Chapter Text
You close out of Trollian and just stare at your palmhusk, flicking through your app roll with no purpose at all. The ache in your right temple is starting for your spine and you need -- a week of sleep, your migraine meds, a cocoon to die in. Something. AA doesn’t hate you, but she’s also mad that you thought she’d hate you. Which makes you worry she’s eventually going to hate you, but if you keep on that route you’re definitely going to explode.
The worst part is you’ve still got more than an hour to burn, and no charger to plug in your palmhusk. You could bounce, but that would be even worse. RX wouldn’t even be mad if you left, just ~disappointed~, and you wouldn’t do that to your kismesis. Almost-kismesis. Hornscraping hell, how are you even supposed to ask her out if you can’t get through one challenge? Cause AA’s right, RX absolutely put you up to this. Whether or not it’s pitch to take you to a pale parlor, the least you can do is stick it out in the waitorturing block. Maybe if you turn the brightness down, your battery will hold and you won’t have to read any human magazines.
Unfortunately, you don’t get very far on your walk of shame. You open the door and collide with a solid wall of Tavros, who is lurking just outside in true creepy butler fashion. Water sloshes onto you from the mug he’s carrying, because of course, you smack that with the door. Of-fucking-course.
“Sorry!” Tavros yelps. “I thought you um, might like something to drink.” He genuinely looks distressed, like he’s a piece of shit because you’re a clumsy douchebag.
“It’s cool,” you say faintly, even though it’s not. Why are you being so fucking nice to me? You want to snarl, but you aren’t stupid. You know the reason. RX is paying him through the cartilaginous nub to pretend like you’re not a disaster. You could at least act like you appreciate it.
You bite your lip and step back into the block, giving him space to follow you in. He gives you the mug, as if that makes this any less awkward.
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
Tavros fidgets with a string on the front of his uniform, twirling it around and around a thick finger. He really does look like a butler, watching your every move.
“I’m…” ‘Okay’ isn’t the word, but you use it anyway.
His eyes flick to your silent palmhusk.
“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble.” Like it’s even his fault that you can’t manage your quadrants. You made him feel like that, didn’t you?
“I’m sorry for wasting your time,” you say. “I talked to my moirail. It was a misunderstanding.”
Tavros shakes his head. “Technically, it’s your time. I’d be here regardless, so.”
“So,” you echo, like the awkward squawkbeast you are.
“We still have time, if you wanted?” he says. “It’s your call.”
Exactly the last thing you actually wanted, another decision you can fuck up. You pinch the bridge of your cartiliginous nub, right above your glasses.
“It’s just butler massage, right? I don’t lay on your couch and talk about my lusus or whatever.”
Tavros’s ears flush a fascinating muddy-grey.
“That’s uh...we don’t do that here,” he says, a little sharply. “If that’s what you’re looking for, I would have to ask you to leave. Um.”
You actually laugh at that. Dammit, you hate it when you giggle-snort.
“Fuck no! My lusus was a goddamn idiot. And my moirail would actually kill us.”
“Right.” Tavros nods. “I can stay away from pale trigger points, if that helps?”
“It would,” you say, relieved.
Tavros gives you a tentative smile. His largest fangs poke out like blunt barkbeast teeth.
“You’re not the first client I’ve had with a moirail.”
“Well, I’ve never been to a ‘spa’ before so. Yeah.”
‘ So, yeah? ’ Ughhh why. Maybe if you’d had this conversation in the first place, you could have been a suave and competent individual, instead of spazzing so bad AA had to deal with you. Is this what highbloods do all the time? Go to a parlor and talk about Boundaries and negotiate service without deciding your spade’s fucking up your diamond?
(Probably not. Like highbloods give a shit about boundaries.)
Tavros takes a few steps forward, still keeping his chin up and back to show you his throat.
“It can be about pain relief,” he says in a low, soothing voice. “Can you tell me where you hurt?”
He’s so earnest. Like he just knows that you do, and he actually wants to do something about it. You consider lying just to get him back. But RX’s not around to be annoyed by your self-deprecating schtick, so why bother.
“Where don’t I hurt?” you snort. “Pan, mostly. I get headaches.”
And neckaches and strut aches and everything in between, but who’s counting. You’re a funhouse assortment of genes. It’s amazing your mutated ass is breathing at all.
“May I see?”
“I guess?” You plant your feet and brace yourself for prodding. You may not have seen a doctorturer in sweeps, but you kind of remember how it goes.
Tavros stretches his hands out so slow, however. You can practically see the HUD pop up predicting his next movement. He comes in close and asks again if it’s okay for him to touch you. He’s so warm and muscular and steady. He is not going to hurt you at all.
“Knock yourself out,” you tell him, and you’re not shivery from looking up at him. You’re not.
Tavros’s fingers squeeze down on the tops of your shoulders, that stiff join between your neck and your body. Two stripes of pleasure (pain?) lick into your posture pole and you can’t help the pulse of static through your eyes. Tavros startles and immediately eases up.
“It’s okay,” you hiss. You tap your glasses, the silly human ‘retro’ panes. “I’m a burnout. ‘S harmless.”
Biggest lie of your life, but you’re good at delivering it. The fingers return to your neck and test a divot higher at the base of your spine. Which is great, because, fuck. It hurts but it’s also good to have something push against you. Like the corner of doorway, or a particularly firm chair. You’ve been known to shove yourself against things until your crooked vertebrae pop.
“You’ve got a lot of tension in your shoulders,” Tavros says. He slips around behind you but keeps squeezing in light, efficient pulses, up along your neck and then over your spine. You are trying not to sway. “Do you spend a lot of time on a husktop?”
“I’m an apicultist."
“Mm,” Tavros says. “Do you ah, have any pain through the wrists? Lower back?”
“I guess? I don’t know, I don’t really notice it.”
His thick thumbs dig into two spots on either sides of your hips and the sudden pressure drives a spike all the way into your legs. It’s all you can do not to shoot sparks.
Tavros steps away and gives you a long, calculating look.
“I think we can ah, do something about this,” he says. “We’ve got about sixty minutes.”
“Okay,” you say, a little huskier than usual. It’s hard to be nervous when his hands are so powerful like that. Fuck. His squeezes were like three seconds and they were still light years better than anything you have ever done to yourself.
“I’d like to start you face down,” Tavros says. His voice is clearer now, gaining in strength. “If you would um, undress as much as you’re comfortable and lay down on the platform?”
That’s…kind of sudden, but okay. You tug at the hem of your t-shirt and Tavros yelps like a barkbeast.
“Uh, I’ll give you a minute!”
He bolts for the door in a way that might be insulting, if it weren’t also funny to see him forget his horns. He chips off a sliver of paint on the door frame as he absconds.
“I’ll knock when I’m coming in. Okay?”
He closes the door behind him, and the room seems to sag in on itself without his presence.
Left to your own devices you can be nervous again and you are struck once again with how damn weird this is. Being naked is vaguely concupiscent and that’s sort of comforting because then this is absolutely not pale, but you also got the impression from the human video that you should also be concealed under snuggleplanes at all time. Whatever. You shuck off your shoes and shirt and jeans but leave your boxers on. They’re covered in miniature cartoon femurs, a present from AA. It’s a relief, somehow, to be wearing something of hers.
The conciliatory platform seems more intimidating too, larger now that the stressassinator isn’t here for comparison. You’re not small for a Gemini-sub- Captor but it’s clear that everything here is sized for highbloods. You grit your fangs against the throbbing in your head and levitate the extra step onto the padded ‘bed’, wallowing like an oinkbeast to crawl between the sheets. Your entire backside still feels abruptly, terribly exposed.
It’s okay. Focus. You’re lying on your stomach but your prongs are all present and accounted for by your sides. There aren’t any restrictacles here, not even guardrails to keep you on the table. If Tavros tries anything too funny you can literally tear him apart by the atom. You close your eyes and think again about the human porno, smooth hands on skin, rubbing down your aching spine.
A timid knock breaks through the silence, one-two-three scratches like a baby purrbeast.
“Come in,” you yell into the platform.
You twist your head to the side so you can see Tavros coming. He lumbers in with the same tiny smile, one of his dopey fangs caught against his lower lip. He drags a rolling chair behind him, a tattered thing with an inexplicable emoji cow sticker pasted over a crack in the seat. Not exactly the picture of a helmsmechanic. You find yourself relaxing, just a little.
“Um. There’s a face cradle? If you wouldn’t mind scooting forward. It’ll straighten out your neck.”
Oh. The padded loop hanging off the end of the table. You can’t see your ears, but you suspect they’re warm grey. At least you didn’t fuck up so catastrophically that you’re laying the wrong way around. You wiggle forward on your belly until you can stick your face in the hole, which feels both weirdly obscene and very, very relaxing. The twinge in your neck relaxes into a very pleasurable ache.
“Is that a good height?”
Tavros’s chair rattles somewhere off to your left.
“I guess? I don’t fuckin’ know,” you admit.
“It should feel like it doesn’t hurt to hold your head up,” Tavros says softly. “It should feel good.”
You consider. “It’s good then.”
There is a soft click and the entire platform begins to lower, like you’re riding an elevator face-first. You are extremely proud of yourself for not jumping like a wiggler.
“Do you mind if I use a chair?” Tavros asks. “I’ll stand up when I have to, but it would be appreciated, ergonomically speaking.”
“I don’t give a shit.” That’s right, the gear on his legs. “What, do trolls actually say no?”
“Well um, I would answer but, historically speaking being honest with customers is not the best way to stay employed?”
You bark out a short, startled laugh. You can’t help it - you kind of like the guy. For all his wishy-washy bullshit, there’s something so comforting about him.
“Fuck don’t I know it,” you say. “Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks. Though I would prefer to stay conscious while I am working on you. Er.”
The edge of the snuggleplane peels back from your shoulders, exposing you all the way down your spine. You suck in a deep breath.
“Tell me if anything hurts,” Tavros says, suddenly serious. “I should know, but.”
“I’ve got a pretty high pain tolerance.”
“You shouldn’t need it, though,” he says with surprising strength. “If it hurts so bad it makes you want to tense, say, let me know? I don’t ever want anyone to hurt.”
Thick hands press over your shoulder blades and spread. It’s not heavy pressure, just a long, slow burn. Enough to let you know he’s there. You let out a startled gasp.
“Is that okay?”
“Yes?”
His fingers draw up into the center, back down toward the ribs and oh.
Oh.
Normally, you don’t pay much attention to your body. You have been at war with this meatbag for nearly ten sweeps and it hasn’t won the battle yet. The more he pets though, the more you can’t help but feel . Throbbing heat blossoms along your neck and sweeps down your back in long, luxurious strokes. It teases at the tense spots at your hips and the most you can manage is a vague hiss.
Tavros draws his hands away and it’s all you can do not to chirp like a lost grub.
“Do you have any sopor allergies?”
“No?”
The chair squeaks away for a pusher-breaking moment and you hear a gentle splashing noise. This time when he touches you there is heat and slickness, rippling heat like his prongs have melted into probing waves. He’s not even contacting you save the tips of his fingers and yet it feels like the platform, the snuggleplanes, the world itself, is giving you a big hug.
What the fuck. What the everloving fuck.
“There we go,” Tavros says in his soft, gentle voice. He rubs the slime in tight circles along your spine and it’s like he’s breathing life directly into your vertebrae. Your lower thorax is starting to go tight and you clamp down hard through your purrbox because you are not doing this, you are not that gross.
“Um, it’s okay if you want to purr,” Tavros says, like he read your fucking mind. “I won’t take it personal.”
“Nah, I’m good,” you lie.
There’s a spot toward the top of your hip that tingles when he presses and you squirm, belly pinched against the platform, as it blossoms into a line of pins-and-needles. Concentrate on that. It doesn’t hurt exactly, just tickles like something’s pricking beneath your skin.
“Are you left-pronged?” Tavros asks.
“Yes,” you admit reluctantly. You’ve wished for years you could be ambidextrous. You’ve dropped too many pizza rolls to believe that’s true. “Why?”
“You’re tighter on this side.”
He draws his knuckles down the same arc and the needles suddenly become unbearable. You shudder and spark right off the tip of your fucking biggest horns, like a dumbass pupa who’s just discovered what they’re for.
The pressure lifts immediately and Tavros switches to big, circular rubs over your ass and hips.
“It’s fine,” you grunt. “Don’t worry about the light show.”
“It’s okay. Tell me if this is too much?”
Like you’d even fucking know. His hands glide in toward your spine again and take your sanity with them. Tavros anchors your aching lower back with a single enormous hand and you chirp, startled.
“Breathe into my nubs,” he tells you. He sounds so steady and perfect and different from his nervous stammer before. “Relax.”
You have no clue how you’d even begin to do that, but it doesn’t matter. Heat pulsates through your back and something in your hip gives way in a gigantic shudder. Like the opposite of a spasm. You slump, dazed, into the platform.
“There you go,” Tavros croons. He pets his way to the crest of your rump and you shiver. “Good.”
You didn’t do anything to deserve him calling you good, you ought to say, but it feels so good to hear it. Praise does things to you that you can’t define and it’s hard to think past the warmth in your belly. It’s hard to think period. His hands are kneading steadily up your sides, twin points of radiant comfort. When they disappear there is a mild splash, and then there is even more sensation. Thick, high-class sopor, like the fancy hotel kind. You chirp again, trembling.
Tavros rattles his chair around to the far side and draws your right arm out. He takes your upper strut in hand and captures your pitiful wrist. When he digs his thumb into the meat of your forearm you whimper.
“Press against my hand,” he says, fanning his fingers out to meet yours. You do, and feel that same heat as the tightness in your palm releases.
He twists your arm into a series of positions, each time asking you to push a certain way. Each time praising you when you let go. You are starting to want so badly to purr again and you can’t. You can’t. You’ve never purred for anybody but AA and no matter how much she laughs at you, it’s special.
(And embarrassing. Even you get tired of your nasally, asthmatic wheezing. If you have to do it in front of a stranger, forget the fucking fleet, you will helm yourself into the nearest star.)
Warm heaviness sinks into your limbs like a thick snuggleplane descending from above, but when you wiggle, there’s no fabric.
“Take a deep breath,” Tavros says, almost sternly. The building pit in the center of your digestive sac eases.
He repeats the stretches with your other arm, flexing each of your curled fingers straight. You didn’t even know your palm hurt like that until he started working it. You didn’t realize your mouse hand was permanently cupped into that shape.
Shoulders, back, the back of your neck. His fingers scritch into the wild thicket of your hair but stay respectfully away from the bases of your horns. You still feel tingles racing through your scalp anyway.
“Okay um, if you could turn over?”
You make a drugged noise. Moving feels impossible. It takes you two tries, and you can’t even lift your head. Your ugly mutant face drags out of the face cradle and lolls against the platform as he guides you to lay on your back.
“Breathe,” Tavros tells you. His huge hands rubbing your forehead are so, so close to the pheromone glands on your face. You feel so good, you can’t even properly appreciate how shit you are for imagining those fingers lower. It’s so good.
“Breathe,” Tavros says again, and the imperative behind it knocks the last of your inhibitions free.
You breathe.
Time pulls out and loses all meaning, as warm and loose and happy as you are. The ceiling above pulses and dazzles with beautiful light. Tavros digs his blunt nails into the divots of your thoracic plate and you can’t help the little burble of sound that wells up.
“It’s okay,” he says. It is. He gently tips your head to the side and you melt into his great hands. He’s got you. You don’t have to hurt. He strokes tiny whorls of fire into the side of your neck and you chirp and chirp for more.
Your lower thorax is drawing up tight and you can’t, you can’t -
“It’s okay,” he rumbles back. “Let go.”
You close your eyes against the glowbugs on the ceiling and let your lower voicebox catch, singing your squeaky little song like you’re the proudest princess in the pile. Maybe you actually are. Tavros’s hands never falter, kneading out pain you didn’t even realize you were carrying.
“Sorry,” you slur, barely intelligible. His fingers are looping in circles right at the edge where your jaw connects to your neck and your pheromone glands ache. You want to mark him. He’s not your anything but he’s making you feel so good. The lights overhead is so bright it’s blinding even through your closed eyes.
Tavros clasps one of your thin hands in his again, trailing his strong fingers up to the join of your thoracic chest muscles. Everything tingles in his wake. How could even your nubs be this sensitive? He draws circles over your flat rumblespheres and it makes you want to cry.
“Be easy,” he says. You are. For once in your whole pitiful existence, you just... are .
You melt into Tavros’s hands, and let him take you apart completely.
Maybe it’s ten sweeps or maybe just ten minutes later, but his hands finally still, coming to a rest on either side of your temples.
“That’s um, all we have time for,” he says softly. “How do you feel?”
Like you’re floating, you want to say. Like you’re flying, and nothing is going to catch you and pull you down. You manage the weakest of hiccuping chirps.
“Ah, take your time getting up? It’s okay if you need to lay down for a minute.”
Tavros smoothes two fingers across the crease in the middle of your forehead, and it feels like a benediction.
You hear the gentle squeak as he rolls his chair away and you squeak back at it, unreasonably alarmed. Don’t leave me , you want to say. Your whole body is tingling all the way into your teeth and you don’t know how you’re supposed to deal with it.
He didn’t even come near your horns, for fuck’s sake. You’re utterly wrecked, and he didn’t touch your horns at all.
Tavros’s voice is an ansible away, a fleet-echo.
“I’ll be outside. If that’s okay?”
When he leaves, he takes all the oxygen in the room with him and you can’t help it, you burst into a mournful, messy trill. You’ve been exhausted and hurting for so long you didn’t know you could be so still and what the fuck does it say about you that you’re upset to feel relief?
Somehow you roll your sorry skeleton off the platform. Your lower limbs are so wobbly you barely believe they’ll hold you. You stuff yourself haphazardly back into your clothes, vaguely getting your shoes on the right feet. Every inch of your skin is still sticky with sopor but it’s not like it matters. You’re starting to realize these clothes were greasy fucking rags to begin with.
You just want to go back into the warm bubble you had. Is that too much to ask? Where all you had to think, and feel, and do, was press against him and breathe.
How are you supposed to go back to being yourself?
Tavros is farther away from the door this time, at least. You don’t hit anything when you open it.
“Would you like some water?”
He’s got another little stoneware mug, cupping it gently in his massive hands. He passes it to you and it is two sizes bigger, real now that he’s not the one holding it. You stare at it, too fuzzy to imagine what you’d even do with it.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. Perfectly normal question.
“Like I got hit by a four-wheel device,” you answer, perfectly snarky, only your chest hitches up like you’re going to cry, or purr, or something. You don’t know what your emotions are doing.
“I mean, in a good way. It was good. Fuck.”
Tavros’s lips twist into a concerned frown. He takes a step closer, visibly drawing in a breath. Warmth pools into your lungs and you sway on your feet. It doesn’t hurt. It’s so alien that nothing hurts, but it’s so good. You can breathe.
You might be so wobbly that you’re tipping over, but you can breathe.
Tavros steadies you with a careful hand.
“Um, can you sit down for me?”
Sure you can. You’re the master of sitting the fuck down, that’s you. Your knees buckle beneath you and Tavros squeaks as you stumble in his direction
“Ah, not here! Sorry!” he says, flailing frantically to catch you, and your weakness subsides like someone’s reached inside your posture pole and suddenly plugged back into your pan. Like someone’s turned off a switch.
Fuck you right in the lookstub, maybe you are sub-alpha intelligence after all.
“You’re a psion,” you realize all at once, gaping. A very subtle, but very effective one. You hadn’t even noticed he was influencing you, damn.
Tavros goes very, very still.
“Uh.”
Belatedly you realize what a dick move that was, holy shit -- he passes normal, maybe he’s stealth at work. You spaz and rush to explain yourself.
“It’s cool! It’s cool. I’m not a drone.” The last thing on this planet - on any planet - that you would do is snitch. “I mean, fuck - me too, yeah?”
You tap at your glasses, showcasing the glow you can’t quite ever truly hide. You would almost feel bad for lying about being a burnout, except well. He gets to pass, so you suppose you’re even.
“Can we…?” Tavros gestures nervously at the open door. After a second, you nod. You suppose if he were going to whammy you, you’d already be fucked. You’re just as vulnerable with the door open as with the door shut.
This is probably that shit they call ‘unhealthy risk-taking behaviors’, but since when has your life been anything other than a series of unhealthy risks?
Tavros pulls the door closed and leans against it. His prosthetic struts creak.
“I’m um, I’m not very good,” he says. “I can’t - I can’t read thoughts. I can’t control people. I mean, I wouldn’t, even if I could! Not like um, some people who are maybe, not the nicest people. I don’t want to be like that.”
“But you hit me with something,” you insist.
Tavros squeezes the back of one arm like he’s liable to rip it off. You can actually hear the bones creak.
“I can uh, feel things? Like, if you’re hurting a lot, or. I can make people feel good! If they’re having a bad day. Animals like me. I don’t know.”
Empath, you would guess, and an unusual one. Most of the ones you met in schoolfeeds were unidirectional receive-only, talking about how other trolls were ~feeling~. You don’t know if you’ve ever seen a bidirectional one this subtle.
“You can broadcast,” you say. “You know how rare that is?”
Tavros waves a hand at you.
“It’s just a little bit, usually. I don’t know what happened with you, er. I didn’t mean to get you so hard.”
He looks so fucking concerned, and you don’t think it’s his influence this time. (Maybe.) You stare at the block’s neutral grey walls and think of the waitorturing room’s whalesong, and it makes sense.
“I bet you don’t get too many yellows?”
Tavros shakes his head.
“Humans, mostly. And high-bloods.”
“Waders live in a literal bubble,” you say. “And humans are the stupidest shits the universe ever blew out its infinite stinking wastetunnel. You hit them with psi, it rolls right off. Use it on one of us, it’s a whole new thermal container of fish.”
“I’m sorry,” Tavros says. He bares his throat apologetically. “I didn’t know?”
You pinch the bridge of your cartilaginous nub like he’s making your headache worse, except you don’t actually have a headache. You can’t remember the last time you didn’t have a headache.
Come to think of it, your entire body is just...relaxed, exhausted and loose in the most pleasurable way. The constant background ache of your muscles has transformed into low-level relief. You could sleep like this, maybe. For the first time in two nights, you think you could sleep. It’s enough to make you want to be kind.
“Did you even take any schoolfeeds on psi?” you ask him.
Tavros fiddles with that infernal string on his uniform.
“Not as such, er. I may have skipped out on schoolfeeds. And homeworld. Uh.”
You dig around in your hoodie pockets, searching for a piece of paper or a business card or something. You find a crumpled McDonald’s receipt but no pen, so. Fuck this old-school writing-things-down bullshit.
“Look, I don’t know much either,” you lie. “But I do know a guy who knows a guy, etc. You got a palmhusk?”
Tavros nods. He tugs an ancient brick out of his back pocket, at least six versions behind the current model and so scuffed up you could scream.
“Gimme.”
You take it before he has a chance to think twice and swipe in your contact information, not your work alias, but one of your personal accounts. You also queue an install for the latest patch to CrockerOS, disable a bullshit feature that likes to eat 15% of his battery, and switch his ansible feed from the slowass public band to a fleet channel no one smart is using. 2^14 times faster connection, there, he’s welcome.
“Hit up that address,” you tell him, handing his device back. “They can send you some tutorials. And for fuck’s sake don’t whammy any more trolls until you know what you’re doing. You’re going to get your stupid ass culled.”
Tavros hugs his palmhusk to his chest. He is watching you very closely.
“Is that what you did?”
“Something like that.” You shrug. “Just paying it forward, I guess.”
RX should be proud. For the first time ever, you used one of her sappy human idioms without laughing.
Tavros opens his mouth and then closes it, and then shakes his head.
“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”
You rub behind your left set of horns, a little awkward now. It’s strange not to feel the usual prickle of tension. It’s going to take some getting used to, feeling good. You hope it’ll last long enough to stop being a novelty.
“So, not to be a damp snuggleplane, but I think my kismesis is waiting for me. Something about seaweed claws?”
“Oh! Right,” Tavros says. “Your package includes a nail treatment. If you’ll follow me? I can take you to the salon.”
He clanks his way back to the door, all smiles again, as if that heavy conversation never happened.
Pauses.
“Unless...um. If you wanted. Only if you wanted. Would you like one ‘for the road’?”
It takes you a second to parse that weirdass idiom, but when the meaning sinks in, you nod.
“Why the fuck not,” you say. Why the fuck not. You only pupate once. If you’re going to get culled, you might as well go happy.
Tavros reaches for your hand. When you take his, warmth flows directly into your veins.
“Be easy,” he says, looking right into your eyes. “Be still.”
And maybe it’s priming, maybe it’s the power of your own anticipation, but the effect hits you double, triple-time as hard. Every inch of your body goes heavy and your eyelids droops. Like you’re in a cocoon, like he has wrapped you up. Like his arms are around you, and they’re promising you’ll never ever hurt at all.
“Be happy,” Tavros says, and you are, you are. “You deserve good things.”
“You’re not my moirail,” you remind him thickly, struggling through the haze.
Tavros smiles.
“No, I’m not,” he says simply. “But uh, you’re a good person, and you deserve to hear that anyway.”
You pretend the moisture in your ganderbulbs is just extra-abundant lubrication.
After an aeon, the heat draws back, leaving you tingling and swaying once more. Tavros offers his arms until you can steady yourself, and then he carefully guides you through the door.
“Thanks,” you manage, light-headed.
“No, thank you. For the ah, ‘advice’.”
“It was nothing. Not like I know what I’m doing either.”
“It was everything,” he insists. “Although uh, if it’s okay for me to give you advice? It might be safer not to lie. I don’t think you’re very good at it?”
“The fuck?”
You peer at him blearily from the mess of your own bangs, vaguely pissed but too wiped to do much about that. Tavros beams back and taps the points of his own horns.
“When you are actually happy, you glow ,” he whispers. “And it’s beautiful.”
And then you can’t speak, because you’re back in the corridor, back in the world of fish and humans, and a planet that keeps its time by its sun. Your moirail is 2^16 light years away and your kismesis is a squishy alien disaster, and Tavros isn’t anything to you (yet) but you don’t hurt. It counts for something.
You take a step back toward the waitorturing block, back toward reality.
You breathe.