Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Chase Space kids had a true gift for showing up in the kitchen right when food was ready and not one second earlier.

It wasn't a question of knowing exactly what time to appear. Blitzen didn't make breakfast most mornings when he was going to the shop; he'd just had a little extra time on this particular morning, and had decided to throw two dozen eggs in a pan. So they couldn't have predicted it, but like they'd been drawn by the siren smell of scrambled eggs and bacon from three floors above, Jess and Shafik popped into the doorway just as Blitz was lifting a stack of plates off a low cabinet shelf.

"Bacon?" Jess asked, hopeful.

"Bacon," Blitzen confirmed, flipping said bacon onto a plate.

Jess stuck her head back out into the hallway and bellowed, "BACON!" at a volume that could have woken the dishonored dead in Helheim.

"Jeez, kid," Blitzen said, rubbing at his nearer ear. There were already distant thundering footsteps on the stairs. "You ever think about a career in auctioneering?"

"Feedback noted," said Jess. She nimbly ducked around Blitz, grabbed two plates, and passed one to Shafik and started piling the other high with eggs. "Adding it to the list."

Blitzen handed Shafik a yogurt from the refrigerator. "What else is on the list?"

"Museum docent," said Jess promptly. She stuffed a piece of bacon in her mouth. "Astronaut, trapeze artist, IT security administrator."

Bemused, Blitzen stepped back as the other kids started flooding into the kitchen. "Not sensing a theme here."

"That's 'cause there isn't one," she sing-songed brightly. She dodged her fellow diners and escaped to the dining room with her plate and her ever-present shadow Shafik in tow.

Alex Fierro filtered in, yawning, at the back of the hungry pack, still wearing green and pink pajamas with two-toned hair askew.

"Alex! I didn't know you stayed over last night." Blitzen critically eyed the already much-diminished state of the pan of eggs on the stove, as the kids chattered and filled their plates. "I would've added another dozen eggs."

The new kid, who Alex had been helping settle in last night, laughed. All the other kids, who had seen Alex Fierro eat, knew Blitz meant it. Einherjar appetites were no joke.

"It's cool. It'll be a light snack," Alex said, casually filling a plate with what would have been a monstrously large portion for most humans. "C'mon, Jay; we'll make the introductions."

Saluting Blitz with a fistful of bacon, Alex herded the new kid to the dining room. "Hey, can't sign, too much bacon," Alex said to someone in the hallway as the two of them passed.

Hearthstone was lowering his hands as he stepped into the kitchen. He looked faintly amused and there were still a couple of red pillow creases running up one side of his face. Blitzen smiled reflexively, and the corners of Hearthstone's mouth rose as the two of them made eye contact.

Blitz's smile broadened. He held up the still-hot mug of coffee he'd set aside for Hearth. "Morning." Standing in the breakfast line ahead of Hearth, 15-year-old Madison blinked at Blitz, then turned around in time to see Hearth making grabby hands at his coffee.

"Oh!" said Madison, and they tucked their empty plate under their arm and painstakingly signed, Hello, H! in their clumsy ASL. Blitzen made a mental note to remind them that people generally didn't use name signs unless talking about someone in the third person, or unless they really wanted to make a point.

Hearthstone lightly ruffled Madison's hair in greeting as he stepped past to claim his coffee from Blitz. He cupped the mug in both hands, parking it right under his nose, and shut his eyes in apparent satisfaction. Not a morning person, Hearthstone was almost as bad as the kids when it came to following the smell of breakfast. He made up for it by preparing plenty of lunches and dinners, and by being, well. Hearth.

Blitzen waited for him to open his eyes. Hearth's eyelashes flickered when he finally did. "You probably have caffeine for blood, at this point," Blitz told him.

Hearth made an equivocating face as he set his mug down on the counter. He signed, Delicious blood. He started opening and closing cabinets, then sighed and turned back to Blitzen again. Travel mug?

Blitzen had already fetched one for himself; he said, "Above the sink," with a point to the cabinet in question. Hearthstone reached up for it in one long, easy stretch, and Blitz looked him over and finally registered that he was already fully dressed for the day, including a heavy leather jacket, his prized green and pink scarf from Alex, and boots.

Blitz brightened and waited for Hearth to pour his mug of coffee into a travel tumbler and look at him again, so he could sign, You're coming to the store? More specifically, what he actually asked was, You store you? but, after years of friendship with Hearth, Blitzen was well used to mentally flipping back and forth between English and ASL syntax. "I'm working on a new concept for the window display, for winter — I'm thinking funhouse mirror, I'm thinking New Year's Eve, it's gonna be big! You know I could always use somebody taller than Madison or me—"

Hearthstone was shaking his head. His expression was, as usual, subtle, but Blitzen thought he could read both determination and some unexpected hesitance in the set of his mouth. Visiting I-N-G-E.

It was like an anvil dropping out of the sky; like getting stepped on by Vidar's giant foot. Blitzen's heart leaped into his throat. He yelped. A-L-F-H-E-I-M?! He immediately threw down the pan he'd been planning to scrape out, and yanked free the knot on the apron protecting his wool suit trousers and mint dress shirt. I'll be ready in five minutes. Need my helmet, my navy cravat…

He was already running through the equipment list in his head: his emergency parachute, obviously, and his thickest crepe veil to drape over his pith helmet for protection against the bright Alfheim sunlight; probably some rope, because you never knew when you were going to need a good coil of strong rope, and definitely a fistful of expand-o-ducks—

Hearth lifted his hands quellingly even as he shook his head. Will be fine. No danger.

No danger? Blitzen asked incredulously, putting his right fist in front of his left and raising it twice in quick, vehement succession. "I was there last time!"

Different now, Hearth pointed out. It was a typical Hearthstone understatement. Sure, his horrible father was no longer there, in the form of an elf or of a murderous, treasure-mad dragon, but that didn't prevent the place from being a nightmare.

Doesn't mean it's easy, Blitzen argued. It was easier to sign — to not have to fight the lump in his throat at the thought of Hearth in Alfheim alone. You don't have to go alone.

Not alone. I'll be with Hulder. Inge and family. Instead of fingerspelling Inge's full name again, Hearth raised his pinky for the letter I with the rest of his fingers closed, and bobbed the sign twice. When he lowered his hands, he briefly touched the gold woven bracelet at his wrist. It was a subtle move; the kind of motion that Blitzen never would have noticed on anyone else. But Hearthstone wasn't anyone else.

Don't need you to come, Hearth signed.

Blitzen's stomach gave a strange, unfamiliar flip. All at once, he didn't know what to say, and the sheer wrongness of not knowing what to say to Hearthstone made him feel like his brain had unexpectedly lurched in his skull; like the Nine Worlds had shifted when he wasn't paying attention, and now he didn't know where to step that wasn't full of invisible lava.

There was a soft clattering sound, and he remembered, finally, that the two of them had an audience.

He slowly glanced to his right — Hearth's left, the two of them facing each other, each with his back to a countertop — and found Madison staring down at their plate and shoveling eggs into their mouth with intense, very obvious focus.

"Madison," said Blitz, and, when Madison slowly looked up with guilty eyes, Hearthstone jerked his head at Madison and then pointed to the door, eyebrows raised.

Breakfast, Hearthstone signed.

"Um, yeah, yep," said Madison awkwardly. "I'm just gonna ... go eat with everybody else, then..." In the doorway, though, they paused. "Blitz, are you going to the shop today?"

Blitzen glanced at Hearthstone.

Hearth pointedly sipped his coffee.

Blitz sighed. "Yeah, kid," he said. "You want to come?"

"Yes!" Madison cheered, fist pumping. "Okay, okay, just — ten minutes, I swear!" They bolted for the dining room with enough speed that they narrowly avoided flinging scrambled eggs everywhere.

Even above the sound of at least six distinct conversations, from two rooms away, Blitz could hear Jess demand, "Are Mom and Dad fighting?"

Blitzen rolled his eyes and signed, Gossip, to Hearth, with a gesture at the dining room, and then he turned to face him more fully. Think Madison understood?

Hearth shook his head. Little. Learning ASL still.

"If they keep improving, we're eventually going to have to watch what we say," Blitzen said dryly, and Hearthstone huffed.

Wait a long time for that, he signed, and then the two of them paused, there, for a moment, looking at each other.

With the initial shock of Hearthstone making a casual return to Alfheim wearing off, Blitzen had a new question and its name started with I. "I didn't know you and Inge stayed in touch," he said. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't known something about Hearth. "How's she doing?"

Okay. Looking for a new job. Hearthstone twisted his mouth and added, Again. Real job.

Blitzen started to speak out loud again, then registered the ringing silence from the dining room and reconsidered. Good you're helping, he signed.

Hearth shrugged like it was no big deal, undoubtedly not giving himself enough credit. Do what I can. Elves don't know if they're afraid of me or not. Last week, it was helpful.

It was another sudden seismic shift to Blitzen's personal world; like one of Thor's lightning bolts crashing out of the sky, or his thundering footsteps shaking the ground when he jogged in his tighty-leatherys. You went to Alfheim last week?

In the other room, there was a sharp whistle and someone spoke, words indistinguishable but tone unmistakably Alex Fierro, and then the buzz of conversation picked up again. Blitzen barely registered it, attention on his best friend.

Hearthstone looked almost shifty, glancing away for a second like he wanted to pretend he hadn't seen the question. He nodded.

"Oof. Buddy." Blitzen took a step toward him. "Was it okay? Are you okay?"

Fine. Just a place, Hearth signed, his signs quick and sharp. He wrinkled his nose and added, Bullshit place.

"You've got that right," Blitz muttered, and when Hearthstone frowned at him, undoubtedly about to complain about mumbling and the beard, he repeated himself in ASL.

Hearth smiled faintly. There was real warmth in it, so clear to Blitzen that he usually forgot it wasn't obvious to other people — the open set of Hearthstone's shoulders, the way the skin around his eyes crinkled. So it was all the more obvious when the expression suddenly dropped off Hearth's face. Thanks for coffee. Alex is staying, he signed. Store — you are almost late. He picked up his mug again and tipped it to Blitzen, and then zipped out of the kitchen and out the brownstone's front door before Blitz could even think about saying another word.

Hearthstone was rarely slow, but that had been a precipitously speedy exit. Blitzen was left blinking in a disastrously messy kitchen in his wake.

He was still standing there when Alex found him. "Everything okay?" Alex asked, walking to the sink with a stack of empty plates in hand. "They're all in there whispering about divorce."

Blitzen shook himself and then snorted. "They should worry more about doing the dishes," he said. "It's fine. I hear you're sticking around today?"

"Hearth said he had somewhere to be, so here I am," Alex confirmed. "Ready for big sister duty. I understand noogies are part of the standard sibling deal. My knuckles are ready."

Blitz felt his smile morph into something more genuine. "Tell that one to Samirah."

"Oh, Sam is aware," she promised, and Blitzen chuckled at the mental image of Alex, probably with gorilla arms, trying to give Samirah al-Abbas a noogie. "I'll see you later?"

"After closing time; we've got a window display to build," Blitzen confirmed. He'd been excited about it when he first woke up this morning, he remembered. He lightly tapped his travel mug against the counter, then tried three different lids before finally finding the one that fit.

“Hey.” He glanced up to find that Alex had narrowed her eyes, standing at the sink up to her elbows in dish soap. "Are you sure everything's good?"

"Yeah. Don't mind me, kid," Blitz said. "I'll see who I can wrangle to give you a hand in here."

"Oh, they're all going to," she said, with the surety of an einherji who was going to be obeyed, and, sure enough, Blitzen could already hear cups and utensils clattering in the dining room.

He left the kids cheerfully flicking crumbs at each other under Alex's capable direction and went upstairs. He paused on the second floor landing.

"Madison!" he yelled up the next flight of stairs, and there was an immediate series of loud thumps overhead.

"Almost — I'm almost ready, I swear! One second!" Madison's distant voice shouted, which, judging by the past month's worth of Madison experience, really meant at least five minutes.

Blitzen shook his head, but his smile faded as his eyes fell upon Hearthstone's closed bedroom door.

Hearth was his own person. Blitzen didn't know where he was at all times, at all hours. But he generally had a good idea — not least because they were often together — and it was a shock that Hearthstone hadn't told him about something as big as making his first return to Alfheim since they'd ended things with his literal and figurative monster of a father.

They shared everything. They didn't have to, but they'd chosen to for years: sorrows, triumphs, arguments big and small, day-old falafel, quests that would shape the fate of the Nine Worlds, responsibility for first one homeless teenager and now up to a dozen of them at a time.

Blitz remembered again the look on Hearthstone's face as he signed, Don't need you to come, and what it had really felt like he was saying:

I don't need you.

Blitzen's Best was only a short walk from the brownstone. Blitzen carried an umbrella and bundled up under a broad-brimmed hat, muffler, thick overcoat, black gloves, and oversized sunglasses, sticking to the shade cast by the trees of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall for as long as possible. The kids all thought he was allergic to sunlight (which was, technically, kind of true), so Madison happily gamboled along at his side without questioning his outfit, saying hello to passing Bostonians who generally looked bewildered to be addressed, and practicing their ASL fingerspelling.

"Is this right?" Madison asked, holding up their right hand. It was a little hard to tell what they were doing, given that they were wearing hedgehog mittens, but after a second, Blitzen recognized the sign as a wonky letter E.

"Tuck your thumb, then you've got it," he said, and Madison tucked in their thumb, then fist-pumped with their corrected E.

"How long did it take you to learn when Hearth taught you sign language?" they asked.

"Depends what you mean by learn," Blitz said thoughtfully. He pulled his umbrella down lower against the morning sun's weak rays as the two of them strolled down the Mall past yet another block of beautiful, venerable old brownstones. "I could start to get Hearth's point within a couple days, thanks to a whole lot of finger spelling, but it took a lot longer to get anywhere close to fluent."

Madison sighed with a puff of visible white breath. "I feel bad I can't understand much yet."

"You're making good progress." Blitzen had enough layers on that he chanced sticking a hand out from under his umbrella's shade and patting Madison's near shoulder.

Madison smiled above their scarf. They were a sweet, funny kid with an appreciative eye for wild color combinations and all things cute and fuzzy. They'd first appeared at the Chase brownstone door in tow behind Alex a month earlier, and, unlike many of the mansion's guests, hadn't left since. Hearth was teaching them sign language and planned to start walking them through their options to earn a high school diploma soon, but all Madison really wanted to do every day was go to the shop, help arrange inventory, and blithely chatter from their spot on a stool behind the counter.

"I guess," they said, and their smile deepened when Blitzen offered them an arm. They laughed and tucked their hand into the crook of his elbow.

"Take my word for it, kid," Blitzen said. "You'll get there."

There were much-loved familiar routines to Blitzen's daily life, these days. Every morning when he unlocked the shop door with a jangle of keys, even if he was risking a light gray crust by continuing to stand under the sunlight, he took a moment to look up at the brass-and-silver sign above the door with satisfaction and pride. Blitzen's Best had been his dream for so long — sometimes it was still hard to remember that it was all his, and his designs were a sensation across multiple worlds.

Madison shuffled inside ahead of Blitzen, stamping road salt and sand off their boots, and went straight to the back room to drop off their coat and mittens. Hearthstone had been correct — the two of them were barely on time, bordering on late, so Blitzen flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN and started shedding all his sun and cold protection layers while he waited for the computer system to boot up at the checkout counter.

Madison came bursting out of the back room wearing a riot of blue and yellow, their shock of black hair askew after the run-in with the sweater they'd yanked off over their head, and eagerly asked, "Display windows?"

"As long as it's quiet this morning," Blitzen said, finally freeing himself from his muffler, and Madison cheered and gathered a pile of winter clothes that was almost taller than they were, and took it to the back without Blitzen even having to ask. Madison was clearly getting used to the routine, too.

Foot traffic would probably start to pick up in the next few weeks, as November rolled into December and Boston’s feverish holiday shopping season took hold, but for the time being, a small lull was giving Blitzen the chance to get his inventory stocked up and his shop windows decorated fabulously.

He was kneeling in the windowfront amid mirrors and half-dressed mannequins, draped in gold, silver, and lavender garlands and considering options with his sleeves rolled up and pins in his mouth, when Madison, sitting behind the counter and futzing with the store's musical selection, asked hesitantly, "Blitz?"

Blitz looked over and found them biting their own lip. He took the pins out of his mouth. "What's up?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Are things okay with you and Hearth?"

It was a lucky thing the pins were in his hand and not in his mouth anymore. Blitzen tried not to flinch, but he must not have done a great job because Madison's eyes widened. "Just, 'cause, you guys were arguing at breakfast, and I mean, you guys argue all the time, but this seemed serious, and I'm sorry, I was trying not to eavesdrop, really, but Jess said you were asking about someone named Ingrid or something, and I think I saw Hearth fingerspell her name too, and I know I'm getting really nosy now but I just—"

"Whoa! Madison, breathe!" Blitzen finally managed.

Madison stared at him across the shop for a minute, and then burst out, "Are you and Hearth breaking up??"

"What," said Blitz.

"I know it's none of my business but you guys are #CoupleGoals, and we're all rooting for you—"

"Madison," Blitzen tried again, and they shut their mouth. "Does ... everybody at the house think Hearth and I are dating?"

"Well — yeah," said Madison, like it was obvious.

Hoo boy, he thought. "We've been friends for a long time, kid," he said, shaking his head, and Madison dropped over the countertop like a mortified puppet that had had its strings cut.

"Oh my god," they said into their folded arms.

"You're not the first person who's gotten it wrong," Blitzen tried.

Madison moaned something unintelligible to the countertop. Whatever it was, they sounded mortally embarrassed. Their ears were noticeably red.

"Jimmy was convinced we were dating for the first four months we knew him," Blitz said, using the name the kids all knew Magnus by, and Madison gave a muffled, reluctant laugh. "It's no big deal."

They lifted their head. Their eyes were wary, in a way that reminded Blitzen just how badly adults had let them down in their short life. "You're not mad?"

Blitzen gestured down at himself crouched calmly in the shop window and tangled in garland and beads. "Do I look mad?"

Madison finally smiled, at first hesitantly and then broader. It was good to see it, and also a reminder that Blitz and Hearth really needed to get the kid in to see a dentist; there were definitely braces in Madison's future. "No."

"Good. Now, you want to come back over here and help figure out where we're placing this?"

Their bright smile in response said it all, but even as the two of them worked together to position the mannequins, Madison — never a subtle or particularly quiet kid — was visibly chewing something over in their head. Blitzen let them think through whatever it was; he had plenty to stew about himself.

He'd told Madison the truth. He and Hearthstone were mistaken for a couple pretty regularly, especially in Boston, but it had happened across at least four of the Nine Worlds over the years. The two of them had always taken it in stride; responded with humor or corrected somebody when they needed to.

"But ... you're gay, right? Or, like, queer?" Madison asked hesitantly into the silence, and there was the question they'd clearly been wanting to ask.

There were plenty of potential answers — that dwarves just weren't as hung up on who other dwarves were attracted to, though naming could get confusing when a person had two dads in a matrilineal society; that the honored dead in Folkvanger, where he'd also spent time growing up, definitely didn't care about that stuff; that Blitzen had to know someone really well to want to date them. The simplest answer, though, and the one that Madison was clearly hoping for, was also true.

"Yes," he said, and he gave Madison a cautionary point as they beamed at him. "But I'm focused on my career right now, so don't go getting any ideas!"

He really was focusing on the business and the kids at the moment. The shop did well among humans and he had a loyal Midgard customer base that was supplemented by Newbury Street tourist walk-ins, but the real brisk business lay in filling custom orders for customers who wanted bespoke suits with chainmail lining or the finest in bow ties that could double as brass knuckles. He couldn't keep cravats in stock for love or money.

"Okay," said Madison, still grinning from ear to ear. "No ideas, I have none in my head at all, about anything ever."

The bell over the shop door jingled, heralding the arrival of a tall, queenly black woman with her hair bound up in a bright headscarf — one of Blitzen's favorite human regulars. She smiled and waved as she spotted the two of them in the window. "Can people with no ideas in their heads help customers?" Blitzen asked Madison, waving back.

Madison's face lit up like the Bifrost. "Oh, dude! Can I really?"

"Go on; you've seen me do it enough," Blitzen said, secure in the knowledge that Jenee was as friendly a test customer as they came, and Madison went stumbling over, voice pitched high with excitement.

Blitzen draped a gold garland across the nearest mannequin dressed in a natty buffalo plaid suit, then stepped back to judge it with a critical eye. He'd have to fetch a stepladder from the back in order to reach the top of the mirrors arranged in the display; Hearthstone's height would have been an advantage here.

Blitzen kept trying, and failing, not to circle back to the question of what was happening in Alfheim. He remembered the way Hearthstone had touched the bracelet woven from Inge's golden hair like he was absently, automatically reaching for reassurance.

Hearth had never shown any kind of interest in anyone for as long as Blitz had known him. Blitzen had eventually figured Hearthstone wasn't wired that way. Plenty of people weren't, but Blitzen wondered now if he'd been wrong about Hearth. When Inge came along, Blitzen had assumed she was a sweet person with feelings that were unlikely to be requited, and that was that. But maybe, now that he'd wrestled the demons of his past, now that he had a home and a family of full cups and his magic, Hearthstone finally had the breathing space to think about it. Maybe he'd been waiting for the right person all along.

Maybe he'd found her again.

Blitzen realized, abruptly, that someone had said his name, possibly several times. He looked up to find Madison waving at him from behind the counter. Their other hand was hovering above the cash register, their face a mask of distress.

Blitzen let go of his tight grip on the garland he'd apparently been twisting into a knot, and went to save Madison from the register.

As the two of them checked out the customer together, Madison painstakingly wrapping up one of the coral and seafoam green sweater-dresses that Blitz had acquired with Jenee in mind, Jenee leaned on the countertop. "Where's your other half today, Blitz?" she asked.

Hearthstone helped maintain the half-crafted, half-magic coating on the windows that left the shop with plenty of natural light without the consequence of turning Blitzen to stone, and he'd met Jenee the last time he was in the shop checking on the alf seidr he'd layered over Blitzen's work. Apparently, he'd made an impression.

Blitz felt a flash of irritation that wasn't her fault and was mostly, he could admit, directed at himself. "I think he's on a date," he said shortly, and caught Madison's mouth forming a perfect O of shock. "He'll be back."

Jenee, to her credit, recovered from her obvious surprise with grace. "Oh, well, I'm sorry to have missed him," she said, accepting her bag from Madison. "Blitz, my firm is throwing a black tie New Year's party this year, and my closet isn't up to the task. Keep an eye out for me?"

"You bet," Blitz said. He really owed her a loyal-customer discount the next time she came in.

Jenee swept out of the shop with airy farewells, leaving Blitzen with an annoyingly perceptive teenager who barely waited until the front door bell had jingled behind Jenee before they asked, "Blitz? Who's Ingrid?"

Blitzen moved back over to the half-completed window display. The tallest mirror needed readjusting. "Inge's a good friend of Hearth's."

"Like... you and Hearth are friends?" they asked dubiously.

Blitzen gave the mirror a harder tug than he'd intended to, and it groaned ominously under the harsh touch. "I don't know, Madison; you'd have to talk to Hearth if you have questions about her."

The silence stretched for long enough that Blitzen began to have a bad feeling about it. Had he snapped at them in the name of setting boundaries? He glanced over. Madison was looking at him strangely. "What?" he asked.

"Oh," said Madison. "Oh man."

"What? Did my vest get wrinkled?" With a sudden flash of panic, he tugged at it; the fabric was so finicky, he wasn't prepared to spend a half an hour steaming it again.

"No, no, it's good! You look great!" Madison exclaimed.

Blitzen had the distinct feeling he was being placated by a 15-year-old. He gave his vest one final tug and eyed Madison suspiciously. They flashed far too many teeth in their reassuring smile.

He missed Hearth. It was much easier to deal with the kids being weird when he had someone to share commiserating looks with.

Blitzen sent Madison back to the brownstone just before closing for the evening with a couple of $20 bills and instructions to order pizzas if Hearthstone wasn’t back yet, so he wasn’t entirely surprised to be greeted by a full house when he returned home.

Kids were sprawled all around the big solid Chase family table, with one group arguing over something on Hunter’s cell phone. The pack of them had a whole stack of Santarpio’s pizza boxes scattered across the table.

There was no sign of Alex or of Magnus, though Magnus was in California visiting his cousin again and wasn’t due back yet, so his absence wasn’t a surprise. Blitzen had talked to Magnus on the phone a couple days ago and he’d still been miffed about missing all the excitement of breaking up a nefarious Surt plot the last time he visited his cousin, a few months back — though privately, what Blitzen thought Magnus really regretted missing was seeing Alex casually hold Surt at garrote-point in Muspellheim. The kid had it bad and Fierro did too, even if Alex wasn't as all-consumingly obvious about it.

Half the dining room went silent when Blitzen stepped into the room. He narrowed his eyes at Madison, who had been leaning close with Jess over the tabletop, clearly plotting, and was now frozen. Jess looked unflappable as usual, but Madison began guiltily shoveling pizza into their face at increased velocity. They really needed to learn a new way to try to look innocent.

“Okay, okay, I can take a hint,” Blitzen said to the room at large, tossing a couple slices of Hawaiian pizza onto a plate. “I’ll be upstairs if anybody needs me.”

“Hearf brough' the eetza,” Madison said, their mouth full, shoving Blitzen's fistful of cash back at him.

“They said Hearth. He’s upstairs,” said Jess helpfully. Shafik silently pointed upward.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” said Blitz, and he went upstairs.

On the second floor, Blitzen paused at Hearthstone’s closed bedroom door, and thought about it. He got as far as raising his hand, but he couldn't imagine what would happen after the moment when he opened the door; what Blitzen would say. Generally, Hearth's door being shut sent a message. He wouldn't welcome company. Blitz shook his head to himself and went to his own room across the hall.

It used to be a study, but Blitz had obliterated all trace of Magnus’s odious, sad uncle Randolph with his remodel, and now it was a very handsome, stylish modern space with a seating area, a truly enormous closet, and an army of crafting supplies tucked into a shelving and counter unit that ran the length of an entire wall.

Hearth had, with obvious concern, offered to take the room when they first did the walk-through with Magnus, but Blitzen had liked the idea of reclaiming a space that used to belong to the man who almost killed him. Plus it had great light, once they’d mitigated its fatal effects with the window treatments he and Hearth had brainstormed together, and with some custom blackout curtains.

Blitzen set aside his plate of pizza on Finest of Side Tables, crafted by himself, and neatly hung his overcoat in the closet and put away the rest of his sun protection gear, which he hadn’t exactly needed at this time of year in Boston. The sun practically started setting by 3:00 PM, which suited Blitz just fine.

Pit stop accomplished, magazine in one hand and plate in the other, Blitzen kept climbing the stairs. The brownstone was five stories top to bottom — Magnus’s uncle really had had a truly obscene amount of money, just knowing the costs of Back Bay real estate — and the library was at the very top of the house. Normally it would be full of kids hanging out, playing videogames or arguing about memes or reading books pulled from the wall-to-wall shelves, but tonight, it was empty.

Blitzen settled down with the latest issue of Dwarf Quarterly and his dinner, and doggedly concentrated on the spring fashion spread on boar-skin coats, and not on thinking about Hearth’s closed bedroom door.

That lasted approximately two minutes.

It was ridiculous, considering how long Blitzen had been Not Thinking About This, and how good at it he’d previously been.

At first, it had been easy. Romance had been the last thing on his mind when a half-dead elven stranger stumbled into his life and he had only a matter of hours to figure out how to keep him alive. And in the early days, when Hearth was slowly regaining his strength and they were getting to know each other as Blitzen frantically learned ASL — with books gathered from the local library, copious coaching from Hearth, and, most unexpectedly, a handful of PixieTube video channels — it had never occurred to Blitz to see his visitor in that light.

It came slowly, in waves, after that; watching Hearthstone determinedly draw back a bow and try, over and over again, to strike the bullseye on a target. Blitzen laughing over a joke, and Hearth narrowing his eyes at him in betrayal, the corners of his mouth quirking. Looking at Hearthstone one day and realizing that the best friend Blitzen had ever made was handsome in a way that went beyond pure objective standards into something much more personal and dear to his heart.

It came quickly, too, in the moment when he groggily woke in the shallows at the edge of the hot springs beneath the base of Yggdrasil and realized, for one frozen moment, that Hearthstone had washed up a few feet away and wasn't moving. Then he'd coughed and raised his hands to start swearing before he even got up, and Blitzen's heart had started beating again and he'd thought: Oh.

Hearthstone was fiercely supportive and endlessly loyal, kind, and brave. He had filled an infuriating, sardonic, ridiculous-elf-shaped hole in Blitzen's life that Blitzen hadn't even realized was there. They'd been there for some of the best and worst moments of each other's lives. The plan of squashing his feelings hadn't been a difficult one. It would have been much more terrifying to do anything else, and in the end, Blitz valued their friendship over, well — everything. It wasn't a hardship to have Hearthstone for a best friend. It was priceless, even when Hearth insisted on flinging himself headfirst into danger or making a pain in the rass of himself.

But just one day spent starting to wonder if Blitzen had been wrong about Hearthstone's preferences, all these years, and Blitz had apparently lost all ability to push his feelings down. He was the lousiest best friend across all the Nine Worlds. Inge was a nice lady, and she clearly loved Hearth dearly and would do anything for him. She’d been the only person there for him during his horrendous childhood. Blitzen would never begrudge either of them that connection. He would be happy for Hearthstone, no matter what.

As if thinking about him that intensely had summoned him, there were familiar footsteps on the stairs. Blitzen sat upright and resolved to be completely normal, as Hearthstone stepped through the library doorway.

Then Blitzen really looked at him, and all thoughts of playing it cool flew straight out the window. He tossed his plate aside. “Hammer and anvils! Are you okay?”

Hearthstone’s face was drawn. His eyes were green-rimmed and his hair stood on end like he’d been running his hands through it. He sank into the armchair across from Blitz and waved a hand in a tired ‘it’s fine’ sort of gesture, which Blitzen did not find reassuring in the least.

Hearth was looking at the magazine that Blitz had left open on the loveseat, not at Blitzen’s mouth or hands, so Blitz leaned across the space between them and tapped his knee to get his attention. Hearthstone started, which was unusual enough that Blitz left his hand on Hearth’s knee instead of pulling back.

“What’s the matter?”

Fine, Hearth signed. He was signing like there were weights hanging from his wrists. Bad day.

Was Inge okay? Blitzen asked, and Hearthstone slumped deeper into his chair.

Upset.

“Buddy,” said Blitzen, and, inexplicably, Hearthstone’s face went tight and even more unhappy, “what happened?”

Hearthstone didn't make eye contact for a long couple of seconds, and then suddenly, he brought his hands together and then apart in the shape of a D and a backwards D: Dates. He was signing with explosive energy now, movements jerky and fast. Kind of. I wanted to try, because I love her, but it didn’t feel right. I told her today. Wrong love.

Blitzen gaped at him.

Hearthstone’s expression was grim. She cried. She deserves better.

“Whoa, whoa.” Blitzen signed, Slow down. Come on, nobody’s better than you.

Hearth stared at Blitz miserably. He looked like he wanted to sink all the way into the armchair and never come out again; he lifted both hands and dragged them down his face.

“Hold up.” Blitzen frowned, and waited for Hearthstone to finally lower his hands and look his way again. “You said you two went on kind-of dates? Multiple kind-of dates? How did that work?”

Hearthstone’s pause said it all, really, but he followed through and reluctantly signed, Been visiting Alfheim for a few months.

“Months?” Blitzen yelped.

Hearth’s expression took a turn for the mulish. He tugged at the bracelet that he was still wearing, before he insisted, It was private.

I get that. But: M-o-n-t-h-s?! Blitzen fingerspelled.

Hearthstone jerked his knee away from Blitzen’s other hand, which Blitzen hadn’t even realized was still resting there.

“You could have told me, buddy,” Blitzen said, trying — and suspecting he was failing — to have a measured facial expression. “I would have been happy for y—”

Hearth chopped the edge of his right hand into his left palm with enough force that the slap echoed back against the walls. My business, he signed, and Inge’s. He stood up and the heavy armchair scraped back. Not yours, I know. See you tomorrow.

“Hearthstone, wait,” said Blitzen, but Hearth was clearly done with the conversation. He strode out of the library, and Blitzen heard his boots rapidly descend the stairs.

Blitzen tilted his head back and miserably told the ceiling, “Blitzen, son of Freya, you’re a lombungr.”

The next day dawned bright and early, and cold. Blitz had laid awake for hours, listening to the soft hiss of sleet on the windows and then the distant rumble of snow plows on Commonwealth Avenue below, before he finally gave up and got out of bed to sit at his workstation. He was close, he thought, to a breakthrough on engineering a version of his emergency parka that could pass as clever Midgardian stitchery instead of fine dwarven crafting with magic woven in. If he could clear that hurdle, he could start making warm coats that folded up to the size of maybe a winter hat. They’d be invaluable for the kids who preferred to sleep rough and only stopped in for meals or pocket money.

He fiddled and stitched for hours. Once, he thought he heard footsteps pause outside his door, but whoever it was moved on, and Blitzen waited another couple of minutes before returning to work. When he finally thought to pull back Blackout Light Shield (sewn by Blitzen himself; capable of, with its fellow drapery panels, creating absolute darkness in his bedroom), he found that daylight had broken as much as it was going to for the day. The sky was an ugly steel gray; the sleet had changed over to a thick, tumbling curtain of heavy snowflakes. The wind howled.

They were going to have a lot of guests tonight if this weather continued, Blitz knew, so he unwrapped his hair from the protective silk scarf he slept in, fetched a robe from his closet, and went to gather sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows out of storage.

The brownstone was mostly sleeping, still. Quiet Shafik was perched in the windowseat on the third floor, watching the snow flurry and cradling a steaming mug of tea, and he nodded hello to Blitzen as he passed.

Two of the younger kids were sharing a blanket on the loveseat in the fifth-floor library, each reading a book, and Jay jumped up to help Blitz lay out sleeping bags. This room would be the overflow space for any extra guests they couldn’t accommodate with the extra cots that they’d squeeze into the four kid-bedrooms downstairs.

Blitzen, Hearthstone, Magnus, and Alex had prepared for this when they’d talked about plans for the Chase brownstone. This was the first major storm of the year, but they'd all remembered very well what it was like to be outside during a Boston winter; how extreme cold or big snowstorms drove everyone inside on top of each other, filling the shelters and then causing mass cabin fever. There was a closet on the fourth floor stacked with nothing but extra beds and bedding. The library was full of board games and the refrigerator and freezer were stocked up.

Blitz already knew he wasn’t going to open Blitzen’s Best — when he opened the front door for Maria and an unfamiliar girl, it was a whiteout behind them. As he ushered them upstairs to find warm dry clothes, he almost smacked into Hearthstone rounding the corner on the third floor landing.

“Hi Hearth!” Maria said, muffled and waving. She was completely lost in the enormous, ratty bomber jacket, hoodie, and holey scarf she’d wrapped herself in. Blitzen had only recognized her by her voice.

Hearth waved back and shot Blitz a look over her head.

M-a-r-i-a and new kid, Blitzen signed behind her, and it almost felt normal. Chaotic normal; the kind of normal that Blitz had come to love.

Until the girls kept going upstairs to find Jess, who’d help them sort out clothes, and left the two of them alone.

Hearthstone didn’t look like he’d slept much either, but his expression was pretty inscrutable. Neither of them said anything for a long, awkward moment. The two of them had never had long awkward moments, so Blitz didn’t have the first idea what to say.

Library? Hearth signed.

All done. We need cots for the blue bedroom.

Hearthstone nodded, and after another terrifically awkward pause, one that Blitzen knew was stupid even as he continued to be a part of it, he went upstairs.

Blitzen groaned and scrubbed his face with one hand, and, when he turned, found Shafik still sitting in the windowseat, openly staring at him.

“Kid, you’re gonna give me a heart attack,” Blitz yelped, pressing a hand to his chest.

Shafik winced and huddled in on himself, in as clear an ‘I’m sorry’ gesture as Blitzen had ever seen, shy of spoken words or ASL.

“No, no, don’t worry about it. We’ll get a bell to put on you,” Blitzen promised, and, to his surprise, Shafik laughed at the joke. Blitzen had never heard any kind of sound out of him before; the kid looked as startled by the noise as Blitzen felt.

Shafik tempered his smile and gave him a thumbs up, but Blitzen could feel a thoughtful gaze on his back.

It was a day of running up and down the stairs over and over again; getting kids settled, making food, doing laundry, giving the tour, and then starting the whole cycle over again the next time someone yelled, “Blitz!” He ran into Hearthstone doing the same thing over and over again. Each time, they were monstrously out of sync, repeatedly colliding while trying to step around each other.

Madison witnessed one of the more disastrous run-ins — Blitzen almost dropped an entire basket of dryer-fresh socks right in a muddy puddle of melting snow in the foyer — and Blitzen genuinely thought they might cry.

Every time, Hearth’s face looked more pinched, and Blitzen felt more miserable.

The day’s hectic pace finally started to slow down after dark, when, Blitz knew from his own experience, people would be settling in and bunking down for the night. The kids had begun going to bed and they hadn’t had a new arrival in an hour or so, and he had just let himself sit down in the kitchen with Jay and a late-night plate of spaghetti and meatballs when the distant cry rose: “Blitz!”

Jay was eyeballing his plate.

“Duty calls,” Blitzen sighed, sliding the plate across the counter to Jay, and went back up the stairs.

“Blitz!” Multiple voices were calling for him, now, and it sounded like the disturbance was in the library at the top of the house. That wasn’t good. Blitz put on a burst of speed and blew into the library.

“What—” he started.

There was a whole crowd of kids clustered together at the foot of the stairs to the roof. The Plexiglass hatch was open, snow swirling down into the library. At a quick glance, he saw Madison, Jess, Ryan, Maria, and a couple of other well-known faces.

They all started yelling things about the roof, all at once. Oh sweet Helheim, the roof — they should have locked the roof access; who even knew what somebody was doing out there in this weather!

Blitzen charged up the stairs and out into the blinding snow — and a small figure darted past him and leaped inside the house through the hatch, and it slammed shut.

There was an ominous click.

Blitz spun back toward the hatch and found a half-dozen faces pressed up against the domed glass, staring at him from inside the house. “Ha ha,” he said. “Very funny, guys.”

Footsteps crunched on the ice behind him, and Blitz turned around. Someone had shoveled a neat square of the roof deck directly around the hatch, illuminated by the one overhead light on the roof. Hearthstone had entered the ring of light and was picking his way across the shoveled patch. He was wearing his scarf wound around his neck and the same T-shirt he’d had on all day, but didn’t look any more prepared to be outside than Blitzen was. He had no coat, hat, or gloves, and the wind was whipping ferociously at the ends of his pink and green scarf.

He stopped and blinked when he saw Blitzen.

What are you doing? Blitzen asked.

S-h-a-f-i-k was pointing, thought something was wrong, Hearth signed, and Blitzen belatedly realized the identity of the small form that had sprinted past him.

He turned back around. The kids were now holding handwritten signs up to the glass dome. The three signs said:

UNTIL YOU
YOU CAN’T COME IN
TALK TO EACH OTHER!!!

Madison, Jess, and Maria were pointing vigorously at the three signs. Whoever was holding the signs wiggled them.

Blitzen glared at them and their obviously out-of-sequence signs. He reached for the edge of the hatch and, sure enough, it only rattled and wouldn't lift under his fingers. He gave it a few more tugs. “Open up! It’s a blizzard,” he told them, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him through the glass.

Shafik, at least, looked apologetic. Jess was visibly laughing.

He turned back to Hearthstone again and signed, Locked, and Hearthstone pulled a face that looked as unamused as Blitzen felt. They weren’t without options here — Blitz could stone-shape with the best of them, and he was standing beside the finest living master of alf seidr outside of Odin himself — but they were without options that wouldn’t immediately expose talents that shouldn’t be broadcasted to a pack of six human teenagers.

He sighed sharply. “Balder’s bling, from now on, I’m drawing better boundaries.” He signed Kids, personal, lines.

Hearth nodded sharply in clear agreement, and rolled his eyes. He wrapped his arms around himself. The storm pelted them both with painful ice pellets.

Blitzen sighed again. He glanced back over his shoulder and was just able to make out a burst of movement inside as the kids scurried back from his glare. Audience temporarily cleared, he pulled the pocket square out of his suit jacket and a handkerchief from his pants pocket. Handing the pocket square to Hearthstone, he shook the handkerchief out into a warm, fur-lined parka that he tugged on. No self-respecting dwarf went anywhere without a supply of emergency parkas.

Hearthstone grimly put on his pocket square parka. They looked at each other.

Blitz couldn’t take it anymore. “Buddy, I hate this,” he said, right when Hearth signed, I’m sorry.

Me too, Blitz signed. I was surprised you didn’t say anything about visiting Alfheim and dating Inge but that’s not an excuse. Sorry I got s-h-i-r-t-y with you.

Hearth shook his head. Should have told you. Shouldn’t have lied.

You didn’t lie.

Hearthstone grimaced and signed bluntly, I did. Not yesterday. Other times.

No, you were right. Your business, not mine.

Shouldn’t have felt weird.

There was a series of banging noises from the house. When Blitzen looked back, he saw that the kids had figured out their mistake and rearranged their signs to be in the correct order. Several indistinct faces were pressed up against the Plexiglass hatch, and there were multiple fingers drawing arrows in the condensation, pointing at the TALK TO EACH OTHER!!! sign. One joker was tracing a heart in the fog.

Hearthstone threw up his hands, and then, unexpectedly, reached out and snagged Blitzen’s arm, and drew him out of the shoveled patch and deeper into the snow.

Blitzen squawked, “Hey! These loafers aren’t waterproof!” but followed even as the snow rose up his shins.

Hearth let go of his arm and pulled his rune bag from his pocket. Blitzen glanced back at the hatch again and positioned himself to block Hearth. They couldn’t possibly be seeing much, between the awkward angle Hearth had chosen, the snow, the dark, the distance, and the condensation created by a half-dozen nosy teenagers’ breath on the glass, but every little bit of cover counted, and Hearthstone was clearly Done with this.

But instead of dagaz to unlock the hatch like Blitz had expected, Hearthstone threw the isa rune and sent a whooshing rush of icy wind to fling the contents of a snowbank over the glass dome, then immediately drew another rune, one that Blitzen recognized all too well: kenaz.

The thick carat of flame roared to life above their heads. In Niflheim, it had been five feet tall above the ship’s foredeck when it first appeared. Now, it was less than a foot in height, but its effect was immediate. Snowflakes vanished before they reached them. The snow drifts began to melt underfoot. The roar of the wind went silent. The two of them were surrounded by their very own bubble of tropical heat.

Dwarves did well in the cold, but the warmth was perfect. Like most of Hearth’s magic, something about it felt singularly Hearthstone to Blitzen; like Hearth had wrapped his whole self around them to cocoon them together away from the rest of the worlds.

Outside the bubble, the wind howled in the darkness, snow eddying, but inside, it was warm, Hearth’s intent face lit by the flames’ soft, flickering orange-gold light.

Blitz swallowed.

Generally, Blitzen internally flipped what Hearth was saying into dwarvish syntax. He knew Hearthstone better than he knew anybody else alive; he was confident in his translating. But this… Whatever was about to happen felt big, somehow, like they were standing on the edge of yet another cliff together.

Past: me, secret, you, Hearth signed, and then he added, Why? with the slight eyebrow raise and head tilt that meant it was a rhetorical question that he was about to answer himself. He gave the sign for, Feel, and then visibly hesitated. When he finished with, Wrong, his movement was much slower, smaller and more contained.

Blitzen knew Hearth wasn’t fully committing to that being the right sign, but he still viscerally jolted — with enough force that one of his arms exited the kenaz heat bubble and ice pellets began to pelt his fingers — at seeing Hearth tap his hand to his chin in a letter Y and then lower it away from his face.

Blitz finally broke. “Talking to me felt wrong?” His voice cracked. “Holy Helheim, Hearth, did everything go that bad between you and me somehow? And I didn’t even noti—”

Hearthstone exhaled sharply and clapped a hand over Blitzen’s mouth. His palm was warm and, and this was unlike Hearth, a little damp. Eyes on Blitzen’s, he shook his head hard. He sliced a hand through the air in a chop — the sign for future, with a wide enough curve to the motion that he probably meant distant future. He signed, Together, you and me.

Blitzen didn’t trust his own wishful thinking.

Past: you say— Blitz began to sign.

Hearthstone shook his head again in abject frustration, and snatched Blitzen’s hands to shut him up.

The two of them looked at each other, the air between them shimmering with waves of heat. The moment felt unspeakably, inexplicably tense.

Hearthstone slowly lowered their joined hands. Blitzen glanced down, bewildered, which meant he was watching when Hearth slipped his fingers through Blitzen’s. They were standing together on bare concrete, a perfect circle melted in the snow all around them.

Hearth squeezed his hands, and Blitzen looked up.

Blitzen had thought he knew everything about Hearthstone by now, but Hearth was watching him with his pale gray eyes reflecting firelight and a tenderness that Blitzen didn’t recognize.

Blitzen’s heart thundered. Without conscious effort, he glanced down at Hearth’s mouth then back up again.

He only fully realized what he’d just done when the elf’s eyes widened. There was a split second where bone-chilling panic began to set in — and then Hearthstone leaned down all at once.

The shock of the press of dry lips to Blitzen's was overwhelming; like knifing into ice-cold water. Blitz clutched Hearth’s hands, hard. Hearth started to pull back, but Blitzen dropped Hearthstone’s hands, grabbed hold of the back of his neck, and went up on his toes to chase after Hearth’s mouth.

For a second, they stood there frozen, both breathing unevenly, and then Blitz closed the remaining gap between them and kissed his best friend.

When they broke apart this time, they gaped at each other.

Blitzen said hoarsely, “Hearth,” and Hearth began to smile. “What— Come here, you stubborn—”

Then they were kissing again, really kissing, Hearthstone grabbing Blitz around the waist and pulling him in close. Blitz stood on his toes and cradled Hearth’s face in both his hands, and they kissed and kissed until there was a tremendous roar of heat and Hearth jerked. Their tropical bubble popped with an abrupt drop in air pressure.

Hearthstone, Blitzen realized after a dazed moment, had just accidentally melted every inch of snow off the entire rooftop.

Blitz laughed and flung his arms around Hearth, who immediately bent down even further so he could bury his face inside the collar of Blitzen’s parka, his nose chilly against Blitz’s neck.

For a skinny elf, his arms were like steel bands. He rocked back and forth just a little, pulling Blitz with him. Blitzen was convinced the two of them could take on the Nine Worlds right now and not only live to tell the tale, but probably defeat Ratatosk, permanently avert Ragnarok, and convince mortals and immortals alike to stop wearing faux-fur ponchos.

Blitz drew back. He had no idea what his expression was doing in his shock and giddy joy, but it must have been a sight because Hearth gave a rare bark of laughter. With the kenaz rune extinguished, the nor'easter raged again, snow whirling around them. The only light sources were the muted glow of the city lights around them and, at closer range, the roof’s weak overhead spotlight that the kids had thoughtfully left on. The light was thin through the storm, but even in the dark, Blitzen could see the way Hearthstone was looking at him.

It warmed him right down to his toes.

Really? Blitzen asked.

Hearthstone gave him a look that practically howled ‘Duh.’ Insistently, he signed, Wrong with Inge. Hard to tell you about her because I started to think it would be right with you. You are my best friend. I was afraid.

Blitz’s heart wasn’t going to survive this evening; it was going to burst in his chest. It would serve the kids right, having to clean up splattered dwarf.

Me too, he admitted, thumb pointing to himself and his pinkie at Hearth. Then he tossed up both hands, one on top of the other, with his fingers spread wide and thumbs reaching for the sky. The sign even looked like a fearful gesture.

So stupid, Hearth signed, condemning them both, and then he convulsively shivered, and Blitzen finally leaped into action.

“Come on. I don't know about you, but I've had enough of blizzards to last me a lifetime,” he said, reaching up and tugging Hearthstone’s fur-lined hood up over his head and then walking back toward the brownstone’s Plexiglass hatch. There was a panicked flurry of motion behind the icy glass as the two of them approached.

When Hearthstone reached for the hatch, it lifted easily under his hand. He dumped piles of snow off the hatch and then held it open for Blitz. There was no sign of their audience, but Blitzen could hear, two floors down, several pairs of running footsteps and then a door slamming.

He climbed through and down the short flight of stairs to the library, where the room was dark and silent, a half-dozen teenagers in sleeping bags pretending to be dead to the world. Even the signs had been hidden. Jess was draped across the entire loveseat, arm hanging limply over the edge — you couldn’t say that kid didn’t commit.

Hearthstone came downstairs, stamping snow off his boots, and he and Blitz shared a look.

“For the record,” Blitzen said loudly, “not locking people on the roof in the middle of a blizzard is going on the list of house rules.”

To give the kids credit, their eyes stayed closed and not a one of them so much as twitched. You could have heard a pin drop in the library, aside from the one person who was pretending to snore.

“Not a safe or effective communication method, people,” Blitz insisted, as Hearthstone patted his arm and nudged him toward the stairs. "Teenagers who lock people out of the house don't get pancakes for breakfast!"

One of the schemers squawked in protest and another one shushed them, and Blitz swept out of the library with Hearth at his heels.

Out on the landing, Blitzen chuckled. “Let them stew on that overnight,” he said with satisfaction, and Hearth looked like he was giving consideration to the thought of laughing.

The house was quiet and still, apart from the distant sound of low voices drifting up the stairs from the first floor. Blitzen looked at Hearth, and found Hearth looking back.

Blitz reached out. Hearthstone closed the distance between them and took his hand. His fingers were like ice. Blitzen swore and sandwiched Hearth’s familiar, cold hand between both of his.

Hearthstone made the sign for warm, which, appropriately, involved holding his free hand like a claw in front of his own mouth, then turning the sign out as he blew on it. He was definitely laughing at Blitzen, but he also didn’t protest as Blitz rubbed heat back into first his right hand, then his left. He just watched, with the same soft look he'd turned on Blitz on the roof.

It wasn't like Blitzen or Hearthstone had ever been shy about how much they appreciated each other, but the way Hearth was looking at him now was different. It was overwhelming.

Blitz reached up and lightly touched Hearth's neck where his veins were beginning to stand out, green as anything, and Hearth leaned into him. It had been an overcast day even before night fell, and Hearth was starting to look a little peaky, his lips tinged faintly emerald; not that Blitz was staring at his lips or anything. Blitzen knew Hearthstone had a full-size tanning bed disguised as a sideboard and also a handheld flashlight model, both crafted by Blitz, in his bedroom. Downstairs? he signed, pointing down twice. “Could use some light.”

A little, maybe. ‘Maybe’ was technically a two-handed sign, but instead of dropping Blitzen’s hand to deliver it, Hearthstone made the up-and-down equivocating gesture with their hands still joined together, then tugged at him. Was it possible to be too happy? Blitz felt like his head was going to float off his shoulders.

As he was descending the first few steps — still improbably, stunningly hand-in-hand with Hearthstone — Blitz glanced through the library's open doorway and made eye contact with a wide-awake Madison.

His most devoted shop assistant was curled up in the sleeping bag closest to the door, wearing their glasses and beaming from ear to ear. It was like someone had taken all the light generated by the endless fires of Muspellheim, sprinkled on a dash of radioactive Bifrostian colors, and then poured it all into the expression on one small face.

That overwhelming smile somehow got even wider when Blitzen gave in and winked at them.

Down on the second floor landing, Hearth squeezed Blitz’s hand and then let go. He took a step back toward his door and questioningly beckoned to Blitzen, then signed back and forth between the two of them with his hands pointed toward each other and both pointer fingers raised.

“Yeah. We’ve got some stuff to talk about, right?” At least four years' worth of it, Blitzen figured.

Hearth didn’t take a step back toward his room, though, so when Blitzen stepped in, he found himself right up in Hearth’s space. Talk? Hearth questioned slyly, eyebrow raised.

“You said ‘talk’ first!” Blitzen complained, his face flushing hot. It felt impossible, still, when Hearthstone bent and pressed his smile to Blitzen’s, hands under his elbows. Blitz hadn’t let himself think about even the possibility of this for so many years. But Hearth’s lips were chapped and his mouth was still cold — that was all too real.

Hearth grunted and thumbed at Blitzen’s beard. At first Blitzen thought he was brushing ice out of it; then he nudged Blitz back far enough that he could sign, Beard scratches.

“It does not,” Blitzen said, affronted.

It does. Like kissing a hedgehog.

“How many hedgehogs have you kissed?” he challenged.

Hearthstone pretended he hadn’t read his lips and opened the door to his room. Kissing steel wool, he continued.

“You know, I could just not kiss you at all, you ingrate,” he pointed out, even though he really couldn’t, now that he knew what it was like. “I’m not shaving it!”

Still companionably squabbling, they started to close the door, but then Blitzen thought better of it.

They left it cracked open, for the next time someone needed them.

"Magnus, I think you'd be better off picking something yourself," Blitzen pointed out for at least the fourth time. He kept half an eye on Magnus, who was aimlessly wandering the shop, picking things up and then putting them down again in despair, as Blitz counted the day's cash at the register.

Leaning against a support column with her arms folded, Samirah laughed. "I told him the same thing," she said. "Give it up, Blitz. He's determined to get murdered by my sibling."

"I just need some ideas!" Magnus protested, hovering over a shelf of hats and scarves. He'd only been gone a few weeks but managed to pick up an impressive tan while he was in California with his cousin and her friends. His hair was noticeably longer and more blond. Alex was going to have a field day going after him with a pair of scissors. "Nobody's getting murdered. We're window-shopping, that's all." For all his casual disavowals, Magnus was doing a remarkable job of twisting the newsboy cap in his hand.

Blitzen loved the kid, but he was mangling all the neat facing to the shelves that Blitz had done when he'd opened the store that morning. He was also mangling that hat. "You break the hat, you buy it," Blitz told him, and Magnus blinked down at his own hands and then put the hat back down on the shelf.

"Alex is a hard person to shop for," Magnus said. "What do you get as a birthday gift for the einherji who has it all?"

"Something that involves you embarrassing yourself, probably," said Sam, who ... wasn't wrong, based on what Blitzen knew about Alex. "So you're off to a good start already."

Magnus sighed heavily.

Blitz took pity on him. "You know I've never turned down a shopping assignment," he said. He bound up the day's bills in a deposit envelope for the bank. "Okay, okay, buy me a coffee and we'll take a crack at this." He rubbed his hands together with relish. "I like a good challenge."

"And that's why you're the best!" crowed Magnus. "Deal."

Blitzen left Sam and Magnus good-naturedly arguing about their plans for the evening. In the back of the shop, he locked up the cash in the safe, double-checked that he'd been making good progress on his latest commission (a shield that converted into a boogie board for a day at the beach), and picked up his overcoat and the pile of sun protection gear that he wouldn't need now that the streetlamps had come on for the evening.

The bell on the shop's front door jingled; the shop was closed for the night, but both Sam and Magnus greeted whoever had just entered. Blitz stuck his head around the doorway to find Hearthstone perching himself on the counter beside the cash register, watching Magnus fail to convince Sam not to join the window-shopping expedition.

Hearth caught Blitz's eye, and one corner of his mouth tilted up.

"Oh, no, I'm definitely staying," Sam was saying to Magnus. "This is going to be much more entertaining than my chemistry homework."

Sam and Alex were two very different people, and yet every once in a while, it was very obvious they were related.

Blitzen left Magnus and Sam to their discussion and made a beeline for Hearthstone. You're early! How did it go?

Good, Hearth signed. He did look like it had gone well; much better than the grimly determined expression he'd had when he set out for Alfheim had implied. He'd been nervous to visit again, feeling guilty, and now he sat like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Inge is good. New job, teaching hulder kids.

"That's pretty perfect."

She's happy. He glanced down at the bracelet that he still wore around his left wrist, and he gave a tiny smile that spoke volumes about how happy he was, too. Friends.

Overcome with gladness for him, Blitzen put his hand on Hearthstone's nearer thigh and gave a squeeze. Hearth's smile widened just a fraction. Out of the corner of his eye, Blitzen thought he saw Sam glancing at the two of them. She probably had made some kind of movement, because Hearth looked over toward her and Magnus too.

Hearthstone pointed between Magnus and Sam and tossed Blitz a questioning look.

Magnus, birthday gift, Alex, spiraling, Blitzen explained succinctly.

Even in the middle of his conversation with Sam, Magnus apparently caught that. "No, I'm not!"

What? Obvious. Hearth looked over at Magnus. Let Alex cut hair.

"I already do that," Magnus pointed out.

New scissors, Hearth signed, and Magnus said, "...Huh."

Alex seemed to particularly enjoy gleefully hacking up Magnus's hair, but had also been known to self-trim and to do haircuts for other hallmates in Valhalla and kids at the Chase Space. A pair of scissors that were actually meant for that side hustle was the most Alex-appropriate idea anyone had suggested yet.

"Watch out, Blitz; Hearth's coming for your gift-giving championship title," said Sam, signing for Hearth's benefit as she spoke.

"We can share it," Blitz allowed magnanimously.

Over my dead body, signed Hearthstone, deadpan. He cracked a faint smile and leaned into Blitzen, though, when Blitz swatted at him.

Sam was definitely raising her eyebrows at them now.

"Nobody's allowed to die," said Magnus. "I already had to heal a bunch of people in Valhalla this morning; it was Dragon Thursday and I'm all out of juice. Let's just do some nice, easy looking for a birthday present."

"Nice and easy? Watch what you wish for, kid," Blitzen said, as Hearthstone hopped down off the counter. "Let's not jinx anything."

"Is there a Viking jinx nobody's told me about yet?" asked Magnus. They all gathered their coats and scarves and startled filing out of the shop. Thoughtfully: "Pinch, poke, you owe me a mead horn?"

Hearth shot Magnus a blank look, so Blitzen clearly wasn't the only one who had no idea what he was talking about. "It's — a Coke," Magnus said. "You guys never heard that saying? You lived here for two years, and Taylor Swift is a dwarf, and you don't know 'you owe me a Coke'?"

Blitzen let them all go ahead of him so he could hit the lights, with one final, warm glance at his shop. He pulled the front door shut behind himself.

Outside, Newbury Street was in holiday-shopping-season high gear — shoppers rushing back and forth in the cold, red brake lights stretching as far as the eye could see as bumper-to-bumper traffic continued, and the trees all strung with white lights. "You're still stuck on the Taylor Swift thing, huh?" Sam was asking.

"It's wild," Magnus insisted.

Hearth was waiting too, leaning against the opposite side of the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, but he straightened up as Blitzen finished locking the door.

"Right," Blitz said, "Magnus, we need a plan of attack here. Are we starting with books," Hearth slipped a gloved hand into Blitz's, and Blitz didn't skip a beat, "are we starting with accessories, are we starting with home goods—"

Hearthstone lifted his free hand and reminded, Scissors.

"—Right, that was a good idea, Hearth; are we starting with scissors—"

"Pause," said Magnus. "Hang on. Wait. Stop." He stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing a group of tourists to detour around them. He stared, blond eyebrows raised sky-high, and then he pointed squarely at Blitzen and Hearthstone's joined hands. "What's this?"

The sign for hand required two of them, so Hearth finger-spelled, H-a-n-d-s, like it was the obvious answer.

"I knew it," Magnus burst out, springing from foot to foot.

"Knew what? You didn't know anything," said Sam, but she was beginning to smile enormously at Blitz and Hearth.

Honestly, if one of them took a video of the goofy hopping that Magnus was doing right now, that would probably be at least ten birthdays' worth of gifts for Alex Fierro. "I called it two years ago!"

Unexpectedly, Magnus lunged, separating them in the process. You were wrong two years ago, Hearthstone pointed out, for four months, but Magnus was already thumping hard into first Blitzen and then Hearth, and then hugging both of them together. Blitzen was laughing under the assault but there was a lump in his throat, too. He was standing just a few feet from his own storefront on Newbury Street wrapped up in a group hug with Hearthstone and Magnus, Sam laughing at them. Their family of four empty cups. Probably more like five full cups, these days. Blitzen couldn't have imagined this, two years ago.

Magnus pulled back just as fast as he'd attacked. YOU GUYS, he signed. He raised four fingers to his mouth and then flung that gesture into a thumbs up way above his head — the sign for BEST — with so much enthusiasm that he nearly punched a passing pedestrian in the face.

Sam signed, Best, too, beaming at them knowingly.

"How did this happen?" Magnus demanded. The sign for happen was holding both index fingers out, then rolling his hands so his palms faced down, and when Magnus did it, he jabbed them both in the chest.

Hearthstone batted Magnus's hand away and solemnly signed, When a dwarf and an elf love each other very much...

Blitz stepped on his foot and Hearth stopped, looking pleased with himself. "That's how you're gonna say it?" Blitzen demanded. As he spoke, he signed: Love?! They'd both said it before, but not like this; not since they'd kissed in the middle of a November blizzard.

Hearth paused. He slowly lifted his hand to the height of his own shoulder. He gave two small, deliberate bobs of his closed fist: ...Yes?

"Ridiculous man," Blitzen grumbled, and he leaned against his warm side.

Magnus was grinning at them. Blitzen coughed. "Magnus, do you or do you not still need to get a birthday gift for Alex?"

"Oh, meinfretr," said Magnus. "Yes. Definitely yes."

Sam, because she was practical and a good friend, no matter how much time she spent busting Magnus's chops, stepped in. "Let's start at the Thinking Cup," she suggested. "Blitz was right; you should give this some thought."

The four of them began drifting down the sidewalk toward the coffee shop on the corner. When Blitzen's arm bumped Hearthstone's, it was impossible to say who reached for whose hand first; they just fit, like they always did.

Blitz had spent years paying close attention to every move of those strong hands. At this point, he probably could have predicted their movements better than he even knew what he was going to do with his own. And still, then, Hearthstone surprised him.

Blitzen felt Hearth's middle and index fingers curl. When Blitzen glanced up, Hearth wasn't looking at him, but there was a smile toying at the corners of his mouth, the big softy, as he pressed the word love into Blitzen's palm.

Blitz was never letting go of this elf.