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Grand Magnificent did not choose to build Arbit down the hill from the newly reopened Reverie Academy of Martial Arts.
Really, he didn’t. He was there first. The valley he’d chosen was an excellent location to build in, remote enough that no one else would get hurt if there was an accident, or if it didn’t work, or if the Rapid Evening tried to ambush him, or if he failed at this thing too. At the time, a school building did sit at the top of one side of the valley, but it had been unoccupied. Somewhere along the way, apparently, the building had been repaired and put back to use.
Grand didn’t know for sure whether Echo was there or not. He’d heard bits and pieces of information from his occasional trips into the nearby town. Strange trips, these were— once upon a time, he was surrounded by people constantly, a party or two every night. Now, the only time he saw anyone was when he walked an hour to visit the market. He’d make some small talk; he’d buy some bread; the devout would bow their heads at him and those still hostile to the idea of divines would avoid looking him in the eye. But mostly it was people in the middle of that spectrum, and those people hardly noticed him at all. Those were the ones Grand liked best, the sellers who would give him a polite smile and forget him instantly.
Sure, he was a little lonely sometimes, but he was learning to enjoy solitude instead of seeing it as a punishment.
But, regardless, people at the market would talk, just not to him. And the arrival of a new professor at the Reverie Academy of Martial Arts, one with blue-black hair and a sword half their height, caused a lot of talk. But none of the Reveries seemed to come this far out, so Grand couldn’t know for sure whether it was Echo. He could wonder, and hope, but he didn’t know.
He spent a lot of time thinking about it, thinking about them as he worked on Arbit. Some parts of Arbit were so high that the Academy would be at eye level when he’d go to repair them. He was extra distracted on those days. Leaning against the rickety guard rails of the cherry picker, he would search the crowd for that jacket, for Elegy, for any sign of Echo.
But despite his constant wondering, he couldn’t bring himself to do the simple task of walking up the hill and checking for himself. It was impossible for him to convince himself to do it. Grand owed Echo a great debt—a couple of them, really—which made him afraid of pushing them too hard. He didn’t want to overstep, to overstay his welcome when he wasn’t even sure if he had a welcome.
And besides, there was no shortage of work down here in the valley. Really, he was too busy to be spending his days hiking up a hill. There was always something on Arbit that needed to be fixed, or replaced, or fine-tuned, or maintained. The work was constant and never ending, a fate Grand knew would be his when he built the thing.
(Some might argue that this workload was self-inflicted, that Arbit was a well-made machine who didn’t need constant maintenance, but Grand Magnificent clinged to this excuse. And so, some might find it inevitable that Grand would never be the first to reach out, and that he was very lucky that Echo was willing to take the leap.)
It was a very small thing, a paper bag left on his doorstep to be discovered at the end of a workday, but it meant the world to him all the same.
The bag caught him by surprise— he’d had a handful of visitors to Arbit before, but never any here, at his home. He grabbed it on his way in the door, greasy from a day refurbishing a long and important chain. He checked over his shoulder for anyone as he walked inside, the old habit resurfacing. With the door shut, it was easier to smell what was in the bag: something sharp and rich and sweet. He opened it to find a couple dozen cookies and a folded note.
Grand Mag—
Hey. One of my student’s moms brought way too many cookies to the showcase last night, more than we know what to do with. So I thought you might want some? They’re chocolate and lemon, and they’re pretty good.
I’m teaching with Ballad now up at the school. If you ever need anything, let me know. I hope you’re doing well.
Echo
Something stirred in his belly, and it wasn’t just hunger. He smiled without realizing it. Grand popped one of the cookies into his mouth—it was pretty good.
So Echo was here, all plausible deniability extinguished. And they were thinking about Grand, at least a little bit. Enough to come all the way down here. They knew he was here. They had reached out. Maybe that meant that they still—
Grand shook his head, stopping that line of thinking before he could get his hopes up too far. His feelings about Echo had always remained constant. It was pointless to deny that now, what with how he broke a magnet off of a scrapped gravity cannon just so he could stick Echo’s letter on the fridge. Loving Echo was easier than breathing. But it had been a long time since they’d had… whatever it was that they used to have. A bag of cookies didn’t mean Echo still had feelings for him.
But it did mean Echo was thinking about him, and that was enough to make Grand’s stomach twist.
***
Arbit had handed Grand a serious problem.
It came down to one wire. One thin wire, green and coiled, tucked between crossed metal beams, had begun to fray. This was a serious problem. If it broke completely, the whole arm could freeze, or Grand could be electrocuted, or a myriad of other horrible technological problems could spiral out.
The solution was simple: replace the wire. Problem was, no matter what angle he came from or what tool he tried, Grand just couldn’t reach it. He just wasn’t flexible enough to get through the bars.
Which was the true problem Arbit had given him. He knew how to fix the problem, or rather, who could fix the problem. But that would mean going up the hill.
Grand put it off as long as he could. He didn’t want to bug Echo, but at the same time, he was desperate to see them again. They’d been to Arbit once, they must have seen it when they’d dropped off the cookies, but he wanted to be the one to show them around, to explain how unexplainable the machine was. But would Echo want to see the tour? Would Echo want to see him?
When the wire began to spark, Grand knew it was time to swallow his pride and began his trek up the hill, willing his nerves to just be cool.
The Academy grounds were much nicer up close than they had been afar. Green lawns were filled with children chasing each other. An older group of students worked behind a fence, all twenty of them kicking in time. Grand flagged down the first adult he could find, a Qui Err woman with curly black hair. “Hi. Do you know where I could find Echo Reverie?”
“Oh, yeah. Mx. Reverie’s office is down that hall, just make a right and it’s the first door.”
“Thank you.” He smiled at the woman and walked where she had pointed. Echo had an office?
And sure enough, they did, with a nameplate and everything. Grand knocked once on the ajar door and pushed it open.
“Grand?” Echo’s face was a mixture of a smile and surprise (a win right there, Grand thought).
“Hi,” he said, brilliant as ever.
“Hi.” Standing behind a desk, Echo looked good, Grand couldn’t help but notice. They looked really good, like time had decided to be kind to them for once. Their hair had grown out a bit since he’d seen them last, in that midlength stage where it just barely touched their shoulders, a length that seemed like it should look awkward but worked on them. “What are you doing here? Not that it’s not good to see you, I’m happy to— just— what’s up?”
“I need your help.” Grand saw Echo’s shoulders tense and he flinched, hated that they still had those instincts and hated that he caused them. “Not like that, I mean— I just need a favor with Arbit.”
“You want my help with Arbit?” Echo’s shoulders relaxed and their brow furrowed. “Grand, what’s going on?”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m doing this all wrong,” he groaned behind his palms. “Let me start over.”
“Sure.” He removed his hands from his eyes to see Echo, arms crossed and a smirk beginning to form on their face.
He stopped short of rolling his eyes at them. “Hello, Echo, it’s nice to see you again. Thank you for the cookies. How are you?”
“I’m doing all right. Had a run-in with this weird guy in my office though.”
Okay, that time he did roll his eyes. “I can’t believe you have an office.”
“Neither can I.” They smiled. “You said you needed a favor?”
“Yes. Um. There’s some wiring on the southern arm that got exposed, and leaving it like that is dangerous, but I can’t, um, reach it.”
“You can’t reach it?” they said with a laugh. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re like, five inches taller than me. I don’t think I can help.”
“I think it’s a flexibility issue, not a height thing.” Grand felt his face start to go pink. “If you could spare some time to try to fix it, I would really appreciate it.”
“Sure, Mags.” Echo smiled, and the nickname washed over him like a ray of sunshine. “Let me grab my jacket.”
“Oh, you don’t need to go now if you don’t—”
“I thought you said it was dangerous?”
“I mean, it is.” Grand rubbed the back of his neck. “But it can wait a little, if you’re busy.”
“I’m not busy. I don’t have any afternoon classes today. Let’s go.”
“All right.” Grand smiled back and started leading Echo down the hill.
“You can’t believe I have an office, I can’t believe you live here.” Echo eyed the wooden house Grand had built himself to stay in as they walked past.
“I’m not going to waste money or materials on me when I need to maintain Arbit,” he said, a little indignant. “I made a lot of art before I had patrons. I knows how to stretch credits as far as they can go, and besides, I’ve never needed much.”
Echo snorted at that. “Sure.”
Grand opened his mouth to fire back, but they interrupted him before he could say anything. “Let me see where your problem is.”
“Right. Uh, this way.”
They rode the cherry picker up together, standing close on the small platform. Working with Echo was just like Grand hoped they would be: smirking at him as they easily squeezed between the two beams, teasing him about how easy it was to reach. The wire was no challenge at all, which only served to bolster Echo’s friendly mocking. Grand took it all in stride, warmth in his chest even as he knew he was being made fun of. Because he had missed this, really. He missed them so much. Grand liked being alone now, more than he’d ever liked it before, but being with Echo felt like being in on a secret and not needing to have any secrets all at once.
Echo took a moment when they were done to look at the view of the valley, like Grand had done so many times before. “It’s really pretty up here,” they murmured. “Grand, do you remember when we first got here, and we could see the stars?”
“I’ve never been able to forget them,” he admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the Twilight Mirage, but I miss being able to look up at the night sky.”
“I know what you mean,” Echo said in a low voice.
“Thanks, Echo.” He nudged their shoulder as the cherry picker carried them to the ground.
“No problem.” They elbowed him back. “You need any light bulbs screwed in or anything, just give me a call,” they grinned.
***
Grand Magnificent was not prepared for his first thunderstorm with Arbit.
Arbit itself was fine, of course. Grand hadn’t put thousands of hours into the project just for it to be destroyed by a little bit of water. Arbit was waterproofed and protected. His house, on the other hand…
Water poured in from several spots in the ceiling. His floor was littered with buckets, trying to catch all the leaks. It wasn’t nearly enough to stop it. Grand ran back and forth across his tiny house in a raincoat and boots, dumping water out as the buckets filled and trying to find more things to catch the water with: cups, pots, a busted floodlight from a Saint unit. Trying to contain the storm was hopeless, he soon realized, water beginning to overflow.
He heard a pounding noise outside. He assumed it was more thunder and groaned, thinking about the more rain it would bring. And then a voice cut through the pitter patter: “Mags, open up.”
Grand froze, looking between at the door, the floor, and back to the door again. Under no circumstances did he want to bring anyone inside right now, but if that was who he thought it was, he couldn’t just ignore them. He opened the door to see he had been right: “Echo?”
They stood on his porch with an umbrella, one hand on their hip, a lavender raincoat pulled over their head. “Dude,” they scoffed at him, laughing to themself. “Okay, yeah, I was right. Your house is a nightmare.” They pulled out another umbrella from their pocket and held it out to him. “Come on, let’s go.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I figured your house wasn’t going to hold up to this storm. You can hole up at the academy until it passes, if you want.”
A quick assessment of his circumstances was all Grand needed. “Yeah. Yeah that would be great.”
They ran back up the hill in the rain, going as fast as they could without slipping in the mud. The rain had turned the path into an obstacle course. Echo dodged puddles with ease, and Grand tried to follow their steps best he could. His slow and steady approach proved to be an advantage when Echo misstepped on rock, stumbling backwards. Grand caught them, one arm across their lower back, before they could slide too far down the hill.
“You okay?” Grand asked, eyes wide.
“Yeah,” they said, out of breath. “Thanks.”
“Of course.” Grand kept his hand on their back for just a moment— just to make sure Echo could catch their breath, of course, that was all. It took Echo a long beat to move away, a fact Grand tucked away carefully into the back of his mind.
Echo lived in a faculty dorm room on the campus, essentially a small studio with a minimal kitchen, a couch draped in blankets, and a closed door that Grand assumed led to a bedroom. It was cozy, especially compared to the storm outside.
“I’d offer to make you tea or something, but my stove top’s busted.” They put down their umbrella and shook out their hair. “But it should at least be warmer in here.”
“Thanks,” Grand said, trying to seem genuine but not like he’s trying too hard. He glanced over at the kitchen— really just a sink, a fridge, and one electric burner. “I could take a look at it, if you want.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I know. But you did a favor for me, so the least I could do is take a look at it?”
Echo laughed at him a little bit. “I mean, go for it. But I promise, this wasn’t a scheme to get you to fix my stove.”
“I know,” he replied with a small smile. “You got a toolbox?”
Grand got to work as Echo settled in on the couch. They put on some music, a gritty band with an airy-voiced singer that Grand hadn’t heard of before. Echo would call out the titles to Grand, occasionally talking over the music to tell a story. Grand didn’t say much of anything—he was very talkative when he was designing, yes, but the mechanical side of his work always took a little more focus. Echo’s music and stories were the perfect balance, he found, for keeping his mind occupied and happy while his hands worked. The time passed quickly; Grand only noticed how quickly when Echo got up again to flip the record.
The burner’s problem was an easy enough fix. A few rearranged wires and it was working again. Satisfied, Grand started opening Echo’s cabinets. He found the kettle and tea that Echo had mentioned earlier and started boiling the water.
When the tea kettle whistled, Echo looked over at him in the kitchen and laughed to themself.
“What?” Grand asked, turning the burner off again. “I need to check my work.”
“Nothing,” they said, still grinning. “Cups are on the left.”
And with a steaming mug in each hand, Grand joined Echo on the couch. Echo had put their feet up on the table, leaning back, relaxed. Grand didn’t dare follow suit, too nervous, instead sitting awkwardly next to them and trying to silently judge how close was too close to be.
But as they sat and talked, really talked, for the first time in ages, his nerves melted away. They drank their tea (“A gift from Signet,” Echo said) and properly caught up. Echo asked questions about Arbit and Grand answered honestly, about the workload and the people calling it a divine and his insatiable fear that one day it’ll break, and the Rapid Evening will come back, and all of his work will have gone to waste.
Echo had rubbed their hand on Grand’s shoulder when he said that. “If all you did was give people some extra time, that would be enough. But I think we both know you’re too smart to build something that’ll just break right away.”
“Thank you,” Grand said with a swallow. Desperate for a change in subject, he grabbed the first escape rope he could think of: “How’s Ballad doing?”
“Good,” Echo said, even-faced.
“Just good?”
Echo sighed. “I know you don’t really want to know how he’s doing. But I appreciate you asking.”
“I do really want to know how he’s doing,” Grand said, genuine. “You two are co-teaching, right?”
“Not exactly.” Echo shifted on the couch as they began to explain the school’s structure, hugging one bent leg and turning towards Grand. The move made their knee press into Grand’s. It was a tiny point of contact, but it was nice, rooting Grand to the spot. The two of them stayed there for hours, long enough for Grand to get a full rundown on every one of Echo’s students, for Grand to share the handful of funny stories he’d accumulated in the valley, for the talking to fade out comfortably as the pounding rain faded into a sprinkle and then away completely.
When he realized the storm had stopped, Grand sat forward. Being with Echo again had felt good, had felt right. But he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. “I guess I should get going,” he said quietly, glancing out the window.
“Oh, did the rain stop?” Echo turned to check, something that Grand wished was disappointment in their eyes.
“Yeah, it did. And I know you’ve gotta get up early in the morning, so.” He slowly stood and made his way towards the door, Echo following him.
“Somebody has to get the kids to do their stretches.”
“Of course, of course.”
“Mags?”
God, Echo was still the only person who ever called him that. They were probably the only person he’d ever want to call him that. “Yeah?”
“Do you—” They looked back at the couch for a moment, then their head whipped back to Grand. “Nevermind.” They took the mug from his hands, their fingers grazing over his for just a moment, long enough to remind him of the days when they would linger. “I’m sure you have a lot of work to do.”
“It was really nice to hang out again,” he offered. “Like old times.”
“Not like old times, I don’t think. But yeah, it was nice.”
Echo smiled at him, and the smile reached their eyes, dark and shining. It was the only push he needed to ask, “We should do this again. Maybe without any favors involved?”
Echo laughed and tucked their hair behind their ear. “Yeah, okay.”
“Okay.” Grand’s eyes followed their hand, trailing down their cheek and across their face. Echo was standing closer than he’d thought, closer than they’d been all afternoon, and Grand was sufficiently distracted by that realization that the boom of more thunder completely caught him off guard. He jumped forward with an embarrassing yelp.
Echo snorted, but they caught him, hands resting on his biceps.
Grand turned to look out the window. The thunder brought the rain with it, coming down even harder than before. “Fucking hell,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m gonna have to rebuild that whole damn house.”
“Would you maybe like to do this again right now?” Echo asked with a laugh.
“Yeah, that would be great.”
“Good.” Echo leaned in with a grin and kissed him. It was quick, quick enough that by the time his brain caught up, Echo had already turned back around and was walking to the coat rack. Their lips were just as soft as he remembered, but his heart pounded in his chest like it was all new.
“We should head to the cafeteria,” they said, facing the wall, putting their raincoat on again. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry, and tonight is—”
“Echo.”
“Yeah?” They turned around and Grand could see the pink in their cheeks, the nervousness in their eyes, not as unaffected as maybe they wanted to seem.
“Echo,” he said again, and he rushed to fill the gap between them, taking their jacket in his hands and kissing them. It was maybe harder than he meant it to be, wrapped up in making sure he got to kiss Echo back this time, but Echo reached an arm around him, pulling him in tight, running a hand up the back of his neck and into his hair. The one kiss became two, and three, and four. He moved a hand up to run his fingers through Echo’s hair, and they sighed into him, the soft sound filling Grand’s world.
Echo pulled away just a hair, pressing their foreheads together. “Sorry, I— I wasn’t sure if you wanted to— if I wanted to—”
“Don’t be sorry. Of course I want to.”
“But do you…” Echo’s voice faded away, and Grand was too afraid to let them drop the subject.
“All my feelings for you are still here,” he admitted, “and if you want to try to make something together with them, I— I would really like that.”
“Okay,” they said, a smile beginning to form on their lips. “Then I think dinner is a good place to start?”
“Dinner sounds great.”