“Holy shit, you actually came.” Yasira threw his arms around Sunny’s shoulders and lifted him a little off the floor. “Lidea.” He offered eir a hug, as well. Yasira guided them toward a group of tables at the back of the pub. There were a lot more people than Sunny expected, but he at least recognized most of them. Lidea gently touched his hand but didn’t take it.

They had been dancing and flitting around the central conflict all day, but they didn’t feel steeped in dread. Not yet. For Sunny, at least, something had clicked over in his brain. He wasn’t going to lose Lidea. If ey hadn’t gotten tired of him during this six-week intensive after all the years that preceded it, then ey was in it deeper than he realized. They would get through this minor hiccup. 

You didn’t have to be a magician to work at a magic-craft oriented school. Yasira wasn’t one. But it certainly attracted that population. A group of any manner of magicians in one place made the ambient energy pulse and vibrate. They both sat in it, awash, letting it wrap warm and snug.

And neither of them had to carry the conversation. It was nice, Lidea thought, that ey didn’t have to do anything. That ey could just listen to other people, take in their stories as a nice little background narrative. Maybe ey had given Sunny a harder time that he deserved. Ey thought of themselves as an extrovert, a talker, but maybe that was only when ey framed themselves in terms of Sunny’s behavior. Here, ey was happy to sit next to Sunny and have everything sort of happen around them. Ey still wanted to know about his day and wanted him to be interested in eirs and actually talk about stuff, but had they really had a problem with that before? Ey had maybe started imagining a different version of their life together instead of just adjusting it to new circumstances. 

“So you’re friends with Sunny?” A human woman took the seat next to em and leaned in. Margot, a telekinetic magician that Lidea had only just been introduced to that evening. Sunny had temporarily moved to the other end of the cluster of tables to confer with a colleague on something that had them laughing softly. 

“Yeah,” Lidea replied. It was such a nothing question. Where the hell was ey supposed to go with that kind of opener? This was the reason Sunny didn’t talk to people. 

“I’m a guild mage,” Margot said. “I always thought I wanted to travel and work, but…”

"Not for you?" Lidea prodded. 

"Joined Guild Tessiar in college, but my parents encouraged me to keep after my degree. Decided I'd get the teaching certificate, travel, then do magework and teach in the field. But you really need more traditional teaching experience before trying to do travel teaching. Then I met my spouse, and they weren’t really interested in being with someone who traveled for work. I made the choice to stay home. Then we got divorced. So…now I don't know what I'm supposed to do." 

"If you're looking for encouragement, it's never too late to do traveling work." Lidea took a sip of eir wine. Ey was midway through the second glass, working through them slowly. Still, there was a buzz in eir head and a warmth in eir cheeks. 

"Hm. Maybe." Margot finished the last quarter of her mixed drink in one swallow. "What's the love life like on the road? I've heard some of you guys can really get around." 

"I…um." Lidea hid from the question behind a sip of wine. "You're not wrong, I guess. Not really something I pay a lot of attention to personally." 

Margot leaned in a little closer, arm skating along the back of Lidea's chair. 

"I mean," she said, "If you're never in one place for too long, not like there are consequences. You can just…hook up and move on. No attachments." 

"Yeah. That's an advantage for some people." Lidea leaned away. Hard. Was this flirting? Ey had never been good at noticing flirting and was terrible at doing it back. Ey cast down the table at Sunny, but he had moved. 

"Margot!" Sunny was over eir shoulder, close to eir ear. "Back off. Lidea's not interested." His body was coiled in like a spring ready to pop. He wasn’t drunk, yet, but the tops of his cheeks were peachy with inebriation. A few people half-looked down the table but glanced off before it could turn into staring. 

“We’re just talking, Sunny. Calm down.” Margot moved away, and Lidea realized how close she had actually gotten over the course of their brief conversation. It wasn’t a threatening or even necessarily unwanted closeness. There was a point in eir life, a younger age, when ey would have welcomed a little of this kind of attention. Right now, though, it was too much. A pressure that made eir skin crawl. 

It also felt like a betrayal. 

But to whom exactly?

“You’re not just talking,” Sunny insisted. “You’re flirting, and Lidea doesn’t like it.”

“Lidea can speak for emself.” Margot had kept her voice level, but now it was lifting a little. 

“Ey’s trying to be polite.”

“Okay,” Margot turned back to Lidea, more serious this time. “I recognize that Sunny’s an intense guy, but you let him speak for you like this? He’s not your father, and he’s not your husband.”

Sunny’s fist clenched. Lidea’s reflexes kicked like a flash of lightning shooting down eir limbs. Eir fingers circled Sunny’s wrist, pinning it in place. 

“Let’s go. We’re going.” Lidea threw enough cash to cover both their drinks on the table, then surged up, dragging him outside into the cold of the night. Ey moved quickly, pulling him away from the pub and down the street.

This part of the borough nearer Giddington Academy was dotted with small, partially walled-in parks, and Lidea yanked him around through an opening. The chest-high walls blocked off enough of the sounds for it to almost seem quiet. Ey found a bench under a streetlight and dragged Sunny in front of em until they were eye level with each other. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” ey asked. “Were you actually going to fight her? Do you know how insane that is?”

Sunny raked his hands down his face then locked them behind his head. 

“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” he mumbled. 

“You sound like it, too, so…I don’t know…maybe get your shit together.”

Sunny did a small turn, hands still clasped behind his neck. He huffed and puffed a few times. His guts were ready to rattle apart, the bile ready to bubble up his throat at the slightest provocation. There was no going back from any of this. Only through. He took a few steps back toward Lidea and let his body take over the last half of the motion. 

When his lips met Lidea’s, whatever pressurized thing that was living in his chest burst and boiled out, burning his muscles and bones. He put his hands around Lidea’s jaw, terrified ey would pull away. 

Ey didn’t. 

The initial surprise of Sunny kissing em like this clipped quickly through a constellation of emotions. Confusion that it was happening. Anger that he had done it without express permission and consent. Acceptance that Sunny, of all people, kissing em wasn’t really that big of a deal considering everything else that came before it. Then confusion again that ey liked it. Ey liked it a lot. Enough that ey started kissing him back within half a moment. 

Eir hands touched the outside of Sunny’s hands where they were resting on eir face and neck. Ey pulled them loose and dropped them down, weaving their fingers together. Sunny moved forward until he was standing between Lidea’s legs. They didn’t know what to do with their hands, trying to break away in various turns before settling back into the grip they were currently holding.

“Fucking finally, damn.” 

Sunny sighed as he pulled away gently. Yasira had tracked them down in the brief span of time since they had stormed out. 

“We’re gonna go home,” Sunny said. 

“Yeah, you are,” Yasira winked.

“Shut up, not like that.” Sunny pinched his nose. “Can you smooth things over with the others?”

“Why do you care? Your contract’s over, for now.”

“Just…please.”

Yasira gave a flick of his hand and moved off beyond the wall. 

Sunny turned back to Lidea and kissed em on the forehead. Through, not back. 

“This doesn’t suddenly fix everything. A little kissing in the park.” Lidea sat at the table picking at eir oatmeal while Sunny puttered around the kitchen. 

“And back at home on the couch. Then this morning in bed.”

“That’s all been you.” Lidea pointed a spoon at him. “You broke the seal, and now you’re getting overly bold.”

“You’re not stopping me,” Sunny countered. 

“Shut up.” 

“No.” He moved away from the counter specifically to place a series of kisses and up and down eir jaw. “I found us a job.” 

“Wh-what?” Lidea moved all eir focus back to Sunny. 

“Monday after you’re done with the print shop. Ruins research group needs some extra mages on hand to help with equipment management. Artificer college put me onto it.” 

“I’ve never really been out in the jungle.” Lidea considered the shape and color of eir oatmeal. “We don’t have to do that. Go on jobs. We can start…changing how we do things.” 

“You’re bored,” Sunny said simply. “You’re not ready to give up traveling. So we go on jobs. For now.”

“And you’re…okay…with that?”

Sunny stopped mid-task to drop into the chair across from em. He flicked his fingers that ey should hold his hands. The mood grew very serious, very quick. 

“The only thing I want right now is to be with you. So where you go, I go. Until you get tired of me.”

Lidea chuffed.

“You know that won’t actually happen. I can’t imagine it.”

“Then you’re stuck with me. We’ve already established that.” Sunny got up to go back to mindlessly wiping the countertops down. Ey watched his back for a moment. 

Ey loved him. Maybe was finding the closest thing to “in love” that ey’d ever experienced. But ey’d wait to tell him when he wasn’t so smug about it.