Work Text:
"What are we?"
No, not this and not now. Ral couldn't stand to look Tomik in the face, so he looked down at the worn wooden floorboards instead. He felt hands on his shoulders.
"No, not in that way, what are we, individually?"
Ral looked up again.
"We're two lovers from different guilds who live in a mediocre apartment, both involved in stopping an ancient egomaniacal bastard of a dragon?"
"No, what do we call people that are attracted in a similar way as we are?”
"I don't know what term there is for that. The League isn't filled with social scientists. I guess you could call it 'people who like people of their own gender?'"
"That's a description, but see what I mean? As I'm the one who brought up this, it's only makes sense I answer this question. My schedule is less hectic than yours anyway."
*****
The public story was that the library at the edge of the lesser plaza was formed charitably "for the good of all citizens so that greater understanding could flourish among the Gateless and the guilded." That was of course a facade, but it meant it had greater variety than would be found in a guild library. Tomik had been to far too many haunted vaults with absurd degrees of safety to fail to notice that the security wards were just a little too advanced to protect just common books and scrolls. If you strained your ears by one corner by the shelves, glossolalic whispers brushed against the surface of your mind. All of it in a comfortably warm interior with a helpful Vedalken at the desk.
It was clear that the true operators were trying to make a smart person think they had found a Dimir cell, but that wasn't quite right. More likely, it was an Azorius-run library pretending to be Dimir to sweep up spies, although it could be the more complicated than that. Whatever the case, it didn't matter.
The topic was narrow enough; how difficult could it be to find? As he cast the same searching spell that was used to sift through lengthy contracts, he thought of the topic broadly, and the ends of relevant texts glowed.
An exposé claimed to tell the story of a Boros Legion smuggling ring but it was mostly preoccupied about a much more than friendly relationship between two angels. Weren't all angels clones or at least related? Anyway, it offered no terminology to describe them.
Another text was a mystery novel about the ambiguous transfer of Orzhov wealth. A pair of married men adopted a child, but it turned out one of them had another child born earlier from an affair. Tomik smirked. The writer clearly hadn't researched thoroughly enough. It wasn't just a matter of what current laws of inheritance, but of what previous agreements had been made by still existing spirits that changed how that inheritance could happen.
An introductory manual to Rakdos leather dungeons was potentially useful. After elaborating on such topics as choosing a safe word—"Don't choose the name of something or someone you hate. That might be your best tool!”—and popular scenarios, the author included a glossary on jargon. One entry seemed promising until he turned the page and it turned out to actually refer to preferences for using knives and needles. Why?
An anthology of poetry about street markets looked like a false result, but when he opened it up, one entry proved to be about two fellow fruit sellers who had unspoken crushes on each other, and the genders of each one was left unstated. It was so vague it was even possible for the sellers to be constructs, and if you read it another way, it could be an erotic poem.
This search was more difficult than it seemed.
*****
"I didn't find what we were looking for. The sources mentioned things but never gave a specific phrase or word," Tomik reported.
"That's disappointing. I've been doing some thinking of my own. If you can't find something, make it yourself. Idioamicable: what do you think of it?" Ral replied.
"I don't think anyone would actually use that word."
“So much for us trying to be social scientists.”
“We are still what we are, whatever that is.”