Chapter Text
It’s a cloudy October afternoon in Ordelia; the waters of Lake Howden are calm, still, and the slightest bit cold. They’re disturbed only by the occasional light breeze, and the gentle kicking of Linhardt’s feet.
“Ugh, nothing’s biting.”
The bobber on the end of his line has barely even moved since he cast it. It seems even the fish are tired today.
“I mean, we’ve only been here for fifteen minutes.”
Marianne is resting against his back, eyes on the house overlooking their little pier, and the flock of white birds currently perched on its roof.
“Well, yeah, but I don’t have all day.”
She turns to look at him. “Sure you do. We’re in no hurry.”
He sighs. “I guess not. But I am liable to get bored.”
“That’s your problem.” Marianne swings around to sit beside him, dangling her legs off the end of the dock. “You’re always thinking about stuff. You’ve got to learn to slow down once in a while.”
Linhardt shrugs. “There’s a lot of stuff to think about.”
“Alright.” She pats him on the thigh. “So talk to me about it.”
He hesitates. “Are you sure? I don’t want to bore you.”
“You never bore me.”
“Really? Never?”
“Nope.”
“I mean... if you say so.” He adjusts his grip on the fishing rod. “I was reading this article on Wikipedia the other day about this volcanic eruption 200 years ago that, nobody knows where it was. Like, we know there was a huge eruption, but we have no idea what volcano erupted.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. There’s sulfate evidence in the polar ice cores of a major eruption that year, and there’s a report from an observatory in Dagda of a large cloud blocking out the sun, and we know that the weather got cooler worldwide for several years, all of which point to there having been an eruption somewhere southwest of Almyra, but there aren’t any records that fit the criteria. So it’s, like, this huge geological mystery.”
“Huh.”
“And what makes it even weirder is that it’s supposed to have come from a region with very few active volcanoes...”
---
A little while later, the clouds have cleared up, the winds have gotten stronger, and Linhardt still hasn’t caught any fish.
He’s staring intently, disappointedly, almost angrily, down at the end of his line, trying to will a caught fish into existence. Marianne is leaning on his shoulder.
“Do I ever bore you?”
He looks up. “Hm?”
Marianne shifts. “I mean, do you ever think I’m boring?”
His brow furrows. “No, of course not. Why?”
“Well, I don’t know, I feel like...” She shrinks into herself a bit, resting her chin on her hand. “I feel like you’re usually running at a million miles an hour, and I’m usually... not.”
“So?”
“I dunno, sometimes I think that maybe you’d be, like... better off hanging with someone more your speed.” She looks down at the water, for fear of eye contact.
“Okay, first of all” - he turns to look at her, gravely serious, and puts a hand on her shoulder - “I would be stupid to give you up. Second of all, you better not be calling yourself dumb, because you’re not. And thirdly, I love you, and it doesn’t matter whether you ‘run at my speed’ or not.”
“I... it’s just, you always have so much to talk about, and I feel like I never have anything to talk back about.” She rubs her arm, embarrassed. “Sometimes I’m scared I don’t... engage you.”
“Mari, do you really think I would’ve stayed with you for four and a half years if I thought you were boring?”
“Well- no, I just...”
Linhardt sets the rod down for a moment to take her hand. “You ‘engage’ me just by being around. Plus, you’ve got plenty to talk about. I love listening to you talk about your garden, or your animals, or the books you’re reading, or, like, literally anything. You could tell me about a pigeon you saw on the way to work, and I’d be ‘engaged.’”
She looks up. “Are you sure?”
He squeezes her hand a little tighter. “Of course! You don’t have to talk about anything to ‘engage’ me. I just like to hang out with you.”
“I... thanks.” She shies away again. “Sorry, sometimes I just... have these kinds of thoughts, I guess.”
“Well, you need not entertain them.” He gently kisses her hand and looks her in the eyes. “You are enough, and I do love you.”
She smiles for the first time in the conversation. “I love you, too.”
His right hand still on her shoulder, they both lean in for a kiss. Suddenly, the wind kicks up, and his hair is in her face, but so is all the rest of him, so she really doesn’t mind.
“And for the record,” he continues when they finally pull apart, “you are most certainly not boring. Quite the opposite, in fact. I find you fascinating.”
Fifty feet away, something is biting at the end of Linhardt’s line, but he doesn’t even notice.