Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I think we should break up.”

For a moment, Fabian’s sure he’s misheard. Eillana doesn’t look angry, or disappointed, or closed off in any way. Instead, she’s smiling. Sure, it’s a soft, bittersweet kind of smile, not all that different from the kind he and his friends always wear when they’re parting again for Cassandra-knows-how-long, full of be-safes and I-believe-in-yous and soons, but surely if she’d actually said that– if she was–

“I… did I do something?” Surely if he had, if he’d forgotten her birthday or something (he hadn’t, he knows it’s February 23rd, three weeks before their anniversary, and he heard enough jokes from Kristen about learning from her mistakes and not combining presents to be sure) or if he’d upset her, she’d look angry. She’d look sad, instead of just kind of rueful. It’s not often these days that Fabian feels like he’s missed a step in a dance – he’s still Fallinel’s Oracool for a reason, all these years later – but he feels it now when she shakes her head.

“It’s me, really.” It’s a sign of how cool Eillana is, how much Fabian likes her, that even ‘it’s not me, it’s you’ doesn’t feel trite, but it doesn’t tell him anything either. She sighs and pulls her glass of water closer, and he can only stare as she starts idly playing with the condensation on the outside of it, eyes firmly on it instead of him. It’s something she only does when she’s buying time, trying to figure out how to word something.

It strikes him, then, that this might actually be happening. “Lana,” he pleads, and hopes she’s kind enough to ignore the way his voice cracks a little on the syllables. “C’mon. You gotta give me more than that. Please.”

Her finger pauses on the bead of water. “You know how Rona got engaged last month?”

“Yes,” he says, a little slowly, because, what? As far as he knew, Eillana has been nothing but excited about it. She’d spent hours after her sister had called, rambling to Fabian about what kinds of wedding traditions the two girls would weave into the ceremony, about the crazy relatives he’d meet and the ones they’d make a game out of avoiding, about all the shenanigans they’d witness together as her inevitable plus-one. It hadn’t even been a question that he’d be there. Now it’s… something she’s breaking up with him over?

She looks up at him again, bottom lip disappearing between her teeth for a minute. Then she sighs, and says, “She keeps talking about all these plans she and Nym have for their future, and it just… hit me, that I don’t– we– I don’t think we’re headed anywhere like that. Where we start building a life together. And once I realized that, I couldn’t stop realizing it.” 

The words sound a little sad, wistful, like it’s something she wishes weren’t true, and Fabian almost feels lightheaded with relief. A misunderstanding, then. Easy. “Eillana, what? Of course we are. We’ve been dating for almost two years. I’m crazy about you. Do you really think I don’t want a future with you?”

Her smile turns a little wry, and there’s a look on her face he knows so well. It’s the one she gets when she’s got a lead, when there’s a story she knows exactly how to put into words. “So if I told you I wanted you to move in with me, what would your answer be?”

It’s immediate and visceral, the way he recoils against the idea. Eillana is great. She’s so fucking smart, and kind, and witty, and gorgeous, and he loves her. But the idea of leaving his house? It’d taken months of wearing Riz down, of pleading and pointing out all the ways that they’d outgrown the little townhouse they’d shared for the three years after Riz had returned from Bastion City and Fabian had decided he’d had enough of rambling around the continent and bouncing between dance studios and the futon he’d insisted on buying Riz for his shitty college apartment and Gorgug’s van and Seacaster Manor and Kristen’s Goddesses-on-Tour-shtick caravan. The two of them have only been living there for a little over a year now, and he loves it, loves the blue shutters and the porch and the little garden area that’s completely devoid of plants but serves perfectly to spar and dance in, with plenty of room to drag out all their chairs when their friends come by and spend the night chatting under the stars. He loves the couch that’s deep enough for him to sink in and takes Riz ages to crawl out of, so movie nights almost always end up with Riz mostly-curled up against him instead of against the cushions for more leverage, allowing Fabian to feel every grumble and snort and scoff and laugh. He loves the kitchen and how it spills into an open nook, how it can fill with noise and feel so cozy and alive when any party members come to town and they do their best to cook an actual meal like the grownups they only sometimes are starting to feel like they are. The thought of leaving, of not waking up and stumbling out to start a pot of coffee for Riz to come blearily fetch when the smell rouses him to consciousness, of not being there to feel the sharp relief when Riz finally comes back after disappearing for too many days on some mission for the LPRTF that he says he can’t talk about but always ends up letting Fabian in on, of stretching out and whirling Fandrangor around and dancing and breathing and trying to feel right in his body in a way that doesn't feel as easy as it does in the home he lives in now, of trying to find a new space that fits him the way that this does, after so many years of feeling like he’d never quite fit anywhere? It’s… he loves her, but he can’t. He won’t. And by the look on her face, she knew that far, far before she asked. “Lana,” he says, weakly, and can’t figure out what he could possibly add to soften the ‘no’ they both hear in the silent beat that follows.

“So. No, I don’t think we’re working towards a future like that.” She looks guilty, of all things, like she’s the one who had a minor aneurysm and hadn’t said a word for far, far too many agonizing seconds as she tried to put into words how wrong the idea of them moving in together felt. “It’s– well, it’s my fault, really. I– you know my parents are poly, and like, I know I feel compersion, and I figured I really was okay with how things are, especially given the whole,” she waves her hand, as if that makes any of what she’s saying make any more sense, “quasiplatonic aspect of it. And I am! It’s not jealousy, exactly, but it’s just– I don’t think I’m as okay with it as I thought I was. Not in the long term. Not in a way that I can see working for me. For both of us. …All of us, I guess.”

Now Fabian’s really, really lost. It’s hard not to see her point of them not being ready for that kind of future now, but he doesn’t know how they got from that to her babbling about jealousy and her parents being poly. “You don’t think you're okay with what?”

Eillana visibly swallows, and the awful, sad-guilty smile wobbles a little. “Being in love with someone who’s in love with someone else, too.”

Yeah, no, forget a step: there’s, like, a whole routine he’s missing. “I– you– I– what?” He can’t even begin to think where she got the idea that he’d cheat on her from, much less that he’d want her to be okay with it. “I am not in love with anyone else.”

She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, stops, and looks at him, visibly taken aback for the first time since they sat down for dinner. He can’t imagine what she could possibly see besides the denial and confusion that must be written all over his face, but then her mouth drops, the smile finally gone as she splutters a bit. “Fabian. You– I always just thought it was just. A thing we don’t talk about since he doesn’t do– but it– Fabian. You have to know. Surely you know. You– there’s no way you don’t actually know that you’re in love with Riz.”

It’s not the first time a partner has accused him of this, but from Eillana, it feels so much worse. Probably because it’s not being thrown at him as an accusation or an ultimatum or anything: she’s making it seem like it’s obvious, like it’s something they’ve both known all along, like it’s okay, like she doesn’t want him to feel guilty about it. It’s a far cry from how it’s gone down before, and maybe that’s why it feels like so much more of a gut punch. “I’m not,” he says, and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. This was always so much easier when they were mad, when he was mad right back at how not okay it was that his best friend was being used as something to throw in his face. “It’s not… it’s not like that.”

There’s a long moment where Eillana keeps looking at him, searching his face for something, until she sighs again. “I– Mazey didn’t prepare me for this part,” she says, and if Fabian thought his brain couldn’t short-circuit more, turns out he was dead fucking wrong. 

“Mazey?” he repeats, shrilly enough that the table behind Eillana turns to peer at them, interest keen in their expressions. He feels his face flush as he waves his hand in an annoyed little shooing motion until they turn back around. He doesn’t need more people witnessing this breakdown. Breakup. Both. Whichever of the two ends up being more apt. “Like my ex, Mazey?” He knows they’re friendly, that they’d had several classes together when they went to the same college, but there’s friends who keep in touch on Crystalbook and then there’s whatever relationship there is that includes conversations his ex-girlfriend and apparently-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend had about him and his feelings about his best friend. “Mazey thinks I’m in love with Riz?” Yeah, there had been some comments back in high school, especially when they’d first got together, but it wasn’t like she’d actually thought anything was going on between them. He and Mazey had dated for over two years! They’d been serious enough to even keep it up long-distance when she’d gone to school! She knew him. She knew Riz. She knew him and Riz and how there was no ‘him and Riz’. There’s no way she–

“Not that long after you and I went social media-official, we were catching up, and you and me dating came up. We talked about… a lot of things, but yeah, she…” Eillana winces, probably at the thunderous expression Fabian knows is on his face now, because what the fuck. “It wasn’t a cruel or petty thing, Fabian, I promise. She still cares about you a lot. I know it was an amicable thing with you guys. It wasn’t gossip, just… wanting the best for you, and worrying about you and me. And Riz, really.”

It’s– just. What the fuck. Girls he’d only gone out with a handful of times accusing him of secretly fucking his roommate were one thing. Guys he tried to upgrade from fuckbuddies to something more smirking at him and making callous comments about being substitutes were one thing. They didn’t know, didn’t know him or Riz or their friendship. They just made assumptions on the same kind of thing that Riz had gone on more than one tipsy rant about, people automatically equating closeness with romance. It wasn’t personal. The two longest, serious, real relationships he’d ever had acting like it’s a well-known fact that he’s in love with Riz feels like another thing entirely, and it’s bizarre, how much it feels like he’s been hit by a truck when he knows better. He loves Riz, obviously, but he’s not– it’s not– “I– no. No. There’s– it’s–”

Eillana reaches out towards his hand, and he flinches. The guilt is back, even starker on her face now as she slowly withdraws her hand like she feels any sudden movement might startle him. Maybe it will, with how insane he feels right now. “Shit, Fabian, I’m sorry. I would’ve been, like, way gentler about that if I’d thought…”

“It’s. You’re breaking up with me because you think I’m in love with Riz? Because if you are, I’m not, so– so, it’s fine, we can just figure it out– I mean, I still don’t know that I–”

She actually does reach out and grab his hand now, and the words die in his mouth. He almost wishes she hadn’t, that his mouth would keep going, because now he just feels worse. “I’m breaking up with you,” she says, so, so gently, “because I don’t think your future is with me, or mine with you. Whatever it is you feel for Riz, that’s… besides the point.” She hesitates, then adds, almost reluctantly, “I don’t know that the labels are what really matters.”

He can’t find any words, can’t think of a single thing to say, high charisma be damned. 

“If I’m wrong about you and me, if there’s– if you really think there’s a way forward, long-term. Maybe we could try. But I don’t… Fabian, I really don’t think there is.”

For all that in a lot of ways this still feels like it came out of nowhere, he can’t, in good conscience, disagree. If he can’t even see a way to move in with her, if the idea is so entirely off-putting to even pretend to consider, how can he ask her to entertain the idea that they may find a way for even more beyond that? “No,” he says, a little hoarsely. “I thought… but I– you’re right. I don’t think there is, at least right now. I’m… fuck. I’m really sorry, Eillana.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Her other hand comes up to rest on top of their joined hands, and her eyes go a little shiny in the stupid fluorescent lighting of the café as she says, “You’re a good man, Fabian. I know it’s a lot to ask for right now, but I really do hope that one day we can be friends. And I… I hope you find happiness, whatever that looks like for you.”

This is actually, really happening. It doesn’t quite feel real, even when she delicately untangles her hands, stands up, and presses a soft kiss to his cheek as she murmurs a teary goodbye and passes behind him.

It’s… fucked up, he realizes, sitting alone at the table for a few minutes until he just can’t anymore, that he doesn’t feel heartbreak the way that he should, after a year and a half of dating. Maybe that’ll come later, once he works through this confused, numb daze, but he just wants to go home and figure out a way to untangle his thoughts. They keep snagging on something, on how bizarre this all is. 

The Hangman is unusually subdued as they ride home, save for one gruff, things will be okay, Sire, as they pull into the garage.

“Thanks, Hangman,” Fabian murmurs, and feels the first sting of guilt and regret, himself. He’ll miss her, he knows, but deep down, he already knows that the Hangman is right. He’ll be okay. Moving on will be just a little backwards, just a little too steady, just a little too smooth: Eillana was right, and he hadn’t quite realized it until now, how little space he’d been carving out for her in his present and his future. She deserves better. 

Maybe they both do.

His key glides smoothly in the lock, but he fumbles a little as he enters the side door and feels along the wall for the light switch. When it comes on, he hears a startled hiss, and his lips twitch up almost despite himself.

Riz’s eyes are slitted against the sudden brightness, and the container of leftovers he was scarfing down presumably only by the light of the oven hood tumbles to the counter as he raises an arm as if to shield him from the onslaught of the kitchen lights. He’s a mess, curls just a bit longer than he usually keeps it after too many weeks too busy working himself half to death to worry about a trim, waistcoat flapping open and sliding off his shoulder, and shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the faint lines of old tattoos and curves of lean muscles earned through years of field work instead of a gym. 

The normal flood of warmth Fabian feels when seeing him suddenly feels like an avalanche instead, sharp and intense and threatening to bury him alive, and he absolutely cannot let himself dwell on that for a single second right now when he feels so raw and messy. “We have things called lights, The Ball,” he says, and hopes his voice doesn’t sound as odd and strangled to Riz’s ears as it does to his own. “And utensils, you heathen.”

Riz scowls, blinking as he lowers his arm to get a better look at Fabian, mouth open to spit some undoubtedly witty retort. Once his eyes land on Fabian, the glare disappears entirely, replaced with steely concern in a single blink. “What’s wrong?”

Fabian’s smile feels brittle, and there’s no way it convinces Riz, whose passive perception alone could almost always beat even Fabian’s most believable lies. Still, he tries. “Hey, you stole my question. Did you sleep in those clothes? I know you have pajamas; I’ve definitely bought you some.”

“Fabian.” Riz isn’t amused. 

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug, turning to deliberately peel his coat off and hang it on the rack on the wall so he doesn’t have to look Riz in the face as he says, “Eillana and I broke up.”

He hears Riz’s sharp breath in. “Fuck, Fabian. What– I’m sorry.”

Thank Cass he didn’t actually ask what happened. Fabian’s not sure he could lie right now, especially not with Eillana’s shocked ‘surely you know’ ringing in his head as he turns around. There’s no way you don’t know. His eye flits from the particularly long lock of hair curling against Riz’s forehead to the flecks of gold in Riz’s concerned eyes brought out by the warm kitchen light to chapped, downturned lips to the delicate sliver of collarbone revealed in the gap left by the undone top two buttons of Riz’s crumpled dress shirt to long, elegant fingers bare of magical rings in the haven of their home to the much, much safer floorboards. “It’s fine,” he croaks. This must be what going insane feels like. “I mean. I’ll be fine. I’m just– I’m going– yeah. Good night.” It’s barely past seven o’clock, but he doesn’t care, and flees to his room, ignoring whatever it is Riz says after him.

What the fuck.

Fabian doesn’t sleep. He can’t, can’t stop thinking and carefully not thinking and uncarefully having a mental breakdown over how strangers had known better, about how Eillana had known the entire time they’d been dating and he’d never even suspected. By the time the night crawls away and the sun comes up, smearing the sky with pastels, he doesn’t know what he can do, but he knows he can’t lay here any longer.

He dresses, doing his best to avoid looking at his bloodshot eye in the mirror, and is halfway through the familiar motions of making a pot of coffee when it hits him all over again, and his hands shake so badly he scatters the grounds across the counter. Fuck. How much of his life has been this, behaviors unconsciously shaped around love he didn’t even know was there?

That’s not fair, he realizes a moment later, and takes a long, even breath, trying to calm himself. Even if there’s a romantic aspect to it that he’d never allowed himself to grapple with consciously, Riz is still his best friend. Making coffee every morning, bringing home takeout when he knows Riz has spent too long distracted by a case to feed himself, dragging Riz out to get some sunshine when his skin gets a little too sallow and his eyes a little too hollow, happily being a sounding board when Riz needs an audience to process his thoughts… yeah, they’re acts of love, but it’s not fair to either of them to pinpoint it all on one kind of love. Not when other kinds of love have always been a willing, known constant.

He keeps going in circles, and when the smell of coffee fills up every space of the room, he knows he needs to leave. If he sees Riz emerge, squinty-eyed and sleep-rumpled and gloriously morning-grumpy, Fabian doesn’t know what will be on his face or come out of his mouth, but he knows he’s not ready for it.

Sire? the Hangman greets him when he opens the garage, worry obvious in the voice in Fabian’s head. Are you alright? If someone has harmed you–

“I’m okay,” he says, and it only somewhat feels like a lie. “I just… let’s go.”

The thrum of the Hangman’s engine feels reassuring, the easy agreement vibrating through Fabian’s bones, and they peel off into the morning. 

The cool autumn air feels like the best kind of slap to the face, stealing some of the exhaustion from his bones as they just drive, winding through the streets of Elmville, far too loud for a Sunday morning. He knows he should care, that he has neighbors now whose opinion of him matters, at least in terms of not wanting it to affect their lives, but he can’t bring himself to. He doesn’t know what he needs right now, but it feels like the Hangman does, keeping up a steady, soothing roar beneath him.

Fabian hadn’t had a particular destination in mind, but somehow it’s not a surprise to see the familiar monstrosity of Mordred Manor’s haphazard silhouette growing larger and larger. His friends don’t live there anymore, at least most of the time, but it’s still a place of comfort, of, ironic enough given its physical form, stability. For a moment he can picture it so clearly, walking through the front door to see Adaine at the kitchen table, lazily using Mage Hand to turn the pages of her book as her real hands cup a chipped mug of tea and she rolls her eyes and tries to hide a smile at the cacophony. He sees Fig sprawled out across the window seat, strumming her bass or grinning and cooing at her crystal over something Ayda’s sent her. He hears Kristen laughing loud and unapologetic, filling up space with her bright smile and tie-dye shirts and hard-won confidence. He aches with it, how much he misses his family.

When Sandra Lynn opens the door, eyebrows raised, there’s nothing behind her but quiet, but it’s still a familiar, beloved enough sight that Fabian feels himself smile, shoulder drooping in some small relief.

“Fabian?” she asks, and it’s only when he hears the note of concern in her voice that he realizes how stupid this was, showing up at their front door this early in the morning when he hadn’t been by in months, not since the last time Kristen was in Elmville. “Are you– is everyone okay?”

“Sh- sorry. Everyone’s fine,” he reassures her. “Sorry, I don’t… know why I came. There wasn’t really a plan.”

He doesn’t know what she sees as she peers at him, but it’s enough for the frown to quirk upwards into a small smile, and she takes a small step to the side, clearing the doorway. “You’re always welcome here, you know that.” 

Walking into the kitchen, he feels a little like a teenager again, even if none of his party is here alongside him. He really doesn’t know why he’s here, but luckily Sandra Lynn doesn’t ask. She just fixes him with a long look, then grabs her bag, fully dressed and geared and… heading out, Fabian realizes, feeling stupider by the moment. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get going if I’m going to get to Mount Shieldgaze by the time I promised, but Jawbone’s up in his office, and I know he’d love some company.” She’s good, he’ll give her that: she makes it sound almost like Fabian would be doing her partner a favor instead of what she clearly figured out even before Fabian did, that of course this was why he’d come.

“Be safe,” he says, almost reflexively.

When she grins at him, for a moment, all he can see is Fig. “Where’s the fun in that?” She leans over to give him a kiss on the forehead, almost absentmindedly in her mothering, and squeezes his shoulder before grabbing her bow. “Tell Riz I said I miss you both, and that you don’t need one of my kids to be in town to come over for dinner.” It’s pointed enough that he almost manages not to flush at the gentle scolding, at how easily it was directed at him-and-Riz, and Cassandra, there’s so much he doesn’t know how to begin unpacking.

“Yes ma’am.”

He knows Mordred Manor is large enough that there’s no way Jawbone would’ve heard Fabian come in from his office on the third floor, but either Sandra Lynn was lightning-quick with a text message or Jawbone’s a little psychic, as he doesn’t look surprised at all to see Fabian hovering at his doorway. (Frankly, Fabian isn’t ruling out either option.) 

“Fabian! Well ain’t this a nice surprise,” he crows, beaming as he lounges in his ratty robe in an even rattier office chair. “Good to see you, kiddo. What’s going on?”

It’s so strange, this mix of relief and guilt that rushes from him in a whoosh as he sucks in a deep breath and lets it out. “I haven’t seen my therapist in years,” he starts, almost as an apology, “and I know you told us that we should really find someone not you to talk to, I’m sorry-”

“Whoa, whoa, hey, hey, hey,” Jawbone interrupts, holding out both his giant furry hands. “Easy. It’s okay. Take a breath for me?”

Fabian just swallows, feeling weirdly close to tears. Stupid, that this is the closest he’s come to it since Lana broke up with him last night, but the sleeplessness and anxiety and guilt feel visceral now, threatening to choke him. He nods, and the breath he takes in time with Jawbone’s gesture comes out shaky, but no tears fall.

Jawbone just softens, hands slowly coming down. “Fabian, when I told y’all that, I only meant if you were going to seek therapy as a long-term thing, it should be with someone who wasn’t so intertwined with your guys’ lives. Someone you could talk to who could be more objective, rather than someone who’s a father figure to half of your party. I never meant to make you feel like you couldn’t come to me if you needed to talk through something, and I’m sure sorry if I did.” 

“I just. Don’t know who else I can talk this through with,” he says, only really realizing it as the words come out. It’s true. Riz is the person he talks through things with most of the time, and he’s out, for obvious reasons. Gorgug or Fig have traditionally been the people he goes to about relationships: Gorgug when he wants to work through some different perspectives and cut through to the heart of whatever’s going on, Fig when he wants to vent or gush or revel in whatever emotions he’s feeling in the moment. But this isn’t some random guy or girl he’s trying to figure out. This is Riz, their rogue, their family. Their party is scattered across Spyre more often than it’s not these days, but they’re still them. Fucking things up with Riz would have ramifications so, so much bigger than just for the two of them. So party members are out. There’s so few other people he trusts to work through this. Ragh, maybe, but as much as Fabian loves the guy he can’t imagine a world where the two of them work through whatever mess is in Fabian’s head in any meaningful way. 

It’s awkward as fuck looking at Jawbone’s creased eyebrows and frown, but there’s something in Fabian that’s already settling, knowing he can at least try to put into words some of what’s going on.

“Talk to me, kiddo.”

Where to even start, except: “My girlfriend broke up with me. And while this wasn’t exactly the reason she broke up with me, it was… adjacent? But it turns out that the entire time we’d been dating she’d been working under the assumption that we were in some pseudo-poly thing where I was also in love with– someone else and she was okay with it until she wasn’t.”

One of Jawbone’s eyebrows twitches up, and he lets out a low whistle. “Sounds like it wasn’t an assumption you were aware of.”

“No,” Fabian says, a little too loud and a little too wild. “No, it was not. I didn’t even have a clue of what or who she was talking about until she started… elaborating. And apparently it’s not just her who thought this. Other people, too. Not just strangers, but people who know me.” Saying Mazey’s name might be a giveaway: there’s less overlap than there probably should be, the people Fabian spent a lot of time with now and in high school. Hell, there’s a good chance Jawbone’s guessed anyway, but for some reason, Fabian feels safer, more comfortable not saying Riz’s name. “She said it like it was a given, like both of us knew. It was very much not a given,” he says, waving his hand, and his laugh feels a little unhinged. It’s been a wild twelve or so hours, so sue him. “I didn’t– people have said it before, but I didn’t– I never stopped to think– and now I can’t stop thinking. And I don’t know when it started, but now that I see it, I can’t stop seeing it. It’s. I can’t be in love.” Miserably, unhappily, he adds, “I need to know how to stop.”

“Love’s not usually something you can just force away,” Jawbone says, the ghost of a smile appearing at his lips. It’s sympathetic, at least, but it’s very much not what Fabian wants to see or hear. “Even for someone as, uh, persistent as you. Is it so bad, knowing?”

No. Yes. He doesn’t know. 

Jawbone continues, like Fabian had actually answered aloud. “You’ve been in love with this person for a while, it sounds like, yeah? Has it felt like there’s been something missing, like you need more? Now that you know, do you need things to change?”

That, at least, is an easy answer. “No.” It’s… wild, and strange to think about, because he’s never not done anything. He’s miles away from the overeager, idiotic teenager he was when he first went to Aguefort, burning with the need to prove himself worthy of walking in his father’s daunting footsteps, but through everything, through all the growth and transformation and unlearning and relearning again, he’s still always been a man of action. Even the settling in that he’s done the past few years, it’s been something he’s actively chosen, strived for. He chose to stay full time in Elmville. He badgered Riz into agreeing to live together. He found them their house. He made a point of decorating it, of making it his (their) own, and even the teasing comments about nesting had been a point of pride. Any time he’s ever been attracted enough to someone for the feeling to last, he’s done something about it. He’s flirted, and asked people out on dates, and made moves. He’s never been good at moping in inaction. It’s never been good enough, just sitting in the what-if.

But it… what he has now with Riz is not just good enough, it’s good. More than. It’s the best part of his life, the part of it that he gets to share with his best friend. He loves it, the domesticity and the bickering and the way they can talk endlessly without running out of things to say and the way they can sit in contented silence because there’s nothing else they need to say. Maybe it’ll change a little, now that he has another name for the way he’s always pulled back to Riz like following a compass. …But maybe it won’t. It’s always led back to Riz, even before. Even when he was in relationships of varying seriousness, he’s never let it come between their friendship. He doesn’t know how that could be any more the case now, even with the way his heart clenches at the knowing of it all. What was it Lana had said, that the labels aren’t what really mattered? Does it really matter, if it’s love or love that leads his heart back to the same place?

But there’s one huge, insurmountable problem. “But I can’t lie to him.” He won’t, wouldn’t, but can’t is truly the operative word here when it comes to their resident detective. Riz still doesn’t have the best understanding of attraction and romance, and maybe if it was someone else other than Fabian, that’d be enough of a blind spot. But he knows Fabian, better than anyone else on this or any other plane. Fabian doesn’t believe in his own ability to pretend nothing’s changed well enough to hope to fool Riz, at least for long. He’ll end up looking a little too long, or saying something a little too revealing, or acting a little too strange, and it’ll all come tumbling out in one great, big mess.

“As much as I’m an advocate for bein’ upfront about this kinda thing, feelings like this aren’t something you’re obligated to share,” Jawbone says, but there’s something reluctant about even the way he says it, like he knows that’s not the right answer.

“I– even if he wouldn’t figure it out, which he absolutely will, it’s… it’d feel like lying.” The idea of saying it upfront, of going in front of Riz and going, ‘hey, I know you’re not into romance at all so I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable that the person you share most of your life with is apparently desperately, stupidly in love with you and probably has been the whole time he was bullying you into sharing it with him in the first place’ makes him want to strangle himself with his battle sheet. But the idea of not saying it, of choking it back and pretending nothing’s changed as he wrestles Riz to the ground when they spar and cuddles with Riz on the couch and letting his touches innocently linger the way they always do, makes him feel sick. It’d feel too much like a betrayal, letting himself be as open and free with his affections now that he knows there’s an aspect of it that Riz hasn’t asked for and hasn’t consented to. And it’d feel too much like punishing Riz, restraining himself, changing parts of their friendship for reasons Fabian doesn’t want to share. If nothing else, he has to trust and respect Riz enough to let him decide what he’s comfortable with for himself. “I have to tell him,” he realizes, and the sick feeling only intensifies.

The expression on Jawbone’s face is sympathetic, but unsurprised, as if he’d come to the same conclusion even with only a fraction of the pieces. “You never know. These feelings surprised you: maybe you’re not the only one who just hadn’t thought about it long enough to realize it was something you wanted.”

Then again, maybe Jawbone hasn’t figured it out. The noise that’s scraped out of Fabian can barely be called a laugh with how unhappy and hollow it feels. “No, that much I know. It’s… he’s not interested. In any of that, least of all with me.”

“Aromanticism is a wide spectrum, kiddo. Might not be that cut and dry.”

Or Jawbone had figured it out after all. It feels a little like a betrayal, how casually he’s toeing past the line of plausible deniability, for all that they’d never actually agreed on keeping to that line. “I never said anything about– it’s not– who–” Fabian splutters.

Jawbone’s mouth twitches, but at least he isn’t so cruel as to actually laugh. “Call it a stab in the dark. Maybe I’m stabbin’ at the wrong thing. Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time. There was this one time in the Dunefort back when I was barely eighteen– man, we were all fucked up on dusk moss, hoo boy, was that a–”

“I just. It’s not fair,” Fabian says, ignoring how whatever tale Jawbone was about to launch into cuts itself off. “I like how we are now. I don’t want this to fuck it up, and I don’t see how it doesn’t.”

His former guidance counselor sighs and scrubs at his unruly beard with his clawed hand. “It’ll probably change some things,” he admits, which is the absolute last thing Fabian wants to hear right now. “But change can be good, too. Neither of you are the same people you were when you met, and everything that’s changed, good and bad, since then has done you both a world’a good. I don’t think it’ll fuck it all up, Fabian. Not permanently anyhow. You’ve been through so much together: you really think some feelings are what’s gonna tear you apart?”

Feelings are probably the only thing that could, he thinks, but he wants so desperately to cling onto the surety in Jawbone’s words. “What if it does?”

“What if it doesn’t?” Jawbone challenges, but his smile softens. “Aw, hell. I meant it when I said you’re persistent, kid. Same goes for, uh, the person you’re in love with.” It’s so stupid, how obvious it is that they both know who they’re talking about, but it brings out a reluctantly amused, fond snort from Fabian nonetheless that Jawbone got the hint about not wanting to say it aloud and is playing along. “The both of you, you’re stubborn as hell. Do you think either of you are gonna let your friendship crumble over this?”

That, at least, makes Fabian smile, because if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that neither he nor Riz goes down easy. “No,” he says. “Not without one hell of a fight, anyway.”

It’s not a guarantee. But it's a start.

Chapter Text

Something’s up with Fabian.

At first, Riz chalks it up to the breakup. He’s more than willing to give Fabian whatever space he needs, figuring he’ll come to Riz if there’s anything he can do to help. It’s kind of how this thing goes: Fabian mopes, or celebrates, or does whatever he does when a relationship ends. There haven’t been enough serious ones while the two of them have lived together for Riz to really pick up on any patterns. When this kind of thing does happen, Fabian tends to outsource his emotions to their other friends, whether because Riz doesn’t personally understand well enough to have the reactions Fabian’s looking for or out of some misplaced but sweet desire to shelter Riz from having to deal with emotions related to romance, Riz doesn’t know, but it’s, like, a thing, and this breakup seems like it came even more out of left field than the usual, given how warmly Fabian had been speaking of Eillana even days before he’d come home all fragile and stilted.

But it only takes a few days of Fabian being even weirder than usual for it to stop feeling like he’s bothered about the breakup and start feeling like he’s bothered about Riz, for some reason.

Randomly going to Mordred Manor? Unusual, but sure. Maybe he’d been looking for Jawbone’s advice about the breakup, but that doesn’t explain how squirrely he got when Riz mentioned that Sandra Lynn had texted him extending ‘another’ reminder about how they’re both always welcome. Staying out all day, then going and getting spectacularly drunk with Ragh that evening, and Riz only finding out from Ragh’s incredibly blurry selfie of the two of them with some cryptic comment (with somehow at least eighty percent of the words including Riz’s three letter name misspelled) about keeping Fabian safe? Riz had just fondly rolled his eyes and thanked Ragh for keeping him updated. He’d felt bad, the first few days. Heartbreak like this isn’t exactly his area of expertise, and this thing with Eillana had been the longest relationship Fabian had had since Mazey. It made sense that this messed him up more than the usual.

But one weird day turns into two, to four, and suddenly it’s been almost a week since Fabian’s done more than exchange a few words with Riz and flee the room at the first opportunity. None of their other friends have noticed Fabian acting that strange, and apparently Fabian doesn’t even seem all that broken up about Eillana. Everyone Riz has dared ask, casually and offhandedly, thinks Fabian is acting fine. It could be just that most of them are too far away to have had any long conversations with him that aren’t via crystal, but it feels like more than that. And look, Riz makes a point of not investigating his friends, especially Fabian. Whatever’s going on, Fabian will talk about it eventually. He always does.

But Thursday night comes and goes without any sleep as Riz valiantly tries and fails to not go through everything in his head. It doesn’t matter: the pieces still don’t make any sense, not as he lies in bed staring at the ceiling, not when he tries to scribble on a notepad (it absolutely does not count as a clue board if he doesn’t actually put it on a board, he tells himself), not when he eventually absconds to the living room and curls up in the deepest corner of the couch, letting the gears of his brain whir away as he watches the space between the slats of the blinds go from deep blue-black to murky grey to pinky-orange. He’s still there, trying not to spiral, trying not to let his brain run off with stupid, self-centered thoughts, when Fabian’s door creaks open.

Riz knows he should say something. Fabian’s clearly been avoiding him, and he’s always hated it when Riz lurks somewhere and doesn’t make his presence known. But Riz’s mouth stays firmly shut. He stays silent, watching as Fabian, barefoot and wearing a threadbare Owlbears shirt and lounge pants Riz knows are more expensive than anything in Riz’s entire wardrobe, rubs at his eye as he crosses the room to the kitchen, humming under his breath. It’s just. He misses him. It’s stupid, because they’ve definitely spent longer than this apart, and even when living together there’s been plenty of times where they barely interact for a week when Fabian’s got a project or Riz is on a complicated mission for the LPRTF or life’s just keeping them both too busy to do more than shoot stupid texts each other’s way, but. It feels different this time, especially coming on the heels of nearly three weeks beforehand where Riz had been too busy to get any meaningful time with his best friend. This week has felt emptier, stranger with how distant Fabian has been. Riz can’t help but watch, feeling a little sad and a little greedy and a lot off-kilter as Fabian opens the cupboard and smiles to himself as he grabs the bag of coffee beans and starts scooping them into the burr grinder. It’s a good smile, no melancholy or regret or anything, just something almost fond visible even from across the barely-lit open room. He seems… fine, just like all their friends had said.

So why…?

Riz watches, trying to shake the irrational, paranoid feeling like he’s soaking in a view he may never see again, until Fabian is done ambling around the kitchen and heads back to his room to get dressed or do whatever he does in the mornings when Riz is usually still asleep or otherwise occupied. The smell of coffee starting to waft its way over helps wake up the overtired part of Riz’s brain, but that isn’t what ultimately makes him untangle his limbs from the oversized blanket on the couch and take way too long to wriggle his way out of the cushions. He’s silent as he slinks across the living room, past the nook, and over to the kitchen counter. The coffee is there, poured into the fancy insulated carafe Fabian had bought, Riz’s favorite mug already waiting next to it. He just stares for a minute at the stupid, way too expensive machine and the bag of stupid, way too expensive gourmet coffee beans next to the stupid, way too expensive burr grinder, and the stupid, dirt cheap mug that Fabian threatens to replace with something better all the time but never does because he knows Riz loves it, and a part of him almost wants to cry. No matter how strange Fabian has been acting all week, no matter what else has been going on, he’s still done this every morning, despite the fact that Riz somehow knows he hasn’t had a single drop of it himself. He just kept doing it for Riz.

Yeah, no, whatever is going on needs to stop. 

“Oh.” Riz whirls around to see Fabian freeze mid-step, halfway through the living room as he spots Riz, and Riz has to fight against the absolutely insane urge to make a dash for his arquebus and use one of the net bullets to keep Fabian from moving a single inch. “That was fast.”

“I was already awake.” Riz can feel his heart hammering in his chest, and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t understand any of what’s been going on lately, least of all Fabian’s behavior, or why it feels a little like they’re teetering on the edge of a cliff. Both of them just stand there, staring stupidly at each other. More for something to say than anything else, and because his brain is still fixating on it like it’s a clue instead of something that Fabian has done almost every single morning for going on four years now, he blurts out, “Thank you for the coffee.”

Wrong thing, apparently. Fabian’s brow wrinkles in a frown, and there’s something almost sad to the slant of his mouth. “I– you’re welcome? Riz, I always make you coffee.”

“I know.” He doesn’t know why that feels important right now, only that it does. “It’s just. You’ve been… off. And you still–” As soon as the word ‘off’ comes out of his mouth, Fabian’s face just wipes clean, eerily neutral, and Riz wants to hiss at the wrongness. Fabian’s hiding, and it makes no sense, there’s no reason– fuck it. “Fabian. Did I do something wrong?” He means it to be more of an accusation, less desperate, but to his displeasure, it comes out unsteadily, almost thready with how scared he is that something’s gone sideways when he wasn’t paying attention and he’s too late to solve it.

Maybe he should be glad; as soon as his voice trembles, so does Fabian’s face, and Riz just watches as Fabian’s hands come up to scrub at his face, burying himself in them for a moment. There’s a murmured swear, but when he drops his hands again, his face looks open for the first time in nearly a week. There’s so much, almost too much to read, and Riz can’t quite figure out what it is other than wrecked. “No. Fuck. No, you didn’t do anything wrong, Riz, and I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to figure out how to… and I haven’t been handling this well.”

How to what? “What happened?” It’s the question he stopped himself from asking when Fabian had come home so early from that last date with Eillana, and one he’s wanted to ask at least a dozen times since. 

Fabian grimaces, eye twitching away from Riz to fix on the ceiling, like he can’t quite look Riz in the eye when he says, “I– just. Get some coffee and we… let’s sit. And just… hear me out.”

It’s not reassuring. It’s more than a little terrifying, and it’s only because Riz has the feeling he’s going to need everything in his arsenal to deal with whatever’s freaked Fabian out enough to spend six days avoiding him and then barely be able to look at him when he agrees to talk about it that has Riz filling up his mug with somehow perfectly steady hands. It’s still way, way too hot, but he chugs a few mouthfuls regardless, wincing at the damage it does to his tongue. The quicker the caffeine starts working, the better.

It’s… listen, he’s thought the word weird so much this week that it’s almost lost all meaning, but it’s so weird and unsettling, the way that Fabian both looks like he’s heading into battle and also shedding the weight of some burden as he perches on the edge of the couch and gestures to the coffee table. …Not a great start, then: Fabian wants to face him, but also wants Riz to be able to get up quickly if he needs to, otherwise he would’ve sprawled out sideways on the couch and had Riz settle into the arm cushion to look at him. As Riz sits on the wood, tips of his feet just brushing the carpet, it’s only the look on Fabian’s face, tension warring with unabashed fondness, that stops him from assuming the worst. It’s something he loves so much about Fabian, how open he is in his affection. He still remembers the stupid teenage boy (that Riz had still loved, in that stupid, teenage way) who’d spent most of freshman year only meeting with Gorgug the weird backpack kid when no one else was around, who’d had such a hard time acknowledging that Riz was his friend at all, who’d spent hours doing painstaking calligraphy by hand for business cards he openly scoffed at, who’d paid enough attention to these people he could barely admit he cared for to know exactly what they wanted, who’d left himself a thoughtless gift just to try to throw anyone off the scent of the idea that he’d put so much time and effort into making sure they got it. That stupid teenage boy had declared toxic masculinity dead barely a year later and never looked back, and Riz loves the man who beams with so much open love and pride at all his friends more and more with every year that passes. 

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for almost a week and I still have no clue,” Fabian says, his voice thin and nervous, but there’s enough of a laugh in there that it still sounds like him. It’s fine. There’s no reason to panic yet.

“What happened with Eillana? That’s when… all this started, yeah?” Riz still doesn’t know what ‘this’ is, but it’s simple enough. Correlation, even if not causation, but he’d be willing to bet good money on it being the latter.

Fabian lets out a heavy breath. “Yeah. It’s. Well. She said we weren’t really heading towards a future together, and she… well, she wasn’t wrong.” He grimaces, looking more like himself than he has in a while. “When she asked how I’d feel about moving in with her, it was the quickest no I think I’ve ever had. Leaving here? Not living with you?” It’s gratifying, because the rush of cold fear Riz feels at the thought almost leaves him dizzy. Look, he’s not stupid. That day will come, eventually, but he’s not ready. He’s so, so not ready. “But uh, kinda made it hard to argue with her. But. Um. Part of the reason she was sure I wasn’t looking to commit to a future with her was because, according to her, I was already in love with someone else.”

It– what? Riz likes - liked - Eillana. She’d always been easy to talk to, and witty, and smart enough to keep Fabian on his toes– he’d thought, anyway. But apparently she’s actually really goddamn stupid, because there’s no way Fabian would ever cheat on anyone. He’s imperfect, and reckless, and stupidly stubborn. He’s a lot of things, but he’s loyal. “She thought you were cheating on her?” He can feel his hackles rise, his fangs ready to bare at the thought. 

For some reason, that makes Fabian laugh. “That was my reaction, too. But, uh, no. She… thought we had an understanding. That we both knew that yeah, she loved me and I loved her too, but that I was also in love. With, uh, with you.”

Riz just blinks. Normally, he’d laugh or roll his eyes. It’s not the first time Fabian has dated someone that got the wrong idea about the two of them. And he almost gets it: they’re incredibly close, and have their own level of intimacy that neither of them quite has with anyone else. They live in an obnoxiously allo, romantic-centric world, so it makes sense that people read into things.

But it is the first time it’s been someone who’s known them both that long and that well. It is the first time that someone’s said it and Fabian has spun out about it. It is the first time Fabian has said it and his cheeks have gone rosy pink. It is the first time it’s sounded almost like a confession instead of a joke he’s being invited in on. “You. You told her that that absolutely wasn’t the case, right?” Riz hears himself say. 

Fabian laughs again, but this one is a little weaker, and his hand is visibly shaking when he rubs at the bridge of his nose, eye fluttering shut for a moment. “Yeah, I did. She was floored at the idea that I didn’t know.” 

It’s. The way he phrases it, like it’s–

“Apparently Mazey had the same theory.” Fabian’s beet red now, gaze fixed elsewhere, and Riz actually cannot think straight, because something about this sure feels like– “I told her they were both wrong. And then I came home and saw your face and just had to go stare at the ceiling for twelve hours freaking out. And then I ran off to Jawbone to be able to talk to someone about it and I didn’t even have to say who I was talking about, he already knew–”

“Fabian.” Riz doesn’t know whether he’s pleading with Fabian to just say it and get it over with or to stop talking entirely.

“I’m in love with you.” It’s a confession and an apology all at once, and the crooked smile Fabian gives him as he finally looks Riz in the eye again looks like release and regret. Riz is sure he’ll remember it, every inch of it burned into his brain as it slowly morphs into something more relieved as Riz just stares, unable to think or respond or do anything. “Fuck, I’m just. I’m so in love with you, and I didn’t even know.”

Absurdly, all Riz can think to do is pick up the mug of coffee and down it in one go. At least the way it burns his throat and tongue is a sensation he knows how to handle. “Right,” he says when it’s empty and he has nothing else to do with his mouth. “Okay.”

It’s wild, the way that now that it’s out, Fabian looks more at ease than he has all week. He’s still smiling haphazardly, apologetic but clearly relieved to have his big secret out in the open. “I… I know it’s a lot, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to keep it from you. I didn’t want you to figure it out, and feel like I’d been hiding it.”

Even as disconnected from his brain and body as Riz feels now – huh, strange, this must be freeze; funny, when he usually defaults to fight instead – he realizes that yeah, no, that was the right move. The idea of having to put clues together, driving himself insane as he finally formed a picture clear enough that even he couldn’t explain it any other way, of having to be so sure in it that he finally confronted Fabian when not knowing for sure felt worse sounds… fucking awful, actually, especially because he knows it wouldn’t have been a conclusion he’d reach easily. It doesn’t mean he has any better idea of how to react now. “No, uh. Good call.”

“Riz.”

Riz can’t help but look up, and when he does, Fabian looks… determined. Not in the way he gets when he’s gearing up to fight, but in the way he does when he tries to bully Riz into taking care of himself, or when he’s fluttering over Riz when he limps home with an injury, lecturing him about not going into battle without the backup that was waiting just a text away, the Ball. It’s steadfast and serious and full of affection that… doesn’t look all that different than how it always does on him. “Fabian.”

“I’m telling you because you should know. I want you to know. But I’m not asking for anything to change.”

It should feel like a relief. It does, but it doesn’t, and Riz doesn’t know how to even begin to comprehend that. “You just said you’re in love with me.” It feels surreal, coming out of his mouth, and the twitch in Fabian’s expression means it must feel surreal to hear it, too.

“Yeah.” For some reason, it makes Fabian’s smile broaden. “Yeah, I am. And I have been for a long while, I think. And do you know what I want?”

It’s such an obvious trap, but Riz purposefully fails that check. “What?”

“I want to make you coffee in the morning,” he says, like that isn’t something that already carries its own weird fucking weight. “I want to bring you food when you forget to eat. I want to watch you roll your eyes at me when I say something dumb and arrogant. I want to take insane amounts of glee in the moments you hiss at someone because it’s always fucking incredible. I want to stay in and watch movies with you and go out on ill-advised drinking sessions when you’re so stressed you just want to let loose and go a little crazy. I want to spar with you, and bicker with you, and fight alongside you, and go on those certifiably insane ‘skill-building’ sessions that are absolutely not built for bards that you sign us up for where they tie us up and drop us somewhere sketchy as fuck and you get to flex your rogue skills while I question every decision that ever led me to thinking that being your friend was a good idea, actually.”

Despite himself, Riz laughs, and he can see how Fabian perks up at the sound.

“I want to make faces to make you laugh while you’re trying to sound all stern on your crystal lecturing Adaine about overworking herself like the giant hypocrite you are. I want to sit next to you when all our friends are in town and we have to squish in a booth that’s too small for a party of six, let alone the dozen or so it somehow always ends up as. I want to be there when you come home from missions and I get to make sure you’re okay and sulk at the times you take Aelwyn as backup instead of me.” 

He’s beautiful, his face still a little flushed, but with something that looks closer to exhilaration than embarrassment now, and Riz loves him. Maybe he doesn’t love him, but he loves him. He– right? “You don’t want to get your kisses in?” He doesn’t know why he asks, other than it coming from that part of him that always has to pick at scabs and take things that don’t make sense and turn them over and over until something clicks in his brain. Maybe he’s hoping (dreading) Fabian will say yes, actually, he is asking that, or hoping (dreading) Fabian will say he’ll just find that with someone else despite now knowing he’s in love with Riz. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping, doesn’t know what he’s fucking thinking at all.

“If you decided that one day you wanted to try it out, it’d take almost zero convincing on my part,” Fabian says, almost like it’s a joke, but his eye is serious where it’s holding Riz’s gaze. “But no. I’m not asking for that. I don’t need kisses.” 

It doesn’t make sense. “You love kisses,” Riz says, almost accusatory, and it should rankle, the way it makes Fabian laugh, but the sound sends something warm shooting through him instead. 

“I love you more,” Fabian says, plain as day for someone who spent a week avoiding saying just that, which just isn’t fair, honestly. “I love you, and I love you, and I’m not asking for anything to change, because being your best friend is already the best part of my life. Is that okay?”

And what else is Riz supposed to say to that? “Yeah,” he says, hoarse and awkward. “Yeah, that’s okay.” 

Just like that, the wind goes out of Fabian’s sails a little and he sags, relief clear as anything. Must be nice: Riz still doesn’t know what he’s thinking or feeling. “I– Cass knows you’re allowed to be awkward and weird for a bit, because I sure as fuck have been, but. Can I just– can I hug you? No funny business,” he adds as a joke, and it’s way, way too soon for that and both of them know it by the way it hangs in the air between them like a bomb, but Riz nudges it away, just for a minute, and lets himself surges forward because he’s missed Fabian this week.

It’s the best and worst hug they’ve ever had. Riz buries his face in the crook of Fabian’s neck, close enough that he can hear how uneven and fast Fabian’s heartbeat feels when it’s usually so steady and grounding and sure. Fabian’s hands hover for a moment, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch now, until one winds its way around Riz’s waist to splay across his back, just a shade too tight, and the other lands on the back of Riz’s neck, just a shade too loose. It feels different. It’s wonderful, and awful, and Riz doesn’t quite know why he wants to cry or laugh, only that he does neither. He just clutches back, not ready to show his face.

“Are we going to be okay?” Fabian asks when Riz finally feels composed enough to pull out of his arms. 

Riz can’t tell if he’s grateful or furious that Fabian words it as going to be instead of asking if they are okay. “Obviously,” he says. Neither of them comment on how wobbly it comes out.

Riz lasts all of three more minutes before he flees. In his defense, it’s more than fair for it to be his turn.

He can barely stand to fill up his travel mug with coffee, struck anew by the intimacy of the habit that Fabian has done almost every day for four years, but the need for more caffeine wins out and he clutches it like a lifeline as he speeds out the front door of the house that he shares with the man who’s… fuck, who’s in love with him. He doesn’t know where he’s going, only that he needs to process, and he can’t do that in a place where everything is filled with him-and-Fabian.

He walks, and walks, and walks, until his mug has been empty for a half a dozen blocks and he finds himself sitting on the filthy curb in front of Strongtower. His mom hasn’t lived here in years, and he hasn’t in even longer than that, but there’s still something soothing about the nostalgic sounds of the too-crowded building. The garbage truck is just as loud and obnoxious in the morning air as ever as it beeps and screeches its way through emptying the rusty dumpsters, and even the forest sprawling nearby can’t dampen the roar of traffic or fully cover the scents of mildew and bleach and plastic. It’s not the same as sitting in his old apartment, but it’s close enough to soothe some itch in his hindbrain, and something settles as he runs his fingers over the grooves of the uneven concrete and stares out at the street.

Okay. Facts first, then feelings.

Fact: Fabian’s in love with him. As wild as that is to even think, it’s not something he’d say lightly, not to Riz. He wouldn’t say it unless he was sure.

Fact: Fabian’s been in love with him for longer than he realized. He didn’t say when he thought it might’ve started, only ‘a long while’, but there was at least enough reason for Mazey to suspect. Mazey, who hasn’t dated Fabian in over seven years, what the fuck does that even mean–

Fact: at least in the hour or so since he’s started combing through things, Riz can’t look back and pinpoint a moment where things feel like they changed. Fabian’s far more tender and open with his affections with Riz now than he ever was as a teenager, but he’s far more tender and open with everyone. He’s touchy, and likes to reach out to ruffle Riz’s hair or shove at Riz’s shoulder when he makes stupid jokes or tug Riz onto the couch or sling an arm around Riz’s shoulders when they sit next to each other or hipcheck Riz to be annoying instead of asking him to slide over to make room but– it’s. That’s just Fabian. He tackle-hugs Ragh and chest bumps Kristen and flicks Fig on the nose when she’s teasing him and picks up Ven and tosses her over his shoulder when he wants to really play up the annoying big brother shtick. Anything that’s different with Riz is because Riz is different from the rest of his friends. But that’s not unique to just him. Fabian’s not exactly the same person with Riz as he is with Gorgug as he is with Adaine as he is with Cathilda as he is with Lucy as he is with Ivall from the dance studio as he is with Tarrakei from across the street. It’s just– it’s context. How is he supposed to know what’s been Fabian just expressing his friendship with Riz in a slightly different way versus what’s been Fabian secretly being in love with Riz? Riz doesn’t know, hasn’t paid nearly enough attention to what makes Fabian different with his girlfriends and boyfriends besides the obvious. He doesn’t know what the turning point is, when it is or what changes when Fabian goes from Fabian with a crush on someone new to Fabian who’s comfortable in liking the person he’s dating to Fabian fully in love. He doesn’t know if it’d help even if he had. He doesn’t know–

(Feeling: Riz doesn’t know if he wants to know. He wants to know more than anything else, because he can’t stand this not knowing, but he doesn’t ever want to know. What if it’s newer, and he didn’t notice a shift in a routine that he’s so comfortable in? What if it’s older, and everything Riz loves about their friendship has always had another angle to it? What if he can start to see it, what of all the best parts of Riz’s life were borne from love and what parts from love and what if he doesn’t like the answer? What if there’s no difference between what Fabian does out of love and out of love and what would that mean and how could Fabian be so sure that it is something different now?)

Fact: Fabian says he doesn’t want anything to change. And Riz knows how much Fabian loves being in a relationship, how much he preens and walks around with a swagger in his step and a big grin on his face after the first few dates with someone new, and saying he loves Riz more than he loves kisses sure sounds like he means he doesn’t want a relationship with anyone else, either. Riz also knows the look on Fabian’s face when he says something he fully intends to stick to, and he believes him. That sure feels like a big change.

Fact: if Riz tells Fabian he’s uncomfortable talking about it, he knows it’ll never come up again unless it absolutely has to. All of this is new and it’s not like Riz has any proof, but it still feels like a fact, something he knows in his bones: Fabian won’t make this Riz’s burden.

Fact: Riz is older and wiser, or at least enough so now to know he got it wrong as a kid, back in the Forest of the Nightmare King when that scared, lonely part of his heart that never felt good enough manifested that fear of being left alone as everyone else found someone else. He has more than enough room in his heart for all the people in his life that he loves, so, so much. Why wouldn’t they have enough room for him, too? It may very well be that he'll never have the kind of relationship that his parents had, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be abandoned. Gorgug’s married now, and Fig and Ayda are as good as, and none of them love Riz any less for it. If anything, they love him so much more and so much better (and him, them) than they ever could’ve as kids, if only because they know each other and themselves better now. It’s just… different. They’re different. They don’t see each other as much now that their responsibilities and lives stretch further than Aguefort Adventuring Academy and the wonderful, incredibly fucked up adventures they’d had to become so codependent to survive. In some ways, that makes it better. They don’t need each other so much anymore, but they still want each other. So while he’s been truly, deeply enjoying this part of his life that he gets to share so much of with Fabian, he’s always known it isn’t going to last, and he’s learned to be okay with that, as best he can. He’s always known that Fabian deserves to find someone, and Riz is secure enough of his place in Fabian’s life to know that he’ll still be an important part of it, even once Riz is no longer the first person Fabian sees most mornings and the last person he sees at night.

Fact– actually, feeling? Both, neither, does it really matter? It’s this: he knows that he knows better. He knows he’ll always have a place in his friends’ lives. He knows it’s not healthy or helpful or fair or anything to focus on where he falls in terms of importance or love. It shouldn’t be a competition. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t still quietly want it, to have that reassurance, that knowing that there’s someone who will always want to put him first.

Feeling: once he gets past the initial shock and terror at things changing, there’s a part of him that’s just want. That selfish, greedy part of him that he’s had to learn how to quiet, to stop focusing on the things he’s scared he’ll lose or that he’ll never have when he’s so spoiled with the things he does have now, it hears all the quiet promises in Fabian’s words and wants to clutch it all tight, no takebacksies. He wants to be wanted. He wants all those things that Fabian said he wants. He wants to bask in however Fabian wants to express his love the same way that he’s always loved it when Fabian expresses his love. He wants to not be scared of the thought of it. He wants to want it. He might want it? He wants to know if he does want it.

Fact: all of this is getting him nowhere.

With a loud groan, Riz buries his face in his hands. He gets why Fabian went straight to Jawbone now, but that sounds like hell. He loves Jawbone, really, but he’d never even felt comfortable enough with being vulnerable to talk about normal stuff as a teenager with any kind of counselor, let alone one who he regularly saw walking around in boxers at his friends’ house. In a lot of ways, he’s better now about being vulnerable, but he still hates it. It still makes him itch, even though (sometimes because?) his friends have always been nothing but supportive. In their own ways, of course, but when he’s needed to spill his heart out, they’ve always come through.

He could text any of them right now, whine about how confused he is, and they’d say all the right things, about how it’s okay to not reciprocate and how Fabian loves him exactly the way he is, being aroace included, and how his friendship is the most important thing to Fabian and that they’ll make it through and how everything will be okay. He already knows it wouldn’t help a bit: all it’ll do is leave him feeling embarrassed and self-conscious and defensive about how much this is messing with him. He just needs to talk aloud, to get his thoughts in order, and not have someone tell him that nothing has to change.

And then he snorts, feeling like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. He pulls out his crystal and opens one of the text threads near the top.

I need to be dramatic and lose my shit a little and then have someone tell me to get over myself. Up for the task?

I’m offended you thought you even had to ask, Aelwyn texts back instantly. Door’s unlocked. If you let Button out I’ll skin you alive.

Threatening to skin a goblin alive? I have a feeling several of your ancestors would be proud.

I’d be doing it for my cat. My ancestors can go fuck themselves.

Grinning, Riz sends a little saluting emoji in response, takes a deep breath, and stands.

Chapter Text

Button does indeed try to make a valiant attempt at running for freedom when Riz opens the door to Aelwyn’s apartment, but Riz is quick enough to scoop up the yowling, ugly rat of a cat and shove him into Aelwyn’s arms with only minor injury. The demon (actually, no, that’s too kind; Riz has met plenty of demons nicer than this menace) settles right on down, curling up on her lap where she’s perched on the couch like it was where he’d planned on ending up the entire time. “Congratulations, your skin gets to remain intact for today.” Aelwyn just raises one perfectly tweezed blonde eyebrow, oozing smugness, and for some reason, even though he opens his mouth fully intending to make some kind of snarky remark right back, it just tumbles out.

“Fabian’s in love with me.”

The eyebrow twitches downward. “Ah,” she says, and at least has the decency to look chagrined for all of two seconds before it morphs into something all too amused. “What finally clued you in?”

And– no. No. No, he can deal with strangers assuming it. He can barely deal with Fabian’s girlfriends seeing some kind of echo of how he was with them in how he is with Riz, when at least Fabian had to literally be told of his feelings. He cannot deal with one of his friends, one of the friends he and Fabian see the most often these days, saying she’d known for a while. “What.” It’s flat, the single syllable not nearly enough to contain the horror and annoyance he feels.

“What clued you in?” she repeats, her small smile growing into something a bit wider. “You have a frankly revolting level of perception and insight, but this has been a blind spot for… ever, really. What finally gave it away?”

“Fabian didn’t know either!” he says hotly, because if she’s going to make this a thing, how Riz hadn’t picked up on it, he’s sure as hell going to drag Fabian under this bus with him, too.

Immediately, he knows it’s a mistake: Aelwyn goes from slightly amused but trying to pretend she’s a good enough friend to temper it to full-out delighted. “Fabian didn’t know he was in love with you?” She positively cackles, and because, sadly, reaching for his gun actually would be an overreaction, Riz just lunges for one of the claw-shredded throw pillows from her couch to throw at her head instead. It misses, but it’s enough to startle Button out of her lap and send him skittering down the hallway, so he'll chalk it up as a minor win regardless. “What clued him in?”

It’s not funny. It’s so, so not funny, and this is probably the most callous way anyone who claims to hold any affection for either he or Fabian could respond. It feels like rubbing salt on a wound that’s still very much actively bleeding. It’s… kind of exactly what Riz needs, somehow, even if he’s preemptively offended on both of their behalfs when he sighs and admits, “Eillana. She broke up with him and then was shocked to discover the only one of them who knew he’d also been in love with me the whole time they’d been dating was her.” It’s so wild, how easily it tumbles from his mouth like this when he allows himself to see the grim, horrifying humor in it, when he words it as something Aelwyn can find entertainment in. It’s easier to not spiral when it’s framed like something ridiculous, instead of something that has the power to ruin everything.

Fabian’s going to kill him later. Or, well. Maybe not, with the whole in love thing. 

Aelwyn steeples her hands in front of her face like she’s praying and looks up to the ceiling. “This is truly the best day,” she says, and he half expects her to wipe a fake tear from her eye with all the dramatics. 

With a huff, Riz throws himself onto the armchair adjacent to the sofa, ignoring the puff of cat hair that balloons up around him as he does. “I’m glad someone finds it funny that everything’s changed.”

She scoffs and twists to look at him, somehow still managing to look graceful even as she sprawls crookedly across the couch, her hair fanning out against the cushion. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you’d been blind to this forever,” she says, only a fraction more soberly. “He’s been in love with you as long as I’ve known you both. I don’t think it changes nearly as much as you think it does.”

It– that– “Absolutely the fuck not,” he blurts out. “It has not been that long.”

His vehemence doesn’t sway her, and she just waves a hand lazily at him. “Well, I don’t know if it was as early as our little house party meet-cute,” she says, airy like she hadn’t actively been trying to murder him and his entire party at said ‘meet-cute’. “I hardly got a good enough view of anything then. But when we came back from Sylvaire?” She lets out a very undelicate snort. “Who knows, maybe it was just teenage infatuation back then and not what it is now, but it wasn’t nothing.”

“It was nothing,” he insists stubbornly, because really, today’s been more than enough to handle and it’s barely past noon. Maybe he isn’t an expert when it comes to love and infatuation and all of that, but he knows Fabian. There’s no way. Not that early. Not when they were both so unsure and unsteady and trying to figure out who they were, let alone anything more. 

“Little brother,” she drawls, because she’s an asshole who once overheard a very drunk Adaine weeping to a very drunk Riz about how he’s basically her brother and decided it would be hilarious to bring out the nickname when it’ll piss him off the most. (And when it’ll touch him the most, even if she pretends to not be so sentimental.) “There was only one person he kept trying to wrap up in his new battle sheet for weeks after the Forest, and it was not the person he was supposedly obsessed with wanting to get his kisses in with.”

Riz’s face skips a flush and goes straight to burning. “That’s not– he was just– it wasn’t like that!” It’d been about comfort, about reassurance, because Fabian had watched Riz die, then go down again as he was thrown off the edge, and the battle sheet had been the only thing that’d kept him from tumbling to a likely much more permanent grave. It had been Fabian’s way of telling Riz that he had him, that they were okay. And yeah, maybe it hadn’t taken long for Fabian to find entertainment in it, too, snaking it around Riz when he was ranting about something and too wound up to see it coming, ambushing him when Fabian wanted to laugh at the way it made Riz squawk, using it as a teasing threat and delighting in how Riz would laugh his way through protests as he tried to dodge it and– “Anyway, that was the same summer he had that weird obsession with Ecaf. And then there was Mazey, so.” Mazey, who apparently had also thought–

Aelwyn just hums, the noise far too satisfied and skeptical. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

She just looks at him for a moment, and finally, some of the smugness starts to seep from her face, leaving something a little gentler and a little shrewder behind. “So Lana told Fabian he was in love with you, he realized she was right, and he freaked out enough that you figured it out?”

“Enough that I noticed something was up, yeah,” Riz says, and sighs. “But I wouldn’t have ever guessed… that.”

“He told you?” Something in her voice sounds almost surprised. Riz doesn’t know if he should be flattered that she had assumed that he’d have figured it out himself, or offended on Fabian’s behalf that she sounds so taken aback at the idea that he’d be upfront about it.

“Yeah,” Riz says, and lets himself slump into the crease of the chair even more. It’ll leave him with undoubtedly even more cat hair clinging to every inch of his clothes, but it also has the wonderful side effect of shielding him from her view a little better, and her him. If they’re getting serious, if she’s listening and not just immediately mocking, he doesn’t think he wants to see whatever expressions she’s going to have at all of this. “He said… a lot of things, really.” A lot of wonderful, overwhelming things about things that they’ve done together for years but laid out in a row like that, said in that context sounded almost romantic, and that’s part of what’s messing with his head so much. Because it’s just them, their very platonic relationship: no part of it should have sounded like a natural continuation of Fabian’s confession. It’s– there’s a difference between platonic love and romantic love. He doesn’t begin to know how to know what the difference is or what suddenly pushes something from one side of that line to the other, is the problem. “The important one being that he’s not asking for anything to change.”

“Ah.”

And just with one word, Riz is immediately annoyed with himself for not forcing himself to look her in the face: she says it with this strange, triumphant tone, like she’s figured something out, but once he looks up to see if he can understand, her expression is obnoxiously neutral. “What?” he says, scowling.

Her eyes go wide, transforming her into the picture of innocence. “What?” she parrots. “All I said was ‘ah’.”

More than perhaps ever before, he deeply, deeply understands Adaine. “Obviously you’re good now, but there’s part of you that’s still kind of an evil bitch, you know that?”

She just lets out an exaggerated gasp, hand flying to her heart. “You flirt.” Then, proving his point further, she adds, “Really, Riz, save it for your roommate.”

Another pillow goes flying Aelwyn’s way. This one hits her, and she makes a big show of picking it up and tucking it against her chest like nothing’s happened, letting her chin rest on the top as she peers at Riz for a long moment. Her absolute refusal to take any of this too seriously has been oddly helpful to keep him from getting too wrapped up in his own head, but he’s still grateful that she tones it down a little when she finally asks, “Do you not believe him, then? That nothing will change?”

It’s not that he doesn’t believe Fabian. The opposite, really: he believes that Fabian will do everything he can to keep it as similar as possible. “I just don’t see how it can not change. He-” Riz swallows, absolutely not willing to repeat exactly what Fabian said, about loving him more than kisses, and tries to figure out how he wants to word this. “Maybe I’m reading into it, or maybe it’s just a ‘for now’ thing but he kinda implied he doesn’t want to date anyone else.”

“...And that’s a bad thing?”

Yes, and no. That selfish, greedy part of him doesn’t hate the idea of having even more of Fabian’s time and attention, of not having to wonder if the next person will be the one that ends up being the one that’ll finally make Fabian decide he wants to leave. But the rest of him, the majority of him, the only part of him he’s really okay with owning up to, doesn’t know if it’s that simple. It’s not like he’s ever suffered from Fabian dating people before. Most of his frustrations have been when they haven’t been good enough for Fabian, or when Fabian would get so caught up in his head he’d start acting stupid, or when the relationship got complicated and Riz didn’t have any idea of what to do to help Fabian through the pain and heartbreak. He’s never felt neglected, never felt like he’s losing something when Fabian’s dated before. 

Would that change, if he started dating someone now? Would it feel different, seeing him kiss and hold someone, knowing he’s in love with Riz, too?

“It doesn’t feel fair, for him.”

“I’m assuming you didn’t ask him to not date anyone,” Aelwyn points out, but it’s just. It’s not the point.

He doesn’t know if she’ll get it, either. “No, obviously. But, he just. He loves being in a relationship. He loves getting to take someone out on dates and bring them gifts and spend time with them and– it’s just.”

“You’re worried he’ll resent you for it?”

“No,” Riz says, and now he’s actually starting to get frustrated at how bad he is at this, at making sense of the mess that’s in his head and putting it into words. “If I was worried about resentment, if anything, I’d worry that he’d start to resent himself.” No matter how messy things get, Riz can’t see a world where Fabian starts to blame Riz – at least, not with where they and their friendship are now. He can, however, see a world where Fabian starts to miss it, or regret it, and then gets upset with himself for wanting more after saying he didn’t need it. It’s the ridiculous kind of noble, loyal bullshit that Fabian’s so obnoxiously good at. “But I’m– I want him to do the things that make him happy.”

At last, there’s no amusement on Aelwyn’s face. It’s almost funny how much she resembles Adaine in this moment as she straightens up on the couch and leans forward enough to look Riz straight in the eye. “Riz. I’m going to tell you two things that you absolutely should already know but maybe are just too close or too… stressed to see right now. And then I’m going to tell you another that I think deep down you also know, but probably aren’t going to like hearing.”

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement, but even as it fills him with dread, it’s also sort of a relief. He’d come to Aelwyn for a reason, and as much as the banter has been more comfortable than the kind of heart-to-heart he’d have got from someone like Gorgug or Jawbone or even Fig, it wasn’t just to be made fun of. She’s a snarky asshole, yeah, but she’s also, surreal as it feels sometimes, one of Riz’s close friends. She cares, in her own, emotionally stunted way, and she won’t hold back from telling him what she thinks he needs to hear.

He nods, jerkily, and the corners of her mouth tilt back up. It’s more sympathy than smirk, and Aelwyn says, about as delicately as she knows how to, “Firstly, no matter how good he can be at acting like a child when he wants to, Fabian is a grown man. If he decides he doesn’t want to date anyone, that’s his choice. If he regrets it later, that’s a problem that he’ll have to deal with. He’s in love with you, but that doesn’t mean you get to decide what he should and shouldn’t do for himself with that love.”

“Obviously, but–”

She holds up a hand, one eyebrow cocked, and truly, it’s a little impressive that she manages to still look a little scary after he’s seen her in the aftermath of some hugely embarrassing hangovers and some of the most insanely childish squabbles with Adaine. “I’m not finished,” she says primly, and Riz isn’t sure if the noise he bites back is a laugh or a scoff or a squeak. “Second.” She sighs, and the smile comes back a little. “Fabian loves being in a relationship the same way that he loves being a friend. Do you really not see that? Taking them to places they enjoy, giving them gifts, spending time with them, bragging about them? He does that with everyone he loves, not just the people he dates.”

Riz just blinks. Well, yes, but. It’s different.

“Honestly,” Aelwyn says, and the intensity breaks as she leans back, moving to tuck her legs underneath herself, “it’s why we never would’ve worked out. He’s far too demonstrative in his affections.”

He snorts. “And it turns out you’re very, very gay.”

She tilts her head his way as if to say, point, but says, “Trust me, mine’s the more salient point. If he hadn’t been such a teenage boy, hung up on kisses, ugh, could you imagine? He probably would’ve tried to give me earnest compliments, and give me meaningful gifts, and try to get me to spend quality time with him and his friends.”

“The horror,” he deadpans. “Also, considering two of those friends were literally me and your sister, you could sound a little less disgusted.” He’s not offended, though: the idea of him and Aelwyn getting along back then is nearly impossible to imagine, no matter how things have turned out. He’d have been more likely to shoot her the second she did anything remotely suspicious, and she would’ve lashed out to be genuinely cruel instead of teasing. It’s also kind of hard to take her words at face value when he knows the real reason things with her and Fabian never escalated past a few truly ill-advised makeout sessions.

“My point is, if you think he’s going to be deprived if he’s not doting on a partner, you’re embarrassing yourself. I know you’re more observant than that. He has plenty of people to dote on, including you.”

The way she says ‘you’ shouldn’t feel pointed, given she’s literally lumping him in with everyone Fabian loves, a category Riz has belonged to far, far longer than the one he’s found himself in today, but it does. 

Aelwyn sighs, and then takes a long moment to straighten up the sofa, fluffing the pillows Riz had thrown at her and smoothing the throw blanket that’s draped across the back. She’s clearly buying herself a moment, and given what she said, Riz can only assume this is the part where she says the thing she thinks he won’t like. Maybe he should be dreading it, but the curiosity is too strong, especially now that he sees her in this moment of unsurety. The kind of quiet where she fidgets is a rarity: it’s not that Riz has never seen her in an emotionally charged state, but it’s something she hates, and usually borne of frustration and agitation, not thoughtful quiet. Finally, she stills, and fixes him with a determined look. “You could’ve texted Adaine,” she says. “Or any of the other Bad Kids. Or your mom, or Lucy, or Penny, or Erren, or anyone else. But you texted me, and as delightful as it’s been to make fun of you and especially Fabian, I don’t think that’s why you picked me.”

It wasn’t. Riz isn’t even entirely sure why Aelwyn seemed like the best choice. He has more half-formed thoughts than any actual theories, but he’s very curious as to why she thinks he did. “Why did I pick you, then?”

Her smile is brittle but steady. “We’re both fucked up. I win that competition, obviously, but neither one of us is as good at the, shall we say, emotional availability that so many people in both of our lives espouse so fervently. But we’ll actually call each other out on their shit.”

She’s not wrong: it’s probably why they get along so well. 

“And whereas I use my dazzling wit and copious amounts of charm and skill as defense mechanisms–” 

Riz can’t help but snort. Charm is certainly one way of putting it, even if for Aelwyn it’s more of a flashbang of devastation than the kind of winsome magnetism people usually think of when it comes to the word.

“–you distance yourself.” And just like that, his smile has disappeared. “You separate yourself. You act like your logic and your emotion are two separate things, and when you feel things you don’t understand or don’t know how to explain or deal with, you don’t talk about it, and sometimes you even convince yourself you don’t feel it.”

It hits like a knife to the gut, especially because he… really doesn’t know if she’s right or not. He’s come a long way from the kid who walked right past his dad’s grave for fear of having to explain his grief and hero worship to his friends, who made up Baron from the Baronies to avoid having to explain the way everyone’s sudden obsession with sex and romance made him feel like he was broken, who drowned himself in extracurriculars and his friends’ schoolwork and mysteries so he didn’t have to acknowledge the absolute terror he felt every day at the idea of things changing. But sometimes it still feels like things just get… stuck in his throat. For all that he’s so much more comfortable in his own skin and his own life now, he’s still sitting here, feeling absolutely insane, spiraling over his best friend saying love and love like two parts of one whole when he’s always worked on the assumption they are so very different and separate. He feels a little bit split open, exposed, and the fact that his first instinct is to try to do or say something to cover up those cracked pieces of himself and skitter away from whatever bright light she’s shining on him is… pretty damning, in her favor. “You’re right,” he says. “I don’t like this.” But he doesn’t tell her to stop.

The smile she gives him is the softest one he’s seen since showing up on her doorstep. “Like you said, I’m kind of an evil bitch.”

It does the trick, and startles a small laugh out of him. 

“So you could’ve called one of your other friends, and they would’ve given you some incredibly heartfelt speech about how aromanticism and asexuality is valid, which obviously, you already know. They would’ve told you that your and Fabian’s friendship will survive this, which you already know.” She stops, and just looks at him, and the victory, the satisfaction he’d heard in her voice earlier finally starts to creep onto her face. “You told me that Fabian told you that he wasn’t asking for anything to change.”

It feels very much like she’s led him into a trap, only this time, he doesn’t think he knows what’s about to be sprung on him. “...Yes?”

“This is the part where I get to tell you what I don’t think any of them would have: that there’s at least a part of you that clearly wants things to change.”

Something in Riz’s chest cracks open, panic and anger and fear and sheer relief all scrambling to get out. He feels like he should be spluttering, forming some kind of denial, but all he can do is stare. “And how do you figure that?”

It’s honestly rude that there’s no smugness, no amusement at his expense on her face, nothing that he can be angry at instead of dealing with what she’s saying. All of that from earlier is gone: in this moment, she just looks like a friend, kind and sympathetic, however bluntly her words fall. There’s nothing there to be mad at when she says, “Riz, if you really didn’t want anything to change, if you wanted Fabian’s love to feel the exact same as his friendship, when he offered you that out, you would’ve taken it and been glad about it. If your only worry was that things would change and all you truly wanted was to be reassured that they wouldn’t and that Fabian wouldn’t end up resenting you for not reciprocating, you would’ve called Adaine, or Gorgug, or someone else who’d tell you all the right things. If you didn’t want to ever have to think about the fact that he’s in love with you, you wouldn’t have rushed here to talk about it; you would’ve done your best to bury it. You wouldn’t have brought up the fact that he’s not asking for things to change as the first thing, like it was the thing you were stuck on, and you definitely wouldn’t have sounded the way you did when you said it.”

There’s absolutely no reason why he should feel like this. He wants to shoot something. He wants to bite something. He wants to throw up. He wants to run. “Aelwyn,” he starts, and then he stops. He doesn’t have a fucking clue what’s supposed to follow that.

“Maybe it is just curiosity. Maybe it’s just that desire to pick it apart until you understand, and nothing deeper,” she says, and there’s a note of doubt in her voice, and it’s kinder than he knew she knew how to be, offering him that out even if – especially if – she doesn’t believe it. “But I also don’t think it’d even be a question if it wasn’t Fabian.”

She’s right. Fuck her, she’s right. “I don’t know what it is,” he admits, and even if he doesn’t add it, he knows they both hear the ‘but’. But it’s something.

It kind of only makes it worse that Aelwyn looks a little raw, too, her smile just a shade too manic. “Terrifying, isn’t it? Wanting, and not understanding what or why?”

He doesn’t think he’ll ever understand how Fabian did it, to go from panic and wondering to being so warm and confident and sure in six days. “How do people stand it?”

Her laugh sounds awful, hollow and fucked up and still somehow fond. “Figure it out and then we’ll both know.”

For the first time since walking through her door, things go quiet. There’s too much tension, too much buzzing in his brain for it to really feel comfortable, but it’s not uncomfortable. There’s no pressure to say anything, to verbally process anything. She even stops looking at him, instead making a show of leaning over the arm of the couch and making noises at one of her cats until they’re within arm’s reach and she can scoop it up.

In this moment, with her hair all askew and clutching a squirming, affronted cat to her chest, she doesn’t look a thing like the maniac he’d once hid in a toilet tank from. She looks absolutely ridiculous as she grins his way and says, “Now, what do you say to stowing the heart-to-heart and instead putting on this absolutely ridiculous teen spy drama I found so we can brutally tear it apart?”

He can’t do anything but grin back. 

It’s the worst show Riz has ever seen, and that’s saying something with how many of the swashbuckling soap opera disasters he’s sat through with Fabian (who loves them unironically) and Fig (who pretends her enjoyment is fully ironic but gets emotionally invested in no time flat). 

An episode and a half in, Aelwyn produces a bottle of firewine, and things devolve rapidly from there. 

By the time Riz finally calls uncle, swearing his brain cells can’t take another, they’re both far past tipsy and starting to waver into ‘drunk’ territory. He stands, sways, and sits back down on the edge of the armchair. “Aelwyn. This is so bad. I walked here.”

She just cackles. “Do I need to call your boyfriend to come pick you up?”

His nose wrinkles. “That’s a hard no to the word ‘boyfriend’,” he decides. 

“Interesting that you specify the hard no is to the word.” She looks far too pleased with herself, and Riz, truly too drunk to think of anything wittier, just channels Adaine and gives her the double middle finger.

He’s always been an emotional drunk and there’s a moment, hovering by her front door, that he feels like he should say something. Some kind of thanks, or acknowledgement, or just telling her how much he loves her. She just gives him this look, like she knows he’s waffling over it, and rolls her eyes. “Ugh. Get out of here before you get maudlin, or I will start calling Fabian your boyfriend and making inappropriate jokes about having made out with him before or whatever it takes to get you to run off.”

His crystal is out of his pocket before he’s even out the building. Soemtimes i miss the days when aelwyn was evil snd i could get away with just shooting her, he sends Adaine. 

He’s almost halfway home when the response comes in: relatable. what did she do? 

She told me i didnt actually want to take thw easy way out of something and that i want the scary thing and idk but i thinnk she might be right 

Immediately: ugh. what a cunt. Then, i’ll make it my goal to figure out how to get you a ring that can cast tasha’s hideous laughter if you promise to get a recording of you surprising her with it

Riz snorts. Oh, but he misses her dearly. DEAL, he sends, and then taps the little exclamation marks on the message, uncaring that it’s his own message. When are you coming back home next/

It takes a few minutes for her to respond, so long that he’s tempted to be annoying and call her, half to see if it makes the walk back home any faster, half because he misses her voice, the dry amusement and enthusiastic glee and fond sternness. She’s clearly in the middle of something, but it doesn’t need to be a long call, right? Just as he’s playing with the idea, she responds. 

soon. i know this is important but if it takes much longer i think i’m calling it. the council can pay for my teleports if they need me here in person. i’m just ready to be home

And: and for the love of cassandra or ankarna - whichever is more likely to have pity on your dumb ass - do not go curl up in bed or on the couch before you drink some water, you lush

Tonight iy's definitely cassandra, he texts back. He’s not all that religious, but Kristen and Fig’s goddesses align with his values more than any other deity and he can’t overlook how important the relationship with the four of them has been in all directions. Any random day it’s truly a tossup as to which domain he feels more adjacent to. Today, there’s no question. Hello, goddex of doubt.

There’s another long pause, and Riz almost stumbles over a bump in the sidewalk watching little dots appear and disappear a few times before another text comes through. i know i’ve been busy but i promise i’ll always make time for you if you ever want to talk

Ditto, he sends, and smiles when a little heart bubble immediately pops up on the message.

By the time he shuffles up to their front door, he would swear that he’s feeling more sober, but he still fumbles his keys in the lock twice and trips over the doorframe, so, really, he’s channeling some real Kristen energy here with his dex. “Shit.”

“Riz?”

Fabian is somehow both the person Riz wants to see most and least right now, and he just winces at the note of alarm in Fabian’s voice as it sounds out from the other room. “‘M fine,” he calls back, straightening himself out.

Fabian still whirls around the corner, Fandrangor at his side and braids pulled back out of his face. He’d clearly been in the middle of something, workout or training or whatever, as he’s in his matching athleisure set that Fig likes to make fun of so much. He sees Riz, falters, and his look of panic turns into a frown as he clearly clocks that Riz is in no danger. “What happened?”

It’s a little ridiculous, and Riz has to bite back giggles at the absurdity of it all, how strange this day has been from top to bottom. “I just tripped, ‘m fine.”

Fabian blinks. “The Ball, are you drunk?”

“Only a little tipsy now, I think,” he says, but it doesn’t do anything to ease Fabian’s frown. If anything, it just gets sadder, and even with the alcohol making his brain fuzzier and slower, Riz doesn’t miss the way guilt starts to creep in, the way Fabian physically withdraws just the tiniest bit. It takes all of one second to realize why that is, and that– no. “Nope,” he declares, as if that’ll stop both Fabian and the thought in its tracks, “not– Aelwyn put on this stupid tv show about a teenage detective… spy thing. Trust me, the firewine was needed.” 

He doesn’t want to bring up the obvious, doesn’t want to have any reason to start that conversation again. It’s… he’s feeling good right now, firewine-warm and grateful for his friends, and the last thing he wants is to start overthinking again. He just needs Fabian to not look like that, like he’s sorry. His words do the trick, at least enough: the look on Fabian’s face doesn’t go away, and it does an interesting little spasm at Aelwyn’s name like he’s going through all five stages of grief all at once, but there’s at least a hint of a smile threatening now. 

“Fabian, it was so bad.” He’s not even playing it up, but he’ll happily do so if it’ll help get that look off Fabian’s face. “The main character is like, fifteen, and exposing all these huge criminal rings even though she’s supposedly in high school. I don’t think she went to a single class.”

Now, there actually is a smile on Fabian’s face. “The Ball. Riz. You hear yourself, right?”

Aelwyn made a similar joke earlier, and Riz just scoffs as he ungracefully kicks his way out of his shoes. “I went to all of my classes, thank you very much. And it’s Aguefort. That’s a whole different… thing.”

It’s so weird. It’s so, so weird to see the affection in Fabian’s eye and in the corners of his smile and not be able to tell if it actually does look any different than it did last week or if it just feels different knowing what they both know now and what, exactly, makes it different. It’s weird that Riz can’t tell why it matters, just that it does, and Aelwyn’s stupid little smug noises keep ringing in his brain. He takes a mental snapshot of the moment, fuzzy and warm and unsure as it is, and tries to file it away for later. 

There’s going to be a lot of ‘later’, he thinks.

Chapter Text

Over the next several days it becomes very, very clear that Riz was right twofold: there’s a whole lot of later to deal with, and Fabian is doing his absolute best to live up to his promise that nothing needs to change.

It also becomes clear that Aelwyn, tragically, was also right: it’s bothering him, and he keeps finding ways to make it feel not normal.

Not because of something Fabian’s doing or not doing, but because Riz can’t go back to normal. 

He keeps watching Fabian, trying to see a difference, and getting frustrated with himself when he can’t pinpoint it. He catches Fabian watching him a little more often, but maybe that’s just because he’s looking more often. Fabian’s gaze looks a little softer, a little warmer, and his smile a little more indulgently fond, but it feels so normal it’s hard to tell beyond how much more it sends a wave of nerves through Riz every time he sees it. He goes down rabbit holes on Fantasy Google, trying to figure out the difference between romantic and platonic feelings, and gets annoyed all over again at how often it seems to come down to sex and attraction. (It’s stupid! It doesn’t make sense! If romance is actually just friendship plus sex then wouldn’t that mean any couple that doesn’t have sex or stops having it inherently becomes ‘just’ friends? Wouldn’t that mean any friends who are attracted to each other and have sex are automatically in love? Wouldn’t that imply that everyone in love is also the best of friends with their partner? Look, Riz will never claim to be an expert on any of this, but even he knows none of these are universally true! It’s stupid why are people this STUPID–) He gets annoyed at how little of this makes sense, and feels justified all over again in not caring about it, and then gets annoyed all over again at how much he suddenly cares right now, at least in understanding it. 

There are things he’s wondered about in the abstract, though not with this intensity and not for years: coming to terms with labels meant it was something he could push aside, put up on the shelf to never have to worry about. Sixteen year old Riz had spent a not insignificant amount of time wondering about kissing and what in the world was so appealing about it to make his friends lose their minds about the concept. There’d been research and a bunch of different charts. It’d been… a lot. Twenty-two year old Riz pretty much never thought about kissing. Newly twenty-seven year old Riz has caught himself staring at Fabian’s lips five separate times in the past four days, trying to figure out if it’s something he is curious about or if it’s something he thinks he should be curious about or somewhere in between. (Would it be soft? Wet? Warm? Uncomfortable but worth putting up with? Gross? Surprisingly nice? Was it something worth testing out or one of those things that was better left hypothetical? Would it be better if it was after Fabian ate something that tasted good, or is whatever his mouth tastes like normally better? For that matter, why do people find the concept of tasting someone else’s mouth hot when that’s pretty objectively weird and gross? Is he curious now because it’s an unsolved mystery or because he knows Fabian would be more than willing or because he’s curious– )

He’s losing his mind a little, is all.

He’s useless pretty much all week, going through the motions in wrapping up all the paperwork and unexciting parts of his last mission, and actually passes on a file the Council of Chosen sends his way. Agent Brookwish is just as surprised as Riz is when the no comes out of his mouth; it’s not the first time he’s turned down work for them, but in the almost three years he’s acted as unofficial contractor for them, it is the first time he’s done so without actively being on assignment for something else or having something he can’t get out of.

It’s fine. He’s fine! He’s fine.

He’s not stupid. He knows something’s going to give. Day after day goes by and his curiosity, his want, the weird feeling of abstract dissatisfaction he gets when Fabian beams at him and nothing happens– it doesn’t lessen, and he knows it’s becoming less and less likely that this is something that’s just going to go away on its own. 

It’s just. For all the progress he’s made, for how much better he’s become at communicating, it’s still not something he’s good at. In a lot of ways, he feels like the slowest member of their party, the one who’s come the least far, who still has the most growing and changing to do.

Riz isn’t like Kristen, who grew up being told with such certainty who she was and what her life was and what the absolute truth of everything was, who was so brave that from the first moment she started questioning things, she didn’t let the fear of the unknown stop her from the pain and joy of discovery. She runs face-first into doubt and embraces it with open arms, all the good and the bad. She’s messy and makes wrong decisions and doesn’t look back, not out of regret or fear of what she’s leaving behind, but because she knows she’ll take whatever chaos she fumbles her way into and make amends and choose her own path and find the good in it, even if she has to create that good herself.

Riz isn’t like Gorgug, who grew up scared and ashamed of the rage inside him, this part of him that no one else understood. He didn’t run from it, but took everything else, the love and empathy and curiosity and openness and creativity and nurtured them until he understood himself well enough to take that rage and shape it into something that makes sense for him. These different parts of him that everyone else said shouldn’t work together, he took them and made them work for him, even when it took so much work it nearly broke him, even when it didn’t make sense from the outside. He knows himself and where he wants to go, and lets himself feel whatever he needs to to get where he’s going even when he doesn’t know where it’ll lead.

Riz isn’t like Fig, who grew up so sure and confident until she wasn’t, until everything she thought she knew she was changed. She tried on disguises and roles and futures like clothes, taking the pieces that worked for her and discarding the ones that didn’t, building herself her own identity piecemeal, never shying away from the opportunity to learn something new about herself. She’s tiefling, half-elf, half-fiend, archdevil, rebel, rockstar, champion, bard, paladin, daughter, sister, friend– she’s herself, all of those and none of them at once, and she knows herself well enough now to know she doesn’t have to hide behind labels, behind words.

Riz isn’t like Adaine, who grew up being told over and over who she should be and what she should do and what she should try harder at and what she should reach for and what was inevitable, who became the Elven Oracle and was told that her role was to see what would be, to observe and witness and dictate, and instead of drowning in the fear of the unknown, she took control. She sees shoulds and wills and rules and facts and refuses to accept them, and instead divines and channels her rage and her sense of justice and her love and her knowledge into making things and people and systems work the way she knows they should, because she trusts herself more than some objective truth.

Riz isn’t even like Fabian, who grew up knowing who he was supposed to be, who tried so hard to follow in Bill Seacaster’s footsteps but didn’t let it destroy him when his path stumbled and took him to a different fork in the road. He was taught to be loud and violent and sure and strong and rely only on himself, and instead he took all the soft, beautiful, vulnerable parts of himself that are his, not his parents’, and now lets them flow freely, unafraid to open his heart to his friends and his doors to anyone in need. He looks back on all the other versions of him, the scared, lonely, unsure Fabians who didn’t know the way forward with empathy, loving every offbeat step of the journey it took to make him who he is now, and never stops trying to learn how to love himself and his friends better than the day before.

And it’s not– Riz doesn’t ever want to discount how hard it’s been for all of them. He’s seen Adaine in the throes of too many panic attacks, with too deep circles under her eyes as she turns that fury against herself when she thinks she’s not good enough. He knows how much she still struggles with it sometimes, the thought that one day she’ll see a horrible future and when it matters most, be unable to change a thing. She’s cried, silent, awful tears as she’s admitted that she’s scared she’ll outlive everyone she loves, until she’s so unmoored she can’t trust herself to know what’s best anymore. He knows Fig’s journey to feeling confident in her identity has been hard-won, remembers all too well how hollow her voice sounded the night after they fought a Doppelganger that’d worn her face as it died, how she’d cried as she admitted that sometimes she was scared she’d tried on so many roles, so many disguises, so many paths that she can’t possibly know who she really would be if she was stripped bare of them all. He knows how sometimes Kristen has to be chaotic and goofy and loud because when she’s quiet and still she can’t breathe under the burden of the knowledge that it’s her doubt, her unsurety that’s shaping a religion, that all these people look up to her and trust her to lead them. She traded the role of Chosen One of Helio in for the one of Saint of Mystery and Doubt and sometimes she doesn’t know who just Kristen could possibly be under the weight of that. He knows Gorgug still struggles with it sometimes, his rage, and how sometimes he still feels like it’s something his adoptive parents could never fully relate to him over, how it created this barrier of shame and doubt that cast shadows over his childhood and how guilty he felt because of it when his parents had given him everything. He’s admitted, quietly, that he’s so scared he’ll accidentally do the same thing to his child when he becomes a parent.

And he knows how Fabian letting himself be vulnerable has also meant leaving himself open to a lot of heartbreak. There’s gilded letters still inked over Fabian’s neck, a reminder of a time when he was so lonely and so unequipped to take care of himself and so afraid of asking for help that he felt he had to make everyone love him to prove he was still worthy of it. He remembers Fabian, skin several shades darker and locs several shades lighter from spending so much time in the sun, who’d sat on the edge of Riz’s flimsy, creaky dorm bed eight months after they’d left Aguefort, hands shaking as he talked about being on the open sea just to be sure that the life he’d dreamed of as a child wasn’t meant for him anymore, and how freeing and wild and incredible it’d been and how he’d never felt lonelier in his life but how leaving it behind had still felt like letting a part of him die. He knows Fabian loves Venariel fiercely and has from the moment she was born despite all his loud, vehement protestations the seven months prior, but Riz also knows that sometimes Fabian still looks at her and wonders what she has that he didn’t, what had been wrong with him to not be deserving of the attention and love Hallariel now gives her daughter so freely. Riz still sees it, the doubt that sometimes creeps in, the echoes of Bill Seacaster’s voice still ringing in Fabian’s head, because hearing I love you and I would be proud regardless doesn’t magically unmake all the rest of the burdens the Scourge of the Nine Hells ever laid at his son’s feet. 

He knows he’s not the only one who struggles, but sometimes Riz feels stuck in a way that he’s ashamed of, like he’s the only one still trying to make jagged pieces work, like he’s the only one who hasn’t been brave enough to stray from the path that he started out on as a kid and has barely faltered from since, the only one too proud and stubborn and stupid to let go. He looks back sometimes at the beginning and he loves them fiercely, those lost, lonely versions of themselves that had no idea how much love and joy and heartbreak they were in for, how strong they’d make each other as they learned how to lean on each other. But it’s only because he’s been there for every step of the journey that he can recognize his friends in them for how far they’ve come, and that tiny, obsessive, overeager version of himself is still so much of him. He’s traded in the briefcase and business cards for rings and swords and guns, and bears the insignia of the LPRTF instead of a private investigator’s license, but he’s still who he always was. He bears his father’s gun and a vest imprinted with his father’s wings and tries to quietly bury the fear that he hasn’t ever been able to fully put aside that at his core, he’s not enough. He’s still a little too odd, a little too obsessive, a little too focused on patterns and clues and being right. He still hides his insecurities, still tries to put forward a version of himself that’s cooler and more collected and more together. He looks at his friends who seem to know themselves, who all somehow unlocked some kind of understanding of things in their core and he’s so, so glad, but so tired, and so envious, and so scared that he hasn’t dug for his own understanding because deep down, he’s not brave enough to see if he even likes what he unearths.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever manage to find the bravery he so admires in his friends, but he musters the feeling as best he can as he finally decides to swallow back the fear and discomfort and just… let go. To just this once, trust he’ll find his way through, at least to the other end of this conversation. He curls up in the corner of the huge sectional they have and watches Fabian, how he drums his fingers on the takeout menu, how he throws his head back just a little as his laugh booms through the kitchen when he reads some message Kristen’s sent him, how his feet never quite stand still the entire time he’s on his crystal placing an order for far too much food for just the two of them. He hangs up and grins Riz’s way, promising that food is on the way, and Riz just lets it fall out of his mouth. 

“I know we haven’t been talking about it,” he says, and tries not to panic over how mid-step, Fabian just freezes. “And if you really don’t want to, we don’t have to,” he adds, the words coming out faster now, because he’s been so wrapped up in his own head and so caught up over how easy and warm and sure Fabian’s smiles have felt, but maybe he’s got it wrong, and Fabian isn’t as sure as he seems? The way Fabian talked about it didn’t make it seem like it was one of those things that Fabian felt only in the abstract and didn’t want to make it any more real, but if Riz had any kind of certainty about… any of this, they probably wouldn’t be in this situation. “But. Can we?”

Fabian blinks once, twice, and then unfreezes and takes a few steps towards the living area. His smile is unsteady, but there’s something genuinely amused, something genuinely fond there. “Yeah,” he croaks, then he laughs a little to himself. “I don’t know why I’m surprised: you never let things lie.” There’s so much affection in it it’s impossible to be offended, but Riz still feels his cheeks color with something a little sheepish.

“Would you prefer it if I did? Let this lie, I mean.” He thinks he knows the answer, but this is something that’s so unknown to him, he can’t be sure. It’s why he has to ask. He doesn’t have any faith in himself, in his ability to navigate this, but he believes in Fabian, and in their relationship. Maybe together they can figure out what way is forward.

Fabian’s smile dims just a little, and there’s a look on his face that Riz hasn’t seen since last weekend, when he’d come home from Aelwyn’s. It’s guilt, he thinks. He doesn’t regret keeping his mouth shut the past few days, especially when their time together in the days since has been limited mostly to a few hours in the evenings after they’ve finished up their work for the day. But he does wonder if maybe he should’ve pressed a little harder, been a little clearer about that in the moment. The alcohol and the stupid, terrible tv show had been a nice, horrifying break, and really had gotten him out of his head for a few glorious hours, but it really hadn’t been him looking to drown sorrows of any kind, hadn’t been him being unable to deal, and he doesn’t know if Fabian understands that. “I want you to do whatever you need to be comfortable,” Fabian says, and sits down on the farthest end of the couch. “I didn’t want to hide it but I know I sprung this on you and it wasn’t at all what you wanted and–”

“Hey,” Riz interrupts, “can we just…” He knows it’s not fair, that it’s Fabian being considerate, and that Riz has been losing his mind about it a little so he knows how hypocritical it is, but there’s still a thrill of frustration at it. He’s aroace, but he’s not some delicate flower who can’t handle even discussing love and whatever comes with it, and it irks him more than it should, Fabian telling him what he supposedly wants with a confidence Riz hasn’t felt all week. “I’m not going to run away or lose my shit or anything if we talk about it, okay?” He hates that he can feel how his cheeks are still flushed, undermining his point a little, but he means it. “Yeah, it took me by surprise, but to be fair, it took you by surprise, too.”

Fabian looks taken aback, but to his credit, he doesn’t argue. Much. “I just. You ran off the second the conversation was over, and came home drunk. I’m not saying– it’s not judgment about how you dealt with it, I just–”

Riz sighs, and he can feel the instinct to push back, to fight, but Fabian looks so upset and self-flagellating about it it’s hard for the annoyance to take root too deeply. “I mean, not to point fingers, but I got a blurry selfie and near-incomprehensible text from Ragh that says you did, too, and way worse.” Before Fabian can reply, he hurries to add, “Anyway, it really wasn’t like that. It got me out of my head a little but it really was just having fun and making a drinking game out of watching a shitty show with Aelwyn. I’d already mostly chilled out by the time she brought it out. It wasn’t me being so uncomfortable that I felt like I needed to drink or anything, so just. Stop blaming yourself for something that didn’t happen, okay?”

He can see it, the way Fabian has to stop himself from pushing back. It’s fascinating, watching the emotions play out on his face, watching him decide that that battle isn’t one worth fighting for now, seeing him opt for grim amusement as he sighs, playing up the wry smile. “How much of a lambaste am I in for the next time I see her?”

There’s a brief moment where Riz wonders if he should feel guilty for having spilled everything to her, but Fabian doesn’t actually seem upset, and he’ll take this over trading blame. “If it makes you feel better, she relentlessly mocked me, too, before she actually gave me any kind of seriousness. But uh, yeah.” He winces and tries to give Fabian his most winning smile. “Expect a thorough ‘lambaste’. Sorry?” 

Fabian shakes his head and gives an exaggerated sigh, but the smile is a little more relaxed, more genuine now. “I suppose I’ll survive. Of all the people you could’ve chosen, The Ball, though, really.”

It feels wild that they’re actually talking about this, even though Riz is the one who started it. “Everyone else felt… too close,” he says, and he can tell by the way Fabian winces that he knows exactly what he means. 

They both lapse into silence for a few moments, and it’s Fabian who breaks it next with a tiny huff of a laugh. “This is weird, right?”

Maybe it shouldn’t feel as reaffirming as it does, but Riz gives a laugh of his own, feeling some of the tension seep out of his shoulders. “A little.” And then he looks down at his hands and back up, adding, “Maybe a good weird, though?” and wonders if it should feel as revealing as it does.

He cannot for the life of him read the way that Fabian looks at him, or whatever’s in his voice when he says, “Yeah. Maybe.”

There’s something that feels nervy and electric to this, like they’re dancing on some kind of live wire, and Riz doesn’t exactly know why. It does make it feel like it was the right choice, though, and gives him the courage to say, “I just. Can you– I want to understand. You said you had no idea, but then you just… knew? I don’t– how are you so sure, when you didn’t know for– before?” He doesn’t ask, doesn’t want to word it as a ‘however long’ or anything that might invite Fabian to start adding that kind of context. He still doesn’t know if he wants to know, even if Aelwyn’s insistence over how early it did or didn’t (definitely didn’t) start makes him burn with interest and apprehension alike.

It’s kind of reassuring, how Fabian’s face flushes, like he, too, isn’t entirely cool and collected over this, either. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, fumbling over the start of his sentences, and then he just looks at Riz, eye darting all over his face like he’s looking for something. “I just… knew,” he says, and for a moment, all Riz can feel is disappointment. It’s not helpful, not really an answer. Fabian takes a deep breath in, almost like he’s steeling himself, and maybe it shows on Riz’s face, how lackluster he finds the answer, because when Fabian lets the breath out again, there’s something else gleaming in his eye. Determination, maybe. “I’ve known, for a very long time, that the way I felt about you was different than any of my – our – other friends. But when people accused it of being romantic or sexual or anything I just… it felt wrong, like they were cheapening our friendship.” 

That, at least, is a feeling Riz knows all too well.

“The way people said it, it was always like… a gotcha? A cheap shot? Like it was something I should be embarrassed or ashamed to feel or admit, and embarrassment or shame has never been how I feel about you.”

Riz doesn’t know if it’s a joke to ease the tension or if there’s some buried, insecure part of him that he thought was long dead that still wants to make itself known, but he teases, “What, not even back in freshman year?”

He’s expecting Fabian to laugh, but he isn’t expecting how the laugh is almost half-groan, too. “For, like, a week maybe, but even then it was more confusion. I hadn’t ever really had friends before, and I walked in there thinking I’d find a band of people I could boss around and be captain of like my Papa, and instead I got you guys.”

“Poor you,” Riz says around a grin. 

“Lucky me,” Fabian corrects, not even pretending to be put out. “There was this part of me saying that I should be trying to focus on establishing dominance, on getting popular and finding people who’d actually follow me instead, but there I was instead, commissioning custom leatherwork and researching books about religion and handwriting dozens of business cards for a child detective to pass out at school.” He’s beaming, so pleased with something he’d been so secretive about at the time, and Riz loves him so much, both the confused teenager he’d been then and the unapologetically affectionate man he is now.

I don’t think it’d even be a question if it wasn’t Fabian, Aelwyn had said, and Riz knows she’s right, if only because he can’t think of anyone else he’d feel safer having this discussion with. 

“The way Lana said it didn’t feel cheap,” Fabian continues. There’s still a little tinge of pink just visible in his dark cheeks, but he pushes through like it’s easy, and it hits Riz anew, how much he’s always admired and envied this part of Fabian, how he’ll be brave and vulnerable when it’s important. “It’s just… I don’t know, people have said it like I’m only your friend because of some repressed desire for more, like I was just settling for one thing instead of another. She said it in a way that felt like the opposite. Like, of course I would love you: how could I not, with who you are and what you are to me?”

Riz can feel his cheeks flaming too, and for a moment, he understands a little better why Fabian was so apprehensive about whether they could handle talking about this at all. Even with the past several days to process, even with an abstract, formless kind of wanting slowly outweighing the discomfort and desire to hide from it all, it’s still a little overwhelming to hear. A good kind of overwhelming, he thinks, but the kind of overstimulating where a part of him still just wants to shut down or throw up or bite something or do something to just deal with all of the everything. 

“And just like that, you knew?” He asks, and as wonderful and lovely as the words are, he also tries not to feel a little let down by the answer. It’s not some mechanical friendship plus attraction equals love, but it’s almost as elusive and wrong, everything changing in an instant like a magic wand. It’s just as unhelpful.

“No,” Fabian admits. “But it made me actually think, instead of just scoffing it off like I always have. Instead of viewing it as this thing that could be separated out and distinguished, one versus the other, just realizing that it’s… it’s both.”

In a way that makes even less sense. If it’s something distinct, something he can point to and go, yes, this is love, and that part of it is a different kind of love, that comes with its own certainty. If it’s not, if it’s just both all at once, how…

“I just. How did you know, then? If they’re not these separate… how can you be so sure that it is different?”

Fabian looks at him for a long moment, and Riz tries not to squirm under the weight of it, under his own frustration. The corner of Fabian’s mouth is upturned, the dimple starting to show a little, but it doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at Riz, thankfully, just… trying to understand, maybe? “The summer after freshman year, you started calling me your best friend,” he says instead of answering the question, and it’s so unexpected Riz just kind of stares. “Even though you and Adaine were definitely closer, and Fig and Gorgug were definitely nicer to you, and Kristen spent way more time with you.”

…What?

The smile deepens, and it still doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at Riz, exactly, but there is undeniably a bit of amusement there, too, when he continues as if Riz’s surprised silence is an answer in itself. “By any kind of checklist or description of a best friend,” and yeah, okay, that feels a little pointed, “you and I wouldn’t have fit, at least in comparison. But you still decided that was what I was to you, not any of the others, even when I was being kind of an ass about it. Why?”

And Riz doesn’t… really have an answer, other than how he’d been a little obsessed with Fabian, all the contradictions and imperfections and wonderfulness, how he’d just known and it’d lit a fire under him even more that Fabian was acting like it wasn’t a thing. “I just… knew,” he says, and he doesn’t even know how to comprehend the obvious, the reason why Fabian is bringing this up at all. “I knew that you were different, and special, and that… that was what I wanted. What I wanted you to– what you already were to me.” 

It really can’t be that simple. It can’t, because there’s a difference. It. There’s things that are romantic, and things that are platonic, and there’s a difference. There’s a very distinct difference. People know all the time that what they’re feeling is love, and they know how to distinguish between romantic and platonic, and they just feel it, they don’t question what makes something one kind of love versus another because they just. They know. That’s what’s been beaten into his head, over and over, that people just know, that there’s imaginary swelling strings and fireworks and that their hearts just explode with feeling and– and there’s things, there’s moments that are tipping points, there’s reasons, he just hasn’t been able to find a clear enough explanation yet, and–

“I just… knew,” Fabian echoes, and there’s something on his face that makes Riz feel like maybe he understands how much this is absolutely fucking with Riz’s… everything. “I’m not saying it wasn’t confusing. It was, because that’s not… every time I’ve been in love with someone, it’s been a– like, an active thing. I felt attraction and then decided to pursue them in a romantic way, and so when the feelings came, it– they were expected. I had context for them, and so I knew what it was I was feeling, and I knew what to do about it.”

And Riz just… pretty much knows that at this point, there’s no trying to figure out how to word things, no tiptoeing around things until he figures out what answers he’s trying to get and how to get them. There’s no thoughts now, just white noise, just blurting out the first thing that comes into mind. “But you don’t want to do anything about it.” He doesn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but even he can hear how it comes out that way. It’s just. Fabian has seemed so zen, so happy, like just knowing and just saying something have given him some kind of peace or clarity and Riz doesn’t get it, because if… how can that be enough? If nothing’s changed, if he doesn’t want anything to change, surely just that knowing can’t be the difference between Fabian being Riz’s best friend while also looking for people to date and Fabian being Riz’s best friend and not needing anyone else and being just fine keeping his love to himself. Ever since Riz finally, very belatedly came to terms with the fact that somehow people find him, like, objectively attractive, there’s been this tiny, insidious worry in his brain that some day someone would want something that he couldn’t give, and it’d ruin everything. The fact that there’s a growing part of him that maybe wants, that maybe doesn’t hate the idea of things changing, that maybe actually really wants to know what, exactly, Fabian would want to have with him because he’s starting to wonder if he maybe actually might want that too, hasn’t assuaged it. If anything, it’s made it worse: what if he wants, and he feels, and he tries, and he’s wrong, and he doesn’t want it after all? What if he does want, and Fabian actually doesn’t, only is comfortable with it as a (relatively) uncomplicated idea? What if the abstract is better, and this noble ideal of keeping his love to himself makes Fabian happier than whatever confused, messy reality Riz can offer? 

(If the abstract is enough, then why hasn’t it always been enough? Why did it have to be love for it to be enough?)

Something in Fabian’s face closes off, and for the first time, Riz actually thinks he might have fucked up. “Riz,” Fabian says, and there’s something a little rough to his voice, and over it, a forced evenness. “I know you’re just trying to understand, that you’re processing. But this isn’t fair.” His voice cracks a little on the syllable and he takes a deep breath and looks away. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Riz doesn’t, either. He doesn’t know what he wants from Fabian, and doesn’t know what Fabian wants from him. He doesn’t know what he wants from himself. The only thing he does know right this second is that he doesn't want whatever it is Fabian’s thinking right now. “I don’t…” he says, and trails off. 

“If you’re trying to, like, logic it away by saying that me being okay with things not changing means that I’m wrong, that I couldn’t actually be in love–”

“Holy shit, no, I– that’s not what I meant at all,” Riz interrupts.

It works, at least in that Fabian looks at him again, but there’s still something closed off, something almost defensive, barely hiding the vulnerability and upset there. “Then if you’re trying to get me to admit that yes, part of that love is attraction and want, and that if things were different that I’d want things to change, that I’d want to do something about it, then yes. Fine. I would. Happy?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t plan on saying it, didn’t even know that that was what he’d say, and it takes him by surprise as much as it does Fabian, and for a moment all they can do is just stare at each other. “I… What?”

Riz’s pulse is roaring in his ears, but for how fast it is, it’s still even. “I– do you know what Aelwyn said, when I told her what you said?” His laugh feels crazy, wild and breathless. For all that he’s spent the better part of a week trying to figure out a plan, there’s no plan now, he’s just… Fabian had been brave for him, admitting something that he didn’t quite understand, something that scared him because he knew keeping it quiet would hurt Riz more in the long run. Now maybe it’s Riz’s turn. Maybe he can be more like Kristen and embrace the doubt, more like Gorgug and let himself feel, more like Fig and stop hiding behind words, more like Adaine and refuse to accept what’s always felt inevitable. Maybe he can be more like Fabian, and let himself be vulnerable because he knows he has someone there to have his back. “She said that I went to her because deep down I knew she was the only one who’d be willing to call me out on how there’s clearly a part of me that wants things to change.”

If Fabian looked surprised before, he looks closer to stunned now. He just stares, and Riz can’t stop, can’t let there be quiet because if he stops he’ll just–

“And I, she’s right. I don’t know what I want or what I feel or what any of it means or how to even begin to figure out how to know but every time you look at me all soft and gooey and happy and then don’t do anything I– part of me is disappointed, because I know you won’t ever do anything, and I won’t ever get to know what you would do or if I’d want it, and I should be relieved but I’m not, I just want and I don’t know what to do with that–”

His lungs burn and he sucks in a dizzying breath and he might actually, really throw up. 

“Hey– Riz– Riz.” Suddenly Fabian’s here, up in his face, one huge, warm hand coming up to rest on the side of Riz’s face, the other grabbing Riz’s hand in his and shoving it against Riz’s chest. His heart is beating so fast under his fist. “Breathe, okay? In–”

“–‘m not having a panic attack,” Riz mumbles, and wishes he could be more confident about that. Fabian’s face this close isn’t helping, even if there’s no room in his gaze for anything like hope or doubt or want or displeasure or anything scary like that underneath the clear concern. Still, he breathes in, feeling both his and Fabian’s hands rise as his lungs expand and contract and expand again, and no matter how badly he wants to, he doesn’t let himself break eye contact.

He doesn’t know if he can call it a moment of quiet with how loud his pulse is in his ears still, and how aware he is of his own breathing, but the moment stretches thick and slow like honey and Riz watches, terrified and exhilarated and fascinated by the way the worry in Fabian’s eye cracks open just enough to let something both cloudy and bright through. Fabian’s grip on his hand loosens but he doesn’t withdraw it, instead letting his thumb make a small, sweeping motion, the callus just barely catching on the delicate skin of the back of Riz’s hand. “It’s,” Fabian starts to say, and swallows around the quiet way it breaks. “It’s okay to want things. And it’s okay to want things in theory but not in practice. And it’s okay to not know. It’s– there’s no right or wrong answers, Riz, I promise. Not with me.”

Terrifying, Aelwyn had called it, and she’d been right, but she hadn’t said anything about the thrill of it, too.

“I don’t know if I love you in the same way that you love me,” Riz manages, and to his credit, Fabian doesn’t even flinch. He just visibly swallows again, and the clouds in his eye start to thin, the brightness peeking its way through further. “I don’t know if I even know how to know. But I. It’s something. And I don’t know what you’d want–”

“Whatever you want.” Fabian doesn’t even wait a beat, barely waiting before the word ‘want’ tumbles out of Riz’s mouth before he’s breathlessly following it, and Riz can’t help but laugh, the sound high and ridiculous. It makes a smile appear on Fabian’s face, almost as if on instinct, and Riz is too close to even properly watch it grow but he can feel it, the bright warmth it brings. “Even if whatever that is changes from one moment to the next. Even if it turns out that it’s exactly what we’ve always done.”

Riz doesn’t respond for a moment, doesn’t know how to put into words this huge thing in his chest trying to claw its way out. “I don’t know how you were so calm telling me,” he admits, allowing himself another tiny, exhilarated laugh.

“Oh, I was scared shitless. Still am, a little,” Fabian says, and he lets the hand still braced on the side of Riz’s head relax, drifting down a little to cup Riz’s cheek instead, curling against the side of his neck. There, again, is that nervy, uneasy feeling, one that Riz isn’t sure if he likes yet, but neither the feeling nor Fabian’s hand moves again, just sits there until it starts to feel a little more comfortable. “I just knew that if it came down to it, you’d always have my back. I believe in that. I believe in you,” he adds with a little joyous huff, and Riz feels it, the salt-and-pine jolt to his bones.

“Did… you just give me Bardic?” he asks, and for some reason that’s what does it, what makes him fully dissolve into relieved, nervous laughter.

If he thought Fabian had been looking more open and fond the past week, it’s nothing compared to this moment. There’s so much affection, so much love taking up space on every inch of his face as he just beams, bright and happy as Riz laughs. He opens his mouth, but whatever he’s about to say is cut off by the doorbell, and it takes a second for them both to remember that they’d been waiting on delivery. His hands withdraw, moving to rub up at his own face and he stands, smile still broad. “Food first, then if you want to talk more…. We have time.”

He doesn’t wait for Riz to respond, just bounds up and towards the door, the sound of his loud, familiar voice carrying easily as he immediately launches into a conversation with the delivery person. Riz doesn’t know if it’s that or the Bardic or the sheer relief of not having to have all the answers just this once, but for a moment, he’s not scared at all.

Chapter Text

The moment Fabian crosses over the front door and steps into the entryway, he can feel the way his shoulders drop, the last of the tension of the very long day bleeding from his body.

It’s almost funny, in a way, how much he’s come to love this, having a home that actually feels like his. Seacaster Manor, for all that it will always hold a place in his heart, rarely felt like home: it hadn’t been one for his Mama, at least until Gilear and Ven, and too late for there to be space for him. It certainly hadn’t been for his Papa, who never viewed it as much more than a temporary change, a base of operations he could decorate with all his trophies for this new adventure he was going to create in Solace – at least until the next one came along. Fabian wonders, sometimes, how long Bill Seacaster would’ve lasted, if he had survived the Harvestmen’s fire: would his role in the palimpsests have been enough to drive him back to Leviathan or the open seas? Or would he have persevered, played off his involvement with KVX Bank and obfuscated until he found another mess to stick his fingers in? Fabian doesn’t know, and honestly is glad he’ll never have to find out: the Goldenrod and an afterlife plundering the Nine Hells suits his Papa far better than a mortal life with him and Elmville.

For years, Fabian had thought he’d been destined to that kind of restlessness, too. He’d found a home in his party, but as graduation rolled around, it’d become impossible to ignore the looming certainty that they would all be treading separate paths. Riz, Adaine, and Gorgug all went to their own universities, certain in what they wanted to continue studying. Kristen took to the open roads, heading just as stubbornly and unerringly into the unknown as she always did to figure out how best to shape her worship of her and Fig’s goddesses. Fig had already spent a year trying out her own futures, and between the time she planned on spending with Kristen, the time she planned on spending with Ayda, and the time she planned on spending in Hell, she’d been more than set. It’d only been Fabian who’d been left adrift, both too many and too few paths ahead of him.

It’s hard to regret it now, with how much he loves where he is today, but he hadn’t at all prepared for it, emotionally or mentally. He knows now, of course, that he hadn’t been the only one struggling to adjust to a life that suddenly felt five-sixths emptier, but it’d sure felt that way in the moment. All he’d thought he’d known was adventure. It’d taken far too many incredibly lonely months at sea, when his father’s name and his father’s money had bought his way into being a part of a crew but not any friendship or trust, when endless blue on the horizon had brought feelings of anticipation and freedom but none of comfort or belonging, when seeing new shores every few weeks had felt nothing like adventure and instead had left him unmoored like he was losing any sense of who he was or where he’d belonged, to realize that the pirate life he’d once dreamed of with such conviction no longer felt like his. 

He’d finally accepted it, that he wanted to go home, but it hadn’t taken long to realize that he had no real concept of the word. Coming back to Seacaster Manor had felt like he was intruding on someone else’s family, and it’d been much too easy to resent a toddler then than to deal with the feelings of inadequacy and hurt in any meaningful way. He’d bounced around, from the futon he bought and foisted upon Riz’s shitty dorm room, to the other side of Mazey’s too-small bed, to the ratty couch in Gorgug’s college apartment, to Ragh’s guest bedroom, to a blow-up mattress on Adaine’s floor, to the borrowed Hangvan riding shotgun with Kristen, to a spare bedroom in Hell with Fig, to one of the empty rooms in Mordred Manor, back and forth, place to place, until the time he could stand to stay somewhere kept getting shorter and shorter, until he could barely breathe with how much of an interloper he felt in everyone’s lives. They’d all moved on, and he was the only one still trying to figure out where to run to.

He’d finished his go-by-myself-wherever-the-wind-takes-me stint on the Hangman long before Riz and Gorgug had graduated, but it’d taken until then, the apartment that’d felt far too empty for just him but had been far too small for three men for the few weeks he’d convinced them to crash there until Gorgug had found his new place and Fabian had talked Riz into “taking the spare room in a townhouse I’ve been eyeing, really, The Ball, you’d be doing me a favor”, for him to start feeling settled. It’d been in that townhouse that he’d realized he could grow roots, to let them tether and ground him without instead feeling like ropes holding him down. 

Now, after nearly three years there and another year and some change here in a house in both his and Riz’s names, he’s never felt so much like himself. No matter what he does during the day, whether it’s teaching or participating at the dance studio, or acting as another pair of hands for Gorgug’s projects, or being backup for Riz or Lucy when either of them need it, or, like the past few days, working on what Riz likes to call his “passion project” at the community center downtown: no two days look exactly the same, but he always gets to end the day by coming home. 

It’s late and the only light is coming from the overhead light in the kitchen, but Riz barely seems to notice, still hard at work at something, papers sprawled out across their entire living room as he darts back and forth, muttering under his breath, arranging and rearranging them into groups. Fabian just leans against the wall and watches, something exasperated and fond swelling in his chest. It’s funny, how used to this feeling he is and how it also somehow still feels like a surprise. He still doesn’t quite know when this started, to feel so familiar and engraved in his heart from even the first moment of realization, but the knowing, the acceptance and contentment in that knowing still has that thrill of newness, a spark of new joy all over again every time.

It’s hypocritical of him, given how exaggerated his reactions of surprise and betrayal usually are when he catches Riz lurking, but he watches for a minute or so, quiet until his body gives him away, a loud yawn cracking through the quiet. Riz jumps and Fabian can’t help but smirk. It’s the only time he can really be stealthy, when Riz is somewhere he feels safe and too absorbed in something to pay enough attention to his surroundings. “How long have you been home?” The suspicious slant to his eyes as he cuts them to where Fabian’s leaning makes Fabian think he’s been found out, and he can’t help but duck his head to poorly hide his smile.

“I thought you weren’t on assignment,” Fabian says instead of answering, and easily winds his way across the living room without stepping on any of the errant papers. 

“It’s not an assignment,” Riz says, his eyes still mostly on the piece of paper in one hand, the other hand going to swipe at his hair. From how wild and unruly it is, he must have been doing that all evening. “Not yet, anyway. The Council just needs another pair of eyes on something, and since I turned them down the last time they asked me for something…” He shrugs. Only then does he really look up, blinking a little in surprise at the dark windows. “Wh– how late is it?”

“Late,” Fabian says, groaning as he flops himself face-first onto the couch. “Took forever to get out of there today.” For all that he’s in excellent shape, thank you very much, he can still feel it, how muscles unused to the specific movements he’d put them through today are tired. Not enough to be sore tomorrow, he thinks, but enough that he’s grateful all over again to his past self for dropping as much money as he did on a very nice couch, no matter how much Riz had protested.

“And yesterday. And the day before,” Riz says, and there’s an obvious, very pointed note of amusement in his voice.

Fabian knows exactly why. “I’m just helping out.”

“I don’t know why you’re so insistent on pretending it’s not very much your baby at this point, especially given this idea literally came from your study nights at Seacaster Manor.”

It’s especially rude that when Fabian looks up from where his face has been smushed into the cushion, Riz is back to looking at his papers, so he doesn’t even see the glare Fabian sends him. “Shut up.”

“Witty.”

He flips Riz off, which only gets him a snort. It’s clear Riz’s brain is still more on the papers than not, and Fabian just settles in, letting himself drift a little as he sinks in. He’s not watching, exactly; not actively, anyway. But there’s still something soothing about the familiar sight, about how alert and bright Riz’s eyes are as they dart back and forth, how his body goes still between movements but his tail keeps quivering, how he doesn’t seem to even register it when he chews on his lip or runs a hand through his hair or uses his thumb to rub at the bare skin of his fingers where rings usually lay. It’s very much Riz, frenetic movement and intense stillness and narrow focus all at once, and it settles into Fabian’s bones, just another part of home. 

He doesn’t know how long it's been, or how long ago he closed his eye, but when he blinks it open again, there are much fewer, larger piles of papers, and there’s another light on in the kitchen. He groans, blearily digs around in his pocket for his crystal, and then groans again when he sees it’s only barely past eight. There’s already a message from Lorissa, no doubt about wanting help tomorrow, too. As tempting as it is to chuck it across the room, he restrains himself to just tossing it to one of the other cushions and grabbing the nearest throw pillow to bury his face in with an unhappy noise instead.

“Fabian.” Riz’s voice sounds amused, and Fabian can tell that he’s laughing at him. There’s enough fondness in it that Fabian can’t bring himself to feign offense. “Just go to bed.”

He’s tired enough that he could, but that would require getting up off the couch, not to mention actually leaving. He makes an affronted noise and doesn’t even bother opening his eye. “I’m good here,” he says, his words slurring together a little bit.

He hears Riz sigh, and then there’s the noise of fluttering papers. With the thick carpet and how naturally stealthy Riz is, he doesn’t hear him coming, but Fabian doesn’t jump at all when suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder, his body long since accustomed to Riz’s presence. “Seriously, you haven’t even taken off your eyepatch. The couch is comfortable but you’re going to be way comfier in bed.”

…He has a point about the eyepatch at least. Fabian had worn one of his more lightweight ones today, so it’s nearly not as uncomfortable as his Papa’s old one tends to get if he puts pressure on it for too long, but while he’s accepting his inevitable inability to stay upright, he might as well. With a dramatic huff, he opens his eye and sits up just enough to grab at the lacy strap and slide it off, and then flings it in the general direction of the side table. “There. Better,” he says to Riz, and makes a show of nestling back onto the pillow.

Riz rolls his eyes, and then just looks at him for a minute, all his attention turned from the Council’s papers to Fabian. “Is there a reason you’re being so ridiculous over this or is it just for the fun of it?”

Neither? Both? He doesn’t really know, and doesn’t particularly care. “I take offense to that,” he says with as much gravitas as he possibly could with his face smushed up against a decorative throw pillow. “I’ve never been ridiculous a day in my life.”

“Fabian.”

Riz’s mouth is still turned upwards, but there’s something in his expression like he can’t decide if he should actually be concerned, and Fabian can’t have that. “Just… missed you, the past few days.” It’s hardly the longest they’ve been too busy to have a lot of time together, but it’s come on the tail of several off weeks, between Riz’s long, complicated latest mission for the LPRTF, the week Fabian spent avoiding Riz, and nearly another week after his confession where things had been off-kilter and awkward as Riz grappled with everything and Fabian had tried to give him space. Any other time, a few days with only getting snatches of time here and there wouldn’t have been a big deal, but nothing about any of this has been like any other time. The few days since Riz asked if they could talk has felt much longer than it should, anticipation and eager nerves stretching the time out even further than the weeks before.

It’s nothing that he hasn’t said or implied many times over the years, but Riz still flushes. It’s a good kind of flush, Fabian’s pretty sure: it’s less twitchy like he’s tempted to flee, more a gentle kind of flustered. Maybe he should let it go, but. “Really?” Fabian teases, syllable lengthening a little with how pleased he is. “Just from me saying I missed you?” It’s a gamble, one that could easily backfire and make Riz twitchy, but something in the comfortable, familiar quiet – and the memory of Riz, bright-eyed and trembling as he admitted to wanting – makes him feel brave enough to make it.

To his delight, the flush deepens, taking on hues of turquoise under the freckles on Riz’s cheeks. “Shut up.”

Fabian’s been… not hesitant, exactly, but patient. He really, truly meant it when he told Riz he wasn’t asking for anything to change, and even now that the possibility of change has been voiced, he still means it. No matter how much a part of him now hopes, now is getting ahead of itself wondering about maybes, he’ll be okay if it turns out whatever want, whatever curiosity Riz apparently feels turns out to be satisfied with things exactly the way they are. More than: he loves his life, and he’s started to realize that maybe this, what he already has, is all he needs.

It’s been a slow deconstruction, away from the idea that in love and happiness, too, he was going to be just like his Papa and find someone toxic and dangerous and let himself thrill in the unsafety and adventure of it all. He’d believed it, wanted it, even, drawn to the Aelwyns and Ivys of the world, and thought that love must be something that clutched at his heart in joy and terror alike. But the way Aelwyn had suddenly burst into sobs that’d surprised them both the first time he slid his hand under her skirt hadn’t felt thrilling. The loneliness that’d crept in the moment the first wild fling he’d had post-Mazey had grabbed her clothes and left hadn’t felt like an adventure. Flirting his way into something like a relationship with someone intense and magnetic who’d laughed and told him that he was only good for fun when he said he wanted more had left him with only shame and hurt. The people who’d demanded to be called names and be fucked harder and crueller hadn’t left him feeling high on victory or adrenaline; they’d only left him feeling empty, echoes ringing through his heart of fear and a forest and the knowledge that if he was to move forward, his fate was to lie there and just take what was given to him.

If there’s danger and adventure in happiness, it’s been a different kind, at his side instead of facing him. Riz can be violent and chaotic and feral and callous and cruel, but always for Fabian, with Fabian, never at him. He’s come to realize that there’s excitement to be found in the mundane, but a kind that’s more comfortable than any he ever found out on the open seas or wild stretches of road to nowhere or in a stranger’s bed. He grew up thinking he’d be just like his Papa, but the older Fabian gets, the more he realizes that if there’s a choice between someone who’d take out his eye or someone who’d take out someone else’s eye for him, there’s no competition.

He’s happier here, stable and domestic and boring in a house with blue shutters and separate beds, than he’d be chasing any kind of dangerous high anywhere else. If it turns out he gets to have that and kisses or whatever else Riz decides he’s interested enough to try, he’ll be the luckiest man alive, but he doesn’t need anything more than he already has. The promise of maybe has been more than he even dared hope for, especially after the days he’d spent agonizing over whether he’d ruined the equilibrium he’d come to love so much.

“I don’t think I will,” he decides, self-satisfied and so, so content in this moment. He takes the tiniest bit of pity on Riz, though, and says, “Just. Not ready to go be by myself yet. Is that okay?”

Riz’s cheeks are still tinged dark green as he looks over at Fabian. There’s something intent to his gaze, like he’s trying to figure out if Fabian is making fun of him, or if there’s something Fabian wants, or – who knows, really: Fabian’s long since given up on being able to understand exactly what goes on in that ridiculous, beautiful brain of Riz’s. “We weren’t even talking. You were asleep.”

“I was resting my eye,” Fabian blatantly lies, just to see the way Riz rolls his eyes again.

“You’re ridiculous, and I don’t know why I put up with you,” Riz also lies.

Fabian just beams back, knowing the answer without either of them having to say it. “Don’t need to talk,” he says. “It’s just… nice. Knowing you’re close.” It’s more honest than he usually dares; their friendship has always relied on the unsaid, on the things that they both knew but didn’t often feel the need to verbalize. But being honest and open has been working out pretty well for them as of late. It’s a trend Fabian wouldn’t mind continuing.

Riz opens his mouth and closes it again, visibly hesitating. Maybe he feels the same, about how well communication’s been working out, because he sets his jaw and sits, settling down on the carpet cross-legged in front of the couch facing Fabian, and starts talking. “The other day. When I said you’d do or say something and it feels like… I don’t know, an opening? But then you don’t do anything? It’s... things like that.”

It’s the first time either of them has brought up that conversation since they’d had it the other day. By the time they’d finished their food and the mindless tv show Fabian had put on for enough background noise to get his head to quiet its buzzing about want, there’d been a kind of quiet peace, one that neither of them had apparently felt the need to break. Whatever pressure there’d been in Riz’s head to say something, it’d been relieved, and he didn’t seem to be in as big of a hurry to figure out what to do about it yet. They had time, Fabian said, and he doesn’t regret it: there’s still been times, moments over the past few days where he can feel Riz watching, assessing, but it’s felt different, in a good way. Less frantic, more considering. For all that Fabian’s learned that he’s a commitment kind of guy, preferring the comfort and affection of a steady partner he knows and trusts over the thrill of the will-we-won’t-we of flirtation, there’s still something heady about the excitement in early stages of a new relationship. There’s something about feeling that electric, eager buzz and luxuriating in it, knowing that whatever will come will be even better but enjoying the heady anticipation of waiting in the wings enough to not want to rush it. For all that this is not the same thing at all, the tension the past few days has been less anxious than the weeks prior, more anticipatory, and it’s settled into his bones in a similar way as that kind of early basking. He wouldn’t have pushed regardless, but there’s now been another, sweeter reason to not want to. He’s not as worried now: he knows whatever it is that comes will be worth it. 

It doesn’t mean he’s not eager to hear what Riz has to say. “I didn’t mean it to be an opening. I didn’t mean anything in particular by it at all,” Fabian promises. He’d just meant it, that he liked simply existing in the same space as people in general, but Riz in particular. 

Riz’s face hasn’t quite returned to its normal color, but Fabian can’t hear anything discomforted in the way he laughs, thankfully. “I know, and I think that’s what’s been driving me crazy the most.” He doesn’t sound upset. There’s something both rueful and amused in his tone, and Fabian can’t tell which one of them the amusement is aimed at.

“I… would offer to stop, but I don’t know that I know where the line is for what’s unambiguously platonic enough that you’re okay with it and what’s not,” Fabian admits. He has a feeling that Riz wouldn’t know either, given how preoccupied he’s clearly been about understanding the difference between the platonic and romantic. Fabian almost gets it, if only because he’d spent days trying to figure out where the line was for himself, when it’d become romantic and how he hadn’t recognized it sooner. The difference is that he’d pretty quickly accepted that, at least to him, it didn’t ultimately matter: the end result both ways is happiness. It’s not a percentages thing, where his feelings for Riz are a finite thing that can be divided up like that, part platonic and part romantic. He loves Riz, platonically and romantically both. 

That also means it’s going to be pretty damn hard to figure out what’s okay if Riz does want him to stop saying anything that could be taken as potentially romantic.

The flush on Riz’s cheeks starts deepening again, but he shakes his head. “I– that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t– it’s nice, I just. Also don’t know what to do with it, I guess?”

It feels a little absurd, having this conversation while he’s still lying horizontal on the couch, but Fabian doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to break whatever moment they’re in right now. “I’m not– Riz, when I say I don’t mean anything in particular by it, that also means I’m not looking for anything in particular with it. You don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to.”

“I know,” Riz says, and though there’s a note of frustration there, thankfully it’s not accompanied by any of the near-panicked, frantic babbling he’d had the last time this had come up. “It’s just, when you say stuff like that, or… I don’t know, it feels different. In a way where sometimes I do want to do something with it. I just… don’t know what I want, or what to do with that want.” He lets out a sharp exhale and rubs his face.

Fabian’s trying, he really, really is, but he’s so out of his depths with any of this. He’d been as prepared as he could possibly be for a Riz that didn’t want anything to change. He’d know how to deal with a Riz who unambiguously, uncomplicatedly returned his feelings. (Well. No. Maybe he wouldn’t, actually; he’d be prepared for it with anyone else, he thinks, but it’s so incongruous to the Riz he knows and loves so well, it’s hard to imagine even the hypothetical. Trying to imagine a Riz that had no questions and no hesitations and jumped straight into the only kind of relationship Fabian’s ever had doesn’t even feel good, because it wouldn’t feel like Riz, and Fabian’s really in so, so deep, isn’t he?) Despite Jawbone’s words about aromanticism being a spectrum, he hadn’t allowed himself to hope or prepare for some middle ground. “Is there anything I can do to help?” It doesn’t feel like Riz is asking for him to change what he’s saying or doing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something else he could do, even if it’s just trying to talk it through to let Riz work his thoughts out.

Riz doesn’t answer for a moment, just lets his eyes scan Fabian’s face. Fabian doesn’t know what he could possibly be looking for, but he doesn’t look away, doesn’t say anything, and just keeps looking back. “What would you do, if I was anyone else? If I was allo. What would you want?”

And Fabian knows it’s not a trick question, but it still feels a little like one. “I… Riz, this isn’t me trying to get out of answering, but I– you’re not anyone else. I don’t know. I’ve never been in love with my best friend.” Consciously, anyway. “I’ve never gone from friends to more with anyone, let alone with someone I know as well as you. With someone as important as you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never gone to ‘more’ with anyone, so you’re off to a way better start,” Riz responds, frustration making his words sharp enough that Fabian inhales, taken aback.

Words jump to his tongue immediately, but he bites them back, begging his tired brain to just think for a moment. It doesn’t feel like it’s him that Riz is irritated with. And Fabian tries, tries to think, tries to understand, tries to reframe it. The first time he’d ever had anything was Aelwyn, and the very intense, very spontaneous kiss he’d got from her while she was high off her ass had been enough to send him spiralling for nearly a year, insistent that she was some kind of damsel he needed to rescue to get another hit of the feeling. The first time actual, tentatively romantic feelings had been involved had been Mazey, and he hadn’t known at all what to do, the both of them teenagers fumbling their way through haphazard flirting and very bad communication and a less-than-stellar start that’d still been more based in mutual attraction than not until he learned how to let himself settle into the rest of it. Riz isn’t a teenager, but in some ways he’s just as fumbling and unequipped as Fabian had been back then. More than, most likely: he hasn’t said anything about the want he feels being physical, hasn’t mentioned anything about attraction, and those definitely aren’t things Fabian is going to presume. If he tries to imagine it, what those – or really, any of his relationships – might have been like without the physical drive propelling him forward, taking the reins until there was a foundation to build off? If there’d already been a relationship he’d been scared of ruining? If he’d already made peace with the idea that he didn’t want anything with anyone? It’s…  yeah, even with his limited perspective, he can understand how this might be even more tenuous and confusing for Riz than it is for him, and even Fabian’s having a hard time figuring out what anything more than what they already have would even look like. “Okay,” he just says, still pitching his voice quiet and steady. “Okay. So let’s figure it out together.”

“Easier said than done,” Riz snarks, but there’s far less bite in it.

He’s not wrong, is the thing. It’s hard, trying to view it from a different angle, trying to figure out what Fabian even would want. He’d meant it when he said that it would be whatever Riz wanted. He’d want everything, if that was what Riz wanted, too, but he doesn’t want that unless it is what Riz wants. It’s just been hard to imagine Riz wanting at all, when that’s never been the context of their relationship, and that’s been a mental stumbling block for him, too, for all that he’s pretty sure he’s been far less preoccupied with it than Riz has. Even in the past few days, knowing that there might be some ambiguous want involved, it’s been hard to even understand what concrete things Fabian’s even hoping for, when all he’d let himself imagine had been abstract at best. “Can you promise me something?”

“What?”

Fabian really, really doesn’t know how to say this in a good way, so he’s hoping the intent comes through. “Don’t agree to anything you don’t want.”

Sure enough, the frustration that’s been building on Riz’s face only grows. “Fabian, I know I’m aroace, but I’m not… incompetent or fragile or whatever else you– you don’t have to protect me from myself, I’m–”

“Okay, fine, I don’t have to protect you,” Fabian interrupts. “Promise it for me, then. Don’t agree to something you don’t think you want, for my sake. Don’t let me be someone who does that to you, especially when I don’t need you, like, trying to push through discomfort because you think it’ll make me happy. It won’t. I don’t want it.” He doesn’t know if he can put it into words in a way that makes sense to him, let alone in a way that Riz understands, but he thinks he might need to try. He sits up, just a little bit, and looks at Riz, face grave. “I… Riz, when I say that I want whatever you want, I just need you to understand that I mean it. Not in a way that’s like, oh, I really want these twenty things but if you’re only okay with four I’ll take the four and be okay with missing out on the other sixteen things, but like. If you want only four, I actively, genuinely don’t want those other sixteen things. At all. I wouldn’t even be thinking about it in terms of those twenty things.” He doesn’t think he was clear enough, when he’d initially told Riz that he loved him more than kisses, partially because it’s something that he’s still really discovering, something that he’s becoming more and more sure of every day. “It’s okay for you not to know, or for what you’re okay with to change. But you trying to force your way into being okay with other things wouldn’t be doing me a favor, or compromising, or– I mean it. It isn’t– it wouldn’t be giving me something I want. It’d just be hurting us both.”

Riz’s face finally softens, irritation not necessarily disappearing but at least now accompanied by something both more curious and understanding at the same time. Fabian’s not sure if it’s the reaction he was looking for, but he’ll take it. “I… how about this. I promise I won’t agree to keep doing anything I don’t like.” It feels like a technicality, and maybe that shows on his face, because Riz sighs and adds, “I don’t– I mean this in the nicest way possible, Fabian, but it’s not about you. Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t know if I even know the difference between wanting something and wanting to know what something is like. I don’t think that I will know, until I try.”

“It’s not stupid.” He doesn’t know that he understands, necessarily, but he’s never needed to fully understand what goes on in Riz’s brain to accept it. He just wishes it wasn’t so daunting, what that might mean. Fabian still means it, that if it turns out all Riz wants is just what they’ve always done, that that’ll be enough, that he’ll be okay. He’s self-aware enough to know that letting go of the quiet hope that’s been building may end up hurting a little, but a little bittersweet sting to something still wonderful is far, far better than the alternative, and watching them tarnish the best part of Fabian’s life through miscommunication and misunderstandings is not acceptable. 

“So. I promise I’ll be honest about what I decide I want and what I don’t, and not try to talk myself into something I actually don’t. But Fabian,” Riz says, serious enough that Fabian knows how important whatever he’s about to say is. “I need you to promise me that you’ll also trust me to decide that for myself, okay?”

Maybe that won’t end up being as simple in practice as it is in theory, but if there’s anything that’s true, it’s that Fabian trusts Riz. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

At last, Riz actually smiles. “Okay.” 

They both go quiet for a moment. Riz is looking down, picking absentmindedly at the carpet by his knees, and Fabian just watches. He tries to picture it, what he’d want, what he’d ask for. It’s– he’s never had a relationship like this (and maybe calling this a relationship is presumptive, given everything, but he doesn’t think he cares, at least for how he frames it in his head; he’s used the word for things of far less significance). He’s never had so much discussion about pure hypotheticals, never laid out framework for things like this. He’d just done what felt natural in the moment. He tries to think about what he’d do, if Riz were one of the people he’s dated before, and tries to think about what he’d do, if Riz were more sure, and then just throws it all out. Figure it out together, right? He doesn’t expect Riz to have any answers, so maybe he shouldn’t expect himself to have them, either. “I’d want to hold you, I think.”

Riz looks up, surprised. 

“If I– you wanted to know what I’d ask for.” It’s insane how scary and exhilarating and incredible it feels, just vocalizing this simple thing, and Fabian’s sure his smile must look ridiculous. “I like physical contact, but that doesn’t have to be anything more than just… holding. I’ve always loved movie nights when you’d lean against me and– look, we don’t call it cuddling, but let’s be honest, The Ball, it’s cuddling. And I’ve always loved sleeping in the same bed as my partners, even when they didn’t want to touch. Just being near them. So. Just being near you is nice, and that really is all that I meant. But if you were asking what the… the logical next step would be, I– I’d want to hold you. If you wanted that.” 

It’s worth it, all the self-consciousness, to see the way Riz’s surprise melts into something hesitant but pleased. “I don’t think we’ll ever have the same sleep schedule.”

At that, Fabian laughs, relief and hope making it a little wild. “No, definitely not. Mostly because you’re an insane person who thinks staying up until you can hear the birds outside is perfectly acceptable.” He wasn’t even necessarily asking for that, just putting into context what kind of thing he might’ve asked for with the admission that it was nice just being in Riz’s presence, but he’s not protesting. He’s so not protesting.

It’s kind of wonderful, the way Riz’s smile spreads across his face. Fabian’s seen thousands of them on his face before, but there’s something almost new to it, something a little too sure and pleased to be shy but too hesitant to be smug. “So. If you admit defeat and just go up to bed already, I’ll finish up here. …And join you?” 

It’s both a question and a statement, and Fabian swallows back the way he instinctively wants to press, to ask if Riz’s sure. Trust. He can do that. “My door’s always open,” he just says instead, trying to suppress the nervous laugh. And then, because he just can’t help it, needs to know that there’s no pressure, he adds, “Tonight or …whenever.”

Riz’s smile turns a shade wryer, like he knows exactly what the thought process was. “Fabian. We’ve slept in the same bed plenty of times. Even when you snore, you’re not that scary.”

He takes the boon for what it is and exaggerates the playful offense as he finally pushes himself off the couch. “How dare you, honestly. Fabian Seacaster does not snore,” he proclaims, and doesn’t let himself look back when Riz laughs and says something undoubtedly rude in response. 

The sleepiness has almost evaporated in the giddy nerves as he washes up and gets himself ready for bed, and when he catches a glimpse of how bright his eye is in the mirror, he actually does laugh at himself. He’s been dating on and off for almost half his life now, and somehow he’s more excited and more nervous than he’s been in years over the potential of just sharing a bed. More than that, of sharing a bed with someone he’s shared beds and vans and haphazard group cuddle puddles with dozens of times before. Cuddled in bed with, even: Riz’s form of friendly physical contact is more likely to involve climbing on someone’s shoulders (albeit with a bit more difficulty now than in high school, thanks to the several additional inches he grew in a late puberty he’d taken extreme, dramatic offense to) or having no sense of decorum or personal space when he needed someone to move and decided to just move their bodies in whatever way pleased him, rather than embraces of any kind. But the moment he dozes off, he’s like a lizard, seeking out whatever heat source is nearest and clinging. Which… yeah, no, Fabian is viewing in a whole new light now, how pleased and smug he’d always get when Riz unconsciously chose to snuggle up to him, and how put out he’d get when Fig or Gorgug won out instead. That… okay, well. Huh.

“You got this,” he tells his broadly grinning reflection, and doesn’t care how ridiculous it makes him.

By the time he slides into his sheets, he’s sure he won’t be able to sleep. How could he possibly, when he’s oh-so aware of Riz downstairs? He’ll just lie here, and maybe try to think of what he might suggest the next time Riz wants ideas for what he might want next and–

The next thing he knows, he’s dramatically startling awake when something– someone– moves at the side of his bed. Riz– because of course it’s Riz, obviously it’s Riz– freezes, and Fabian takes a long breath, thankfully so much more used to a life of quiet domesticity than one of danger on the road that he didn’t even twitch towards where Fandrangor is stored behind the nightstand, no matter how hard his heart is pounding from surprise. “That’s so not how I wanted this to go,” he half-whispers, only barely playing up the anguish. “I was going to be so cool about this.” 

He hears Riz snort, unfreezing. “Don’t worry. I figured out you weren’t cool years and years ago,” he tells Fabian in a voice as equally quiet, and pulls back the fluffy down comforter just enough to slide in.

“Ouch,” Fabian says, and can’t even begin to care how clearly not upset he sounds with how audible his smile is as he blearily watches Riz get comfortable next to him. “I open my heart and my door and my bed to you and this is the thanks I get. Is this what I’ve signed up for?”

“Yes. Now shhh.”

Yeah, he’s got this. They’ve so got this.

Chapter Text

In the face of Fabian being so tentative, so unsure and so appalled at the idea of pushing at Riz’s boundaries (reassuring and sweet, but also strangely frustrating), it’d been easy to be confident, to take the idea that’d been presented more as an example than any actual request and roll with it. Riz had meant it, when he said Fabian wasn’t scary. It’s such a relatively small thing, the kind of action that could just as easily be platonic as romantic or anywhere in that grey space between.

It doesn’t mean there’s not a little nervous thrill when he nudges at the open door to Fabian’s room and slips in. It doesn’t mean that there’s not a part of him that wonders if this hadn’t been a bad idea after all, when Fabian reacts the way that many adventurers do, no matter how long it’s been since he’s had to actively worry about things that lurk in the shadows at night. It doesn’t mean it’s easy to settle in, to take comfort in how quickly Fabian drifts off again. It’s much earlier than Riz has been going to sleep recently, but he doesn’t think that’s the biggest reason why he ends up staring into the darkness for a long while after Fabian’s breaths go deep and even, unsure of if the way his heart is racing is a good thing or bad thing.

Riz wakes up to the smell of coffee and an empty bed, just as he does every single morning, and through the thrill of relief and disappointment and the happy-awkward-bashful flush that accompanies it, all he can do is laugh. In the light of day, nothing about the way Fabian’s leg had hooked around his ankle halfway through the night, the solid line of warmth on and next to Riz as he’d finally drifted off, feels scary. Waking up in a bed so much bigger and softer than his own isn’t intimidating. The other side of the bed is empty, but the whole room feels like Fabian, the bold, dark colors of the bedding and furniture contrasting with delicate, lacy curtains, the walls and corners cluttered with weapons and dance equipment and vaguely marine-themed paraphernalia alike, pictures and pieces of jewelry and scattered objects making the space feel lived in and familiar, the scents of his deodorant and hair oil lingering just enough to catch notes of when Riz breathes in deep. It’s hardly a big change, but it’s nice, waking up in a place that feels so intimate and well-loved, and if anything, there’s only a tiny bit of disappointment that in every other way, it is so like every other morning.

There’s something kind of nice about that, too, though: it’s not a one and done thing, something drastic that he needed to try once in order to have a concrete answer right away. He can have this tonight, too, if he wants: Fabian’s awkward, open-ended invitation had made that clear. They can try it again, and again, until whatever it is that feels like it’s missing happens, or until Riz stops waiting for it to feel like something else has to happen. They can try whatever, figure it out together just like Fabian had said.

Huh.

He’s never been good at lying around in bed once he wakes up. Sleeping in, absolutely, if only because his body rejects anything remotely resembling a sleep schedule and it’s not uncommon for him to not realize he’s tired enough to sleep until it’s so late it can hardly qualify as night anymore, but once he’s awake, he’s awake. He gets too restless to just lie in bed, even if it means getting up to get coffee and sitting comatose on the couch or the kitchen chairs or the floor as he waits for the caffeine to kick in. Lying in this ridiculously comfortable, lavish bed, he understands a little better how Fabian can just lounge here on lazy mornings, but Riz still only manages it for a minute or two before he’s sitting up and crawling out. He almost misses it, but once he’s on his own two feet on the floor, his eyes catch on the bedside table and another familiar sight in a new context. He feels himself smile, broad and pleased, and grabs his travel mug in one hand and crystal in the other.

You do realize you’re setting a dangerous precedent here, not even making me go downstairs to get my first cup of coffee, right? he texts Fabian, giddier and more awake than he usually is before having even his first sip.

Fabian’s response comes in instantly, before Riz can even get the lid unscrewed all the way. A sacrifice I can live with I suppose. Riz watches, too amused to be anxious as dots show up, then disappear, then show up again, and a flurry of messages come through, one after the other. Good morning btw, then, If it still even legally counts as morning you heathen. More dots, then, I thought about leaving a note but didn’t know if that’d be weird??, and But not leaving one also felt weird idk, and I SWEAR I used to be cooler than this idk how but I’m blaming this on you!!

Riz almost snorts coffee up his nose. Spilling coffee on Fabian’s bed or carpet might actually result in more dramatics than it’s worth, so he screws the lid back on and resigns himself to having to gross toothpastey-coffee in the near future as he heads to the bathroom to start his day off. I wasn’t joking when I said I figured out you weren’t cool years ago, he texts one-handed through a mouthful of toothpaste, and he delights in the row of frowny faces he gets back right away.

Excuse you, Fabian responds, and Riz can all but hear the indignant tone. Are you forgetting that I’m a Maximum Legend?? 

Riz definitely hasn’t. It’d been a source of frustration and relief both, that Fabian had made it look so easy that year, balancing classes and Bad Kids shenanigans and Owlbears and parties with becoming the most popular person in school with what seemed like, at the time, very little struggle in comparison to the rest of them. Riz hadn’t had the time or brain capacity to deal with the, in retrospect, alarming signs that Fabian had not been nearly as okay as he’d pretended to be. Still, he’d also noticed even then why Fabian was becoming so popular, and it had nothing to do with his Papa or his money or his charm (okay, no, maybe a little of the latter two, especially with the parties), but instead all the parts of himself that he gave away. The study sessions, all the different attempts to relieve the stressors of not only his party but other kids who were having the same challenges with balancing their lives, the way he took time to connect with people for Kristen’s campaign; it might’ve been borne from a desperate kind of loneliness, but it’d still been genuine, kinder than he’d been raised to be, and people had responded to that far better than they’d ever done to the version of Fabian who’d peacocked around parading his full name like a badge of honor, bragging about his father to anyone who’d listen.

Still, Riz is his best friend and a little shit before anything else, so instead of anything heartfelt, he just responds with, As if I could forget when you got it tattooed on your neck. Isn’t there something about how if you have to announce you’re cool…?

A tattoo infused with REAL GOLD in HELL is VERY cool, The Ball!!

The capital letters have definitely convinced me, you’re so right. Again, he gets several frowns in response. Before Fabian can come back with whatever evidence he’s surely working on typing up, Riz quickly sends, It wouldn’t have been weird. Well, no weirder than any of this is. But no note needed, promise.

The dots disappear, and there’s a few minutes that feel long where nothing else comes in, but Riz, miraculously, doesn’t start overthinking it. He just finishes washing up, dresses, and heads to where he’d left his work last night to go join Fabian in bed. His crystal doesn’t vibrate again until he’s halfway down the stairs.

Still a good weird at least?

He smiles. Yes. You?

Yes. And for what it’s worth, I’ll take your weird no matter what.

Idk if I should be flattered or offended, Riz texts, despite knowing the answer, despite how warm and pleased and flustered he is at the sentiment.

That’s what you get for calling me uncool!! 🙁😇

Routine probably isn’t the right word for it, given how staggered and irregular the times are for Riz in particular when he stumbles up the stairs or across the hallway and into the sheets next to Fabian, but they settle into a new kind of something with far less angst than Riz could’ve imagined. On paper it’s still almost benign, how little changes: especially with Fabian heading out early most mornings to work on the community center and fading fast hours before Riz’s brain has even started slowing down, and Riz’s half-project not-assignment from the Council that keeps snowballing into something larger keeping him too focused to notice how quickly the hours slip away at night, they don’t actually see more of each other than they did sleeping in their separate rooms. Fabian’s fast asleep by the time Riz comes to bed, and he’s long gone by the time Riz wakes up in the morning. There’s little difference in terms of how much they interact outside of the hours their schedules overlap in the evening. But it feels significant, especially when Riz wakes in the middle of the night to find he’s sought out Fabian’s body heat in sleep, curled himself up to tuck against Fabian’s side, or when Fabian ends up sprawling out, unconsciously letting his arms or legs fling on top of or curl around Riz. It’s not all that different, except for the way that Riz can feel it, the casual, quiet intimacy seeping into his bones, squeezing at his heart, settling into his brain. 

It’s the kind of thing he hadn’t realized he’d resigned himself to never having, is the thing. Accepting being aroace had been mostly a boon, a much-wanted explanation for why he’d always felt so different. It’d been a relief, being able to look at the things that he’d never been able to figure out and almost feeling a kind of permission to let them go unsolved. He’d never felt any kind of envy or anything even remotely bittersweet, seeing Tracker and Kristen all but mauling each other in every room back in high school, watching Gorgug and Zelda try to get to know each other with a kind of pressure that made every interaction excruciatingly awkward, hearing everyone make fun of Gorgug and Mary-Ann and how they very physically dealt with the tension between them, watching Fabian absolutely lose his mind the second he developed a crush. Once Riz had realized why, what made him different, he’d just been glad to not be that affected. It was a relief, never meeting someone new and spiraling over if they liked each other or liked each other, never having to wonder about the ambiguity of a relationship and what kind of strings might come attached.

But as he’d grown up, as things had changed, especially once he and his friends had a chance to genuinely reunite instead of just seeing each other in snatches here and there while he was at the Society and they were each forging their own paths, it’d felt less relieving, less black and white. It’d been different, in a way, seeing his friends in love as adults, fully past the craze and insanity of teenage hormones. There’d been something so soft and gentle in Kristen’s face for the few weeks she’d chastely held Lucy’s hand that it’d almost hurt to look at. He’d been there when Narumi had had a long-overdue breakdown over her healing licensing exams, and there hadn’t been any part of Riz that’d scoffed at how Gorgug hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t waffled over what the best move was, had just run to hold her, letting her cry it out in his arms with no questions, no awkwardness, just unconditional love. There’s been no judgement, just joy and an almost awed awareness of how solid Fig and Ayda are, how Fig has no doubts that if there’s ever anything she needs, Ayda would be there without a thought and vice versa, how often they don’t even need to say it for each other to know what the other one wants. He’d seen, over and over, the parts of himself that Fabian gave unthinkingly to his partners, the support and softness and intimacy that was so naturally a part of all his romantic relationships.

It hadn’t necessarily been a conscious, active want, especially not with all the things that came attached, but Riz knows himself well enough to realize that there’s been a part of him, almost shamefully repressed, that’d ached to know he’d probably never have that kind of gentle, unquestioning, undemanding intimacy, not when the people in his life had always had other people to turn to for it.

(There’s a tiny part of him that wonders if he should feel disappointed, getting this conscious gentleness and open communication only now that there is a romantic aspect, however nuanced, to it. The rest of him knows that it isn’t fair: it’s still undemanding, still meaningful. The same way that Fabian being in love with him doesn’t mean things suddenly mean more, maybe it’s also that they don’t mean less. Maybe it’s not tarnishing it, getting this kind of thing only now that he’s so hyperaware of how his own feelings towards Fabian are more complicated than he’d ever imagined. It turns out nothing about any of this is black and white, only more shades of grey, and he’s learning that that’s… maybe also okay.)

There’s only one morning that Fabian getting up and getting ready wakes Riz up, and he watches, blearily and grumpily, until Fabian notices. There’s something so soft to the way that he murmurs, barely-concealed amusement and tender fondness spilling from his voice as he apologizes and tells Riz to go back to sleep, and to how he reaches out to so gently skate his thumb across where Riz’s hand is splayed out across the covers, one gentle touch before he turns away again. It makes Riz’s heart and throat seize up, some kind of paralyzing, terrifying, achy want keeping him quiet as he watches through half-lidded eyes as Fabian tiptoes around the room and leaves the door cracked open behind him so the latch doesn’t make any noise. 

He thinks he wants this forever. 

And, god. He thinks he just might get it.

Neither of them press for more, but it’s easier, in a way, for boundaries to relax a little more. When they’re sleep in the same bed every night, it doesn’t seem as presumptive for Fabian to drape himself over Riz more when he’s whining about something or teasing, for Riz to opt to sit right next to Fabian on the couch and relax back into him instead of sitting an arm’s length away with enough pillows to not feel like he’s sinking too deep into cushions, for them to let hugs stretch out until they’re more just holding one another for longer than they’d ever with anyone else. It’s the kind of physical touch they’ve always done, that’d stopped the last several weeks for fear of crossing lines that’d become so blurred overnight. It’s a welcome return that also feels new, if only because Riz is so much more aware of it now. 

There’s still a part of him that’s almost looking for the other shoe, waiting for the moment when this suddenly feels too different to be good, too strange to want, too complicated to keep.

Funny enough, the first moment of panic comes not from something he or Fabian does, but from a text that would ordinarily bring nothing but joy. He’s been scrolling on his crystal, curled up half on top of, half next to Fabian as he watches some show that hadn’t kept Riz’s attention for more than two minutes, when guess who’s (finally) on her way back to elmville, bitches!!! pops up over his browser. Riz beams, and then freezes. 

Fabian clearly feels it, because he startles, looking down. “The Ball?”

There’s no one here but the two of them, but Riz can feel it, how telling their positions are right now, and for all that not much has changed from the outside, it feels so, so different, and so, so obvious, and he’s not panicking, he’s just. “Adaine’s coming home,” he croaks.

The show pauses, and Fabian barely moves as he asks, calm like Riz is a spooked animal ready to flee, “That’s… good, isn’t it?”

“Obviously,” Riz says, and the simple truth of that is enough to get him to unfreeze. He feels ridiculous, and there’s something almost removed about the way he watches as the messages roll in.

Gorgug: !!!!
Adaine: if anyone has plans on friday night this is officially your heads up to clear them
Adaine: or if they’re impossible to clear this is your heads up to say so now so we can publicly shame you and then plan another night
Kristen: HELL yes i’ve been meaning to head back soon anyway so this feels like a SIGN
Gorgug: !!!!!!!
Gorgug: Wait does this mean maybe we can all hang? Bad Kids reunion?? Fig you and Ayda can teleport in right?
Fig: 😭😭😭 i wish but we’re knee-deep in an ankarna mission and with how slippery this guy has been idk that i can guarantee anything
Kristen: BOOOOOOOOOOOO
Fig: we’ll try! just ya know no promises
Kristen: also what ankarna mission 👀 it’s been a hot minute since we’ve goddess sister wivesed this shit up lmk if you need a third
Fig: damn kristen not in the group chat 😈
Gorgug: Wait so no Kristen now either??
Kristen: no no no i mean after we get litty on friday night obviously

“Riz?”

While he’s been watching the screen, he can tell Fabian’s been watching him, and Riz lets his crystal dim. He’s seen Gorgug since things… developed, and so has Fabian, but they haven’t hung out with him or any of their other friends together, and suddenly Riz isn’t sure how they’re going to manage it. They barely have words for it for themselves, beyond just ‘figuring it out’. He knows Fabian loves him romantically as well as platonically, and Riz knows he loves Fabian in a way that’s different from his other friends but he doesn’t know what that means or what he wants it to mean, and Fabian might be happy accepting that at face value, but will anyone else? And even if they don’t talk about it, he doesn’t know how they’re going to just… act like nothing has changed when even the way Fabian looks at him feels subtly different. He doesn’t know if their friends will notice, or if they’ll notice if Riz starts acting twitchy and paranoid or if Fabian will be disappointed at having to hide it or– “I– I’m not ready,” he admits. “To tell anyone about… this.” It’s not fair, because there’s been something so wonderful about how happy Fabian’s been just in his day to day, how unapologetically and unashamedly pleased he’s been about being in love with Riz. He’s always been loud about his feelings, gushing about dates and bragging about his partners and it’s– Riz knows he should feel glad, should feel honored and touched at the idea that Fabian might want to do the same now, no matter how different it is, no matter how much blurrier the lines are compared to a ‘real’ relationship, and he is, in theory, but he’s also– it’s just–

Fabian lets out a heavy breath. “I don’t think I am, either,” he says, and Riz can hear the relief and guilt he feels mirrored in Fabian’s voice.

At that, Riz feels confident enough to turn, scrambling so he’s facing Fabian instead of leaning against him. “You’re not?” There hadn’t been a single part of him that’d thought Fabian would fight back against it, but he’d been more expecting replies along the lines of there being no rush or following Riz’s lead in this or something like that. It’s kind of a relief to know it’s not just him, but he is curious.

There’s a little huff of something that’s not quite laughter. “I love our party to death, but none of them possess even an ounce of chill. The moment they know, it’s going to be nonstop comments and questions, and a lot of those questions I don’t think we really have answers for yet.” He’s not wrong at all, and it’s why Riz had been frozen with dread at the thought, too. “And I like that there’s no time frame on anything. I like that I don’t feel the need to have all the answers right away, or at all if we don’t want them.”

Riz likes that, too. The initial panic had been so strong, overwhelming with the feeling that he needed to immediately figure out where the line was between platonic and romantic, what he wanted, what things might look like moving forward in the wake of Fabian’s confession. A little silly now maybe, with the hindsight of the past couple weeks and how little pressure there’s been to do anything but take their time, but he hadn’t been able to shake the idea that if it hadn’t been then, if he hadn’t come to some kind of decision at least in if he wanted to make any decision and not just let it be something they never talked about again, that the opportunity would pass them by for good and things would never be quite the same.

It’s not that he hadn’t trusted Fabian – he did, and still does – but it’s new. It’s different, for all that the things that haven’t been different have also been a comfort. But it’s that trust and curiosity, not any kind of guilt or trepidation or fear of missed opportunities that makes him ask, “Any particular answers you do want to figure out?” Fabian looks over at him, sharp and almost defensive at first, and Riz adds, “Not a trick question. No right or wrong answers, right?”

The wariness softens into something more considering, and makes Riz feel like they’re on the same page now. Fabian takes a moment, clearly thinking it over, and then takes a breath. “We’re best friends.”

“Not a question,” Riz points out, amused. “And definitely not one you should need an answer to after this long.”

“Hush, The Ball,” Fabian says, but there’s a smile on his face. There’s an edge of nerves to it, but no discomfort or fear or anything scarier. “I just– to be clear, that’s enough for me. Always. I’m asking as an ‘and’ thing, not an ‘or’ thing.”

Riz doesn’t say anything, just waits it out. He has a hunch where this is going, but it doesn’t bother him the way he thought it might, especially with how resolutely and unquestioningly Fabian says it, that ‘best friends’ is enough.

“It… maybe I’m wrong, because I don’t– it feels like we’re heading… there’s another part to it we’re trying? This, us? And I don’t know, ‘boyfriends’ feels wrong–” he cuts himself off when he sees Riz’s face, the way it instinctively scrunches up in distaste the same way it had when Aelwyn had said it. “Okay, noted, same page there,” Fabian says with a little laugh. Thankfully there’s no hurt or offense or anything that Riz can hear at how quick and emphatic his reaction was, just a kind of amused relief. “But… I don’t know, it… do you hate the idea of me maybe calling you my partner, too?”

If he’d asked Riz as a pure hypothetical, weeks ago when this had all started or even before, he’s pretty sure he would have hated it, if only on principle. He and Fabian and the people closest to them understand what their relationship has always been, what ‘best friends’ looks like on them, but it’s been a source of frustration, that the older they get, the less weight it carries to everyone else. Even ‘roommate’ has garnered more respect with a lot of people, and Riz hates that. He still hates the idea that another label, one that implies a romantic kind of relationship would carry more weight than the one that’s always held the most value to them, but he finds he doesn’t necessarily hate the idea of having that label as an ‘also’ kind of thing. Maybe it’s just because he’s starting to understand it, that it can exist as an ‘and’ and not an ‘or’, the way that people had always framed it before, but he… doesn’t hate it. He really, really doesn’t. 

‘Boyfriend’ is an easy no. Maybe it’s not fair, but to him the word carries the connotation of something else, something more frivolous and headier and more of a temporary whirlwind of hormones and attraction and confusion and that’s… it’s not him. It’s not even Fabian, really, and it’d always felt strange to Riz to hear it applied to Fabian by his previous partners. In high school, absolutely, but the adult Fabian that exists now is more grounded, especially when it comes to romance: he’s still dramatic, still ridiculous and silly and a handful, but ‘boyfriend’ had never felt like it’d carried the proper weight that he’s always given to his partners. 

Maybe on paper Riz should hate ‘partner’, too, given how ubiquitous it’s been in his life in other contexts. He partnered with people at school and at the Society. He partners with people at the Council of Chosen, with the LPRTF. He partners with people in board games and pub quizzes and even the silly strategy games on his crystal. But when Fabian says it, it doesn’t sound sterile like the agents at the COC, or urgent like the assignments from Bytopia, or temporary like being assigned teams, or even serpentine and accusatory the way it sounds in Baron’s lilting voice in nightmares. It sounds warm and steady and supportive, satisfying that tiny, possessive part of him that likes that he has some kind of claim on Fabian, the same way it’s always felt to hear Fabian call him his best friend. 

“No,” Riz says, a little smile forming, the pleasant surprise of it all feeling promising and new. “I don’t hate it.”

The hesitation that’d been on Fabian’s face disappears in an instant, a pleased smile of his own taking its place. “Okay.” 

They just sit there for a minute, smiling like idiots at each other, and Riz feels brave enough to ask, “Any other questions you’ve been keeping to yourself, then?”

The smile on Fabian’s face doesn’t disappear, necessarily, but it wavers a little as he swallows, the nerves reappearing. “No right or wrong answers,” he echoes in a way that feels like a reminder to both of them, and his gaze flits away for a moment, then back to Riz, like he’s forcing himself to watch for a reaction when he adds, “I haven’t been saying it, because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, and because I don’t know–” He inhales, almost sharply. “If I want to tell you that I love you. Is that something that’s always okay? Only sometimes? Not okay?” 

It’s a fair question, especially because the only time he’s really said plainly and directly to Riz, it was that first morning to a Riz who’d felt just a few steps away from dissociation with how unprepared and panicked he’d been about it all. Even when Riz had started that discussion about maybe wanting things, even when Riz had flat out asked how Fabian had known it was love, he’d still hedged around it as much as he could. He hasn’t shied away from showing it in other ways, from the open affection in his eyes when he looks at Riz or the tender note his voice sometimes gets when they’re talking about important things or even the hesitant, innocuous touches they share, but in terms of looking Riz in the eye and plainly saying ‘I love you’? It hasn’t been a part of the slow, steady blooming of things. It’s still a little scary, for all that it probably shouldn’t be, and Riz knows the easiest route would be to take that middle option, to figure out when and where it’s the least scary until he’s brave enough to figure out how to face it unflinchingly at any time. 

But even in this kind of unknown, at his most unprepared, he doesn’t feel good about taking the easiest routes. He never has. When he comes to conclusions, when he fights his way through the unknown to the other side, whether it’s a world-shattering danger or a personal insecurity, he wants it to feel earned. “Always okay,” he says, voice a little quiet and unsteady but mind made up. “As long as– I can’t promise I might not get… I don’t know. Squirrelly. Weird.”

Fabian’s smile is still small, but it’s so, so soft as he reaches out and gently touches Riz’s hand. “I told you I’d take your weird no matter what, remember?”

Riz feels the relief and nerves, sharp and exhilarating, and he huffs out a little laugh as he lets himself touch back, not so much holding hands as much as just letting their fingers rest on one another.

Tentatively, delicately, Fabian says, “I love you, and I love you.”

Riz had been too freaked out the first time Fabian had said those words to really clock it, but he hears it now, the purposeful, conscious repetition of it, how there’s no audible difference between the way he says it both times. Riz can’t tell which of them is supposed to be love and which is supposed to be love, and he doesn’t need an explanation to know that that’s the whole point. He’s never been very good at knowing what to do with his emotions, with the way his whole chest feels tight and blown wide and full the way it gets sometimes, especially in regards to his friends. It’s hard to navigate right now with how much appreciation and joy and a fondness that’s strange and complex and also somehow the simplest thing. All he knows how to say in response is, “I love you.” He doesn’t say it twice, can’t quite, but it’s somehow an answer to both regardless. He doesn’t need to specify how he loves Fabian – maybe it’s not the same way, maybe it kinda is, but maybe that’s definitely not what’s important right this moment, and watching the way Fabian’s face crumples into this wonderful happiness that’s a little hard to look at directly for how lovely it is, he knows it’s just as meaningful regardless.

Fabian doesn’t ask this time, just closes the distance between them and tugs Riz into a hug. It’s perfect, the kind of almost-too-tight contact that lets his brain go quiet, the kind that he almost never gets except in the worst situations, when someone’s upset or narrowly escaped a perma-death or when there’s some underlying fear or grief that makes them clutch tighter. That it’s happening now from just joy makes it all the better and he clutches back, greedily soaking in the moment. Fabian doesn’t even pull back all that far when he eases back, just enough for Riz to barely be able to look up at him. “Any questions you want to hash out, The Ball?” he asks, and he’s so close Riz can feel how his voice rumbles, how the breathless little laugh catches in his throat between his words. “Gotta say, do recommend. Ten out of ten.”

His grin is goofy and wonderful, and Riz knows what he’d ask if he was going to ask anything, but he doesn’t really want it to be right now. “Not tonight,” his own smile just as light and easy. “Right now, I think we probably need to answer Adaine, before we get in too much trouble.”

The noise Fabian makes is half a laugh, half a groan, and he finally pulls away, reaching for his crystal.

Riz is quicker, and he doesn’t bother scrolling to read back the way he can see Fabian start to do out of the corner of his eye. If the COC comes knocking I promise I’ll let them know Friday’s a nonstarter, he sends. He only has time to see the next two messages flurry in – Kristen, gleefully proclaiming that because Fabian was the last to respond that that meant the drinks were on him and Fig unable to help but make the obligatory COC joke – as he swipes to the chat with just Adaine. If you come home sooner than Friday and don’t come see me I’ll only be a little offended, he texts, and he’s barely joking.

Adaine: well we can’t have that
Adaine: i’m hoping to get out of here by thursday at the latest but i’ll let you know 🩵 no cases or missions or anything?
Riz: A half project thing that will almost definitely end up turning into one for the council and something I’ve had a few briefings on with the task force that may end up turning into something but nothing that can’t keep.
Adaine: who are you and what have you done with riz??
Riz: Maybe I’m trying something new!!
Adaine: and how’s that working out for you?

Riz looks up, watches as Fabian continues laughing at his crystal, rapidly firing back messages to whoever is impugning his honor in the group chat now. He gets to fall asleep next to his best friend (…and partner?) tonight, and then on Friday all (or almost all, but he’s holding out hope) of his absolute favorite people in the world are going to be in a room together for the first time in far too long. If he’s really lucky, they’ll even end up staying for a while.

Oh I’m positive I’ll go a little stir crazy and end up taking on way too much at once soon enough but for now? Good, he sends Adaine, beaming. Really good.

Chapter Text

Riz doesn’t think anything of it when he gets a text from Adaine late Wednesday morning asking if he’s working from home today, just tells her he is and gets back to work. He hadn’t been lying when he told her that he was enjoying taking his time a little more in terms of work, but it’s still strange, this in-between, weird grey area he’s found himself in with both his official work as an agent of the LPRTF and his unofficial work with the COC.

The Task Force had so much for him to do at first, as one of the very few dedicated full-time agents who were part of the material plane, who could venture in places that were often much harder, whether it be physically or strategically or politically, for the overwhelmingly celestial forces. Once he’d graduated and had officially declared himself available as an agent full-time, he’d hit the ground running and, for a long time, had barely stopped. There’d been plenty of things to do, whether working on loose ends that’d stalled out from a lack of feet on the ground in the material plane or investigating new things. But as time goes by, the amount of active missions he can participate in are dwindling, if whether because they involve work in planes he can’t easily get to, or because his part in it just fizzles out once the baton is passed to someone else. If there’s one downside to the vast majority of the LPRTF being based in Bytopia, it’s that a mortal sense of urgency is often… well, as lost on them as mortality is. A month doesn’t seem that long to souls in the afterlife, even those whose focus is still primarily on work instead of rest, but to Riz, a month devoid of progress can feel like ages. More and more, there’s fewer and fewer full missions to work on, only bits and pieces of various tasks, often resulting in little to no closure or answers. It’s still satisfying, still something he loves, but it’s certainly not turning out the way he expected when he agreed to take on the role more seriously, more full-time once he’d finally finished his studies.

And he’d decided, fairly early on, that he didn’t want to work full-time with the Council. He was sure there’d be plenty of satisfaction in it, sure he’d find things to love in both the same and different ways that his father had, but it had felt strange, unappealing in ways he hadn’t quite been able to pinpoint. It’s why, even nearly three years on, he still only acts as an unofficial contractor instead of something more official. He doesn’t really want to be an agent, and it’s not because he doesn’t think he’d be good at it. He knows he would: hell, by the time he was sixteen he’d had more experience with both solving mysteries and first-hand combat than most of the COC’s agents. He knows he could excel at it, if he wanted, take up Pok’s mantle and bury himself in field work, whether covert or more behind the scenes, and make his mark upon the council in record time. He could work full time on strategy instead, on untangling the webs of political and criminal conspiracies and give his findings to other agents and never actually do field work. He just… doesn’t want it, either option. He doesn’t trust himself with it.

It’s already too easy to bury himself in work whenever and wherever and however it comes: the sporadic nature of it, however frustrating, is probably a good thing. He knows from experience it’d be all too simple and appealing to lose himself in it, to unearth whatever roots he’s put down. He’s not quite the same person he’d been in his late teens and early twenties, and doesn’t think he’d let himself backslide as thoroughly and devastatingly as he’d done those first few years at the Society of Shadows, but it’s still there in the back of his mind. Even if he has far more friends around him now than he’d had then, even if they know better than to let him self-isolate to that extent, even if Riz doesn’t want to do that to himself again, he knows, deep down, how easy it’d be.

And while he doesn’t define himself by or crave the domesticity in quite the same way that he knows Fabian does, it’s still important to him, having it, being able to nurture it. He wants to be here, to be able to see his mom regularly, to hang out with Gorgug, to be able to drop things with relative ease when his friends need him or come home for a while. He likes the fact that he’s had the time to grow into the relationship he has now with Fabian, both the platonic and whatever it is that they’ve been letting blossom the past few weeks.

He just wishes he didn’t feel so itchy about it, sometimes.

It’s that itchiness, that dissatisfaction with how limited his view of this current project is that he’ll blame for why it takes his crystal buzzing multiple times for him to actually process that he’s hearing it. Once it does, he tears himself away from the haphazard evidence board he’s assembled on the walls of the bedroom he hasn’t slept in in over two weeks and scrabbles for his crystal. He’s not quick enough. The call goes to voicemail, and it lights up with a new text message as he unlocks it. It’s not the first, apparently.

Adaine [11:49AM]: i wanted to surprise you but history has made me reassess that plan haha. i’m in elmville (surprise) and heading over to yours in like 20 minutes so this is your heads up to wrap up whatever you’re surely elbows deep in
Adaine [12:07PM]: you didn’t go back to bed did you? i know you’ve texted me at some pretty alarming times the past few weeks but
Adaine [12:31PM]: no answer to the doorbell either so i’m assuming you’re just in the ZONE. turn your ringer up!!!
[12:33PM]: 1 missed call from Adaine
Adaine [12:34PM]: you have like three minutes and then i’m forcing my way in to make sure you didn’t drink enough coffee to give yourself a heart attack and you’re lying dead on the floor or got yourself abducted or something dramatic

Riz doesn’t even fully read them, just scans the contents as he starts moving, and by the time he’s made it to the last he’s already halfway down the stairs, flying around the corner to the door. He throws it open, and there, thankfully looking more amused than irritated or concerned, is Adaine, leaning backwards against the porch railing, one hand holding her crystal, the other hand in the pocket of her beloved jean jacket. She barely has time to lower the crystal before Riz is tackling her in a hug that she returns with zero hesitation. “Sorry, sorry, I was so distracted by this project I’m working on that I didn’t even hear my crystal,” he babbles, and he can hear the familiar huff of laughter in his ear. The smell of her perfume hits him, and he can feel relieved, happy tears already threatening to form, prickling at his eyes. Cassandra, but he missed her.

They hold each other much longer than they might’ve any other day, and neither of their smiles are perfectly steady when they pull back, beaming at one another. “I assumed as much,” Adaine says, eyes clearly scanning him the way he’s doing to her, both of them searching as though to make sure the other one hasn’t changed too much in the almost three months it’s been since they last saw each other in person. Adaine mostly looks the same as she always does, but much more tired, which Riz knows is saying something. Usually, as long as she’s able to trance most days, she doesn’t even get bags under her eyes, but there’s something about her right now that just looks worn down, even as the smile redoubles. “Are you at a good point where you can stop, or should I plan on entertaining myself for a bit until you get there?” There’s nothing negative in her voice when she asks, no judgment or frustration, not even really any wry amusement, and he loves her a little bit for it, even as he shakes his head.

“Nah. I’ve been going in circles on it anyway,” he says as he turns to open the front door again, Adaine following behind just a step behind him.

“The kind of circles where you could use another pair of eyes on it?”

The Council probably wouldn’t appreciate him roping other people in on it, but given she’s just spent over two months partially being expected to act as a representative for Solace’s government, they’d be the largest of hypocrites to raise a fuss about it with her in particular. But even if Riz weren’t hyperaware of how his unused mattress has been propped up on its side, leaning against the wall to make more space, and how much he wants to avoid anything that could possibly raise questions about where he’s sleeping, even if she didn’t already look tired, he doesn’t want to focus on work right this second. “The kind where I’m just going to leave it alone, especially when one of my best friends is here after nearly a quarter of a year,” he says, grinning. “Especially since I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Adaine snorts. “I spent two months biting my tongue and behaving and resisting the temptation to curse everyone, especially the damn bigot of an ambassador from Highcourt, but I lose my temper one time on my second to last night with one of the Fallinel representatives and suddenly no one has a problem with me leaving a day sooner than expected.”

This is a story Riz is going to have to hear in its full glory at some point. “I’ve seen you lose your temper so many times,” he says gleefully. “I fully believe no one would be willing to stop you after that.” He comes to a stop in the living room, assuming they’d just collapse onto the couch and keep chatting, but she keeps moving past him, over to the sliding door that leads to their backyard. He raises an eyebrow. “Going somewhere?”

“Outside,” she says, and he recognizes by the look in her eyes and the set to her chin there’d be no arguing with her even if he wanted to. “You need the sun even more than I do. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She’s not, and with how archly she says it, she knows it, so Riz just sighs. “I’ve been busy.” It’s a weak argument, especially since he hasn’t as much, at least by comparison, but that doesn’t mean he’s been good about doing things other than work.

Clearly Adaine does love him, because she just lets him off the hook with a skeptical glance, and more or less shoves him out the back door. The air is chilly, and the grass is brittle and brown and patchy where she just plops herself down onto it and sprawls out, but when he sits down next to her, the sun is strong and warm enough that it’s not unbearable. Before he lets himself get too comfortable, he grabs his crystal, ignoring the snort from next to him. “It’s not work!” he insists, and taps at his conversation with Fabian. Adaine got in early (!!) and is here if you can get out and get home early, he sends, and turns the screen off as quickly as he can. Adaine doesn’t seem all that interested in peeking over his shoulder, and it’s not like their messages contain anything actually incriminating, but… yeah, okay, he’s squirrelly and paranoid already, like he knew he’d be. “I’m just letting Fabian know you’re here in case he can see about coming home earlier than he has been.” When his crystal doesn’t buzz with any immediate answer, he finally lays back.

“He still working on the community center project?” she asks, and there’s a note in her voice that says she’s as entertained by the whole thing as he is.

She has her eyes closed, basking in the sun, and Riz snorts and just watches her for a moment, so glad to have her home. “The one he still insists he’s ‘just helping out with’, despite it being mostly his idea, and mostly funded with his money, and that he spent months helping plan and now most days the past few weeks helping get everything in place? Sure is.”

Her mouth stretches wide with a grin, and he can see more than hear the laugh. “I swear, even after over a decade since he decided he didn’t need to be the person he was trying to be freshman year, he still never stops bragging about the stupidest things, then gets all modest about the things that he actually cares about.” There’s so much fondness in the way she says it, and Riz just lets himself grin, too, finally turning his face upward and closing his eyes against the sunlight.

“That’s Fabian for you.” And speaking of some things never changing: “So did you actually punch the Fallinel representative, or just chew him out?”

“God, I wish,” Adaine says with a groan. “No, just the latter. But it was enough for me to decide, screw it, I’m going home and they could arrange my transport for that night or maybe I wouldn’t be so willing to play ball for so long next time.”

It’s not the first time she’s threatened the Court of Stars, and Riz knows it won’t be the last, either, but he also knows she’d never actually sit by for something as important as this, no matter how much they pissed her off. “Was it that bad?”

There’s a deep, deep sigh, and he can feel how the hand that’s between them grabs a fistful of the grass, as if clawing for some kind of purchase to ground her. …Or as if she’s reminiscing about someone she’d have liked to hit. “Yes and no,” she says after a minute, and something about how hollow and frustrated her voice is makes him open his eyes again to turn his head and look at her. Adaine’s eyes are open, but she’s still looking up at the sky, not over to him. “It was worth it. I really do think the framework for the accord they managed to put together is solid. It’s the kind of thing that I feel like is actually worth being paraded around as Oracle for.”

She sounds like she actually means it, too, and isn’t just saying it for the sake of defending how she had to spend over two months of her life, or parroting something she’d heard over and over. Still, Riz also hears how very clearly that isn’t the entirety of it. “But?”

She’s quiet for a long minute, and he doesn’t rush her. Eventually, she turns, not just her head but her whole body, pulling her arm up to pillow beneath her head as she gets comfortable on her side. It’s a little like they’re trading whispered secrets at a slumber party instead of lying in mostly-dead grass in Riz’s backyard in the middle of the afternoon, especially with how low her voice is when, instead of directly answering Riz’s question, she says, “My counselor at BCU suggested once that I go into politics.”

Riz can’t help it: he snorts, the mental image too funny. He loves Adaine dearly, and knows she could and would succeed at anything she puts her mind to, but the thought of her in politics? Politicians, especially the elected ones, are smooth, polished in a way that she isn’t, despite how firmly her birth parents had tried to force her to become so. People might look at her and see the pretty, small, blonde girl, but it takes no time at all to realize she’s so much more dangerous than that. Politicians try to round off all their edges until they’re neat and shiny like perfectly-carved jewels, hiding the imperfections with glitter, and Adaine’s more of a geode: still beautiful, still sparkling and incredible, but rough, with edges and crags sharp enough to draw blood at the slightest of touches, and he loves her even more for that.

She doesn’t return his laugh, or even smile. There’s still a frown on her face, and he realizes, much too late, that she clearly held the memory with less levity than he’d realized.

“Wait, what?”

Now, Adaine smiles, but it’s a little crooked, not quite amused. “She was a half-elf whose family had originally come from Fallinel, so she knew enough to know that I’m… not all that traditional an Oracle.”

Riz doesn’t know nearly as much as he’d like about the Oracles – with Fallinel’s reticence to move away from oral tradition at all and only really starting to reluctantly do so with the increased emigration in the last few decades, there’s just so little information available, even in Solace with its decent size population who can claim at least some High Elven heritage. There’s so little even Adaine knows about any from before Eleminthindriel, but from what they do know, ‘not all that traditional’ is the understatement of the century. “And we’re all the better for it,” he says firmly. He couldn’t imagine a world where Adaine would’ve fallen in line with the Court of Stars’ wishes and not been so desperately miserable and broken, but even more broadly, in the thirteen years since she’s become the Oracle, she’s used it for so much more than they would’ve had her do, stuck only in some stuffy room in Fallinel to administer prophecy when it suited them. Her divination had saved him and their party so many times, and helped them save the world nearly as often. She takes the role of Oracle of the People seriously; there’s a reason why she acts as figurehead for Solace just as often as, if not more so than for Fallinel these days, and it has nothing to do with the title or the powers and everything to do with how she’s used both.

(If someone had told Riz, that first day in detention, that that group of misfits would one day comprise some of the most well-known and well-esteemed citizens of Solace, he never would have believed it. …Or conversely, if the Solace of today could see how they’d started, diving into the buttholes of a giant corn monster and being taken down by tiny corn cuties, and how their beloved Oracle had bludgeoned a lunch lady to death with her own ladle, maybe they’d think twice about how highly they hold the Bad Kids in esteem.)

Her smile is affectionate and grateful, if a little lopsided. “She told me that I hadn’t had a choice in becoming Oracle, but I had had a choice in how I used it, and what was more, I was already learning to use it as leverage when I needed to. Fallinel also hadn’t had a choice in me becoming Oracle, but they’re stuck with me, at least for now. And we proved pretty early on that removing me from the equation wouldn’t be an easy task.”

Absolutely not. Fallinel had been stupid enough to try once when they’d tired of an Oracle they couldn’t control: with how thoroughly and effectively that plan had been foiled, and how much political and cultural backlash it’d caused both internally and internationally, Riz didn’t think they’d be so stupid to try again – at least so blatantly – anytime soon. Not that he wouldn’t love the chance to exact some (ideally, very violent) revenge on the ones who’d managed to slither their way out of any blame.

Still, even with how often her role as Oracle means brushing up against or working hand in hand with politics, he doesn’t quite see how one and one equals two yet. “So how does that translate to going into politics?”

“She said that that kind of attitude, that approach, would suit me well in it. Even at eighteen or nineteen, I already was in the unique position of having a voice that certain groups felt they had to listen to. In Solace, I already was gaining a reputation beyond that from our adventures, too. She said I had the chance to make effective change not just as the Oracle, but in politics, too, if I wanted. To not just be a figurehead who can comment on what is and what could be, but to actually change the current state of things.”

The argument makes sense, even if it feels reductive: Adaine’s never just commented, even when it has been on paper just making her opinion and what she’s Seen known. That feels too passive, too reductive for someone who’s never been one to just sit idly by. “Politics isn’t the only way to change things,” he points out instead.

The smile had faded a little as she’d echoed words from almost ten years ago, but now it redoubles. “I know. The thing is, she wasn’t wrong. And I’m sure I might’ve been able to go about it in my own way, especially because they’re stuck with me to a certain extent.” She sighs, and rolls back onto her back again, face upturned to the sky. “I didn’t want to, though. I wanted change, but I didn’t want to deal with all the power dynamics and performance of it all. I was still struggling, being apart from all of you, this family I’d made. I wanted to be selfish, and find parts of my life that weren’t tied to being the Oracle.”

“It wasn’t selfish,” Riz says with a frown. She’s saying it lightly enough, with enough kind of emotional distance that it’s not something he thinks he should be worried about, but he hates it, that she ever even thought it. He knew they’d all backslid some, the first year or two apart, and that they’d all made it through to the other side of it stronger in the end, but it hurts to think of the Adaine who’d become so sure, so confident in herself and her worth by the time they’d graduated high school, viewing herself as selfish for wanting something in her life that was just hers and didn’t belong to everyone else as the Oracle.

Adaine keeps lying on her back, but she turns her head to the side to grin at Riz, brighter and even fonder than any expression she’s had on her face since they came out here, clearly touched by him defending a decision she’d made nearly a decade ago. “I’m not saying being selfish was a bad thing. I knew then and I know now that I’m entitled to a little bit of it, I promise. And I don’t regret it in general. I’m sure I could’ve found success in it, especially with how much of my role as Oracle has become political, or politics-adjacent, but that also means I’m so, so aware of how much I would’ve hated it.” The smile disappears now. It’s not a frown, necessarily: it’s not sad enough for that, more contemplative. “Still. It was… so incredibly frustrating, and disgusting, seeing how long parts of this summit were stalling over petty power plays. Part of me couldn’t help but keep wondering what it might’ve been like, if people like me who did want things to change were a little more drawn to it instead of the people who thrive in the mire of it all.” There’s a long moment where he’s not sure what he could possibly say to that, and she seems to realize how introspective she’s become, because then she snorts and adds, “Or, you know, if I was allowed to punch people. That certainly would’ve had things moving along.”

Riz takes the joke for what it is, and laughs along with her. “Ah, yes, Adaine’s Furious Fists of Diplomacy,” he deadpans. And really, he’d pay to watch that.

“It’d be far more effective than the diplomacy we currently have,” she says, affecting something haughty that’s ruined by how clearly she’s trying not to laugh.

Riz snorts. “I’m pretty sure that’s how you get dictators.” She swats at him, and he grabs her hand and just holds it. “I guess if anyone’s gonna do it, though, I’d much rather it be you than… pretty much anyone else.”

She squeezes his hand back, but doesn’t say anything else, just lets out a little sigh, a noise he recognizes as decompression more than anything else.

He doesn’t have any answers for her, and he knows she’s not really looking for any, but as the amusement dies, he just watches her for a moment, trying to put into words the hollow, bittersweet feeling he knows so well. “It sucks sometimes, doesn’t it? That for how fucked up things were even when we were kids, it was almost easier when we could just… shoot everything.”

The noise she gives in response is half-groan, half-laugh. “You’re not kidding.” Her expression is a shade lighter now, though, and she beams over at him. “Still, I think we’re doing pretty okay for ourselves, all things considered.”

They really, really are. Maybe their respective jobs aren’t as satisfying as especially Riz had once childishly hoped and dreamed about, but the two of them, they’re good. They’re so much more solid in how they exist in the world now, and in their friends’ lives. “We’ll be doing even better if you get to actually stay put for a while,” he says, light as if it’s a joke, but selfishly meaning it so, so seriously.

“I am going nowhere,” Adaine says, firm and mulishly stubborn as she so often is, and he knows anyone who’d try to persuade her otherwise would be in for a hell of a fight. “Something will actively have to be destroying the world for me to be willing to leave Elmville for at least the next few months.”

“Good,” Riz says, grinning over at her.

She groans and throws an arm up, slinging it over her eyes. “Ugh, I just feel like I’ve missed so much. I don’t know how Kristen does it, these long stints away from home. Fig, either, but with how much easier it is for her and Ayda to get around, at least they could come back quick if they needed to.”

The words are on his tongue, about how she hasn’t missed that much, about how relatively steady and boring the lives of everyone who stays put in Elmville are these days, but he can’t quite get them out. On paper, maybe, things haven’t changed that much for him, but he’s still so aware of it, the little, significant changes whose whole feels so much bigger than the sum of their parts. He’d meant it, when he told Fabian he wasn’t ready to talk about whatever they’ve been figuring out the last month or so with anyone else. He’s still not. He just… didn’t quite realize how it’d feel, biting the words back, especially with Adaine. She’s pretty much the opposite kind of aromantic that he is; while she doesn’t necessarily understand or feel attraction the way that most allo people do, she doesn’t mind flirting, both doing it herself and having other people flirt with her. She’s even had a few incredibly short-lived flings just for the fun of it, but she has absolutely zero interest in anything long-term, zero interest in falling in love, zero interest in anyone falling in love with her, zero interest in any kind of strings. She’d never struggled with her identity the way that Riz always had, and still does to some extent: she’d figured it out, accepted it with a shrug, and never really worried about what it meant for her with a nonchalance that… honestly, probably would’ve bothered him so much more, if it hadn’t come at a time when he’d already settled on the term aroace. It didn’t matter, though, that their experiences with it were so different; the two of them had still bonded over it, the two Bad Kids who took pride in how they never lost their damn minds over hormones.

He doesn’t feel like he’s been losing his mind, at least not since he started making any sense of things. If anything, it’s been more of the opposite: a conscious, considerate kind of rearranging, one that they’ve put so much care into already. He kind of doesn’t know if he wants to tell her more than anyone else or if he’s dreading telling her more than anyone else.

“I’ve never stopped feeling like I’m missing things,” he admits instead, wishing it didn’t feel like a cop-out, almost like a lie for all that it’s still very much the truth. “Kinda hard when we spent years in each other’s pockets, I guess.”

Adaine just makes a ridiculous, affronted noise, and scoots and wiggles her way over to lay her head on his shoulder. “I know I should be glad that we’re all finding our way in the world, but I kind of hate it, too,” she says petulantly.

He grins. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.”

By unspoken agreement, they keep discussion lighter after that. Riz tells her about the embarrassingly bad junior agent training he’d witnessed the last time he was at the Council’s headquarters, including the one warlock he’d witnessed somehow hex himself and his partner and the barbarian who’d knocked himself out cold within twenty seconds. Adaine tells him about the night she’d been invited out drinking with some of the Solesian interns who’d been working at the summit, and how it’d turned into a wild goose chase trying to hunt down three wayward nineteen year olds who’d gone a hair too crazy at their first night off in a long time. It feels obvious, how much he’s avoiding talking about Fabian, and he tries to tell himself that it’s not all that different from how he’s not talking much about what’s been going on with Gorgug, either, figuring their barbificer can do that for himself on Friday. (It’s different. It’s so different. Fuck, can she tell it’s different?)

They’re laughing about the truly horrific first date Aelwyn had left midway through to go play backup for Riz a few months back (he hadn’t even known she’d been on a date at all until three days later, which Adaine finds funniest of all) when the door slides open and Fabian pokes his head out, face splitting into a huge grin when he spots them.

Adaine accidentally elbows Riz in the neck as she scrambles up, but he just waves her off, rubbing at it, and watches, laughing, as Fabian meets her halfway and scoops her up in a hug so strong her feet lift off the ground and he twirls them a little. She swats at him, making a big show of wanting to be let down, but her smile is just as wide. “Ugh, you’re all sweaty,” she complains once he puts her back on her feet, and he flat-out laughs at her.

“You were literally lying on the ground!” he says in a tone just as petulant as hers, almost bordering on whiny. “Which, you guys do know we have a huge, comfy couch inside, right? Way better than dead grass and dirt. That you have all over you, by the way.”

Adaine twists her body around to get a view of her back and legs smeared with grass and dirt, grimaces, and Prestidigitates it away. “I needed the sun after being cooped up in halls and offices for weeks. Pretty sure Riz needed it even more.” The last part is said very pointedly, and not even at Riz. “You’re slacking on the job, Fabian.”

Riz squawks in outrage, because hello, fully grown adult goblin, right here, can hear them? Fabian just scoffs in offense that Riz is pretty sure is all banter and no actual annoyance. “It’s been dark by the time I get home the past few weeks! How am I supposed to make sure he gets sun if there’s no sun left? I’ve been making sure he gets some sleep, at least.”

It’s an innocent enough remark, Riz knows, but he’s so glad Adaine’s too busy making faces at Fabian to see how Riz’s face erupts into flames. More to cover the way he can feel himself spluttering than anything else, he crawls up off the ground and says, “I’m literally sitting right here, you know!”

And really, it’s unfair that both of them look unimpressed as they look over at him. There’s a little bit of dark satisfaction, though, in seeing how Fabian’s expression twitches when he takes in how flushed Riz is, when he clearly clocks the reason why and a mild flush of pink shows on his face, too. At least he’s not the only one of them not completely cool and collected over this, even if Fabian recovers much more quickly, and starts loudly and dramatically regaling Adaine with tales of what she’s missed as they head inside and actually do get comfortable in their living room.

As the afternoon stretches later and later, Riz can’t decide if he’s glad or not, that they got this test run of trying to be normal and act like nothing’s changed, in front of just one of their friends before the whole gang on Friday.

On the one hand, Cass, it’s so for the better, at least in terms of keeping things quiet until they’re ready to talk about it. It means when the conversation lulls a bit and Adaine looks over at Fabian and says, “I’m really sorry about you and Lana, by the way. I know how much you cared for her,” all her attention is on Fabian, and there’s no one else around. Riz doesn’t have to immediately school his face, doesn’t have to immediately stress about what could possibly be showing on it. It’s just. He hadn’t forgotten, necessarily, that Fabian had broken up with his longtime girlfriend not even six weeks ago, but it just… it hadn’t felt like it, for obvious reasons. Fabian hadn’t even really been sad about it, unless it was just one of the things he’d worked through it in those first few days when he’d been grappling with everything on his own and hiding from Riz. There’d been so much else to deal with, to focus on, that Riz maybe had forgotten that that’s a thing that might come up, and he wonders if he should feel guilty about that.

If Fabian’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “Don’t be,” he says, his mouth going crooked with something that’s half-smile, half-grimace. “It wasn’t anything super messy or heartbreaking. She just pointed out that even if we cared about each other, loved each other, we weren’t really building a future together, and I didn’t really realize it until she said it, but she was right.” His eye flicks to Riz, just for a second, and back as he adds, “I love my life. I didn’t want to change it, and I didn’t really realize that that meant not wanting to change anything with her or for her, too, until then. I… couldn’t possibly be upset, that she wanted something different. She’s great, and deserves to find that with someone, and I’m good, I promise. I’m happy, and I’m really good.”

It’s honest and genuine, and, Riz can’t help but notice, strategic. He doubts Fabian was consciously, deviously trying to think of the best way to word it, if only because it’s not how he operates, especially with his friends, but if there was any way to explain it to her and not be pressed further on it, it’s like that. If there’s anyone who’d understand the sentiment, it’s Adaine, who’s never, ever liked the idea of changing her life around a romantic partner. She’d accept that at face value – and does, just offering him a sympathetic smile and a few words about still being sorry, and moves on without any other comments or questions about what that means for Fabian or how he’ll find someone new.

And that’s it, the other hand: with just Adaine, it feels so, so much more like lying. For all that he’s better about being vulnerable and open, Riz is still used to avoiding things, to steering conversations around things he’s not ready to talk about. He doesn’t always do it with grace, but he’s skilled enough and accustomed enough to it that it sometimes doesn’t even register that he’s doing it. But especially with his friends, he’s not used to outright lying. He’s never liked it, never felt good about the times when he has done it. This isn’t that, exactly, but it feels close enough to it. Avoiding the subject when in a larger group and there’s so much to talk about and so many different directions and people to focus on might still be awkward, but it’s something he thinks he’s prepared for, even if he’s still worried about how good of a poker face he’ll have if the subject skirts close enough to things he isn’t at all ready to offer up for conversation. Not volunteering anything when it’d been just the two of them had felt a little strange. Now, with both him and Fabian here, so aware of what they’re saying and how they’re even looking at each other and multiple times having to actively dance around the subject in ways that feels like they’re maneuvering her away from pressure points? It doesn’t feel good, and he hates that it’s the tiniest smear of black in an otherwise wonderful day getting to just hang out and chat and soak up the presence of one of his dearest friends, who he’d missed so, so much. He hates that when she spots the time on the kitchen clock and groans and says she promised to go out to dinner with Aelwyn after her sister found out Friday night was already claimed for their party, there’s even the tiniest bit of relief. He just… kind of hates this, even if he hates the other options even more.

It’s so, so good, though, clutching her at their doorway and all three of them beaming when it hits them all over again that it’s just goodnight and not goodbye again. Not for a while, if they have anything to say about it.

Riz doesn’t say a word when she closes the door behind her and takes off, just turns and buries himself into Fabian’s chest. Fabian’s arms come up around him instinctively, and they just stand there for a while, holding each other. It’s nice. It’s so, so nice, and maybe it should make him feel worse, how much better it’s making him feel, chasing away some of the complicated, muddy guilt and replacing it with something warm and comforting, but he can’t muster the feeling. When Riz finally lets out a deep exhale and pulls himself away, Fabian’s mouth downturns just a fraction. “You good, The Ball?”

“Yeah,” he says, and it’s the truth, even with the murk of unhappiness still hovering. “Just… didn’t realize how much it would also kind of suck, even if we don’t want to talk about it.”

The flash of emotions that cross Fabian’s face makes Riz feel like he isn’t the only one who’d felt strange and conflicted about it. “Any regrets?”

“No.” That, at least, is an easier answer. It hadn’t felt good, but that doesn’t mean he’s any more ready to just put it all out there for everyone to dissect and comment on. He knows their friends love them, that they’ll be happy for them no matter what kind of relationship they end up settling on and any jokes or teasing remarks or serious questions will be out of love and happiness and concern, not anything cruel or callous, but it’s just… he needs more time. They need more time.

Fabian nods, but whatever it is that’s making his smile feel weak, whatever’s carving the crease between his brow and the lines around his mouth doesn’t go away.

Riz frowns. “Have you changed your mind?”

At that, Fabian laughs a little, but it still feels off. “No. Not about anything.”

Something about how he says it, something Riz clocks in his face, suddenly adds up and it just… clicks, this sudden hunch. “Are… you asking if I have any regrets about not wanting to tell our friends yet, or about… everything?”

The way Fabian barely suppresses a wince is answer enough, even when he covers it with a wider smile and says, “What? No, don’t worry, The Ball, just. Making sure we’re on the same page. It’s all good,” and all but flees to the kitchen.

Riz just stupidly stands there for a moment, feeling the startled surprise give way to something small and hurt and frustrated, and then to just… this overwhelming wave of relief and satisfaction, so sudden that he almost feels light-headed with it, the clarity. Fuck. He’s hurt at the idea that there’s even a part of Fabian that thinks Riz might change his mind. He’s upset at the idea of losing this. He actually, really wants this. Thank fucking Cassandra.

Maybe it’s stupid, that he still hadn’t been sure, but it’s just. It’s been like he can’t see the forest for the trees, can’t see the shape of his feelings through all the parts of it. It’s been so hard to wrap his head around this, how small the changes have actually been versus how huge they’ve felt. How ‘partner’ feels both exactly like ‘best friend’ and also so, so different, and how much he’s really, truly okay with that and how he’s still so uncertain about it at the same time. How it feels easy, but not at the same time, and how the parts that are easy feel almost too easy, and he obsesses over that almost as much as he does over the parts that feel more stilted. How unclear it’s been what he even wants in a not-abstract way versus how clear it is that he hasn’t disliked anything that’s changed.

There’s just been this weird, persistent feeling, even through the happiness, like he’s been looking for the catch. Not because he thinks Fabian is waiting to pull the rug out from under him or anything, but because this doesn’t feel like he always thought romance was supposed to, and he hasn’t been able to really tell if that’s because this isn’t quite romance, or if it’s because he’s just had it wrong all along, or if it’s neither, and it’s maybe a kind of romance, but it’s not like everybody else’s romance, or if it’s some weird, mashed-up combination of all three. Aelwyn’s words from a few weeks ago have kept circling in his brain, about how maybe it’s just the desire to pick it apart, to come to some kind of understanding about it and nothing more.

And maybe there is still that, to a degree, but the quiet worry he’s done his best to bury, that once he does come to some kind of understanding, the things they’d built on the way to getting that understanding suddenly wouldn’t feel so comfortable and appealing, doesn’t seem as real a threat now. He’s more sure now than he has been: he wants this. Not just the individual parts of it, the chaste touches and cuddling in bed and adoring smiles and patient words, but the entirety, whatever the shape of it ends up being. Whether they end up calling this a romance or not-romance or whatever exists in between or outside of that or all of the above, it still matters, but… maybe not in a way that actually changes anything. He wants this, not because he wants to investigate it from the inside, or because he knows Fabian wants it, or because he’s scared of how things might be strained if they tried to go back to uncomplicated, purely platonic best friends. Riz wants this for himself.

He follows Fabian into the kitchen, feeling a small flicker of hope and relief in his chest that just grows as he watches Fabian rummage through the refrigerator, so clearly making a show of being casually busy and not continuing whatever conversation he’d accidentally started with his question. Maybe it’s not the most kindest response, clambering onto one of the barstools and watching with an almost indulgent smile instead of addressing the almost-visible stormcloud of unsurety roiling around his best friend, but it’s endearing, the way that Fabian thinks he’s being subtle. It isn’t until the broad line of his shoulders starts to actually look tense, until he keeps rummaging but nothing comes out of the fridge and onto the counter, until it becomes clear that he’s more hiding his face than anything else, that Riz feels like he needs to stop this in its tracks.

“Fabian.”

“Yeah?” he says into the fridge.

“I'm not going to change my mind.”

Fabian goes still for a few seconds that stretch out so, so long, and then his shoulders slump. He closes the fridge door but doesn’t turn back around. “I’m not– I wasn’t trying to say you were. I’m not trying to say you have to be sure, either. You can change your mind whenever you want–”

“I know,” Riz says simply. “And you can, too.” Now, Fabian turns to look at him. There’s something strange on his face, apologetic and defensive and unsure all at once. When he doesn’t immediately open his mouth to say anything, though, Riz does it for him. “I really don’t think I’m going to. And I really hope you’re not going to, either.”

A small, humorless laugh that’s almost as much a sigh comes out of Fabian’s mouth, almost hidden behind his hand as he drags it down his face. “I’m really, really not. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying– I’ve just been… in my head, a little.”

Riz can’t help but snort. “Relatable.”

He doesn’t even say it to be funny, but that doesn’t mean he’s not pleasantly surprised to see the hints of a rueful smile appearing at the corners of Fabian’s mouth as he finally takes a few steps away from the fridge and closer to Riz. “Find anything useful in there you could lend me?” he jokes.

Riz doesn’t answer right away, just lets himself look for a moment, take it in. He forces himself not to pick it apart, not to analyze every minutiae of the expression on the face he’s so, so familiar with, and just sits with it. He’s not always good about sitting with emotion. He tends to take the relevant ones in whatever moment he’s in and wield them in a hurry, racing away from the less relevant or the less comfortable ones, but he tries now. He does his best to hold onto the newer, the cautious hope and determination and anticipation, and to let them settle in with the rest, the affection and trust and faith that he’s held stubbornly, greedily, wholeheartedly, for so much of his life, so long that they’ve long since been ingrained in him, just as much a part of him as his skin and bones and brain. “Certainty,” he finally says. “But you’ve had that longer than I have.”

It’s strange, the way that he can see how clearly the hope and regret mix on Fabian’s face, the steely determination at odds with something soft in the silver of his eye as he rounds the kitchen island to stand next to where Riz is sitting. “I’m not– it’s okay, if you’re– I don’t want you to feel–” he says, stumbling over his words.

With Riz on the barstool and Fabian standing, they’re almost at eye level, and it’s easy to reach out and grab Fabian’s hand, to tug him forward until he’s standing in the space between Riz’s knobby knees and no longer babbling and Riz can pull him into a hug. His chin hooks over Fabian’s shoulder, and Fabian’s hands feel warm and big and solid around him, splayed out across his back like this. “I’m not saying I’ll never overthink anything, or second guess myself, or spiral or anything, because we both know that’d be a huge fucking lie,” he says, and he feels more than hears the way Fabian laughs into his shoulder. “But I trust you. I like this. And I… I want to keep it.” It’s mostly the look on Fabian’s face when he pulls back, like he’s not sure what to think, that makes Riz quirk his lips up and say, only barely teasing, “Can I keep you?”

Mission accomplished: there’s hardly any room for doubt or unhappiness with how the joy and affection and exasperation explode across Fabian’s face. “Really, The Ball,” he drawls as he reaches out to brush a curl off of Riz’s forehead. “For someone so smart, it’d be really stupid if you haven’t realized yet that you’ve already got me. So embarrassing for someone who was Spyre’s youngest ever detective.”

Riz feels ridiculous, his grin mirroring Fabian’s, just as broad and goofy. “Guess I’m washed up.”

Fabian doesn’t even bother trying to keep a straight face when he tuts and shakes his head. “Peaked in high school, huh? Tragic, really.”

It’s so, so not smooth, it’s just as embarrassing and tragic as they’re joking about him being, but Riz doesn’t bother trying to think through how he phrases it when he knows there’s no way he won’t be awkward. He just blurts out, “If I said I wanted to try kissing you, would it completely ruin the moment if I end up hating it?”

There’s part of him that feels like, objectively, he should probably be offended that Fabian pauses a beat and then just cracks up, but Riz had already known there was going to be no way to approach this that wasn’t at least mildly ridiculous. Really, it’s better this way: making Fabian laugh has always been one of his favorite things, how big and bold it always is, how he shows the amusement with his whole body, letting his head fall back and his shoulders shake. It takes some of the pressure off this act that’s always carried this weird connotation, that’s been wrapped up in so much insecurity and puzzlement. It’s easier to remember, to focus on the fact that it’s Riz’s best friend that he wants to try this with. It’s not a big deal if it’s a little goofy and embarrassing and awkward, not with the sheer quantity of goofy, embarrassing, awkward things they’ve suffered through together over the years.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll survive,” Fabian says, fighting through the tail end of the giggles. The laughter is trailing off, but his smile is still wide and gummy and lingering on the brink of that joyous surprise when he reaches out to card a hand through Riz’s hair, letting it glide until he can curl it to cup around Riz’s jaw. “You sure?”

He is. He’s been curious, abstractly tempted to try for weeks now, but he’s glad he never actually tried to put it into words until now, when he feels more sure of where the motivation’s coming from, when he’s pretty sure he won’t spiral if it turns out he hates it. (Or if he likes it more than he expects he will.) “Yeah. Yes. Just. No tongue or anything,” he says, aiming for a joke in the hopes it’ll quell the beginnings of nerves that are trying to rear their heads.

It feels like it falls flat, but Fabian’s grin doesn’t falter. His eye sparkles a bit, and Riz gets the distinct feeling he’s being laughed at, just a little. Oddly, he thinks he’s fine with that; it’s easier, somehow, than if Fabian started getting serious and cagey about how much he respects Riz’s boundaries again. “Funny enough, I wasn’t planning on going straight in with tongue,” he says, and yeah, he’s definitely laughing at Riz, “but noted.”

He doesn’t ask if Riz is sure again, just leans in and closes the distance. He only hesitates right before his lips touch Riz’s, one last request for permission, and Riz leans forward the rest of the way.

It’s longer than a peck, but doesn’t last very long at all, just a few moments of Fabian’s mouth on Riz’s, not nearly long enough to really get a good idea of anything. It’s… fine? Riz can’t feel much more physically than skin on skin, not that different from any other place they’ve touched other than the feeling of his lips being a softer, a little more give underneath Riz’s own lips. There’s no fireworks, no fizzy feeling of rightness that surges up, nothing earth-shattering, nothing dramatic, but nor is it uncomfortable or gross or scary. It’s just… a kiss, and when Fabian gently pulls back, breaking the point of contact, Riz almost wants to laugh at the sheer absurdity. This is what his friends had been losing their minds over for years? This is what he’s been so intimidated by the thought of?

He needs more data, he thinks, and instead of letting Fabian pull back enough to look at him and presumably ask his thoughts, Riz just nudges forward again, lets their lips come back together again. It’s not awful, even if he doesn’t think he really gets it. He doesn’t know that he cares all that much about the points where their lips meet, for all that it’s supposedly the main event, but now that some of the pressure has been taken away from that, he starts to notice the rest. He can feel Fabian’s thumb stroking so gently, back and forth where it rests on Riz’s cheekbone. He feels the heartbeat under his own fingers as his hand comes up to Fabian’s neck, how it flutters and leaps. When their lips part again, he can hear the quiet hitch of Fabian’s breath, warm and damp against his mouth. There’s something a little more vulnerable, a little less steady to the closeness than a hug, and Riz doesn’t know if he necessarily likes it, but he doesn’t hate it, especially not when he can see the way Fabian looks at him when he does pull back enough for them to see each other’s faces, something hopeful and fragile and soft that Riz really doesn’t want to scare away.

“What’s the verdict?” Fabian asks in a voice that’s barely above a whisper.

Riz can’t help but laugh, almost as quiet. “…A little underwhelming,” he admits, but he’s smiling. “It’s… fine, I guess?”

Fabian’s smile only grows, apparently wholly undeterred by the lukewarm response. “Okay. Moment not ruined. We take those.”

Riz rolls his eyes fondly and pushes at Fabian’s chest, getting him to move back enough that Riz can hop down off the barstool. More because he can than anything else, he darts out and presses a quick kiss to Fabian’s cheek in the moment before he clambers down and delights in how Fabian’s face instantly goes bright pink, mouth dropping open as he makes a little noise of surprise. Riz doesn’t think he cares all that much about kissing, at least so far, but that part of it might turn out to be fun, he thinks, and grins. “Come on. Let’s figure out something for dinner.”