Lidea spent the entire walk back to the camping area deciding whether ey was going to confront Ivan a second time. He made the decision for em, approaching from the path that led toward the gaming arenas. He stopped in front of em, letting em share the shade of his lavender parasol. 

“Lidea.”

“Look.” Lidea poked him in the ribs. “I was willing to play your mind games, but it’s gone too far.”

“Oh, hell, you actually went to talk to her.”

“Are you going to help me or not? Just tell me so I can figure out what I’m doing with the rest of my day.” Lidea huffed, shoulders falling and rising in irritation. Ivan shifted his massive weight onto one foot and looked em over.

“This righteous indignation thing isn’t cute. I’m the one who made sure your little boyfriend got a free ticket, yet I’m suddenly the bad guy for not asking ‘how high’ when you say ‘jump?’”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“The Thýla is stingy with plus-ones when they arrange free tickets or have events. Internally, the board draws the line at being officially partnered in some capacity, legally or spiritually. We just don’t tell anyone that’s what we’re doing.”

“I never noticed…” 

“Yeah, that’s the point. I argued that if they wanted you to do this presentation without a fuss, they needed to give you an extra ticket for Childress, too. So, get him to help you with this. I’m sure he’s capable of it.”

Ivan shifted around em to move on down the road. 

“Why would you argue so hard to treat Sunny like my husband?” Lidea asked to the back of his shoulder.

“Because I have eyes,” he replied as he kept walking.  

“Run it again.” 

“I think we need to stop, Sunny.” 

“I can do it. Just crank it up.” 

Phyll sighed and flicked the switches in the base. Sunny let the magic wash over him, looking for a frequency to hold on to. Constantine had built this thing to work with greenwitch and more standard variegated magicians. This wasn’t built for someone like Sunny. The frequencies were outside his range. 

But he told Lidea he’d help em, and that was what he was going to do. 

Sunny sunk his shoeless feet into the ground, grabbing the parched grass with his toes. There were two pieces of fruit on the ground between him and the machine. The goal was to freeze one and steam the other, plying two strands of magic at the same time. In a real-life scenario, a single magician would just do one after the other as quickly as possible. Two magicians would take an apple each. It wasn’t actually that impressive. With the machine, he could theoretically do both simultaneously. From a technical perspective, it had a lot of really interesting use cases beyond cooking fruit. 

Heavy on “theoretically,” though.

He had to match the output of the machine first, force feedback with it to get control from the outside, and then branch two strands of magic. It started fine at first, even working at a higher frequency than he was accustomed to. Then his bones popped against each other, muscles trying to pull away to make space for the energy that was moving through his body. He bared down, trying to compress. His vision went spotty, breath hitching.

This was stupid. 

Why was he doing this?

“Okay. We’re done. You’re done.” 

Phyll shut down the machine. Hir hands came around Sunny’s jaw and lifted his head for a better look.

“Pupils are huge, and your nose is bleeding. You’re not doing this.” Sunny felt Phyll wipe under his nose, and blood came away on hir sleeve. Sunny fell back to sit in the grass, letting his bloody nose drip free. 

 “Why are you pushing this hard?” Phyll asked.

"Because I asked em to marry me, and ey haven't said yes, yet. Not really. And I'm going to have to tell em about Echo one day. I'm going to have to tell em about a lot of things. Things no one knows about."

Phyll’s hands were a little less gentle as ze touched fingers to his shoulder and chin. 

"And when that all comes to light, I want to be the person who made eir life easier, not harder. To make up for the rest of it."

Phyll chuffed.

"Yeah, hate to break it to you, but you’re not exactly making anyone’s life better if you have an aneurysm. Your priorities are fucked up." 

"Sunny, holy shit."

Lidea saw his back first, his body hunching over, then his face, streaks of blood across his upper lip. Ey dropped next to him in the grass, hands wrapping around his face. Ey brushed blood from his nose. 

"You need to go to the hospital," ey said. 

"I'm fine," Sunny barked back. 

Ey knew better than to fight him on it. Ey got up and ran eir fingers over the filigree. Ey turned it on at the base then flicked it off immediately. 

"Shit…" ey sighed. "Yeah, no one's turning this on. It's not supposed to do this. Something broke. Maybe when 

Ajax…I don't know. I'm not an artificer. But it's putting off an antagonist wave."

"Wait…how…shit…if it's high frequency, I wouldn't have felt it. Shit." 

"And you were trying to feedback on it…" Lidea dropped to squat in front of him, exploring the angles of the machine. "Never do something this reckless again. Ever." 

"Yeah…yeah okay." Sunny pinched the bridge of his nose. "You smell like vampire." 

"Yeah, I've gotta run you through my day so far." Ey found an apple sitting in the grass. It was squishy, steamed inside the barrier of its skin.

There was something deeply satisfying about spending the latter part of the day watching handsome people in armor smash at each other with various weapons. An axe met a shield, and the stadium erupted in cheers. 

"Who are we rooting for, again?" Sunny asked, leaning his head against Lidea's shoulder, reaching into their shared box of caramelized popcorn. Phyll had broken off to return to hir other friends, threatening Sunny with a good time later. A threat neither of them would be following up on.

"Gal in blue is from my hometown, so that one." 

Sunny squinted down at the fighters. 

"You're from Apolais?" he asked. 

"Have I really never brought it up?" Ey took eir own handful of popcorn and munched. "We don't talk about things from when we were growing up, do we? Just kind of left it all behind."

"We don't have to," Sunny said sharply. 

"I feel like it should get hashed out eventually. Secrets make bad bedfellows." 

"Hm…" Sunny felt his hands clench, and he forcibly released them. Lidea saw it out of the corner of eir eye, but didn't turn eir head. That had made him nervous. Whatever ey had said had agitated him. Ey threw eir arm around him to change the mood of conversation.

"We've got time. Don't have to rush it."

They both settled into silence, watching the fight and pretending that something dark hadn't dropped between them.