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Soln hates his job.
No—that’s a lie. His job’s great. Pays the bills. Puts food on the table. Got him off the streets. Flexible hours. Freelance. All that good stuff.
What Soln hates is being up at four in the fucking morning on the edge of a suburb trying not to die or cause too much property damage. The Creature is a writhing mass of shadows and feathers, tied together by surface-bone and sharp teeth and too-many eyes. It is also pressed against the ground and unable to move because of the ward that’s been thrown down around it not even ten seconds ago.
What he hates is that he wasn’t even the one to apply that ward.
“Why are you here?”
Nox tilts their head at him, looking luminescent in the moonlight. It hits bright on the edges of their perfectly pressed black suit, silver on the strands of their perfectly straight hair. Their brows furrow, just a little.
“I sensed your magic,” they say, as if that explains anything. They’re supposed to be in another country right now. “And this Creature. You were going to use your Blessing, right? I could feel it. It could have set this whole neighborhood on fire.”
His temper flares. “Well it’s not my fault that these,” he waves at house that they’re right beside, “fucking idiots blew up their wards with fireworks. I could have handled it.”
“And that’s why your forearm is bloodied?” Their voice is hard and sharp: the only way Soln has ever really known them to speak. He bristles. “Be more careful, Soln. If you had—”
“Not everyone can be a neigh-untouchable fucking—prophecy—whatever,” he spits, flames licking at his fingertips, unbidden. “Just fuck off if you’re only here to be condescending.”
Nox doesn’t return the animosity; they would have, once, years ago, but they’ve grown used to Soln’s baiting. Soln… his temper has improved too, a little, maybe. Maybe not. He sucks at personal development.
“Are you done?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Nox rolls their eyes and tosses him a white bottle. He catches it easily and has to squint to read the label. Painkillers? Oh. His arm throbs and he almost winces at the burning sensation of it. His adrenaline is fading, and the pain is becoming sharper.
“...Thanks.”
“Don’t—” Nox starts, then stops. Soln follows the flick of their eyes to the entrance of the house. The door is creaked half open and there is a woman staring at them, gaze switching between the Creature and Soln and Nox.
“Is it…?”
Nox dips their head towards the woman. “This will be cleaned up before sunrise. Please be more careful with your wards in the future. We apologize for the disturbance.”
Soln sure as hell does not fucking apologize for the ‘disturbance’, and he is about to say as much, but Nox shoots him a glare, and he swallows it. Just this once. The woman starts thanking and apologizing and he tunes it out. The door closes.
Soln huffs impatiently, shoving the painkillers into one of the pockets of his cargo pants. “Are we going now?”
“Wait.” Nox slips a sleek black phone from the pocket of their pants and make a call. It’s brief, just a location, a summery of the Creature, and a thank you at the end. The phone slips back. “Alright.”
“Finally.”
“Yes,” Nox agrees, glancing at him. “Are we using the Paths on the way there?”
“What? Hell no.” He thumbs the thread bracelet around his wrist, eyeing the deep shadows of a nearby break in the suburban houses. He could open a Path, if he wanted, but. “I’m not gonna try to guide us through there just to save us a half hour walk for some halfassed reason.”
It’s true that he’s good at navigating the Paths, but they aren’t trivial things. In them, desire is your lamplight, and the weaker your reason for entering, the less likely you are to get out. Nox may not understand, because they don’t use the Paths, don’t worship or pay tribute to the god of them, but that’s how it is.
“Alright.”
Nox doesn’t even look at him when they start walking back to the city. Their legs are stupid long and their pace is brisk. Soln stares stupidly for a moment before briefly jogging to catch up. Their eyes are pale blue and familiarly unapproachable when they flick at him.
“So...” Soln kicks a pebble on the sidewalk. They’re out of the suburbs now, finally. “Why are you here anyway? Like, actually. I thought you were in, like, I don’t fucking know. France?”
“China,” Nox answers. “The job was easier than I thought it’d be so I ended up coming back early.”
“Oh. You speak Chinese?”
“I speak a little mandarin.”
“Same difference.”
Nox’s expression pinches. “China is a very diverse nation with more than one language.”
“Yeah whatever.” Not like he cares. He perks a little, looking at Nox with some hope. “Did you get souvenirs?”
They blink at him. It shows clearly under the street light. In the light, their hair looks almost white instead of the pastel blue he knows it as. “Was I supposed to?”
Aw. “So you didn’t?”
“...I didn’t.” Their expression does something strange that Soln doesn't know how to read. He blames it on the late hour; Nox is hard to read in the dark, shadows blending into the natural darkness of their skin, shading over details and nuances. “My apologies.”
Soln sticks his tongue out, face pulling strangely. “Don’t apologize it’s weird.”
Nox scoffs quietly, and says nothing more.
Some minutes pass in silence. The inner city is still some half hour away, but they are not going to the city’s heart. They’re approaching an apartment complex, a nice one. Nox walks in easily, but Soln feels out of place walking up the squeaky clean staircases, even now. Even so, it’s him who knocks on the door to the penthouse up top. Three clumsy taps, and then four incessant rings of the doorbell.
The door opens.
Dhelm squints at them, heavy bags under her eyes, lavender hair pulled up into a bun that looks half undone. “Seriously?” She rubs her eyes. “It’s five in the morning. Why the fuck are you guys awake.”
“Like you have room to speak on that,” Soln nudges past her, entering easily and making way towards the bathroom. He needs to clean his arm properly. “Have you even looked at the mirror? The scent of coffee is so thick in here I can taste it.”
“That’s different,” Dhelm protests, weak and halfassed. “I’m working on a song. Can’t sleep or the ideas will leave.”
“Mhmm.”
Soln enters the bathroom and starts washing the gash out. It’s fucking painful, but he doesn't yelp. He’s had worse. Over the water, he can hear Nox quietly thanking Dhelm for letting them in, even though this has been routine for years, and there’s really no need for it.
When Soln comes out, pressing a towel to his arm with one hand and carrying bandages in the other, Nox slips across the room and slides the roll from his fingers. He bristles, indignation in his throat, but—
“Let me do it,” Nox says, voice short as ever, but their touch is so gentle on his skin. “I’ve been learning first aid.”
It takes Soln a moment to lift his tongue and say: “Why? Not like you ever get hurt.”
“But you do,” Nox says, fingers wrapping around his wrist, tugging him down to the couch. Soln thinks they’re going to elaborate, but nothing else comes.
It should be condescending, probably, maybe. Soln is used to reading bad intent where none exists. Normally, he would push the hand away and grab the bandages because he doesn't need to be taken care of, and he’s long since learned his lesson on growing reliant on people, but—
Soln hasn’t seen them in a couple months, and it’s not like they’re even friends, exactly, but it’s still nice to see them. Nox’s touch is so careful, light and barely there, ice-colored eyes focused solely on Soln’s injury, soft hair brushing briefly on his shoulder. Warm yellow light from a nearby lamp hits softly on the silver loop of Nox’s earrings, the sharp ridge of their nose, the slant of their eyes.
Something curls in Soln’s chest, heavy and aching, and it’s not unfamiliar; he has harbored jealousy and envy towards them since they first met, but this feels—different. Less ugly, but just as wanting. What? His heart stutters weakly in his chest, and suddenly, it is hard to breathe.
-
Afternoon sun glitters gold on the river’s sluggishly moving surface. A dandelion tickles Soln’s knee. It’s one of those idyllic summer days, blue skies, cotton-candy clouds, slight breeze. Warmth curls around his neck, over his back, trapped in by the thick bush of his own hair.
Dhelm groans next to him, rolling over the bank, left, right, and again. She has been restlessly shifting like this for the entire hour that they’ve been here.
“Make any progress?” He’s not actually interested.
Her eyes wrinkle tight. “Shhh.”
Soln lets his eyes wander: the river, the bank, the bridge not too far off. The figure walking down the path towards them, dressed pristine as ever.
He lifts a hand lazily. “Yo!”
“Hi,” Nox responds, pausing atop the bank, just a few steps away. Their face is impassive. No suit, this time. Just a white collar shirt. “What’re you two doing here?”
“Brainstorming,” Dhelm says, some irritation in her tone, peeking up at them. “Were you trying to find us?”
A head shake. “No. Just passing through. There’s something I need to deal with across the city.”
“Well go have fun with that,” Soln says, dropping his eyes from the place where the skin of Nox’s neck disappears into the collar of their shirt. “I’ll continue having a great time lazing off here.”
They frown, just a bit, so slight Soln would almost miss it if he wasn’t so good at picking out the smallest details of someone’s body language. (He’s never quite dropped the habit—it’s a good habit to have. Things can be dangerous otherwise.)
“You’re pretty free.”
“Yep,” Soln angles his head towards them, popping the ‘p’. Something carves onto his face, too challenging for a smile, too thin for a grin. “Why? ‘You jealous?”
“Of course not,” Nox answers, entirely genuine, raising a brow. “Why would I be?”
A stab of what once would’ve been jealousy knits Soln’s chest. Now it’s just an ugly sort of admiration. Too wanting for proper admiration; too full of self-comparisons. Nox knows their role and has embraced it since the very start—they know their meaning. The reason that they are alive. And Soln—
He has never fell into meaning like Dhelm and Nox have; easy as breath. There is a reason that between the three of them here, Dhelm is brainstorming music and Nox is on their way to craft wards and Soln is just—well.
“Dunno,” he says, “doesn’t really matter. I was just saying shit. Whatever.”
Their lips purse for a moment. “Okay,” they finally say. Then: “I’ll be free for a couple hours tonight. Will you also be?”
He jerks his head around. “What?”
“Will you be free tonight?” They repeat, brow arched, chin lifting ever so slightly. Sunlight glitters on the silver bands around their fingers when a hand lifts to tuck a strand of hair behind their ear.
“Yeah,” he says, words feeling clumsy in his mouth, then: “yeah. Yeah of course! Why’d’ya wanna know? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just making sure,” they say, eyes flicking down to the watch on their wrist. “I need to go now, but ‘see you later.”
“’See you,” Soln echoes, maybe a beat too late, because Nox is already walking away. But they pause and twist halfway around, giving him a sharp nod before continuing off.
He twists the stem of a dandelion between his fingers, and wretches his eyes away from Nox’s disappearing feature, and to the river. He glares at nothing in particular. Summer sun slicks down Soln’s arms and burns on the skin of his face. Even though he’s too dark for sunburn.
There’s a poke on his arm. He looks over. Dhelm peers at him. A smile tilts on her pink-painted lips, delighted, without any teeth. Like she knows something he doesn’t. Hesmacks her hand away without any force.
“What?”
“You know,” she says, pauses for a moment, tilts her head as if with consideration. Rephrases: “Do you know what the music I’m writing is about?”
What? The one that’s giving her so much trouble? “...No.”
Her brown eyes glint.
“It’s a song about pining.”
-
Soln doesn’t like being reliant on people. He learned not to hand his wellbeing into other’s hands as a child, when his father left, and his mother soon after. This is why, the moment Nox and Dhelm crossed from being people that he knows, to being people that he knows—he began rejecting their aid. Because it was no longer something he was taking, it was freely given. It was something that meant something; like kindness, like companionship, like affection.
And, because he is a liar to many but not to himself, he can admit that it terrified him. Still scares him, honestly.
There is a casual intimacy in being here, in Dhelm’s penthouse, eating her snacks and listening to her talk about things he doesn’t care about in the slightest.
“Anyway, what I mean is that art has no inherent meaning; drawings are just ink on paper, writing is just strung words, music is just wavelengths of sound. It’s the author and viewer that give them meaning beyond that.”
“...Right,” he says. The bag of faux-cheesy pretzels or whatever the hell crinkles in his lap. “Uhhuh.”
Dhelm peers at him from across the couch, pillow pulled to her chest, hair done up in plaits across her skull that tie into a bun at the back. It’s nearing noon, and she’s still in her pajamas.
He squints, huffing at the look. “What?”
“How much have you been listening?”
Not a lot. “Why are you telling me all this anyway?”
She huffs a sigh, but looks like she expected it, and makes a grabby hand for the snacks in his lap. He pulls them tighter to his chest despite himself, despite the fact that they’re hers in the first place, and he’s not even hungry; hoarding food is a hard habit to shake. He passes her a handful.
“What I mean,” Dhelm says, “is that nothing means anything if you don’t want it to. Nothing. Not even real things, like wandering thoughts and blushes and skipped heartbeats.”
“What—” he starts to say, then stops. Thinks of Nox. “How’d you even—” a sound hisses past his teeth, not quite a groan, but something frustrated and frayed. He has been trying not to think about it. “Really?”
“Mhmm,” she hums. “Your feelings don’t have to mean anything. Don’t let romance movies trick you.”
He leans into the couch and breaks a pretzel between his teeth. He feels the snap of it. “’Fuck are you even talking about.”
“Exactly what I said,” she says. “It doesn’t have to mean anything, and you don’t have to do anything about it, and if it does and you do, then there can be ambiguity in what comes of it, too.”
“Fuck,” he mutters. Sometimes he forgets that between the three of them, she’s the one with the most relationship experience. Which—doesn’t mean much, granted, because he’s slept around but he’s never been in anything resembling a more-than-friends-relationship—hasn’t had many friendships either, really—and Nox hasn’t either, he thinks. Probably. “Hhh.”
“You don’t have to decide right now.”
“No.” He swallows. Thumbs the thread bracelet around his wrist. Meaning, or no meaning, meaning, or no meaning. No. It—it does. His fingers drop from the bracelet. Something cold and hesitant anxiously squirms in his chest, but he’s not a liar, not to himself. “I know already. It means something.”
-
Once he identifies the feelings, once he acknowledges them, decides they mean something, they get worse. Love. It sits awkwardly on his tongue, old and unused. The last person he said I love you to was his little sister, and, well.
He hopes she’s finding some enjoyment from the afterlife in the way he’s stumbling his words right now.
“I got souvenirs,” Nox repeats, the beginnings of a frown starting to crease at the corner of their lips, where deep pink meets the surrounding so-dark-brown-it’s-almost-actual-black. His eyes linger maybe a moment too long on the movement. “You wanted some last time, right?”
“I—yeah.” His stomach buzzes with a swarm of angry bees. No butterflies. He wants to speak with whoever said it was like butterflies. Wow, this is so horrible. What bullshit. “Thanks. What’d you get?”
“I figured you wouldn’t want anything that takes too much space, or that has no utility,” Nox says, tone measured, almost tentative. Observing. They shift the large white bag nestled in the crook of their elbow down into their hand, extend their arm, and offers it. “So I thought..”
The bag hangs in the air between them, crinkled paper deceptively innocent.
Soln’s arm feels weightless when he reaches out and grasps it by the handle. His fingers brush Nox’s when they relinquish hold to him. It’s—not heavy, but not light, either. Something sweet wafts from the air. Sugary.
“Sweets?”
“From a famous bakery in France,” Nox confirms, gaze thick and tingling on his skin. “There are a few things in there, but my favorite are the chocolate éclairs. Nothing too fancy could retain full deliciousness in travel, but I’d hope they prove enjoyable regardless. Good vegan desserts are hard to find here.” There’s a startlingly uncertain lilt to their voice, and their pretty blue eyes flick to the side before focusing back to Soln.
And fuck, he could kiss them right here, in this park, under the noonday sun, flowery scent coming from a tree in full bloom not too far away.
I could kiss you, he almost says, but doesn’t.
“Sure as hell I will,” he says instead, grinning wide, viciously trying to smack down the distracting swell of his chest. The way it feel that his heart will break right out from the cage of his ribs. Gods, he’s such a coward. “Noth’in could’ve been better.”
“I’m glad,” they say, smile carving on their face, bright sunlight shining on the straight-cut edge of their hair where it shifts over the midpoint of their throat. “Do you want food next time, too?”
There’s going to be a next time?
“If you want,” Soln says, “yeah. I mean—it’d be good.”
“Alright.”
Soln leans back, against the trunk of a tree. Its rough bark digs into the back of his neck and helps him focus. Nox sits down next to him.
They’re wearing one of those ridiculous shirts that they sometimes find in fuck knows where. It’s a formal piece of clothing, like everything else they wear; a collar shirt with a black tie sitting perfectly in place. It’d be normal, if not for the fact that the shirt is patterned all over with eyes, cartoonish and catlike, the sort that peers out of the dark in ‘creepy’ scenes.
“Soln?”
He startles a little. “Yeah?”
Their brows crease just a little. “What are you staring at?”
“Your shirt,” Soln says. “It’s—where did you even find that? And why wear it?”
They peer at their sleeve, and then back to him. “It’s cute, right?”
“Uh,” he says, eyeing at the masses of eyes. “...Sure.”
On any given day, it’s tossup between whether they’ll be wearing unbearably proper office wear or something like—that. “I think it’s cute.”
“Good for you, having bad taste.”
Nox breathes something through their teeth that isn’t quite a laugh, but it unmistakably amused. It’s a nice sound. The topic switches, and they talk on until the sun casts long shadows from his feet.
I love you, he thinks of saying, briefly, but doesn’t. I like you so so much. This is so stupid.
Soln isn’t a coward, nor is he a careful planner. He’s impulsive, if not exactly reckless, and it shouldn’t be this fucking hard to confess. He isn’t shy, has never been shy. But he has been thrown aside so many times, and he knows his personality is shit, and the gnawing discomfort of it churns under his skin. Relationships are for other people. Not him. So here he fucking is.
If his sister was still alive, if she were him, she would have confessed by now. Or not. Probably not. She was brilliant and smart and it’s something that he will never forgive the world for that she died of sickness and he didn’t, but she had social anxiety. And he doesn’t, so really—
it shouldn’t be so hard.
-
Between Nox and everyone else, there exists a void. They are incredibly unapproachable in the excellence of their capability, in their rigid kindness, in their straight-laced seriousness. They hold themselves to a baseline of perfection, and that ridiculous standard extends to everyone they meet.
“Where are you going this time anyway?”
Soln hated them the moment they met. He wanted to rip them right off that pedestal and down into the dirt with the rest of humanity.
“Italy.”
Nox disliked him in turn, he thinks. He was too crude, too harsh, too abrasive; they were too arrogant, too sheltered, too full with uncompromising expectation. Back then, Soln closed the distance between them with spite and circumstantial necessity.
He fiddles with the thread bracelet around his wrist. Tries to act casual. “What for?”
And now, once again, he has to close the distance, but he just doesn’t know how. All he knows is that time is running out. Nox is leaving tonight, again, will be gone, again, and he just—
“Just routine maintenance of major wards,” they answer, steps clacking against the frosted sidewalk underfoot. It’s autumn, now. “It shouldn’t take more than a month to finish business there.”
A month.
His chest twists uncomfortably.
“Have fun.”
“Hm.”
Soln breathes out something like a snort, but not quite. “That’s a shit response.”
“I don’t really know what else too say,” Nox responds after a moment, lips pursed. “It’s not exactly a ‘fun’ activity. It’s just work.”
“Sounds miserable!” He skips a step over a crack in the cement. Chilly air bites at his nose, at the exposed tips of his ears. “You gotta learn how to have fun wherever and whenever instead of being a boring stick in the mud.”
That gets the slightest hint of a frown. “I know how to have fun.”
“Oh yeah?” He sticks out his tongue, taunting, childish. “Like?”
“I have fun when I’m with you.”
He almost trips. “That’s—” what does he even say to that? “That’s because I’m a naturally fun person!”
Nox laughs, small and quiet and barely there, but Soln savors the sound. Heat crawls over his skin. He feels like a fucking idiot. “Sure.”
They both come to a stop where the street twists, and the car that Nox has rented comes into full view. It’s a small, sleek thing, fast and elegant. They’re about to leave for the airport. They’re about to leave, and Soln still hasn’t told them.
There’s a sigh so quiet that Soln almost thinks he’s imagined it, and Nox looks at him with an apologetic look. “My apologies for cutting this short,” they say. “The plane leaves in three hours. See you next time.”
A feeling twists his chest, cold and anxious and wanting.
“Hey.”
The last person he said I love you to was his sister, and she was the last person who ever said they loved him, too. In fact, she was the only person. Not like his parents ever cared. And the people he’s slept with—those have all been loveless. He’s bad at loving, and bad at being loved, and it’s fucking terrifying, but he’s—
Nox tilts their head. “Yeah?”
“I just wanted to say—” the words stumble and tangle on his tongue—“before you leave,” he stops, air balling thickly at the back of his throat. They raise a brow. Fuck it. He already started. “I really like you. Like-like.”
—always been impulsive.
A beat, two, three. His eyes wander the streets around them—the dusty sky, a ball of gum pressed against the curb, his breath puffing white in the streetlight.
An inhale, then, tone too flat: “Like-like?”
“You know.” He carelessly motions a hand in the air. Faux-casual. His stomach is dropping coldly.
Another long, dragging moment.
“To be sure,” they say, voice still unreadable, and he risks a glance back at them. Their entire posture is stiff. Dammit. “That was a confession, right?”
“Yeah.” Fuck. “Sorry it’s such a bad one.”
Silence.
See? This is why he sleeps with people instead of loving them. God, he’s such an idiot.
“I’m sorry,” Nox says, eventually, and his heart sinks, heavy and crushing. “I don’t have time for relationships like that.”
No time? An ugly, incredulous feeling crests the back of his throat. What sort of lame rejection is that? What does it even mean? That doesn’t say anything about how they feel.
“But if—” he starts, stops, levels his tone and digs nails into his palm. Still, he wants to know, has to know. “If you did have time?”
Nox visibly falters, hesitates, and God, he can’t take this. “If,” Nox begins, but doesn’t continue.
Why did he even ask? The ugly feeling in his throat blooms and slips venom onto his tongue. “Just reject me properly instead of using bullshit excuses,” he spits, and it’s so much meaner than he wanted it to be. “I’m uneducated, not stupid.”
Nox’s features freeze over. Their shoulders straighten, and their lips carve into a flat line, and their brows relax, and oh. He hates that so much. Nox’s anger is a cold, icy thing, cutting and impersonal.
“It was not my intention to condescend,” they say, perfectly level. Their hand wraps around the handle of their car door, and opens it. “But apologies if it came across like that. I have a plane, now, so please forgive my leave.”
I’m sorry, he desperately wants to say, smacked with immediate regret, anger-turned-ash behind his teeth, but—
the car door closes with a loud click before he can.
-
It’s obvious that Dhelm knows something happened. To be fair, it’s not like Soln’s ever been very subtle about anything, anyway. She isn’t subtle in her interest to know, either. Her eyes follow him and she stocks her cabinets with his favorite snacks and invites him over in the late morning.
She doesn’t ask, though.
Soln supposes that her carefulness with other’s comfort is a consequence of upbringing; have your boundaries broken so many times, and eventually you learn that you never want to give someone else to same feeling. She’s rubbed off on him, and now, retrospectively, thinking of the way he pried into her history when they first met makes him cringe.
So, she doesn’t ask.
But, eventually, he gives.
“I confessed to Nox,” he blurts, sitting on her couch, bag of vegan cheesy chips against his right side and book on his left leg. It’s open on the same page as it was ten minutes ago. He stares at the windows, where dying afternoon light paints the city below in shades of orange and gold, glittering and bright over the glass jungle.
Behind him, from the kitchenette, he hears a cup place down on the smooth marble counter.
“It went badly?” Less of a question than an ask for confirmation, or perhaps an odd expression of sympathy.
“What do you think?” That too, comes out meaner than intended, and he clamps his jaw, leans back, and sighs. “Nox said they don’t have time for a relationship, even though I didn’t even—I didn’t even say anything about a relationship, I just confessed my stupid fucking feelings.”
“I see,” Dhelm hums. There’s a bit more clinking, and the scent of something sweet and rich, and Soln turns around. She’s making hot chocolate at the stove, using real ingredients, not a mix. “That makes sense, considering who they are. You know they’ve never been in any relationship, right? At least, not that I know of.”
No, he didn’t. He glances at his untouched book, and gives up, snapping the pages shut and abandoning it on the couch while he makes his way to the kitchenette’s bar, sliding himself onto a stool.
“So? Not like I have much experience either.”
“Well,” she says, pursing her lips, motioning for him to pass the oatmilk. He does. “Especially considering their orientation, that—”
“Wait,” he interrupts, “what does their orientation have to do with this?” Come to think of it, he doesn’t actually know their orientation. “Fuck. Do they not like men?”
Dhelm blinks at him, brown eyes warm and widening with realization. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Well—” her voice catches on a half-laugh, and he scowls, fingers fiddling with the his bracelet, rolling the threads between his fingers. “It’s not that they don’t like men, they don’t… Nox is aroace.”
It takes a moment for the words to sink in.
Nox incarnated on this earth as a God in mortal flesh, a pinnacle of magical ability, with their destiny clearly laid out ahead on a starry path. While Soln was out on the streets trying not to fucking die, they graduated the entire highschool curriculum with full marks in barely a year. So of course, Soln thinks, a hint of something bitter curling up his throat, they'd have all As in queer identity, too.
He never had a chance in the first place.
“Oh,” he says.
Yeah. Really. It makes sense. Of course they’d be unreachable in that way, too.
“Jeez.” Dhelm stirs the small pot of brown liquid, adding a couple more spoonfuls of sugar before glancing over at him. “You look like a kicked puppy”
“I do not,” he mutters, quiet and pathetic, eyes flitting from the pot to the wall to his bracelet. It’s made of three branches of color: orange, cloud-gray, and ash-gray. The orange weaves through, making a way. Paths. “Shut up.”
“I’ve known a few aroaces,” she says, ignoring him, “’dated one,” his head jerks, “and was in a QPR with another. From what I’ve been told, romance to them can be...”she pauses, then sighs. “Honestly, you should just talk to Nox about it. I don’t want to speak for them.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, voice choked, throat dry. “I—yeah. I should. Thanks.”
“No problem,” she responds, silky, and ladles thick hot chocolate into a mug. She slides it across the marble to him. “Good luck.”
-
So, apologies. He’s shit at them. There are plenty of things that he’s done to warrant apologies, but there’s never been many people that he’s actually wanted to apologize to. So. Apologies. Yeah.
He stares at the screen of his phone like it’ll give him instructions. It doesn’t, of course. All that stares back at him is the call button.
So he thumbs his bracelet instead, tracing the orange with his fingertips. What most outsiders don’t understand is that the god of the Paths—he’s not just the god of the Paths, his domain encompasses what they represent, too. And while that is not love, or apologies, it is way-finding, it is want. It is a ‘destination’.
Please let me find the path to making this better.
He drops his fingers from the bracelet, and presses the call button.
It picks up on the third ring.
There’s a crack of thick static, and: “Why a—”
“I’m sorry,” he blurts, then flushes. “Sorry I didn’t mean to—what were you gonna say?”
Static fills the line. Electricity picks over his skin. Light filters in bars through the blinds of his bedroom window and he feels inexplicably sweaty in his hoodie. The unbrushed mess of his hair ticks at his jawline, spilling around his collarbones.
“...Nothing,” Nox finally responds, and he can’t read their tone over the shitty connection. Anxiety spikes sharply through his stomach. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m really, seriously sorry,” he repeats. “I acted like an asshole because of my own personal shit. It’s. Whatever. I just—sorry.”
Another long, stretching pause.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nox repeats. “I understand. It’s fine.”
“So, you...” he swallows, “you’re not angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
The knots stitching from his stomach into his chest loosen, just a bit, but don’t untangle. He draws a knee to his chest and presses against the pillows on his bed.
“Okay,” he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. “Okay. That’s good.”
Pause.
“Is that all?”
“That’s what I called about,” he answers, and is about to continue, because he doesn't have anything else planned to say, but—
“Alright. Goodbye,” says Nox, over shitty phone connection, and the static cuts off.
Soln stares at the screen for maybe a bit too long, and drops it abruptly, letting it fall somewhere into the mess of blankets. Then he closes his eyes tight, lays down, shoves a pillow over his head, and curls into a ball.
-
The thing about avoiding someone is that it’s pathetically easy to do over the internet. If Soln texts Nox, he only does it when he knows they will be asleep, and if he’s late to respond, then, oh, sorry, something came up.
It’s mutual, he thinks. Nox is not one to text much in the first place, but they barely send anything at all.
He life becomes a rhythm between work and sulking in his apartment and glancing at messages that he hasn’t responded to. Dhelm invites him over, sometimes. Mostly, when he’s with her, they’re both quiet.
He glances at his phone, and turns it off. Turns it on. Does nothing. Turns it off, again.
It’s really, stupidly, horribly, terribly easy.
-
Dhelm notices, because of course she does. And this time—
“Can I offer a piece of advice?”
Soln downs the soda he’s been drinking, twists around on the bar stool, and gives her a mean look. Defensiveness pricks on his skin.“None of your fucking business.”
“You two are my best friends,” she tells him, unfazed, barely looking up from the messily strewn music sheets scrawled with inky notes. Apparently, she has a performance soon. “Besides, I do have more experience.”
He wishes he had a good comeback for that.
“Fine,” he bites, thumbing his bracelet. “What’s your genius advice?”
“Talk to them,” she says, simply.
Like it’s that simple.
“I already knew that.”
“I know,” Dhelm says, and she does look up, this time. Her lips are down into a thin, serious line. “But sometimes it helps to hear.”
-
It would be easy, to open a Path and travel right to Nox. Their magical energy is a beacon, a lighthouse, an internationally observable flare, if you know how to look for it. Between that and Soln genuinely having a strong want to find them, it’s highly improbable that he’d get lost in the Paths. Worst case, he’d get stranded in another country and have a shit time. Nothing that hasn’t happened before.
It’s all reward, barely any risk. He could find Nox, and talk to them, and then everything would be normal and okay again.
But he—
he doesn’t.
People can’t abandon him if he abandons them first.
-
It happens in the beginnings of evening, when the sun is pooling gold on the horizon's edge, sky dipping with pink and long shadows extending over the parking lot from Soln’s ankles. He’s just finished a job and he’s just bought himself maple donuts, when his phone rings.
The caller ID reads Nox.
He stares for perhaps longer than he should, standing in the middle of the parking lot and clutching his phone in one hand and the box of donuts in the other. His fingers feel slicked in a cold, numb sweat.
Time runs out. The line goes dead. Fuck. Realization seeps through him cold and slow, and he jolts, hurrying quickly to the side of the area, against some dirty city wall, and calls Nox back.
It picks up on the first ring.
“Nox?”
“Hey,” comes the eventual response, static and awkward. “Hi.”
“Did you—” he winces, how does he phrase this without it sounding like he doesn’t wanna talk to them? “Why did you call?”
“I...” their tone is uncharacteristically uncertain, even through the phone. “...I got hurt.”
Something icy and sharp stabs his stomach and melts dreadfully into a roiling pool in his gut. Hurt? How? What does that even—what? “Hurt?”
“Physically.”
His ears ring with phone static and molten blood, a pulsing heartbeat. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“But you called.”
“The Creature is dead,” they say, “I’m at my hotel room. It’s fine.”
“But you’re hurt.” Soln—he’s seen Nox hurt before, he has, but that was years ago, when they were still growing into their abilities. They have always possessed a firm and unchanging resolve, a cold and honed mindset, but nowadays, as a young adult they fit more comfortably into it. “You’re hurt.”
It feels real. It feels like they are teenagers again, lost deep in the Paths, and Nox is bleeding and their blood is slicked on Soln’s fingers and someone is going to die on him again and—
Calm down.
“It’s not too bad.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“Yeah.”
He can—he can deal with this. He has spent years treating his own wounds, has spent years treating his little sister’s, too. Schoolyard scrapes and deep bleeding gashes aren’t always that different. “Where?”
“My shoulder.”
“How deep?”
“Not too deep,” they say, then tack on: “I think.”
Great. The shoulder is hard for someone to treat themselves. Too awkward to reach. And apparently Nox doesn’t even know how deep it goes.
“Do you have anyone there with you? To treat it?”
Nox waits a moment, before answering: “...No.”
“Okay.” Breathe in, and out. “When will they get there, then?”
“I didn’t call anyone.” Nox’s voice comes, slippery and shapeless through the static. Then: “Except for you. I can’t—Soln, I have a reputation to maintain.”
“But you’re hurt,” he says, incredulous, something horrible anxiously bubbling up between his ribs Nox doesn’t respond. “Seriously?”
“I am being serious.”
He sucks in a breath through his teeth, cold air biting at the flesh of his throat. He thumbs his bracelet. “Okay,” he says, decides. “Okay. I’ll come. I’ll come. I’ll be there in a moment. Minute. Ten minutes tops.”
“What?” Their voice cracks down the middle with static. Overseas connections are so shit. “You don’t even know where I am. Ten minutes? How—”
He hangs up and pushes himself off the wall. He’ll need concentration for this. He turns a corner, looking into a shadowy ally. The walls are stained with spray-paint and dark splotches that he can’t identify. The ground is littered with cracked glass and crumpled soda cans.
Most importantly, there’s a dirty metal utility door, glinting dully in the sparse light. It’s a good enough place.
He walks up to it, picks the lock, and imagines vividly what he needs, what he wants; a Path to Nox. The air ripples with something intangible, and an unidentifiable sense slots into place in his head. His fingers wrap around the cold handle, shoves he the door open, and steps inside.
His shoes sink ever so slightly onto something warm and shifting. Beneath him, this Path is made of orange coals. Around him, shades of black and gray writhe endlessly. Through the sharp darkness, speckles of white blotch the not-walls, dripping and shuttering and so bright they hurt his eyes.
He wretches his gaze away from the fractaling strands of reality all around him, juts his chin high, and looks forward. It’s important to keep focus on the Path he’s trying to follow; he could lose it.
He lets his feet guide him, lets his want guide him.
Nox.
He needs no coordinates.
At the end of his path, there is starlight. There is a crisp white door suspended in nothingness with a gleaming metal handle and a space to swipe a keycard. There’s no need; the door will open, because this is a Path.
His fingers slip around the handle, slide open the door, and he steps out onto a clean wooden floor. Everything smells vaguely like lavender and citrus and fresh linen. It’s a nice hotel suit.
“Soln?”
He jerks off his dirty shoes by the entrance and twists down a small hallway to find the kitchenette. Everything is washed in thick white light, and Nox is there, hunched cross-legged on the tiled floor, white collared shirt soaked in red, steadily dripping down to the ground.
“Fuck,” he says, then: “I’m here.”
“I thought you aren’t supposed to use the Paths for trivial things.”
“It’s not trivial,” Soln snaps, picking up the bandages and rubbing alcohol that have been left haphazardly on the counter. He crouches down next to them, just a little behind, gingerly peeling off their shirt. “Stay still.”
“Okay,” Nox responds, voice small.
“It’s gonna hurt,” he warns. Nox doesn’t respond beyond a nod.
It’s slow. They sit together on the kitchenette floor, quiet. Nox’s skin is warm and Soln’s fingers are gentle, careful. Nox hisses when he cleans the area with alcohol, hands balling into fists, knuckles stretching white. He pauses.
“Do it,” they say. “I’m fine.”
So he does. His hands are scarred, rugged, callused, and they have hurt many people, but not in a while. Not in years. And not now. Now, they are wrapping bandages over wounds. It’s nice.
“Done,” he says, drawing back his hands. The whole area is now cleaned and bandaged. “Where are your shirts?”
“Bedroom,” they say, lifting themselves from the floor and gesturing him to follow. He does.
The bedroom is impeccably clean, like everything else. Blue rug. Silver-blanketed bed. One large window, overlooking a city bright-lit city. It’s proper dusk, sky blue and gray and beginning to turn inky black on the edges. Soln flicks on a small bedside lamp that washes the room in shaded white light, making uneven shadows dance along the edges and not dispelling the dark, not really.
Nox digs out a white collar shirt from the closet and slips it on, white bandages disappearing under the fabric. Then, quiet: “I’m sorry.”
He sits on the bed’s side and frowns. “What?”
Nox leans against the wall. “You shouldn’t have had to come.”
“Don’t apologize for that.”
“I’m not supposed to be...” They start frowning, too. “I should have been able to handle it. Not get hurt at all.”
He snorts. They had this some complex about ‘failure’ when he met them as a teen. “You still haven’t got over that shit?”
They glare. It doesn’t have heat. They do not respond.
“The practical incarnation of a god in mortal flesh is not a god,” Soln says, after a beat, leaning back on his hands. Faux-casual. “You’re okay. This is okay. It’s okay.”
Nox sighs, heavy, eyes skirting the room. “Are you angry with me?”
His fingers curl around the blanket. “For what?”
“In general.”
“No,” he says, a little tighter than he wants to, but honest. “I’m not. I’m angry at me.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
And what does he even say to that? He doesn’t have a good reason. He doesn’t have an excuse. He has been avoiding them. Loathing runs down his spine and tingles in his fingers, hot and rotten and entirely directed at himself. He hates—it’s so frustrating.
“Yeah,” he finally says, word tasting like defeat. “It’s—I’m not angry, though.”
“...Okay,” Nox says, after a moment. One of their hands starts to reach for their shoulder before abruptly stopping and returning to their side. They straighten. “This is… somewhat tangential, but I’ve be thinking...” they trail off.
“...Yeah?”
A deep breath. “Your confession.”
Something absolutely fucking awful drags at Soln’s limbs, heavy and aching. He wants to just disappear. He wants to stay, too. Because. Because even now, there is a small and sharp and fluttery sensation growing barbs in his chest, sinking claws into his ribs. Hope is a thing with thorns.
“Uhhuh?” There’s a lump in his throat. “What about it?”
“I just...” Nox is still looking at the window, but their eyes flick to him. “I’ve been thinking about it. Do you still...feel like that?”
Awful. Just fucking horrible.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” the other breathes, finally looks at him without looking away, and: “Okay.”
That doesn’t say anything. “Nox,” he says, “please just fucking say what you’re leading up to.” Calm. Be calm. “I can’t stand this.”
“I—” pause, they close their eyes, and open them. Their lips form a thin line. When they speak, their voice does not falter. “I think I wouldn’t mind something with you. Something. I don’t know. But something different than what we are now. Romantic love is… from my view, it is a very fickle thing. I don’t understand it, and people fear what they don’t understand.”
Soln’s heart sputters weakly in his chest. It feels so full, and so bursting, that he thinks it will just give out entirely. This is all—it’s fast, and he wasn’t expecting it.
“I get that,” he says.
“But I want to try for you,” they say. There is determination in their voice.
Something dreadful rises in his stomach. “Don’t force yourself for me. I don’t expect anything.”
“I’m not forcing myself,” Nox says, tapping their foot soundlessly on the rug, “or at least, I wouldn’t be. I’m not a pushover. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t mean it. It would be a cruelty to us both.”
The dreadful feeling pushes down. The thorny brambles of hope that have grown vines and sunk hooks in his chest bloom flowers, light and pink and pastel.
“I want something too,” he says, fingers tightening to fists around a handful of blanket. “I would like that.”
“I don’t love you romantically,” Nox says, like a warning, “but I like you a lot. I don’t know how to categorize what I feel, but it is a lot, and it is positive. And I am fine with that, with not returning your type of love, but you have to understand that I never will and you can’t change that.” Pause. “You would have to be okay with that.”
Is he okay with that?
Nox is unreachable; Soln never knows how to completely close the distance. When he half-steps forward, he is still a half step away. It has been like that since the beginning, when he hated them and they disdained him. It was like that when he bandaged their wounds the first time. It was like that when he guided them through the Paths. It’d been like that during these months of pining. A half step of distance; insurmountable. But now—
They have taken a half step, too.
He loves them, loves them loves them loves them. There are many types of love, and no two people love each other the exact same way, even if they have the same type of love. How is this different?
Dhelm told him months ago about art, about meaning. Drawings are just ink on paper, writing is just strung words, music is just wavelengths of sound. Feelings are just feelings, too. It’s other’s that give them meaning beyond that. And here—
here there is only Nox, and Soln, and they are the only ones who can decide if this means something, if they want it to mean something, what they want it to mean.
“Yes,” he decides. Then, louder: “Yes! I’m okay with that.”
“...You’re sure?”
He straightens, raises his chin, and when he speaks, there’s a note of challenge. “Yes.”
Nox breathes in sharply, and then breathes out. A tension that Soln didn’t quite notice before slips from their posture. “So we’re...something more, now?”
Soln grins, crooked and elated. There are bees and lava and love in his veins. “I guess so. Don’t know what it is, but we’ll figure that out, right?”
Nox pushes themselves off the wall, pauses by the bed—a moment of hesitation so small he could almost miss it—and sits down beside him. “We will,” they agree.
Here, in the dusty light, they look ethereal. When the gods made Nox, it was out of the starry night sky. Starlight was woven into silk for their hair, the moon was melted down and pooled in their eyes, and from the celestial blackness in between, their skin was made. And now this starry night sky is looking at him, soft and smiling.
Nox slips a slender hand into his, and his breath catches stupidly in his throat. He intertwines their fingers. Against Nox, his own skin—warm brown like flame-weathered clay—looks almost light.
“So,” he says, clearing his throat, “what do we call this?”
They cock their head. “This?”
He makes a miscellaneous movement with his free hand. “What we are. Now. Dating?”
That gets a small frown and furrowed brows. After a moment, Nox shakes their head. “Doesn’t sound right.”
“Lovers?” He suggests, and that’s an immediate no, so: “A couple? Platonic partners…? QPR mates?”
“No,” Nox says, leaning back. “No. It’s not platonic.”
“Okay,” he says, then, with a hesitancy that is entirely unwarranted: “partners?”
“...Okay,” Nox’s eyes slip half-closed, and their head leans against his shoulder, stray hairs brushing his collar bone. “Partners. That works.”
“Alright,” he says, breathing in, and out, “so we’re partners and we’re...”
“Together,” Nox offers, tilting their head up, meeting his eyes.
“Together,” he repeats, tasting the words in his mouth, feeling the shape of them. A grin slips over his face and tugs at the corners of his eyes. Nox smiles back, smaller, but no less genuine. “Okay. Then. We’re partners, and we’re together.”
-
A week later, they are at Dhelm’s performance. It’s the cusp of winter, snow dusting the streets outside, icy wind biting through the fabric of hats and scarves. Inside the symphony hall, though, it’s lukewarm. Nox and Soln watch from the darkness of the VIP seating, orchestral sound hitting off the walls around them. They lean into each other, shoulders brushing, shoetips touching. There are no lyrics.
A song about pining, Dhelm had said.
Soln can hear it now, warm and aching, just as he can feel Nox’s pulse against his where their fingers are pressed together.
The song ends on a light, silvery note.