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Anya sees him coming from the treeline, sitting on the porch with a hand scratching behind Max’s ears. The dog lets out a soft whine as his master approaches, thick heavy tail thumping against the wooden floorboards. Today is a new moon, because otherwise she wouldn’t have the strength to be sitting there, waiting for him.
Damian doesn’t look surprised to see her. He takes off his hat, fanning himself as he walks up and deposits a basket of firewood by the front steps. Her attention is taken by the single droplet of sweat beading next to his ear.
“How much trouble are you going to be in for coming here?” He asks, and Max lifts his head from Anya’s lap, nostrils flaring.
“Enough,” she replies, and he nods thoughtfully. He gestures for her to get up and follow him inside, although the door is unlocked. He doesn’t get any visitors, other than today.
Anya looks around, taking in the very humble furniture. It’s a single-room abode, and everything looks like it was built probably 200 years ago, save for the little box TV across from the wire frame bed. From the outside, the place didn’t look very much like it had running water or electricity.
“Sorry about the mess,” he says. “I would’ve cleaned if I knew you were coming.”
“It’s okay,” Anya murmurs, and really, it seems like it is. She can still hear the muted sounds of birdsong from outside, and there’s a pile of books and paint canvases stacked haphazardly in a corner, next to what looks like a half-assembled bookshelf. He’s found a way to keep himself busy, and all things considered, she feels a pang of envy at how… peaceful it all looks. Idyllic, calm, and so, so different from the Damian she knew the last time she saw him.
“Earth to Anya?” He asks, and Anya blinks out of her thoughts. He has a hand on another door that presumably leads to the backyard. She notices the lines of pale crisscrossed scars, clumsy accidents from trying to adjust to simplicity after growing up in the womb of luxury his whole life. It stands out against his sun-browned skin; he’s tanned enough that she can see how his palms are lighter, and his teeth flash white as he says, “Come on. I’ll show you around the back.”
Max winds between their legs, padding down onto the grass to greet the chickens. Anya can hear a low cacophony of clucking coming from the coop, and the strong smell of horse manure permeates her nostrils as she glances around. The single-stall stable looks brand new, even freshly painted, and the beginnings of a greenhouse is framed around the small garden.
“You did all this?” She asks in surprise. Damian is a capable person, and she knows he has an affinity with animals, but plant husbandry is very unexpected.
“After some trial and error,” he admits, walking over to the pepper plants and plucking a black-speckled hen from the greenery. It lets out an indignant squawk, flapping its wings furiously in Damian’s face before reluctantly settling in his grip. He turns towards Anya, petting its head affectionately like a beloved pet rather than an angry fowl doing its best trying to peck off his fingers.
Anya feels something warm bubble up in her chest, and she laughs. Whether out of mirth or absurdity, she can’t tell. If she had been told, three years ago, that Damian would one day be caring for chickens in the middle of the Ostanian countryside, she would’ve never believed it.
“I named her Demi, after my brother,” he tells her. “Because she’s kind of mean but I know she loves me.”
“Do you miss your family?” Anya asks, deigning not to put her hand near Demi because she prefers having all her fingers intact.
He kneels by the coop, depositing the hen to be with her nestmates. “Sometimes. I write letters occasionally, but I was never that close with them. Not the way you are with yours.”
Several seconds of silence lulls underneath the sounds of the animals, but it doesn’t feel awkward. Only contemplative. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Damian says with a wave of his hand. “I’m glad it happened, in fact. I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m actually living it.” He looks up at her, and his eyebrows twitch together in response to her somber expression. “Really. I didn’t think I was cut out for… all this, but I like it. It’s hard to explain.”
He stands upright, brushing the dirt off his knees. “What about you? Is being Agent Starlight everything you imagined?”
Anya purses her lips. “No,” she says finally. “It’s a lot more than what I imagined. I’m always doing something. Even now, just standing here feels wrong.”
Damian grabs her by the shoulders, and she can feel the callouses through her sleeves. “You need to rest, Anya,” he says firmly, and Anya is stunned by how suddenly intense he sounds. “No one in your life is telling you to rest. You look like the way I used to look during exam season. You’re not sleeping enough, are you?”
“I–” Anya starts, before realizing what he says is true. “I don’t–” I don’t need to, is what she wants to say, but it is unexpectedly hard to talk around the lump in her throat, and his eyes soften. Mutely, she shakes her head, and then shrugs as if to play it off.
“Oh, Anya,” he says softly, and the dam breaks.
She lets out a strangled sob as he pulls her against him. It’s the first time they’ve hugged in a while, and she can’t wrap her arms completely around him anymore, but he feels so warm, and so real that everything she’s been holding down slips through the cracks of her demeanor.
“I miss you so much,” she chokes through her tears. “I thought you would resent me for doing this to you, or–or hate me. I thought you’d be lonely, out here by yourself, because I am too and I’m always surrounded by people. I don’t know. You really really wanted to become senator and I took that away from you.”
Her voice shrivels into a whisper, and Damian shushes her, stroking her back in a comforting gesture. “I don’t resent you, or hate you,” he assures gently. “And I never really cared about becoming a senator. It was my father I wanted to please. I know now that I want to live for myself and not him. I couldn’t do that before, but I can now. And that’s because of you. I… I still feel the same way I always do.” Warmth colors the distance from his mouth to her ear, but she shivers under his touch. “I’m okay being alone. I promise. But if you’re lonely, you can be lonely with me. For however long you need.”
For however long you need. The premise sounds alluring, and Anya wonders what a life with him here would be like. Maybe he’d make her a matching straw hat, and she’d also tan until freckles burst across her skin in constellations of melanin. They would sit together on the porch, quietly lulled by birdsong and the chirping of crickets in the evening, long grass tickling her legs.
He pulls back, as if embarrassed by his statement. They haven’t seen each other in years, and he doesn’t know if he’s crossed a boundary, telling her that. “Sorry,” he says, and his hands find each other, poking at his cuticles worriedly. “I... I probably smell bad, and I know you’re busy–”
“It’s okay,” she says for the second time that day, and manages a smile, because this side of him is the one she is intimately familiar with. Shy, awkward, Imperial Scholar Damian. “You don’t smell bad.”
He snaps his mouth shut and inclines his head in a half-nod, before his hands hesitantly reach up again, higher this time. Gently, he cradles her face, rough thumbs smoothing over the damp track marks left by her tears. “Okay,” he whispers, and he seems to be conjuring up the resolution to say something else.
“And… I’m not busy right now. I’m here anyway. I’ll be (lonely) with you for as long as I can.” Anya puts her hands over his, cupped over her cheeks, and simply rests them there.
His tongue falters behind his teeth for a second before he speaks again.
“Can I kiss you?”
She remembers the first time he asked her that question, whispered in a secluded corner of Eden’s expansive library. Then, his palms had been clammy, heart thundering so loud that Anya could nearly hear it above the exploding fireworks in his mind. And above all else, she remembers the taste of his lips, sweet like the strawberry candy he’d rewarded himself with as compensation for taking on the daunting mantle of tutoring her.
She rises to the tips of her toes and leans forward, closing her eyes this time because there is no Lady Tonitrus waiting around the corner to strike them with demerits for public displays of affection. It’s just him.
The hint of sweetness remains, along with the slightly bitter tang of tannins, the aftertaste of an underripe persimmon.
The first kiss is a little awkward, teeth bumping against her lip, but they press flush against each other, hands roving to explore what has changed since they last touched each other. Hers slide up around his neck, fingers carding through hair that’s grown long enough to give him looks, if he were back at school.
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask that,” she sighs against his mouth, and he lets out a little laugh.
“I really missed you too,” he says in a soft rasp, and it took a bit for him to confess that, but at least he did, and didn’t wait over a decade to do so. Not this time. Maybe they don’t have enough of it to do that anymore.
“Come,” he murmurs, “come take a nap with me. You need it.”
“A nap?” Anya repeats as he shifts angle, mouthing soft kisses along her jaw. She can’t help but giggle as his breath fans over her neck, being ticklish there. “Is that what you do all day now?”
“Among other things,” he responds, his lips just barely brushing over her thrumming pulse. “It’s very nice, if you have the presence of mind to enjoy it.”
“Okay,” she agrees, the tension falling from her shoulders as he slowly but surely unravels her. “I’ll take a nap with you.”
He leads her around the garden to a shaded grove close by. Between two close-growing trunks is a low hanging hammock, which looks home-made and well-used.
“Will it fit both of us?”
“Easily. I usually read in there with Max, or Pluto. The other chickens sometimes bully her since she’s smaller,” Damian explains, getting in first. The shape of the contraption didn’t leave a lot of room for personal space, and his ears turn a little pink.
“Is this okay?” Anya asks, and his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows.
“Here, turn this way,” he tells her, and she shifts so they’re lying more next to each other. He peels a blanket out from between them and settles it over their bodies, and it’s surprisingly cozy despite the slight early autumn chill in the shade. Anya nestles into his warmth, and the faint rocking of the hammock is quite soothing.
“This is nice,” she muses, and he hums in response, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and repeating the motion in slow, idle caresses.
“Go to sleep,” he murmurs, and the quiet intonation sends a curious feeling down her scalp, raining down her spine and cascading goosebumps over her skin. It passes, and she’s left with a pleasant drowsiness pulling at her eyelids.
Her dreams are calm, floating in contentment and the smell of him , his pine-sap hands, smoke from yesterday’s fire in his clothes, and the low syllables of her name whispered from his sighs.