered the shape and color of eir oatmeal. “We don’t have to do that. Go on jobs. We can start…changing how we do things.”
“You’re bored,” Sunny said simply. “You’re not ready to give up traveling. So we go on jobs. For now.”
“And you’re…okay…with that?”
Sunny stopped mid-task to drop into the chair across from em. He flicked his fingers that ey should hold his hands. The mood grew very serious, very quick.
“The only thing I want right now is to be with you. So where you go, I go. Until you get tired of me.”
Lidea chuffed.
“You know that won’t actually happen. I can’t imagine it.”
“Then you’re stuck with me. We’ve already established that.” Sunny got up to go back to mindlessly wiping the countertops down. Ey watched his back for a moment.
Ey loved him. Maybe was finding the closest thing to “in love” that ey’d ever experienced. But ey’d wait to tell him when he wasn’t so smug about it.
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