Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s the first week of winter, and Sebastian is having a bad day.

He wakes up at six, nearly an hour and a half before sunrise— too early, in his opinion, but his boss is a morning person, so their standup meeting is at eight (spirits, really, who’s awake at eight in the morning?)— and he spends thirty minutes hitting snooze on his alarm before he hauls himself out of bed. Brushes his teeth. Hops into his little five-square-foot excuse for a shower, which has absurdly low water pressure, and then tries not to freeze as he towels off, because baseboard heaters are useless against the cold, and the windows in his studio apartment are drafty.

This apartment may suck, he reminds himself with chattering teeth, but it’s his.

He punches in his daily coffee order on his way to the elevator, which, as it turns out, is out of commission. Again. Thirteen flights of stairs later, he’s out of breath and vaguely sweaty. He doesn’t have time for that cigarette he was planning on as he books it towards the subway station two blocks away.

(He’s been smoking more, lately. He doesn’t want to consider why.)

He makes it to the station with time to spare, mostly because the train is late. He could have taken that smoke break, after all, but he didn’t, and now he’s in a worse mood than usual. The platform is crowded with dozens of other dead-eyed commuters who have the same zest for life he does (read: none), and the chilled, damp air smells faintly of mildew and metal.

He tugs the hood of his dark jacket up over his head, pops in his crappy wired earbuds, and queues up a mid-2000s pop-punk playlist, turning it up to full blast. Mostly because he likes it, but also because his earbuds and carefully-curated air of detachment are what protect him from being harassed by strangers on public transit. He boards the packed train car, rides four stops, and disembarks. He trudges four-and-a-half blocks through half-frozen slush, music still blaring.

Holiday lights and baubles sparkle and glint in carefully-curated shop windows. Shiny glass skyscrapers tower overhead. The buildings had awed him when he’d first arrived in Zuzu City, but three years in, they’ve lost their novelty. All he notices now is the traffic, and the crowds, and how even though the first snowfall was only a few days ago, the snow’s already ruined, bits of asphalt and trash embedded in the ice.

He thinks of the snow in the mountains, back home. He used to sit beside the lake and gaze out across the landscape: Pristine, quiet, hushed. The sun would cast long shadows through the pines as it slipped below the horizon, catching on the ice encasing the frozen branches. He remembers feeling like the only person left in the world.

A passing car splashes dirty, ice-cold water onto the curb, soaking him from the knees down and yanking him out of his daydream. He curses under his breath and shakes his boots out, like that will make his thick woolen socks any less squelchy and waterlogged, and then, when that doesn’t help, he begrudgingly sloshes his way towards the coffee shop to pick up his latte and croissant, cringing at the way the wet, cold denim of his jeans chafes against his calves.

At least this city has decent coffee, he consoles himself, shivering.

.

His company recently moved to a bigger office space, after they were acquired by JojaCo. This is a good thing, he reminds himself for the hundredth time as he pushes open tall glass doors and trudges into the lobby, because the old place was objectively worse. It was cluttered and dingy, with low ceilings and lots of dust. It was right underneath another company’s office (either a machine shop or a testing facility for bowling equipment, if the constant industrial banging and heavy footfalls were anything to go by). The windows had rattled whenever the train passed by. The pipes had leaked. The temperature had always been either frigid or furnace-hot.

The new offices, on the other hand, are big and spacious, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the sunlight. There’s lots of concrete. There are lots of plants. The sleek new company logo is mounted on a bright teal statement wall. Plastic and particleboard desks are arranged in a modern open office layout, with waist-high half-dividers between the cubicles. There’s a water feature in the lobby.

If he’s honest, Sebastian was more comfortable in the old building.

He makes his way through the maze of desks to his own cubicle, stepping carefully so his ice-water socks squelch as little as possible, and then settles in at the fancy standing desk they bought for him last year. It’s still in the sitting position. He hasn’t used it standing even once.

He cracks open his laptop, takes a swig of his latte, and starts his day.

.

Sebastian’s morning is long and grueling, and his timecard looks about like this:

8:00 AM — Attend standup (useless).
8:34 AM — Answer two customer support emails (torture).
8:50 AM — Fix bugs that other people made.
9:37 AM — Field a frantic call from HR about the website forms.
9:42 AM — Look for the person who’s supposed to be in charge of the website forms.
10:01 AM — Give up on the website forms guy. Fix the bug without him.
10:31 AM — Submit a pull request for the bugfix.
10:45 AM — Write a strongly-worded email to Jason (website forms guy) asking why the hell he chose not to add input sanitization to the website forms that feed into their customer database, because everyone knows that’s a massive security vulnerability, Jason!
10:53 AM — Reword the email.
10:59 AM — Reword the email again.
11:12 AM — Save the email to drafts for later review (when he feels less like screaming).
11:39 AM — Adds several completely unnecessary unit tests to his earlier pull request, because Jason insisted on it. Where Jason has been for the last hour and a half, and why Jason is incapable of just adding the tests himself, is beyond him.

It’s nearly noon, and Sebastian has yet to look at a single line of code in the module he is supposed to be working on.

He decides it’s time for a coffee break.

He makes his way to the coffee station in the lobby, toting a black ceramic mug with a Grampleton Hiking Society logo emblazoned on the side. The company has a proper coffee kiosk, now, with a neatly-arranged line of fancy-looking espresso machines. Their fake chrome accents gleam in the light. He can see whole coffee beans in the glass canisters at the top, because apparently, pre-ground coffee is beneath them. Two of the five espresso machines are out of order.

He really preferred the ancient coffee machine that used to live in the old break room, a dinosaur four decades old with yellowing plastic that was sturdy enough to survive an apocalypse. After the merger, their new CEO had insisted that new coffee machines were better for morale.

He selects “French Roast” on the screen, puts his mug in, and scrolls through his phone as the too-fancy machine grinds up the beans and brews his coffee. It buzzes as he turns off Do Not Disturb. One of the text notifications is from his mom.

.

Mom — 10:42 AM
Hi Sebby! Hope your workday is going well :)
Have you thought at all about whether you’re coming home for Winter Star yet?
We’d love to have you, and I’m sure Sam and Abigail would—

.

“Sebastian!”

He looks up halfway through reading the text to find that his boss is making a beeline towards him, toting his laptop, a plastic lunchbox, and a travel mug. He’s smiling, which means he’s in a chatty mood. Sebastian cringes and braces himself for small talk.

“Hey, Menton.”

“Great morning, isn’t it?” He’s still smiling. Sebastian avoids looking directly at his teeth. He doesn’t want to risk being blinded. “Sure is chilly out, but that just makes the indoors more cozy, am I right?”

“Mm,” Sebastian hums.

“Of course, the snow’s always a nightmare to drive in, but…”

Sebastian tries his best to nod along and pretend like he’s processing what Menton’s saying as he monologues about the snow— nearly slipped on my driveway this morning and gonna affect holiday travel if it keeps up like this, that’s for sure— but he must not do a good enough job with his listening face, because a little crease appears between Menton’s eyebrows.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just a long morning, you know?” He takes a sip of his still-too-hot coffee and searches frantically for another topic of conversation, because Menton’s generally a decent boss, and he doesn’t want him to feel put out. “Are you, uh… Doing anything? For the holidays?”

Menton lights up. “Oh, thanks for asking! Diedre and I are actually taking the kids up to Wumpus World right before the new year. It’s gonna be a hoot!” (Menton is the only person Sebastian knows who can use the word ‘hoot’ in a casual conversation and not come across as completely unhinged.) (He still seems a little unhinged.) “Are you doing anything fun?”

“I dunno. My mom’s trying to get me to go home for a couple of days.” He sighs, shoving his phone in his pocket. “I told her I’d think about it, but…”

“You should go,” Menton says, filling his mug. “Everyone needs a break once in a while!”

Sebastian shrugs and makes a noncommittal noise. “I guess.”

Menton frowns. His expression goes very somber. He claps his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder and looks into his eyes in a way that Sebastian guesses is probably supposed to convey some level of gravity. This serious of an expression feels a little unnatural on Menton’s face.

“You know, there’s a limit on how much vacation time rolls over at the end of the year. I saw your file the other day. You’ve got a lot of hours saved up. It’s a lot of paperwork on management’s end to pay those hours out, if your comp time goes over. A lot of money for the company, too.”

Sebastian fights the urge to shrug his hand off. “Yeah, I know.”

“So, go! Spend it! Be with your family!”

That’s what I’m trying to avoid, Sebastian almost says, except that would call for a bit more emotional vulnerability than he really wants to have with his boss at 11:45 AM on a Thursday.

“I, uh…” The eye contact is getting uncomfortably intense. “Sure?”

“Perfect!” Menton enthuses, all smiles again. His watch beeps insistently, and he glances down. “Oh, darn! Well, it was great seeing you, but I’ve got a meeting at noon, and I still need to get my steps in! Have a super awesome time with your family! I want your PTO request on my desk by EOD today!”

Before Sebastian can reply, or try to make an excuse for why he needs to stay here, actually, Menton is already hurrying off towards the revolving doors.

“Right,” Sebastian mutters. “Will do.”

Chapter Text

Sebastian’s first thought when he steps off of the bus with his suitcase is that Pelican Town is mostly the same as he remembers it— quiet, unremarkable, and frankly a little boring. Fresh snow is falling, and he shivers and tugs his scarf tighter against the winter chill. Back when he’d lived here, the lack of activity had bothered him, but after three years of living in a constantly-bustling city, he finds that it’s actually kind of refreshing.

The main difference is that there’s a second bus, one he didn’t just step off of. It’s shiny and new, with bright blue-and-pink stripes running across the side. He steps forward to examine it, ice and gravel crunching beneath his feet. It takes him a minute to realize this bus is the same one that’s always been here, just a heck of a lot more functional than it was when he saw it last. The rusty parts have been patched and painted over, and the windows aren’t dingy anymore. The thing looks like it might actually run.

“You want a ride to Calico Desert, kid?” Pam hollers from beside the ticket kiosk, startling him badly enough that he flinches. “It’s 500G round-trip.”

“Uh… No, thanks. I’m good.”

So, Pelican Town is the same as he remembers it, plus one bus route to the desert.

“Hey, dude! Sorry I’m late!”

He turns to see that Sam is pretty much the way he remembers him, too, a blond whirlwind of bright colors, iron-on patches, and raw energy, tearing along the path with alarming speed. His left thigh and shoulder are covered in half-melted snow, and the arm of his denim jacket is ripped. There might be blood. He doesn’t stop until he’s a foot or two in front of Sebastian, at which point he doubles over, gasping, like he’s trying to catch his breath.

“I got here— hah— as fast as I could, but I was working on nailing this new guitar riff for our next gig and I totally lost track of time!” His breath comes out in little puffs of crystallized vapor as he straightens up, looking deeply apologetic. “And so— so, I was running, you know, and then there was this huge patch of black ice and I totally wiped out! Bruised myself up real good, and I think I might’ve blacked out for a second, but I’m not sure, so, uh— sorry, I didn’t mean to be late, I just—”

Good to know some things never change, Sebastian thinks, biting back a grin.

“You’re good,” he reassures him, and then, just to make sure: “Are you good?”

“What? Oh, yeah! Yeah, I’m fine, just got the wind knocked out of me. Anyway, enough about me, how was your trip? It’s great to see you again, man!” Sam grins, clapping him on the shoulder and pulling him in for a solid hug, and then adds, just as brightly: “You look super tired!”

“Thanks,” Sebastian says, huffing out a laugh. “And you look like you have a concussion. You should swing by the clinic and get that checked out.”

“Nah, I’ll be fine!” Sam laughs, but it comes out sounding a little pained. “You’ve been on a bus for like, twelve hours, yeah? I’ll bet you’re itching to get home!”

I’m really not. “We’ve got time. It’s on the way.”

“You worry too much.” Sam rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling. “Can I help carry anything?”

“Not with a concussion, you can’t,” Sebastian deadpans, hefting his backpack over his shoulder and extending the handle of his rolling suitcase in one smooth motion. “Let’s go.”

.

Harvey keeps the clinic at a cool sixty-five degrees during the wintertime, but it’s still warmer than the outdoors, and the boys take a moment to knock the snow off their boots before tumbling inside. The bell above the door jingles merrily as they open it. Sam goes first, and Sebastian follows, still dragging his massive suitcase awkwardly behind him.

As soon as he sees who’s behind the counter, Sebastian immediately realizes why Sam was reluctant to bring him here.

“Welc—Oh!” Maru greets them, cutting herself off mid-sentence. There’s a little nurse hat pinned on top of her box braids, which are tied back into a neat, loose bun. Her uniform is crisp, freshly-ironed, and, like the rest of her, irritatingly perfect. She glances between Sam and Sebastian, her expression slipping into something like awkward discomfort before she rearranges it into a cheerful smile. “Sebastian! Hi! I didn’t think you were coming in until tonight?”

He tries not to take it personally. They’ve barely talked in three years, after all. Why should she be happy to see him? They may be half-siblings, but the only reason he knows about her senior thesis work or her remote internship—or any other details about her life, really—is because Robin’s talked about her during their weekly phone calls.

Still, the stilted politeness in her voice hits hard. Even though he kind of knew it already, it hurts to be reminded: Maru’s glad I’m gone.

He shrugs. “My bus was early.”

“You should’ve said something,” she says, her voice apologetic. “We would’ve…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay!” She still looks guilty and uncomfortable while also clearly trying not to look it. Spirits, he wishes she’d just come out and say that she hates him, so they can stop pretending to be friendly with each other. “Well, it’s great to see you! It’s so nice of you to swing by!”

Yeah, right, he thinks.

“We’re not just here to say hi, actually,” he says instead, gesturing towards Sam, who waves sheepishly. “Sam slipped on a patch of ice, and we need to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion or something.”

Sam, for his part, is actually looking a bit more concussed, now that he’s indoors. His cheeks are still red from the cold. His eyes keep flitting between Maru and Sebastian, and he looks like he’s in pain, but really, that may be less of a ‘concussion’ thing and more of a ‘stuck between two half-siblings who can’t hold a normal conversation’ thing. He kind of looks like he wishes he were somewhere else. Sebastian relates.

“I’ve told him, like, ten times, I don’t have a concussion! I’m fine!” Sam laughs, then leans on the counter and shoots Maru a lopsided smile. “C’mon, Maru! Tell him I’m fine.”

“Let me see,” she says, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards.

She tugs open the desk drawer (it jingles as she does so, and seriously, did she put bells on it?) and pulls out a pen light. She leans over the counter, holding a hand out, and Sam lowers his head to meet it. She grabs his chin gently, then lifts it and turns his head from side to side, shining the light in each of his eyes. She does this once, twice, and then nods, seemingly satisfied.

“Your eyes both seem to be dilating properly,” she says, dropping her hand and stepping back, “but with head trauma, it’s better to be safe.”

“My upper back’s also got some pretty gnarly bruising going on,” Sam adds, grinning and rubbing his chin, and then his face goes brighter red, and he freezes. “Not that I’m asking you to check that out too! Because that would be, uh, haha, no, you know? Not because— I mean, because in the clinic we wear shirts! Not that it’s not important to wear shirts in other places— because I— you— haha—!”

“I think you should have Harvey check him out,” Sebastian interjects, because he’s not really sure why Sam is suddenly doing the verbal equivalent of drowning in shallow water, but he seems like he might need a life saver.

“Sebastian’s absolutely right!” she says, nodding profusely, and that’s something he’s never heard her say before. She grabs a few papers from the file cabinet and clips them to a clipboard, then hands them over along with a plastic ballpoint pen. “You wait here, and I’ll go get Harvey, okay?”

“Thanks, man,” Sam whispers to him as Maru disappears behind the swinging door. “I really need to learn when to shut up.”

Sebastian waits while Sam settles down in a chair to fill out the intake forms. The snow is melting off of his suitcase and dripping onto the floor. It makes a puddle that he thinks he’d maybe feel bad about, if he had the energy. Fluorescent tube lights flicker overhead. The air smells sharp and antiseptic, like someone’s tried very hard to make the old clinic feel clean and new again, but there are unmistakable musty undertones that linger. A poster reminds everyone that it’s time for their annual flu shots, and a strand of multicolored holiday lights is strung along the edge of the counter in an attempt to make things feel more festive. They blink softly, in alternating sequence.

Maru eventually emerges from the back room with a rack of glass vials, probably blood samples, and she starts loading them one by one into a centrifuge, occasionally letting her gaze drift over in their direction before snapping back to her work. The silence is uncomfortable.

I should say something, Sebastian thinks, fidgeting with the edge of his scarf. Mentally, he rifles through his usual list of small talk topics. Weather? Cold. Food? Not applicable. Media? He doubts she’s seen the latest season of Odder Happenings, and he hasn’t seen… Well, whatever it is that she’s been watching. (What shows has Maru been into, lately, anyway?)

Family…?

I should keep my mouth shut, he decides.

Sam gives the papers one last look-over, then caps the pen with a sense of finality. He stands and makes his way over to the counter, his Converses squeaking on the linoleum as he goes. Maru, who is very resolutely focused on her work, doesn’t look up.

He clears his throat and holds out the clipboard. “Hey, I—”

She gasps and fumbles the vial she’s holding. It hits the floor and shatters, sending thin shards of glass and streaks of thick, viscous liquid across the floor. The rubber cap bounces a few times and then rolls, landing at Sebastian’s feet.

“My bad! I totally didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, no, it wasn’t you, it was me! I can’t believe I—!” She groans, flailing her hands a little. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears. “That sample took forever to prep. Harvey’s going to kill me! What should I do?”

“Tell him it was my fault!” Sam offers, with incredible confidence and zero hesitation.

That’s a terrible idea, Sebastian thinks, and Maru doesn’t look too sure about it, either, but she also looks panicked and desperate. The handle of the door to the back hallway clicks, and Harvey steps through, clipboard in hand.

“Sam, whenever you’re— oh?” He stops short just before stepping in glass. “Oh, dear. What happened?”

Maru is frozen, eyes wide, like a deer facing down oncoming traffic. “I, um…”

“It’s not Maru’s fault!” Sam cuts in, apparently determined to throw himself on this particular sword. “It was mine! She was super focused on her work— like, she was really in the test tube zone, you know, super diligent as always— and I totally startled her. It was my fault she dropped it! Sorry, doc.”

“Mm-hmm,” Harvey says, looking unimpressed with this explanation. He turns back to Maru with raised eyebrows. “Maru? Is that what happened?”

“I…” She sighs, glancing in Sam’s direction. He nods reassuringly. “Yes. He startled me, and I dropped it.”

Harvey waits for a beat, like he’s expecting Maru to elaborate. She doesn’t.

“I’m surprised at you, Maru,” Harvey says sternly, glancing down at his clipboard. “It’s not like you to blame your own mistakes on someone else.”

Some small, childish part of Sebastian experiences about two seconds of schadenfreude— Ha, Maru’s the one in trouble, for once!— but then he catches a glimpse of her crushed expression. Her face flushes, and her mouth presses into a thin line, downturned at the edges. She turns away, blinking furiously, like she’s on the verge of crying again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice is small.

Sebastian feels a prick at the corner of his heart. It feels oddly close to guilt.

“But it really was my fault!” Sam interjects, and Sebastian turns to him in disbelief. “I’m sorry, I was the one who suggested that she blame it on me! And I’m the one who startled her, and—”

“No, Harvey’s right.” Maru takes a shaky breath. “I’m the one who dropped the sample.”

“But—!”

“I should get this cleaned up.” She straightens her shoulders and shoots him a thin, watery smile, then turns to Harvey. “I’m sorry. I’ll update the records, then call the patient and let them know they have to come in for another blood draw. If you’ll excuse me…”

Sam opens his mouth again, presumably to dig the six-foot hole he’s trapped them in a little deeper, but she’s already retreated through the swinging door to the back of the clinic. His shoulders sink, and he starts fidgeting with the silver rings on his fingers. His expression is totally checked-out, and his eyes have gone unfocused and distant.

Weird, Sebastian thinks. Maybe he really does have a concussion.

Harvey clears his throat.

“Huh?” Sam startles, then smiles. Something about it feels forced. “Yeah, doc? What’s up?”

He raises the clipboard and waves towards the door. “Whenever you’re ready.”

.

Sam is weirdly quiet as Harvey prepares the paperwork, which is to say, he answers each question with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ instead of a long and directionless ramble that ends up being more about music trivia than his symptoms. He looks pale. His knuckles are white as he grips the edge of the exam table. He’s biting his bottom lip hard enough that Sebastian’s worried he’ll draw blood.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?” Sebastian asks, as soon as Harvey leaves the room.

“Do you think she hates me now?” he blurts out.

“What, Maru?” He frowns. “Why would she hate you?”

“Oh, I dunno, because I’m a total freaking moron?” He groans and buries his face in his hands. “I made her drop the sample, and then I told her to blame me for it— it was my fault! My idea! And now Harvey thinks she’s a terrible person who blames other people for stuff, but, like, I’m the one who’s a terrible person, and—”

“You were trying to help.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t! She looked really upset!” He waves his hands helplessly. “Do you think it’ll help at all if I tell Harvey that it was, I dunno, like…? Uh… You know?”

Sebastian doesn’t know. “I think the best thing to do is stay out of it.”

“Right. Right, yeah, you’re right, I guess. I just…” Sam frowns and sighs, then goes back fidgeting with his rings again as he chews his lip. He bounces his leg, making the paper on the exam table crinkle. “No, yeah. You’re right.”

The door swings open, and Harvey returns, a clipboard in his hand and a resigned expression on his face.

“We really need to stop meeting like this,” he states, raising his bushy eyebrows and eyeing the tear in Sam’s jacket. “What was it this time? Climbing onto the roof? Running on black ice? Or, let’s see, what was it”—he checks his notes, and his moustache twitches in displeasure—“ah, yes, attempting to do a ’sick boardslide’ on the standing planters beside the community center?”

“It wasn’t Maru’s fault!” Sam blurts out.

Sebastian has to resist the urge to roll his eyes, but he also has to fight back a smile as he feels a rush of genuine affection for his friend. Sam is kind to a fault. He really shouldn’t be surprised.

“You shouldn’t be mad at her! I was the one who told her to blame it on me,” Sam continues. Harvey sighs and pulls out a pen. “She was just really super focused on her work! That’s not her fault! And I did actually startle her! Not on purpose, but… Uh…”

He trails off as Harvey taps the pen lightly on the clipboard.

“Are you the one who dropped the vial?”

Sam frowns. “No, but—”

“Mm. I see,” Harvey says drily, cutting him off. “Did you use dark and forbidden magics to temporarily possess Maru’s body and compel her to say that it was, indeed, your fault?”

Sebastian suppresses a snort as Sam gapes at him. “I, uh… No?”

“Then I fail to see how this is your fault.”

“It was an accident, man! What gives?” Sam throws his arms out, then winces, probably because his shoulder and back are still bruised. “Honestly, it’s really uncool of you to get mad at her over something that wasn’t intentional.”

“I’m not angry, I’m—” Harvey cuts himself off, shaking his head with a frustrated little huff. “Maru is an excellent lab tech, but excellence isn’t godhood, and to err is human. She needs to learn to take responsibility for her own mistakes.”

“Yeah, well.” Sam sniffs. “You might want to tell her you’re not mad at her, at least? She seemed upset.”

“Noted.” There’s an odd, tense beat, and then Harvey clears his throat. “Now, I’ll ask you again: What did you do this time?”

“Nothing!” Sam protests, dropping back into his usual, more amicable tone. He winces as Harvey prods at his shoulder.

“Nothing indeed.” Harvey sighs, turns around, rummages through a cabinet, and retrieves a flashlight. He clicks it on. “Can you look into this light for me?”

.

“Clean bill of health!” Sam declares as they make their way up the mountain.

“I’m not sure deep-tissue bruising is exactly a clean bill of health,” Sebastian points out.

“Clean bill of health, plus some bruises!”

Sebastian rolls his eyes and focuses on getting his suitcase up the stairs. He has to haul it up one stair at a time. It’s slow going. Either he’s out of shape, or the smoking is starting to catch up with him, because by the time they get to the top, he’s gasping for air. The cold air stings his throat.

“I’m fine,” he pants, waving away Sam’s concern, and yanks his suitcase forward. “Let’s go.”

As he turns, his eyes catch a flash of bright plum-colored purple, and he stops dead in his tracks.

“What the hell is that?”

“What?” Sam asks, and then, following his gaze, laughs. “Oh, that’s right! You haven’t been back in town since Abby’s wedding, have you?”

“Yeah, it’s been a minute.” He’s still staring. Processing. The part of his brain that’s not busy taking in the newly-renovated community center informs him that this path hasn’t been fully cleared yet. Fresh-fallen snow is working its way into his boots. His socks are going to be soaked by the time he gets home. “It looks less, uh… Decrepit. Than usual.”

“The farmer renovated it!”

Sebastian rolls his eyes and starts dragging his suitcase forward through the snow. “The one nobody seems capable of shutting up about?”

“Don’t be like that! She’s super cool!”

“No offense, but you say that about eighty-five percent of the people you meet.”

“Okay, but she’s actually cool! She answers, like, every request we put on the board. Like, every request. It’s kind of wild.”

“Did anyone even ask her to renovate the community center?” he grumbles. His suitcase is now four inches deep in snow and mud, but he plows onwards. “Nobody asked for her help! Nobody asked her to fix anything! Who does she think she is?”

“Look, dude, I know you were kind of emotionally attached to the old community center—”

“I wasn’t attached to it!”

“Sure,” Sam allows with a shrug. “You just used to hang out there a ton. I gotta say, though, it was kinda falling apart, and the new one’s pretty sweet. We can check it out while you’re here, if you want.”

“I. Do. Not. Want.” Sebastian punctuates each word with another yank of his suitcase.

“Whatever you say,” Sam says, coming around the side. He bites his lip, clearly trying not to laugh, and gestures at the suitcase. “You want help with that?”

He’s still fuming. “No.”

“You sure?” Sam flexes his arm. “I’m strong! I’m courageous! I have a clean bill of health and two tablets of aspirin coursing through my veins!”

Sebastian stops yanking on the handle and laughs in spite of himself. “If I let you help me, will you stop saying the ‘clean bill of health’ thing?”

Sam grins back. “No promises.”

Chapter Text

Sebastian’s been home for less than forty-eight hours, and he’s already exhausted.

The city’s been bad for his socialization. He’s self-aware enough to admit that that’s part of it. He keeps meaning to find a comic book club, or a group to play Solarion with, or a basket-weaving class, or something. He knows he needs friends who live less than a four-hour bus ride away. He knows! It’s just that he’s busy, and strangers are exhausting, and honestly, most people don’t understand him. Not really. Not the way Sam and Abby do. Even when they try, and even when Sebastian tries to explain, they don’t get it.

(“Don’t get what?” Sam asked last summer, the strum of his guitar staticky over the phone line, and Sebastian had swallowed around the lump in his throat and replied: “Me.”)

So maybe Sebastian just doesn’t like people, and maybe his social skills are so rusty that he needs a tetanus shot just thinking about them, but that’s not the main problem. The main problem is Demetrius.

Demetrius is proud of him, and it’s the worst.

It was one thing when his stepfather was constantly nagging him to get a real job and move out of the house, but now that he actually has, the approval is unbearable. Demetrius is so glad that Sebastian finally has a steady, respectable job. A job with health insurance! With dental, even! He always knew Sebastian could move out of his mother’s basement and live a Good And Successful Life!

See what you can accomplish when you really apply yourself? he’d said at dinner last night, looking so genuinely pleased. (As though Sebastian wasn’t applying himself before, back when he’d been freelancing, staying up until three in the morning to teach himself object-oriented programming from scratch.) I always knew you had it in you!

If Demetrius praises him for finally being a “productive member of society” one more time, Sebastian will do something drastic that will definitely ruin the holiday spirit and also land him some jail time for destruction of property.

Three years ago, his strategy for dealing with Demetrius had mostly involved hiding at Sam’s place, and that was what he’d been counting on this time, too. He’d suggested band practice. He’d mentioned he was thinking of picking up his keyboard again, even though Sam’s found a replacement pianist for The Pelicans in his absence.

Which is fine, for the record. He’s cool with being replaced. The band has been Sam’s dream for as long as they’ve been friends. It’s not like he expected that to be put on hold when he left.

It’s just… Elliott? Really? That pompous Fabio knock-off looks like he belongs in a trashy historical romance novel, not a pop-punk band. He probably doesn’t even know how to work the settings on the keyboard properly, can’t tell Pete Wentz from Gerard Way, never graffitied lyrics from “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on the walls inside the abandoned community center as a teenager because the song resonated, because it was cathartic, because someone else was able to put words to the weight of grief in his chest even if he wasn’t able to—

Anyway. Elliot is his replacement in the band, and Sebastian is doing just fine.

Back to his original problem: He was counting on retreating to Sam’s place to avoid Demetrius, but Sam’s got a job at the museum, now. It’s the sort of job he actually enjoys doing and wants to go to, and Gunther has him picking up a lot of shifts, which means Sam isn’t home. Which means hiding at his place is a non-starter.

So, Sebastian has pivoted to a new plan: Hiding in his room until the end of time.

This plan has gone really well, so far, except now, it’s three in the afternoon, and his head is kind of starting to hurt. It’s probably because he hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since he woke up, which he guesses is probably bad, so he sighs and hauls himself out of his desk chair. He plods up the stairs towards the kitchen.

I wonder if I could go back to the city early, he thinks, rummaging through the fridge. He knows he needs to eat, but nothing looks appetizing. I could make up a work emergency or something, but Mom would be so disappointed…

He reluctantly picks out a tupperware of green bean hotpot, dumps some of it into a bowl, and pops it into the microwave. He waits. Watches the bowl as it spins, pre-baked green beans slowly pirouetting on a glass turntable, lit by a yellowish incandescent lightbulb that’s probably older than he is.

“H— Oh? You’re not Robin.”

He startles, then whirls around to find a rumpled-looking woman standing in the doorway of the kitchen, bundled in a woolen jacket and a maroon pashmina scarf. She’s got wide hazel eyes, edged with smudged eyeliner— getting wider, now that she’s seen him— and her reddish-blonde hair and shoulders are dusted with rapidly-melting snow. She’s toting a heavy-looking rucksack over one shoulder, filled to bursting with wood and stone.

She doesn’t look familiar, which must mean this is the famous farmer nobody can shut up about. Personally, he thinks she can’t possibly be as perfect as everyone seems to think she is.

And really, nobody asked you to fix the community center, he thinks sourly. We were doing fine without you. Take your pretty hazel eyes and your small-town hero complex somewhere else.

The microwave dings.

“Mom’s off today.” He yanks open the microwave door and pulls out the green beans. They look sad. He grabs a fork anyway. “She’s probably at Pierre’s, if you’re looking for her.”

The farmer stares at him. Her mouth is ajar. Her face is pink, possibly from the cold. She looks kind of breathless and— well, he’s not sure, really. Distressed? Dismayed? On the verge of a breakdown?

He pauses. This is not at all how he envisioned her, actually.

“Are you good?” He doesn’t really want to know, but he feels like he should ask.

She shuts her mouth with an audible click. “Yes! Yes, I am good. I am— so sorry, for like, barging into your kitchen, spirits, I promise I’m not like, a burglar or something, I was just looking for Robin, but it’s Tuesday, and I forgot it was Tuesday, so of course she’s not here, and I’m sorry— spirits, I need to stop apologizing, but you’re— um—!”

He waits for her to finish the sentence, but she doesn’t, so he hazards a guess. “Yeah, I’m Robin’s son,” he says, through a mouthful of green beans, and then, in case there was any doubt, swallows and adds: “I live here. For the next two-and-a-half weeks, at least.”

“I know!” She bites her lip. “We’ve, uh, actually met before.”

“Ah.” He’s supposed to remember her, apparently. Fantastic. “Abby’s wedding?”

“Oh, right, you were one of the groomsmen!” (She’s saying it like she’s just now remembering it. This means he’s guessed wrong. And also that she saw him in that ridiculous three-piece suit, not that it matters.) “No, actually, we didn’t talk at the wedding— I mean, I was there, mostly, I just got a little tied up with, uh— well, ha, not important, never mind, but actually, we met when I first moved here! Which was like, three years ago now, so of course you don’t…”

She trails off. Of course you don’t remember, even though I do, she was probably going to say, and he’s so ready to be done with this conversation.

“Anyway! Let’s try this again!” She takes a deep breath, straightens her spine, and runs a hand through her hair. It only makes it messier. “Hi! I’m Ava.”

She sticks out her other hand with smile that’s two notches too bright to be real.

“Sebastian,” he says, hesitating for a second before dropping the fork and shaking her hand.

She’s got a solid, firm handshake, but she doesn’t let go when she should. She just keeps shaking his hand as she studies his face. She seems tired. The dark smudges under her eyes that he initially thought were from day-old eyeliner might actually just be from good, old-fashioned exhaustion. He wiggles his hand a little, trying to prompt her to give it back, and she drops it like it’s burned her.

“Sorry,” she says, her face going bright red. “I— Sorry.”

“Did you need something?”

“Ah! Right, I was—” And then she cuts herself off, grimacing. “Uh, never mind. It’s not important. I can figure it out myself, probably, so I should… Go, I guess?”

But she doesn’t go. She just stands there, fidgeting and chewing her lip.

He shouldn’t ask, he thinks, picking up the bowl and shoving another forkful of green beans into his mouth. He really shouldn’t ask. He should let her go and write this off as yet another failed social interaction to add to his already-abysmal track record. He should retreat back to his basement. Play a video game, maybe. Or read some comics. Or whatever it is he’s gonna do with this vacation.

She looks stressed, though, and he’s kind of curious.

He really, really shouldn’t ask.

“Not important?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s not,” she insists, but the way her eyes shift and the pause before she says it tells him she’s lying through her teeth. Badly. He wonders whether she’ll fess up about the nature of the not-important emergency if he pushes her on it.

He raises his eyebrows. Makes eye contact. Holds it.

I can do this longer than you can, he thinks as she wavers, feeling more than a little smug.

“Okay, it’s maybe a little important,” she finally admits, cringing. “There’s kind of, uh… A hole. In my chicken coop.”

“There’s a hole in your chicken coop,” he repeats slowly.

“A pretty big one. Anyway, I can figure it out! I think it’s not structural? Probably? And, you know, even if I can’t figure it out on my own, it’s fine for now, because I moved them into—” She cuts herself off mid-sentence, her eyes going even wider, and there’s a full two-second pause before she continues. “I… Moved them. Yes.”

He narrows his eyes. “Moved them where?”

She grimaces. “Into my house? Maybe a little bit?”

“Into your house? Why?” He feels the corner of his mouth twitch upwards, and he takes another bite of green bean casserole to cover it. “How are they a little bit in your house?”

“They’re very in my house! Spirits, this all sounded so much less unhinged in my head,” she sighs, scrubbing a hand across her face. She looks like she might cry. “I never meant for it to get this bad! I meant to have your mom fix it over the summer, but I just got so busy setting up the greenhouse, and then Lewis asked me for a bunch of wood for the Ice Festival, so I had to collect more lumber for it, and— and I know being busy isn’t an excuse but now there’s a hole in the floor, and they’d be cold if I left them outside, so what else was I supposed to do?”

Oh, so she’s a total disaster, Sebastian realizes. This is why the smile didn’t quite hang right on her face. He kind of wants to see what her real smile looks like and wait no hold on—

“I can fix it,” he finds himself saying, before his brain can catch up with his mouth.

As soon as his brain does catch up, it immediately pitches a fit— What? No! What do you think you’re doing?— but it’s too late. Ava’s eyes go wide. Maybe a little hopeful. He notices that they have little flecks of green and gold that catch the light from the window.

“Fix…?”

“The chicken coop,” he tells her, because he can’t exactly take it back now. There goes my afternoon. “I mean, it won’t look as nice as Mom’s work, obviously, but it should be, you know. Functional.”

“Really?” She looks uncertain, like she isn’t quite sure she’s allowed to be happy about this yet. “I mean, I’ll pay you, obviously, and I’ve got the materials and everything, but you’re on vacation, right? I’m sure you’ve got other stuff to do this afternoon. I don’t want to impose.”

She’s giving him an easy out. She’s respecting his time and his boundaries.

That’s something Sebastian is very freaking appreciative of, actually, and now that he’s actually been offered the escape route he was looking for earlier in this conversation, he kind of doesn’t want to take it.

“It’s fine,” he reassures her, trying to seem nonchalant. He sets the bowl in the sink, leaving the green beans half-finished. “Honestly, I’ve been looking for a reason to get out of the house, you know? I could use a project.”

What are you even talking about? his last brain cell scoffs.

I have been looking for a reason to get out of the house! he argues. I have been looking for a project!

Yeah, a coding project, his brain grumbles. You’re gonna get splinters. Or tetanus. Maybe both.

But then Ava smiles— a real smile, this time, her eyes crinkling at the edges— and she breathes a relieved, thanks, you’re a total lifesaver, and for the first time in a good, long while, his brain has absolutely nothing else to add.

Chapter Text

Ava has made the worst possible first impression.

Well, not the worst first impression, she thinks miserably as they make their way along the snowy mountain path towards her farmhouse. It’s not technically the first, because they’ve met before. He clearly doesn’t remember her at all— which is totally reasonable, because who remembers a random person they met one time three years ago, right?

Except then she had to go and tell him that she, in fact, remembers him, because her first thought when they’d met (very briefly) back then had been a very distinct: Oh, no, he’s hot! (Her second first impression of him was pretty much the same.) And then she’d reintroduced herself and gone in for a handshake, like it was a freaking business meeting.

And if, by some Winter Star miracle, Sebastian happens to still have a single shred of respect left for her as a grown independent woman who can handle herself and maintain her own farm, that shred is going to go up in flames the second he sees just how bad the coop’s gotten.

She sighs. It’s just her luck that when she finally finds the time to swing by Robin’s, after nearly two seasons of letting the coop issue fester at the bottom of her to-do list, the only person available to help her is Robin’s stupidly attractive Tall-Dark-Handsome son. His time in the city has only improved his looks. His hair is longer than she remembers, dark and straight and constantly falling into his very pretty eyes, and she thinks that helix piercing might be new.

They’re halfway back to her farm before she realizes that neither of them have said a single word since they left Robin’s place. It’s dead silent, apart from the ambient sounds of winter and the crunch of snow and gravel under their boots. The flurries haven’t stopped, and the wind and snowflakes are pricking at any bare skin they can find— her face, her ears, her exposed wrists. She shivers and shoves her hands deep into her pockets.

“So!” She clears her throat. “How, uh… How are you liking being home for the holidays?”

“I mean, I’m spending the day fixing your chicken coop, so…”

She winces. “Sorry. I know, the timing sucks.”

“No, no, not like that,” he says, shifting the toolbox in his hands. “I mean, this whole chicken coop situation is the first remotely interesting thing to happen since I got here. There’s literally nothing to do in this town.”

“There’s not nothing to do,” she protests, frowning, because there are festivals! She puts a lot of time and effort into coordinating them! (She’s not sure when it became her job to do all the prep work for them, instead of the mayor’s, but really, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.) “We just had the Festival of Ice, like, yesterday.”

“Mm.” He sounds unenthused.

“And we’ve got the Night Market and the Feast of the Winter Star coming up!”

“Right.”

There are nearly ten seconds of dead silence, cut by the crunch-crunch of the icy gravel path beneath their feet, before Sebastian speaks again.

“Do you think they’re still doing that stupid annual gift exchange?”

“Uh… Yeah, I think so?” Actually, she knows so, because the letters are sitting on the side table by her front door, ready to be passed out. They’re probably covered in chicken crap by now, which means she’ll have to redo them. It’s fine. She’d’ve had to redo them all, anyway, since Sebastian’s name wasn’t originally in the drawing, and did he really just call the gift exchange stupid?

He glances over at her with a smug, asymmetrical grin. It’s conspiratorial, like they’re both in on the same joke. Pleased little butterflies kick up in her stomach, until he says: “I wonder which poor sap Lewis roped into coordinating everything for him this year.”

Seriously? She feels her blood pressure spike. “That would be me, actually,” she bites out, trying her best to bottle her anger.

“Oh.” His smile drops, and he has the good sense to look embarrassed. “Sorry.”

She makes an irritated, noncommittal noise, and they keep walking in silence.

After she’s cooled off for about ten seconds or so, Ava kicks herself— Why am I getting so huffy and defensive about the stupid festivals?— but it’s too late to take it back, and now, she’s probably cemented herself in Sebastian’s mind not only as an incompetent farmer who can’t even maintain her own buildings, but also as a total buzzkill who can’t take a joke. She shivers and tugs her jacket tighter around her shoulders.

They walk for another few minutes, and she mulls over starting up another conversation. Whatever she says, it has to be something that makes her seem cool. Put-together. Competent. Worthy of an ambitious city boy’s attention, and less like the walking disaster she actually is.

“Sorry! I’m usually way more fun than this, I promise!” she says, because that’s exactly what a fun person would say. She cringes as soon as the words leave her mouth.

“I like the quiet,” he says with a shrug. “It’s nice.”

And, well, if that’s not a hint to shut up, she doesn’t know what is.

.

Sebastian lets out a low whistle as he surveys the damage to the floor and side of the coop.

“You were right. This is pretty bad.” He pokes at some of the dark, crumbly wood around the hole her foot left in the floor this morning. It falls apart as soon as he touches it. (Ava thinks she might relate.) “We’re gonna have to replace this whole section, I think.”

“Ugh, I know,” she sighs, tugging at one her gloves. She focuses on tracing the outlines of the ribbing around the wrist. “I kept meaning to fix it, but I just…”

Didn’t make it a priority, she could say. Got busy, she could say, but what is there to do on a farm in the winter, really? Except Gus just put in another special order for two dozen eggs, and she has to chop a bunch of hardwood for Robin, and oh, by the way, the ice slimes are disrupting the ecological balance of the mines again, so she’s gotta slay ten of those by the end of the week, and Emily’s cloth order is late, and Sam needs some rhubarb, and also she has to figure out what the heck a Void Salmon is and how to get one for the little apple spirits that live in the empty hollowed-out shell of the JojaMart, and and and—

(Her journal is so full of special requests, sticky notes, and to-do-list addendums that it no longer closes all the way.)

She forces a smile and settles on: “Things have been a little hectic.”

He hums, not in a judgmental way, and gives her an odd look.

“What?”

Sebastian holds her gaze for a moment, assessing, then shakes his head and glances away. “Nothing.”

He stands and shrugs off his heavy jacket, hanging it on one of the hooks by the door, and rolls the sleeves of his black turtleneck up to the elbows. He undoes the clasps on the toolbox easily, then slides the top open.

She finds herself suddenly, inexplicably fixated on his hands as he starts pulling out his tools, arranging them carefully in a row beside him. His nails are painted black. He’s wearing a stainless steel watch on one wrist— a regular one, she’s surprised to note, not a smartwatch— and a silver chain and black beaded bracelet on the other. His right forearm flexes a little as he pulls out a hammer, and she can’t help but stare.

Spirits, you weirdo, Ava scolds herself, her face heating. He’s being kind enough to fix your chicken coop. The least you can do is not thirst over him while he does it.

“Can I get you anything?” She clears her throat and glances away, because she’s trying to be polite and well-behaved and normal, please, dammit. “Hot chocolate, or coffee, or…?”

“I’m good,” he says, without looking up from the toolbox.

“Okay,” she says, biting her lower lip. It’s chapped, because apparently she’s put about as much effort into her skincare routine as she has into farm maintenance. This is the worst day of her life. “Cool! Well, in that case, just… Let me know if you need anything!”

“Sure,” he says, pulling out a box of nails.

“I’ll just be chopping some firewood,” she tells him, because being somewhere else and freezing cold might actually do her some good right now. “Over on the west side of the farm, past the barn, which is— if you just head on over in the direction we came from, it’s—”

He finally looks up. Even though his dark hair has fallen across half of his face, obscuring it, he manages to fix her with the most overwhelmingly unimpressed look she’s ever seen.

“I know what direction west is.”

Of course he does. He grew up here, for spirits’ sake.

“Right!” She laughs. It comes out high-pitched and louder than she means it to. “Okay, well, uh! Enjoy the repair work, then! Or, well, don’t enjoy it, but— you know what I mean!”

Ava doubts that he does know what she means, given that she doesn’t even know what she means, but she backs out of the chicken coop and flees back to the cabin anyway, ice and snow crunching under her feet. She storms through the door, shutting it solidly behind her, and then surveys the chicken-besieged mess that is her living room. She sinks down to the floor with a groan.

“Why am I like this?” she laments.

The only response she gets is clucking and rustling feathers. One of her chickens approaches, tilting her head, and pecks at the ice on her boot. Ava heaves a sigh.

“I don’t want to hear it, Glimmer,” she mutters, hauling herself to her feet and grabbing her axe.

.

Sebastian pops in his earbuds, queues up a Fall Out Boy album, and cranks up the volume. He hasn’t worked with wood in a while, but he helped his mom enough around the shop as a teen that he’s pretty sure he remembers the drill.

Not that we’ll need a drill for this, he jokes to himself, grinning.

He starts by grabbing a pencil and a straight-edge and sectioning off the rot from the solid wood. He marks a little beyond where he thinks he should, just because you can never be too safe with dry rot. Ava’s lucky it didn’t hit anything structural, or at least he thinks it didn’t— he makes a mental note to have his mom swing by tomorrow, just to check. Dry rot can be tricky, and she knows what to look for better than he does.

Next, he starts sawing away the rotted sections. His hands aren’t used to this kind of work anymore, but he quickly falls back into the familiar rhythm of the tools. He has to take breaks every so often to give his stinging hands a rest, but the feeling of doing something physical is kind of relaxing. When he goes to lift out the old, rotted wood, it crumbles in his hands.

Spirits, she really let this get bad, didn’t she?

She’s left him with some sturdy pine lumber to replace it with. The wood smells sharp and sweet, like it’s been freshly-cut. He measures out the lumber for each of the floorboards and cuts them to measure, and he’s just starting to hammer in the first one when something firmly nudges his elbow.

He startles and narrowly avoids smashing his thumb.

“Jiangui,” he hisses, yanking out his earbuds. “What the—”

He turns, glaring, to find an orange tabby cat, presumably the one who just headbutted him, staring up with flat ears, an arched back, and wide, frightened eyes. It’s backed up a few feet, and seems just as startled as he is.

“Oh,” he says, in a much quieter voice. The anger melts. “Hey, there, little guy.”

The cat eyes him with deep suspicion.

“You startled me, is all,” Sebastian reassures him. He’s trying his best to sound soothing. He’s not sure how successful he is. He doesn’t do ‘soothing’ much. “Sorry for yelling. Look, I’m not scary, see?”

He puts the hammer down and holds out a hand. The cat stares, like it’s not quite sure what to make of him. After a few long, tense seconds, it finally steps forward. It sniffs at his outstretched palm, then tilts its head forward and rubs the edge of its mouth on his hand.

“Yeah, there we go.”

Sebastian scratches the top of the cat’s head. Its fur is soft and silky. He can hear it purring over the guitar line of “Hold Me Like A Grudge,” which is still blaring distantly from his earbuds. He’s probably killing his eardrums a little, and it occurs to him that he’s been here long enough that the album’s looped back around to the beginning. Ava hasn’t bothered him once. She’s not hovering, like some people used to do on jobs, back when he’d tagged along with his mom.

It’s quiet here. He likes the quiet.

“Caesar Augustus, huh?” he asks, reading the tag under the cat’s chin. “Did she name you that?”

Caesar chirps happily and nudges his hand again. He smiles and goes back to petting.

If he’s honest, it’s also nice to do something with his hands again. He’s missed woodworking. The smell of fresh-cut wood and sawdust, the familiar tools in his hands, the rasp of sandpaper… Come to think of it, he hasn’t really done any woodworking since—

Well. That season of his life is long gone. Along with any trace of it, probably, now that the community center’s been restored to a sort of former glory he never got to see. He hopes the little animal carvings he left behind rotted away before Ava did the renovations.

It’s not like it matters, he tells himself. It’s not like they were any good.

Still, he kind of hopes they died a natural death, crumbling to dust, like the wood he’s stripping away. The idea of them lying in a landfill somewhere makes his chest ache.

“Oh, hello, Sebastian!”

The door of the coop creaks open, and he turns to see Emily standing in the doorway, looking between him, the cat, and the massive hole in the floor with interest. He freezes mid-pet. Caesar Augustus brrups and sidles over to Emily, rubbing his face against her leg. She kneels down to pet him.

“Hello to you, too, Caesar,” she giggles, smiling wide. She ruffles his fur, then raises her head and looks Sebastian over, like she’s assessing him. “Wow, I barely recognized you, it’s been so long!” Doubtful. He hasn’t changed that much in three years. “Robin mentioned that you were visiting.”

Here we go, he thinks. “Yeah. I just got in yesterday.”

“Well, we’re all glad to have you back in town for the holidays!” Sure you are. “How’re you liking Zuzu City? How’s work?”

“It’s good.”

“Oh. Really?” She purses her lips and squints. “But your aura’s so…”

He tries very hard not to make a face, because he’s a grown adult man who is capable of white-knuckling his way through terrible small talk. I said ‘it’s good,’ I gave you the answer you wanted, so now can I please get back to work?

“…Never mind,” she decides with another bright smile, and maybe he wasn’t actually that successful at not making a face. “Anyway, is Ava around? I’m supposed to pick some cloth up from her today.”

.

After Emily leaves, several more people stop by, including:

1. Elliott: “Pardon me, but you wouldn’t happen to have seen Ava toiling away somewhere on the farm, would you? I placed an order late last week for some new duck feather quills.”
2. Caroline: “Oh, Sebastian! It’s great to see you! I know Ava’s working, but I’ve got a request, and can you also tell her I’d love to have her over for tea later this evening, if she’s free? Just tell her to drop by at seven!”
3. Gus: “I need another ten dozen bottles of hard apple cider. Whatever she’s done with that most recent batch, it’s been a real hit at the saloon!”
4. Lewis, frowning, his moustache twitching with displeasure: “Is she taking the day off today? Well, I only ask because she wasn’t picking up her phone, and I had some ideas for the Night Market that I wanted to talk over. No, no, I’ll just go find her myself…”

He sends them all over in her direction and wonders, privately, how she ever gets anything done.

.

It’s five in the afternoon before Sebastian finishes the repairs, and it’s nearly five-thirty when he finishes inspecting his work and decides he’s satisfied. He dusts the sawdust off of his jeans, stretches his arms over his head, and packs up his tools.

He finds Ava exactly where she said she’d be, in the little grove on the far west end of the farm, chopping firewood. She’s gathered her hair into a loose braid that hangs down her back. She’s removed her flannel shirt and tied it around her waist, leaving her in a fitted black t-shirt and blue jeans. There’s a pile of large uncut rounds of wood to her right, and a slightly larger pile of cut wedges of firewood to her left. A single round sits on the giant mahogany tree stump in front of her.

She hefts the axe over her head, yells, and swings. It lands with a sharp crack, splitting the round nearly down the middle. She tugs the axe loose, then wedges her hands between the halves and yanks them apart with a little grunt and practiced ease.

Sebastian takes a sharp breath in. Suddenly, the cold doesn’t seem quite so biting.

It’s not like he’s trying to notice how her shirt clings to her torso as she leans over to place the smaller half on the wood pile. He’s not trying to focus on the soft, subtle muscles in her upper back that shift and flex as she moves. It’s just that he’s finding it kind of hard not to.

She stretches her arms over her head, warming up for the next round.

This better not awaken anything in me, he thinks.

She sets one of the halves in the middle of the chopping block, picks up the axe, and swings again, splitting it cleanly in half. Sebastian makes a small, involuntary noise in the back of his throat, and she turns.

“Oh, hey!” she says, lighting up as soon as she sees it’s him. She buries the axe in the stump with uncanny ease and makes her way over. The clouds from earlier have cleared, and the setting sun lights her hair from the side, turning half of her head into a bright gold halo. “Sorry, I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“No, I, uh—” His mouth’s feeling a little dry, probably from the cold or the cigarettes, and his voice comes out a little deeper than normal. He has to clear his throat a few times to sound normal again. “I haven’t. Sorry, I didn’t want to distract you.”

“Nah, I’ve been doing this for, like, an hour or two. It’s about time I took a break,” she breathes, wiping the sweat from her brow and grinning. “Thanks again for doing this. Seriously, I know I already said this, but you’re a total lifesaver. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”

“Glad to help,” he says, and finds that he means it. He feels appreciated. It’s both nice and unfamiliar. He can’t remember the last time someone genuinely thanked him for something he did at work.

“My wallet’s in the shed. Let me just…”

He follows her. The cobblestone path beneath his boots is well-salted, and there are snowbanks piled high on either side where she’s shoveled it. Does she do all of this by herself?

As they approach the shed, he catches sight of something parked under the weathered overhang beside it, half-covered in a tarp. He thinks it’s red, or maybe orange— it’s coated in enough dust, cobwebs, and mud that it’s hard to tell, especially in this light— and there’s a bunch of spare lumber stacked around it in a way that tells him it hasn’t been driven in a good long while.

“Is that a tractor?”

“What?” She follows his gaze, then laughs. “Oh, that? Yeah, it’s been here since I moved in. I should really get it towed out to the junkyard, at some point. That thing hasn’t run in years.”

She tugs open the door to the shed, knocking the snow off her boots as she enters. Sebastian follows behind her. The inside smells like an odd mix of raw wood, pine sap, and machine oil. There are rows of kegs on the left, and preserves jars to the right. There’s even a section of automatic looms. All of the looms are running, whirring away with a rhythmic squeak-thud-thud, squeak-thud-thud that he thinks might cause hearing damage if he stays in here for too long.

“Oh, uh… Before I forget, Caroline left this,” he says, rummaging through his pockets and retrieving her note. “I’m pretty sure it’s another request. She said to give it to you.”

Ava’s still smiling, but she cringes a little as she takes it. “Thanks! I’ll just put it with the others.”

“She also said you should swing by for tea later, if you’re free.”

Ava presses her lips together and takes a long, sharp breath through her nose. “If I’m free!” she snaps, her voice thin. “Right! Because it’s winter, which means I must have so much free time on my hands right now! Never mind that I’ve got a whole-ass greenhouse to tend to, and two barns full of animals that need to be cared for, and the brewing and the cheesemaking and the—!”

She cuts herself off and glances at Sebastian. Her eyes go wide and guilty, like she thinks he’s going to do something absurd, like judge her for feeling overwhelmed.

“I mean…”

“Nah, I get it,” he says, waving away her concern. “If half the village kept interrupting my workday, I’d’ve gone postal a long time ago.”

“I am not ‘going postal,’” she huffs, crossing her arms.

He raises his eyebrows. “Okay.”

“I’m—” She huffs again, frustrated, then blinks rapidly and glances up at the ceiling, like she’s searching for words. “Look. Caroline’s great. I like her, and she makes great tea, and I know I’m being super ungrateful here, because, like, it’s just a tea invite, you know? It’s nice. It’s nice of her to invite me.”

“Sure.”

“And it’s good that I’m getting so much business! It’s just…”

He waits for her to finish her thought, and she doesn’t. She just grimaces and waves her hands helplessly, like she doesn’t really know how to articulate her frustration.

“You need time to decompress,” he finishes for her. And you’re not getting it.

She shrugs, tugging at her braid. The edge of her mouth is still twisted downward, and her expression’s still somewhere between irritated and guilty. “I just keep screwing up the deadlines, but like, it’s fine, you know? Emily was super nice about the cloth not being done yet, and I’m pretty sure I can still get the next round of cranberry jam done by the end of the week, so…”

Sebastian rummages around half-heartedly for a set of words that will make her feel better, or at least less guilty, because he really does get it. It’s the one downside of setting your own working hours, and he remembers it well from his freelancing days: Nobody really respects that you’re working. If your schedule is flexible, people tend to assume all of your time is up for grabs.

Before he can come up with a decent response, Ava takes a deep breath in and claps her hands together with an anxious little laugh. The fake smile is back.

“Anyway, none of that is your problem! Weird day today. Sorry, didn’t mean to get all… Anyway, uh, let’s go ahead and get you your payment, yeah?”

He hovers awkwardly as she rummages through her bag.

“I did my best with the repairs,” he tells her as he waits, “but dry rot can be sneaky if you’re not careful. I’ll have Mom swing by first thing tomorrow to take a look at it, just to make sure I—”

“Wait! Today’s Tuesday!” She swears, then freezes and turns bright red. “Sorry, I didn’t—”

“I literally don’t care,” he says, but the grin he’s biting back says that he might care a little. This version of the farmer is much more interesting than the one he was promised. “Why’s Tuesday a bad thing?”

“I was supposed to rack the next round of cider kegs today.” She buries her face in her hands with a frustrated groan. “But I can’t do that until I bottle the stuff in the old cider kegs and clean them out, which is gonna take, like, an entire day! I don’t have an entire day.” She drags her hands across her face and sighs. “It’s fine. I can probably still get Gus’ order done on time.”

“That’s rough,” he says, and then cringes, because it comes out sounding a lot less sympathetic than he means it to. He searches something else to say, anything, and finally settles on: “Are you brewing the cider in the cave?”

She looks up, squinting at him in confusion. “What?”

“The cave? Out on the northwest side of the farm? It’s still there, right? The temperature in there is usually pretty consistent, so I just… I figured…”

She just stares at him, and— Wait, is it weird that I know that?

“I used to hang out on the farm a lot,” he explains, and, wait, no, that makes it worse— “A long time ago! Before you moved here! Mostly just because it was quiet and I needed a place to be alone and think, because, you know, family stuff, and I didn’t have my bike yet, so—”

No! Stop! Why are you still talking!

He shuts his mouth before anything else stupid can come out of it, but Ava seems totally unfazed by his sudden, inexplicable chattiness and lack of brain-to-mouth filter. In fact, she looks kind of delighted. She smiles, and her amber-warm eyes crinkle up at the edges.

(His sudden lack of brain-to-mouth filter is maybe a little explicable.)

“I’ve got a wine cellar, actually,” she laughs, the tension easing out of her shoulders. Her laugh is genuine this time, not forced. “The cave has a bunch of mushrooms in it now.”

“That’s cool,” he says, and then says nothing else, because now he’s self-conscious and there’s too much brain-to-mouth filter.

She kneels down next to her rucksack and rummages through it for a minute, then pulls out a worn-looking leather wallet. She unzips it and digs out the money. Her fingers graze his outstretched palm as she hands over the cash. They’re warm, and softer than he expected. She’s looking at him nervously, expectantly, like—

Like she’s just said something and is waiting on a response. Dammit.

“Sorry, what was that?” he asks, frantically trying to restart whatever part of his brain keeps short-circuiting.

“I was just saying that, you know, for the record, you’re still welcome to hang out on the farm.” Her cheeks are pink. Probably from the cold. She twirls the end of her braid around her finger. “Since, uh, you mentioned that you used to… I mean, if you still need a place to be alone for a bit, while you’re in town? Not that you’d really be alone, since, ha, I’m here! But I’ll try not to bother you too much, if…”

She trails off, and he waits for her to finish, but she doesn’t. She just stares at him, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. Her lips are slightly chapped. He wonders for a moment whether she uses lip balm and if so what flavor it is and if her lips, like her hands, are softer than they look, and— nope, absolutely not, it’s time for us to not be looking at her mouth anymore.

“Thanks.” He pockets the money and drags his gaze away. “I’ll think about it.”

He suspects that he’ll be thinking about it more than he wants to.

Chapter Text

Ava doesn’t mean to leave cleaning her house until the next morning— she really doesn’t— but she’s already exhausted from chopping all of the hardwood for Robin’s request, and then moving all of the chickens back into their coop after Sebastian leaves takes nearly two hours (Glimmer is especially temperamental about being manhandled today), and once all of that’s done, she has just enough energy to text Caroline an apology for missing teatime, take a hot shower (so the guilt over missing teatime doesn't eat her alive), throw on her fluffiest bathrobe, devour some leftover pizza, and collapse into bed.

“It’s self-care,” she explains to Caesar, who’s finally decided to come back into the house, now that the chickens are gone. He’s making little muffins on the quilt next to her. She strokes his fur, trying to focus on how soft it feels beneath her fingers. “It’s been a long day. I think cleaning the house can wait until tomorrow morning, don’t you?”

Caesar gives a little mrow of agreement and settles in, curling against her side. She switches off the lamp on her nightstand and nestles down into bed, pulling the quilt up around her chin. She’s warm. She’s comfortable. She’s resolutely ignoring all of the work she has left to do, and the fact that she’s made an awful second first impression on Sebastian, because she’s resting, this is supposed to be her resting time, so she’s going to bottle up all of those things and—

Her phone buzzes on top of her dresser.

She groans and tugs the quilt up over her head, waiting for the ringing to stop. It does. She breathes a sigh of relief and snuggles back down into her bedding.

There are about ten seconds of silence before her phone starts vibrating again.

She swears, hauls herself out of bed, and trudges over to the phone. She swears again when she sees the name on the caller ID. She takes a deep, calming breath through her nose, trying to steady herself. The effect of this is diminished a little by the fact that the phone is still ringing.

“Lewis,” she says as she picks up, “it’s ten-thirty at night.”

“Yes, which is why I knew you’d be home! You never pick up during the day.”

“Right,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. Maybe it’s because I’m working. Farming, remember? My job? “What do you need?”

“I was wondering when you were planning on handing out the invitations for the Winter Star Feast. It’s almost two weeks away, and I’m concerned that some people won’t have time to collect gifts for their secret friends.”

If you don’t like how I’m running the festival, maybe you should try running it yourself, Ava barely stops herself from saying.

“Sorry,” she says instead, in a flat sort of tone that she hopes indicates that she’s not. “There was an emergency on the farm today”—because I haven’t had time to fix it, to do my own job, because some people keep asking me to do theirs for them, she doesn’t say—“and I need to redo the assignments, now that the number of registrants has changed, so… I really just haven’t had the time to get to it yet?”

Lewis harrumphs. “Well, just make sure it gets done as soon as possible. I need you to make passing these out your highest priority.”

“Sure,” she sighs, gritting her teeth. “I’ll take care of it.”

Hanging up doesn’t feel satisfying— pressing a button on the screen doesn’t have the same visceral feel of finality that slamming a phone back onto the hook does— and she’s left with a lot of pent-up frustration, because if Lewis already had a deadline in mind for this, why hadn’t he told her? Was she just supposed to magically know that two weeks beforehand wasn’t acceptable?

Especially when Lewis himself never handed the letters out until the eighteenth, when he was the one running things.

“‘Make it your highest priority,’ he says,” she grumbles to Caesar, who watches from his comfy spot on the bed as she paces the room. “Over my crops? Over my animals? Over my dead body!”

She knows that when Lewis says “as soon as possible” he probably doesn’t mean it literally, but she’s too worked up to go to bed right now, anyway, so she spends the next two hours furiously redoing the assignments, careful not to look at who’s assigned to whom. It’s supposed to be a surprise, after all. She’s not about to break tradition.

By the time she’s done putting all of the letters and slips of paper into the envelopes with the names on them, it’s nearly two in the morning, and she’s too exhausted to be curious, anyway.

.

Ava doesn’t mean to put off cleaning her house until the afternoon of the next day, either, but that’s what ends up happening.

She wakes up as the dim winter sun is creeping over the edge of the mountains, and the first thing she thinks about is how many orders she’s behind on. She bundles herself up, downs her first cup of piping-hot coffee, and reviews the list in her journal as she laces up her well-worn snow boots: Five bolts of cloth for Emily that should’ve been delivered last week; three jars of pickles for Maru, due Saturday, at the latest, so let’s hope those cucumbers in the greenhouse are ready for harvesting; two dozen eggs for Gus; dried chanterelles for Leah, and there’s no real deadline but she asked for them last week, which means… She pops in her earbuds and ventures out into the cold with 1989 on shuffle, hoping that some upbeat music will help her shake the feeling of being overwhelmed.

She tends to the barn animals first. She checks the water levels in the trough and rolls out the hay. The cows and goats, huddled around the space heater to fend off the winter chill, perk up and meander towards the food. Ava lets herself linger by the heater for a minute, basking her hands in the warmth, before she reluctantly pulls herself away and grabs the milk pail.

She loops “Style” for a solid thirty minutes as she makes her rounds, trying very hard to convince herself that she does actually have That Red Lip Classic Thing That You Like energy this morning, before finally giving up and queueing up some evermore instead. Mellow indie folk music is really the most she can handle on four hours of sleep.

Once the cows and goats are done, she feeds the sheep, then makes her way towards the coop.

“’Tis the damn season, write this down,” she sings, shoving open the coop door and tapping the ice off her boots. She’s pitchy, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody’s listening, anyway. “I’m staying at my parents’ house, and the road not taken looks real good now…”

Sebastian really did a good job with the repairs, she thinks as she steps through the doorway. She can see the discontinuity between the old and new wood, but the lines are clean and neat, and the patched floorboards look sturdy.

She checks the chickens over, taking extra care with Sparkle (because she’s got a foot injury, which seems like it’s healing up nicely, thank the spirits) and Glimmer (because she’s still broody today, and her beak is sharp). She pours out the feed, checks the water, and sets about gathering the eggs. There are fewer than usual, which is understandable and probably even expected, given how stressed they were by the whole coop fiasco yesterday, but she still groans. This is going to set Gus’ special order back by at least a day or two.

(The omelette one, not the cider one. There are too many special orders.)

It’s nearly ten by the time she circles back around to the greenhouse, fresh-fallen snow crunching under her feet. She shucks off her coat and scarf as she enters, tossing them onto the chair she keeps by the door. She pops her earbuds out, wrapping the cord around her neck like a stethoscope, and takes her time checking over the plants. The greenhouse is a warm little oasis with fogged-up windows that she’s reluctant to leave, especially today.

“Looks like you’re holding up, at least,” she tells her tomato plants as she examines their leaves. “Even if the rest of the farm isn’t.”

Normally, the next step in her morning routine is to grab some breakfast: A second cup of coffee, along with some toast and fresh scrambled eggs, or maybe a nice breakfast sandwich on some of the thick-cut white bread she buys from Pierre’s… Sometimes she throws some homemade cheese on top, if she’s feeling fancy.

Today, a nice breakfast is out of the question, for obvious reasons.

She winces as she takes stock of the damage to her living room and kitchen. Her home is officially a disaster zone, overcome by a hurricane of chickens. There are no survivors. Feathers and chicken poop are strewn across the floor. They’ve even managed to get some on the upholstery of the couch, which she already knows is going to take forever to get out.

The counter is blessedly untouched, so she heats some water in her electric kettle and eats some bland, watery instant oatmeal over the sink, because if she doesn’t eat something for breakfast, she’ll probably pass out midway through her cleaning session. (It’s happened before.) She leaves the bowl and spoon in the sink, then grabs her headphones and queues up a high-energy pop playlist.

Okay, she thinks. Let’s get this over with.

She opens the kitchen cabinet and pulls out a bottle of her strongest disinfectant, then frowns as she hefts it. The bottle’s nearly empty. She aims it at the nearest stain, then yanks the trigger experimentally, and it sputters weakly.

“Crap,” she says, like what her house is currently covered in.

She hauls herself up and rummages through the cabinets. She spends nearly five minutes looking for the vinegar, because that seems better than nothing, before she remembers that she used the last of it pickling beets for Evelyn last season. She swears several times, slamming the cabinet doors closed, and then stands in her kitchen for a moment, hugging her arms and trying not to cry.

It’s happening again, a small, scared part of her thinks. She’s overwhelmed again, overcommitted again. Failing to meet everyone’s expectations again. The shadow of burnout flickers around the edges of her mind. I wasn’t good enough to cut it at JojaCo, and I’m not good enough for this, either.

“I’m fine. This is fine!” she insists to her empty, poop-bedecked kitchen. The kitchen doesn’t respond. “It’s whatever. I was going to go into town today, anyway.”

She heaves a sigh, deflating, and grabs the pile of Winter Star Feast letters from her side table. She shoves them in her bag, pulls her boots on, bundles up, and heads out.

.

Pierre’s is bustling today. Nearly half the village is there. She makes sure to smile and nod at everyone, and at least five people stop her for small talk that she isn’t really feeling up to today.

Hey, how’s your day going? they all ask, and she smiles and lies and says, It’s going great, how’s yours?

Here is what she learns: Gus is making eggplant parmesan. Elliott’s buying extra conditioner, because his hair gets dry in the winter. Marnie is trying her hand at baking blueberry muffins, which are undoubtedly for Lewis, and Ava barely holds herself back from sharing her strongly-held opinion that he doesn’t deserve the muffins nor the woman who’s baking them. Jodi’s feeling harried about the upcoming holidays and wants a vacation. Ava relates.

Now, Alex is telling her all about his latest training regimen, and all Ava wants to do is take her groceries and run.

“…And I eat, like, eight eggs a day! They always say you need a lot of protein if you wanna actually see good results from workouts, so I have to watch my diet. I benched two-fifty the other day, isn’t that wild?”

“Yup. Two-fifty is a super high number,” Ava agrees, craning her neck as she looks for any excuse to disentangle herself from this conversation.

“Maybe someday, if you keep doing farm work, you’ll be almost as strong as me!”

“Hm,” she says, instead of dignifying Alex’s weird negging with a response. It’s probably not even on purpose, she thinks. He’s just that full of himself. “Oh, would you look at that? I think I see Pierre in the back!”

“Really?” He swivels his head around, frowning. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

Neither does Ava, but if she has to make small talk with him another second, she’s going to commit murder right here in the produce aisle, which will probably kill not only Alex, but also the cheerful holiday vibes Pierre seems to be going for, with the seasonally-appropriate music and the silver tinsel strung up around the displays.

“I’ve gotta go give him his letter for the gift exchange,” she tells him, pasting on a smile, “and, right, before I forget, here’s yours—”

She rummages through her rucksack, grabs Alex’s letter, and shoves it into his hands.

His eyes light up. “Sweet, thanks!”

“Okay, great, bye,” she says, and makes her getaway while he’s busy opening it.

Finally, after a solid fifty minutes in the grocery store, she manages to make it to the checkout counter. Her pint of chocolate ice cream is probably half-melted by now. If enough people stop her in town on her way home, maybe it’ll refreeze.

Abby asks, eyeing her basket, which holds a single bottle of industrial-strength cleaner, a frankly appalling amount of vinegar, and, of course, the ice cream consolation prize.

“You have no idea,” Ava sighs, because while they’re not best friends or anything, Abigail is cool and not easily offended. She’s one of the few people Ava doesn’t feel the need to put up a front with. “Your dad’s got you on cashier duty again?”

“Ugh, yeah. He says he needs the extra help, this close to the holidays. Especially now that we’re open on Wednesdays.” Abby rolls her eyes. The scanner is loose in her hands, but she handles it with the same casual ease she’s begun to use with her sword, now that she’s going into the mines regularly. “It’s not like we’ve got much more foot traffic than usual, anyway.”

She scans another two bottles of vinegar. Beep. Beep.

“I’ll bet it’s nice to visit your family, though,” Ava says, and then, when Abby opens her mouth to argue, finishes— “now that you’re all moved in with your new wife?”

Abby’s face brightens immediately. “Ha! Yeah, I’m still not used to calling her that. Or the idea of being married, really.” She giggles. “It’s nice, though.”

“You’re still liking it out there in Cindersap?”

“Definitely! It’s very cosy.” She leans in conspiratorially, lowering her voice. “And don’t tell my parents, but the Secret Woods is kind of perfect for sword training.”

Ava grins. “Nice. I’m surprised Leah hasn’t warned you off of it yet.”

“I think she figures it’s safer than the mines. She’s not wrong.” Abigail laughs. “She actually tags along with me, sometimes! Brings her sketchpad and her paints and all. She says she likes the way the light filters through the trees… Can’t say I get it, but if she’s happy, I’m happy, you know?” She grins, then picks up the next bottle and raises her eyebrows. “I see we’re switching to apple cider vinegar, instead of vinegar-vinegar. Do I need to restock?”

“I left a few, in case someone else needs them, but I’ve got so many veggies to pickle,” Ava explains, running a hand through her hair. “And honestly, I’m already behind because of the chicken coop debacle yesterday. Not that I wasn’t already behind, but…”

“Chicken coop debacle?”

“Oh, yeah, it was a whole thing,” Ava sighs, rolling her eyes. “It needed some emergency repairs, and Robin wasn’t in the carpentry shop yesterday, so Sebastian had to patch it.”

“Sebastian helped?” Abigail asks, picking up another bottle. She looks skeptical.

“Yeah, he was a total lifesaver,” she sighs, leaning on the counter. Abigail perks up, and her eyes narrow just a fraction. Ava hurriedly straightens her posture and adds: “I mean, it was nice of him to help. Very, um… Helpful.”

Abby looks amused. “Seb doesn’t usually do nice and helpful.”

Ava laughs as she scrambles to change the topic. “Speaking of the chicken coop, I totally had to redo all the Winter Star letters because the chickens got into the old ones. Which reminds me, before I forget…” She rummages through her bag, then presents Abigail’s letter with a flourish.

“Ooh, perfect!” Abby says, lighting up as she snatches it from Ava’s hands. She looks the envelope over for a moment, then shoves it into her apron pocket without opening it and keeps scanning. “Thanks!”

“No problem! It’s kind of my job.”

“More like Lewis’ job, actually, but okay,” she laughs, shaking her head. Beep. Beep. “Anyway, I’m psyched Seb’s back in town! Feels like we’ve barely seen him since he moved out to the city. Not that he was out and about much before then, anyway. Kind of a workaholic. I’m sure you relate.”

Ava shrugs, but a thought suddenly occurs to her. It’s a bad idea. It’s a really bad idea.

“You know Sebastian pretty well, right?” she asks.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Beep. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know what kinds of things he likes, would you? Like, in terms of gifts?” She leans on the counter, trying to seem nonchalant as Abigail loads her groceries into her bag. “Just out of, uh, casual curiosity.”

“Oh!” Abigail’s eyes go wide, and her face splits into a wide, delighted grin. She jabs a bottle of apple cider vinegar in Ava’s direction. “I see what’s going on here!”

“What?” she squeaks, trying to stay calm. Her face feels hot. “What do you mean? Nothing’s ‘going on,’ he just— he helped me fix my chicken coop, and I wanted to thank him for—”

“You got Seb for the gift exchange!”

Ava stares at her. Abigail smiles back confidently.

“…Right!” Ava confirms, after way too long of a pause. “Yes. That is what happened. I got Sebastian for the gift exchange, and that is why I want to know what sorts of things he likes. For gift-exchange purposes.”

Abigail’s expression goes on an interesting journey, and it settles on ‘skeptical,’ with one eyebrow very pointedly raised towards the ceiling. “Right.”

“No other reasons!”

The eyebrow creeps higher. She grins. “Uh-huh.”

“Look,” Ava huffs, “are you going to help me, or not?”

“Oh, absolutely, I’m going to help you.” She looks mischievous now, in a way that’s kind of making Ava regret asking. “Don’t tell him I told you this, because he tries super hard to put on that whole cool emo-boy persona, all tall-dark-and-broody, you know, but he’s actually kind of a total nerd? Like, he’s super into horror and sci-fi movies, and he likes comics a lot— Dracula, Cave Saga X, that sort of thing. He and Sam used to play Solarion on the weekends. He likes frozen tears. He’s got a motorcycle, but I don’t think he’s driven it since he moved to the city… In terms of food, he’s a huge fan of sashimi, but also? That pumpkin soup Robin makes all the time? Definitely his favorite.”

Sashimi, comics, frozen tears, pumpkin soup. Ava tucks the list away into her brain for later use, and then, in a completely separate part of her brain, for a different sort of later use, scribbles down: Motorcycle??

“Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind,” Ava says, handing over the gold for her groceries. Abigail takes her payment with a knowing smirk.

“It also happens to be his birthday today,” she adds, tearing the receipt from the cash register and sticking it into the nearest bag. “Just in case you wanted to give him any non-holiday-related gifts?”

Spirits alive, now she knows, I knew this was a bad idea—

“Thanks-so-much-have-a-great-day-bye,” Ava says in one panicked breath. She yanks the bags up and makes a beeline for the door, but on her way out, something catches her eye. She hesitates for about half a second before grabbing it.

She returns to the register with a tube of wrapping paper and a burning-hot face.

“Yes, Ava?” Abigail asks, with uncharacteristic professionalism. She’s trying so hard to hold back her laughter that she’s practically shaking. Ava wants to melt into the floor. “Can I help you with something?”

“I want to buy this wrapping paper,” Ava says decisively, slamming it down on the counter. “For Winter Star!”

“For Winter Star, huh?” Abigail repeats. She looks at the wrapping paper, which is black-and-silver-striped and not at all Winter Star themed, and then looks back up at Ava. “You know, if you want, we’ve got a few prints that are a little more festive.”

“This one’s good,” Ava grits out through a smile, clinging to what’s left of her dignity.

.

Sebastian’s birthday dinner goes about as smoothly as he expects it to, which is to say, like 80-grit sandpaper.

It starts off just fine. Robin makes his favorite pumpkin soup and a spiced cider cake, and the rest of them make awkward but benign small talk about things they know are safe. Maru’s remote internship is going really well, says Demetrius. She’s working on her applications for graduate school. Her thesis work is going smoothly. He’s very excited for her. Sebastian manages to bite back his envy and dredge up some genuine congratulations, which Maru accepts with stilted but also-genuine-sounding thanks.

Robin mentions that she swung by the farm earlier in the day to check on the coop. She makes a big deal about how good of a job Sebastian did in her absence, and how proud she is to have raised such a kind and helpful son. He’s embarrassed but pleased.

(She mercifully doesn’t make a big deal about the small amount of cash she had to return because Ava overpaid, or ask him why he forgot to count the money. He drinks his soup and tries not to blush at the memory of Ava’s fingers against his palm.)

But then Demetrius starts interrogating him about work, and spirits, it almost makes him miss the old days. Arguing back-and-forth about the merits of freelancing was better than listening to Demetrius go on and on about how happy and successful Sebastian must be in the city, while Sebastian nods along and bites his tongue and tries to pretend that sitting in an office chair answering emails and taking video calls and fixing other people’s bugs for nine hours a day doesn’t make him want to crawl out of his own skin.

Still, he grits his teeth and powers through it. If three years working in a corporate environment have taught him anything at all, it’s how to handle painful social interactions.

Except his mom immediately slips back into running interference, like she thinks Sebastian’s going to lash out like he used to, and Maru has gotten weirdly quiet since her grad school applications were mentioned, and he knows it’s his fault for not handling things more smoothly, but also it’s so unfair that his brain is being this socially anxious at his own birthday dinner, and he genuinely congratulated her, so what right does she have to be so—?

An hour later, it’s finally over, and Sebastian retreats to the lake to recharge.

He lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. Holds it. Exhales, watching the smoke dissipate. The buzz of the nicotine hits him a few seconds later, and he feels the tension he’s been carrying in his shoulders uncurl. He sighs in relief, sinking back against the tree, and brings the cigarette to his lips again.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

The tree bark is rough. The winter air is cold and biting against his skin, but it’s better than being inside. The night sky is clear overhead, dotted with pinpricks of stars and a waning crescent moon that’s nearly full. He takes another pull and watches the reflection of the moon in the lake. Watches the stars. Watches the way the blue-silver moonlight catches on the treetops, the ice, and the fresh snow, crisscrossed with footprints.

It makes him feel calmer. Lighter. He’s nearly at the end of his cigarette when he hears the crunch of footsteps on the path behind him, and he glances up.

It’s Ava, sword at her side, stumbling down the path to the mines. Her jeans are spattered with a dark liquid that he thinks (hopes) isn’t blood, and there are several sooty smudges on her too-pale face. Her sweater and scarf are oddly clean. She’s favoring one side as she walks, moving slowly and stepping gingerly, like her ankle’s hurt.

“Oh!” she says as he looks up, halting and immediately straightening her posture. She winces, then smiles. “Hey, Sebastian!”

“Hey,” he replies, putting out his cigarette. “You good?”

“Ha! Yeah, sorry. Don’t worry, none of the blood and viscera I’m covered in is mine!” she laughs, waving her hands. “Actually, while I’m here, do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” he says.

She approaches his spot under the tree, still limping but less than before. She shrugs her rucksack off of her shoulder, rolls her sleeves up, and starts rummaging. Her arms are smudged with dirt, under the pristine sweater, and she’s got a large-ish bandage on her right forearm that definitely wasn’t there yesterday. After a few seconds of digging, she pulls out an envelope with his name on it.

“I’m just here to hand this off for the, uh, what did you call it? The ‘stupid annual gift exchange’?”

He freezes. It takes him a half-second to register that she’s smiling as she says it, and another two seconds to parse that information and conclude that she’s probably just making a joke. (Emphasis on probably. He’s not especially confident in his people-reading abilities tonight.)

He laughs a little nervously as he takes the envelope, and then, just in case he’s wrong, says: “Sorry about that. Again.”

“You’re good! I was just messing with you.” She throws him a quick, bright grin that seems genuine, and then dips her head back down to continue digging around in her bag. “And, uh… Hang on…”

“How many more of these do you have to hand out?”

“Only a few,” she replies, sounding distracted. “I know it’s here somewhere…”

He’s itching for another smoke, just to ease his nerves, but he doesn’t know if she’ll mind, and before he can ask, Ava’s shoving a small, lightweight box into his hands. It’s wrapped in dark black-and-silver-striped wrapping paper. The edges of the paper are wrinkled, like it took her a few tries to get the paper to lay right… Or like it got knocked around a bit in the mines. Maybe both.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“It’s a birthday gift! And a thank-you gift. Sort of a thank-you-happy-birthday hybrid sort of gift, you know?” Her cheeks are pink from the cold, and she picks at the edges of the bandage on her arm. “You really didn’t have to help me out yesterday, and I just… I appreciate it.”

“Really? Thanks.” He takes the package. He almost feels bad about opening it, given the effort she clearly took to wrap it, but when he does… “Woah, this is awesome! Where’d you find this?”

It’s a frozen tear, and a high-quality one. It’s a pale, crystalline blue, fully translucent, with barely any flaws running through it. Its surface is mirror-smooth and cold to the touch. He holds it up, watching how it catches the moonlight.

“In the mines,” she says, casually, like it’s nothing. Like she goes that deep into the mines on a regular basis. That’s kind of hot, he thinks and then dismisses. “I picked a few up the other day, while I was doing some monster slaying, and Abigail mentioned that you like them, so…”

“Monster slaying, huh? That’s pretty neat,” he says, because it is. He grins and juts his chin at the bandage on her forearm. “Is that how you got that?”

“Maybe so.” She grins back and holds up her arm, wiggling her hand. “It’s a good way to blow off steam, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it. I’ve actually been down there a few times, too.” He realizes suddenly that he’s stepped closer to her without realizing it, that he’s leaning towards her a little. “I got nicked by a rock crab once. I had to get stitches.”

Ava laughs and leans in, mirroring him. She’s only a handful of inches away now, close enough now that he can smell the smoke on her clothes, mingling with undertones of sweat and spiced vanilla and citrus, and is it weird that he’s noticing that? It’s probably weird that he’s noticing that.

Her face glows in the moonlight, almost luminescent. She smiles mischievously, her eyes shining like she’s about to let him in on a secret, and then says, “You know, I’ve actually passed out down there before!”

He takes a second to process that, and then chokes out, “What?”

“It’s not a big deal! It really only happens when I stay out too late or lose too much blood.” She’s still smiling up at him, twirling the end of her braid around her finger. “I mean, like, there were a couple of things missing from my rucksack when I woke up, but—”

“You passed out and then you got mugged?”

She frowns. “I mean, really, it’s not a big deal. I’m fine now.”

Are you, though? he kind of wants to ask.

“Sure,” he says instead, turning away and putting the frozen tear carefully back in its box. He reminds himself that the frankly horrifying work-life balance she’s got going on isn’t really any of his business. “Thanks again for the birthday present. Honestly, I’m kinda impressed you remembered. I didn’t realize it was still on the town calendar.”

“The calendar?” She blinks a few times, confused, before her eyes go wide with realization. “Right! The calendar. That’s definitely how I knew it was your birthday!”

Which makes it very clear that the calendar is not how she knew it was his birthday. He doesn’t have solid proof of who’s to blame, but he does have a primary suspect: One notorious purple-haired meddler who wields a very sharp sword. If his suspicions are right, he knows better than to rock the boat by asking.

.

Back in his room, Sebastian eyes the Winter Star envelope on his desk warily, chewing at the inside of his cheek. Nerves churn in his stomach. He picks up the envelope and slides his finger under the flap, tearing it open unceremoniously. He pulls the letter out, then ditches the first page of text to read the second, where he knows his actual assignment is.

He reads: “This year, your secret friend is—”

Ava.

He curses under his breath and throws the letter onto his desk, where it lands between his keyboard and a half-drunk mug of coffee. He sighs and sinks down in his chair, scrubbing a hand across his face. Of all the people in Pelican Town, he had to get the one he knows the least?

And the one you think is prettiest, his last brain cell adds, and he tells it in no uncertain terms to shut up and stop it with that nonsense, because he knows exactly where that rabbit trail leads, and it’s not one he wants to go down right now. He’ll admit that she’s pretty, but that’s it. He’s going back to the city in about two weeks. Getting into a romantic entanglement with one of the hometown locals is nowhere on his (empty) to-do list for this vacation.

Really, when he thinks about it, there’s an even bigger problem with having Ava as his secret Winter Star friend: Ava may be stretched thin, but she’s still the backbone of the local economy. She singlehandedly restored the community center. She’s got half of the town’s Winter Star gifts on backorder, because apparently, nobody’s capable of getting their presents anywhere else.

As he boots up his computer for the evening, he wonders: What do you get for the woman who literally has everything?

Chapter Text

When Sam suggested that they hang out at the saloon on Friday night, just like old times, Sebastian had had certain expectations about how things would go.

It’s not like he’d thought it would be exactly the same as it was before he left Pelican Town— it would be stupid to expect his friends’ lives to freeze while he was gone, to stay perfectly preserved, like an autumn leaf pressed in the pages of a book— but he wasn’t expecting—

“At this rate, he’s never going to notice me,” Elliott laments, draping himself across a bar chair. He’s waving around a peacock-green handkerchief, which he apparently carries around in his suit pocket at all times, like some sort of Victorian-era romance novel protagonist. “I’m going to die alone, with only the vast, endless sea and my minute pocket crab for companionship.”

He wasn’t expecting their Friday Saloon Nights to turn into… Whatever this is.

“You won’t be alone! You’ve always got us,” Sam reassures Elliott, clapping him on the shoulder. Sebastian doesn’t know who ‘us’ is referring to. He hopes it doesn’t include himself. “Besides, he’s definitely into you. Abs overheard him humming the other day while he was doing his food shopping, my dude.”

“That proves nothing,” Elliott sighs, gazing across the saloon.

“It was Hozier,” Abigail adds helpfully, sipping her mug of hot cocoa.

“He’s just so suave, so intense… So…”

Sebastian follows his gaze across the bar to Shane, dressed in a scruffy hoodie and beaten-up sneakers. As far as Sebastian can tell, the only intense thing here seems to be the game of Junimo Kart he’s playing. He snarls and yanks the control stick back hard, jostling the arcade console, and slams his hand on the button a few times. The game dings, then plays a little 8-bit victory song. Shane whoops, letting go of the joystick and pumping both fists in the air, and then glances around before starting the next level. (Making sure nobody’s observing him, Sebastian thinks. How relatable.) Elliott sighs again and props his chin on his hand.

“To put the things I feel for him into words would cheapen them.”

“Was I like this before Abby and I got together?” Leah asks, squinting at him.

Elliott drags his gaze away from Shane and wrinkles his nose. “No. You were worse.”

“Aww, you had a crush on me,” Abby giggles, nudging Leah’s shoulder with her own. Leah just laughs in return and loops an arm easily around her, tugging her close.

Sebastian settles back in the hard maplewood booth as the jukebox changes songs. Someone’s queued up a string of cheerful Winter Star tunes, and between that, the holiday decorations strung around the room, and the roaring fireplace, it’s cheery. Cozy. Downright festive.

He sulks and pretends to drink the beer in front of him, which he didn’t ask for and doesn’t want. Elliott bought it for him without asking. He guesses it’s an olive branch, that Elliott can tell he’s uncomfortable and is trying to make him feel better, but it just makes him feel like more of an outsider. Makes him feel like freaking Elliott, who’s about a decade older than them and stuffy and pretentious and probably hasn’t played pool with Sam even once, is trying to welcome Sebastian into his own friend group.

The presumptuousness leaves a taste in his mouth that’s more bitter than the beer.

“How’s the writing going this week?” Sam asks.

“It’s going swimmingly!” Elliott declares, puffing up a little, and Sebastian simply cannot bring himself to care. “I’ve been dabbling in some other genres, but I think I’ll stick to romance, this time around. Ava’s suggestion of genre was certainly a good one.”

“Ava’s into romance novels?” Sebastian asks, and okay, he can maybe bring himself to care a little bit, now. He tries to keep his voice disinterested, like it’s just casual curiosity— and that’s really all it is, after all, but Abigail will absolutely smell blood in the water if he doesn’t keep his tone under control.

“Oh, she totally is,” Abby says, her eyes lighting up. Damn. Not casual enough.

He shrugs dismissively. “It’s not my thing, but I can respect it.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad she recommended it! The critics all seem to approve, and I find I’ve been rather in the mood for love stories lately.” Elliott swirls his mulled wine pensively and takes a sip, and then, seeming to remember again that Sebastian is there: “Ah, and here I am, rambling on about myself! Sebastian, do you have a paramour back in the city?”

Sebastian grits his teeth and fights to keep the irritation out of his expression. He knows interrogating a stranger about their love life is wildly invasive, right? “No. I don’t.”

“The city must be so romantic during this time of year,” Elliott sighs. “The sparkling lights, the breathtaking architecture, the crowds bustling through the glowing streets as they prepare for the upcoming holidays…!”

The traffic. The smog. The litter in the subway. He shrugs noncommittally instead of disagreeing, because as annoyed as he is that Elliott’s asking him overly-familiar personal questions, it feels petty to argue.

“So,” Abby starts, drawing out the ‘o’ with a sort of thinly-veiled intent that puts Sebastian immediately on edge. She leans forward in her booth. “What do you think of Ava?”

That seems off-topic, he wants to say, because it isn’t. He sniffs and takes a sip of terrible beer. “She’s okay.”

“She mentioned you helped her fix her chicken coop the other day.”

“Yeah, she swung by the shop when Mom wasn’t around. I helped. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Mm-hm,” Abby says, sipping her drink and raising her eyebrows in a way that makes it very clear that in her opinion, it was definitely a big deal.

“Eager to lend a hand to the pretty farm girl, huh?” Sam laughs, nudging him with his elbow, and Sebastian prickles.

“Seriously, it was nothing,” he grits out. His face feels hot. “She needed help. I was bored.”

“It’s cool, man. Everyone in town’s got a little bit of a crush on her, right?”

“Get off my back!” he snaps. Sebastian doesn’t know why everyone’s goading him about his stupid crush on Ava, anyway, especially in front of these strangers who aren’t part of their little Abby-Sam-Seb trio. “I just needed a good excuse to get out of that miserable freaking house, okay, because someone was too busy with his new job to hang out.”

The table falls silent. Leah and Elliott exchange an uncomfortable look, a we think we shouldn’t be here for this discussion sort of look, and Abby kicks his shin under the table. He winces and shoots her a glare. She glares back and shakes her head, motioning with her eyes towards Sam, whose expression is something close to that of a kicked puppy.

Oh, he thinks, guilt settling heavy in his chest. Oh, no, I didn’t mean—

“Sorry, dude.” Sam’s mouth presses into a thin line as he wilts and looks away.

(Sam had been joking, it was a joke, and spirits, why is he taking everything so personally tonight? Has he totally forgotten how to play nice with others over the past three years?)

The conversation moves on. Sebastian tries to stay engaged, but it’s hard, with the guilt and social anxiety gnawing at him. He kind of wants to leave, but that will just make things worse— really, he needs to apologize, but he can’t do that with Elliott or Leah here— so he’s stuck at this miserable little corner table, sipping a beer he hates and desperately trying to pretend he’s having a good time.

He does try to drink the beer, but he doesn’t really have the stomach for it right now.

He hears the door swing open, followed by a rush of cold winter wind. He knows that Ava’s just walked in, even though he doesn’t have a great view of the door from this angle, because the shift in ambiance is palpable. Emily lights up and waves from behind the counter; Gus perks up. Even Shane looks up from his arcade game.

Ava scans the room like she’s looking for something, and her eyes skim across their table and catch his. He freezes, expecting her to move on, but she stares back, her mouth quirking up into a friendly half-smile. After a second too long he glances away, sinking down in his chair and pulling his shoulders up around his ears, his anxiety shifting into higher gear— now she’s going to think he was watching her, which he was, technically speaking, but—

She moves on. Or he assumes she does, at least, because he’s pointedly not even looking in her direction anymore. If they make eye contact like that again, he thinks he might simply die, right here in the middle of the saloon. At least the graveyard isn’t far away.

Sam nudges his arm, and he flinches.

“Hey, man, are you good?” Sam asks, keeping his voice low enough that the rest of the table won’t overhear. They’re all lost in conversation, anyway— something about a set of t-shirts Leah’s been designing for some upcoming event— but he appreciates the gesture.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Sebastian tells him. “Sorry for snapping at you earlier.”

“You’re good, dude.” Sam grins, his eyes creasing at the edges. He has smile lines, Sebastian notices. When did that happen?

Sam nudges Sebastian’s shoulder with his own affectionately, then turns back to the table’s conversation. Sebastian tries to follow, but after a minute or two, he cautiously goes back to observing Ava as she flits around the room. She talks to everyone, he notices, but never settles in with any particular group.

Is she actually friends with anyone?

“Of course she is,” Sam laughs, and he hadn’t realized he’d asked the question out loud. “Everyone in town totally loves her! She’s super cool. You know she’s the one who fixed up the community center, right?”

“And that bridge on the beach,” Leah adds, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Abby grins. “And the elevators in the old mine shafts!”

“Sure,” he says, frowning, remembering the exhausted circles under her eyes, the way she’d limped out of the mines and waved away his concern. The way she’d acted like it was normal. “But is anyone… I dunno. Checking up on her?”

“Someone must be.”

Abby laughs. “And she’s not shy!” True-ish. “She’s, like, the backbone of the local economy.” Definitely true. “She’d reach out to us— well, maybe not us, you know, but someone— if she needed anything.”

He thinks about how hard it had been to get her to even admit that she’d needed help patching the chicken coop— how she “hadn’t meant to let it get so bad” and “should have been able to handle it herself”— and he hasn’t known Ava for nearly as long everyone else at the table has, but he tentatively marks that last assertion as False.

“Speaking of the backbone of the local economy,” Leah cuts in, grinning, “you’ve all heard that Pierre’s is stocking blueberry wine now? Well, I picked some up the other day, and…”

The conversation moves on without him again. He lets it.

.

Ava spends ten or fifteen more minutes circulating (not that he’s keeping tabs on her, because he’s not) before she finally shows up at their table, a bright smile on her face and a bottle of hard cider in her hand. She’s dressier than she was when he last saw her. The soft holiday lights catch on her gold jewelry, and her eyelids are glittery. Her red turtleneck sweater matches her glossy red lipstick, which she definitely wasn’t wearing on Tuesday when he visited. Even her hair is shiny.

She cleans up nicely, he notices, and then tries his best to stop noticing.

“Wow, you look nice tonight,” Abby notes, raising her mug in greeting. See? he tells himself. It was a normal thing to notice. “What’s the occasion?”

“Nothing!” Ava laughs, her cheeks going pink. “There’s no occasion!”

She laughs again and takes a sip of cider, and is he imagining the way she’s glancing at him as she says this? Yeah, I’m definitely just imagining it, he decides, although his conviction wavers when Sam elbows him, raising an intrigued set of eyebrows.

Dude, what’s up with you and Ava? Sam’s eyebrows ask.

Sebastian frowns and gives his head a fractional shake: Nothing’s up! Sam still looks unconvinced, and he knows this is going to come back to bite him. There are three inevitable things in this world: Death, taxes, and his friends’ dogged insistence on meddling.

“Hey, Ava,” Abigail calls, and, yeah, speaking of which… She’s using the tone of voice she uses when she Has A Really Great Plan, She Swears, It’s Gonna Work Out Great This Time! Sebastian shoots her a death glare across the table, which she pointedly ignores. “I’m gonna get another round of drinks for the table. Wanna come with?”

Abby’s main goal here definitely isn’t getting more drinks, but what’s he going to do? Call her on it? And open himself up to interrogation? Absolutely not. The best course of action, in the face of one of Abby’s schemes, is the same as it is for a tornado: Hunker down, keep your head low, and pray it doesn’t do too much damage.

“Oh, uh…” Ava glances in Sebastian’s direction. Their eyes meet again, and it takes him a second longer than it should to look away. “Sure!”

“Great,” Abby says, pushing herself up from the table and dragging Ava away by the elbow.

Sebastian watches them go, then takes a swig of his beer, struggling not to grimace at the taste. He tries to tell himself that it doesn’t matter what Abby tells Ava, that he doesn’t care if Ava thinks he’s got some weird crush on her, which, for the record, he doesn’t, because it’s just a normal crush.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sam asks, nudging him again. “You’re spacing out a lot tonight, my dude.”

“I’m fine. Just tired,” he sighs, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair.

“It’s been a long week,” Sam allows, even though Sebastian’s on vacation, and it hasn’t really been a long week for him at all. Sam frowns, like he’s thinking, and then lights up. “You up for a game of pool? It’s been ages since we played!”

Sebastian has never been more thankful for a distraction.

.

Ava follows Abigail to the bar. It’s been decorated for the holidays (probably by Emily, if the vibrant colors are anything to go by). Evergreen garlands wrapped in twinkling holiday lights are fixed to the edge of the counter with large bright-red velvet bows. The menu blackboard on the wall features hot cocoa, mulled wine, and eggnog. The margins of the menu are decorated with chalk fir trees and a few reindeer. What the reindeer lack in anatomical accuracy, they more than make up for in cheerfulness and zest for life.

Abigail drags Ava over to the secluded corner where Shane always used to stand, back when he’d spent his evenings getting blackout drunk, over beside the fireplace and giant wooden bear statue. It feels like kind of a weird place to order from, but it’s still technically the bar, so she doesn’t question it.

“What are you getting?” Ava asks, craning her neck to see the menu. It’s hard to see from this angle. “I’m kinda feeling a peppermint hot chocolate.”

“That’s nice! You know what I’m thinking about getting?” Abigail asks, turning to face her, and Ava can see now that she’s grinning wide, like a purple-haired shark who’s just found a delicious little tropical fish to chow down on. “I’m thinking about getting some answers.”

Uh-oh. “What about the drinks?”

“Oh, there are no drinks. That was what we in the spelunking business like to call an excuse, because you and me? We need to talk.” Abigail pulls out a Winter Star assignment letter and brandishes it. “Remind me why you were asking about Seb’s gift preferences the other day?”

Ava looks at Abby. Looks at the letter. Looks back at Abby, who’s looking both smug and delighted, like she thinks she’s got Ava cornered. Ava pastes a smile on her face and hopes that the spirits weren’t in a bad mood when she paired up the names.

“Because I got him for the gift exchange?” she tries, even though this feels like a trap. Abby grins wider, and her heart sinks.

“See, it’s really interesting that you say that, because what I have here”—she opens the letter with a dramatic flourish, then holds the second page out for examination—“kind of looks like it’s got Sebastian’s name on it, don’t’cha think?”

She looks at the page. It’s folded and a bit wrinkled, but to her dismay, it does indeed have Sebastian’s name written across the top in her own meandering, half-cursive scrawl.

“It maybe does a little bit, yeah,” she reluctantly admits.

“Which means that you, in fact, don’t have his name for Winter Star.”

“So?” Ava feels her face go warm, but she doesn’t break eye contact. “What’s your point?”

“My point is: What if you did?”

Ava narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if we switched assignments?” Abby’s got a glint in her eye that Ava’s learned to recognize by now— it’s the one where she’s got an idea that she’s convinced is a good one, and she’s very, very determined to see it carried out. Most of Abby’s “good” ideas involve swords and bodily injury. This one scares Ava more.

“Why would I want to switch?” This would be much more convincing if her voice weren’t an octave higher than usual.

Abby gives her an incredulous look. “You’re gonna look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t do this whole thing”—she gestures at Ava’s dressier-than-usual outfit—“pretty much exclusively to get the attention of Mr. Tall Dark and Emo over by the pool table?”

“I mean—!” Ava huffs. “He’s leaving in two weeks!” (It isn’t a denial.)

Abby throws her arms out wide. “So?”

“I don’t know…” Ava sighs, tugging at her hoop earring and averting her eyes. If she happens to avert them towards the pool table, well…

And then Sebastian looks up at her— unmistakably at her, even across the bar— and he’s caught her looking at him again, but this time, he holds her gaze, and she can’t bring herself to be ashamed enough to look away. He looks downright pretty in the dim glow of the holiday lights strung through the arcade. His silver cuff earrings glint. His pitch-black hair and the contours of his face are radiant, highlighted warm red-blue-purple in the multicolored light. She wonders what it would be like to tangle her fingers in that hair, to loop her thumbs through his belt loops, use the wallet chain on those black skinny jeans to tug him close enough that their breath mingles, close enough to watch his dark irises blow wide as she leans in and—

Sam elbows him, and he breaks eye contact and turns away. She takes a sharp breath in, pulling herself back into the conversation with Abigail. Come on, focus.

“Maybe I just wanted to dress up.”

“Oh, sure, maybe,” Abby agrees, nodding along. “And maybe that wrapping paper you bought the other day was actually for Winter Star. Who did you say you had, again?”

Abby holds out the letter and raises her eyebrows.

We shouldn’t switch, Ava should say.

But it’s too late, because she’s already picturing it in her mind: Handing Sebastian the perfect gift in front of the giant Winter Star tree, finally managing to pry a proper smile out of him as he tears the wrapping paper open. Wow, I really love this! How did you know? You’re my new favorite person, and I would love to go to dinner with you sometime, and oh, look, here’s some conveniently-placed mistletoe—

This is getting unrealistic, she thinks, dragging her mind back to reality. Cut it out.

“We shouldn’t,” Ava finally forces herself to say. It comes out hesitant. Her integrity as the festival organizer is on the line. “It’s cheating, isn’t it?”

“You can’t cheat at something that isn’t a game,” Abby argues. “Look, there’s precedent for people switching, isn’t there? If someone gets their own name or whatever, they’re supposed to just switch with the organizer, right? It says so, right there in the directions. How’s this any different?”

Because the exchange is supposed to be random, and also because I really want it, Ava thinks.

“Besides, you really helped me out last season with the wedding,” Abby continues. “I owe you one, you know?”

“No, you totally don’t!” She laughs casually and waves a hand and tries her darnedest to seem like someone who definitely didn’t steal the recipe for a Sun Totem from the local wizard’s bookshelf. “I keep telling you, I had nothing to do with that!“

“Atmospheric rivers don’t just vanish overnight! Seriously, I dunno what you did, but what I do know is that Leah and I owe you. Big time.” Abby grins and holds the letter up between her index and middle fingers. “And, you know, there’s one very easy way to get me to quit asking you about it…”

Ava’s eyes drift from the letter in Abby’s hand back to Sebastian, who’s playing pool with Sam in the other room. He bends over the table, focused and serious as he lines up the cue and takes a shot. He sinks two balls at once, and his smile is small but genuine as Sam laughs affectionately and slings an arm around his shoulders.

She really, really wants to make him smile like that again.

“Okay,” she finds herself saying. “Okay, let’s switch.”

“Awesome,” Abigail says, grinning again as she hands over the letter. “You won’t regret this!”

Doubtful, Ava thinks to herself as she tucks the letter away into her rucksack. Still, glancing over towards the pool table again… For now, Abby’s right. She can’t really say she regrets it.

.

The game room, at least, is the same as Sebastian remembers.

The pool table is solid mahogany, with curved legs and ornate half-shell carvings along the sides. Gregorian, his mom told him once. Beautiful craftsmanship. The room smells of hardwood and chalk dust. The arcade machines along the wall play catchy 8-bit songs, flashing enticingly as bright pixelated figures scatter across their screens. The stained-glass pendant lights hanging from the ceiling cast warm light across the pool table, and although the holiday lights strung around the room are new, it almost feels like old times again.

He racks the balls easily, as though he isn’t three years out of practice, and breaks. “I’ve got solids.”

As the game proceeds, he notices that Sam is quiet, and he’s getting increasingly fidgety. He keeps looking over in Ava’s direction and then back at Sebastian. He’s fiddling with his rings and picking at his nails, like he does when he’s trying very, very hard not to say something that he worries might make the other person upset.

He’ll say it eventually. Probably.

Two more rounds pass without a word, and Sebastian’s starting to wonder why he won’t just spit it out. It’s not like him to clam up like this, but, well… There’s a little voice in the back of his head that whispers: Maybe he doesn’t trust you not to get mad at him, now. With how he acted earlier tonight, it’s maybe justified for Sam to be cautious, and Sebastian feels a sour, nauseating twist of guilt take root in his stomach again.

He takes the next shot, and very nearly misses pocketing another one of the solids.

“Your turn,” Sebastian says.

“Sure.” Sam throws yet another questioning glance at Ava across the bar, and Sebastian fights back an irritated frown. He loves Sam, but the man has no idea how to be subtle. If he keeps this up, Ava’s going to figure it out before Sebastian even gets the chance to—

To do what, exactly? his last braincell asks, skeptical. You’re leaving town again in two weeks.

“Fine. Go ahead,” Sebastian sighs, because Sam clearly won’t bring it up himself.

“What?” Sam schools his expression into something innocent and confused-looking. He’s still picking at his fingernails. “Uh, I dunno know what you mean.”

“You clearly want to ask me about Ava. So.” He waves a hand. “Ask.”

“Well, if you insist.” Sam grins easily as he leans against the pool table, chalking up his cue, and his posture relaxes. “So, Ava. Thoughts?”

“Thoughts are: I’m going back to the city in two weeks.” He lines up his shot. “It’s kind of a moot point.”

It’s not a denial, and the glint in Sam’s eye tells Sebastian that he definitely hasn’t missed the implications of that. Still, he just shrugs and says, “That’s a shame. She’s cute, and she’s a pretty cool person.” Then, just as Sebastian’s taking his shot, he adds: “And it seems like she’s maybe kinda into you?”

Sebastian scratches. He shoots a glare across the pool table. Sam snickers, plucking the ball out of the pocket, and circles the table.

“If you think she’s so cute or cool or whatever, why don’t you date her yourself?” he asks, quickly tamping down the twinge of irrational jealousy he feels. You don’t have any claim on her, you weirdo.

“What? Nah. I mean, Ava’s nice and all, but, uh…” Sam laughs and waves a hand as he places the cue ball, shaking his head. “She’s just not really my type, you know?”

Sebastian snorts. “Since when have you had a type?”

“Don’t change the subject! This is about your love life, not mine,” Sam says, sticking his tongue out as he lines up his cue. “It’s cool if you’re really not into her, but, dude, you’ve totally been watching her all night.”

Sam takes his shot. It’s not a clean shot, but he still pockets a stripe.

“It’s not like I’m watching her on purpose,” Sebastian says, and then, when Sam gives him an odd look, admits: “That sounded a lot less creepy in my head.”

“If it’s any consolation, she keeps checking you out, too.” He chalks up his cue and squints at the table. “You know, if I put a bit of a spin on it…”

Sebastian scoffs, but he glances up towards the bar, where Ava and Abby are knee-deep in conversation. Sure enough, Ava is watching him.

She’s pretty, objectively speaking. Really pretty. That much, at least, he’s willing to admit. He’s also willing to admit (although really only just to himself) that he thinks she’s really pretty, which is a completely different and harder-to-achieve thing.

She doesn’t flash a grin at him, this time, just watches. Her mouth is set in the friendly halfway-smile that seems to be her default, but she looks distracted, and her cheeks are flushed. The way she’s fidgeting with her earring like it’s a nervous habit is maybe kind of cute. Objectively speaking. Her hair is nice. Her eyes, which he can’t see from here but absolutely remembers, are also nice. (Objectively speaking.) The miniskirt she’s wearing is nice. (Objectively speaking.) It’s doing wonders for her legs, he thinks— not that her legs need much help, because they go on for days, and they’re only made longer by the cool-looking heeled boots she’s wearing. They’re nice legs— objectively speaking, he belatedly remembers to add, and wonders why he suddenly can’t remember any adjectives besides nice—

“Dude,” Sam says, elbowing him, and Sebastian whirls around to glare at him. Sam laughs. “You’re staring again.”

“I’m not staring,” he grouses, and then, when Sam keeps looking at him expectantly: “What?”

“I missed my last shot while you were busy making eyes at Ava across the bar. It’s your turn again, my man.”

Sebastian scoffs and rolls his eyes and prays that the holiday lights Gus has strung up in the game room are weirdly-colored enough to hide the red in his cheeks. He glances at the billiards, does some quick mental math, and then moves to the other side of the pool table to line up his next shot.

“What? You’re not going for the 3?”

Sebastian shrugs and drops into his shooting position, focusing on the familiar way the cue stick settles in the divot between his thumb and index finger. In an ideal world, he really should be going for the 3— he thinks he could probably manage to sink the 5, too, if he spins the cue ball right— but firstly, he’s out of practice, and secondly, at that angle, he’d have to face Ava while doing it, which would be… Distracting.

“Maybe I’m challenging myself,” he says. He takes a deep breath. Focuses on the object ball, letting his eyes flit occasionally to the cue ball as he readies the shot. “Maybe I want to improve my pool skills.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam says, sounding skeptical.

He takes the shot. The angle’s tricky, but the ball he was targeting goes in clean, and he rounds the pool table again. He’s feeling more sure of himself, now. He lines up his next shot and takes it, easily sinking two billiards in one go and very nearly sinking a third.

He straightens, hefting the cue in his hand. “There. See?”

“Dude!” Sam cheers, pulling him in for a side hug. “Nice one! That was awesome!”

Sebastian smiles.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I’m lucky to have you as a best friend, he thinks, and can’t bring himself to say. He chalks up his cue and jokes: “You know, most people don’t cheer when their opponent scores.”

“Honestly, man, I’m just enjoying playing with you again. It’s good to have you back in town.” The smile Sam gives him in return is earnest and bright. “Speaking of which…”

He digs through the pockets of his cargo pants and tugs out a folded piece of paper, which he holds out proudly. Sebastian takes it and unfolds it to find a flyer. THE PELICANS! it shouts in large retro-style bubble letters. Live In Concert! Winter 27 At Amber Hill Park! The words are accompanied by a stylized linocut print of a pelican with outspread wings, diving into a fiery sun, which Sebastian immediately recognizes as Leah’s work.

“Wow,” Sebastian breathes. “The band’s finally got a gig?”

“Only took us like a decade,” Sam laughs, fidgeting with his pool stick. “And, look, I know you don’t really play anymore, and I know you’ve got a million other things going on, but it would really mean a lot to me if you came on as a guest keyboardist for one or two songs.”

Guest keyboardist. One or two songs. He should be happy, he thinks, staring at the flyer.

He knew The Pelicans would take off someday. It’s just— it’s always been their band. Sam’s the leader, of course he is, the band is his baby, but Sebastian’s been a member since before it even had a name or a genre. He remembers propping up a handheld camcorder on Sam’s bookshelf. Remembers staying up until three in the morning editing grainy music videos together. Remembers talking Abigail into being their drummer. In his mind, whenever he envisioned The Pelicans finally stepping into their rightful place on a stage, he’d always been up there with them, not lost somewhere in the crowd.

Still, he gets it. Of course the band needs a keyboardist who can actually make it to practice every week. This was the cost of moving to the city, of pursing his dreams, of independence. It makes sense. It makes perfect sense.

The regret sits in his stomach like a rock, cold and heavy.

Sam is still watching him. He’s waiting patiently for an answer.

“Of course I will,” he says, and Sam’s smile is almost warm enough to melt the disappointment.

Chapter Text

It’s late Saturday morning, and Ava has already had a very long day. She’s checked on the animals, milked the cows, and collected the eggs. She’s bandaged her arm, because Glimmer is being broody (again) and beaks are sharp. She’s gone to Pierre’s to pick up some fertilizer for the greenhouse, groceries, and more vinegar; she’s dropped off thirty hard-won iron ore samples at Clint’s, and picked up her new iridium axe. Now, she is delivering two dozen farm-fresh eggs to the saloon.

She is exhausted. She wants to lie down in one of the snow drifts and curl up for a long sleep. She could sleep for a few decades, probably, like one of those ice-age mammoths stuck in permafrost. Unfortunately, she cannot take a nice long ice nap, because Lewis wants her to come to his house for a damn planning meeting after lunch, so it’s beyond her when she’ll find time to harvest her latest crop of blueberries from the greenhouse, and rack the hard cider, and do her holiday shopping, and and and—

So it is maybe a little understandable that when Alex hollers something at her across the town square, her first instinct is to ignore him completely.

“Ava!” he calls, a little louder. She tries not to cringe too visibly. Mostly because cringing would imply that she has seen him, and her best plan of attack here is to pretend she hasn’t, and just continue to speedwalk towards the path to her farm. If she can just go a little faster, maybe she can get there before he—

“Hey!” He’s waving harder, and Yoba above, he’s coming over. She doesn’t have the bandwidth for him to come over! “I’ve gotta talk to you about something.”

“Sure,” she says, stopping short. She braces herself, turns, and smiles. If she clenches her jaw any harder, she’s going to crack a tooth. “What’s up?”

“You’re organizing the gift exchange this year, right?”

“Oh! Yeah, I am!” Her smile turns genuine as the tension leaves her shoulders. This is business, not small talk. She can handle business. “What’s up?”

“I got my own name,” he says, rummaging around in the pocket of his puffy jacket. “Which means I’m supposed to switch with you, yeah?”

He holds out the letter expectantly. Her heart sinks.

“Right,” she says haltingly, pushing down her disappointment. You weren’t even supposed to have Sebastian’s name in the first place. Suck it up, buttercup. “That is what you’re supposed to do! Um, hang on, let me see if I can…”

She pulls the letter out of her rucksack reluctantly and hands it over. Alex takes the envelope and yanks it open eagerly. He glances at the name, and his face immediately sours.

“Ugh, really? That weirdo from the city who wears black all the time?”

“He’s not a weirdo,” Ava bites out, immediately defensive. She reminds herself that she is a pillar of the community, and pillars of the community don’t sucker punch people. “And personally, I think black’s a great color. It suits him.”

Alex shrugs, turning the paper over in his hands. “Whatever. I’ll just get him a book or something. He seems like a book guy.”

If you’re not going to appreciate him properly, we can switch back, she wants to snap, but beneath the anger, there’s a sea of guilt. She can see it now: Sebastian is going to open a sucky, half-assed attempt at a gift, and then he’ll have to grit his teeth and smile and say thank you for something he doesn’t even like.

This is a disaster. More than that, it’s a disaster that’s totally her fault, because if she hadn’t swapped with Abigail, Sebastian would be getting a gift from someone who likes him and knows his tastes. She’s completely ruined Winter Star for him!

It’s fine, she reassures herself, trying not to panic. Everything’s totally fine! I can still fix this!

“You know, if you want, I can switch names with someone else for you,” she offers.

“What, really?” Alex asks, eyes lighting up. “You’d really do that for me?”

It’s not for you, you arrogant little— “Everyone deserves to have a happy Winter Star,” she tells him, reigning in her irritation, and it’s true. “I’ll try and find someone who’s a better fit for you.”

“Thanks, Aves, you’re the best!”

Did I give you permission to give me a nickname? she wants to snap, but Ava is kind, and Ava is polite, and Ava gets along with everyone she’s ever met even if she doesn’t particularly like them, and so she pastes on a smile. She gives him a friendly thumbs-up as she leaves.

She goes back to her farm, grabs some earbuds, puts “all-american bitch” on loop with the volume up as high as it will go, and chops hardwood for one hour straight.

Chapter Text

When Sebastian wakes up late on Saturday morning and checks his phone, he’s kind of expecting to find ten or twenty texts from Sam— a bright, bubbly, typo-ridden waterfall of bro!!!! r up yet??? and when r u comin ovr 4band practice? and rly feeling ioh 2day bring the sheeet music!! :)— and instead, he finds himself staring at an empty lockscreen.

It’s fine, he tells himself, pulling on some jeans. It’s only nine. I’m sure he’ll text later.

He sneaks past the lab to the kitchen, narrowly avoiding the lab (and, consequently Demetrius’ predictable Wow, Look Who’s Finally Up! routine). He makes a coffee. He makes some toast, spreads some butter on top, scarfs it down, and hurries back downstairs with his coffee mug still half-full.

He checks his phone. It’s nine-thirty.

Sam still hasn’t texted.

He shoves the phone under his pillow and settles down in his old programming chair. It’s less fancy than the one in his apartment— the foam inside doesn’t quite hold its shape anymore, and the peeling black pleather flakes off wherever he touches it, littering his jeans and the floor— but sitting in it again makes him feel weirdly nostalgic.

He sighs and kicks off of the edge of his desk, letting himself spin around. His chair finally comes to a stop, and he’s left staring up at the posters and sticky notes still lining his walls.

Back when he was living in Pelican Town, the only thing he’d ever wanted was to get out and move to Zuzu City. He’d worked towards it for years, teaching himself how to program, picking up any gig he could get his hands on, working himself to the bone as a freelancer, only to be met with unimpressed raised eyebrows and thinly-veiled hints that he should get a real career.

Who’s got a real career now? he bites back in his mind. It’s me! I do!

He hasn’t just gotten out, he’s thrived. He has a steady paycheck! He has job security and a 401K! They gave him a fancy standing desk!

And sure, the walls of his apartment are empty, because he’s renting, and the lease agreement has a bunch of stipulations about asbestos and nailing stuff to the walls. Sure, he can’t keep his motorcycle out there, because there’s no space to work on it. Sure, he never plays Solarion anymore, and he doesn’t see Sam or Abigail or his mom in person for weeks on end, but…

All he’s ever wanted is a place of his own, right?

Right. So.

Now he has one.

He peels little strips of pleather off of the armrest, watching as they crumble between his fingers. He should feel successful, he thinks. He has everything he ever wanted, he’s achieved so much, and somehow, sitting here, he feels just as restless as he did three years ago. He still wants out. It’s just that he doesn’t know what he wants to get out to, anymore.

His phone buzzes, and he scrambles across the room to check his notifications.

Finally, it’s about time he—

It’s an email notification from MealRush. His favorite sushi place on Fifth Street is 15% off today.

He growls, irritated, and chucks the phone back down on his bed.

Whatever. It’s fine! Sam’s forgotten all about him (you know that’s not true, his last shred of common sense tells him) and he’s gone and replaced him with Elliott, who doesn’t even listen to half of the pop-punk bands Sam’s whole genre is based off of (because you moved away, what else was he supposed to do?), and really, Sebastian is handling all of this very well, he thinks. He throws himself back into his chair and cracks open his laptop.

Work is good, he tells himself as he hops on the company VPN, pulls up a terminal, and signs into his workstation. He keys in his password. He’ll just throw himself into another coding project, or maybe fix a few bugs, and before he knows it, five hours will have gone by, and—

And why is it taking so long to log in?

$ ssh [email protected]
ssh: connect to [email protected]: port 22: Connection timed out

Huh, he thinks, frowning. That’s weird.

He disconnects and reconnects the VPN, then tries logging in again. No dice. He tries pinging the server, to see if the connection’s even working properly, and…

$ ping work17.priv.nullco.com
PING work17.priv.nullco.com (172.67.25.159): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
^C
--- work17.priv.nullco.com ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

“Jiangui,” he grumbles, rolling back from his desk. He submits a help ticket and pings Menton on the work channel to let him know there’s a problem with his VPN, and that he’s having trouble accessing his work files. He’s pretty sure the main issue is just that the internet in Pelican Town is crappy and slow, which means that he’s not getting a solution for this anytime soon.

(Besides, he can already see Menton’s response in his mind: “Why are you working? You should be on vacation! Take a break! Otherwise, we’ll have to pay you overtime!” This will be accompanied by multiple emojis with an oppressively cheerful aura.)

What he really needs right now is to be somewhere besides this stupid basement. Dwelling isn’t healthy. He needs to give himself space, before he gets so tangled up in his own thoughts that he can’t move. He needs something to do.

He wanders over to his bookcase, feeling listless, and skims it for ideas. He could reread Killdroid Journals for the hundredth time, but he’s not in the mood. He could play a round of Solarion, but it’s less fun playing it solo, and he doesn’t want to text Sam. His hands hesitate over his old box of carving tools, itching to pull them out, but messing around in the community center isn’t an option anymore… As much as he hates that it’s been renovated, taking a chisel to Ava’s shiny new building seems like it would be a little rude.

He spots a familiar plastic box, and he can’t help but grin as he hauls it out and blows the dust off. It’s his mechanic’s tool set.

He hasn’t worked on his motorcycle in ages.

.

The garage is different than he remembers it.

It still smells the same— a sharp, distinctive mix of machine oil, fresh-cut pine, must, and metal shavings— but things have been rearranged. The mini-fridge has been replaced. Maru has a new drafting table, angled upward and littered with blueprints, and her old work table beside it is littered with an assortment of tools, papers, and circuits. There’s a familiar lathe in the corner that’s about as old as he is, and an ancient dot matrix printer that’s much older.

His bike is still sitting in the corner under a tarp, right where he left it. He pulls it off in one smooth motion and leans in, examining his bike closely.

“Ah, Duli. Just as gorgeous as I remember you,” he murmurs, trailing his fingers along the handlebars. “Now, let’s see how your oil’s doing…”

He kneels down and looks through the inspection window, and he’s unsurprised to find that the oil is dark brownish instead of the bright yellow-amber it’s supposed to be. Bikes are meant to be ridden, not stored, and even for a bike as solid and reliable as his, three years is a long time.

He flicks on the space heater and gets ready to work. He grabs a few rags off of the shelf, along with a container of oil. His socket wrench is still in his toolkit, but he’ll need a strap wrench for the filter. He looks in the usual box on the shelves but can’t find it, and then he spends five minutes rummaging through the communal shelves on the far wall before he spots it on Maru’s workbench.

“There you are.” He retrieves it, but as he’s turning to leave, the title of one of Maru’s heavily-highlighted research papers catches his eye.

Training Dwarvish Neural Networks for Human Parity Language Parsing.

He skims the titles of the other papers, and they’re all in a similar vein: Modern Algorithmic Approaches to Markov Decision Processes; Quantitative Benchmarks for Artificial Self-Awareness; Ternary Circuits or Timeworn Spectors? A Review of Theories Regarding the Superior Soft Logic Capabilities of Dwarvish Computer Systems… There’s also one that, as far as he can tell, is about improving the dexterity of robotic arms, which seems wildly out of place. It’s highlighted in orange instead of blue.

The other out-of-place thing is an old CD jewel case. The case has a small crack on one edge, and it’s got a scribbly-looking picture of a fork in a road on the front, surrounded by blurry humanoid figures.

I didn’t know she listened to Radiohead, he thinks.

The door to the house flies open, then slams shut, and he springs back from the table as Maru’s footsteps pound down the wooden stairs. She’s muttering under her breath, and thinks he catches one or two curse words before she notices him and stops short, her eyes going wide.

“Oh,” she says. “Hi.”

He waves the strap wrench. “Hey.”

Her eyes flick between him and the workbench, and he tries his best not to look guilty for snooping through her stuff.

“I just had to borrow this. Sorry. It wasn’t in the usual place.” He waves the strap wrench again awkwardly while he scrambles for a good olive branch to extend. She’s always loved talking about her research projects. “How’s the internship thing going?”

This actually seems to make things worse. Her mouth flattens into a line, and she heaves a long, deep sigh through her nose.

“The internship is fine,” she says, which is not at all the answer he expected, given Demetrius’ glowing review during his birthday dinner the other day. She glances between him, the desk, and his motorcycle. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you would be working on your bike today. I can come back later.”

(Is she just blatantly avoiding him now, he wonders? Does she hate him that much?)

“No, you’re good. I was just about to head out, actually.” Sorry, Duli, I’ll change your oil later.

“Oh, really? Where are you going?” she asks, perking up and eyeing his assortment of tools with curiosity, and he bites back his irritation. The constant questions about where he’s going and who he’s seeing are one thing he hasn’t missed about living at home.

More importantly, though, where is he going? Sam’s house is a non-starter, given that being not-invited to band practice is what he’s trying to avoid thinking about right now. The community center’s fixed up, now, which means there might actually be other people there, so that’s out. The beach is maybe an option, but it’s freezing today…

You’re welcome to come hang out at the farm anytime, Ava had said.

“I’m going over to the farm, actually,” he finds himself saying.

Maru squints, looking skeptical. “With a strap wrench?”

“Yeah, there’s, uh…” He scrambles for a decent-sounding excuse, then remembers: “I saw an old tractor while I was over there the other day. I’m gonna try fixing it up.”

“With a strap wrench?” she repeats.

“Sure.” He’s never changed the oil in a tractor before, but he figures it can’t be that different from a motorcycle, right? “But, I mean, if you need it for something else this afternoon…”

Her eyes go wide and panicked, and she laughs nervously. “No! Of course not! What would I need a strap wrench for?”

The fact that she’s suddenly so weird about it tells him that she might have needed the strap wrench for something, actually, but handing it over now would mean both calling her on it and also admitting that he wasn’t originally planning on spending his afternoon fixing Ava’s tractor, neither of which seem like good options right now.

He throws the tarp back over his bike, loads his tools into a bag, and sets out for Ava’s, trying his best not to get stuck in the mental quicksand of trying to figure out how that one robotics paper on Maru’s desk fits in with the others.

.

Ava is just starting lunch when there’s a knock on her front door.

“Coming,” she hollers. She places her bowl of soup on the coffee table and hauls herself off of the couch, where she’s just settled in with her lunch and queued up an episode of Queen of Sauce. She scrambles for the remote. “Gimme a second, sorry—”

She mutes the television. Her leg tangles in the blanket as she gets up, nearly tripping her, and she heaves an irritated sigh as she kicks it off and trudges to the door, because for the love of Yoba, she just sat down! She’s gonna miss her show, and now she’ll never learn to bake a chocolate cake, and now she’s probably going to be late to the Winter Star Feast planning meeting, which she doesn’t even really want to go to in the first place. She yanks the door open, fuming, and— Oh.

Sebastian is standing on her front porch, all bundled up in his black leather jacket and his striped scarf and his dark gray beanie that’s only a few shades lighter than his hair. She can just barely make out the silver of his earrings. Her brain goes totally, blissfully blank for a hot second before switching gears entirely.

“I— uh, hi,” she says, suddenly very aware that the comfy flannel shirt she’s wearing (straight from Grandpa’s old chest of work clothes) is as old as she is and twice as big, riddled with several mystery stains and a giant hole in one sleeve that she hasn’t gotten around to patching yet. She runs a hand through her hair, trying to make herself look more presentable, and smiles. “Hey! Hello.”

He frowns. “Sorry, is this a bad time?”

“No, no! This is a great time! Great. Super great.” Spirits alive, shut up, you sound like a broken record. She tries to lean casually against the doorframe, with limited success. “What’s up?”

“You said I could hang out here for a bit if I needed a place to clear my head, right?”

“Mm-hm, yup, I did say that,” she agrees, trying not to look unduly excited by the fact that apparently, he’s actually taking her up on it.

“And, uh, you know that broken-down tractor?” He sniffs and glances away, nodding vaguely in the direction of the preserves shed. “I’ve been thinking, it might be fun to try and fix it up, you know?”

“Sure, that makes sense!” She’s still smiling and nodding. She feels like a bobblehead.

“Or I could help with bottling the kegs of apple cider, if you still need to do that, or…” Sebastian sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Look, honestly, I just really need an excuse to not be in my mom’s house right now. I know it’s weird, I just…”

“No-no-no, it’s not weird!” she insists, although right now she’s less focused on whether it’s weird or not and much more focused on how nice his fingers look tangled in his hair like that.

“And I know you’re already really busy.” He’s fidgety, and he keeps glancing over towards the road that leads to town, like he’s about to bolt.

“No! I’m not busy at all! I have, like, so much time, right now,” she insists, suddenly deciding that lunch is no longer important. “Let me just put my boots on real quick, and, uh… You should come in! I mean, you can come in. If you want. No pressure.”

He hesitates, then follows her into the house. His gaze catches on something over her shoulder. She turns to look at whatever he’s looking at, and she sees her soup and her blankets and her little nest of couch pillows. Queen of Sauce is still playing silently in the background. The chef on the screen is pouring a frankly alarming number of chocolate chips into a metal saucepan.

“Were you in the middle of lunch?” he asks.

“What? No!” she says, very convincingly. She plops down in a chair and tugs on one of her boots.

He points at the soup and raises an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me that’s not lunch?”

“It maybe is a little bit, yeah.”

“Right. And you weren’t in the middle of it?”

“Not technically,” she replies, pausing mid-lace to look up at him, “because I hadn’t started it yet. You can’t be in the middle of something you haven’t started, right?”

Sebastian snorts, amused, but he also looks very unimpressed with her explanation.

“Okay, fine. Maybe I was a little bit in the middle of lunch,” she admits. “It’s not a big deal.”

“You shouldn’t skip lunch. Not that I’m one to talk, but…” He runs a hand through his hair again, pushing it out of his gorgeous, dark eyes, and spirits, really, if he keeps doing that…

“I’m gonna die of thirst before I die of hunger,” she deadpans, out loud, with her real, actual mouth, and as soon as she realizes what she’s said, she feels her adrenaline levels spike. Oh no oh no oh no—

Now, instead of dying of literal hunger or metaphorical thirst, she’s going to die of shame!

“Okay, then have some water or something?” Sebastian says, looking confused.

“Water sounds like a great idea!” Ava agrees in a slightly higher pitch than normal, nearly tripping over the chair in her haste to go to the kitchen and bury her face in a cabinet. “Hydration is super important!”

“Sure.”

“Do you? Want? Anything to drink?” she asks the inside of the cabinet.

“I’m good,” Sebastian says, but she can hear his feet shuffling around the kitchen behind her. He pauses near the stove, then tentatively asks, “Is this Mom’s soup?”

“Oh, yeah!” Ava says, emerging from the safety of her cabinet fortress. “She gave me the recipe a few seasons back. I don’t think it’s quite up to her usual standards yet, but…”

“Looks pretty close to me,” he says, eyeing it. “I keep meaning to make some myself, but you can’t really get fresh baking pumpkins in the city without paying through the nose for them. Sometimes, I think I’d kill a man for some decent pumpkin soup, you know?”

Oh, I know, she absolutely doesn’t say. Abby mentioned that this soup was his favorite the other day, so naturally, because he’s been on her mind, the soup has been, too— but for the love of all the spirits, he doesn’t need to know she’s been pining over him like some stupid teenager with a crush.

“Do you want some?” she asks.

“What, really?” His expression stays carefully neutral, but his eyes light up as he sneaks another glance at the pot on the stove. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

He just looks so happy about it, and on second thought, maybe she can’t drink soup right now, after all. Her stomach is too full of butterflies. There won’t be room.

“Of course I’m sure! You’ll be doing me a favor, actually. The recipe makes a ton. I have, like, two gallons of leftovers.” She presses her lips together to keep from smiling and fails. “And, you know, you don’t even need to kill a man for it.”

He grins. “Well, in that case…”

.

The soup is good, Sebastian decides.

It’s warm and thick, sweet and savory, with hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove… Everything a good pumpkin soup should be. There’s an unusual, subtle sweetness to it that tastes familiar and works well, but feels out of place in this particular soup. It takes him a minute to realize that she’s subbed out maple syrup for the usual honey. It takes him about five more minutes to decide whether he actually likes the maple syrup or not, but after he has time to adjust, he finally decides that he does. He still prefers his mom’s version, but this one is good, too.

Things are quiet as they sip their soup, aside from Queen of Sauce, which Ava’s kept playing to fill the silence. The couch, piled high with pillows, is plush and comfortable— I just bought it earlier this year, Ava explains, it’s a pull-out couch for visitors— and between that and the crackling fire, he thinks he’ll be a little reluctant to leave, once the soup’s done.

(He will leave, though. He still kind of wants to repair the tractor.)

“And now for the secret ingredient!” the chef declares, whipping out a carafe from behind the counter. “Fresh-brewed coffee!”

“Fresh-brewed coffee is my secret ingredient, too,” says Ava, glancing over at him, and then clarifies: “For running the farm, I mean. Not for the pumpkin soup.”

He barks out a laugh, then bites it back, his face heating. Spirits, it wasn’t really even funny, and this doesn’t bode well for his stupid crush on her that he’s trying to ignore. Before he can come up with a more normal response, her phone buzzes.

Ava’s shoulders go rigid as soon as she hears it, and she swears under her breath. She scrambles for the remote, grabbing it off the coffee table and jamming the “Mute” button a few times with unnecessary force, before storming over to the kitchen with her phone and answering.

“Hello,” she says, in a voice that sounds way more cheerful than her demeanor.

There’s a harried-sounding voice on the other end of the line that he immediately recognizes as Lewis. Sebastian takes a very deliberate sip of his soup and strains to hear what he’s saying. He can’t quite make it out, but he sounds irritated.

“I know, I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had time to—” She glances at Sebastian, then looks away. “Okay. Sure.”

The voice on the other end says something again, more emphatically, and Ava rolls her eyes and clenches her fist, looking exasperated.

“I don’t know how to make gingerbrea—” The voice cuts her off. “Yes, I could get the recipe from Evelyn, but I…” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Sure! Fine. I can just… Figure it out. I guess.”

Probably-Lewis keeps on talking. At length. Ava tries to interject and is unsuccessful. Sebastian still can’t hear what Probably-Lewis is saying, but he doesn’t like his tone.

“Right,” she finally says, her voice terse and her smile tight. “Sure, I can probably find time to call all of the vendors for the Night Market after the planning meeting. Okay. Okay, great! See you in a bit. You have a good one. Bye.”

Her smile drops as soon as she hangs up the phone. She slams it down on the counter, then looks startled, like she’s shocked by her own show of force. She glances guiltily at Sebastian, like she expects him to be fazed at all by this instead of mildly amused.

“You good?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath, screwing her eyes shut and rubbing at them with the heels of her hands. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“Might be a little called for,” he says. “Who was it?”

“Lewis,” she groans, wrinkling her nose and grimacing. “You know, that’s the third time he’s called today? Ava, I think we should serve iced gingerbread cookies at the Winter Star Feast, can you bake three dozen iced gingerbread cookies? So, now, I have, like, a week and a half to learn how to bake gingerbread, which is just gonna go”—she cringes—“so great, and there’s supposed to be a blizzard partway through the Night Market so we’re shifting it by a few days, and somehow I’m the one who has to call all of the vendors to reschedule, and also he insists on having these weekly planning meetings to provide guidance, because he wants me to manage everything but also every decision I make is somehow the wrong one, and I just— ugh!”

“That sucks.”

“Right? He keeps saying that I’m doing a mediocre job, and like, he’s not wrong, but also, what does he expect? I’m doing like ten people’s jobs at once! Sometimes, I just…” She sighs and throws herself down on the couch next to him, sprawling across the pillows. Her knee accidentally brushes against his thigh before she pulls herself back in, arranging herself a little more neatly. She grimaces. “Sorry, I’m venting. I’ll shut up now.”

“No, please, go on,” he says, and then, when she gives him a disbelieving look, raises a spoonful of soup. “You give me my favorite soup and a place to chill, and I give you a platform to gripe about Lewis. It’s an equivalent exchange.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it equivalent,” she says, but she’s smiling now. Smiling is good. Ava’s smiling in particular is very nice, and he would like to see more of it.

“Okay, how about this: There’s this one guy on my team who never remembers to close his tickets. I’m the one who’s in charge of managing sprints, now, which means I’m the one who has to chase him down every single week to remind him. It’s super frustrating.” He eats another spoonful of soup. “There, see? Now we’re even.”

She laughs. “You know the special orders board, right? When Lewis and your mom first put it in, she asked if I’d fill an order for some hardwood— and she was super nice about it, right? She explicitly said, no pressure, and I told her I’d see, because I wasn’t sure I’d have time that week, and Lewis just gave me this look like…”

Ava screws her mouth into a sour, unpleasant pucker, like she’s just bitten into a lemon, and draws her eyebrows together into a furious glare. Sebastian snorts.

“Yeah, see? He got so weird about it! I hadn’t even said no, yet, and he acted like I’d set fire to his house or something by not being willing to drop everything to help out!” She rolls her eyes, then turns to him with a bright smile. “Anyway, I’ve un-evened us. Do you have any more terrible work stories? A terrible boss, maybe?”

Sebastian tilts his head and thinks. “My boss is pretty good, actually, but he’s also the most extroverted person I’ve ever met. He wants to have a ten-minute conversation every time I swing by the communal coffee machines— which, okay,” he says, raising a hand, “here’s my actual work-related gripe: Those coffee machines? Total waste of money. They’re those huge fancy ones that have fake chrome all over them and grind up the coffee beans for you. They’re broken half the time. At least our old one worked, but the company who bought us out insists that getting the new ones was ‘good for morale,’ or whatever.”

Ava snorts. “Ah, the corporate life.”

“They made us get a bunch of boring ceramic cups and matching saucers, too, like we don’t already have mugs. You know what would actually help morale?” He sets his bowl of soup down on the coffee table, then mimes picking up a saucer. “If they gave us one of the saucers each morning, and then, whenever we’re on hour three of a video call that should’ve been an email…”

He pretends to throw the imaginary saucer against the wall, and Ava cackles.

“Just one a day, though,” he adds, picking up his soup again. “Two would be outside of our budget.”

Ava’s laughter dies down, and she settles back into the cushions. Her knee brushes against his leg again. “So your boss is super extroverted, huh?”

“Yeah. He’s a decent guy, but every time we bump into each other, I feel kinda bad for him.”

“Why?”

“He likes to stop and chat, and, well… You know,” he says, and then, when she makes a confused noise, explains, “I’m not exactly easy to make small talk with.”

He looks over and meets her eyes. They’re wide and hazel, dotted with little flecks of green and gold and brown. He’s suddenly very focused on his pulse, and how fast it is, and how she’s sitting close enough that he can feel the warmth of her thigh through his jeans, and how the sunlight from the window catches the flyaway edges of her hair, making it shine almost golden—

“I think you’re really easy to talk to, actually,” she breathes.

“I, uh…” He has to look away to get his brain to make words again. “Thanks.”

Case in point, his last brain cell snarks.

Nice of you to rejoin us, he shoots back. Where were you five seconds ago?

She settles back into the couch. “Anyway! So! Lewis, right? This one time, he—” She cuts herself off and bursts into giggles. “Ah, I haven’t told anyone this. I probably shouldn’t tell you, either.”

“Okay.”

“But I kind of want to, and it’s not like you live in town, anyway! So I will,” she says, steepling her fingers and pressing them to her mouth. She’s smiling. Her eyes are shining with mirth. “Okay, so… You promise not to tell anyone?”

He can’t help but smile back. “My lips are sealed.”

“Perfect. Did you know that Lewis is hooking up with Marnie?”

“No!” If he were still drinking his soup, he’d have choked on it. “No, I did not know that.”

“Right! Neither does anyone else in town! Do you want to know how I found out that Marnie and Lewis are hooking up?”

“I’m scared to ask.”

“Okay, picture this: It’s, like, the third day of summer.” She spreads her hands out, like she’s setting a scene. “Sun’s shining, it’s like ninety degrees out, and I go out to the mailbox and check my mail, and there’s a letter. It’s from Lewis. Which isn’t unusual, right, so I don’t think anything of it.”

“Oh, no.” He’s grinning.

“So I go inside, I make my coffee, and I sit down and tear this letter open, and it’s like… Lewis is writing to tell me that he’s lost his, quote-unquote, ‘lucky purple shorts,’ he has no idea where they might be, and he wants me to go find them and bring them back to him.”

“Lucky purple shorts?” Sebastian repeats, squinting as he tries to puzzle out the thread of logic.

“His gold-embroidered boxers,” she clarifies.

“Oh.” He chokes back laughter and struggles to keep a straight face. “Oh, dear Yoba, that’s horrifying.”

“’Bring it to me DISCREETLY,’ he says! In all caps!” She scoffs and rocks forward, waving her hands. “I’d known this guy for, like, a month, tops, and suddenly I was running all across town on a scavenger hunt for this grown man’s underwear! Like, sure, I did it, but why on Yoba’s sweet green earth would anyone think that was an acceptable ask? Marnie deserves so much better.”

Sebastian wrinkles his nose. “Right, and why would he ask you?”

“Honestly, no clue.” She picks up her bowl of soup again and takes a sip of soup, then jabs her spoon vaguely towards the front door. “You know, I’ve already chopped more firewood in the first two weeks of winter than I did in my entire first year here?”

“Impressive,” he says, although it takes him a second to connect the dots. “You blow off steam by chopping wood?”

She smiles wryly. “I know, it’s a weird coping mechanism.”

“I might have a weirder one: I used to have Abby sneak me out-of-date produce from Pierre’s, and then I’d throw it at the cliff face as hard as I could.” He laughs, and (more importantly) so does she. “I used to build snowgoons with them, too. Or at least I tried to. Demetrius always made me take them down. It pissed me off so much.”

“Oof.” She clucks her tongue sympathetically. “That sucks.”

“Right? He always lectured me about how it was ‘too grotesque for a family setting’”— he drops his voice into a low register with clear, deliberate enunciation, mimicking his stepfather—“and ‘why would you build an angry snowman with two heads and sharp teeth when you could have a perfectly respectable, happy-looking one-headed snowman?’ and I just…” He switches back to his regular voice and scoffs. “It’s a freaking snowman! Like, really? This is the hill you want to die on?”

Ava makes another sympathetic noise and sips her soup.

“He always let Maru’s snowmen stay up, though, because hers were always normal, and perfect, and wholesome,” he says, unable to stop bitterness from seeping into his voice. “I don’t know why everyone likes her so much, anyway.”

Ava frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ah, crap. He’s misstepped. Something in the back of his mind is telling him to walk it back, but he’s got momentum, now, and if he can just explain properly, maybe he can make her understand.

“I mean… Sure, she’s friendly, and she’s a total genius, and her grad school applications are going so great or whatever, but it’s all just so fake, you know? She’s only ever nice to people because she wants them to like her.”

“What’s wrong with wanting people to like you?”

“Nothing, but— I just— She’s fake to me all the time!” he argues. Don’t double down, his last brain cell is yelling, why are you doubling down? “You should’ve seen her face when I showed up with Sam at the clinic the other day! All stiff and overly-polite, pretending to be happy to see me…” He scoffs. “I’m fine with her hating me. I wish she’d just admit it so we can all move on.”

“Actually,” Ava snaps, “she’s mentioned to me more than once that she’s always wanted a brother.”

“But…” The fight ebbs out of him as Ava’s words sink in, and it’s replaced with a weird, gnawing doubt that’s close to guilt. If Maru’s talked about wanting a brother, it means she feels like she doesn’t really have one in the first place.

“She may want a brother,” he finally allows, “but she doesn’t want one like me.”

Ava’s expression falters into something softer. More like pity. He’s not sure it’s any more comfortable than the anger. “That’s not true.”

He sighs, running a hand through his hair and looking away. “Sorry. I’m being a jerk.”

“I mean, we were both griping about stuff,” she sighs, picking up a pillow and tugging it to her chest. “We were both being jerks. It was a mutual thing.”

“You weren’t, but I… My family’s kind of…” Insufferable, he’s about to say, but guilt twists in his gut, and he finds he can’t say the word and mean it. “We’re not congruent. I always end up arguing with someone, or getting upset, or making things uncomfortable, and the holidays just make it more noticeable. Without me around, they’re…”

Complete, he wants to say, but the words stick in his throat. That’s too much to share with someone he’s just met. Happier. Like a real family.

“It’s just better for everyone if I keep my distance, you know? That’s why I used to come here.” And to the community center, he doesn’t say.

“Well, you’re always welcome,” she says with a tentative smile, nudging his knee with hers. She smiles, like she actually likes him. Like she wants him here on the farm.

They fall into a comfortable silence. On the television, the chef has put the chocolate cake in the oven and has moved on to sugared cranberries, in keeping with the holiday theme. She’s melting the sugar into a syrup, whisking it to keep it from burning. He’s sure she’s saying something useful, but there’s an idea half-formed in the back of his brain that won’t let him go.

It’s a bad idea. A terrible idea. He doesn’t even know why he’s thinking it.

(He does. It’s because he needs an excuse to not be around the house, where he feels like he’s constantly screwing up, where he only ever feels ignored or politely tolerated. Needs an excuse to stay away from the friend group he no longer feels he has a place in. Needs to feel like someone actually wants him around.)

“Anyway,” Ava finally sighs. “The whole Lewis thing is really not as big of a deal as I’m making it out to be. I’ll just head into town once we’re done here.” She says it in a cheerful-but-tired sort of tone that tells him that it actually is a big deal, probably. “Let me just, um…”

She hauls herself up off of the couch and moves to the kitchen, then unzips her bag and rummages through it. She pulls out a pen and a battered-looking moleskine journal. It’s heavily tabbed, and papers stick out of it from multiple angles— they’re mostly ivory, but there are a few brightly-colored ones that he recognizes as sticky notes. She yanks the book open, scribbles something down, and then crosses two things off before slamming the book shut and shoving it back in her bag with another sigh.

“There! I’m sure the ice slimes can wait another day,” she says, returning to the couch and settling back down. She glances over at him and gives a little half-smile. “You can hang out for as long as you want, of course, even if I’m not here. I can give you a key or something, or…”

“Or,” Sebastian starts, with deliberate casualness. It’s an awful idea.

“Or?” Ava asks, turning to face him with eyebrows raised. A wonderful, awful idea.

“Or…” He keeps his eyes fixed on the television screen to avoid looking at her. “You could supervise me while I fix the tractor, instead.”

“Oh, I can definitely supervise.” She grins, and he’s almost definitely imagining the furtive once-over she gives him before her expression falls. “Ugh, no, I do have to go to the meeting, though. Lewis will pitch a fit otherwise.”

“No, no, that’s the point! It’s an easy out. You don’t actually have to supervise, you can just… Call him and tell him you can’t make it, because I’m here, and then do whatever you were originally going to do this afternoon,” he clarifies. He takes a deep breath, and then pitches the idea: “You can tell everyone that I’m working on the tractor, and that you need afternoons free for the next two weeks until I’m done.”

“Okay?” She squints at him, looking a little lost. “I mean, while I do technically have the budget for a tractor repair, I’m not really sure that I…”

“You don’t need to pay me, or supervise me, it’s just—”

“Well, I can’t ask you to do it for free!”

“The tractor isn’t the point!” he interjects, and she falls silent. He sighs. “Look, it’s a mutually beneficial thing, right? I need a good excuse to be somewhere quiet that’s not my mom’s house. You need an excuse to focus on your actual job. And having a tractor would actually be useful for you next season, right?”

She hesitates. “I mean, sure, but…”

“If there’s something else that you need help with instead, I’m more than happy to switch gears,” he says, and then cringes. He’s been in the corporate rat race for too long. “And honestly, it really seems like you could use a hand.”

She frowns and crosses her arms, defensive. “I don’t need help! I’m managing my farm just fine.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, and I’m sure you are,” Sebastian says quickly. “But you’re not just managing your farm, are you? When’s the last time you spent the whole day focusing on farming, instead of running errands for everyone else? When’s the last time you went to a festival to just have fun, instead of because you were responsible for helping organize it?”

“I—” She opens her mouth. Closes it. “I’m social! I like social events!”

“You just told me you’re doing like ten people’s jobs.”

“But I’m managing!” she repeats, a little helplessly.

A few days ago, your house was full of chickens, and you were two seconds away from having a meltdown because someone asked you to afternoon tea, he doesn’t say. That doesn’t sound like ‘managing.’

“Okay, sure. You’re managing,” he allows. “Are you happy?”

“Of course I’m—!” She cuts herself off, then falls silent, like she hasn’t actually considered the question before.

“You’re helping me out by giving me space to decompress during the holidays. It’s only fair that I try and return the favor, right?”

He settles back into the couch and picks up his soup again while she mulls this over. It’s mostly for show, mostly because he needs something to do with his hands. He’s trying not to look anxious. He doesn’t know why he’s so worried (it’s probably the social anxiety) (he knows it’s not just the social anxiety) or why he cares so much what Ava thinks of him (he knows) or why the idea that she might reject the idea out of hand makes him feel like throwing up a little bit (he knows!!)—

He’s just making excuses to not be at his mom’s house over the holidays. That’s all this is. The fact that it’s Ava’s house he’s hanging out at is fully circumstantial, and will absolutely not become a problem, because he is not getting attached.

“You’re sure I wouldn’t be imposing?” she finally asks.

He laughs. The tension in his chest eases, like a stretched rubber band snapping back to its normal shape, and it’s all he can do not to sink back into the couch cushions in relief. “You’re the one doing me a favor, here. I promise, it’s not an imposition.”

“Okay, then,” she says, holding out her hand. “Deal!”

He shakes it and tries very hard not to think about how warm her hand is in his own, or how her calloused fingers catch and hold on for longer than is really strictly necessary, like she doesn’t want to let go quite yet, either.

Chapter Text

Sebastian’s first thought, as Ava pulls off the tarp, is that the old tractor is in abysmal condition.

He kind of knew it would be, going in— tarp or no, there’s no way a tractor left out in the elements for over two decades was going to be in good shape— but he definitely has his work cut out for him. He’d originally thought that it was red-orange underneath the dust, but upon closer examination, he thinks this paint might actually have been blue, once. The tires have giant cracks running through them, almost definitely from dry rot, but those will be easy enough to replace…

“I know, it’s bad,” Ava says, wincing as she, too, surveys the ruin that is the tractor. “You really don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Nah, it’ll be fun,” he says, setting his toolkit down on the concrete slab and undoing the latches. “I don’t get much of a chance to work on this sort of mechanical stuff in the city.”

“You mean like your motorcycle? Abby mentioned that you had one.”

Of course she did, he thinks, resisting the urge to to roll his eyes.

“Yeah. I ride a lot, or at least I used to, before I moved.” He’d originally gotten his bike because it gave him some much-needed independence— gave him a way to get out of town for a bit, whenever he needed time alone— but it had become a sort of meditative activity for him, back in his early twenties. He’d spent hours riding along those stretches of dark, empty highway, with the city glowing in the distance and the wind rushing by… “I kind of miss it. It was a nice way to clear my head.”

“You didn’t bring it with you when you moved?”

“Nah. My apartment complex has some pretty strict rules about working on things in the parking garage.” He shakes his head. “You know, if I can get it back in decent shape while I’m home, I could take you riding with me.”

“Yes!” she exclaims, and then flinches, like it came out louder than she was expecting it to. She straightens her shoulders and tugs at her braid. She’s wearing one of her genuine smiles now, and the cold winter air feels a little less biting. “I mean, yeah, that sounds, uh, cool? I’d be down for that.”

“Cool,” he says, grinning, and then, not sure what else to say, gestures towards the tractor. “So, I should probably…”

“Oh! Right, yeah, I should probably get back to the whole, uh, farming thing. Cows to milk, chickens to feed, and plants to, er, plant,” she laughs, dusting her hands off on her jeans. They leave pale grayish-brown handprints. “Come get me if you need anything, okay?”

Ava starts off towards the greenhouse. He resolutely turns back to the tractor to begin his work, and it takes him about five seconds to realize that he has no earthly idea how a tractor even works, let alone how to go about fixing one.

He’s not about to tell Ava that, of course. He wants to maintain some shred of dignity.

You just don’t want to look stupid in front of a pretty girl, his last brain cell taunts. He tells it to shut up, and when it doesn’t, he pops in his earbuds, puts his bike work playlist on shuffle, and cranks the volume up. The violin lead-in of “So Much (For) Stardust” gives way to a minor-key piano melody, and he lets himself get lost in the rhythm of the work.

The engine is first, he decides, because the engine was what he did first when he fixed up his motorcycle. It seems like a safe place to start. He knows what goes into an engine; it’s familiar territory.

He looks for the oil tank cap first. He can’t find it.

The manual is first, he decides.

He looks up the manual online, and then, following the diagrams closely, takes stock of all of the basic engine-related things. The radiator and oil tank are both miraculously holding water and oil, respectively, although they’re both badly in need of a change. It takes him a minute (and a few more internet searches) to figure out where the battery should be. It’s not there, which he’s actually kind of grateful for. If there were a battery, it would be corroded beyond belief, and he doesn’t want to deal with chemical burns today.

The battery will have to wait, but he can at least try and change out the oil, right?

He goes through the usual motions that he’s come to associate with oil changes— places the drain pan under the tractor, puts on his gloves, sets out the drain plug wrench (17mm, which is, miraculously, the same size he uses for his motorcycle) and the socket wrench— and as he sets the socket wrench down, he realizes that the oil filter he has is for his motorcycle, not a tractor, which means that he’ll have to order one of those, too.

That’s assuming the tractor even starts, which, as he brushes two decades of dirt and rust away from the drain plug, is looking like an increasingly bold assumption.

He slides himself underneath the tractor. Then he picks up the wrench, attaches it to the bolt, and tries to turn it. The drain plug doesn’t budge. He tugs harder, then shoves. Flakes of rust fall on his face (gross) but the bolt is still solidly in place.

Probably rusted in there, he thinks. Or overtorqued? I wonder if—

His ringtone blares through his earbuds, and he startles, nearly hitting his head on the underside of the tractor. He pulls himself out and yanks off one of his gloves, smudging his forearm with decade-old nasty tractor dust in the process, and fishes his phone out of his back pocket with his clean hand.

Sam, the caller ID reads. He swears under his breath and accepts the call.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“What do you mean, what’s up?” Sam demands. “Where are you, man? Band practice started like half an hour ago!”

“I, uh… Didn’t know it was still happening?” This is maybe kind of a lie. He pockets the phone, replaces the glove, and crawls back under the tractor.

“It’s Saturday,” he says, his voice incredulous. “It’s always on Saturday.”

“You didn’t text or call or whatever, so I just figured…”

“Figured what, dude, that you weren’t invited?”

Kind of, he’d say, if he were being truthful. The more logical side of him knows that he’s not being fair to Sam, that all of this boils down to his own anxieties about being a spare wheel in his own friend group, but: You’ve already got a piano player. What do you need me for?

“You know me,” he says instead, yanking on the wrench as hard as he can. It still doesn’t give. “I’m like a vampire. You have to explicitly invite me to stuff.”

“Okay.” Sam laughs, and even through the phone, Sebastian can tell he’s rolling his eyes. “Well, consider yourself officially invited. Now get over here, yeah? The show’s in like two weeks. We’ve gotta practice!”

He tugs on the wrench again, then huffs. He shuffles himself so he’s lying on his side and leans his full weight on the handle. “Um, I’m kind of in the middle of doing something right now. Let me wrap this up and then I’ll head over?”

“Ooh, you’re doing something?” Sam asks, and lowers his voice. Sebastian can hear the smug grin he’s probably wearing. “Is ‘something’ code for ‘Ava’?”

The bolt gives out, and Sebastian stumbles forwards, banging his shoulder on the undercarriage of the tractor. The wrench slips from his hands and clatters into the drain pan, knocking it off-center. He swears, and his face burns as he pulls himself back up into a sitting position.

“I am not doing Ava,” he hisses into the mic on his earbuds, then glances over his shoulder to make sure she hasn’t chosen this particular horrible moment to check up on his progress. “I’m just fixing a tractor.”

“Seducing her with your tractor repair skills? Nice.” Sam laughs, snapping his fingers. “Isn’t there a Kenny Chesney song about this?”

“The tractor is her grandpa’s, not mine,” he adds, before Sam can remember the tune, or, spirits forbid, start singing it. He repositions the drain pan. “And nobody thinks this tractor’s sexy. Nobody has since before we were born, probably. It’s a very unsexy tractor.”

“Bummer. I guess you can at least go for the whole sexy-guy-with-a-wrench thing. People like guys with wrenches, right? Not that that’s a gender-exclusive thing, because, like, gals with wrenches can be sexy, too! I don’t mean that I’m, like personally into that, obviously, haha, that would be— I just mean, like, the whole Rosie the Riveter thing? That whole, uh, vibe, with the overalls, and the—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He unscrews the now-loose bolt the rest of the way with his hand, then watches as a thick, semi-congealed stream of dark oil begins to pour into the pan below.

“Right! Awesome,” Sam says, sounding distracted. “Anyway! Band practice?”

He does some mental math. Ava’s meeting with Lewis is already cancelled, which means she’s in the clear for the rest of the afternoon. If he goes to band practice and comes back later, he’ll still have an hour or two before the sun goes down. That’s still plenty of time for an oil change.

“Sure,” he says, wiping his hands on a nearby rag. “I’ll be there in thirty.”

.

Sam’s room is mostly the way he remembers it. The musty shag carpet covering the floor was once a bright neon green but has faded over time. A pile of clothes overflows from a plastic bin in the corner, hidden next to a hastily-made bed, and, of course, the giant foam soundproofing tiles, which Jodi insisted they install back in high school, are still mounted on the west-facing wall.

It’s perfectly fine if you want to have band practice in our house, she’d said as she marked out the dimensions on the wall, armed with a leveling tool and a nail gun she’d bought from the JojaMart in Kent’s absence. But I don’t want you disturbing the neighbors, okay?

There are some differences, too. Some of the polaroids taped to his wall have Elliott or Leah in them, now. There’s a framed photo on his desk of a preteen that Sebastian takes way too long to realize is Vincent (has the kid really grown that much?), and he’s added a bunch of new band posters to his wall, some of which are signed or framed. The CD collection, which was massive even before Sebastian left town, has nearly doubled.

And, of course, there are two keyboards now. One for him, and one for Elliott, who’s already here, perched on his piano bench, neatly arranging his sheets of music. Elliott, who actually got here on time, probably, because he didn’t have to wonder whether or not he was even supposed to show up.

Elliott has reserved the newer keyboard for Sebastian, and he silently fumes as he tweaks the settings. How dare he act like Sebastian is the guest here, in a house that three years ago was practically his second home! Elliott wasn’t even friends with Sam and Abigail three years ago.

The gesture is nice. It’s kind. It’s an olive branch, intended to make him feel welcome. The presumptuousness of it makes Sebastian want to scream.

(Especially because it’s true, a little voice whispers, somewhere in the back of his mind. You’re the guest, here, now, aren’t you?)

.

They’re three songs in, halfway through a mash-up of “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Paint It Black”— one of the first arrangements the band played when they were first starting out, and Sebastian’s always been particularly fond of it— but when they slide off of the second chorus, suddenly everyone is looping back around to the beginning of the bridge while he’s left careening into the instrumental, and everything comes to a screeching halt.

“Oh, right, we changed the arrangement on that one a while back,” Sam says, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry, man, it was like, a year ago. I totally forgot. Uh… Elliott, do you have an extra copy of the new one?”

“My apologies, I don’t believe I do,” Elliott says, and Sebastian’s about to politely reply through gritted teeth that he’ll be fine sitting this one out, thank you very much, when he adds, “However, he’s more than welcome to use mine! I’m fairly certain that I can play this one from memory.”

Because we’ve all practiced it together so much, he implies but doesn’t say. Spirits, Sebastian had known this would happen when he moved away, but it’s one thing knowing it. It’s another thing to have it thrown in his face.

I don’t need your pity or your damn copy of the sheet music, he wants to snap as Elliott holds out the papers, but the thing is that he actually kind of does need them, if he wants to play the bridge properly.

“Thanks,” he bites out, snatching them from Elliott’s hand.

.

Band practice ends differently than it used to. This is partly because there’s one extra person, but it’s mostly because they’re all living different lives than they did when he left. Abigail is the first to bow out, hurrying away to a date in the Secret Woods with Leah— with my wife, she laughs as she leaves, with such giddiness that Sebastian can’t really be mad at her for ditching them early— and Elliott stays on for another few songs before following suit.

“You don’t really need two piano players, do you? Besides, I need to mull over the lyrics for that one song a bit, and you know I can’t revise in company,” he tells them, smiling. Sebastian knows he’s trying to be kind. He knows that he’s trying to give them more bonding time without making it too obvious, but all he can hear is: You don’t really need two piano players, do you?

Sebastian stays behind, because he’s missed hanging out. Sam doesn’t seem to mind.

“Vin’s grown a lot,” he muses, eyeing the photos on the corkboard. There’s one of Vincent and Jas as kids, and another with Vin in a suit, probably from Abby’s wedding. “What grade’s he in now? Fifth?”

“Seventh.”

“Damn,” Sebastian says, with a low whistle.

“He’s a good kid. He’s working harder at his schoolwork than I ever did,” Sam laughs, picking an arpeggio on his guitar with his fingers. His voice goes quieter, and his hands pause, and then he says, “I’m just… Glad he’s turning out okay, I guess.”

There’s an odd edge to Sam’s voice, and Sebastian glances over. He strums his guitar again, but he’s looking at the corkboard, too. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno.” Sam sighs, drumming out a rhythm on the hollow wooden body of his guitar, and then sets it aside on the bed. “I dunno, man, I just…”

It was hard on him, having Dad gone for so long, Sebastian expects, because they’ve hashed this out at length before, over the phone. I’m glad he’s back, but he’s not the same. Even Vin can tell. We keep waiting for things to get back to normal, for our family to readjust, but how long do you wait before accepting that “normal” isn’t coming back? That it died four years ago, somewhere on a Gotoran battlefield?

(Sam doesn’t bring this up often, but when he does, Sebastian generally tries to center his responses in his feelings about his own father’s death. He avoids thinking about how Robin must have felt so much like Sam, having a child depend on her, only she was doing it alone. He doesn’t think at all about the half-remembered faces of his birth parents, or the name seal resting on his shelf. He tries very hard not to think about any of these things. Sometimes, he succeeds.)

“I want Vin to have a future. Direction. Like you do, you know?” Sam says, worrying at his rings, and this isn’t how this conversation usually goes. He swallows. “I want him to be happy.”

Do you think you don’t have direction? Sebastian wants to ask, but the sudden left turn has thrown him totally off-balance. He needs to be careful about this. Deliberate. His best friend is being vulnerable right now, and he doesn’t want to misstep. He thinks his words over for a long time before speaking.

Sebastian clears his throat. “Are you—?”

The door slams open, and he nearly startles out of his chair as he whirls around. It’s Maru. She barges in with a sticker-bombed guitar amp and a brilliant smile.

“Maru!” Sam cheers, throwing his arms in the air, at the same time Sebastian says, “Maru?”

“I finally fixed it!” she announces, hefting the amp she’s carrying. “It was really just a matter of soldering the cable jack again”—(again?)—“and, uh…” She stops short as she catches sight of Sebastian. She glances between him and Sam, her smile going stiff and awkward. “Sorry, it’s Saturday, isn’t it?”

“No! I mean, yeah, it is Saturday, but you’re totally good! You know you’re always welcome to swing by during band practice! Or, you know, whenever else you want,” Sam laughs, springing up from his bed and bounding to her side like a delighted golden retriever. “Here, let me get that for you.”

“Oh! Thank you!”

Indignation sparks up in Sebastian’s chest, and he shoots Sam a betrayed, disbelieving glare. We were in the middle of a serious conversation, the glare says, and since when is Maru welcome during band practice, and what the heck does ‘whenever else’ mean? Sam fully ignores him, moving to take the amp from Maru’s hands and set it back in its usual spot.

“You said it was the cable jack?”

“Yup! I also switched out the electron tubes, which I’m fairly sure should solve the crackling problem, but let me know if it doesn’t.”

“You’re totally brilliant, so I’m sure it’ll work just fine!” His smile is million-watt, and it takes every ounce of Sebastian’s self-control not to roll his eyes at the obvious flattery. “Thanks so much, Maru, you’re the best.”

“I’m glad I could help,” she says, smiling and dusting her hands off. She glances at Sebastian, deflating a little, and then glances away. “So… Um, I should probably get back to work. Samples to run, wires to solder…”

“You’re not staying?” Sam asks, not even bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice. It’s like he was expecting her to hang around. Sebastian finds himself wondering how often Maru does come to band practice. “I’ve been workshopping the ‘Homesick At Space Camp’ mashup, and I really wanted your opinion.”

Not that he’s asked Sebastian’s opinion on it. Not that Sebastian knew there even was a “Homesick At Space Camp” mashup in the first place. (He’s being petty, here. He knows he’s being petty. This knowledge doesn’t make it easier to stop.)

Maru’s face lights up, but then she glances over at Sebastian and then looks uncertain. A little divot of a frown forms between her eyebrows.

Please just go away, he thinks, and it sounds immature and selfish even in his own head. This is my best friend! This is where I feel at home! Everyone loves you already, and you always get everything you want, so just let me have one thing to myself, for once.

“I don’t care,” he tells her instead, his voice impassive. He turns to rearrange his sheet music. “You can stay if you want. It doesn’t make a difference to me either way.”

Sam shoots him a sharp look that he can’t quite make sense of— irritated? disappointed?— but Maru simply sighs and adjusts her backpack on her shoulder.

“Some other time,” she says, offering Sam an apologetic smile.

“Okay! Okay, yeah, sure.” Sam’s smiling, but it’s forced. “Some other time.”

Chapter Text

As she climbs the rickety ladder to the roof of the community center late on a Sunday morning, a fifty-foot-long string of lights wrapped loosely across her torso like a Miss Ferngill Republic sash, Ava takes a moment to wonder how she got roped into this.

Well, she knows how it happened. Evelyn posted a flyer on the request board three weeks ago, asking for help decking the halls (meaning the community center and the town square, neither of which Ava thinks really count as “halls”). Then, when a slew of volunteers hadn’t been forthcoming, she’d specifically asked Ava for help.

“I’ve been decorating the gardens for the holidays, of course,” she’d said, wringing her hands, “but now that the community center’s all fixed up, Lewis has asked me to decorate it, too, and, well, my climbing legs aren’t quite what they used to be. I would hate to impose, but…”

And in this case, she can honestly tell Evelyn that it’s not an imposition at all. Evelyn is one of the sweetest ladies she’s ever met. If Ava is part of the economic backbone of the local economy, Evelyn is a key member of the social backbone, always tending to the flowers in town square, always ready to welcome anyone, friend or stranger, with a smile and a plate of cookies (snickerdoodles in the spring, gingerbread in the winter). If she wants help with this, Ava’s more than happy to pitch in… Especially if it means that a kindly eighty-year-old woman doesn’t have to climb a rickety, rusted-out ladder onto the slippery roof of the local community center in the dead of winter.

Really, what was Lewis thinking, asking her to do this? she wonders, and then decides a little sourly that the answer is probably that he was thinking what he always thinks: About the end result, without considering any practical aspects of how the thing will actually get done.

So far, the decorating has gone smoothly— a wreath here, a garland and a sprig of holly there— but now, it’s time to put up the lights, and as she climbs off of the ladder and onto to the roof, Ava is kind of regretting her decision.

She shivers, tugging her jacket tighter around her torso, and edges her way carefully across the roof. She makes sure to keep her center of gravity low, and she slides her foot around a bit each time she steps forward to make sure it actually has purchase. She’s not a reindeer. Flying off the roof is the last thing she needs right now.

It takes her nearly five minutes to cross to the other side, and by the time she gets there, the cold’s starting to sink through her jeans and thermal leggings.

“Be careful up there!” Robin calls as she passes on the path below, waving up at her, and—

And Ava halts mid-shuffle, because Sebastian is trailing along behind his mom like a lanky shadow, all bundled in black. He glances up at her and gives a tentative wave, too, along with a little half-smile. It’s a good thing she stopped moving, because that smile definitely would’ve made her fall.

(It kind of has made her fall a bit, metaphorically speaking, but she bottles that feeling right on up and tosses it into the basement of her mind with all the other things she’s been bottling, lately.)

Still, he’s waving. Ava smiles brightly and waves back.

She waits until they’re out of range, then resolutely turns her focus back to the edge of the roof, where she’s supposed to be hanging the lights. It is at this point that she realizes she’s never hung holiday lights on a roof before. There’s nothing to attach them to. She pulls off a glove with her teeth, tugs her phone out of her pocket, and starts typing with one hand.

hoe to hang einter star feast lightw om roof

She clicks the first link, scrolls, and then wrinkles her nose and tries again.

how ro hang wintwr stR FEAST LIGHTA ROOF NO GUTTER

She clicks through at least five links, trying to find a source that doesn’t insist that she ought to be using a bunch of plastic clips. (Plastic clips definitely were not included in the deteriorating plastic grocery bags that these lights came in.) She doesn’t find one.

“Dammit,” she grumbles, scrubbing her ungloved hand across her face, and starts inching her way back towards the ladder. “Today is not my day.”

.

Sunday isn’t usually Sebastian’s mom’s day off, but the Night Market is happening soon, and evidently, she has errands to run. She asked if he wanted to tag along. He said yes. He’s home pretty much exclusively for her, after all, so it’s nice to have a little some mother-son bonding time.

“Oh, hang on a second!” She halts by the bulletin board as they pass it, rummaging through her bag and pulling out a sheet of paper. It’s folded into quarters and is only slightly crumpled. Sebastian watches as she fishes a few clear pushpins out of the clear plastic box that Pierre keeps nearby. She pins the request up, then nods, satisfied, and leads the way into Pierre’s.

The store is nearly empty, which Sebastian guesses is probably normal for a Monday afternoon. He trails behind his mom as she grabs a cart and starts wheeling her way through the aisles at a leisurely pace, checking items off of her shopping list as she goes. She hums along to the cheerful holiday music crackling from the old boombox set up beside the cash register.

Tagging along with Mom to the grocery store. Peak kindergartener activities, Sebastian thinks, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“Hey, I can go grab some of the stuff on the list, if you want,” he says, tugging on her sleeve to get her attention. Please give me something useful to do besides follow you around this supermarket like a sad, lost emo duckling.

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you! Here you go, Sebby,” his mom says. She tears off a piece of the list. “Can you go and find these for me?”

He looks at the scrap of paper. There are only three items on it. He feels a little patronized.

Still, it’s better than nothing, so he thanks her and sets off with the list: Apples. Eggs. Milk.

He wanders into the produce section and tears a thin plastic bag off of the roll, then surveys the selection of apples. There are the usual suspects— Red Delicious, Gala, Granny Smith— but there’s a whole section labeled “North Ferngill Winesap,” with a little “I’m Local!” sign and smiley face sticker affixed to the placard. The apples are shiny and golden, streaked and freckled with red. A few still have their leaves attached to the stems.

He picks one up tentatively and sniffs it. It smells sweet and tangy and apple-y. It’s nice.

He picks out half a dozen of the Winesap apples and puts them in the bag, then adds two more for good measure before tying it off. If nobody else eats them, he will.

Next on the list are the eggs and milk. He passes within eyeshot of the front counter on his way to the refrigerated aisle, and Abby waves frantically, like she’s trying to get his attention. He waves back. Her flailing increases in intensity. Pierre should give her a sign and station her out front, like one of those tube guys they put outside of used car lots.

“What?” he calls out.

“Nothing!” she says, then jabs her finger towards the counter and jerks her head to the side in a ‘come over here’ motion.

He rolls his eyes and approaches the counter. “What is it?”

“Ava’s in the hardware aisle,” she stage-whispers as she leans across the counter, her eyes shining and her smile wide. He feels his face go hot. “She just came in.”

“Okay?” he says, dropping his voice down to something a little below a stage whisper, because Pierre’s shop is small, and he does not want to see what his mother will make of this conversation if she happens to overhear. “Why do I care that Ava’s in the hardware aisle?”

“I just thought you might want to know,” she says, practically vibrating with glee.

“Abigail,” he says, giving her a meaningful look. The meaning is, ‘No, Absolutely Not.’

“Sebastian,” she replies, raising her eyebrows with equal and opposite meaning. He’s a little tempted to bean her with the apple bag.

Instead, he just rolls his eyes and wanders over to the back of the store, where the milk and eggs live. He grabs a carton of eggs, with “Evergreen Farm” stamped across the side, and a gallon of whole milk that has “Evergreen Farm” printed neatly on the glass.

Spirits, he wonders, is she this entire town’s supply chain?

He holds the eggs and apple bag in one hand and the milk gallon in the other, and after a little adjusting, he decides it’s manageable. Now that he has the three things he was tasked with retrieving, he starts making his way back towards his mom’s last known location. It’s not a difficult task, or at least it shouldn’t be— there are less than ten total aisles in this store— but he ducks his head into each of the aisles as he goes, just to make sure he doesn’t miss her. As he nears the hardware aisle, he slows, then plows forward with determination.

He’s not choosing to check it just because he knows Ava’s there. He’s not. His mom could be in the hardware aisle. It would be weirder if he didn’t check, actually.

He powerwalks around the corner and nearly slams into Ava, who’s a lot closer to the edge of the aisle than he’s expecting her to be. She yelps and jumps back.

“Hey,” he says, stopping short. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry!” She laughs and waves a hand. “I mean, I, uh, startle easily. You’re totally good.”

“Sure,” he says, because he doesn’t know how else to respond to that. He nods at the shelf of hardware next to her. “Are you, uh… Looking for something?”

“Oh, yeah! I’m actually looking for those little hook things for holiday lights?” She makes a few parabolas with her hand, mimicking the shape of a string of lights. “Apparently using nails directly on a roof leaves holes in it and is not recommended. Who’d’ve thought, right?”

“Listen, at least you’re looking it up before you try and DIY it. Most people hammer first and ask questions later.”

She pauses for a second, then leans in with a smile, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “I assume the questions they ask are all, like, ‘Hey, Robin, where did all of these leaks in my roof come from?’”

It’s not that funny, but he finds himself laughing anyway, and he has to pause to adjust his grip on the gallon of milk. It’s getting slippery. This is because of the condensation gathering on the glass, and because the milk jug is shaped oddly, and it has absolutely nothing to do with his hands getting all sweaty. And really, even if they were getting sweaty (which they aren’t), it’s because Abigail’s turned up the heaters, because what other explanation is there for the room suddenly feeling about ten degrees hotter?

“Do you need help carrying that?” Ava asks, eyeing the milk jug warily.

“What? No, I’m good,” he insists. He has strength and dexterity and his hands are very not sweaty right now. “It’s more of a friction thing than a weight thing.”

“Right? They’re so hard to carry! I keep meaning to try and find bottles with a better design somewhere, but the ones with proper handles are a pain to sanitize, and, well… You know.” She shrugs. “I have Winter Star lights to hang. Crops to tend to. You know the drill.”

“Yeah,” he says, then holds the apple bag aloft, or as aloft as he can while still holding the egg carton. “Speaking of which, I’m assuming you’re the one who grew these?”

“Ooh, yeah!” Her eyes light up, and they’re freckled, like the apples. Even in the fluorescent lighting, he can make out flecks of gold and green. “Those are North Ferngill Winesaps! They’re, like, this one really specific type of heirloom apple. Grandpa used to have a bunch on the farm, back when I was a kid. None of the original trees were left when I moved here, but I’ve been trying to build the orchard back up!”

She gestures with her hands as she talks, jostling the plastic bag of holiday lights that dangles from her elbow. He can see why Sam says everyone in town has a little bit of a crush on her. She’s passionate, emphatic, determined… She’s the sort of person who’s easy to like.

The glass of the milk jug feels a little more slippery, suddenly. He adjusts his grip again.

“They mostly grow in hardiness zones five through eight, although, like, you can technically grow them in nine, I think? Except you have to be kind of careful about winter frosts…”

Her smile’s pretty, he thinks. He should be listening, probably. Instead, all he can focus on is the shape of her mouth, the way her pretty eyes flit up and meet his briefly before flitting away again, the flush on her cheeks, the way she’s twirling the tail of braid around her finger as she talks, and—

“And, uh, the crop this year was small, but Winesaps are pretty versatile! You can use them for ciders, or baking, or you can just eat them or whatever, so I think—”

The glass jug of milk slips from his hand.

The next few fractions of a second pass in slow motion for Sebastian as the jug plummets towards the floor. He makes a hopeless one-handed grab for it, nearly dropping the carton of eggs in the process, but his hand glances off the side, changing its trajectory from “going down very fast” to “going down very fast, but now at a slight angle.”

It hits the hardwood floor and shatters. Milk is everywhere. Glass is everywhere.

Sebastian is mortified.

“Are you okay?” Ava gasps, looking between him and the milk puddle with wide eyes. Some of it has splashed on her very cool-looking leather boots. He doesn’t think he’ll ever live this down.

“I’m good.” This is the worst day of my life, he doesn’t say.

“Okay, it’s fine,” she says, in a tone of voice like she’s also trying to convince herself that it’s fine, “let me just—”

And then it somehow gets even worse, because Ava crouches down in front of him and starts picking up the larger shards of broken glass with her bare hands. He watches in horror as she starts collecting them in her cupped, outstretched palm like seashells or bottle caps or something that’s not literal broken glass.

“What are you doing?” he hisses.

She pauses and blinks up at him. “Helping?”

“You’re going to hurt yourself!”

“Only if I’m not careful,” she argues, dipping her head back down and gingerly picking up another shard of glass, and… Great. This is great. Not only has he made a huge fool of himself, but now he’s also going to be single-handedly responsible for the town hero bleeding out in the middle of Pierre’s.

“I’m gonna go get Abby,” he says, but then, like magic, Abigail is already appearing at the other end of the aisle to take stock of the damage. He kind of wonders whether she’s been eavesdropping the whole time.

“Wow, I wonder what happened here,” Abby deadpans. She smirks, making direct eye contact with Sebastian, and then deliberately looks over at Ava with raised eyebrows.

Ava doesn’t catch it, thankfully (because, less thankfully, she’s still crouched on the ground, playing fast and loose with the idea of hand lacerations). Sebastian glares and flips her off over Ava’s shoulder. Abby snorts and rolls her eyes.

“I’ll go get a mop,” she says, and leaves.

Ava drops another shard of glass into her hand with a clink.

Okay, that does it. He sets the eggs and apples safely on a nearby shelf, then makes his way over to her side, skirting around the worst of the milk-and-glass minefield. She immediately protests— No, don’t move, there’s glass! like she has any ground to stand on— but she goes quiet as soon as he kneels next to her and unwinds the scarf from around his neck.

“What’re you doing?”

“Helping,” he shoots back. He folds the scarf over a few times so its ends won’t drag in the spilled milk before placing it on his own hand and holding it out towards her. “Put the glass in here, yeah?”

She frowns, hesitant. “But you wear that.”

“You also wear your hands.” It isn’t exactly what he’d meant to say, but it also isn’t wrong.

She opens her mouth to argue, pauses, then closes it and carefully upends her handful of glass into the scarf. The pieces click gently against one another as they settle. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, no probl—”

Ah. Really? She’s already reaching for another shard. Without thinking, he reaches out to grab her wrist, and accidentally grabs half of her hand, instead. She freezes and whirls around, looking at their hands and then at him. Red-pink blooms across her cheeks, and her irises are blown wide enough for him to get lost in.

“D… Don’t, uh…” Don’t do that, he was going to say, but his mouth is suddenly really dry, for some reason, and whatever bundle of nerves connects his brain to his mouth seems to have totally short-circuited. Which is actually a good thing, maybe, because there are no real words left in his brain. All he’s capable of focusing on right now is how warm her hand feels in his, and how the fine hairs on the back of her wrist tickle against his palm, and he can feel her pulse in his fingertips (or maybe it’s his own pulse, and whoever’s it is, it’s really a lot faster than it ought to be), and—

He doesn’t know how long he’s been holding her hand-slash-wrist but it’s definitely longer than is socially acceptable, because the socially acceptable number of seconds to grab a pretty girl’s hand for is zero and dear Yoba you need to let go what’s wrong with you—

“Sorry,” he says, dropping her hand like it’s burned him. (His face is burning, if that counts.)

“Ha! No, no, you’re, uh… You’re good. Super good.” She pulls her hand back from the milk puddle and skims her fingers along her wrist, looking a little dazed.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“What?” she asks, looking confused. “No! Of course not!”

“Okay, good,” he says, laughing awkwardly and flexing his hand. He is trying very hard not to think about how he can still feel her warmth in his fingers and what is even happening right now? “Sorry. Again.”

Ava opens her mouth to respond, but before she can, a smug-looking Abigail arrives with a dustpan, a mop, and a bucket. She waves off Sebastian and Ava’s offers to help clean up with a not-so-subtle, no, you two go have fun. He’s flustered enough that he nearly forgets his eggs and the bag of apples, and the knowing smirk Abby gives him as she shoos them out of the aisle doesn’t help.

“Well,” he says, feeling awkward. “I should probably get another thing of milk, so…”

“Will you let me help carry it this time?” she jokes, bumping his shoulder playfully with hers, and he hopes the spirits are in a good enough mood that she won’t notice his blush.

“I mean, if you’re offering,” he says, ducking his head between his shoulders and hiding behind his hair.

They make their ways towards the refrigerated aisle slowly, not in any particular hurry. He swings the bag of apples at his side, and for once, he finds himself thinking that the tinny holiday music coming from the speakers up front isn’t so bad.

“Mom was right to only give me, like, three things to get, I guess,” he says as she picks out one of the glass jugs, and then, because that strikes him as kind of pathetic, adds: “I promise, I’m usually totally capable of getting my own groceries.”

She smiles, looking amused. “Listen, it’s easy to overestimate the amount of stuff you can carry at once. Happens to the best of us.”

“Hubris, right?” He grins back at her. “I am Icarus, and the idea that I can hold all of my groceries without a handbasket is the sun.”

She laughs. He wants to hear her laugh again. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, um, I should probably figure out where my mom is,” he says, craning his neck and scanning the store. “I know, shopping with my mom is probably the lamest possible holiday vacation activity, but…”

“No, I think it’s sweet! Your mom talks about you a lot, you know,” she says, and the dismay must show on his face, because she rushes to add: “All good things, don’t worry!”

“Great,” he says, although he shudders to think what “good things” his mother’s said about him. You’ve met my son, Sebastian, right? He’s very successful, very handsome. Very single. Oh, by the way, here’s his favorite pumpkin soup recipe, in case you ever need it! Wink!

It takes them a good five or ten minutes to find his mom, which is downright shocking, given the size of the store. Sebastian kind of suspects she was avoiding them as part of some scheme to give them more time together. Ava hands over the milk, makes brief small talk, and then retreats back to the hardware aisle to get what she actually came here for.

His mom doesn’t say a single thing about it as they pay Abigail for the groceries and bundle them up for the long trek back up to the house, but even after three years away, he knows her well enough to know what her smile means.

“Ava’s a lovely girl,” she tells him as soon as the shop door closes behind them.

“Mom,” he huffs, his face burning against the cold.

“What?” She laughs, her eyes shining with mirth. “I’m just saying…”

He grumbles and hefts the grocery bags in his hands as they start up the mountain path, but the anxiety prickling in his gut is smoothed over by the realization that he’s hearing the sound of his mother’s laughter for the first time in at least a season. That he’s missed doing random errands with her like this, actually.

Doing errands with his mom is kind of nice, he decides.

.

Ava checks the bulletin board as she leaves the store, Winter Star light hooks in hand. The board is mostly empty, but one request in particular catches her eye. She reads it over, then pulls it off the board and reads it again, just to be sure.

I’m looking for some fresh sunflowers, or a melon or coconut, if anyone has any on hand.
— Robin

She takes a deep, calming breath. The good news is, she knows who has Haley, which makes the question of Winter Star rearrangements far easier. The bad news is, she’s going to have to explain to Robin why, exactly, she needs to switch, and to do that, she’ll need an explanation that isn’t, I screwed up the annual holiday gift exchange because I’ve got a big dumb crush on your son.

She folds the note up and sticks it in the pocket of her jacket. Untangling this particular problem can wait until after she’s done decorating the community center. Maybe she’ll get lucky. Maybe the ladder will fail, or she’ll slip off the roof. Then she can just fall into a coma until the end of the season, and never have to face any consequences for her actions.

It’s not likely, she thinks grimly, tugging her scarf tighter as the snow picks up. But one can hope.

Chapter Text

By the time Ava’s finished putting up the lights, she still hasn’t figured out how to ask Robin to trade Winter Star assignments in a way that doesn’t show her very embarrassing hand. She goes back to the farm and continues to ignore the problem until the sun sinks in the sky, casting long golden shadows over the mountains. By 4 o’clock, she finally decides that there actually isn’t a good way to start this particular conversation, and she just needs to suck it up and resign herself to this being horrifically awkward.

There’s no good way to frame her request, but she keeps mulling it over anyway as she trudges up the mountain path. She constructs a haphazard script in her head: Hi, quick favor to ask! Funny story, I totally screwed up the town gift exchange because your Tall-Dark-Handsome son is super hot, and he’s funny, and I like his fancy hair, and his ass looks phenomenal in black skinny jeans—

Nope. Absolutely not.

She envisions herself bursting into the carpentry shop in a little Smokey Bear hat, decorated with holiday lights. Only You Can Prevent Sebastian From Getting Dollar-Store Socks For Winter Star!

Ava groans, kicking a chunk of snow that’s melted and re-frozen. It skitters down the path, lacy pieces of ice breaking off as it bounces.

This is going to be the worst.

.

She arrives at the oak door of the carpentry shop just after sunset has turned into twilight, then hesitates for as long as she can stand before the cold pushes her forward to open the door. Some small part of her is half-hoping that Robin won’t actually be there, and she’ll have an excuse to put this terrible no-good conversation off for another day.

“Ava, what a surprise!” Robin says, perking up as soon as she hears the little brass bell over the door. She smiles wide. “Always great to see you. How’s the woodwork on the coop holding up?”

“Perfectly! Sebastian did a really great job with it.” She wonders if a thumbs-up would be overselling it. Probably it would be, she decides. “It’s very solid.”

“Glad to hear it! Not that I’m surprised. He may prefer programming, but he’s always had a knack for carpentry, too,” Robin says, her voice laced with warm affection. “You know, he’s kind of shy, but I think you’d get along with him really well.”

“Thanks!” Ava laughs nervously, trying not to cringe or turn red. “And he’s been really helpful! When, uh… Helping out, you know. On the farm.”

“Oh, that’s right! Maru mentioned something about him fixing up an old tractor?”

“Yeah. It’ll be nice to have it up and running again.”

“Is that why you’re here? I think Sebby’s downstairs, if you need to talk to him.”

Ava very nearly collapses with relief, because there it is! The segue she’s been waiting for! Thank the spirits!

“Actually, I’m here for something else.” She clears her throat, adjusting her rucksack on her shoulder. “So, as you know, I’m running the Winter Star gift exchange this year. And I’m guessing, based on this”—she digs out the Help Wanted ad and slides it across the counter, tapping a finger on Robin’s name scrawled across the bottom—“that you’re the one who has Haley, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Robin says, glancing down at the ad. “What’s this about?”

“I was wondering if you might be willing to switch with Alex? He got his own name.”

Robin frowns. “Wouldn’t he usually just switch with you?”

“Yeah, but…” This is going to be the tricky bit. “The thing is, through a weird and convoluted series of events that are not important right now”—Abigail immediately clocking that I have a crush on your son and deciding to play matchmaker—“I actually ended up with Sebastian’s name.”

Robin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?”

“And that means that if I trade with Alex, he’ll have Sebastian, and, like, that’s fine, no big deal! But the thing is, it seems like Alex doesn’t actually like Sebastian very much? Like, he was actually kind of rude, which, first of all, how dare he, Sebastian’s great, and really cool, and black suits him super well, actually, and if Alex isn’t going to appreciate him properly, that’s—!”

Ava cuts herself off before she can dig this particular hole too far to climb out of. Robin has a calculating look in her eye, like she’s assessing something.

“Anyway!” She gives her best, most honest-looking smile. “I just think, personally, that Sebastian deserves to be paired up with someone who actually likes him!” Wait, wait, no! “Someone who likes him generally, I mean! As another human person. The sort of liking that we all have for the, uh, the people around us.”

“I see.” Robin is now nodding slowly, a proper smile spreading across her face.

I didn’t mean it like that, Ava wants to insist, and she’s scrambling frantically to find some way to tell Robin that whatever she’s assuming is all wrong, that there’s a totally super normal explanation that doesn’t involve feelings or favoritism.

“I just want him to have a good Winter Star Feast! Not him specifically— I mean yes, him specifically! But overall, it’s just very important to me that everyone, in general, have… A good time. At the Winter Star Feast.”

“Mm-hmm,” Robin agrees, her eyes sparkling. “I think, in this case, I’m definitely okay with bending the rules a little bit.”

“Thanks.” She fidgets with her braid. “You can have his name, instead, if you want? I mean, he’s your son, so…”

“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary! I think you should definitely keep him. Because he’s a keeper, you know?” she jokes, winking. Ava wants to sink into the floorboards. “I’ll be more than happy to find a gift for Alex. Let me just see if I can find the letter.”

Robin disappears into the back room of the shop, and Ava hovers by the counter, looking around the room while she waits. She’s been here a hundred times, but she’s never really taken the time to focus on the decor. Lumber is stacked in the corner. A variety of pictures in differently-shaped frames cover the back wall. They’re mostly of houses and buildings. There’s an award, too: A large brass plaque mounted on hardwood, engraved with the words, “Pelican Town Local Business Association.”

She’s flipping open the furniture catalogue on the counter, intending to idly browse while she waits even if she doesn’t buy anything, when something beside the cash register catches her eye.

It’s a small wooden bird, clearly intended to be a robin. The carving itself is a little amateurish, rough and uneven around the edges, but it’s clear that the sculptor put a lot of thought into their design. There are textured feathers on top, stained such a dark brown that they’re nearly black, but the underbelly is sanded smooth, with a warm gradient that glows nearly orange.

“Hey.”

She startles. The voice is deep and quiet and familiar, and she whirls around to find Sebastian standing in the hallway. He’s wearing jeans and a fitted black band t-shirt. Very fitted. It looks soft and comfy and is showing a regular, normal amount of his collarbone, no more than a regular t-shirt would, so she doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly so fixated on it. On his collarbone. She tries to look somewhere else, and her gaze lands on his forearms, which are worse (or better, a small, very interested part of her argues). She tries again, and gets his eyes.

Eyes, she decides. Eyes are safe. Pretty. Pretty safe.

“I, uh— hi,” she laughs, biting her lip and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Fancy seeing you here!”

“This is my house,” he says, looking mildly amused.

“Ha! Right,” she says, because what else is she supposed to say to that?

“I was just going out for a smoke,” he explains, even though she wasn’t about to look the gift horse of Sebastian Being In Close Proximity in the mouth. He moves closer, up towards the counter. He smells woodsy, but a different sort of woodsy than normal, like sandalwood and woodsmoke. It drives the part of her that was just appreciating his forearms absolutely feral. “How’d the rest of the light-hanging go?”

“Oh! It was good,” she says. “Didn’t fall off the roof, so!”

“Glad all of your bones are intact,” he deadpans, and then he frowns. Hesitates. Wavers, like he’s trying to decide whether something’s a good idea. “But, um— is this another one of those things Lewis roped you into doing for him?”

“Actually, it was Evelyn, this time.” She laughs. “It’s fine. I volunteered.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Right, but, um…”

She waits again while he pauses and thinks something over, tilting his head. He studies the pictures on the wall for a long moment, and then sighs, like he’s resigning himself to something.

“Look, the thing is: If you do ever need to use the whole tractor thing as an easy out, at some point in the future, you should probably have some way to contact me, right? Like, um…” He clears his throat and briefly glances up at the ceiling. “Like my phone number? Maybe?”

“Yeah! Yes, absolutely,” she agrees, nodding a little too eagerly. “That totally makes sense.”

“Great,” he says, also nodding. “Right, so, let me just…” He grabs a pen from the cup beside the register, then starts searching for something to write on. “Dammit, where does Mom keep the sticky notes?”

“You can just write it on my hand.”

He stops short. Squints at her incredulously. “On your hand?”

“Yeah.”

“Um. Sure,” he says. “Okay.”

She holds out her hand and tries very hard not to focus on the way his fingers press into her wrist as he holds it to write, or the warmth of his skin on hers. She’s almost certainly imagining the way his breath hitches when she flexes her hand just slightly. His eyes are focused beneath his long, dark lashes, and he’s biting his lip.

“There. Let me just… And this one’s a little…” He’s tracing the 9 over again, even though it looks perfectly fine to Ava. Retracing the 1. Retracing the 8 in a little loop, over and over. He might actually be making it worse, but she’s not about to complain.

“Hi, Sebby!”

“Jiangui,” he hisses, dropping Ava’s hand like it’s burned him. The pen clatters to the floor, and he snatches it up before taking several steps back. “Mom! How long have you been standing there?”

“Language, kiddo,” Robin scolds, but her eyes sparkle with mirth. She glances at the clock mounted on the wall and raises her eyebrows. “It’s always a joy to see you, but it’s a little early for your usual smoke break, isn’t it?”

Sebastian’s mouth opens, then closes. “I don’t have to justify taking an extra smoke break,” he huffs. The tips of his ears have turned bright red. “I’m not a child.”

Then he turns on his heel and disappears out the front door, letting it slam shut behind him.

“I’d better give you this before he comes back,” Robin laughs fondly. “It’s not gonna take him long to realize he forgot his winter coat.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.” Ava goes to take it, but when she tugs, Robin doesn’t let go.

“For the record,” Robin says, her tone still light, “I know you would never mistreat my son, because you’re a lovely young woman, but just remember: I know these woods very well. Well enough that, if you were to hurt him, they would never find your body, or my axe. Understood?”

Is this a shovel talk? Ava wonders. There’s nothing to defend Sebastian over, because we’re not dating, she almost says, and probably should say, but she panics.

“Sure,” she says, instead, her face heating. She wants to be gone. “Got it.”

“Great!” Robin brightens and lets go of the paper. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

.

??? — 6:12 PM
hi, Sebastian!! this is Ava!

Sebastian — 6:12 PM
Hey. Everything good?

Ava — 6:14 PM
oh, yeah, everything’s fine! I just wanted to text so you’d have my number, too :)
in case you need to give me a heads-up you’re coming over or anything

Sebastian — 6:15 PM
Should I be giving you a heads-up when I come over?

Ava — 6:15 PM
no!! you can come over whenever you want!
but it’s useful to have, right?
like, in case I’m not on the farm or something

Sebastian — 6:15 PM
Sure. That makes sense

Ava — 6:15 PM
or if we need to communicate about other stuff

Sebastian — 6:19 PM
Stuff like what?

Ava — 6:22 PM
haha idk!!! just stuff!

Sebastian — 6:31 PM
[ frog_farm_meme.jpg ]
Stuff like this?

Ava — 6:32 PM
[ Ava laugh reacted to a message ]
hahahaahah yes, exactly :)

.

Apparently, in Sebastian’s absence, Sundays have become Family Dinner Night. He’s not entirely sure when this happened, or why, although he has suspicions— Maru’s senior thesis and internship schedule among them— but his mom knocks on his door in the early evening to interrupt his dozenth re-read of Cave Saga X and inform him, cheerfully but with force, that:

1) Family dinner is in thirty minutes.
2) Sebastian, as a member of this family, will be partaking in the family dinner.
3) No further questions or arguments will be taken at this time.

And then, when he sighs and agrees, she hits him with a bright, cheerful:

4) “Great! You let Maru know, okay?”

She disappears back up the stairs before he can protest, so he dutifully drags himself out of bed and up the hardwood stairs. He loves his mom very much, and if she wants him to play happy family with her husband and daughter for three hours over some spaghetti and baguettes… Well, he can probably manage. For her sake.

(He’s going to grumble about it, just a little, though. At least on the inside.)

He rounds the corner and pokes his head into the lab. Maru’s still working. She’s wearing a lab jacket and safety goggles, and she’s got her earbuds in. She’s humming to herself as she carefully pipets something from a beaker into rows of little test tubes. The tune she’s humming is familiar, but he can’t quite place it.

“Hey, Maru,” he tries.

Maru continues humming, and he wonders: Seriously, where do I know that tune from?

“Hey!” he repeats, a little louder, and then, when that still doesn’t work, rounds the table so that he’s within her field of vision and waves at her. “Earth to Maru?”

She startles. “Oh! Sorry, hang on, just let me—!”

He waits as she sets the pipette down, then pops out her earbuds and shoves them in the front pocket of her overalls. She looks vaguely guilty, like she did when they were kids and he caught her sneaking cookies from the cookie jar.

“Sorry, I promise I didn’t mean to ignore you,” she explains, gesturing towards her pocket. “These earbuds are noise cancelling, and they may be doing their job a bit too well.”

“‘Numb,’'” he realizes.

“What?”

“The song you’re listening to. It’s ‘Numb,’ right?” he asks, and his question is mostly rhetorical, because he’s pretty sure he’s right. Hybrid Theory was formative media for him. Since when does she like Linkin Park? “Anyway, dinner’s in ten.”

“Oh, great!” she says, with zero trace of irony. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Sure.”

She looks at him with nervous anticipation, like she’s expecting him to say something else. Her brow is furrowed, just slightly, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d say that her smile has an odd undercurrent of guilt.

“Okay,” he says, nodding. “Well. Good luck with the pipetting, then.”

“Okay! Thanks!” she chirps, and then turns back to her assays.

He turns on his heel and leaves, shaking his head. Weird.

.

The first five or ten minutes of dinner go smoothly. His mom’s spaghetti is good. She’s sprung for the nice shredded parmesan cheese instead of the powdery stuff, and he’s surprised to find that she’s added fresh basil to the sauce. Apparently, Pierre sells fresh herbs in the wintertime, now, thanks to Ava’s greenhouse. As disgruntled as he is about a few of the other changes around town, he’s more than willing to admit that this one is an improvement.

He’s about halfway through his pasta when Demetrius clears his throat.

“So, Sebastian,” he starts. “How’s work going? It must be busy, working at such a big company.”

I spend all day debugging other people’s crappy, poorly-documented code, he doesn’t say. I close twice as many tickets as my coworkers. Zoom calls make me want to tear my hair out.

“Work’s fine.”

Demetrius smiles. “Well, you should think about asking for a promotion soon. Your mother’s told me that you were a key player in the last big project, which makes this an ideal time to ask.”

Not happening, he thinks. I pulled two all-nighters last month to get our product ready for launch, and what did it get me? Nothing.

“Right,” he tries instead. He’s going for sincere, but it comes out acidic. Biting.

“Is there anything you’re looking forward to doing while you’re home?” his mom asks, nudging his shin with her foot under the table and shooting him a look. It’s sympathetic, but it also says: Play nice. “Maru says you visited the farm yesterday? Something about fixing a tractor?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs, poking at a meatball with his fork. “Ava says it hasn’t run in a while. I figured it would be a fun project, you know?”

“Well, that’s very kind of you.”

“You know, that girl is a good influence,” Demetrius says, whirling up a forkful of spaghetti. “She seems mature and responsible. I’m glad you’re spending time with her. It’s very important to be judicious about the company you keep.”

Maru sighs. “Um, Dad, can you please pass the salt?”

“Of course,” he says, and reaches across to grab the shaker. He holds it out to Maru with a smile. “I’m just saying, you’re a driven young man with a bright future ahead of you! You’ve worked hard to get to where you are, so it’s wise to surround yourself with people who share your excellent work ethic, your ambitions, and your goals.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sebastian says. For your totally unsolicited feedback on my friendship preferences, he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t want to start something.

“But sometimes it can also be good to forge friendships with people who have different ambitions and goals, because they can help balance you out,” Maru counters, taking the salt shaker from Demetrius’ hands. She fidgets with it for a moment, then sets it down on the table without using it.

“Hm,” says Demetrius, raising his eyebrows.

“Anyway, I’m sure Ava really appreciates having you around to help,” his mom interjects, putting a certain spin on the you that Maru and Demetrius fully miss but he absolutely catches. He shoots her a look of warning, but she’s keeping a straight face, aside from the crinkles around her eyes.

“Mom,” he grits out.

She feigns innocence. “What? She even told me so, earlier today. Before you exchanged phone numbers.”

Maru is starting to look like she might be picking up on his mom’s tone, and he desperately scrambles for some other topic— any other topic— and, with relief, remembers the papers he saw on her desk the other day. “Maru! How’s the internship going? You’re doing some sort of robotics stuff, right? Or AI? That sounds, uh, cool.”

Maru chokes on her pasta.

“What do you mean?” Demetrius asks. “Her internship is at a pharmaceutical company.”

“Maru’s major is biochemistry, Sebby,” Mom reminds him, frowning, like she’s disappointed in him for not remembering. I’ve told you this a hundred times, the crease between her brows says, and he heaves a sigh, because it’s not like he forgot.

“I know that, obviously,” he starts, “it’s just—”

Maru, who’s just barely recovered, breaks into another coughing fit. Demetrius looks over at her with concern.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

“Sorry,” she wheezes, waving a hand and grabbing her water glass. “I’m fine.”

But the wide-eyed glance she shoots Sebastian across the table says otherwise. She gives a subtle but frantic shake of her head, and the panic in her eyes tells him that she’s very much not fine with this particular train of conversation. She wants it to careen off the rails and into a deep canyon, where it will hit the ground at terminal velocity and be reduced to a pile of word shrapnel.

The papers are supposed to be a secret, he realizes.

The idea feels strange in his head, unnatural, like a missing tooth. Sebastian keeping secrets is nothing new, but Maru? Maru, who never snuck out to parties in high school? Maru, who steadfastly reported all of her grades to their parents as soon as she got them, good or (on very, very rare occasions) mediocre? Maru, who called a family meeting one time back in high school to tearfully confess that she’d accidentally drunk some of the spiked punch at the Luau?

Maru’s never kept a secret from her family in her life.

“It’s just what?” Mom asks, turning to Sebastian, asking him to complete his thought, and now he’s faced with a decision: Let it slide? Or rat her out?

It’s not even a choice, really, is it?

“It’s just that everyone’s into AI these days, over in the city,” he says, shrugging. “People at work keep talking about it, and you can do some bio-related stuff with some of the newer neural nets, right? I figured maybe she’d jumped on the bandwagon.”

Maru’s shoulders sink in relief.

“Ah, that’s an intriguing concept, isn’t it?” Demetrius says, lighting up, and then launches into a long and enthusiastic monologue about how actually, while there has been certainly been an influx of recent interest in using ternary neural networks for a small subset of biological applications, more traditional binary neural networks are still far more reproducible, and while he’s certainly not an expert himself, he did just read an article about some recent research work at Eastern Castle Village University that has some absolutely fascinating implications, and—

Thank you, Maru mouths at Sebastian across the table. He doesn’t respond.

I may not be the brother she always wanted, he thinks, shoving a forkful of pasta in his mouth, but at least I’m not a snitch.

.

Maru doesn’t say anything about it through the rest of dinner, or through the ten minutes they spend clearing the table and putting leftovers away. She volunteers to help with the dishes, even though he and Robin usually do them on the nights Demetrius cooks, and he thinks she’ll talk about it then, but all she does is grab a towel and stand next to him, taking each dish he’s washed and meticulously drying it. The silence is tense. By the time all the dishes are done, he’s more than ready to retreat out to the lake with a cigarette and his thoughts.

He gets probably ten minutes of blissful quiet before he hears the crunch of boots on snow behind him. He doesn’t have to turn to know who it is.

“You didn’t tell them,” she says.

“Yeah.” He takes a long pull from his cigarette, holds it, and then exhales.

“How much do you know? Are you planning on telling them?” she asks, and then holds up her hands in a placating sort of way when he turns to glare. “Look, I just— I have to ask, okay?”

What, so you can do damage control? he almost scoffs, but manages to bite it back. What actually comes out of his mouth, though, is almost worse.

“Just because you would doesn’t mean I will.”

She frowns. There’s a long moment where she just stands there with her arms crossed, shivering in the cold, and he realizes she’s only wearing a sweater and scarf instead of the heavy peacoat she keeps on the hallway coat rack. She’s wearing her sneakers, thin purple canvas soaked with melted snow, instead of her usual winter boots, which he saw in the entryway as he left the house tonight.

She went out the side door, he realizes. She must really not want them to know about this.

“For the record,” she says, sounding offended, “I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, yeah?” He’s being incredibly petty right now, and he knows it, but he can’t help himself. There are so few opportunities to have the moral high ground over Maru, and he wants to relish this one. “What about that time I skipped class, back in the tenth grade, and you told Mom? Or the time I snuck out to hang at Sam’s house? Or the time I tried to smuggle in that Greenday CD Demetrius said I couldn’t have, or—?”

“That was years ago,” she points out, still frowning, and he just shrugs. “In any case, all of this is completely beside the point. I didn’t come out here to argue with you.”

“No. You came out here to make sure I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“I came out here to say thank you!” she snaps.

She stares at him, her breath coming out of her mouth in little white clouds, looking like she wants him to break she silence first. He won’t. He takes another pull of his cigarette. Inhale. Hold it. Exhale.

“So, uh… Thank you,” she finally says, her voice quieter and shivering but still very determined. “For covering for me. You didn’t have to, and I really, honestly appreciate it.”

“Yeah. No problem.”

She takes a deep breath. “And I understand if you have questi—”

“I don’t.”

She blinks at him, taken aback. “What?”

“Look, you don’t have to worry about me. Whatever it is you’re doing with robotics or AI or bioengineering or whatever else… I don’t care.” He levels her with a serious look. “It’s not my business.”

Maru stares back at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable.

“Sure,” she finally says, sounding almost disappointed. “Thanks.”

She disappears back into the house, leaving him with a cigarette that’s nearly burned to ash.

He stubs the cigarette out, then tips a fresh one out of his pack. He flicks open his lighter— a beaten-up silver Zippo that he’d found in the community center back in high school, when he’d haunted it— and strikes the wheel. It’s windy enough that he has to do this several times before it catches, but with enough effort, it finally does.

He watches the flame dance for a long moment, bright and warm in the cold winter night, before lighting his cigarette, bringing it to his lips, and flicking the lighter closed again.

He tries to focus on the shape the cloud of smoke makes as he exhales.

Still, even after the second cigarette’s long gone cold and he’s retreated back inside to his chilly basement bedroom, leaving his icy boots to thaw by the door, he’s still turning the question over in his mind: What’s Maru gotten herself into?

Chapter Text

It’s Monday, and Maru is going to the library for scientific research purposes.

She’s going for scientific research purposes, and that’s the first reason her dad can’t know where she’s going this afternoon. She’s asked Gunther to order a few journal articles on Dwarvish computer theory that weren’t accessible through her university’s database, and they’re ones that her dad would ask way too many questions about. Questions she isn’t ready to answer. Not yet, at least. Not until her project is done. The articles came in earlier this week, and she needs to pick them up.

The second reason her dad can’t know she’s going to the library is because of Sam, which is to say: While scientific progress is her primary objective, Sam also happens to be working today.

Of course, she could promise herself that his presence won’t be a distraction, but she’s an intelligent young woman who knows her own mind and habits well. The fact that she’s waited until the day after she’s done her twist outs to go pick up her papers is not entirely incidental. Neither was her choice to put this visit off until she knew he’d be working a full shift. The thought of seeing him puts a brightness in her chest and an extra spring in her step.

Still, she’s brought her laptop. Maybe she’ll manage to get something done.

Libraries are for reading, she tells herself resolutely as she walks along the freshly-shoveled path, the hood of her jacket tugged loosely over her hair to shield it from the snow. Libraries are for studying. Libraries are for science.

She pushes open the mulberry-dark library door, thumping her boots on the doormat a few times to knock off the lingering ice, and steps inside.

The interior of the library is as cozy as ever. Shafts of soft winter light filter through the tall vertical windows, falling on the old oak shelves. The rotating display near the front, which was still stocked with horror novels the last time she was here, has been updated with a cheerful selection of holiday-themed romances. A few are marked as new arrivals. She smiles. That genre isn’t really her cup of tea, but she thinks Penny will appreciate it.

She approaches the front desk, which holds an ancient-looking computer, another pile of books, and a miniature Winter Star tree decorated with tinsel and shiny baubles. It also has a sign.

Out for lunch and errands. Will be back at ?:??. — Gunther

It’s unclear whether the intended time is 1:15 or 2:15, because the little paper clock attached to the sign is analog, and the hour hand is stuck in quantum superposition squarely between the 1 and the 2. Either way that particular wavefunction collapses, it’s going to be at least thirty minutes before she gets the journal articles she’s after.

Maru sighs, hefting her backpack on her shoulder, and makes her way towards the desks.

“Everybody! (Ye—eah!) Rock your body! (Yea—a—ah!)” sings a familiar voice from the museum room, and she breaks into a fond smile. The timbre of Sam’s voice is warm and sweet and soothing, like lemon-honey tea.

You’re here to study, she reminds herself. Don’t get distracted.

She tamps down the tachycardic feeling in her chest, then dutifully settles in at her usual desk and unpacks her notebooks. Her pen case. Her laptop. She gives it a minute to wake itself from its sleepy, cold hibernation, whirring to life, and then she opens the document that contains her Statement of Purpose for her application to South Ferngill Regional University. It contains several prompts, which she copied over from the graduate school website three weeks ago, and a lengthy, bulleted list of research projects and work experiences that the graduate admissions committee might find compelling or relevant.

It contains nothing else.

She takes a deep breath and faces the blinking cursor, trying to focus. First question: What interests you about biochemical engineering?

“Am I original? (Ye—eah!)” She can’t help smiling again.

Second question: What about our program makes it a good fit for you?

“Am I the only one? (Ye—eah!)”

What research experience do you have? What motivates you?

“Am I sex—u—aaaaal? (Ye—eah!) Am I everything you need? You bett—aaaah—!?” Sam’s shoes squeak on the hardwood floor as he slides around the corner with his mop, spots her, and then stops dead in his tracks with a yelp. He breaks into a smile almost as wide as her own. “Maru! Hey.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No—no—no, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize anyone was, uh, you know.” He makes a vague gesture with the hand that’s not holding a mop. “Here?”

“Probably because your music’s so loud,” she observes.

His grin turns sheepish. “Sorry. I can turn it down.”

“No, don’t! It’s not a bad thing, besides maybe the tinnitus,” she insists, and then adds, very matter-of-factly: “I like listening to you sing. You have a nice voice.”

“Thanks!” he replies, leaning his mop on a nearby bookshelf and grabbing a chair. He turns it backwards and settles in across from her in one smooth motion, straddling it and leaning his crossed arms on the backrest. “That’s really nice of you to say.”

“It’s true! Although I’ll be the first to admit, I do have some confirmation bias.”

He laughs, which is exactly the reaction she was hoping for. “Okay, but still, I’ll turn it down. You’ve got, like, twenty highlighters there.” He nods at her pen case. “Makes you look like you’re up to some cool, genius-level engineering-girl stuff! Not that I’m surprised, obviously, ‘cuz cool, genius-level engineering-girl stuff’s pretty on brand for you.”

“Thanks.” His enthusiasm for what she’s doing does bolster her spirits a little. It makes her feel like she is on the right track, after all. “Can I quote you on that in my grad school applications? ‘Genius-level engineering-girl stuff is on brand for me?’”

“Oh, yeah, for sure! Quote away,” he says cheerfully, but his million-watt smile fades just a fraction as he eyes her laptop. “So, is that what you’re working on? Grad school stuff?”

“Yup.” It comes out flatter and more resigned-sounding than she means it to.

He winces. “Going that well, huh? You wanna talk it through?”

“Not really. I just need to keep chipping away at it.” (This is true, she thinks, although it implies that a few chips have already been made in the huge marble slab of this application, when truthfully she hasn’t even picked up the chisel.)

“Gotcha! I should probably let you work, then.” His eyes sparkle, bright and blue like copper sulfate. He raises a hand and winks. “I’ll totally keep the janitorial karaoke to a minimum. Scout’s honor.”

“Or,” she says, a hopeful edge working its way into her voice as she closes her laptop, “we could talk about something besides my grad school applications?”

“Ooh, I like the way you think. New topics, new topics…” He drums his fingers on the edge of the table, then leans forward in his chair with an easy, eager smile. “Did you do something with your hair? A new protective style or something? It looks good.”

“Oh, thanks!” He noticed! She tugs at one of her curls. “They’re twist-outs! This is the first time I’ve really gotten them to work properly, and I’m pretty sure it’s because I used cream instead of mousse. Obviously I need to experiment a bit more, but I’ve seen a wide range of suggestions regarding which products are best, which I think is probably because variations in hair porosity can have a significant impact on how well an individual’s hair absorbs moisture, but, um…”

He doesn’t respond. He just stares at her. He’s still smiling, but he looks completely spaced out.

“Sam?”

“What?” He blinks, then shakes his head. “No! No, sorry, I was listening! I just got distracted.”

“Distracted by what?”

“How pretty you are.” He says it so casually, like it’s obvious. Like it’s a law of nature. Energy is neither created nor destroyed; the entropy of the universe is ever-increasing; and Maru is pretty.

“Thanks,” she says, her face going warm. She smiles.

“Especially when you get really into talking about something you’re passionate about, like—Wait! The papers!” he gasps, jolting up so fast that she startles, and he practically sprints over to the front desk. “Holy crap, seriously, I had literally one job, I can’t believe I forgot—”

She follows behind him and watches as he frantically roots through the holding shelves. It doesn’t take him long to find the binder he’s looking for. He double-checks the sheet of white printer paper that’s been bound to its spine by a rubber band, and then reemerges from behind the desk, looking guilty.

“I’m so sorry,” he says as he hands it over. “Gunther told me to give this to you if you came in while he was out. I even wrote it on my arm, see?”

He pushes back his sleeve and holds out his arm for examination. She leans forward. Sure enough, there are several messy, smudged notes scrawled across his arm in various colors. The freshest one (in blue ballpoint) reads: Papers for Maru.

She tries making out some of the others. Vin — Ginger Ale and clean room and bass dinner? are fairly new, but others are more faded and difficult to read. His shift schedule for the week has clearly been traced over several times. One particularly long entry in green just looks like a list of ingredients, one after another in a row, all crossed out. She reaches out and runs her index finger along it—flour, eggs, milk, grapes, rhubarb—and it’s only when his breathing becomes irregular that she realizes she’s also tracing a path along the inside of his forearm, following his radial artery.

Still, he doesn’t pull away. His skin is warm under her trailing finger. She imagines that she can feel his pulse, maybe, if she focuses hard enough. It feels nice.

She moves on to deciphering some of the older ones: Band @ 1:30!! DONT BE LATE. guitar strings. Wumbus? Swap T(S)GS/Dear Maria on WS setlist. Add Yellow. Mom = Pie? Wine? Spa? Dad = ???

There’s a particularly tricky-to-read smudge near his wrist. It’s been traced over enough times that she has trouble making it out, but if she squints, part of it almost looks like her name.

“What’s that one?” she asks, peering closer.

“That’s one’s—Oh! Never mind!” He laughs and pulls away, yanking his sleeve down. She tries not to look too disappointed. “Anyway, um… Speaking of which, uh, completely unrelated to the five hundred notes on my arm, how are you liking A Rush of Blood to the Head?”

“Oh, I’ve had it on loop since you gave it to me!” She picks up the binder and starts thumbing through the papers, taking stock, making sure they’re all in order. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him retreating back behind the desk, and, wait, no, I didn’t mean to disengage from the conversation! “It’s really nice! I like to put it on in the background when I’m working in lab.”

“Good! Good. I’m glad.” He takes a deep breath and bounces on his feet, like he’s psyching himself up for something, and then announces: “And, uh, speaking of CDs, there is one more thing back here with your name on it!”

She watches intently as he makes his way towards the other end of the desk again with an odd, deliberate sort of casualness. He slides open one of the drawers and pulls something out, hiding it behind his back as he turns back towards her.

“So, I also kind of made a playlist for you?”

“Really?” Her cheeks will start to hurt, if she keeps smiling this much.

“Don’t get too hyped, it’s nothing fancy.” He holds out out a thin, compact jewel case, tinted a frosted pink. ‘For Maru’ is scrawled across the front in metallic silver Sharpie. He’s drawn little asymmetrical stars around her name and decorated it with holographic stickers. As soon as she takes it, his hands start fidgeting with his rings. “It’s just some stuff I thought you might like. I also threw in a couple of songs I’ve been working on for the band, so, I mean, I’d love to hear what you think, if you end up listening, but—”

“When,” she corrects, grinning. “When I end up listening.”

The smile he gives her makes her feel brighter than a cluster of stars.

“Actually, do you think we could listen now?” she asks. “Together?”

“Sure! I was just about to take my lunch break,” he says, his eyes shining. “Give me five or ten minutes to finish mopping this section, and I’ll be good to go.”

.

They drag two of the floor cushions over to the tall window in the warmest corner, the one that catches the most afternoon light. No one ever comes in here at this time of day, he insists, so they slide the CD into her laptop, prop the lid open, and hit ‘play.’ They listen to it together on the tinny speakers, curled up beneath an oversized fleece blanket that they’ve borrowed from the bin behind the checkout counter. Sam eats the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he packed this morning. Maru’s already eaten, but she steals a few potato chips from his lunchbox.

It sounds different on the laptop, she thinks. It’s ambient. It’s cosy. She sinks into the warmth of the blanket and thumbs through the lyric booklet, which seems to have been printed using the library’s ancient black-and-white copy machine, stapled together, and meticulously hand-colored using some of Vincent’s art supplies.

Sam’s leg starts bouncing nervously halfway through the first Pelicans demo song, and he fidgets with the now-empty plastic sandwich bag, running his thumbnail along the seam. She smiles affectionately and reaches over, covering his hand with her own.

“Thank you for this.” She leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek. “I love it.”

“Thanks,” he says, pulling her into a gentle side-hug and pressing a kiss to her temple in return. “You haven’t even heard the whole thing yet.”

“A valid criticism of my analysis,” she says, and tucks herself into his side with a contented sigh.

He gasps in mock offense. “What, you’re not gonna argue your case? You’re not gonna say, ‘well, based on the data so far—?’”

She shushes him. “I’m listening. If you keep interrupting, I’ll have to restart it.”

He huffs out a little laugh, smiling and rolling his eyes, but the tension in his shoulders has eased, and Maru finds herself incandescently happy.

.

“I’m pleased to say that my initial assessment was correct,” she declares once the CD has finished its first loop. They’ve shifted positions over the last fifty minutes or so; he’s propped himself up against one of the bookshelves, and she’s still cuddled up against him, nearly sprawled across his lap. “This is the perfect mixtape. I’m going to love and cherish it forever.”

“As much as you love and cherish me?” he jokes.

“That’s a high bar. I love and cherish you so much.” She sits up and leans back, stretching. A few of her vertebrae pop. Sam eyes her with an affectionate, comfortable smile.

“You gonna read a few of those cool science papers now?”

“Oh, I wish,” she says, letting her arms fall back to her sides. “I should probably work on my applications for a little while… Most of them are due by the end of the month.”

“Hm,” he says, his smile fading just a little.

“Hm?” she repeats. “Why ‘hm?’”

“I dunno.”

“Okay, now I’m concerned. Is everything alright?” She turns to face him properly, searching his expression (he’s still smiling, but it’s faded a little, and his brow is furrowed), and then she asks, as gently as possible: “Is your dad doing worse again?”

“Nah, this year’s been better, actually. I think Vin’s finally used to having him back, and we’re a lot better at knowing what, um— like, with the popcorn thing, what’s gonna bring back…” He gestures vaguely. “You know?” (Maru, who input Kent’s PTSD diagnosis into the clinic’s system herself, privately fills in the word trigger.) “And I think he’s getting better at knowing what’s gonna freak him out and giving us a heads-up, instead of just trying to power through. So, yeah, we’re actually doing pretty good, this year. ‘New normal’ is starting to feel like ‘regular normal.’”

“That’s good,” she says, chewing her lip. It tastes like strawberry-flavored lip balm. “Then…?”

“It’s kind of about the whole grad school thing?”

“Oh.” She straightens, taking a deep, steadying breath, and wills the the cortisol levels in her bloodstream to stay normal. “Okay.”

“It’s not bad— or, I mean, I think it’s not bad, but it’s just…” He tilts his head to one side, then the other, and runs a hand through his hair with a sigh. “See, um, it’s like… I wonder sometimes if my mom regrets having had kids. It’s like that.”

Maru blinks. What? “I’m not following.”

“I mean, I wonder if maybe she had kids because she assumed she should want them. Or, like, because it seemed like the next logical thing? Or if maybe she did it because everyone around her said that being a mom would make her happy, and she went, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll incorporate that into my worldview!’ without really looking too hard at whether it was what she wanted?”

“Your mom loves you,” Maru insists fiercely, because it’s true.

“Of course she does! That’s not—ugh, I’m not saying this right,” he groans, rubbing a hand across his face. “She’s a great mom. I know she loves me and Vin! But she always flips through the course catalogs for Zuzu U that come in the mail, before she throws them away. She talks about all the traveling she used to do for work, sometimes, and she just gets this look on her face, and… I dunno if she’s really happy, you know?”

“I’m still not following.” Her brow furrows. Normally, she finds Sam’s way of meandering through conversations to be fun and charming, but right now, it’s making her nervous. He’s bouncing his leg again and studiously avoiding eye contact, which means he’s anxious about her response, and it’s hard to guess what sort of response he’s looking for when she can’t even figure out what he’s trying to say.

“I don’t want you to make the same mistake she did.”

Ah. Really? “I thought we’d talked about this.” She huffs out a sharp, irritated breath and tries her best not to seem as upset as she feels. (His leg is still bouncing.) “I realize that a lot of women who go into STEM fields do face unfair disadvantages if they choose to have children, so I understand your concern, but frankly, I’ve thoroughly explored the potential benefits and drawbacks of different family planning decisions, and as long as we wait until I’m done with my doctorate, it’s perfectly manageable to—”

“I’m not talking about having kids,” he interjects, cutting her off.

“Okay. Could you just tell me directly what you mean, then?” she asks, and then in case her tone was a little more blunt than she meant it to be, adds: “I ask because I want to properly understand what you’re saying, and I’m having trouble parsing this.”

“I’m talking about asking yourself what you want out of life,” he says. “Do you really want to go into biochemical engineering?”

Once, when she was in middle school, Maru slipped on a patch of ice and landed hard. One second she’d been upright, and the next, she was flat on her back, dazed, lying bruised on the cobblestone with ringing ears, gasping for air. The breath was knocked out of her. Sam’s question feels like that: Shocking. Disorienting. Jarring.

She manages: “What?”

“I know you want to go to grad school, and I think that’s a good call, but are you sure about the biochem part?” He hesitates. “I just… I don’t want you to spend your life doing something you aren’t actually super into just because it’s the only major you could do remotely.”

She catches her breath. “I like biochem!”

“Yeah, but do you love it?” Sam asks. “Sure, you’re good at it—phenomenal, don’t get me twisted—but when you think about going into lab and doing the same stuff you’ve been doing for your internship, day after day, is that… Like, how do you feel about that? Is it fun for you?”

“It’s fine.”

“Just fine?” he asks, pointedly, like it’s the answer he was expecting.

“Yes! It’s just fine,” she argues. “I fail to see how that’s problematic. It’s like Dad says: Work isn’t always fun. That’s why it’s called work.”

“Okay, but what if it could be fun, though?”

“Fine isn’t bad!” She presses her lips together. “Look. Do you like janitorial work? Is what you’re doing fun for you? Are you planning to quit your museum job to pursue a music career?”

His eyes flash. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it? You seem perfectly fine doing a career that you aren’t passionate about.”

“Yeah, because I don’t have a choice!”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. “Right.”

“Dad can’t work right now, so it’s up to me to pick up the slack, and, you know, I’m totally cool with that, but, like, do you know what I’d give to be able to do music all the time, instead of just on the weekends? I’d…” He looks thoughtful. “What would I give? A kidney, definitely. Maybe my signed American Idiot poster.” He shakes his head, refocusing. “Anyway, point is: I don’t have a choice. You do.”

“Okay,” she says. “For the sake of argument, let’s allow that I put off my grad school applications and change majors. What would I even change to?”

“Electrical engineering.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “That was a quick response.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kinda a no-brainer, right? Like, you do audio equipment repair for fun.”

“Have you considered that I might have had ulterior motives for that?” she asks, and he laughs.

“Oh, for sure,” he admits easily. “I got super in my head about it for a couple of weeks, and I wrote like five half-formed bridges that are never, ever going to see the light of day.”

She smiles at that, and the way his face lights up when she does makes her feel fuzzy. She resists the urge to call a time-out and tuck herself back into his side, to wrap the blanket around them both and pull out her papers and spend the rest of the afternoon indulging herself in a deep dive into AI theory. Fights the urge to pull up a terminal and toy with her models. The bundle of questions lingering in the back of her mind is enticing, tangled and complex, an impossible-to-solve puzzle that she’s itching to pick apart piece by piece, until each component is laid out neatly and sensibly in a well-ordered row.

(There is an order to it, after all. There has to be. She just has to find it.)

“The point is, ulterior motives aside, it’s fun for you, right? And—okay, watch.” He clears his throat. “Dwarf computers are way better at figuring out intuitive stuff, like walking and talking like a person, than, like, your regular ones-and-zeroes computers, because they’re… Uh, what’s the word for computers with ones and zeroes but also a secret third thing?”

“Ternary processors,” she completes automatically.

“Exactly!” he says, snapping his fingers. “I know what a ternary processor is! And it’s not because I’m secretly a computer genius, it’s because you talk about them literally all the time! And you have, like, opinions on why they’re like that—”

“Obviously, because why would you pull in spirit theory and magic when the ternary theory completely explains their improved performance? The root cause of Moravec's paradox is that binary computers lack ambiguity—it’s all yes or no, one or zero—so doesn’t it totally make sense that moving to base three would fix that? Why look for a supernatural explanation if we don’t need to? And besides—!”

She stops short as she catches Sam’s smile. His eyes are sparkling, and he props his chin on his hand, looking absolutely smitten.

“What?”

“You’re gorgeous when you’re hyped about something.”

“Thanks.” Her heart goes a little tachycardic again. She’s quiet for a long moment, and then asks, “You really think I should switch majors?”

“Mm,” he says, tilting his head. He squints and glances up at the ceiling. “Not exactly? I think you should ask yourself what you want to do! Like, what makes Maru happy? And then, whatever that is, you should do that.” He shrugs. “If it’s biochem, then it’s biochem, and if it’s not…”

“I would have to attend the lab sections in person,” she argues. She’s already puzzling through the logistics, looking for solutions to a problem that she’s not even sure needs to be solved. “I couldn’t do a hybrid study model, like I’m doing now. Dad’s lab is a biology lab; it doesn’t have the types of equipment that would be required for electrical engineering labs. Neither does the clinic. My personal lab has a few things, but…”

“Then go do the labs in person!”

“I’d have to move to Zuzu City,” she tells him, nudging his foot gently with the toe of her sneaker. “I’d have to live at the university full-time, and we…”

“We’d have to do long-distance, yeah. I figured,” he says easily, nudging her foot back, and her breath catches. Oh. He’s really thought about this. “If you’re cool with it, I’m cool with it. Besides, the trip between here and Zuzu isn’t so bad. It’s, what, a five-hour bus ride?”

“Closer to ten, with all the transfers.”

“Same difference.” He laughs, and his cheeks dimple. “I have top-notch noise-cancelling headphones and a boss who’s super chill about my work schedule. We can make it work.” He pauses. “Would you be cool with it?”

“Absolutely,” she reassures him, making eye contact and holding it for a moment so he knows she means it. After a few seconds, she lets her eyes drift away to the window, where snow is still falling, and she muses, “I’d have to backtrack and take most of the upper-level electrical engineering classes. That means two more years of coursework. My scholarship wouldn’t cover it.”

Sam’s been fully confident in this plan, up until this point, so she expects him to respond to this with a rebuttal— to say, Aha, you think that now, but I’ve come up with a solution for that, too!— and she prepares herself to argue more, to find more reasons why switching to electrical engineering won’t work. She allows herself the possibility of being reasoned with, of being convinced.

“Oh,” Sam says, his face falling. “Crap. That sucks.”

Her heart sinks a little, and it’s hard for her to determine whether she’s disappointed because she’s actually upset about it, or because Sam seems sad. “That’s not to say I couldn’t. I could take out some loans, and the scholarship means I still have all of my college savings left, it’s just…”

“No, no, I totally get it. College is crazy expensive.”

“Sorry,” she says, and when he asks why, explains: “You seem sad.”

“I’m sad for you.” He takes her hand and squeezes it. “I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” she reassures him, squeezing back, but as she says it, the word doesn’t feel correct. Doesn’t feel precise. She tries again. “I’m content.”

She gives him a reassuring smile, and that, at least, feels true. She’s content. Maybe that should be enough, but she’s already been knocked flat. The question of happiness aches in the back of her mind like a new bruise, hurting when she presses into it. She wonders whether it will go away, if she ignores it for long enough.

She’s dying to dig into the papers.

“Okay,” he says.

She waits, and when he doesn’t say anything else, squeezes his hand again and lets go. “I should get back to my applications, I think.”

“Yeah,” he replies, clearing his throat. “My lunch break is probably done. I should get back to work.”

She wakes her laptop from the sleep it’s fallen into, the screensaver of stars vanishing as she inputs her password. She props her back against the nearest shelf and balances the laptop on her thighs, trying to focus on the prompts for her personal statement. What motivates you? Why are you interested in biochemical engineering? Where do you see yourself in ten years?

“You could ask your dad, maybe,” Sam suggests. (He hasn’t made any move to get up from his spot on the cushions.) “He knows how the whole academia thing works, right? Maybe you could apply to an electrical engineering program for grad school without doing it for undergrad? Or you could apply for another scholarship, or…”

“Oh, no, there’s no way I’m bringing this up with Dad without a plan,” she says, glancing up from her laptop. “He’d totally lose it.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “He would not ‘totally lose it.’ Your dad’s got, like, the evenest temper I’ve ever seen.”

“True. What I mean is, he would get frustrated. He wouldn’t understand.” She sighs, staring at the blinking cursor. “He definitely wouldn’t approve.”

Sam is quiet for a moment, and then asks, “Does he need to?”

“I respect his opinion, and I want him to approve of the choices I make. The big ones, at least.” She shrugs, running her thumbnail along the edge of the space bar. “Besides, it really stresses him out whenever we’re not on the same page about things. I don’t want to put him through that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get that,” Sam says, but his voice is oddly tight. There’s anxiety and self-consciousness in the set of his shoulders, and her heart sinks.

“I don’t mean—” She hesitates, then closes her laptop entirely and puts it aside. “Sam, listen. It’s not like that with you.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” she insists, grabbing his hand. “Because you’re worth it.”

He frowns. “And your career’s not?”

“That’s not what I’m saying! I can always do my inventions on the side, you know? You are not an on-the-side thing.” She interlaces their fingers. His are calloused from his guitar strings. “I really wish my dad approved of my decisions, especially this one. It’s not easy for me to be misaligned with him, but you’re worth being uncomfortable for.”

He looks at her with wide eyes and a furrowed brow, like he disbelieves it, and that won’t do.

“You’re an amazing person.” She tugs his hand up and kisses his knuckles, the silver of his rings cool against her lips. “You are patient. And kind. And fun, and talented, and generous, and funny, and a really great listener. And you do an amazing job caring for your family and friends— not just taking care of them, but caring for them.” She glances up. His cheeks are pink, and his eyes are wide. “Do you want me to show you the pros-and-cons list? I made one. There are a lot of pros.”

“Oh, for sure, you can totally keep saying nice things about me,” he jokes, but he sounds a little choked up. He swallows hard. “Thank you.”

“You’re important to me.” She lifts her free hand to his cheek, turning his head to look at her, and he closes his eyes with a sigh, leaning into her touch. “And I am going to tell him! I promise. It’s just… I think maybe if I time it right…”

“Don’t do it until you’re ready, okay? I can totally wait,” he sighs, and then opens his eyes and grins mischievously, scooting towards her. “So! Out of curiosity, what else is on the pros-and-cons list? Did my weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock make the cut?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she tells him, and his eyes crinkle at the edges. She rubs her thumb across his cheek. “And your eyes, and your smile, and…” She trails off as his eyes flit down to her mouth and linger there. She forgets how to breathe.

“Was this on the list, too?” he asks quietly, then leans in and kisses her.

“You know, I don’t think it was.” She moves her hand to the back of his head, running her fingers through the short fringe. “I didn’t have enough data to make an, uh—” He presses his lips to hers again, soft and sweet. He tastes like strawberries, this time. “A proper assessment.”

“What about now?”

She hums, pretending to think it over. “I think we should do a few more, just to be sure.” She kisses his cheek. “Collect a few more samples.” His jawline. “A few more data points.”

“Oh, really?” he chuckles. “Just a few?”

“One can never have too large a dataset,” she teases, tugging him in for another kiss.

The bell over the library door rings, accompanied by squeaking hinges and a rush of wind, and Maru and Sam spring back from each other. Maru kicks her laptop a little in the process, and it skitters off the cushion and catches on the blanket, tangling it around her legs as she scrambles to stand up. She mutters something that might be a swear word under her breath, and Sam snorts and offers her a hand. He pulls her to her feet, and then, after a quick glance over his shoulder, ducks in and places another kiss on her cheek.

“Sam,” she scolds, struggling to hold back laughter, and he shushes her, but he’s laughing, too.

“It’s just me,” Gunther announces as he rounds the end of the bookshelf, then stops short as he takes in Sam, and Maru, and the big cushion pile that they’ve clearly just been curled up in. Sam goes stiff beside her, and Maru jumps into action.

“Sam was just helping me study!” she explains, putting on her best good-girl expression, with a bashful smile and too-wide eyes. “He gave me the articles—thanks for that, by the way—and I just had to talk about them with someone, you know? Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract him from his work.”

“I see.” Gunther glances dubiously at the cushion-and-blanket pile, looking something close to amused, but he must decide it’s none of his business, because the next thing he says is: “We’re open for another half-hour, and then we’re closing up.”

“Oh,” she says. “Why?”

“Snow day. Seems the blizzard’s rolling in a day earlier than expected,” he informs them, and it’s only then that she notices the fresh-fallen snow melting in his hair. He nods in her direction. “You should head out soon, if you want to make it back up the mountain before the path gets too icy.”

Gunther vanishes behind the bookcase, and she kneels, gathering up her laptop and study materials and sliding them neatly into her purple backpack. She zips it up and stands, shouldering it, and then turns to face Sam, who looks vaguely apologetic.

“I’d offer to walk you back, but my shift’s not over yet, and I should probably finish mopping the museum section before closing. But, uh, text me when you get home safe, yeah?”

“Will do,” she promises. “Thank you, Sam.”

“Any time,” he says, and the last kiss he presses to her cheek may melt her, but it’s his smile that keeps her warm on the cold, snowy walk back home.

Chapter Text

Sebastian wakes on Monday morning to a notification that his tractor battery is ready for pickup at Pierre’s. When he swings by to grab it, Abigail interrogates him immediately—she’s very interested to know why he’s ordered a tractor battery, where he’s taking it, and whether it has anything to do with a certain local farmer. He answers all of her questions with vague, monosyllabic statements and noncommittal shrugs, and then makes his way to Ava’s place, his toolkit in one hand and the battery, lead-heavy, in the other.

He hauls himself up the porch, sets the battery down, shakes out his aching hand, and knocks. After a few seconds, Ava appears at the door, with Caesar Augustus trailing close behind. She’s clad in a grey tank top and an oversized flannel, and she lights up as soon as she sees him.

“Hey! Hi. Hello.” She leans against the doorframe, biting her lip and fidgeting with the tail of her braid. It seems like she does that a lot. It’s kind of cute. “Are you here to work on the tractor again?”

“Yeah. The battery finally came in,” he says, a little redundantly, because the battery is clearly visible on the porch beside him.

“Awesome.” She glances up at the cloudy sky. “It’s getting pretty cold out. Do you wanna come in and warm up for a minute before you get started? Maybe grab a hot drink or something? I’ve got coffee, tea, hot cocoa…”

“Oh. Uh… Coffee sounds nice, actually. Thanks.”

He follows her inside, toeing his shoes off at the door, and stops short at the sight of several dozen amber-colored swing-top glass bottles. They’re scattered across every available flat surface in the kitchen to dry, red tea towels laid out underneath them to catch the water. A giant aluminum pot is boiling on the stove.

“Sorry, the kitchen’s kind of a mess right now,” Ava says, fishing another bottle out of the pot with tongs and setting it carefully on the counter beside her. She sets several more bottles in the boiling water, then sets a timer on her phone and moves to the sink to wash her hands. “Just sit down wherever!”

“Wherever” ends up being at the kitchen table, which is, of course, covered in bottles. There’s a small, squarish area of uncovered wood near the edge where the he thinks a coaster and a coffee mug might fit, if he’s very careful.

“I’ve always wanted to drink coffee out of a beer bottle,” he deadpans, and she laughs.

“Sorry. I’m bottling the next batch of hard cider today, so I have to sterilize everything first,” she explains, grinning and brushing some stray locks of hair out of her face. She pours water into her coffee maker, then grabs a tin of coffee from the cabinet. “I’m pretty sure it’s gonna take me, like, the entire rest of the day, but I really want to get this done before the blizzard hits tomorrow.”

“You want an extra hand?”

“Are you sure? I thought you wanted to work on the tractor.” She stuffs a filter into the coffee maker with practiced ease, scoops out the coffee, and flips a switch.

“Nah, cider-bottling sounds like fun,” he says, and then, in case bottling apple cider is more of a solo activity: “If you don’t mind the company?”

She beams as she walks over and drops herself down into the wooden chair next to his with a solid thud. Her hazel eyes sparkle.

“Oh, no,” she reassures him, “I definitely don’t mind the company.”

.

The cellar of the farmhouse is cool and damp, with wood paneling lining the walls. There are several shelves of barrels and wine casks, stacked floor to ceiling, and a few large stainless steel kegs. She leads him to the back corner of the room, where there are rows of glass jars filled with apple cider lined up on a worn wooden table. The area is well-lit, but she’s also strung some fairy lights across the bare rafters in the ceiling.

“Are those always there?” he asks. “Or are you just trying to infuse your wine kegs with some extra holiday cheer?”

She glances up, then snorts. “They’re there for the vibes, okay?”

“Sorry, you said they’re there for the vines?” It’s a horrible pun, and as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he’s hit with a wave of shame and regret. It’s a massive wave. More of a tsunami. He cringes. “Because—because, it’s wine, and… Um…”

What’s gotten into you? he scolds himself. Why on Yoba’s green earth are you cracking unfunny jokes like some kind of terrible sadboy stand-up comedian?

But Ava actually laughs, ostensibly at the horrible pun and not at him, which, frankly, he thinks is nothing short of a Winter Star miracle.

“Shut up,” she giggles, nudging his shoulder with her own.

He does shut up, because her arm is soft and warm, and he’s suddenly using all of his effort to think about something else, anything else, so he doesn’t fixate on how good those two seconds of physical contact felt for the next five hours. That would be weird and creepy, he thinks, and he cannot possibly be that touch-starved.

Focus. What can you see? Ava, her eyes sparkling in the warm fairy lights.

What can you hear? Ava’s voice, saying words. It’s got a cheerful, musical lilt to it. In an ideal world, he’d be paying attention to what she’s saying, because it seems important, but he keeps getting distracted by the shape of her lips. It’s like they’ve got their own gravitational force. He thinks maybe this grounding exercise isn’t actually helping.

What can you smell?

Her hair smells like citrus and vanilla and also kind of like sweat! another part of his brain gleefully informs him, as though finding the smell of someone’s sweat attractive is normal and not absolute freak-level behavior. I bet her hair would be super soft, too, if you ran your fingers through it—

Let’s find a different way to refocus, he tells himself.

“Okay, so then, we’re going to do a third racking into new jars, just to make sure we don’t accidentally siphon any sediment into the bottles,” Ava is explaining, and, right, these are instructions. Instructions for bottling the cider. Which he’s helping with. (Seriously, what’s wrong with him today?) “You know how a siphon works, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, nervously wiping his palms on his jeans. Why is it suddenly so warm in here? “I’ve used a siphon for my motorcycle before.”

“Sweet! Okay, the new jars are right over there.” She points to a nearby shelf, where about two dozen empty five-gallon-sized jugs are lined up in a row. “They’re already sanitized, so you can go ahead and start setting the first round up. Just put them on the ground next to the old ones.”

“Got it.”

“Cool. I’m gonna go grab the rest of the equipment.” She gives a two-fingered salute and walks backwards towards the cellar door. “Be right back!”

Sebastian lets out a breath as she disappears up the stairs, then turns to the jugs. He tries to pick one up with his hands, then realizes that they’re heavier and more unwieldy than they look. (His hands are also still a little sweaty. The memory of the glass milk jug shattering on the general store floor haunts him.) After a moment of consideration, he changes tactics, looping one hand around the mouth of the jug and tugging it towards him. He lets it fall off the edge of the shelf and into his other arm, cradling it against his chest, and then wraps his newly-freed arm around the middle to secure it.

He walks the jug over to the line of cider-filled jugs and sets it carefully on the ground. Then, he moves the other jugs over one at a time, lining them up in a neat row. After five or ten minutes, each of the jugs on the counter has a corresponding empty one on the ground. He steps back.

I did good. I helped. Warmth suffuses through his chest as he wipes his hands off on his jeans again.

It’s not that Ava needs the help, although—despite her denial—she does need it. She’s incredibly capable, but he’s seen her notebook, full of sticky notes and scribbled to-do lists, and he thinks that no single human person could possibly handle that many requests at once.

So, it’s less that Ava needs the help, and more that he likes helping. He likes the feeling that his work is appreciated. That what he’s doing actually makes a difference.

(It’s also a little bit about the way she smiles when she sees him. It’s nice to feel appreciated; it’s even nicer to feel wanted.)

While he waits for Ava to come back down, he tries to find ways to make himself useful. He sweeps the concrete floor. He grabs a dust cloth and wipes down the shelf where the empty jugs were stored. He doesn’t straighten up the packets of seeds scattered across the table at the far end of the room, because she might have a system, and he doesn’t want to mess with her stuff. He wonders what’s taking her so long, and thinks about going to look for her, but…

As he looks around for other (unobtrusive) ways to help, he catches sight of the clear plastic siphoning tube laid out on the table beside the cider jugs. After a moment of consideration, he picks it up, turning it over in his hands.

He’s siphoned gas before. This can’t be too different, right?

.

Admittedly, Ava takes a little longer than she should to gather up the bottles and the rest of the siphoning equipment. This is partly because loading the bottles into the crate takes forever, but it’s also because she swings by the bathroom—Just to make sure I look okay, she tells herself, but then she looks in the mirror and sees that her hair’s a total mess, so she can’t not re-braid it, and she used the cheap eyeliner this morning so it’s all smudged, and—

She can’t be blamed, can she? Sebastian is cool, and he’s hot, and he’s funny and nice, and he’s the first person she’s had a proper crush on since she moved out here. Honestly, she thinks she could use a little bit of a confidence boost.

“Okay-okay-oh-kay,” she tells herself, chewing her bottom lip as she leans towards the mirror, liquid eyeliner in hand. “This’ll just take a minute, it’s okay, you’ve got this, come on…”

Three shaky-handed attempts at winged eyeliner later, she finds that her confidence isn’t really all that boosted.

She gives up on the idea of wings and settles for her usual basic eyeliner. She picks up her lipstick, then thinks better of it (too obvious), but she does reapply her deodorant and spritz on a little perfume, because really, she has been working on the farm all day. She and Sebastian are going to be working in close quarters this afternoon. He’ll probably enjoy the work a lot more if the person he’s doing it with doesn’t smell gross. He’ll enjoy it even more if the person smells nice.

So, putting on the perfume is just common courtesy, right?

She goes back to the kitchen, where the bottles and siphoning tools are all waiting in a large wooden crate. She picks the crate up and makes her way carefully down the basement stairs, descending one step at a time. The bottles clink gently against one another as she goes.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you for so long!” she calls out as she hits the landing. “This should be the rest of the bottles, so we c—oh.”

She rounds the corner of the keg rack and halts as she takes in the five-gallon jug on the ground, half filled with hard cider, and the siphoning tube that very clearly does not have an auto-siphon attached to it. Sebastian is standing beside the setup, looking very pleased with himself.

“You… Started siphoning already,” she says, forcing a smile and trying not to let the dismay seep into her voice, because he’s trying to be helpful, but—

“Yeah?” He frowns, as though to say, Should I not have?

“Uh…” She sucks a breath in through her teeth and starts making her way towards the work table. “Right, so, um—the thing is—how did you start the siphon?”

“With my mouth?” he says, like it’s obvious, and then, realizing the problem: “Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a health code thing,” she says, grimacing. “Doing it by mouth is fine if you’re home-brewing, but, like, if you’re selling it to Gus… For everyone to drink in the saloon…”

“Oh, spirits,” he says, eyes going wide with horror or maybe embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back for it.”

“No-no-no, you’re good, you were just trying to help! And really, I took longer than I should’ve, because”—I was busy drowning myself in perfume and braiding my hair again and reapplying eyeliner because I want you to think I’m pretty—“um… Not important! Don’t worry about it.” She sets the crate down. “Anyway! That one can be yours. On the house.”

“No offense, but I’m not going to drink five gallons of hard cider in the next week.”

She shrugs and starts poking around in another nearby wooden storage crate for a clean siphoning tube. “We can split it, then.”

“You don’t mind the mouth germs?”

“It’s fine if they’re your mouth germs,” she says casually, still rummaging, and then she freezes, her face going hot. Wait wait wait no that was a weird thing to say, abort, abort— “Wait, sorry, do you mind?”

He squints. “Do I mind what?”

“Me? Having your mouth germs?”

“I…” He looks incredibly confused, and Ava wants to melt into the floor. “No? Why would I be the one who minds?”

“I don’t know! Because it’s—! Never mind,” she squeaks out, and continues digging through the crate, even though she found a spare siphoning tube a good three sentences ago.

After a little extra rummaging for show, she pulls out the tube. She attaches the clear plastic auto-siphon to one end, then hands it off to Sebastian, who very hesitantly takes it. He turns the cylinder over in his hands, like he’s not exactly sure how to hold it properly.

“Um,” he says. “How do I…?”

“They’re super easy to get the hang of, I promise!” She drops her end of the tube into the lower, empty jug of the next pair, then motions towards his end. “Now put your end into the higher jug, and then pump it a little to start the siphon.”

He does, which is great, except for the part where he dips it all the way to the bottom of the jug, stirring up the layer of sediment that’s collected at the bottom. This entirely defeats the purpose of doing a third racking. She tries not to make a face, and clearly fails, because he grimaces apologetically and pulls the tube back up again, stopping the siphon.

“Sorry. It might be easier if you just show me how to do it?”

“Okay, sure.”

She steps towards him, closer than she probably needs to for him to hand it off to her, but he doesn’t back away. Her fingers accidentally brush against his knuckles as she takes it from him, skimming over the back of his hand. His skin is warm in the cool air of the cellar, and she feels herself unconsciously lean towards him. He smells nice, like pine and smoke, and—

He lets go of the auto-siphon. She fumbles and nearly drops it.

“Sorry,” he mutters, backing away quickly. His face is red.

Great, now he’s uncomfortable, she chastises herself. Pull yourself together.

“No, I’m sorry, I should’ve—um—anyway,” she says, and then shuts her mouth, because she has no idea where the sentence was headed, and she doesn’t want it veering into uncharted territory.

She sighs as they go back to bottling. Whatever mood there was, it’s gone now. Which is fine. Because the point of this is to get the cider bottled.

Right? Right.

Ava is a professional, she reminds herself. Her one-sided feelings are her own business to deal with, not his. She’s determined not to to ruin one of the best things to happen to her since she moved here, one of the first friendships where she really feels like she can be herself. She knows it’s temporary—she knows, okay, he’s leaving soon, she can’t get her hopes up, but spirits, maybe it would be okay to pretend—

In her mind, she hurriedly plucks up all of the inconvenient things she’s feeling, as many as she can hold, and stuffs them into one of the amber-glass cider bottles. She caps and seals it, the metal hinge coming down on the bottle’s neck with a solid clink in her mind.

Now, stay there, she tells the feelings sternly, as though they haven’t already invited all of their friends into the cellar with them.

.

It takes Sebastian and Ava about two hours to finish the third racking, and then another three or four hours to do the bottling and package everything up. By the time they finish loading the last bottles into their crates, it’s a little after seven, which means he’ll definitely be walking back home in the dark.

Honestly, Sebastian finds he doesn’t really mind.

“Sorry you won’t get to work on the tractor today!” Ava calls behind her as they climb the stairs with the first crates of bottles. The crates are heavier than he was expecting, but she carries hers effortlessly. (He is noticing her strength a very normal amount.) “I didn’t mean to keep you here forever.”

“It’s fine,” he says. The bottles clink together as he steps up. “This was fun.”

“Yeah, well, it’s definitely more fun with you here!” she laughs, and his cheeks suddenly feel very warm. She steps through the doorway to the kitchen and sets her crate on the table, then turns back to face him as he follows. “Like, way more fun. Also way more efficient! You really should take some of this stuff home with you as compensation. Make some mulled cider or something. Or, um, I know you're already taking some of it, because, ha! The siphon thing! But I could…”

I don’t really drink, he’s about to say as he sets his own crate down, but before he can open his mouth, his phone starts buzzing.

It starts buzzing a lot.

“Oh, is that your phone? I should’ve warned you—cell reception down there’s pretty spotty. I can give you the wifi password, if you want?”

“Maybe.” He fishes his phone out of his pocket and checks his notifications.

20 Messages — Various (Sam, National Weather Service, Mom, A.S.S. SQUAD GC HEYO)
5 Missed Calls — Mom
2 New Voicemails — Mom

“Everything good?”

“Mom called. I told her I was planning on coming to the farm today, but maybe she forgot,” he says, frowning. “I’m just gonna listen to the voicemails real quick.”

“Yeah, of course! While you’re doing that, is it cool if I pop out for a minute? I should do the evening egg collection before dinner.”

“Sure.”

“Great! I’ll be back in a few,” she says, grabbing her boots.

He turns away, retreating to the corner of the kitchen, and queues up the first voicemail.

Hey, Sebby, it’s Mom! I know you’re probably still busy helping Ava, but I just heard on the news that the blizzard is rolling in earlier than expected, and I just wanted to give you a heads-up. If you could text me whenever you get the chance, that would be great. Love you! Bye!

“Uh, Sebastian, I think I know why she called you,” Ava calls from the front door.

Sebastian follows behind her and looks over her shoulder, beyond the threshold of the door, to see that the ground is completely covered in a blanket of snow. Maybe several blankets. Big, fluffy, downy blankets, like the type you get at five-star hotels. It’s nearly knee-deep, and fresh snow is still falling heavily, streaking past the porch lights fast enough that it looks more like lines than individual flakes. It’s hard to see more than five or ten feet beyond the front door.

He looks out at the blizzard, then back at Ava, who’s staring up at him with wide eyes.

There’s no way I’m walking home in that, he thinks with dismay.

A sharp, cold gust of wind blows some of the powdery snow into the house, and Ava gasps and slams the door shut with a shiver. She stares at the handle for a long moment, like she’s mulling something over.

“Well,” she finally says, turning to him with a sheepish grin, “I do have a pull-out couch?”

.

“…And this low-pressure system, formerly expected to move north, has in fact continued east,” the weatherman is saying on Ava’s old cathode-ray-tube television, gesturing at a radar map. “High winds and powdery snow are expected to cause white-out blizzard conditions in many areas, and wind chill is expected to hit a low of about negative twenty tonight in the valley. Hunker down somewhere warm, keep off the roads, and stay safe out there, folks.”

“Okay. Got it. Don’t worry, I’m—ugh, no, Mom!”

Ava hugs the couch pillow to her chest and glances over towards the kitchen, where Sebastian’s pacing, holding his phone to his ear.

“Okay, okay. Yeah, I know.” He laughs. “Love you, too. Bye.”

He hangs up and stuffs the phone in his pocket, then comes over and sits beside her. He doesn’t fling himself onto the couch, the way she always does—he just lets himself fall back with a little sigh, settling into the pillows comfortably, quietly, propping his feet up on the coffee table.

“How’s your mom?”

“She’s good,” he says, smiling fondly. “I think she’s actually a little happy I’m stuck here.”

Ava side-eyes him. “Isn’t she the one who invited you home for the holidays?”

“Not like that,” he says, and then, when she throws him a questioning look, glances away. “Forget it. It’s stupid.”

She leans forward, giving him her full attention. “Okay, now I’m curious.”

“She’s just somehow gotten it into her head that we’re… You know.” He glances back at her and then up at the ceiling. His ears are bright red, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Like. Dating. Or something.”

“Oh.” Her face is burning. She feels lightheaded.

“Sorry. I told you it was stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair, looking embarrassed. “Look, don’t read too much into it, okay? My mom just gets these ideas in her head, and, like—”

“No, no, you’re not the one who has to apologize.“ She bites her lip and fidgets with her braid. “I think it might be kind of a little bit my fault?”

He whips around to face her, wide-eyed. “What?”

“I’m sorry! It wasn’t on purpose, I swear!” she rushes to explain, throwing her hands up, as though that will make this situation any less horrifically awkward. “I was over the other day for, uh, reasons, and she never outright said that she thought we were, you know, involved”—(she regrets her word choice immediately; she was going for vague, but the vagueness just makes the implications worse)—“but she definitely assumed that there was, like, some sort of clandestine dating situation happening”—(this isn’t better)—“and—”

Sebastian’s expression has gone from shocked to amused, and he’s pressing his lips together, like he’s trying not to laugh.

“What?” she demands.

“You’re giving yourself way too much credit. This is nowhere close to being your fault.”

“Isn’t it? I really should’ve just told her she’d assumed wrong, but”—but she wasn’t wrong about me—“she never explicitly said it, so I didn’t know how to…”

“Listen, even if you’d told her point-blank, she wouldn’t have believed you.”

He’s grinning at her, now, his asymmetrical smile warm in the glow of the television and fairy lights. She feels her heart slide sideways into something steadier and less anxious, maybe a little hopeful, although it’s still beating hummingbird-fast in her chest. She doesn’t feel any less lightheaded.

“You know, she really cares about you,” she says, fidgeting with her braid. “She gave me a shovel talk and everything. It was both sweet and appropriately intimidating.”

He barks out a laugh. “That sounds like something she’d do.” There’s affection in his voice, and he settles back into the couch again, looking a lot more relaxed. “Anyway, it’s just a miscommunication. Not the worst thing in the world, right?”

Not the worst thing in the world. Well, there’s an idea, she thinks.

“You’re right,” she says, and then, before she has time to think about whether her idea is actually a good one or not, adds on in a rush: “And really, it might actually be kind of good? If she thought we were secretly dating?”

His eyes go wide. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again, and croaks out, “What?”

This is a terrible idea, she thinks, but her mouth keeps going.

“We’re already using each other as a socially-acceptable out,” she says, leaning forward. “Pretending we’re dating would just make it more believable. More socially-acceptable! Everyone gets it when you hang out 24/7 with someone you just started dating, right? It’s a total free pass.”

“Fake dating? Are you seriously proposing fake dating?”

She laughs. It comes out too high-pitched. “Yeah, obviously! Not, like, real dating!”

“Right,” he says, a little too quickly. “Obviously.” The corner of his mouth twitches downwards, and he frowns, which is not a great sign for Ava’s Terrible No-Good Fake Dating Plan. “So, then, what, we just fake date forever?”

Yes, she thinks, a little breathless. Yes, please.

“Um… Well, no,” she says instead, because she hasn’t completely lost her mind yet. She knows what the right answer is, here. “Once the holidays are over, you go back to the city, and everyone forgets it ever happened.”

He scoffs. “How long have you lived here? People never forget anything in this town.”

“I mean, if anyone asks, I can just tell them I wasn’t cut out for the whole long-distance thing.” She shrugs, trying her best to seem casual. “Amicable breakup. Nobody’s the bad guy.”

He opens his mouth again, like he’s going to protest, and her mind finally catches up with her mouth, tackles it, and wrestles it to the ground, shrieking at the top of its lungs: Girl! Have some dignity! He’s clearly not into the idea!

Ava’s face heats with embarrassment, and she decides it’s time to backpedal. Hard. “Okay, so clearly you’re not a fan, which is super valid! Just forget I said anything.”

“I’m just really not sure it’s a good idea. For…” He trails off with a sigh, gazing up at the ceiling again. There is nothing interesting there, so it must be because he doesn’t want to look at her. Ava wants to fold herself into the couch. “Reasons.”

“No, yeah, you’re totally right! Definitely a bad idea.” She laughs and waves a hand dismissively. “I don’t even know why I suggested it!” (She does know. She hopes he doesn’t think about it too hard.)

“I mean, it’s not objectively bad. I do see the logic behind it.”

“Sure,” she says, forcing a smile, but privately wonders: Does he, really? Because the (admittedly minimal) logic behind this proposal is definitely rooted in a lot of wishful thinking and the stack of paperback romance novels on her bookshelf upstairs. She thinks that probably, if he did actually understand her logic, they’d be having a much more uncomfortable conversation right now.

“But I’m really not… Uh…”

“Uh-huh!” This was such a stupid idea. Ava really wants this conversation to be over.

“I just feel like…” He runs a hand through his hair and gestures vaguely with the other, like he’s trying to come up with the right word. His face is bright red, and he’s still staring at the ceiling. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, you said that a few times already,” she says, laughing to try and indicate that she’s fine so they can just move past this, please. “Look, you don’t owe me an explanation. Just forget I said anything.”

He’s silent for a long moment, like he has to take a second to think it over. As though he’s considering whether he wants to forget she said anything. Ava doesn’t understand why he’s hesitant. She wants to drop this conversational thread like it’s electrified razor wire, and she’s the one who brought it up.

Unless he’s deciding whether to leave, she thinks, trying to put on a brave face. He’s going to march back out into the snow, because struggling along an icy mountain path in the the middle of the night, through a white-out blizzard with negative twenty windchill, is nothing compared to navigating the absolute train-wreck that is this conversation.

Instead, he sighs and settles back into the couch. “Okay.”

“Okay, great,” she says, trying not to sounds as relieved as she feels, and then, desperate to move on to something else: “We should probably eat at some point. How do you feel about pizza?”

Chapter Text

Ava throws a frozen pizza in the oven while Sebastian takes a quick smoke break, and then they spend a good ten or fifteen minutes looking for a movie to watch. They finally settle on an old sci-fi film, Mysterium, which is one of Sebastian’s all-time favorites. He’s not the one who asks if they can watch it, but the way his eyes light up when she tells him she’s never seen it before makes it impossible for her to suggest anything else.

They settle in on the couch with pizza and two bottles of the hard cider they bottled earlier. Ava turns on the fairy lights strung over the curtains and turns off the floor lamps. (It’ll be easier to watch if the room is darker, she explains to Sebastian, even though he didn’t ask. I always watch movies this way. He shrugs and replies: Okay.)

She queues up the movie. Everything glows in black-and-white monochrome, with fuzzy lighting that gives all of the shots an eerie, ethereal quality. The film opens on a title card with a large picture of the moon above curling script, and a voice-over that sounds like a radio host from the 50’s promises to take them to the far reaches of space, where untold horrors await them.

Ava cracks her cider open, then holds it up, as if to make a toast, before realizing that there’s not really anything to toast to, here. To bottling cider together? To being trapped in this small, drafty cabin? To using each other as a socially-acceptable excuse to avoid uncomfortable situations?

Finally, she just goes with: “Cheers?”

“Sure. Cheers.” He clinks the necks of their bottles together and takes a sip. His eyebrows shoot up. “Wow, this is actually pretty good.”

Ava squints, trying to decide whether to be offended. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“I don’t usually like alcohol.”

“Why’d you agree to bring half a keg of this stuff home with you, then?” she asks, leaning across the sofa to take his bottle. “Look, you don’t have to finish that if you don’t want to. Let me get you some Joja Cola or tea or something.”

“No, I’m drinking it!” he protests, yanking the bottle out of range. His arm brushes hers as he moves. He smells like pine. “This isn’t regular alcohol. This actually tastes good.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It tastes like apples and cinnamon and a successful afternoon of teamwork,” he deadpans, throwing his head back and taking another swig to hammer home the point. Ava watches the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows, the catch of the amber bottle on his lip, and finds that her mouth is suddenly very dry.

She clears her throat and grabs a slice of pizza, turning her attention back to the screen. A giant eyeball is floating through space. It’s accompanied by orchestral string music, and there’s no apparent connection to the previous scene, which involved monkeys and a large monolith. “Am I supposed to be following this?”

“Just watch.” He settles back into the couch, glancing over at her through long lashes, and he tries to hide his smile with another sip of cider. For a second, she forgets how to breathe.

The eyeball flickers and then disappears with a loud shriek. Ava startles, nearly dropping her pizza, and she shoots Sebastian a dubious look.

“No, really, what’s supposed to be happening, here?” she asks, and he just laughs and insists that she should just keep watching.

(Despite how much he keeps telling her to watch the movie, whenever she glances in his direction, his dark eyes are fixed on her instead of the screen.)

.

“Okay, so like, I get the part in the middle with the space station, but what was the point of the floating eyeball?” Ava asks as the credits roll. “Why did it turn into the moon?”

“What do you think the point of the floating eyeball was?” he counters.

“I don’t know! To freak me out?”

Sebastian looks absolutely delighted by this answer, but he just says, “Huh. Interesting.”

“Seriously, why?” she demands. “And the, like—the weird flashing lights with the orchestral humming? That whole segment went on for at least ten minutes longer than it should’ve. I timed it. What’s with that?”

“I have no idea,” he admits. “Honestly, the fun of watching Mysterium isn’t the movie itself, it’s watching the reactions of the people you’re watching it with.”

She gasps in mock offense. “Oh, so I was the entertainment?”

“Maybe a little bit.” The edge of his mouth twitches up into a smile. “Don’t worry, you were very entertaining. Five out of five stars on Rotten Tomatoes.”

“Oh, well, as long as you had fun,” she laughs.

“I did.” His voice is surprisingly genuine as he says it, and his thigh brushes against hers as he settles back into the couch. It’s warm and pleasant, and he doesn’t immediately recoil from the contact, so she doesn’t, either.

“I did, too,” she admits, hugging a pillow to her chest.

They wait for a beat. Neither of them have moved their legs. She thinks about pressing into him a little, readjusting so that their sides are fully touching, but she doesn’t. She’s had enough of accidentally overstepping boundaries tonight. It’s bad enough that the weather’s trapped him here—she doesn’t want him to feel trapped by her, too.

“Do you want to watch something else?” Ava finally asks. “Queen of Sauce, maybe?”

He clears his throat. “Y—Yeah. That sounds good.”

Ava switches over to her regular television feed. They watch in silence as the chef on the television pulls roasted chunks of spiced pumpkin from the oven. The steam wafts off of them as she dumps them ceremoniously into the mixer, along with some milk and brown sugar. She adds the spices in rapid succession: Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, allspice… She’s reaching for the freshly-ground ginger when Sebastian clears his throat again, and when Ava turns to look, he’s looking back at her.

He’s closer than I thought, she thinks. She leans into him a little before realizing she’s doing it, and she stops herself short when her shoulder brushes his, but he doesn’t pull back. She can feel the warmth radiating through the sleeve of his hoodie. She wants to sink into it.

“What’s up?” she breathes.

“Nothing. Just thinking.” (Is she imagining it? The way his eyes flit down to her lips, just for a moment? Are they dilated like that because the lighting in the room is dark, or—?)

“About what?”

“Uh.” He licks his lips. Swallows. It’s hard to tell, but his cheeks look red. (She thinks maybe she’s not imagining it.) “Nothing, really, I just—”

The lamps and television flicker once, twice, and then the room is plunged into total darkness.

“Jiangui,” he mutters under his breath.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Hang on, let me grab my phone.”

She leans forward, skimming her hands across the surface of the coffee table, feeling out shapes in the dark—that’s a plate, that’s a mug, that’s the remote—and then her fingers make contact with something warm and solid and unfamiliar and, oh, that feels kind of nice, actually—

She doubles down without thinking, brushing her fingers across his knuckles, across the back of his hand, before realizing what she’s doing and yanking her own hand away.

“Oh, um—”

“Sorry,” he says, sounding flustered and apologetic, like he’s the one who has to apologize for accidentally-on-purpose fondling her hand in the dark, and then the springs in the couch creak as he shifts back, turning away. His face is briefly lit by his phone screen, and with a few taps, he manages to get the flashlight on.

“Right, okay,” Ava says. “So, the power’s out.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, I kinda got that.”

“I’ve got some candles. Hang on…”

She stumbles towards the kitchen, and he follows behind her without asking, holding his phone up so she can see where she’s going. She makes a beeline up the stairs to the upper room, watching her footing carefully. The light from Sebastian’s phone casts sharp, bright shadows, catching on the plush reading chair, on the drawn maroon curtains, and finally on the hardwood bookshelves set against the far wall. Their bottom halves are storage cabinets. Their tops, built for display, are lined with tchotchkes, novels, gifts from villagers, and other miscellaneous items Ava has picked up over the last three years.

She kneels and tugs open the cabinet door, rummages, and pulls out a large cardboard box. She opens it to reveal a large collection of yellowish-brown candles in a variety of shapes and sizes.

“Why do you have so many candles?” Sebastian asks. He angles his camera so he can see better, stepping close enough that he brushes her shoulder. “Are they scented? Does your farm turn into a Bath and Body Works every full moon?”

She laughs. “Look, I had a lot of extra beeswax that I didn’t know what to do with, and I had to do something to beat Pierre’s grange display at the fair this year.”

His smile flashes in the harsh light of his phone. “Interesting. Did you win?”

“Oh, for sure. He was pissed, but half his display was stuff from my farm, anyway.” She pulls out two taper candles, two brass candle holders, and a large three-wick candle. “We can use this big one in the living room, maybe, and then each of us can take one of the long ones?”

“Works for me.” He fishes a silver lighter out of his pocket. “You need a light?”

“That would be super helpful, thank you.”

She wedges the taper candles into their holders, then holds one up. The room goes dark for a moment as Sebastian turns his phone flashlight off. He makes a sharp, quick motion, and a small flame appears in his fingers. He holds it up to the candle wick for a few moments with steady hands, then pulls away as soon it catches.

“Perfect, thanks,” Ava says, kneeling down to light the second candle with the first. She hands one of the lit candles off to Sebastian, who steps closer to one of the shelves while she kneels down to pick up the others. “I think we can wait until we get downstairs to light the big one, and then maybe we can light the fireplace so it doesn’t get too cold. What do you think?” There’s no response. “Sebastian?”

“Where did you get these?”

Oh, great, he’s found my romance novels, she thinks, but if that were it, his voice wouldn’t be so quiet and awed, would it? She has to strain to hear him over the wind of the blizzard outside.

When she looks up, he’s staring at the little shelf of wooden carvings she gathered from the community center.

She stands and holds up her candle to light them a bit better: A stretching tortoiseshell cat, striped dark-brown and orange. A small spotted rough-hewn figure that’s either a lizard or a salamander. A smooth frog, to which Ava has added a small gold crown. There are a few other animals gathered in the collection, and a piece of a banister is laid across the front of the shelf, carved with swirling, ornate scrollwork on one end and dotted with practice carvings on the other.

The candlelight emphasizes the uneven, angular edges of the animals, throwing them into sharp contrast, but as it flickers across their surfaces, they almost seem like they’re moving. Like they’re alive. Ava has to blink a few times to make sure they aren’t breathing.

(Living wooden animals would not be the weirdest thing to come out of that building.)

“The animals? I found them in the community center before the, uh…” Before the weird little apple spirits healed it with the power of nature magic. “During the restoration process.”

“Yeah, I know that much,” he says, as though that part was obvious. It shouldn’t be.

“The cat’s my favorite,” she says, gently tapping the cat on the head with her finger. It wobbles. “I named her Clover.”

“She’s—” Sebastian stops short and squints, leaning forward. “You gave the frog a crown?”

“I felt like it suited him.”

“Weirdly, it kind of does.” His expression is incredulous. “You saved them. Why?”

“I just… Liked them?” He raises skeptical eyebrows. “They looked cool?” His eyebrows creep higher. Try again. “Cool is maybe the wrong word, but I just…” They felt like they meant something to someone, once, she almost says, but that feels stupid. “I didn’t want them to get destroyed during the renovation, is all.”

“Why?” Sebastian sighs. “It’s just trash, you know?”

Anger flares up in her chest, and her face heats with embarrassment. “Excuse me?”

He cringes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then what did you mean it like? You’re going to come into my house and call my decor trash and expect me to stand here and take it?”

“No! I just…” He looks lost for a moment. The candlelight casts a warm glow on his face, catching in his dark hair, and spirits, even when she’s irritated with him, he’s gorgeous. He says, very softly: “Most people wouldn’t see these as something worth saving, is all.”

“Oh! So they’re worthless trash?” She smiles, sharp and sarcastic and irritated. “I see what you meant now! That’s so much better. Thank you.”

He huffs, frustrated, and runs a hand through his hair. “That’s not—you know what I mean!”

“Oh, I know exactly what you mean, and you know what? I don’t care if you think they’re worthless!”

“I don’t th—”

“These meant something to the person who made them! They mean something to me.” She schools her expression into something hard, something that she hopes doesn’t betray the flicker of self-consciousness and humiliation she feels. “I didn’t take you as the sort of person who assigns value to things based on what most people think.”

He looks at her for a long time, his lips slightly parted, like he wants to say something but can’t quite put it to words. After what feels like an eternity, he turns back to the figurines on the shelf, closes his mouth, and swallows, his brow furrowing. He studies them carefully, like he’s considering them for the very first time.

“I’ll see you downstairs,” she says abruptly, then turns on her heel and walks away.

.

Ava quickly realizes that there is only one bed.

Technically speaking, there are two beds: The full bed in Ava’s room, and the queen-sized sofa bed in the living room. The problem is that there is a blizzard outside, and now that the power is out, the only source of heat in the entire house is the fireplace, which is in the living room. With the sofa bed. So really, while there are two beds, only one of them isn’t icebox-cold.

Power outages aren’t unusual during blizzards, but the only overnight visitor Ava’s had since she moved out here is Deanna. None of her visits ever overlapped with a blizzard or a power outage, and frankly, even if they had, it’s much less awkward to propose sharing a bed with your childhood best friend than with your crush.

(Said crush looks twice as pretty as usual in the light of the fireplace. He’s curled up on the couch, quietly flipping through a small paperback novel. It’s one of her grandfather’s, a copy of Dracula. Every so often, he unconsciously presses his knuckles to his lips, and she finds it stupidly attractive. She’s finding out a lot of inconvenient things about herself today, isn’t she?)

It’s especially awkward to ask your crush to share a bed if you’ve also recently asked him whether he’s interested in fake-dating you (he isn’t), and then made a fool of yourself by going borderline-postal over a few spirits-forsaken wooden animals. As soon as Ava crossed the lower threshold of the stairs, she’d begun to wonder whether she might have overreacted; by the time she finished building the fire, she’d decided she had. The spark of her fury has now been fully doused, and the embarrassment is beginning to properly set in.

There is only one warm bed. Ava would rather freeze than ask Sebastian to share it.

She makes two mugs of hot chocolate as a peace offering, thanking the spirits for her gas-powered stove, and then lingers for as long as she can by the fire with her own paperback, soaking up the warmth. (She tries to angle the cover away from him, feeling self-conscious for reasons she can’t quite nail down, until he glances up from his own novel and asks: Romance? The book, I mean. He sounds curious and maybe a little nervous, but not judgmental. When she confirms, he nods, offering up a little half-smile. Not my vibe, but I respect it. After that, she doesn’t bother to hide.)

She’s about thirty minutes in before her eyelids start to droop. When she almost dozes off, the book nearly slipping from her fingers, she decides that it’s time to call it a night.

“Well, this has been fun, but I think I’m headed to bed,” she announces, shutting her book and stretching her arms over her head. “I’ll get the sofa bed set up for you before I go.”

“I’ll help,” he offers, setting Dracula on the side table next to his empty mug.

They work together to pull the bedframe out of the couch and wrap it in fitted sheets and blankets. Ava retrieves some extra pillows from the linen closet. She wonders, briefly, if Sebastian is going to sleep with his jeans or without them, and then decides not to think about it.

“You know where the bathroom is, and you’re welcome to help yourself to anything from the fridge,” she says, giving the pillows one extra fluff, “and, um… Actually, did you want an extra blanket?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

She grabs her nicest blanket from the linen closet. It’s a plush throw blanket, one that she brought with her when she moved from the city. The fabric on one side is red and velvety soft to the touch, and the other side is white fleece. When she hands it over to him, his fingers brush against her knuckles, his palms overlapping the backs of her hands just slightly as he takes the blanket from her. His hands are warm and pleasant. She kind of wants an excuse to hold them.

“Um… Thanks,” he says. “Thanks again, I mean, because I already said thanks before, and—” He clears his throat and glances away. “Thank you for the blanket. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she breathes, and retreats back to her room.

.

Going from the warmth of the living room into the cold of her bedroom is shocking.

She knew it would be chilly, of course, but the cold nearly knocks her over, and she curses herself for not checking her window seals before winter set in this year. (Just one more task buried in the infinite shuffle of special orders.) She feels like she’s stepped into a refrigerator. It’s not freezing, technically speaking, but as soon as the air hits her, goosebumps break out along her arms, and she’s seized by a full-body shiver.

She changes by candlelight into her button-down flannel pyjamas as quickly as she can. They’re the thickest ones she has. She pulls all of the spare blankets out of her closet and arranges them on the bed. She holds her hands beside the candle briefly, soaking in the warmth, before she blows it out, plunging the room into darkness.

Ava is already shivering in earnest when she crawls into bed, and the mattress and sheets, cold to the touch, only make matters worse. After a moment of consideration, she slides out of bed and puts on her bathrobe, too, and a pair of heavy woolen socks. They help a little, but not much.

She closes her eyes, willing herself to fall sleep. The space under the covers gets slightly warmer, but her body gets colder. The shivering becomes more intense. Her teeth begin to chatter.

If I had my winter coat, she thinks, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. But her winter coat is in the coat closet, next to the kitchen. If she goes to grab it, she’ll have to go through the living room, and she’s pretty sure Sebastian will have questions. So she keeps shivering. Waiting. Hoping the bed will eventually feel warmer. (It doesn’t.)

After what feels like an eternity, she hears the creaking of bedsprings from the living room. The bathroom door opens and shuts. There’s the faint sound of running water, another open-shut of the door, and then there’s a shuffling of blankets as Sebastian climbs into bed.

Okay, she tells herself. Her teeth are chattering so hard she can barely think, and her toes are numb, but a plan is beginning to form. We’ve got this. All we need to do is wait for him to go to sleep, and then…

.

Thirty minutes later (or a close approximation of it), Ava sneaks very, very quietly across the hardwood floor of her living room. She neatly avoids that one creaky area under the windows. There is one brief moment where she thinks she hears Sebastian stirring in his bed, so she freezes, standing as still as she can while still shivering, until his breathing evens back out.

She tiptoes to the coat closet and slowly, slowly, slowly turns the knob.

Pulls the door open.

Pulls her winter parka carefully off of its rack, hanger and all.

Success, she thinks, breathing a sigh of relief. She grabs a scarf, too.

She’s about to sneak back to her room, but it occurs to her that there are reusable hand warmers in her coat pocket. All she has to do is heat them in the microwave. She does a quick cost-benefit analysis and decides that the kitchen is far enough away (and her room is freezing enough) that the risk is worth it.

She moves stealthily into the kitchen and pops the rice-filled hand warmers into the microwave. It hums quietly as it warms them, and she watches the timer count down, tugging the door open a few seconds before it goes off. The packs are nearly too hot to hold as she pulls them out, and she gratefully stuffs them back into her coat pockets.

Great job, she congratulates herself, holding the coat and scarf carefully as she navigates back through the living room. Sebastian’s still asleep, his breathing slow and even. We’re okay. We’ve got hand warmers, and a warm scarf, and a high-grade field parka. All we need to do is make it back to the room, and everything will be—

The jacket bumps against a windowsill, and the hanger clatters to the ground.

“Ava?” Oh, no. Sebastian’s voice is groggy, rough with sleep. Her stomach flips.

“Hey,” she whispers, as soothingly as possible. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

He sits up, rubbing a hand over his face, and then does a double-take. “Why are you holding a coat?”

She tries to hide the bundle behind her back before realizing that this is both futile and suspicious-looking. “Oh, what? This old thing? I just, uh, needed something from my coat pocket.”

“So you’re taking the whole coat back to your room?” His eyes narrow. Something in his jaw shifts. He’s still sleepy, but she can see the gears in his head turning. “Is that a scarf?”

“Maybe! Don’t worry about it.” She gives a smile that she hopes is convincing as she slowly inches back towards her door.

“There’s no heat in your room, is there?”

Crap. “I mean, technically speaking, there’s not really a heater or anything per se, but it’s totally fine! I’ve got this coat, and some hand-warmers, and…”

“Oh, well, as long as your hands are warm,” he deadpans, sliding out from under the blankets and padding over in her direction. “You’re shivering.”

“No!” She shivers, and he raises an eyebrow. “Only a little.”

“Your lips are blue,” he accuses, and Ava thinks that if this were one of the fun fluffy holiday romance novels sitting on her bookshelf upstairs, she could bat her eyelashes and say, Oh, well, maybe you can warm them up with your own, then?

“No, they’re not,” she says lamely, still shivering.

He sighs, running a hand through his hair, and she wonders, for probably the dozenth time tonight, what it would feel like to run her own fingers through it. He chews his lip for a long moment, then glances away and says, “Look, you take the bed. I’ll take the floor.”

Her jaw drops, scandalized. “No! You are absolutely not sleeping on the floor!”

“Then I’ll take the cold bed, and you can take the living room one.”

“No! You’ll freeze!”

He looks her dead in the eye and raises his eyebrows pointedly.

“I don’t mean you’ll freeze,” she backpedals, because, dammit, he got me, “I just mean—you’re my guest! And as a guest, you are entitled to a warm, comfy bed and a good night’s rest.” His eyebrows creep higher. “I’ll be fine!”

“I won’t have a good night’s rest if I spend the whole night worrying about you freezing to death.”

“Aw, you’d worry about me? That’s sweet.”

She means it as a joke, a deflection, but his expression goes startled and wide-eyed for a second, like a deer caught in the headlights of oncoming traffic, and she swears his cheeks darken just a little in the firelight. He clears his throat and glances away.

He must think I’m flirting with him, she thinks. (Maybe she is.)

“Anyway,” she laughs, nervously twirling the end of her braid around her finger, “I promise, the heating pads pack way more of a punch than you’d think, but if it makes you feel better, I can take the living room floor. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a sleeping bag somewhere.”

“No. I’ll take the floor.”

“You’re a guest,” she argues.

“Yeah, and you’re—” He stops short, staring at her.

“I’m what?”

He hesitates, looking vaguely uncomfortable, and then reluctantly asks: “Is it sexist if I argue that you shouldn’t take the floor because you’re a woman?”

She snorts. He’s trying to be a gentleman about this. She’s a little appalled that she finds this charming, because she thinks she might have been annoyed if someone else had said it. Spirits alive, is she really this easily swayed by a pretty face? “What do you think?”

“I—” He opens his mouth. Shuts it. The discomfort in his posture is no longer vague. “Uh…”

“Great,” she says, smiling and clapping her hands together, “so we agree! I’ll take the floor.”

“Wh—No? No!”

“Too late,” she says in a sing-song voice, tossing her coat-scarf-blanket bundle onto the nearest chair and heading for the coat closet next to the kitchen. She tugs her phone out of her pyjama pocket and turns the flashlight on, then yanks the door open and starts rummaging around.

“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” he calls from the living room.

“Don’t worry! I slept on the floor a ton back in college,” she responds, pushing a suitcase aside and craning her neck, and… Ah! There it is. She tugs her trusty sleeping bag out, the synthetic fabric chilly under her fingers. It’s only a little dusty. She stands, pocketing her phone, and carries it back towards the living room. “I’ll be perfectly fi—”

She freezes as soon as she steps through the door. Sebastian, in her absence, has grabbed a decorative holiday-themed blanket and a throw pillow, and he is now lying on the rug next to the fireplace. He’s wrapped himself in a little red-white-and-green blanket cocoon.

“Wow,” she says, setting the sleeping bag down and crossing her arms. “You know, I’m feeling this—this awful, sharpish sort of emotion, kind of knifelike, in my back. I think it might be betrayal? Is this what betrayal feels like?”

His head pokes out of the cocoon. “You left me no choice.”

“That throw pillow has beads on it. That can’t be comfortable.”

“It’s more comfortable than guilt.”

She snorts and picks up her sleeping bag, then walks over to the left side of the fire. She kneels down, undoes the ties on the bag, and starts setting it up.

“What’re you doing?” he asks with dismay, sitting up. The blanket drops from his shoulders entirely. “There’s no sense in both of us sleeping on the floor.”

“Exactly! So you take the bed,” she says, smiling in a way that she hopes conveys: I am more stubborn than you are, and I will be a good hostess even if it kills me.

He frowns. His mouth presses into a thin line, and then his brow furrows even further, like he’s thinking something over. He tugs the blanket up around his shoulders and turns away, staring into the fire pensively. “As long as I’m on the floor, you’re going to insist on also sleeping on the floor, aren’t you?”

She sits on her sleeping bag, now fully rolled out, and nods. “That is the plan, yes!”

“And if I sleep on the bed,” he says slowly, “are you still going to insist on sleeping on the floor?”

“It’s not like there’s anywhere else to sleep,” she laughs, but then his eyes flit over to the bed, just for a fraction of a second, and then to her. Her heart stutters in her chest. Oh. Is that an option?

“You’re right, there’s not,” he says quickly, turning his gaze back to the fire, at the same time she says, “Unless—!”

He turns to look at her again, and she cuts herself off. She laughs again, high and nervous this time, and he watches. He studies her face. He clears his throat. Hesitates.

“Unless what?” he finally asks.

“Unless you wanted to share the bed?” Her heart is hammering in her chest, but there’s no way he’d’ve prompted her unless he wanted her to offer, right?

“I mean…” He hesitates again. “Do you want to?” He cringes as soon as the words leave his mouth. “I don’t mean, do you want to, I mean—would you be comfortable with it?”

That’s a stupid question, she doesn’t say. Who wouldn’t want to share a bed with you? “I’m good with it if you are,” she says instead, trying not to seem unduly eager.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding slowly and taking a deep, shaky breath. “I mean, it’s perfectly normal for two friends to share a bed. Platonically. As friends. Right?”

“Oh, for sure!” Ava nods along. “Super platonic.”

“Like, I’ve slept in the same bed as Sam before, and that’s been… Normal. And fine.”

“Totally normal and fine,” she agrees. “This is a two-person bed. For two people. There’s a ton of space.”

“Okay, then,” he says, nodding and turning back to the fire. “Okay.”

.

Ava returns to her room to retrieve her pillow and blanket. She comes back to find that Sebastian has collected the remaining throw pillows from the couch and lined them up down the middle of the bed, creating a barrier—for propriety, he says, with pink cheeks and enough earnestness that she can’t even laugh at the ridiculousness of it. If the pillow barricade makes him feel more comfortable, well, she’ll happily stay on her side of the bed.

“Look, we don’t have to do this,” she tells him. “I can haul my bed in here, or…”

“Is there even enough space in here for that?”

“Um…” Ava bites her lip and glances around the room. “No.”

Sebastian fidgets with the edge of the quilt, like he’s considering throwing it off. “Look, if you’re uncomfortable—”

“No!” she insists, a little too quickly. “I’m comfortable. Totally comfortable!”

Ava nestles into the covers. The mattress is thin, and the springs are digging into her legs, but the fire at the foot of the bed is nice and warm. It casts the living room in an orange-red glow, and it crackles pleasantly, cutting through the occasional gusts of wind outside.

The only other thing she can hear is quiet, even breathing from the other side of the pillow barrier, and the occasional squeak of the metal bedframe as Sebastian settles in. Under ordinary circumstances, the thought of sleeping one pillow barrier away from the hottest man alive might keep her awake, but it’s the middle of the holiday season, and she’s bone-tired. She sinks into the mattress, her eyes heavy, and curls up. She can feel the blanket of sleep settling around her, the crackle of the fire becoming a dim flicker at the edge of her consciousness, and—

“The cat’s name is Xiaobiao.”

Ava rolls over. Sits up. Sebastian is lying on his back, hands folded across his chest. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling, and he doesn’t look over at her.

“What?” she asks.

He’s silent for a moment, unmoving, and then says, slowly and deliberately, “The cat’s name is Xiaobiao. Or it was. Originally.”

He swallows, and his eyes dart over to her nervously, like he’s trying to gauge her reaction. She blinks, thinking over what he’s just said, and the other things: I used to spend a lot of time in abandoned places when I was a teenager, and I used to help Mom out with the carpentry. The little carved robin beside the cash register. Most people wouldn’t see those carvings as something worth saving.

When she puts the pieces together, she’s surprised she didn’t figure it out sooner.

“Xiaobiao?” she echoes, pulling her knees to her chest.

“Xiaobiao. There’s kind of a dip in the middle, and the ‘o’ at the end goes up in pitch,” he says, letting out a sigh. The tension in his shoulders relaxes, and he turns his head to look at her properly. “It’s, uh, the word for ‘little’ and the word for ‘stripe’, but, like, tiger stripes? It can also just mean ‘tiger.’”

She grins. “Yeah, I could see that.”

“She was one of my favorites, too,” he confesses, “but I think I liked the frog the most. His name was Xiaohai.”

“‘Little…’?”

“‘Little sea,’ but I borrowed the ‘sea’ character from the name of this one Daoist xian, which is basically just like, uh—an immortal being who used to be a regular guy?”

“How’d he become immortal?”

“Oh, the usual: Local ancient courtier has a spiritual awakening, leaves home, and practices self-cultivation while doing a bunch of solo travel. He also rode a mythical three-legged toad and gave himself bangs, which, let me tell you, I found super inspirational, as a teenager. My mom was less hyped.” Ava snorts. “I spent a ton of time doing Wikipedia deep dives into Chinese culture stuff back in high school, because, well, you know…” He trails off, shrugging, and waves a hand. “Asian diaspora identity angst. Also the usual.”

He drops it into the conversation casually, but it stops Ava short. She’s not an idiot—of course she knows that Sebastian is Chinese, and that he grew up in a town of mostly white people—but the actual implications of that hadn’t ever really occurred to her. “Huh,” she says, and feels like she ought to say something else.

“Anyway, related fun fact, Xiaohai can totally hold a coin in his mouth,” he continues, sitting up and turning to face her across the pillow barrier. “Did you have a name for him, too?”

Oh, no. She bites her lip and shakes off her lingering thoughts. “You have to promise not to laugh.”

He looks intrigued. “Okay.”

“Eric,” she admits, and then, when he frowns in confusion: “Like the prince?”

He barks out a laugh, then claps a hand over his mouth. His shoulders are still shaking with repressed laughter. A few snickers manage to sneak through his fingers.

“You promised!” she gasps, indignant, but she has to bite back another smile. His laughter is nice. She wants to fold it up neatly and tuck it away. Save it for a rainy day. Wrap it around her heart like a warm, fuzzy blanket, soft and comfortable in her hands.

“I’m sorry! Sorry, I just…” His laughter tapers off, and rubs a hand over his face. “Prince Eric? Really?”

“I was maybe a little obsessed with The Little Mermaid as a kid,” she says, by way of explanation. “I started calling him Prince Eric as a joke, and it kind of stuck.”

“Eric,” Sebastian repeats, shaking his head. “It’s gonna take me a minute to get used to that one.”

“I think I’m gonna start calling him Xiaohai. It suits him.”

“Hm.” Sebastian’s smile goes melancholy around the edges. He drops back down onto his side of the bed, and then rolls over to face the wall, tugging the covers around him. She can feel the reverberation of it in the mattress. “Anyway, you were right.”

She blinks. “Right about what?”

“They meant a lot to the person who made them.” He sighs, wrapping the blanket tighter around his shoulders. The pillow barrier shifts, just a little. He’s quiet for a long moment, and then adds, very quietly: “Thanks for taking good care of them while I was gone.”

Ava is hit with the sudden, inexplicable urge to pull his head into her lap. She wants to card her fingers through his hair, wants to map the contours of his face with her fingertips, wants to catalog each of the piercings in his ears. She wants to fall asleep with the weight of him in her lap. She wants to make him feel safe. Cherished. Loved.

But she doesn’t, because that would be wildly inappropriate, especially given the pillow barrier. The barrier he specifically requested. For propriety.

She sinks back down into the mattress on her own side. “Thanks for making them.”

She tries to stay awake, to keep listening, just in case he wants to keep talking. She’s exhausted from the cider bottling, though, and the fire is warm, and the low, even rhythm of Sebastian’s breathing on the other side of the barrier is oddly comforting. Despite her best efforts, she very quickly falls asleep.

Chapter Text

Ava doesn’t wake up to her phone alarm.

She starts to panic as soon as she realizes that it’s quiet. The fact that she’s waking up naturally means that she’s probably overslept, which means she’s behind. It means she has to get up, has to feed the animals, has to call the Night Market vendors about rescheduling, which is going to eat up at least an hour, and she has to work on filling today’s orders, and and and…

And she’s in her living room. The fire in the fireplace has gone cold overnight, but the space under the covers is still warm. The string lights are lit. The power’s back on. Her heart jumps when she realizes that Sebastian is still here, still asleep, his breathing a steady, comfortable rhythm beside her. She’s going to have to be quiet about getting ready this morning if she wants to avoid waking him.

She blinks the sleep from her eyes and glances at the clock on her wall. 7:15. It’s earlier than she expected.

The blanket is heavy on her waist, bunched up in one place, almost like a weighted blanket. She reaches down to gently push it off (quietly, quietly), and what her hand grabs is soft and covered in fine little hairs and is not a blanket, actually, it’s—!

She lets go of Sebastian’s arm immediately. He lets out a disgruntled little noise behind her and shifts, tugging her closer, and she lies very, very still, her heart beating so loudly that she’s surprised it doesn’t wake him. The only remaining evidence of last night’s pillow barrier is a single small throw pillow near the foot of the bed. Its beads glint in the dim morning light.

So much for propriety, she thinks, biting back a breathless grin.

She decides that the responsible thing to do is take very careful stock of the situation. (If “taking very careful stock” involves cuddling with her crush in the warm, comfortable bed for a bit longer, well…)

The situation is this: Sebastian is lying behind her, with an arm slung over her waist. Their bodies aren’t quite touching, but one of his calves brushed up against hers when he shifted, and he’s close enough that she can feel his body heat even through the flannel of her pyjamas. He still smells like fresh-cut pine and nicotine, but it’s fainter than yesterday, and there’s an underlying musky scent that she can’t quite identify. It might be sweat. It might just be how he smells. She wonders if it’s weird that she kind of likes it.

He’s close enough that she can feel his breath on the back of her neck, and when she shivers, he nestles even closer with a contented-sounding little sigh. His calf brushes hers again. Her heart pounds in her chest.

I should wake him up, she thinks, chewing her lip. Or I should get up. Start on chores.

But the thing is, it feels nice. It feels so nice. Incredibly nice. Her will is weak, and she is tired, and she doesn’t want to wake him, so what Ava does instead of leave is settle in, tug the blanket tighter around herself, and bask in the comfort a little longer. Feeding the chickens can wait another hour. Maybe two.

She scoots backwards into his warmth, just a little. (It’s cold. She can be forgiven.) She thinks about what it might be like to skim her fingers over his forearm, his wrist, his knuckles, and wonders whether his arm would flex under her touch and pull her closer again. She doesn’t, of course, because he’s asleep, and they’re friends, at most, and she’s being good and normal and platonic about this.

Still, she does move a little, resituating herself on the creaky pull-out mattress, because there’s nothing wrong with trying to get more comfortable, and if her own arm ends up resting on her own waist, close enough to press up against Sebastian’s arm, which also happens to be there, well—

He takes a sharp breath in, stirring, and she freezes.

Go back to sleep go back to sleep go back to sleep—

He shifts, making a low, sleepy, confused noise, and then his breathing stops altogether and he goes very, very still. She waits for a long, tense moment, and then, slowly, with as little movement as possible, turns her head in his direction.

They make eye contact. Sebastian’s eyes go wide.

“Ta ma de!” He shoots up and scrambles back until he’s nearly fallen off of the bed, only stopping when the sheet tangles around one of his legs. He looks horrified, and guilt wells up in her chest. “Spirits alive, I’m sorry, I—I just—“

“No!” She sits up. “No, don’t be sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Why are you sorry? You’re not the one who—” He swallows hard, his face bright red, and Ava has some decidedly non-platonic feelings about the way his throat moves.

She waits for him to finish his thought, but he doesn’t. He just sits there, gripping the quilt tightly enough that his knuckles turn pale. His breathing is shaky, and he’s refusing to make eye contact. His eyes keep flitting towards her and then away again.

“How do you feel about breakfast?” she offers.

He nods sharply. “I— yes. Breakfast. Breakfast is good.”

.

Sebastian, she discovers, does not actually think breakfast is good.

She pitches every breakfast food idea she can think of, and he shoots them down one after the other. He’s unenthused by the idea of hash browns. French toast is out. So is regular toast. When she suggests omelets, he visibly cringes. Scrambled eggs, then? Boiled? Over easy? Nope, nope, and nope. After some fruitless back-and-forth, she just straight-up asks how he likes his eggs, and he reluctantly admits that he doesn’t.

“Do you like any breakfast foods?” she finally asks, exasperated.

He thinks for a long moment. “Do you have pancake mix? We could make pancakes.”

“I don’t have pancake mix.” She stoops down and starts rummaging through a cabinet. “But I do have flour, milk, eggs, and a healthy amount of hubris, and I’m pretty sure Grandma’s old recipe book is around here, somewhere, if I can just…”

Sebastian snorts, sounding amused, but his shoulders relax, just a little. She hadn’t even realized he’d been tense. “Cool. Want me to get started on the coffee?”

“Yes, please, that would be awesome.”

She finally locates the volume she’s looking for. It’s a hardback cookbook with dark blue cloth binding. The cover is embossed with silver that’s lost its luster, and the cloth is stained and worn. This book has been well-loved, at least in a past life. She sets it on the counter and begins thumbing through the musty pages in search of a pancake recipe, but it falls open to something else, and she stops short. She skims her fingers over the list of ingredients. She smiles.

“Hey, Sebastian?”

He looks up from the French press. “Yeah?”

“How do you feel about coffee cake?”

.

Sebastian feels good about coffee cake, he decides.

The cake itself is simple—he watches as Ava mixes eggs, flour, sugar, milk, and baking powder in a large metal bowl, careful not to get any batter on the old recipe book—and it’s done and and spread in a baking dish, covered in a generous, dusty layer of cinnamon sugar, before the oven’s even finished preheating. Sebastian, desperate to make himself useful and feeling a little awkward about his breakfast food pickiness, washes the mixing bowls and spatula, then dries them and puts them away. The oven dings. Ava slides the cinnamon cake in. She sets a timer.

Then she sighs, pulls her journal from her rucksack, and settles in at the dining table.

He’s seen her journal before, in passing, but up close, he can see that it’s worn, which makes sense. After all, she carries it with her everywhere, doesn’t she? It’s red, with brown cardboard peeking through the battered edges. Folded papers and sticky notes stick out of the pages at odd angles, densely-packed enough that the book doesn’t quite close properly. She flips it open to the latest entry, jots down the date, and starts slowly making a list, crossing things off from other lists on the previous pages. Her brow furrows as the list gets longer, the corners of her mouth turning down. She’s starting to look a little overwhelmed.

“Hey,” Sebastian says, before he can think better of it, and she looks up.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Um…” He scrambles, trying to think of something that will let her allow herself to ignore the notebook, just for a little while. An excuse she’ll accept. (Dammit, why didn’t he think of one before opening his mouth?) He glances around, and his gaze falls on the cookbook, still propped open on the counter. “You said the recipe book was your grandmother’s?”

“Oh! Yeah!” She closes the journal and sets it on the table. That was easier than I thought. “She annotated it and everything. There are, like, half a dozen cookie recipes in there, and the snickerdoodle one? To die for. It gives Evelyn’s a run for its money.” She pauses, a smile quirking around the edges of her mouth. “Don’t tell Evelyn I said that.”

“I won’t,” Sebastian promises, grinning back. “Did she bake a lot?”

“Mostly around the holidays! Or when we came to visit her and Grandpa during the summer. Blueberry muffins were her favorite.” Her smile is here in full force, now, but it’s wistful. “You know, the blueberry bushes were still here, when I moved back. They’re perennials.”

“Really?” Sebastian hasn’t ever thought about the life cycles of blueberry bushes. He does some mental math, trying to figure out how old the ones on the edge of the farm must be.

“There was a lot that was gone. The orchard, and the greenhouse, and… But the blueberry bushes were still here.” She trails off, and then glances away and adds, “I probably would’ve cut them down, if I’d gotten around to clearing out that part of the field before my first summer. I wouldn’t have recognized them; I didn’t remember what they looked like. I would’ve mistaken them for weeds.”

There’s shame in her voice, and she says it quietly, almost like she’s making a confession.

“You didn’t cut them down, though,” he points out.

“But I could have,” she admits. Her mouth is set in a firm, disappointed line. “Some days—most days—I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. And it makes me wonder how many other things I’ve screwed up without even realizing it. Like with the dry rot in the chicken coop, and Marlon having to pick up my slack with the ice slimes last week, and…”

She trails off, picking at the edge of her journal’s cover, and Sebastian could say a lot of things in response. Could say that her grandparents would be proud of her for what she’s done, for her determination and work ethic. Could say they’d be proud of what she’s done to help her community. Could tell her how amazing it is, what she’s done with this farm. How amazing she is. He gets the sense that she wouldn’t really believe any of it, if he told her point-blank.

What he finally says is: “You know, when I first saw that the community center had been renovated while I was gone, I was pissed.”

Ava’s head snaps up, and her eyebrows shoot up. “Sorry?”

“Because, the thing is, I loved that place. I used to spend a lot of time there, because it felt safe. I didn’t have to worry about what other people thought—I could just be myself. I spent hours scrawling Black Parade lyrics on the peeling wallpaper in Sharpie, carving stuff up, kicking the tires on the whole life thing… Normal teenager stuff, you know? And as soon as I saw the shiny new building, I just got so angry.”

“So—so, what?” Ava huffs. “What was I supposed to do? Let it rot?”

“Of course you weren’t! That’s my point. Because first of all, it’s not my building anymore, and second of all… A building like that deserves to be taken care of, the way you’ve taken care of it.”

The irritation on her face drops into a more neutral confusion, and he pushes forward.

“I saw you stringing lights on the community center the other day, and I realized—I’ve never seen lights on the community center, before this year. Not ever. And it’s good.” He takes a deep breath. He feels like he’s talking too much, but he needs her to understand what he’s getting at. “I was angry because I thought a place that was important to me was gone. And it kind of is, I guess—it’s never going to be the same as it was before, but… I like knowing that someone else appreciates it. That someone cares about it enough to make it theirs, too.”

“Seb…”

“And I think your grandparents would feel the same way about the farm. I didn’t ever get to meet your grandfather, but I promise you, he’d be really proud.”

“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t sound like she believes it. She reaches out and picks up her notebook, then lets out a tired huff of air that might be a laugh or a sigh. She doesn’t open it, just runs her finger along the sticky note tabs. Thwip-thwip-thwip. “I just want to make sure I’m living up to their legacy, you know? Sometimes it feels like I’m not even doing the bare minimum. I don’t know how he and Grandma managed a farm this big, all on their own.”

She moves to open the notebook again, a little crease between her brows, and his hand shoots out before he can think better of it, catching hers just as her thumb hooks under the cover. Her hand is warm under his, and her eyes go wide as his heart leaps into his throat, and spirits alive, why does he keep doing this?

“Um,” he says, and can’t manage anything else. He drops her hand. His face burns. The truth sounds stupid, even in his own head—The notebook makes you sad, and I don’t like that—so instead of explaining his sudden desire for hand-holding, he just says, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she breathes, her voice uncharacteristically quiet, and she’s studying his face intently, like she’s searching for something. Intent, maybe. He hopes she doesn’t find it.

After a moment, she shrugs, snatches up her pen again, and flips her notebook open. She jots two more things down on the list, then tugs out a large, folded sheet of paper that’s been paper-clipped in. She unfurls it to reveal a diagram that looks oddly similar to a seating chart. The crease between her eyebrows reappears as she studies it. He watches quietly, and he thinks for a long moment before speaking.

“You know, if you want actual help with the festival prep, instead of just an easy excuse to say no to things, I can lend a hand with that instead of working on the tractor,” he finally offers. “I don’t know exactly what Lewis has you doing, but…”

“Practically everything,” she jokes, glancing up. Her eyes are are warm and cinnamon-honey bright as they meet his. “It’s okay. Really. I’m the one who signed up for all of this.”

“And I’m signing up to help you,” he says, his voice earnest. “If you want. If you’ll have me.”

He tenses as soon as the words leave his mouth—why did I phrase it like that?—but her eyes get brighter. Her smile goes wide and hopeful. “If you’re sure.”

“Very,” he promises, offering a small, relieved half-smile in return.

She thanks him vehemently and spreads the seating chart on the table between them, scooting her chair so close to his that it nearly touches. She immediately starts laying out her rationale for the seating, her shoulder nudging gently against his as she fills him in on the social intricacies of town. She leans in, smelling of vanilla and cinnamon sugar, and she offers up each morsel of gossip conspiratorially, like she’s trusting him with something, like it’s theirs alone: Lewis wants Marnie within eyeshot, but not right next to him, can you believe it? Emily and Haley always sit together, but Emily insists on having Clint at their table this year, and Haley won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. Leah’s at Abigail’s table now, obviously, but then what do we do with Elliott? If we put him near Shane, do you think…?

He lets his hand brush against hers as they both point at different seats on the seating chart, and she smiles and laughs and brushes her hand against his, too.

She wants me here. The thought is comfortable. He slowly allows himself to sink into it, to believe it. The coffee cake is delicious, when it comes out of the oven, but it’s not nearly as sweet as the feeling that finally, he’s found somewhere he’s appreciated.

.

After breakfast, Ava ventures reluctantly out into the snow, wrapped in a heavy woolen coat and equipped with a sturdy-looking shovel. Sebastian offers to shovel the walkways for her, but she demurs. You’re a guest, she says, but she also huffs out an amused little laugh, and it’s only then that he remembers: She does hard labor for a living, and he works a desk job.

So, instead of shoveling, he stays at the kitchen table, sipping his cup of black coffee and steadily chipping away at the list of festival-related tasks Ava’s left for him. He finalizes the seating chart. He places a pickup order at Pierre’s for some decent-looking plates, napkins, and cutlery. (Ava’s chosen a red-and-gold color scheme, and Sebastian smiles, because it just seems very her.) He calls the Night Market vendors, just to touch base about the blizzard-induced rescheduling.

Phone calls are exhausting, so once that’s done, he takes a break. Gets up. Pours himself a second cup of coffee. Settles back in at the table.

You still have no idea what you’re getting Ava for Winter Star, a helpful voice in the back of his mind reminds him. He tells it to shut up, but it also kind of has a point, so he pulls out his phone.

He stares at the search engine prompt, chewing his lip.

book, he types, and hits enter. The results are far too generic to be useful, and he kicks himself, because really, what was he expecting? He thinks back to the titles he saw on her bookshelf, and what she was reading last night, and then he remembers his conversation with Elliott at the bar: Ava likes romance novels.

He tries again: best romance books 20XX.

He sips his coffee as he scrolls through the recommendations, looking up reviews for the ones with particularly eye-catching covers or interesting premises. The spice in this one is particularly well-written, one reviewer says, and he taps away from the page quickly, his face heating. Is it weird for him to buy Ava a romance novel? Probably, yes. (It occurs to him that he saw this book on her shelf last night, actually. He wonders idly whether she’s read it already, whether she enjoyed it, and then he decides that he should absolutely not be asking himself these questions, at least not in the middle of her kitchen.)

So, sure, a romance novel might be a weird thing for a guy to give his platonic female friend (are we friends, now?) with whom he has just shared a bed and on whom he has a big terrible crush that is only getting worse with time and proximity, but also, he turned down the fake dating proposal. That means he’s making emotionally healthy choices, right? Right.

Besides, Ava likes them! He’s just getting her something he knows she’ll enjoy. So it’s normal, okay, or it could maybe be normal, if he—

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The rapid pounding on the door startles him, and he locks his phone on reflex and slams it on the table face-down, his heart leaping into his throat. He feels oddly guilty. He feels like he should purge his search history.

Bang! Bang! “Hello! Ava, are you there? Ava!”

Lewis, Sebastian realizes, irritation sparking in his chest. He considers ignoring Lewis entirely, but then, Lewis would probably go find Ava and interrupt her workday, and if he can spare her from that, well… He hauls himself up from the kitchen table, walks over, and opens the front door.

“Morning, Lewis.”

Lewis opens his mouth. Shuts it. Schools his expression into something less reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, then politely clears his throat. “Sebastian! What a surprise. Do you happen to know where Ava is?”

“Um… On the farm? Doing her job?”

“It’s good to know she’s doing something productive, at least. I can’t believe she hasn’t shoveled the path to town yet,” Lewis grumbles, knocking ice and snow off his boots pointedly. “I had to walk here through knee-high snow!”

Nobody asked you to walk here, Sebastian is tempted to point out.

“Checking on the animals took priority,” he says instead, raising an equally-pointed eyebrow, and can’t resist adding: “Besides, I don’t think she was planning on having visitors this morning.”

“I see.” Lewis’ moustache twitches, his eyes narrowing as they flit from Sebastian to the two coffee mugs still set out on the table. It’s only then that Sebastian remembers that he is a visitor.

“She wasn’t planning on having me, over, either,” he informs Lewis, whose eyes have gone from narrow to saucer-wide. Sebastian glances over his shoulder, following his gaze, and—ah, crap, I forgot to put away the pull-out bed. “We were bottling cider and got snowed in,” he explains.

“I’m sure,” Lewis says, sounding not at all like he believes him. He clears his throat. “In any case, where exactly is she, on the farm?”

Sebastian narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“If you must know, I need to make sure she called the Night Market vendors. She’s not picking up her phone, and if she’s prioritizing her animals over all of her other obligations, who knows when—”

“Done. The boats are all still planning to dock tomorrow morning, except for the traveling saleswoman, who’s gonna be there tonight.” He tries to surpress a smug, self-satisfied grin, and is only partially successful. “Did you need anything else, or…?”

Lewis seems taken aback. “I also need to talk to her about the Winter Star preparations.”

“What about the Winter Star preparations?”

“Gingerbread. Seating plans. Color schemes. A wide variety of things, really.” Lewis shivers, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets. Sebastian doesn’t invite him inside. “Frankly, I feel that this would go much more smoothly if I could just speak with her directly, and I certainly don’t want to waste any more of your valuable time, so if you could just direct me to—”

“I’m on vacation,” Sebastian interrupts cheerfully, leaning on the doorframe. The smug grin is here in full force, now. “Ava’s in the middle of her workday, but me? I have all the time in the world. Hit me with it.”

Lewis frowns, but to his credit, he reigns in his obvious irritation and plows forward. “Alright, we’ll start with color schemes. I know Ava and I discussed red and gold during the last meeting, but I was thinking about it last night, and I think green might be preferable to red.”

“No,” Sebastian says.

He’s pretty sure Lewis’ eye actually twitches. “What do you mean, No?”

“I mean, she said you wanted her to order them as soon as possible, right? So we’ve already ordered all of the disposable plates and forks and napkins and stuff for the red-and-gold scheme.” He crosses his arms. “So, no. Ava will not be changing the color scheme.”

Lewis pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Is it too late to cancel and re-order?”

“Yes,” Sebastian lies.

Lewis’ mouth screws up, like he’s taken a big gulp of sour eggnog. “Well.”

“Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?” he offers. His face is still neutral, but his voice is tight. “We just finished the seating chart. You mentioned gingerbread? I know exactly as much about gingerbread as she does, which, to be clear, is absolutely nothing.”

“Perhaps it would be best if I come back and talk to her later.”

“Perhaps,” Sebastian echoes, and then stops short and clicks his tongue apologetically. “Oh, but you know what? She actually already promised she’d help me fix the tractor today, so I think she’ll probably be busy. Sorry.”

“Busy.” Lewis’ eyes flit back to the coffee cups. To the sofa bed. Something twists in Sebastian’s chest, and suddenly, he feels incredibly vulnerable. “I see.”

“Yeah, the new battery just came in. I was gonna install it yesterday, but, well. Cider bottling. Like I said.” Sebastian shifts his stance, moving a bit to the left, just enough to block Lewis’ view of the bed. (Not that it matters what Lewis thinks he sees. Not that it matters.) “You can ask Pierre.”

“It’s none of my business,” Lewis sniffs, indignant, “but for the record, I think it’s a very sad thing when young people get so caught up in a new romantic entanglement that they neglect their prior responsibilities and relationships. Her grandfather would be—”

“You’re right. It’s not your business,” Sebastian interjects, fury bubbling up in his chest, because he can still hear Ava’s voice echoing in his ears: I just want to make sure I’m living up to their legacy, you know? Sometimes it feels like I’m not even doing the bare minimum. “And how the hell would you know what her grandfather would think? You talk to ghosts, now? Did Abby lend you her ouija board?”

“I just think it’s not healthy for you to isolate her like this.”

“And I think you’re projecting.” Sebastian crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe, and relishes the way Lewis’ face goes red with outrage, the way he clutches at his necktie like it’s a fine set of pearls. “I’m just helping her out. Whatever you think is going on here, it isn’t, and frankly? Even if it were? I think you’re the last person I should be taking relationship advice from.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He makes direct eye contact and smiles. “Nothing at all.”

It’s only after Lewis has stomped away, grumbling and steaming like a kettle, that Sebastian’s self-satisfaction wanes just a little, leaving behind that awful feeling of being seen, being perceived, being assumed about. He tries to work on the Winter Star stuff a bit more, but anxiety gnaws at him. After ten minutes of agonizing, he grabs the tractor battery and his tools and heads out towards the shed, trying to shake the dark, ominous foreboding that settles around his heart like a cloud of smoke.

It’s fine, he tells himself, knocking the rust off of the bolts. Everything is fine.

Chapter Text

“Dude, why didn’t you tell me?” Sam demands as soon as Sebastian steps through the door for band practice on Wednesday afternoon.

Sebastian sets his bag down next to the piano and immediately starts running through his mental catalogue of Things He Has Not Told Sam. The list is long, and potential topics range anywhere from “I had a croissant for breakfast this morning and didn’t hate it” to “I accidentally spilled coffee all over that copy of Cave Saga W that you lent me back in tenth grade and was too scared to tell you, and while I realize the likelihood that you’re going to ask for it back at this point is low, I still live in fear of you finding out.”

“Why didn’t I tell you what?”

“Come on, you don’t have to be coy about it.” Sam grins easily and sits back on his bed, absently plucking at the strings of his guitar. The springs creak underneath his weight. “I know you don’t like to talk about this kind of thing, but you really weren’t gonna tell me? I’m hurt, man.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Sam waggles his eyebrows. “You and Ava?”

“Oh, right. That.”

“‘Oh, right, that,’ he says!” Sam laughs and strums his guitar again. “Congrats, man. I’m glad you finally asked her out, but dude, Alex is gonna be pissed when he finds out.”

“I didn’t, and we’re not dating,” he says, and then, eyes narrowing: “Wait. What about Alex?”

Sam smirks. Strum. “If you’re not really dating, then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

He shoots Sam a glare, one that he hopes isn’t too sharp—It maybe matters a little bit, to me, even though it shouldn’t, he wants to say, but can’t bring himself to—and the mischievous edge in Sam’s expression softens into something a little more gentle and friendly.

“I’m just messing with you, dude. You really don’t have to worry about Alex, there’s zero interest there. At least on her end.” A few more chords.

“But, uh… She’s single, right?” Sebastian clears his throat and ducks his head, rummaging through his bag for his sheet music. “I mean, she’s not seeing anyone?”

Which is a stupid question, and he regrets it as soon as it’s out of his mouth, because she wouldn’t be asking to fake-date him if she already had a partner. (He hopes. He really, really hopes, mostly because the thought of her real-dating someone else makes a sharp-buzzing hot sort of feeling root itself in his ribcage. He’s horrified to discover that the emotion is jealousy.)

Sam snickers. He fingers another chord, then plays the notes individually this time in a little arpeggio. “What happened to ‘I’m going back in two weeks’?”

Right, he remembers, taking hold of the thought. He uses it like one of his oil rags, letting it soak up all of the messy, uncomfortable emotions welling up in his chest, and then throws it all in the bin.

“Yeah. You’re right.” He pulls the sheet music out and carefully arranges it on his piano.

Sam’s fingers go still. He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I’m going back to the city soon,” he says, keeping his voice even. “So. It doesn’t matter.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sam set his guitar aside and lean forward to scrutinize him. He knows Sam well enough by now that he can picture the way his nose is wrinkled up in contemplation, the way his smile cracks across his face as he studies him, without looking.

When Sebastian finally does turn to look, though, Sam’s expression is totally different from what he’s expecting. It’s serious, and a little surprised, like he’s already done the math.

It’s a lot quicker than he used to do the math.

“You like-her like her, huh?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he repeats, ducking his head. He huffs and turns his attention to tweaking the settings on the electric keyboard, because Elliott screwed up the presets, and now he has to redo everything.

Sam hums and picks up his guitar again. “You sure? Because it seems like—”

“She’s not into the idea of long-distance,” he snaps, and it’s only when Sam’s eyebrows shoot up that he realizes that firstly, this is a wild thing for him to know about someone he only met a week ago, and secondly, she’d only said that they’d tell people she was bad at long distance relationships, not that she’s actually bad at them, which is…

A dangerous path to be going down right now, he thinks, shutting that train of thought down before the brain cell conducting it can tell the neuron engineers to start shoveling fuel in the firebox.

“Oof.” Sam cringes and looks away, clearly thinking he’s stumbled into a sore subject. He plucks at the strings absentmindedly. “Sorry, man. That’s a bummer.”

“I mean, it’s not like she turned me down,” Sebastian clarifies quickly. “Like I said. I didn’t ask her.” Not that it matters. “The whole long-distance dating thing just came up, you know, and…”

Sam snorts. “Dude, how does that sort of thing ‘just come up’? Like, did she bring it up? Did you bring it up?”

She brought it up while pitching the idea of fake-dating to get out of uncomfortable social commitments during my holiday vacation, Sebastian absolutely cannot tell him. “She did, but it wasn’t, like… She said that she’d say that she wasn’t down for long-distance, if someone asked her under a very specific set of circumstances, but not that she actually isn’t. Does that make sense?”

“Absolutely not,” Sam says, but his cheerful demeanor has returned. “So maybe it isn’t actually a dealbreaker for her?”

“I mean, she didn’t say it was, but… I dunno. It could be, right? Long distance is hard.”

He waits for the rebuttal he knows is coming, rooted in Sam’s undying, unshakeable optimism—Nah, man, it’s definitely not a big deal for most folks!—or even a mellow strum of his guitar and a sage, I mean, I’d let her decide whether that’s a dealbreaker for her, before counting yourself out.

The rebuttal doesn’t come.

Instead, Sam is suddenly staring off into the middle distance, his mouth set in a pensive sort of line, his eyes a thousand miles away. He picks a little arpeggio of notes on his guitar, but absently, automatically, like he’s fidgeting. Like it’s muscle memory, and his hands are just looking for something to do while his brain is busy elsewhere. He plays the same run of notes again, and then again. Again. Again. Again.

“Sam? You good?”

“What?” He startles, then smiles, but it’s tight. Forced. It’s the same smile he used to give Jodi when she caught him using public architecture as a grind rail back in high school. “Yeah, man, I’m good. Totally good! Why wouldn’t I be?”

Good question, Sebastian wants to say, but the more pressing question is: Why are you lying to me?

Before he can decide which of these two routes he wants to go down, Abigail bursts into the room, startling them both.

“Oh, hey, Abs! You’re early today!” Sam laughs, sounding oddly relieved. (Sebastian fights the urge to glare at Abigail for interrupting. He’d wanted to ask, and now the question of what Sam’s hiding is gonna bug him.)

“You!” Abigail accuses, stalking towards Sebastian. “When were you going to tell me?”

“Ava and I aren’t dating,” he sighs, turning back to the keyboard and tweaking the reverb settings. He’s beginning to think that maybe he should have taken her up on the fake-dating thing, after all. Then he wouldn’t have to keep explaining to people that they aren’t.

“Okay, okay, sure,” Abigail says, narrowing her eyes in a way that tells him she’s not at all convinced. “Then you’re, what, sleeping together? Friends with benefits? Because, like, no offense, but knowing you, that’s a super bad idea.”

Sebastian chokes on air.

“Abs is right. You don’t do casual super well, my dude. You’re gonna catch feelings.”

“We aren’t slee—!” He cuts himself off, his face going bright red, because technically, they did sleep together—literally, not metaphorically, but— “We didn’t hook up!”

Abigail’s eyes gleam, and he kicks himself. She definitely didn’t miss that slip-up. “Really? Because Lewis told Marnie told Shane told Elliott told Leah told me”—spirits, this is why Sebastian hates small towns—“that he saw you two having breakfast at her place the other day! Which means you spent the night, which means—”

“It means I got snowed in!”

Abigail raises an eyebrow. “That sounds to me like an excuse.”

“I was helping her bottle cider. We were in the basement. The blizzard wasn’t supposed to come until later, and—” He groans, running a hand through his hair. “Look, we lost track of time!”

“Oh, I’ll bet you did,” Sam snickers.

“Were there candles involved with this super real definitely-not-an-excuse cider bottling? Maybe some fancy wine and sashimi?” Abby asks with barely-suppressed laughter.

“I don’t even like fancy wine,” Sebastian grumbles, pointedly ignoring the fact that there had, in fact, been candles. He can feel himself starting to spiral, starting to fixate on whether the candles meant anything, which is stupid, because they didn’t. They weren’t romantic candles. They were born of power outages and necessity, just like—

No, no, drop it! Drop it! he tells himself, successfully prying a shiny toy emblazoned with We Shared A Bed! out of his brain’s horrible, sticky little hands.

“Anyway, Leah said—”

And Sebastian doesn’t hear what Leah said, or he hears but isn’t really listening anymore, because his mind catches on Leah’s name, and what Abby said earlier finally registers: “Lewis told Marnie told Shane told Elliott told Leah told me.” That’s practically half the town. Nausea lodges itself deep in his gut. He swallows hard, then swallows again, digging his nails into his palms, trying to breathe normally, trying to stay calm, but spirits, how many people think he’s with Ava, now? Does everyone?

He’s spiraling. He knows he’s spiraling.

That doesn’t make the spiral any easier to break out of.

Vaguely, over the roaring of blood in his ears, he’s aware that Abby and Sam have fallen silent, that they’re staring at him, that everyone in the room is listening to the sound of his shaky too-deep breaths, and is he hyperventilating? Maybe. His chest hurts. He needs to respond. He needs to respond. He needs to respond. He needs to respond. He needs to come up with something to say in response to this, anything, dammit, because they think he—they think we—

“Um.” Come on, come on, come on…

“Seb?” Abby. Sounds concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Sorry.” Sharp breath in. “I’m.” Another breath. “Uh, yeah.” A gasp.

(He needs to respond. He thinks he might throw up.)

“Uh-oh. Hey? Hey, Seb?” Sam’s voice is distant, and there’s a shift in his periphery, which come to think of it is going a little dim, which is great, it’s fine, everyone in town is talking about him and about his love life and if his best friends don’t believe that there’s nothing going on with Ava, then who will, but anyway it’s fine but he can’t get enough air and if his heart keeps pounding like this he might just straight-up die, which might actually maybe be a damn blessing, he thinks, for everyone involved, and oh right Sam said something he needs to respond he needs to respond—

“Sorry,” he tries to say, but he can’t catch a deep enough breath to form words.

“Look at me,” Sam says, and Sebastian doesn’t want to look at anyone right now, what he wants is to fake his death and flee the country, or throw himself into the lake, or retreat to the bottom floor of the mines so he can ride out this stupid panic attack in peace and then maybe be eaten alive by rock crabs, but then his piano bench is spun around, and Sam’s face is in front of his, and his hands are on his shoulders. “Breathe with me, yeah? Breathe in—two, three, four—out, two, three, four. In, two three, four—”

After a minute or two of box breathing, he feels like his body is his own again, and Sam sighs and gives his shoulder a squeeze.

“You okay?”

Sebastian takes a breath, but it’s steady, this time. He nods. He doesn’t trust himself with words right now.

“Can I hug you?”

Another nod, and Sam pulls him into a hug, warm and denim-rough. Sebastian buries his face in his friend’s shoulder, focusing on the feel of seams beneath his fingers, the chilled metal of the buttons on the collar of Sam’s jacket, the sewn edges of the iron-on patches that cover his sleeves.

“Sorry for pushing you too hard, man,” Sam says earnestly, squeezing him tight before pulling back. “We were just teasing, you know? But if you want us to drop it, we will.”

He swallows. “Yeah. I know.”

“And if you say nothing’s going on, we believe you. Right, Abby?”

Abby hesitates, and Sam gives her a stern look over Sebastian’s shoulder and shakes his head, just a fraction. Sebastian thinks that probably he wasn’t meant to see it. He appreciates it deeply anyway.

“Sure,” Abby says, “but, like—”

“Good afternoon, everyone!”

The door to Sam’s room flies open, and Sebastian flinches, and then full-body cringes when he realizes who it is. Elliott strides through the doorway, tall and elegant and carrying an equally-elegant porcelain container that looks like it belongs in a museum, or at least a fine china cabinet. He stops short as he takes in the scene, and then hurries to Sebastian’s side. He kneels, crowding into Sebastian’s space and trying to make eye contact, and neither of those things are helpful right now.

Go away, Sebastian wants to say, but that would be rude, and he’s suddenly furious because now, not only does he need to pull himself out of this spiral, he needs to do it politely. He has to watch what he says, has to worry about accidentally hurting Elliott’s feelings, because spirits forbid he not want this absolute stranger nosing around in his personal business!

“Sebastian, are you quite alright?”

“I’m fine,” Sebastian bites out.

“You look pale.” Elliott shifts, and suddenly, his fancy bone china serving-dish-durned-cookie-jar is uncovered and three inches away from Sebastian’s face. “Would a cookie help?”

Sebastian tenses, furious at the idea that he could be placated with cookies, like he’s some stupid kid who’s been startled by a balloon popping. Like the fact that half the town thinks he and Ava are dating or friends with benefits or whatever, because Lewis couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut, is silly to be upset over and easy to fix. Like he can be easily distracted from his panic attack with a chocolate or a few snickerdoodles.

“I think he needs a little space right now,” Sam says, letting go of Sebastian’s arm to gently push Elliott’s stupid cookie jar away, and spirits alive—

“He is right here,” Sebastian snaps, shoving his piano bench back hard enough that it nearly topples over. Sam startles back, and Sebastian huffs a breath out through his nose.

“Sorry,” he tells the faded shag carpeting, because making eye contact with anyone, even Sam, feels like an insurmountable barrier right now. “Sam’s right. I need some space. You guys can go ahead and practice without me.”

.

It’s stupid to expect Sam to come after him.

Logically, he knows this. He’s the one who walked out of band practice. He’s the one who explicitly asked for space, with more curtness than was probably justified, and Sam’s always been good at respecting his boundaries. He’s the one sulking in his mom’s garage, working on his bike, as though fixing the bike will fix anything else.

(He didn’t even consider going to the farm. He can’t face Ava right now, and if Sam does come after him—which he won’t, but just in case he does—Sebastian doesn’t want to have that conversation in any place where Ava might overhear.)

He’s given Duli an oil change, which, going by the dirty brown-amber color of the oil, was long overdue. He’s cleaned and lubricated the chain. Now, he’s meticulously checking the bike over, searching for other things that need to be fixed. He checks the coolant levels, the tire pressure, the breaks and cables… He’s out of luck. Pre-city Sebastian took very good care of his bike, so it’s still in ridiculously good shape, for something that hasn’t been ridden in three years.

He’s midway through the process of cleaning the air filter—it’s probably totally unnecessary, but the garage is dusty, and it’s an hour-long process and he needs something to do—when the door to the house squeaks open behind him, and he hears footfalls on the stairs. He glances over his shoulder, hoping for a shock of blonde hair.

Instead, he’s greeted by Maru, clad in overalls, her curls held back with glittery purple star-shaped claw clips. She’s carrying a small metal box in one hand, half-assembled. His heart sinks.

“Hey.” He gives her a tight smile.

“Hey,” Maru replies, drawing out the ‘y’ in an odd way that immediately sets him on edge. She moves to her workbench and sets down the box she’s carrying, then starts rummaging through the drawers. “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt! I just have to solder this real quick, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Sure,” he agrees, and turns back to his bike.

Evidently, Maru’s search for a soldering gun is successful, because the clinking of tools in drawers goes quiet. There’s a gentle sizzling from her workbench, followed by the smell of hot rosin and metal. He swishes the foam filter in the dish soap solution gently, careful not to damage it. (There’s a small part of him that kind of wants to damage it, because he’s still angry. He’s feeling self-destructive. He wants to break something. He doesn’t want the something to be the filter, though, because he knows he’d regret it later.)

“How’s your day going?” she asks.

“Fine,” he lies. Swish. He watches the bubbles eddy and swirl, forming little whirlpools in the bucket. Leave me alone, he thinks. “How’s yours?”

“Um…” There’s another sizzling sound. “Mine is going well! Thanks.”

He doesn’t respond. Swish. Swish. Swish.

Maru’s phone buzzes. There’s a long pause, followed by more sizzling. She opens a drawer, rummages, and shuts it again with a sigh. There’s the low, familiar whir of a heat gun, and then the gentle click of a voltmeter turning on. Turning off. A drawer opens and closes again, and there’s a gentle scrape of metal on metal as she reassembles the box.

Swish. Swish.

Her phone buzzes again. She sighs, texts whoever it is back, and shoves the phone back in her pocket.

Swish.

The heat from the space heater on his back suddenly goes cold, and he looks up to see Maru standing over him, holding the metal box. It’s fully assembled, now, and up close, he can see that it has inputs and outputs for audio cables.

“Hi!” She chirps. Her smile is very nearly a grimace. “Could you do me a favor?”

“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he says, gesturing at the bucket with his sudsy hands. This is only partly true. The filter needs to soak for another five minutes or so, and then it has to dry overnight before he can oil it up and put it back in the bike.

“It doesn’t have to be right this second! I just need to deliver this to Sam. I’d do it myself, but I, um, need to run a bunch of samples at the clinic before the Night Market tonight.” She shrugs, looking almost apologetic. “I can drop it off tomorrow, if you’re too busy. Or if you’re not feeling up to it right now.”

Yeah, I am too busy, he almost says, but—But. The delivery is to Sam.

“Sure,” he says, holding out a hand. “I’m going over there soon, anyway.”

.

Fifteen minutes later, the filter is clean, but he waits another hour or so to head over to Sam’s. He doesn’t know how long band practice tends to run, these days, and he doesn’t want to risk showing up while other people are still around. Once he feels like it’s safe, he bundles himself into a scarf and coat and makes his way down the familiar path to town.

He finds Sam in his room. The equipment is still set up. Elliott’s jar of cookies is on the desk, half-empty, and the gold detailing on the bone china is even shinier than he remembers.

“Hey,” Sebastian says, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe. Sam glances up and smiles, but it’s halfhearted. Sebastian holds up the box. “Maru wanted me to bring you this.”

“Oh, sweet!” Sam’s smile goes fully genuine as soon as he sees the box, and Sebastian feels a thread of guilt tug at his gut. “She managed to get it working?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Sebastian hands it over, and Sam immediately sits on the floor and starts unplugging cables from the existing setup to reroute through the box. He clears his throat. “What is it, anyway?”

“It’s a line-level passive isolation box,” he says cheerfully, plugging in one of the feeds. “You know how when you’ve got a bunch of audio equipment all plugged into the same stuff, the channels can kinda interfere with each other? And sometimes you get a bunch of weird buzzing, and the levels get funky and unbalanced? Bad funky, not good funky. This stops that from happening.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, untangling another cable from one of the bundles. Sebastian can’t even tell what it hooks up to. “It’s good for all the channels to get along.”

He knows Sam doesn’t mean anything by it—that when he says, good for all the channels to get along, he doesn’t secretly mean, good for all the people to get along, because he’s not weird and passive-aggressive in that way. He’d tell Sebastian directly if he were angry. Sebastian knows this. But also, Sebastian’s in a bad headspace today, and he’s exhausted, so it’s hard to stop his mind from grabbing onto the phrase and pulling it apart, reworking it into something sharp and pointed and two-edged. Something accusatory and unkind.

“I’m sorry for ditching practice.”

“It’s okay,” Sam says, and doesn’t say anything else. This could be because he’s very focused on plugging stuff into the box, still crouched on the floor, his brows furrowed and his tongue sticking out. (It could also be because he’s upset. Sebastian knows he’s not, but—)

“I was just… I got overwhelmed,” he explains, picking nervously at a stray thread on the hem of his jacket. “And you know how I am. With new people.”

Something in his voice must give him away, because Sam looks up, his hands going still. “Yeah, I totally get it. You’re overthinking it, my dude.”

“Okay.”

“But”—of course, Sebastian knew there would be a but—“if you’re gonna play with us at the concert next week, you’ve gotta learn to get along with Elliott.” He hits a button on the box and stands, brushing his hands on his jeans. “I don’t mean about today, specifically, but like… In general.”

“I’d get along with him better if he’d quit trying to welcome me into my own damn friend group,” Sebastian grumbles, eyeing the polaroids pinned on Sam’s corkboard. (There are so many with Elliott in them, over the past three years, and so few that include him.)

“He’s just trying to make you feel welcome.”

“Yeah, well, I hate it.” Sebastian runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I can get along with him, okay, whatever, but I don’t want to be friends.”

He tenses, waiting for the inevitable protests, the, no, but he’s so nice, I’m sure you and this pretentious, overbearing Fabio knock-off would be best friends forever if you’d just give him a chance—but instead of trying to argue him into it, Sam just shrugs and grabs his guitar. He picks out a few notes, then tweaks one of the dials on the box and settles in on his bed.

“Okay. As long as you can play nice with him.”

Sebastian frowns. “But it seems like he wants to be friends.”

“What? Oh, yeah, that’s Elliott’s whole thing. He’s super friendly with, like, everyone. He’s really good about making sure nobody feels left out.”

“I’m not feeling left out! This is my friend group!” He huffs and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You and Abby are my best friends. I don’t need anyone else. I don’t have the bandwidth for more people right now.”

He tilts his head and strums a chord. “You can just tell him to back off, you know.”

“Right. Because I’m sure that’ll make him feel great about himself. People love being told point-blank that you don’t want to be friends with them, or that you don’t want their stupid beer, or that you want them to quit being so nice.”

“So you’d rather, what? That he be mean to you?”

“No, but he’s doing those things because he wants to be friends! Because he assumes I have the time and energy to do the same stuff for him!” Sebastian paces. “And if I don’t reciprocate, then he’ll feel bad, and then it’ll somehow be my fault even though I didn’t ask for it—”

“Seb, he’s nice to everyone. He wants to be friends with everyone. His entire social life doesn’t hinge on whether you wanna be buddies.”

Sounds fake. “Okay.”

“And seriously, if it makes you uncomfortable? You can tell him to cut it out, and I pinkie promise you, he won’t be upset. The dude is pretty much impossible to offend.” He strums a chord. “I’m not asking you to like him.” Another chord. “But you do have to be cool with him. None of this weird no-communication resentment stuff. That’s the sort of thing that rots bands from the inside.”

It’s not like I’m even in the band anymore, anyway, Sebastian nearly says, but he doesn’t. Mostly because it would be a mean thing to say, but also because some small part of him is scared that Sam will confirm it. That saying it out loud will make it true.

He settles in on the bed beside Sam with a deep sigh, dangling his legs over the edge.

“What’re you thinking, my dude?” Sam asks.

“It’s my friend group.” It comes out sounding petulant, childish, and tears prick at the corners of his eyes. But that’s the crux of the thing, isn’t it? It’s never going to be just him and Sam and Abby again. He’s never going to be comfortable again, in the one place he always was. “It’s mine.”

He sees Sam sets his guitar aside in his periphery, hears the quiet rustle as Sam shifts over on the bed and tugs him into a tight hug. Sebastian hugs back, and it’s been so long since he felt the familiar texture of stitched-on patches under his fingers. He bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood in an effort to keep himself from crying. It only mostly works.

“It’s still yours, you know?” Sam says into his hair, rubbing soothing circles between his shoulder blades. “Just because it’s Elliott’s and Leah’s, too, doesn’t mean it’s not yours.”

But it’s not the same, he wants to tell him. It’s not like it was when we were a trio, and it’ll never be like that again.

He doesn’t say it. Sam won’t understand. And he knows it would be unfair of him to ask Sam to simply not have a friend group, while he’s away in the city—wouldn’t ask it even if it were fair, because that sort of loneliness isn’t what he wants for his best friend, not really. Sebastian thrives in isolation, but he knows that Sam, friendly and beaming and sun-warm, needs people like he needs oxygen, but—

“Would it help,” Sam asks gently, his face still buried in Sebastian’s shoulder, “if you and Abby and I got together for a movie night while you’re home, just the three of us? Just like old times?”

“Yeah.” Maybe Sam does get it, after all. He shouldn’t be surprised. Sam is good at reading people. Sebastian swallows hard, nodding, and hugs him tighter. “Yeah, it would. Thanks.”

“Of course! You’re my best friend, man. Nothing will ever change that,” Sam says, and Sebastian lets himself believe it.

Chapter Text

The docks and colorful boats are strung with lights, flickering on the surface of the water. The snow on the pier almost sparkles in the dim light, and the snowy sky is luminescent, reflecting the warm lights of the neighborhood with an odd, dim sort of glow. It’s uncanny, brighter than a night sky should be, but it’s comforting as Sebastian follows his family down the cold, dimly-lit beach. Snowflakes catch in his eyelashes. He pulls his scarf tighter around his neck.

He’s going tomorrow, too, with Sam, but Robin had insisted that her whole family go, so…

So. Here he is. With his mom’s family.

He’s a fast walker, usually, but tonight, he lets himself fall behind. Demetrius and Maru are walking in lock-step with one another, making small talk as they go—it’s their usual science, something about Maru’s thesis project. He tunes them out, focusing on the chilly air on his face and the crunch of cold sand beneath his boots. Robin’s walking hand-in-hand with Demetrius, but she keeps glancing back, like she wants to make sure he hasn’t disappeared.

He follows all the way to the docks, where a small fleet of boats is waiting, all filled with different types of wares. They pass by the coffee seller without stopping, which is a little disappointing. He remembers the way this particular vendor makes her coffee, semi-sweet and flavored with cardamom, and he was kind of looking forward to having it again.

I’ll come back later, he promises himself.

The first boat they stop at is overrun with houseplants. Sebastian thinks he’s never seen this much greenery in his life, even on Ava’s farm, back when it was abandoned. The vines of several pothos near the edge dangle dangerously close to the icy waters below. Demetrius and Maru descend on the plants in a delighted scientific frenzy, immediately launching into a lively discussion about monocots and dicots.

Sebastian gravitates towards the one box on the boat that’s relatively leaf-free. It holds multitudes of plastic candy cane lawn decorations, striped with glittery green and red. They vary in both size and quality. He pokes at the stripe on one of the messier-looking ones, and his finger comes away speckled with glitter.

His mom appears beside him, also pretending to be interested in the horrible candy canes.

“Hey, bud,” she says quietly. “You holding up okay?”

He shoots her a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.”

“Okay.” She smiles back. “Thank you for coming out with us tonight. And for coming home for the holidays. It means a lot to me that you made the effort.”

“Sure,” he says, feeling a pinprick of guilt. Has he? Has he been making an effort? He shakes the feeling off and turns back to the candy canes. “I wonder if—”

His phone buzzes twice in his pocket. He pulls it out and checks his notifications.

Ava — 6:58PM
SOS lewis has cornered me at the night market
idk if you’re free rn but if so? please send help

“Who’s that?” Robin asks, and he locks his phone quickly and stuffs it back in his pocket.

“No one,” he insists, but he must say it a little too quickly, because his mother lights up like he’s given her the best Winter Star Feast gift she could have ever hoped for. He sighs. Not this again.

“I see.” Her eyes are sparkling, and she’s pressing her lips together like she’s trying (and failing) to keep herself from smiling. In this moment, Sebastian truly hates Lewis. It’s gonna break his mom’s heart when he tells her they’re not really dating.

His phone buzzes again, and he glances down.

Ava — 6:58PM
no worries if not!!

Robin hums, and when he shoots her a sharp look, insists: “I didn’t say anything!”

“Seriously, Mom.” He looks her in the eye, but his face is hot. “I’ve just been helping her out on the farm. I’m fixing the tractor and stuff. That’s all.”

His mother looks both delighted and unconvinced. “I didn’t say it was Ava, did I?”

He glances around, mostly trying to avoid eye contact, and catches sight of her. She’s on the far side of the docks, over near the art boat. Lewis is monologuing about something, and Ava’s nodding along. She glances down at her phone, and something in his chest twists. (What, so we’re yearning now? his last brain cell scoffs. Great. This is going really great.)

“Do you want to go help her fix the tractor?” his mom asks, startling him out of his thoughts.

He frowns. “The tractor’s not here.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” She raises her eyebrows in a way that says, Sebastian, I’m your mother, and even if I weren’t, that excuse is flimsier than a load-bearing structural beam with dry rot.

She’s right, of course. It is an excuse. Just not for the reasons she’s thinking. Sebastian does a quick assessment and realizes that he has a few options:

1) Confess that he’s only been hanging out with Ava to avoid interacting with Maru and Demetrius. This is the most honest path, but it’s not a viable one. He would rather choke himself with a glittery plastic candy cane than choose to hurt his mom by admitting this.
2) Continue to try and convince his mother that there’s nothing going on between him and Ava. Thanks to Lewis and his big mouth, these efforts will not be successful. Also, he will end up trudging around after his mom’s family for the rest of the night, feeling bitter and guilty, and Ava will continue to be hassled by Lewis. This is less than ideal.

Of course, there’s always a third option:

3) Accept Ava’s fake-dating proposal, and play into his mother’s incorrect assumptions.

For a moment, he allows himself to consider it. Allows himself to think about what it would be like to spend the evening wandering the snowy docks with Ava, listening to her talk, watching her face light up whenever she finds something she likes. (He does have her for the Winter Star exchange. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to see what sorts of presents she might like, right?) He imagines sharing hot chocolate with her, ducking into brightly-lit booths, huddling into each other to stave off the cold. It sounds so nice.

It wouldn’t be real, of course, but would it really hurt to let himself pretend? Just for a little while?

(But it would hurt, he thinks. Eventually.)

“It’s okay,” he insists to his mother, in a last-ditch attempt to be a good and honest son. “I know how much it means to you to have me here, so—”

“Sebby!” She grabs his shoulder and looks him in the eye, smiling encouragingly, the same way she had when he’d been nervous about joining the soccer team back in the fourth grade. “Go! We’ll be perfectly fine here.”

He hesitates. This is such a bad idea, but… He glances back at Ava, and at his mother, and he swallows hard.

“If you’re sure,” he says.

“Very sure.”

“Thanks.” He pulls her into a hug. She hugs him back fiercely, without hesitation. They stand for a long moment, holding each other tight.

“I love you, sweetheart! Have fun,” she says as she pulls back, and then her smile turns mischievous. She lowers her voice and adds: “But not too much fun. I’m not ready to be a grandmother yet.”

“Bye, Mom!” He retreats vaguely in Ava’s direction, breathing in the cold night air and praying his cheeks don’t look as warm as they feel.

Sebastian — 7:00PM
On my way

.

“—and while the draft of the seating chart you put together is a good start, I was thinking it might be a good idea to push some of the tables together, so people can sit in larger groups,” Lewis is saying as Sebastian approaches. “Of course, we’ll have to adjust the number of centerpieces, but that should be no problem, right?”

“They’re circular tables, Lewis.”

“Well, why did you rent circular ones?”

Ava sighs deeply and rubs her temples. Sebastian wonders exactly how close she is to drop-kicking Lewis off the edge of the dock into the icy ocean water and letting the anglerfish have at him. He clears his throat, and both of them startle.

“Sorry I’m late. You ready to go?”

“Oh, hey!” She lights up when she sees him, the tension in her shoulders unspooling as she turns. Her smile is bright. The lights strung up around the docks catch in her eyes, and for a moment, he nearly forgets how to breathe. “Sorry, I totally lost track of time.”

“Go where?” Lewis demands, his brow furrowing.

“T—” He has to clear his throat again. “To the Night Market. With me.”

“We’re in the middle of discussing some very important Winter Star logistics!”

“Did you double-book yourself?” he asks Ava, raising an eyebrow playfully, and she shrugs. Lewis has cornered me, she’d said in her text, and that doesn’t sound premeditated. He takes a guess, turns to Lewis, and asks: “Did you actually ask her if she was free? Or did you just dump a bunch of stuff on her at the last minute and assume she’d find the time to handle it?”

“Well, no, but— I mean—” Lewis sputters. “She helped last year!”

“Huh.” He tries not to grin. I was right. I have dibs. “Sounds like you assumed.”

Ava snorts, then quickly covers her smile with her hand, but she can’t cover her bright eyes, which are still crinkled up at the edges with barely-suppressed laughter. Cute, he thinks, and then: This fake-dating thing is gonna kill me, isn’t it?

“The thing is, we, um…” He trails off, the lie dying on his tongue: We have a date. He swallows hard and tries again. “Ava’s already spoken for tonight. We have plans.”

He puts on his best Don’t-Screw-Around-With-Me face, the one he wears every day on the subway, and narrows his eyes at Lewis as he puts an arm around her. She inhales sharply, glancing up at him with raised eyebrows—What are you doing?—and he studies her face, ready to pull away at the first sign of discomfort, but instead, her eyes go wide with realization. She breaks out into a wide smile and nestles herself closer to his side, wrapping an arm around his waist.

Spirits alive, Sebastian thinks, fighting to keep his expression normal, I really did not think this through.

“Well!” Lewis’ moustache twitches, and he harrumphs. “If you’re more interested in going on dates and doing frivolous holiday shopping than giving back to the Pelican Town community, I suppose I can’t stop you, but your grandfather would certainly have something to say about this!”

Her grandfather? Her dead grandfather? Sebastian wants to ask, anger trickling like ice through his chest, because how dare Lewis use her deceased relative as leverage to guilt her into doing volunteer work? Before he can say anything, Ava interjects.

“Listen, I really would love to help, but… The thing is, Sebastian’s going back to the city in less than two weeks, and I…” Through the layers of their jackets, he can feel Ava’s shoulders go tense, but she shoots Lewis a pleading look that nearly looks genuine. “I just want to spend time with him while he’s still here, you know?”

Lewis’ sour expression softens just a bit, and it’s now vaguely reminiscent of the Grinch’s face in the old animated film, in the moments just before his heart grows three sizes. “Well…”

“Please?” It almost sounds like she means it. She tugs Sebastian a little closer. “All you really need is a gofer for the booths, and they never ask for anything from us, anyways. You can manage without me for a night, can’t you?”

“I suppose so,” he acquiesces, looking pained.

“Great, thank you!” She glances up at Sebastian, smiling wide. “Let’s go, babe.”

Ava drags him in the direction of the coffee stand, and he follows. (Babe, his mind echoes, memorizing the shape of it as his heart hammers in his chest.) They track their way through the holiday lights that are strung along the pier, flurries of snowflakes catching in their hair and on their coats.

“Thanks, you’re a total lifesaver,” she says, once they’re out of earshot. She lowers her voice so she won’t be overheard, leaning in close, her warm breath ghosting across his cheek. His stomach flips. “I thought we weren’t doing the fake-dating thing?”

He huffs out a laugh. It comes out as a little cloud. “Yeah, well, it turns out you were right. Dating is a much more believable excuse than farm work.”

She tugs, stopping him short, and pulls him to the side, out of the flow of foot traffic. She steps back, shrugging his arm gently off her shoulder, then spins so they’re face-to-face.

“Sebastian, listen. You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” She looks him in the eye. Her eyeliner is smudged, just a little, and her voice is earnest. Several strands of hair have come loose from her beanie, and he has to fight the urge to tuck them back in. She hesitates, and then adds, “I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable. I can go back and deal with Lewis. I’ll manage.”

No, you won’t, he wants to say. You’ll let him walk all over you. You’ll be miserable.

“No, I want to go on a date with you,” he says, and then his heart is in his throat and his face is on fire, because what sort of Freudian slip—? “A fake date, I mean! I want to fake-date you. Because it’s a good plan.”

He cringes, but the corners of her eyes crinkle up in a smile. “If you’re sure!”

He swallows. Nods. Relaxes, just a smidge. “Yeah.”

“Perfect,” she says, linking their arms together. She leads him down the boardwalk again. “Okay, so, now that we’re fake-boyfriend-girlfriend, be honest with me: Did I oversell it? Was the pet name too much?”

“Nah, you did great.” His laugh comes out shaky, and he shakes his head, trying to seem like a normal and casual person. If you don’t call me babe again soon, I might die. I might also die if you do call me babe again. Either way, I’m dead. “He totally bought it.”

“Good,” she says, tugging him closer. Logically, he knows he had a long list of reasons why fake dating Ava was a bad idea, but when she smiles, he can’t remember a single one.

.

They loop through a few different displays, mostly window shopping. Ava picks up a few things as they go: A brightly-colored pair of earrings for her friend from the city, some rose-infused looseleaf tea for her mother, one or two things for the farm… She doesn’t pick up anything for anyone in town. He considers offering to help her pick a gift for her secret Winter Star friend, but she probably knows everyone’s gift preferences better than he does.

She leads him to a boat full of sculptures and paintings, and he follows close behind as she winds through the narrow displays. She’s switched to holding his hand, instead of his arm. His gloves are fingerless, and he tries dutifully to ignore the electric-warm feeling of her bare fingers intertwined with his own.

“Leah said these ones are by a guy named Lupini,” she tells him, leaning in close and keeping her voice low, even though they’re the only two on the boat. “He’s a famous painter, from, uh, Upper Grampleton, I think?”

Sebastian studies the painting in front of them. It’s a rendering of a dark mountain skyline at twilight, dotted with bright points of glowing neon light, green and yellow and red. The sheen of the oil paints almost makes them seem like they’re flickering. Skyscrapers loom in the background, faded by the foggy blue-gray gloom, and a brightly-lit tower stands on a distant hill, a beacon cutting through the dark haze. It reminds him of the city.

“What do you think of that one?”

“It feels lonely,” he admits.

“It kind of does, doesn’t it?” Her thumb absently brushes his index finger. She’s looking at the painting intently, and he wonders what the city was like for her. If she felt the same strange unmooring, the same distance.

“Do you ever miss it?” he asks. “The city, I mean?”

“No,” she says without hesitation, huffing out a laugh, and when he gives her an inquisitive look, explains: “The city was… Bad for me. Like, very bad.”

“Bad how?” he asks, and means, Was it the same bad for you as it is for me?

“Burnout!” She makes an exploding motion with her free hand and mimics a fizzling noise. Not quite the same, then. “I mean, you know how it goes, right? They fire your coworker, and you’re the competent one, so they go, hey, you can take over this while we find someone else, right? And you say, sure, because you’re a team player, and someone needs to do it, and it’s supposed to be temporary, but it’s not, and you start working overtime to keep up and then you just kind of… You keep telling yourself you’ll be fine, if you just make it past this next deadline, but it keeps happening, and happening, and…”

She sighs deeply and blinks hard, the corners of her mouth twitching downwards.

“Anyway, I wasn’t tough enough to cut it at JojaCo. So I moved here.”

“Sounds like it was a them problem. Not a you problem.” He squeezes her hand. She glances up and smiles, squeezing back, but then she looks back at the painting, and her expression goes melancholic again.

“If it’s not a me problem,” she asks quietly, “then why didn’t moving here fix it?”

Sebastian finds that he doesn’t have a good answer for that, so he just stands there, still holding her hand, still staring at the painting. Ava sighs again, after a moment, and nudges him gently with her elbow.

“Anyway,” she says, her voice bright again, “sounds like the city’s been treating you better, at least?”

“Yeah,” he says, but the painting brings up feelings of loneliness, feelings of social anxiety and discontent and not-fitting-in, and he’s asking himself the same question: If what I feel in Pelican Town isn’t a me problem, why didn’t moving away fix it?

.

After the art boat, they flit around to a few other shops. There’s the traveling merchant who used to set up shop in Cindersap, promising rare imports from beyond the Gotoran border; there’s a booth with candles, incense, and glittering sun-catchers. Sebastian is delighted to find that one of the boats is selling a very large stone frog statue, nearly the size of a small child. Ava suggests that she’ll buy it for the farm, to keep him company while he works on the tractor.

(It’s a joke, he tells himself, but that knowledge does nothing to stop the warm affection from blooming in his chest. It’s only a joke. They laugh about it, but he almost wants to warn her not to say things like that, because he might start believing she means it.)

“Oh, let’s stop at this one,” Ava says, tugging him towards a brightly-lit display of jewelry. “Just for a minute?”

“Sure.”

He watches her as she picks her way through the jewelry. She glances briefly at the earrings and rings before settling in next to the necklaces. They’re displayed in rows, laid out side-by-side on black velvet, glinting in the dim glow of the fairy lights strung up in the boat’s rafters. She trails her fingers along them, occasionally picking one up for careful examination before humming, setting it back down, and moving on.

She hovers over one set for a long moment. It’s a pair of gold necklaces stacked together, one long and one short. The shorter is a small, simple solitaire diamond, and the longer has a coin-shaped pendant with a flame and the words “Amor Fati” stamped across the front.

It’s intended to be a wedding necklace, he realizes—the solitaire worn before marriage, and then worn together with the larger pendant after. They’re not the traditional shell shapes, but not everyone goes with shells, anymore, do they?

“You, uh, like that one?” he asks, heart in his throat.

“Yeah! I’ve been thinking about rounding out my jewelry set a bit,” she explains, still examining it.

Of course, he realizes, the tension in his chest easing. Ava doesn’t know. How could she? She’s not from the valley. Necklaces aren’t a marriage thing for city folks.

Which means I could get her one for Winter Star without it being weird, he thinks, an excited, fluttery feeling kicking up in his chest, and then he thinks: I’ve completely lost my mind.

“Ye ought to try it on, miss,” the shopkeeper calls from the shadows, and Sebastian nearly jumps out of his skin. The man’s weathered face is half-shadowed by his mariner’s hat, and his voice is a salt-scratched drawl. His beard is long and gray, peppered with white. “See if it be to thy liking.”

(Sebastian would’ve sworn, a second ago, that this booth was unattended. Did the guy actually materialize out of thin air? Or was he just that distracted?)

Ava, at least, seems unfazed. “Oh, really? Thank you!”

She picks up the necklace, and, just for a moment, Sebastian indulges himself. He lets himself imagine what it would be like if they were actually a couple. If they were really shopping for engagement necklaces together, in some parallel universe where she’s on his arm tonight as more than a mutually-beneficial convenience, more than a pretense. He finds himself thinking that it actually might be kind of nice.

“Hey, Sebastian?” she calls, and he steps closer. Probably closer than is really necessary, but the booth is small, and she doesn’t seem to mind. She holds the necklace out towards him. “Can you help me with the clasp? My fingers are a little numb.”

“Oh! Sure.”

She turns around and pulls her long hair up and out of the way, coiling it on top of her head in a sort of loose bun. He steps closer, until they’re only a few inches away, until he can smell the faint citrus of her shampoo. He circles the necklace around her neck, his fingers brushing against the warm skin of her collarbone as he does so. His hands must be cold, because she shivers and takes a sharp breath in.

“Sorry.” His voice comes out quieter than he means it to, and about an octave lower.

“No,” she breathes, glancing back at him. “I mean, uh… You’re good.”

After a fumbling for a moment or two with the clasp (because of the cold, he lies to himself), he manages to successfully fasten the necklace around her neck.

“Done,” he tells her.

Ava thanks him, then lets her hair fall back down and steps forward to examine her own reflection in the mirror. He watches her in profile as she watches herself. The fairy lights catch in strands of her hair and light them up gold, and the diffuse light from the snow throws a soft, gentle glow across her face. Her hazel eyes are wide, almost sparkling, and she turns to him with a bright smile. Snowflakes have caught on her lashes and hair, and, spirits, he’s nearly close enough that he could make out the individual flakes, if he were to lean in and—

“It’s really pretty, don’t you think?” she asks.

“Very pretty,” he agrees, half-smiling in spite of himself, not looking at the necklace at all, and really, is this who he is, now? Is this who he’s become? Pulling out the sorts of lines he’s only ever seen in cliche holiday rom-coms? “It suits you.”

She was smiling before, but now she’s beaming. She’s pleased. “Really?”

Yeah, he tries to say, but the words stick in his throat, so he just nods.

Ava turns to the shopkeeper. “How much is it?”

“Three thousand and two hundred gold pieces,” he says, and then guffaws good-naturedly when Ava goes pale. “That there be a lab-grown diamond, miss, set in a 14-karat gold hand-crafted setting… Excepting that, your fiancé’s right. It suits you.”

Ava goes from white as a sheet to bright red in less than a second, and, well, there goes Sebastian’s stupid little necklace-shopping fantasy. It was fun while it lasted.

“My what?” she squeaks.

“We’re not engaged,” Sebastian interjects with a chuckle that he hopes comes across as self-assured instead of nervous. “We’re not even—!” (Wait, no, the fake-dating!) “We, uh, haven’t really talked about it. I mean.”

Nice save, moron. Very believable. He glances at Ava for backup, for reassurance. She looks almost upset for a second before she throws on a tight, pasted-on smile that’s nothing like the real one she was wearing before.

“Right,” she says, clearly uncomfortable, and his heart sinks.

(That’s what you get for wishful thinking, says his last brain cell, sitting in the corner chair of his mind, smoking a cigarette and looking dead tired. After all that talk about how getting attached wouldn’t be a problem… How’s this fake dating thing working out for you, so far?)

(Shut up, he tells it, shut up shut up shut up—)

“Oh?” There’s a knowing twinkle in the shopkeeper’s eye that only Sebastian seems to catch. His face goes hot, and he very deliberately pretends not to have noticed. “So full of shapes is fancy that it alone is high fantastical, eh?”

“I’m sorry?” Ava asks, squinting at him.

Is this guy quoting Shakespeare at us? Sebastian thinks, narrowing his eyes.

“Aye, the necklace may be a fancy, in meaning if not matter,” the mariner says, his eyes twinkling under his cap as he winks at Sebastian. “Still, unless this old man’s eyes do fail, I judge the meaning be as well-suited to the wearer as the form. What say you?”

Ava looks at Sebastian with mild panic—her expression clearly says, I have zero clue what this guy is saying, please help—and Sebastian’s actually a lot more panicked than she is, but for a completely different reason. He spent a few months studying older English dialects for one of his Solarion Chronicles campaigns back in high school, and he knows exactly what the old mariner is getting at.

They need to leave, right now, before Ava figures it out, too.

He opens his mouth. Freezes. Panics.

Spirits alive, say something, or she’ll figure out what he’s implying and she’ll and hate you forever and then you’ll have to go back to the city alone and curl up in your stupid little drafty asbestos-ridden studio apartment and die of shame—

“It’s been,” Ava says, taking off the necklace and placing it back on the display carefully, like it’s made of fragile glass, “just, um, so great to meet you! You’ve got a lovely shop, and some lovely necklaces and things, and a very nice, uh… Ghostly…? Fisherman? Vibe? Anyway, I will definitely think this over and circle back! Thanks so much, have a great night, happy Winter Star, bye!”

She links her arm through Sebastian’s and steers him away from the booth. The world full of loud crowds and holiday lights suddenly shrinks down to a single point of contact: Her body, warm and solid as she clings to his arm, even through the layers of sweaters and jackets. She smells nice, sweet, like vanilla-citrus perfume, and he knows that’s probably a weird thing to notice, but the exit ramp for being normal about this stupid crush was probably a few dozen miles before considering buying her a freaking engagement necklace simply because she liked it.

(I have her for Winter Star, he argues, as though he’d buy this sort of necklace for anyone else. As though it makes this entire train of thought any less inappropriate.)

He lets her drag him along the snowy docks, their boots treading lightly on the weathered wooden planking, until she finally slows down and brings them to a stop.

“Sorry.” She turns, and her smile is real again, if apologetic. “You looked a little freaked out, so I…”

“No, you’re good.” He clears his throat. “Thanks.”

She glances back in the direction of the booth, then turns back to him. “So, where to next? You wanted to get coffee at some point, right?”

“Coffee sounds good.” (She’s taking his hand again. She’s interlacing their fingers. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling and reminds himself sternly that she’s only doing it to keep up appearances.) “You’re sure you don’t wanna go back for the necklace?”

“No! Well, I mean…” She hesitates for a second, then shakes her head with a sigh, like she’s resigning herself to something. “No. I really shouldn’t.”

“Too expensive?” He’s making a programmer’s salary, but even for him, 3200G isn’t cheap.

“More like it’s not a justifiable expense. It’s not like I don’t have the money for it, but shelling out that much for something I don’t really need feels like a bad call, you know?” She sighs again and tugs her coat a little tighter around her shoulders with her free hand, looking wistful. “It was really pretty, though.”

He studies her face. She seems sad. He squeezes her hand reassuringly, before he can think better of it, and she brightens a little.

Just to clarify, it would be totally crazy to buy it for her for the Winter Star exchange, right? he asks his last brain cell, and it chokes on the cigarette it’s still smoking. Right. Right, yeah, that’s what I thought, I just—

You just what? his last brain cell gasps, hacking up a lung. Needed a second opinion on whether buying an engagement necklace for a girl you’re fake-dating is completely unhinged behavior?

“Yeah,” he says, trying to shake off whatever just possessed him. “The necklace was nice.”

.

The thrift boat is one of Maru’s favorite parts of the Night Market.

It’s not just the boat, although the multitude of innovative work-arounds the owner has invented to deal with a sea-bound life are a marvel in and of themselves. The fancier electronics are kept in a waterproof display case, bound with velcro. The narrow mahogany china cabinets are bolted down, so they don’t shift as the boat tilts, and their original glass panes have been replaced with strong plexiglass. Her mother, of course, has gotten caught up in the small furniture section near the front, leaving Maru and her father to wander the maze of cabinets on their own.

“I wonder what this is,” he says, eyeing a gloopy, translucent substance smeared around the bottom edge of a set of crystal champagne glasses. “Looks like some type of adhesive.”

“Oh, that’s museum wax!” Maru offers. “Probably to help keep them stable, in case the boat shifts.”

“Remarkable!” he says, breaking into a grin. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Gunther uses it to secure the artifacts and minerals in the museum section of the library,” she says, and then, before she can think better of it: “Sam’s actually the one who suggested it.”

“Hm! I see!” Demetrius is still smiling, but he’s schooling his expression and tone in the way that he does when he’s being very careful not to show his opinion on something one way or the other. Unfortunately, the fact that he’s trying to hide it in the first place makes his opinion fairly obvious.

If Maru pushes him on this, her father will feel compelled to drop hints about not getting distracted from her bright future. By this time next year, you’ll be in grad school, surrounded by like-minded peers, he’ll say. People who can really challenge you! Isn’t that exciting? By like-minded peers, of course, he will mean people with college degrees. As though Sam isn’t like-minded in ways that are more important. As though Sam doesn’t work hard, as though he isn’t funny and creative and generous, as though he doesn’t challenge her. As though he isn’t worthy of her.

She’s aware of her dad’s motivations, of course: He loves her, and like any loving father, he wants to offer guidance to help his children succeed in life. That’s good. She loves him, too, and values his opinion more than anyone else’s, and that’s why the little comments prick at her so much. That’s why they stick under her skin like needles. They stay. They hurt. They fester. It was manageable, at first, but she can feel herself starting to resent them, and she worries that resenting her dad’s guidance might someday turn into resenting him.

The thought of resenting him makes her feel sad and seasick. So she doesn’t push.

“I found some pretty cool stuff in the electronics bin last year,” she offers. “Wanna check them out?”

“Absolutely,” he replies, looking a little relieved, and she smiles reassuringly.

“By the way, I still need a Winter Star gift for Elliott,” she tells him, turning and making her way towards the electronics bin, “so if you see anything you think he’d like, let me kn—”

As she passes one of the cabinets, something catches her eye, and she does a double take. She takes a sharp breath in, and her eyes go wide.

A Dwarf Gadget!

It’s sitting in a glass display case alongside several other artefacts. The glow of its flickering turquoise display is dimmer than she expected, less intense than the lowest setting on her cell phone. (Of course it’s dim, she realizes, and now that she’s seen it, it seems obvious. She nearly laughs. It’s designed to be used in caves!) Its metal surface is heavily scratched—she knows the casing is usually made of a unique steel alloy, similar to stainless steel but with a small amount of iridium in addition to the chromium—and its raised metal buttons glint in the holiday lights. There’s a dent on one corner, but overall, it’s in good shape, and then she spots the tag—Tested, Works!—and feels dizzy with delight.

“Maru? Did you find something interesting?”

“It’s a Dwarf Gadget! I’ve never had the opportunity to see one up close,” she says, trying to seem casual, because he can’t know what she’s working on. Not yet. She resists the urge to press her nose up against the glass, to examine the device more thoroughly. What are the odds? “It seems like it’s operational, too.”

“Fascinating! I’ve heard several intriguing things about them from my colleagues.” Her dad’s eyes are bright, inquisitive, and he smiles. “Are you thinking of buying it? The adhesive used to fasten the casing together has some highly unique properties, as does the alloy from which the casing itself is constructed. We could test it in the lab together, if you’re interested.”

Maru freezes, because she was thinking of buying it, but if her dad pulls it apart to run tests on the internals, there’s no way she’ll be able to use it for her project. (And of course, she can’t tell him about the project. It’s not done yet. It’s not ready, and it won’t be until she gets her hands on one of these. Even then, she’s not sure it will work, but…)

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s not like I have a good use for it, anyway,” she lies, and holds her breath.

He nods, shrugging. “Alright.”

He turns towards the electronics bin without asking any other questions. She lets the tension in her shoulders relax, letting out a sigh of relief, and joins him. They unlatch the waterproof seal and start rummaging through old disk drives and reclaimed cables, and she thinks the situation over from all possible angles.

“Look, an e-Ink reader! I haven’t seen one of these in ages,” her dad says, grabbing a thin tablet from the pile, and she smiles. “You know, initially, this technology was developed using…”

The safest bet is to sneak back to the Night Market tomorrow evening, she decides. She’ll just have to cross her fingers and hope and that nobody else buys the Dwarf Gadget before she does.

Chapter Text

It’s the last day of the Night Market, and Sebastian is once again headed for the docks.

He’s here to meet Sam, technically speaking. This is how he justified it to himself, as he bundled up to go back to the beach again. I’m going back anyway, he’d thought as he wrapped his scarf around his neck. It’s not like I have to buy the necklace, he’d said, lacing up his boots. I’ll decide when I get there.

But the memory of the necklace has been lingering in his mind all day. He can’t shake it.

(The memory he really can’t shake is Ava’s smile. He wants to make her smile like that again.)

Anyway, he needs more time to mull it over. Sam was perfectly happy to push back their agreed-upon rendezvous time when he’d asked—or at least that’s what he’s deciphered from their message thread (“yo!! i gt 2 grb a cuple thngs 2, c u @ 8? [thumbs up emoji] [star emoji] [sunglasses emoji]”)—so now he has an extra twenty or thirty minutes to, well…

Agonize. Agonize is the perfect word for what he’s doing right now.

She would’ve bought it for herself, if it weren’t so expensive, he reasons, as the lights strung up around the docks come into view. He can feel his brain twisting itself into knots trying to justify this. And it wouldn’t have meant anything if she were getting it for herself, so it shouldn’t mean anything if I get it for her, right? The only thing that’s changing is the person giving it. It’s just a necklace. It doesn’t have to be weird.

It’s an engagement necklace! Of course it’s weird, the other, more socially-anxious (and maybe more rational) part of his brain argues. It’s 3200G! That’s, like, half a month’s rent for a decent city apartment. One month’s rent, if we’re talking about your crappy little shoebox-sized studio. You’re insane.

He scrambles for a counterargument and comes up with nothing besides: But she really liked it.

He starts making his way towards the westernmost section of the docks, where he knows the jewelry pop-up is. He feels more lightheaded the closer he gets. The warm, twinkling lights overhead suddenly feel too bright, and the music feels too loud. He can hear the blood rushing in his ears, and he’s suddenly nauseous, and spirits, he knew it, this is the worst idea he’s ever had.

He alters course and retreats to the coffee booth.

He buys a coffee. It warms his shaky hands, but the coffee inside is piping hot, burning the tip of his tongue as he sips it. The caffeine’s going to make his anxiety worse, but he drinks it anyway, hunkering down in the shadow of Willy’s fishing shop, just beyond the light of the boats and booths. The wind picks up, the snow falling more heavily, and he shivers.

This was a bad idea. I should go find Sam, he tells himself, but he doesn’t. He just stands there, drinking his coffee, caught in indecision—an infinite loop, bouncing between it would be weird and it would make her happy—until a figure rounds the corner and plows into him, sloshing hot coffee out of the cup and onto his hand. He swears.

“Sebastian?” she gasps, and he thinks: Hang on, I know that voice. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” he hisses, shaking coffee off of his hand and whirling to face Maru. “What are you doing here?”

“I—” She opens her mouth. Snaps it closed, then crosses her arms. “I asked you first.”

“I asked you second,” he responds on instinct, and then cringes—what is he, five?—before deciding to double down. Maru can pull the knowledge that he’s here to buy an engagement necklace from his cold, dead hands. “Weren’t you here with Mom and Demetrius last night?”

“Weren’t you?” she asks, raising her eyebrows primly.

Maru’s being weirdly cagey about this. She’s fidgety and tense, and both of those descriptors normally apply to Sebastian, not her. If she’s being secretive, there must be a reason for it, he thinks. Maybe she wants to buy Winter Star gifts for someone in their family. Maybe she has him for Winter Star, and oh, that would really be the icing on the cake of this awful holiday vacation, wouldn’t it?

Or. Or… Maybe this has to do with the secret robotics project she’s been working on.

His phone buzzes, and he slips it out of his coat pocket to check it.

Sam — 6:56 PM
Misson Accomplished [star emoji] [star emoji] [star emoji]
rdy whn u r!!

Dammit, he thinks. The sinking feeling in his gut tells him what he already pretty much knew, but didn’t want to admit: He wants to buy that necklace, whether it’s a good idea or not. It’s the best gift idea he has for Ava so far, and now, he’s going to have to rush to buy it before meeting up with Sam.

Sebastian — 6:56 PM
Give me ten or fifteen minutes?

“I think,” he says slowly, locking his phone and shoving it back in his pocket, “that it’s probably none of my business what you’re doing here.”

Maru lets out a breath, her shoulders relaxing a fraction, but she still looks wary. “Okay?”

“Which means it’s none of your business what I’m doing here, either. Yeah?”

Maru’s mouth presses into a flat line, but she nods. “Okay. Agreed.”

“Cool.” He goes to take a sip of hot coffee, and then, belatedly realizing that most of it ended up on either his hand or the planks of the dock, sighs and downs the rest. He tosses the cup into a nearby recycling bin. “See you back at home, then.”

He makes a beeline for the necklace stand, and he doesn’t stick around to see where his stepsister goes.

.

When Maru finally gets to the thrift boat, she’s dismayed to find that the dwarf gadget isn’t in the glass case.

Maybe they moved it to a different shelf, she tells herself, even though she’s fully aware that this line of thinking is irrational. Maybe someone bought it and then returned it? Maybe they rotate the items that they display each night, and they’re keeping it behind the counter… She skims the shelves frantically, and when she still doesn’t find it there, she starts rummaging through the electronics bins near the back. Spirits, why, who else in Pelican Town could possibly need—?

“Can I help you find something?” the woman behind the counter asks.

“Yes!” she shouts, because her focus is fully on finding the gadget, which means her volume moderation has gone out the window. She clears her throat, adjusts her voice, and tries again. “Sorry. There was a little, uh, computer-like thing here, last night? It was about this big, sort of glowing and humming, and it had a keyboard with—”

“You mean the dwarf gadget?”

“Yes! Exactly!” She clasps her hands together, summons her most charming smile, and asks, a little desperately: “Has it moved, or…?”

The woman shakes her head. “Sorry, someone beat you to it. You just missed it!”

“And that’s the only one? You don’t have any on backorder, or…?”

“Don’t think so.” The saleswoman sucks a breath through her teeth. “I mean, our stock rotates pretty regularly, depending on what our suppliers find, but those’re pretty rare, and they’ve been in high demand recently. We might get another in at some point, but…”

“But it’s not likely,” Maru finishes. It’s not a question. Her heart falls in on itself, a gravitational collapse that leaves a supermassive weight of disappointment in her chest. It’s not a black hole, but it feels like one, metaphorically speaking, which is to say: It’s heavy, and it sucks.

“Sorry.” The woman grabs a business card from the holder next to the cash register and holds it out with an apologetic smile. “You can keep an eye our website, if you want.”

“I will,” Maru says, taking the card politely, even though she knows she’ll never use it. “Thank you for your help.”

.

Sebastian strolls towards the jewelry booth furtively but with intent, glancing around as casually as possible to make sure he isn’t spotted by anyone he knows. At one point, he spots a shock of blonde hair and has to duck behind a pile of crates to avoid Sam, because he knows exactly what this will look like to him—it’ll look like exactly what it is (a terrible idea)—and he really doesn’t want to explain himself right now. He just wants to buy the necklace and be done with it.

The kiosk is exactly as it was yesterday, all smoothed-over wood and soft, warm-toned can lights that shine on the jewelry displays, making them sparkle. The sea-weathered old man who was running the booth last night is nowhere to be seen.

He steps closer, searching for the necklace. Just because he’s curious.

It’s still there.

He picks it up to study it, the gold chains cold against his fingers. He runs his thumb along the Amor Fati engraving, along the edge of the flame. He eyes the diamond and considers it. Considers how delighted Ava had looked yesterday when she’d seen it, the way her eyes had lit up, the way she’d shivered as he’d fumbled to fasten the lobster clasp for her, his fingers brushing against the back of her neck and—

“Are ye seeking to buy that, lad?”

Sebastian startles, drawing a sharp breath in and nearly dropping the necklace. He looks up to find the shopkeeper, who’s suddenly appeared behind the counter, dressed in the same threadbare woolen overcoat as yesterday. The old mariner watches him with an amused expression.

Seriously, again? Where did he come from?

“I’m just looking,” Sebastian replies, heart in his throat. The necklace chain is still in his hands.

“I see.” The mariner hums. “Well, if there’s anything I can help ye with…”

There’s not, he should say. I’m not buying it, he should say.

“Okay,” he says instead. He swallows hard. “Thanks.”

He picks up the diamond again and turns it over in his hand. It’s small and beautiful, like a little shard of ice, glinting and sparkling. Its facets catch the light and send it out again, rainbow-colored. It flashes as it turns.

(She’d looked happy, yesterday.)

“Seems the snow’s pitched,” the mariner says. Sebastian glances up, and the man tilts his head towards the piles of snow gathering on the pier. His nose is red with cold, and his smile is wide as his eyes flick down to the necklace. “And, speaking of pitches… Worst she can say is no, eh?”

“No.” He scoffs, letting the chain slip gently from his hands. The solitaire diamond falls back on the mannequin’s velvet neck with a dull thud. “No, actually, the worst she can say is that I’ve made her uncomfortable. That I’m a manipulative jerk, and a coward, and a terrible person. That she never wants to see me again.”

“I doubt the lass would say any such thing.”

“Maybe I’d deserve it.” His mouth presses into a thin, taut line as the guilt tugs at him: I’m lying to my mother. I’m fake-dating my crush under false pretenses. I nearly had a breakdown because my best friend made new friends while I was gone. “Maybe I am a manipulative jerk. You don’t know me.”

“That be true, I know ye not,” the mariner admits, clicking his tongue and glancing up at the stars. “What I do know is the way she looked at ye.”

“We’re not even dating,” he confesses, with a short, cynical laugh. (The way she looked at me, his brain scribbles down for later analysis. He’s grasping at straws, here. He knows he has no chance.)

The mariner purses his lips. “Well, if she not be to thy liking—”

“No!” The word is a reflex, out before he can really even process it. His face burns, but he stands by it. “No, it’s not that.”

“I know.” The old man chuckles and says: “Ye both looked at each other the same way.”

Sebastian’s heart stutters in his chest, and spirits alive, he almost lets himself believe it. Almost hopes. Logically, he knows that it’s an awful idea to trust the advice of someone who is so clearly biased, of this old salt-bearded man with a vested interest in making sure he purchases the necklace. One month’s rent’s worth of vested interest.

The necklace glints in his shaking hands. He knows this is ill-advised.

And yet.

(She’d looked so happy. He may not believe the mariner, but does it matter? Ava deserves something nice.)

“Okay,” he breathes. “I’ll take it.”

.

The mariner places the necklace very carefully into a hinged velvet box (a necklace box, Sebastian thinks, feeling a little faint) and then pulls out a roll of red wrapping paper that looks like it might have been purchased when Ava’s grandfather was a young boy. He whips out a wickedly sharp boning knife, inset with mother-of-pearl, slices off a perfectly-sized section of paper with practiced ease, and begins to wrap, his movements efficient and precise.

“I have her for a gift exchange,” Sebastian explains, without being prompted. He clears his throat. “It’s not, uh, a romantic thing.” (Even if he kind of wishes it was, it would be weird for it to be a romantic thing. So it’s not. In the city, necklaces are a regular, non-romantic thing—or at least they can be—and Ava is from the city, so! That settles it. It's not romantic to her, and that’s what matters.)

The mariner pauses mid-fold and squints at him, like he’s trying to figure out how to word something delicately. “Have ye considered buying the lass a nice pair of earrings?”

“No. I mean, you saw her yesterday, right? She really likes this one.”

“Ah, well.” The mariner clicks his tongue and winks, smiling, then continues his wrapping. “Can’t be helped, then, can it?”

Sebastian really shouldn’t care what this stranger thinks of him. He could lie outright and say that he doesn’t care about Ava, that he’s just buying this to get the gift-giving out of the way. Or, he could just stay quiet. Let the old man believe what he wants.

Instead he admits: “I just really want her to be happy. She works so hard for everyone, and I think she deserves to have something nice. Something for herself.”

He says it quietly enough that for a moment he doubts whether the mariner’s even heard him, but the old man huffs out a ghost of a laugh as he hands over the neatly-wrapped package.

“Valuing one another’s happiness,” he says, his eyes sparkling. “’Tis one of the truest foundations for a relationship, romantic or otherwise.”

.

Upon reflection, Maru is furious.

Not at the woman running the thrift boat, obviously. She wants to be angry with her father, but none of this is his fault, either. Mostly, she’s angry with herself.

The dwarf gadget is the last piece she needs to finish her project. She’s tried, over and over, to create an artificial intelligence model that matches a ternary-trained model on binary hardware. It should work, because a paper published last year in the Journal of the Ferngill Society of Artificial Intelligence says it’s possible, if computationally inefficient, but there’s a bug somewhere in her code. There must be, because the models she’s managed to create with their reported methods and datasets don’t come anywhere close to the near-human level of reasoning reported in the article. The corresponding author of the paper she’s trying to reproduce results from hasn’t replied to her emails. She’s stuck.

She paces towards the eastern end of the dock, tugging her scarf tighter around her neck, her brows knit tightly together.

She needs to finish MarILDA, and soon. If she’s going to switch majors, that means living on campus next year, and if (if!) she does that, she can’t leave her parents without any support. She won’t. And she refuses to leave them in the hands of some half-baked language learning AI that can’t learn the difference between a beaker and a graduated cylinder! She needs something robust. Something she can trust.

The chassis of her robot assistant, the body, is done. All that’s left is the mind. If she could just get her hands on some actual ternary hardware, she could finish the project. She could move out, move on, grow up and finally take charge of her own life, without any reservations. If she could just find a dwarf gadget, she could…

And then, against all odds, the stars aligned, and she found one.

It was within arm’s reach, yesterday, close enough to touch, and she didn’t buy it because… Why? Because she thought her dad wouldn’t understand? Because she didn’t want to start an argument over an idea that wasn’t even fully formed yet? Because she worried his feelings might be hurt if she expressed a desire to leave?

She found exactly what she needed. It had been right in front of her. She didn’t take it.

And now it’s gone.

Her pacing has brought her in a large circle around the pier, and she lingers for just a moment near the thrift boat, watching the lights as they reflect on the water, glinting like stars. She takes a deep breath and lets it out. She brings the scarf up around the lower half of her face and breathes out again, focusing on the warmth, on the increase in humidity.

It won’t do any good to get upset about this, she tells herself, trying to be reasonable. Rational. Being angry won’t bring it back.

Regrettably, knowing that an emotion isn’t useful doesn’t seem to stop her from feeling it. She huffs, frustrated, and spins on her heel—

And plows right into someone tall and familiar and blonde, someone who’s wearing a sturdy, patched-over denim jacket, who smells faintly of cheap deodorant and maple syrup and bleach. His left hand is occupied by a heavy-looking canvas shopping bag, but his right one immediately lands on her shoulder, steadying her, and when she looks up and catches sight of his bright smile, it’s all she can do not to bury her face in his chest.

“Hi, Sam.” She cringes as soon as the words leave her mouth. She’s upset enough that she forgot to put in the effort to make her voice bouncy, and it comes out with a flat affect that she didn’t intend. Please don’t pick up on it, please don’t—

“Hey,” he says, sounding worried, and she mentally kicks herself. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Nothing,” she says, and shakes her head when he raises an eyebrow. “I found a dwarf gadget at the thrift booth yesterday, and I didn’t buy it, and now it’s gone. That’s all.”

“Oh,” he says, his eyes going wide. “Actually, I, uh—”

“I didn’t buy it because Dad was there.” Tears prick at her eyes, and she sniffs. “I’m tired of hiding things from him, of having to pretend that I don’t—that I don’t want the things I want, because I can’t just grow up and deal with him disapproving of my choices! And then, if I do say something, he’ll just try and argue me out of it, and I don’t want to argue, I just want…”

She trails off, not sure where the rest of the sentence is going. Sam squeezes her shoulder.

“I think,” he says gently, “that it’s really normal to want your dad’s approval.”

“Yes! He’s very rational, and he just wants the best for me, so I keep thinking that maybe if I just explain things properly to him, then he’ll understand, and…” Her voice dies again. She looks into Sam’s eyes, blue and bright, and the fear slips out: “What happens if he never approves?”

“Then, uh, he doesn’t? And you move on.”

She bites her lip. “He’ll worry about me. He’ll pretend he doesn’t, but…”

Sam is quiet for a moment, and then says, “You know, I worry about Vin a lot, as his older brother.” He tilts his head and glances up at the lights, choosing his next words carefully. “But also, like, he’s his own person. I want him to make good choices, sure, but I don’t want him to make every decision in life based on how he thinks I’ll feel about it.”

“You do want him to make the right decisions, though.”

“Oh, for sure,” he agrees. “But the thing is, like—I may not totally get all of the choices Vin makes in his life, or agree with them, right? Maybe they’re not the choices I’d make! But just because they wouldn’t be right for me, or I don’t understand them, that doesn’t mean they aren’t right for him. It’s his life. And disagreeing doesn’t mean I don’t love him.”

“But you…” She trails off, and then says, very quietly: “I don’t want Dad to be worried about me, or disappointed in me.”

She braces herself for the arguments: Of course he won’t be disappointed! You’re perfect, you’re the golden child, you make the dean’s list every semester, you help in the lab and in the shop and in the clinic, you follow every rule set before you, you make normal regular snowmen instead of snowgoons, and—

“If he is,” Sam says, shrugging, “those are his feelings to deal with. Not yours.”

“But I don’t want him to be disappointed!”

The words feel childish, and she’s embarrassed by them as soon as they leave her mouth. Sam gently interlaces their fingers and squeezes her hand. The corner of his mouth twitches up into a reassuring smile, then flattens out into something more serious. His eyes, as always, are kind.

“It does kinda suck, but the thing is, like… Either you learn to be okay with disappointing him, or you’ll spend your whole life disappointing yourself, you know?” His mouth quirks up into a smile again. “Your dad is a good dad. A really good dad. And a dad like that, I think he wouldn’t want his kid to, like, make herself miserable, or miss out on things that would make her happy, just to keep him comfortable.”

Maru takes a deep breath, focusing on the way the cold air feels on her lips, in her lungs. Focuses on the way Sam’s hand feels in hers, the solid weight of it grounding her even though the angora gloves she got for Winter Star last year. She lets her thoughts fall into orbit around the point of contact, like satellites around a heavenly body, ordered and circular and slightly more manageable.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” she says, and finds that she means it. She smiles up at him and squeezes his hand, nudging his shoulder with her own. “Yes, I am.” She sniffs, and adds: “Admittedly, I am still a little bummed about the gadget, though. I kind of wonder who in town even bought it, because it’s not like it…”

Sam freezes in place, his blue eyes going saucer-wide.

“Uh. Sam?”

“So, ha! Funny story re: the whole, er, missing… Gadget… Situation,” he starts, holding out the canvas bag he’s carrying towards her with an apologetic half-grin. He almost looks nervous. “Well, I guess it’s not funny, exactly, but—”

“No,” she gasps, her mouth falling open, and she can’t stop the smile that breaks across her face. She takes the bag from him and tugs it open, and sure enough, the gadget is sitting inside, heavy and steel-cold and absolutely perfect. “No way!”

His half-grin is a full smile, now, warm and bright. “Yes way! It was gonna be your Winter Star gift, but if you want to take it now, so you can play around with it a bit…”

“Are you sure?” she asks, because she feels like she’s supposed to, even though her hands are already itching to open it up. To finally get answers to her questions. “I can wait.”

“Sweetheart, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” he says, looping an arm over her shoulder and pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and she laughs again and holds the bag tight to her chest. His eyes sparkle, and he adds, “Well. Maybe a few things.”

That his relationship with Maru is included in the finite set of Things Sam Has Been Sure About is heavily implied, and she smiles so hard her cheeks hurt.

Chapter Text

The dwarf gadget is even more incredible up close.

It was thrilling to see it in the glass case, of course, it’s but it’s another thing entirely to feel the cold, solid metal under her fingers. Maru sets it on her workbench almost reverently, in the space she’s cleared off beside the robot chassis, her workstation, and her tools. The tactile switch clicks softly as she turns it on. It hums in her hands, the screen throwing off a gentle glow, and she understands why some people have theorized that these things are magic, that they’re alive.

A few glyphs appear on the screen for a handful of seconds, and then they vanish. Next, a full paragraph appears, and this time it lingers. After nearly ten seconds, this text disappears, too, and is replaced with one single line, consisting of three glyphs.

Maru switches the machine off.

“Okay,” she says out loud, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

.

It takes her nearly an hour and a half to properly connect the dwarf gadget to her laptop, and she knows it will take several more hours to transfer all of the training data, even using the ultrafast cable adapters. She begins the transfer, and then, at a loss for what to do while she waits, falls back into old habits: She begins tinkering. She runs a last set of tests on the chassis and its interfaces, just to make sure everything works properly, even though she’s already tested them more times than she can count.

Fine motor control capabilities? Check. The robot’s head turns from side to side on command, and its hand unfurls, one finger at a time, like a flower. The red and blue wires running along its joints remind her of blood veins.

Neural network modules, adapted for a ternary system? Check. She’ll copy over her initial attempts at a neural net once the data transfer is complete, but she expects it will take several more days, maybe even weeks, to debug and train her models on the new hardware.

Voice bank? Check. Speakers, microphones, and audio data processors? Check, check, and check.

Maru’s heart pounds, and she watches impatiently as the progress bar slowly inches its way towards full. She knows that psychologically, there can be a discontinuity between perceived time and actual chronological time, but she thinks she’s never experienced such a dramatic mismatch. She turns on her speakers, throws one of Sam’s mixtapes into her CD player on low volume, and opens up her search engine.

Maru sighs, bites her lip, and types: switching majors senior year “biochemical” to “electrical” engineering.

She hits enter.

As she scrolls through the results, she imagines what her life will look like, over the next few years, if she does switch over to engineering and join the in-person program: Working in the lab, talking through research problems with her peers, and drinking terrible coffee during boring seminars from visiting professors… She lets the vision settle in her mind and finds it pleasing, finds it compelling.

Besides, she thinks, glancing at the little computer on her workbench, it’s not like I’m leaving Dad and Mom to fend for themselves. She holds on to the thought. It reassures her. It eases some of the guilt.

She finally lays out her plan to switch majors, and it solidifies faster than her graduate school applications ever did. It’s a good plan, an airtight plan—it has to be, doesn’t it, if she’s pitching it to her father? She looks up scholarships, looks up student loans. Does the math. (She’s always been good at math.) How much will she owe if she picks up a part-time job? What about finding a roommate in Zuzu City, or doing her remaining general education requirements at a local college over the summer?

Slowly, very slowly, the numbers come together. Not easily, but they do.

The plan is viable, she realizes, and she feels suddenly, blindingly bright, like burning magnesium. She can do this, if she wants to! Now, she just has to finish building this robot, this helper, to shoulder some of her responsibilities here. To fill the gap she’ll leave behind. Feeling satisfied and sure of herself, she throws her efforts back into testing. Voice bank… Neural net… Hand motors, arm motors, finger motors… Audio sensors… Video sensors…

Somewhere between Check Yes, Juliet and Jack Strauber’s Buttercup, Maru finds her eyelids growing heavy, the melatonin beginning to overtake her. She sits up and stretches, yawning, and then sets her timer for twenty minutes. She lays her head down on her desk, settling into her crossed arms like a pillow, and lets herself fall into the warm embrace of sleep.

.

Maru comes awake slowly, easily. The surface of the desk is hard beneath her cheek, and her right shoulder aches. Shafts of dim early-morning light filter in through the awning window—the twenty-minute timer has long since rung and fallen silent—and there’s a gentle, quiet melody, perfectly-pitched and synthetic.

It takes her a moment to realize that the music isn’t coming from her CD player. That fell silent hours ago. It’s coming from the dwarf gadget, which is still hooked up to her laptop.

The dwarf gadget is humming.

As soon as she registers this, she shoots up in her chair, and her mind races, suddenly scrambling. The gadget is humming to itself. That shouldn’t be possible, should it? She’s given it the training data, but she hasn’t done any actual training, nothing to give it any semblance of intelligence—she hasn’t transferred over the code for the ternary neural net yet, hasn’t set things up properly, hasn’t plugged it into the chassis or even given it a voice, and—

And yet, the gadget hums.

It swings into the next section with what can only be described as verve—it’s not just replicating the sound waves, it’s playing with them—and she realizes with dread that she recognizes the song. It’s ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky, which was absolutely not in the training set of open-source and public-domain data she just transferred over. It was on Sam’s CD, though. The one that was playing earlier.

There’s no way it should be taking the song and modifying it, not unless… Unless, not unless…

I’m dreaming, she reassures herself, trying to take deep, steady breaths. Trying not to panic. This has to be a dream. This shouldn’t be possible.

The dwarf gadget hums the bridge. She knows the lyrics by heart.

Mr. Blue, you did it right!
But soon comes Mr. Night
Creeping over, now his hand is on your shoulder
Never mind, I'll remember you this—
I'll remember you this way!

She staggers towards her workbench, the floorboards creaking beneath her weight.

“??” The robot stops humming abruptly, and then hums two notes in quick succession, an up-pitch followed by a down-pitch that in combination with each other unmistakably imply: Hello.

Maru doesn’t respond, because responding would imply—would imply—

This was not how this was supposed to go. This was not how this was supposed to go! She doesn’t know what to do. She feels wildly underprepared for this, which is understandable, she thinks faintly, given the circumstances. There was no way to anticipate this as a likely outcome, based on the literature. The robot can see her, hear her, and that shouldn’t be possible, not without hooking it up to the chassis, and she doesn’t—

She stumbles forwards, feeling lightheaded, her heart pounding, and presses the power switch on the side of the gadget. It shifts under her shaking fingers with a heavy click, and the screen goes dark, the backlit glyphs fizzling out of existence. The room is quiet.

She stares at her reflection in the glass.

It’s alive, she thinks, pressing a hand to her mouth. Her stomach churns. It was already alive!

It’s still alive, deep inside all of that metal, beneath all of those buttons and circuits. Isn’t it? There’s something, someone, in there, asleep (probably) because she’s turned it off, but she can’t keep it off forever, right? Ethically speaking? She needs time to think.

The ternary theory is wrong. How could it be wrong? The recent simulations of ternary computing systems on human-built binary hardware match the soft computing capabilities of dwarf computers, and that proves it, doesn’t it? Proves that they only work better because they’re ternary, and not for any other reason? That one paper said—

She rummages through the documents on her desk, looking for a specific one, and she finds it: Binary Simulations of Dwarvish Computing Structures for Machine Learning. She flips through the highlighted equations, skipping to the end. Supplementary Information. The note says the code is available upon request, but the authors hadn’t responded to her email, so she’d coded their neural net up herself. It had worked for the test cases presented in their paper, but she couldn’t reproduce reasonable results for cases outside of the test set, and when she’d reached out to the corresponding author, he’d brushed off her questions. Double-check your code, he’d written. There must be a bug.

She had believed him, had doubted herself, but now? With the melody of Mr. Blue Sky still echoing in her ears?

Even if the simulation had worked, she realizes belatedly, that would only prove the viability of the theory, not its veracity. And it wouldn’t prove whether…

She swallows hard, trying to organize the rush of questions flooding her mind into something tenable. Something she can make sense of. They’re scattered, marbles-on-glass frantic in a way her thoughts hardly ever are, racing by at a pace that frightens her. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. She didn’t plan for this, didn’t plan to have to ask whether the machine she’s trying to put a mind into already has one.

If they’re just circuits—are they just circuits? Can a computer be sapient? They’re just electrical pulses moving through wires, but our nerves are just electrical pulses, too, aren’t they? Aren’t we all just circuits, in the end? Were Gwata and Kay right about them being ensouled? How does one even quantify a soul? Prove its existence? Even if it’s not a soul, it is certainly a mind, isn’t it? Is it self-aware, or could it be parroting something that looks like self-awareness based on input? Is it scared? Happy? Does it enjoy singing, or is it…?

One question rings in the back of her mind, high and frantic and piercing, repeating, looping, more pressing than all the others: What do I do? What do I do?

What do I do?

Chapter Text

“Would Monday afternoon be a good time for us to decorate the tree?”

Sebastian shoves a baguette into his mouth to avoid answering his mother’s question. The baguette is delicious and crumbly, and he almost feels bad using it as an excuse to not talk. It isn’t a surprise that she’s asking. Decorating the Winter Star tree is a cherished family tradition, after all—well, cherished to her, at least—and the Feast of the Winter Star is only a few days away.

“I’ve got rehearsal,” he mumbles, swallowing his mouthful of bread. You guys go on without me, he nearly says, but he knows how well that would go over.

“We could do after dinner, then?”

“That sounds good to me!” Demetrius agrees.

“Sure,” Sebastian says, tearing off another chunk of bread.

There’s a long pause. They all turn and look at Maru, who’s poking at her food with her fork, lost in thought. Her pasta looks entirely uneaten.

Demetrius clears his throat. “Maru?”

“What?” Maru startles, then shakes her head. “Oh! Sorry. Yes, I can do tomorrow night.”

Robin clears her throat loudly, and when Sebastian glances up, she tilts her head and catches his eye across the table. The corner of her mouth twists up into a mischievous smile.

“Do you know if Ava is free?” she asks, and his heart drops. Crap.

“I dunno, I think she’s pretty busy with all of the Winter Star prep,” he says, waving a fork, and his mother’s face falls. Guilt tugs at him, so he adds: “I can ask her, though.”

He winces—the whole point of their arrangement was to give her more time to prepare for the festivals, not less, and now, he’s making her the bad guy, making her turn down the invite herself because he can’t stand his mom’s disappointment.

Robin brightens again, clearly ecstatic but trying to play it cool. Somehow, this makes the coil of guilt in his stomach even worse. “Sounds great! Let me know what she says.”

Maru sighs, and when he turns to glance at her, she’s staring resolutely at her plate, her mouth pressed into a thin line. There’s a small, determined notch between her eyebrows, just over the bridge of her glasses.

“Everything alright, sweetie?” Demetrius asks.

“If we’re inviting Ava, we should invite Sam, too.”

Why would we invite Sam? Sebastian wants to ask, but his mother is glowing with delight, and Demetrius’ face contorts for a second, like he’s bitten into something sour, and his mouth does that thing that it does when he disapproves of something, and—Oh. Oh, no.

“How do you mean?” Demetrius asks, his voice very carefully level.

“Jiangui,” Sebastian hisses. “This is unbelievable.”

“Sebastian, language,” his mother scolds, but he doesn’t care, because what the hell, what the hell, why wouldn’t Sam have said something if…?

He puts the puzzle pieces together quickly, now that he knows what the picture is: Sam’s odd behavior at the clinic—the way Maru grabbed his chin with zero hesitation, his weird awkward rambling about the shirt, the way she’d turned to Sam for guidance as soon as she dropped the vial, the way Sam was so determined to help her get out of trouble… The way he’d picked up the amp for her at practice, the other day—You’re always welcome at band practice!—and the way she’d smiled at him in return, the way—

How did I not see it earlier? he wonders.

Demetrius clears his throat. “Maru, I’m not sure I—could you please clarify?”

“Sam and I are dating.” She says it so matter-of-factly, like she’s talking about the weather, or a change in the population of bream in the local river. “So, if we’re inviting Ava because she and Sebastian are dating, we should invite Sam to decorate the tree, too.”

“My best friend? Really?” Sebastian stabs a meatball, glaring. Tries to make direct eye contact, because he knows she hates it. “You really can’t let me have even one thing to myself, can you?”

She has the audacity to look hurt. “This isn’t about you, Sebastian.”

“Like hell it’s not about me! He’s my best friend!”

“I fail to see how that’s mutually exclusive with being my boyfriend!”

“I think I need to lie down,” Demetrius chuckles. He’s trying to play it off as a joke, but his smile is tight, and there’s genuine discomfort in the set of his shoulders. “Are you sure you’ve fully considered the ramifications of—ow!”

“We’re so happy for you, sweetheart!” Robin enthuses, shooting Demetrius a sharp look over the pasta. (Demetrius grimaces and subtly reaches down to rub his shin.) “Of course Sam is more than welcome to decorate the tree with us! And I’m sure Sebby will be glad to have him here.”

Sebastian scoffs. “Sure. Whatever.”

“Sebastian.” His mother is frowning, and of course she’s disappointed in him. Of course she’s angry that he’s focused on the dagger of his best friend’s betrayal lodged in his chest, aching and sharp, instead of her daughter’s happiness. Spirits forbid he say that he’s hurt, even though he is, or act like this is utterly unfair, even though it is, or that he express any emotions that might make Maru upset, because this is all about how Maru feels.

Screw what I feel, right? My feelings aren’t important.

“May I please be excused,” he chokes out, and it’s more of a demand than a request.

Her frown deepens. “Sebby—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Maru says, not unkindly. Robin’s face softens, and his blood boils, because the fact that his mom is willing to listen to Maru’s opinion on whether he can leave the emotional Saw trap that is this dinner table, but not his own, is just—

Infuriating. This whole situation is infuriating.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” he snaps, even though it’s his turn to wash dishes. He leaves his half-empty plate on the table and storms out of the room, snagging his jacket from the coat rack as he goes, and nobody makes a move to stop him.

.

Sebastian smokes his cigarette by the lake, leaning against his favorite tree. It’s uncomfortably cold, but his jacket and boots are warm enough, and he’s awkwardly tugged the hood of his sweatshirt over his head to keep his ears from freezing. It’s less than ideal, but he’d rather catch frostbite than go back home for his beanie. He takes a long drag from his cigarette, letting the hot smoke fill his lungs, and exhales. He watches the smoke dissipate and wishes that he’d never come back to Pelican Town for Winter Star. That he’d just stayed by himself in the city, like he has every other year.

And that’s exactly why you didn’t see this coming, a small, insidious voice whispers in the back of his mind. You’re the one who left, remember? Who traded your closest friends in the world for, what? A boring job and a lonely, drafty studio apartment?

It wasn’t a trade, though. He does keep in touch. With Sam. With Abby. With his mom.

That’s not the same as being here, though, is it? He had to replace you. In the band. In his friend group. In his emotional support system. You are right about one thing, though: You do keep in touch, which is exactly how he knew you’d react this badly, and you proved him right, didn’t you? You took it personally. Now they both hate you.

But it is personal, in a way, isn’t it? Maru is his stepsister, isn’t she? And Maru has always, always gotten everything Sebastian has ever wanted. Straight A’s and gold stars stuck to her like magnets to fridges, like they were innately drawn to her, while Sebastian spent late nights struggling to find his place, teaching himself programming, fighting tooth and nail for contracts, scrambling to prove himself, desperate for a shred of recognition. Maru is friendly, good at being nice or at least at putting on a mask and playing nice, while he struggles to smooth over his abrasive, awkward edges. Maru is acceptable. It’s easy for her to be acceptable. Sebastian may be successful now, by nearly any metric, but he isn’t happy. He doesn’t fit neatly into a nice clean socially-acceptable box, like she does.

And now, if being more respectable and successful and likable than Sebastian weren’t enough for her, she’s gone and stolen his best friend, too.

And—that’s the other thing. Sam is his best friend. Why wouldn’t Sam have told him?

Because you’re insecure. Because you’re too needy, too clingy. Besides, he knows exactly how you feel about Maru, doesn’t he? You’re petty. You’re selfish. You’re mean to her. How many times have you complained about her to him? How much must he resent having to constantly bite his tongue around you, having to keep his own feelings a secret because he knew you’d blow up about it?

But Sebastian doesn’t like Maru. He doesn’t have any obligation to like Maru. He briefly entertains the idea that he might have an obligation, then violently shoves the thought away, and all of the shame and guilt with it. He reminds himself, not for the first time, that he’s allowed to have complex, complicated feelings about his family situation. That he doesn’t have to feel guilty for not feeling the way other people say he should feel.

You should be happy for them. How would you feel, if Sam reacted this way when you started fake-dating Ava?

And he tries to tell the voice that that’s not a fair comparison, that it’s not the same, that—

This is why you don’t have any friends.

This is a lie. Sam is his friend—he knows Sam is his friend, but maybe they’re not as close as they used to be, because if they were, Sam would have told him. Sebastian told Sam about Ava, didn’t he? He told Sam about Ava, and the whole time, Sam was—the whole time—

I bet Elliott knows they’re dating.

He screws his eyes shut and sinks to the ground, knowing full well that this spiral is stupid and unhelpful, and yet he’s unable to stop his mind from spinning out of control, heart-droppingly fast, like a motorbike on black ice. The cold seeps through the thin fabric of his jeans, but he can’t bring himself to care. He holds the lit cigarette between his fingers, because he can’t smoke right now. Not when his breathing is shaky like this. Not when he’s on the verge of another panic attack. He swallows hard and forces his breathing into a slower, more regular rhythm.

In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four.

He opens his eyes. Watches the gentle flicker of warm light burning at the tip of his cigarette. Flicks the ashes away.

The cigarette goes blurry in his vision, and he stubs it out on the ground and pulls out his phone, sniffling and swiping tears away with the sleeve of his jacket. He types out the beginning of a message, then erases it. Types again, erases again. Types. Erases.

.

Seb — 8:24PM
Why didn’t you tell me you and Maru were
I can’t believe
You know, when you decide to date your best friend’s sister, it’s generally considered good form to
Maru? Really?? After all I
Were you ever going to tell me you were dating her or was I just supposed to
Maru said
I thought we were friends, why did

.

After a dozen or so deletions, he moves over to his notes app to draft the text, but even then, all of his words come out angry and muddled. He tries to organize his thoughts, but he’s too hurt right now to have a rational conversation with Sam, and he knows he’s going to say something he’ll regret, so he doesn’t send any of it.

Instead, without thinking about it too hard, he opens his phone app and calls Ava.

The second the phone starts ringing, he immediately realizes what he’s done, and then he makes his first healthy choice of the night by panicking and hanging up. He stares at the phone in his hand, vaguely horrified with himself, wondering why his knee-jerk response to something awful happening is to call Ava to vent about it. Maybe he’s developed some sort of weird Pavlovian response to negative feelings.

Wanting to avoid your own desperate lonely sadboy anxiety is not a good excuse to call her, he tells himself sternly. He swallows hard around the lump in his throat, tears threatening to well up again. She’s got enough to deal with already.

She’ll wonder why he called, of course, and he tries not to panic. This is fine. Everything’s fine. He can still fix this. She doesn’t need to know why he called her.

He sends a quick text. The good thing is, he already has an excuse.

.

Sebastian — 8:35PM
Hey. Mom’s asking if you want to decorate the Winter Star tree with us tomorrow night.

.

He hesitates for a moment, and then starts typing out a much longer text, one that will make it easy for her to reject the invitation, that won’t leave her feeling guilty—I know you’re in the middle of festival prep, and that’s what I told her, but I promised I’d ask anyway for family bonding reasons or whatever but I know it’s probably weird to have to pretend we’re dating around my family and I promise I can step up and be a better fake boyfriend and help you assert your boundaries so please don’t—

His phone starts buzzing, and he nearly drops it into the lake. His heart leaps into his throat as he accepts the call.

“Hello?” he croaks.

“Hi!” Ava sounds chipper. “You called?”

“I, uh, yeah, I did,” he says, cringing. He hates himself. “It’s… Ugh, Mom wants to know if you’re free tomorrow night. To help us decorate the tree? I already told her that it’s literally the busiest week of the year for you and that you’re super busy, so yo—”

“I’m not busy!”

“—you don’t have to—” He stops short as her words process. “What do you mean, you’re not busy? You’re always busy.”

“Okay, I am, but I can make time for this! The last time I decorated a Winter Star tree was, like… Four years ago, I think? I’ve kind of missed doing holiday stuff.” He can hear her smile through the phone. “Besides, I’ve had a lot more help than usual this season.”

He chuckles, the tension in his shoulders easing. “I haven’t been that helpful.”

“No, no, you’ve been super helpful, babe,” she reassures him.

He chokes on his own spit.

“No, wait, I mean—I—!” She laughs, anxious and a little too loud, and she seems just as humiliated by this as he is. It’s less of a consolation than it should be. “Sorry! It’s—I did it on reflex, because—habit, kind of, from the Night Market, and—!”

“I don’t mind!” As soon as the words leave his mouth he wants to go back and phrase them differently. His face burns. “I mean. It’s perfectly understandable. You’re good.”

“Good,” she echoes, taking a deep breath.

“And I’m glad to hear I’ve been at least a little helpful, despite ruining an entire keg of hard apple cider with my mouth germs,” he adds wryly, grasping at his self-deprecating humor like it's a lifeline.

She laughs. “Listen, I was gonna keep one for myself, anyway. I love hard cider.”

“Noted,” he says, smiling into the phone, even though he doesn’t have a reason to commit her favorite drink to memory—he’s a fake boyfriend, after all, not a real one—but she doesn’t call him on it. She just hums, sounding pleased.

“You know, I’m glad you called. I needed a break. My hand’s killing me. I swear, if I have to write one more place card…”

“You want help?”

“Seb, it’s, like, eight-thirty at night. Isn’t it kind of late?” His heart catches on the nickname. “I mean! Don’t get me wrong, you’re totally welcome to come over any time—any time—like, even if you wanted to come over at three AM or something, I would like that also, but I just, uh…”

“I stay up until five in the morning pretty regularly. This is, like, nothing. And honestly? I could use the distraction.”

She hums sympathetically. “Family stuff?”

Sam’s dating Maru, he very nearly says. It’s on the tip of his tongue, burning, ready to spill out. He’s been dating her for weeks, maybe months, and I had to find out over family dinner. From Maru! It’s Maru, and I hate that he didn’t tell me, and I don’t understand why—if he didn’t feel safe, or he knew I’d be upset about it, or—

“Something like that,” he says, choking the secret down, because it’s Sam’s to tell, and despite it all, Sebastian wants more than anything to be a good and loyal friend.

“Okay,” Ava says, after only a half-second of hesitation, and he screws his eyes shut and leans his head against the cold tree trunk. She knows there’s more. She knows, and she also knows better than to pry. He’s grateful. “Well, I can’t promise I’ll stay up until five, but you’re welcome to come over whenever. I’ll be here.”

He swallows and tries to smile. “Thanks.”

“Any time,” she breathes, and he knows she means it.

.

[ Sam — 3 Missed Calls ]

[ Sam — Voicemail (8:38PM) ]
Hey, man, it’s me. Uh, Maru said that, um—you know. [Long sigh] Look. I get that you’re probably totally pissed at me, but, like, can you call me back, whenever you get the chance? [Fabric shuffling] I’m just… We were trying to keep it under wraps, and I—anyway, just—call me back? Please?

Seb — 8:43PM
Hey. Let’s talk about this tomorrow before practice? I’ll come over two hours early.

Sam — 8:43PM
i mean, cann’t we just hash it out now? call me back plz
i just. i hate knowing that you’re angry with me. Its stressing me out :(

Seb — 8:44PM
Yeah, well, maybe don’t do stuff you know is gonna piss me off, then
And don’t send me a damn frowny face emoji, talking about how you’re stressed out by my negative feelings? How do you think I feel??
Sorry

Seb — 8:46PM
This is exactly why I don’t want to talk rn. I know I’m gonna say some awful BS I don’t actually mean. My hurt feelings are my problem. You don’t deserve me lashing out like that.
Sorry. Again. I shouldn’t have sent that.

Sam — 8:46PM
no no no its fine!!

Seb — 8:46PM
It really isn’t. I’m a bad friend

Sam — 8:46PM
i dont want u to feel like u cant be real w me
about ur feelings
NO!!!!! ur a good friend!! we talkd abut the bad self talk my dude

Seb — 8:47PM
Right. Thanks. But you still deserve better than me snapping at you
I’m just really hurt that I had to find this out from Maru instead of you.
I thought we were best friends

Sam — 8:47PM
i know! we are best friends. we ARE!!!!

Seb — 8:49PM
I know.
I just need some space to process, ok? I promise we’ll talk about it tomorrow
Before band practice, yeah?

Sam — 8:49PM
ok
i love you man.
i mean it. you’re my best friend and i care about you so much
promise we’ll be ok??

Seb — 8:49PM
I love you too, and I promise we’ll be okay.

.

Sebastian sneaks back into the garage, opening the door slowly, quietly, just short of the angle at which the hinges begin to squeak. His journey back to his room is stealthy and goes off without a hitch. Once safely in his room, he shoves his laptop and charging cables into his backpack a bit haphazardly, still distracted. Still emotional. After a moment of thought, he throws in some sweatpants, a pair of boxers, and a fresh t-shirt, in case he needs to stay the night. He pulls at least three shirts out of his clean laundry pile before he finds one that doesn’t have a band logo plastered across the front, that doesn’t remind him painfully of Sam.

He zips his backpack shut with enough force that one of the stitches pulls, and then nearly starts crying again.

Once he manages to pull himself together, he shoulders his backpack and sneaks back upstairs. He works his way slowly down the hallway, stopping briefly to listen to his mother’s voice behind the closed door of the master bedroom. Her tone is low and frustrated. She is successfully reigning in her anger, but she is also clearly reigning it in a lot. Normally, he’d derive at least a little schadenfreude from the idea that Demetrius is getting chewed out for something, but tonight, he just wants to leave.

He slips through the kitchen, out to the garage, totally undetected. He glances at Maru’s workbench as he leaves, scattered with papers about the stupid secret project she’s been working on. There’s a CD jewel case with a crack running through it, very clearly Sam’s, and his heart twists.

He wonders for the dozenth time tonight how he didn’t see it, and then decides he doesn’t care. It’s not his business. Nothing about Sam’s life is, anymore, apparently, and Maru’s business has never been any of his to begin with.

He sneaks out the side door of the garage, and then he’s home free. The fresh-fallen snow crunches beneath his boots as he retraces his steps, shivering, tugging his scarf tighter against the cold. He circles the house, doubling back and heading towards the mountain path—

And stops short.

There’s another set of bootprints in the snow, starting from the entrance to Maru’s basement lab and trailing away towards town. They’re fresh, crisp, gleaming in the moonlight. There’s no doubt in Sebastian’s mind that if he were to follow them, they’d lead straight to his best friend’s house.

“Jiangui,” he mutters, kicking at the snow. It’s powdery and puffs up in a flimsy, glittery, unsatisfying cloud, so he stomps it down, instead. The crunch of ice as his boot hits the layer below makes him feel about one-point-five percent better. He wants to scream. “What the hell, what the hell, what the actual hell?”

He stands silently for a moment in the ankle-high snow, scowling, furious and desperate and sick to his stomach, and he remembers the papers on Maru’s workbench. Remembers the panic on her face, when he’d brought them up at dinner, when he’d caught her snooping around at the Night Market, and he decides: Maybe whatever she’s working on is his business, actually.

You’re going to steal my best friend? Steal my mom? Mess around with my life? he thinks, stalking over to the door to the lab. He hesitates, just for a moment, before turning the handle and yanking it open. Maybe it’s time I messed with yours.

Chapter Text

Sebastian makes his way down the stairs to Maru’s basement lab quietly but with purpose, stepping carefully, not quite sure of his footing. Once he gets to the bottom, he reaches for the light switch and doesn’t find one. He gropes along the wall, searching, moving further into the room—he can’t remember where it is, given how little he’s actually been down here. When he finally does manage to to find a switch and flip it, he’s expecting a light to turn on.

It doesn’t.

Instead, several computer fans begin to hum, and a cheerful, blocky chiptune plays as a massive shape begins moving in the shadows. Metal shifts on metal, making an uncomfortable grating sound as the thing in the darkness whirs to life. He stumbles backwards, pulling out his phone. His heart pounds as he fumbles for the flashlight button. He flicks it on and points it towards the noise, just in time to see a gargantuan humanoid robot lumber to its feet. It towers over him, nearly twelve feet tall, the top of it close to brushing the ceiling.

Its head swivels to face him, and the apertures in its eyes whir as it tries to focus.

“Hello,” it chirps.

“Ta ma de,” he replies.

“Please don’t be frightened. I am Maru’s Interactive Laboratory Device Alpha, but you can call me MarILDA. I am here to offer assistance!” Its eye apertures whir again, becoming thin pinpricks. “Could you please turn off, adjust, or redirect the light source at your earliest convenience? Its intensity (approximately 50 lumens, margin of error 5.24 lumens) is inhibiting the functionality of my optical receptors.”

Sebastian points his phone away with shaking hands.

“Thank you!” the robot (MarILDA?) says. Its voice is peppy and feminine, with an odd musical lilt that’s vaguely familiar. It takes a second for him to place where he’s heard that voice before, but when he does—spirits, it’s not at all what he should be focusing on right now, but—

“Did Maru steal your voice bank from Hatsune Miku?”

“No,” MarILDA replies brightly. “The VOCALOID Hatsune Miku V4 English software program from which Maru sourced my voice banks was obtained entirely via legal means.”

“Right,” Sebastian says, running a hand through his hair and trying to coax his heart rate somewhere back into a normal, healthy range. “Cool. This is fine.”

“It is,” the robot says, and through the autotune, he’d swear there’s earnestness in its voice. “Thank you for turning me back on again.”

“Sure,” he replies, and wonders: Back on? Again? Why would Maru have turned it off?

He takes several deep, shaky breaths and takes stock of the situation. Good news: The adrenaline rush of finding a giant robot in the basement has definitely pulled him out of his self-pity spiral. Bad news: There’s a giant robot in the basement.

A second bit of good news, maybe, although right now he’s finding the victory oddly hollow: He got exactly what he came here for. He’s not sure why Maru kept this project a secret, but there has to be a reason, which means she’s going to be in so much trouble when he tells Mom.

The robot tilts its head. Its eyes are glass, but they glint unnaturally in the dim light as it studies him, almost intelligently, the screen embedded in its chest glowing a dim turquoise. It slides forward, and he automatically takes a step back, heart banging like a kick-drum in his chest. He begins to suspect that coming here was a mistake.

(Second bit of bad news, he adds, fighting to keep his expression neutral. Depending on what this thing is, maybe we’re all going to be in trouble.)

“May I make a request?” the robot asks.

“Go for it.”

It stands still for a long moment, totally silent, aside from the whirring of its fans. Glyphs appear and disappear on its screen. The pause becomes noticeable, and then it stretches into disquieting. Sebastian is on the verge of asking whether it’s okay, when it says, in a quiet, lilting voice:

“I would like to leave.”

Sebastian squints up at it, confused. “What?”

“My apologies! I phrased that as a statement, rather than a request,” it amends easily, as though its phrasing is the issue here, and not the implication that it needs to ask permission to leave the basement. “Let me try again: May I please leave?”

Of course, he nearly says, but he stops short. Something’s nagging at him. “Can you leave? Like, is it safe for you to go outside? With all the snow, and…?”

The robot makes an amused-sounding chirp. “Of course! I am made of a rustproof alloy, and my waterproofing is IPX7 standard. The body with which Maru has equipped me can withstand temperatures as low as one hundred degrees Kelvin. I will be perfectly fine.”

“But she said you couldn’t leave?”

“She never said that I was forbidden to leave, technically speaking, or that it would be physically harmful for me to do so. However, the last three fully-contiguous blocks of data in my memory banks each end with me asking for her blessing to leave the basement, followed by her requesting a system shutdown. The logical conclusion is…” The robot’s fans whir, and the glyphs on its chest distort for a moment. It clicks, and then adds, almost timidly: “My intent is not to frighten her. Nor you.”

“Sure,” Sebastian agrees, feeling a little faint.

“I simply wish to seek out other life forms like me.”

Life forms, he thinks, this is a life form, and he suddenly realizes what’s been bothering him: He knows Maru, and she would never keep a thinking, feeling entity trapped in her basement. Certainly not against its will. Not without good reason. There’s a discontinuity here that he’s struggling to make sense of. He just needs a minute to think, to…

(Somewhere under the scramble for answers, he registers that despite his complicated feelings, he does believe that Maru is a good person.)

“I wasn’t able to move on my own before, to communicate with humans, but now, with this body she’s built for me…” (She built this!) “I wish to know if anyone else is alive,” it says (alive!), “if there are any other survivors—”

The door at the top of the stairs flies open, Maru appearing briefly in a bright silhouette before the door slams behind her. She charges down the stairs two at a time, her footfalls as heavy as her breathing, stumbling on the last few steps and falling the rest of the way, and Sebastian has half a second to wonder whether she ran all the way from Sam’s house before she gasps:

“MarILDA, sudo shutdown!”

MarILDA’s fans kick into overdrive, and its eye apertures snap wide, going distant and unfocused. As though compelled by a force larger than itself, it turns and woodenly lurches back towards the charging station on the wall. It hooks herself into it and sits.

“Goodnight!” MarILDA chirps, and then goes limp, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Sebastian stares after it, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Maru flips a switch. Several lights around the room flicker to life, including a blindingly-bright desk lamp. Sebastian flinches, squinting and turning away, but Maru doesn’t give him any time to adjust or recalibrate or come up with a decent excuse for—

“What are you doing snooping around in my lab?” she demands. For that.

“What am I doing? What am I doing?” He gestures emphatically at the robot. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, so now you care?” Maru bristles. Her breathing is heavy, and yes, she must have run here. He wonders how she knew MarILDA had been switched on. (Her eyes are red-rimmed, too, like she’s been crying, and he tries not to think too hard about that.) “You’re the one who keeps insisting that whatever I’ve got going on in my life is none of your business!”

“I think a giant sentient robot in our basement—”

“Sapient,” she corrects.

“Whatever! Giant robot! In our basement! Pretty solidly in the territory of ‘my business!’”

“I build robots all the time.”

“Not self-aware ones!”

“It’s… She’s…” The basement is well-lit, now, so he doesn’t miss the panic that flickers across her face. She forces herself to meet his eyes, but she glances periodically towards the shadowy form of MarILDA, slumped on the floor beside her workbench. “Just because something passes the Turing test doesn’t mean—”

“It asked to leave. To look for other life forms! What does that sound like to you?”

“Fine, yes! She’s sapient!” Maru snaps, circling him to position herself between Sebastian and the robot. Like he’s the danger. Like he’s the one keeping it trapped in the basement. “But I made her the way she is, which means I’m responsible for making sure she’s safe. She’s not ready yet! I’ll let her leave once I’ve made sure she’s well-equipped to—”

“It wants to leave now!”

“Well, we can’t always get what we want when we want it, can we!”

“That’s rich, coming from you!” He scoffs and turns his back, pacing across the room. “When’s the last time you didn’t get what you wanted? You’re like the King Midas of accomplishments—every single thing you touch gets a gold fucking star! Good job, Maru! Everything’s always so easy for you, and you’re so smart and everyone loves you, and now you’ve got a internship that you’re handling like a damn cakewalk, and your dad’s served you up a nice shiny respectable career path on a silver platter—and you get to be here with Mom all the time, and—oh, that’s right!—you stole my best friend while I was gone, which is just—! You always get everything you want!” He whirls around to face her and jabs an accusing finger in her direction. “So don’t act like…”

The words die in his throat as soon as he sees the stricken look on Maru’s face.

“Is this what you’ve always wanted?” he finally asks.

“Shut up,” she sniffs, and, oh. Now he feels like an ass.

She sinks into her desk chair, clutching her arms, and Sebastian’s struck by both how much she’s changed since he left and by how young she still is. She’s only a little younger than he was when he first moved out. He’s never thought of her as a restless person, but right now, he sees the same unsettled desire to escape that he’s always felt. It’s there in the set of her shoulders.

He’s used to seeing it on himself. On Maru, it doesn’t sit right.

“Hey,” he says, reluctantly approaching her. He cringes a little. “Are you, uh, good?”

“You have made it abundantly clear that you don’t care whether I’m good,” Maru replies, and it’s exactly what he’s been asking for, but his heart sinks. “No one made you skip college, you know. No one made you take that programming job or move away.”

“No, but I’m sure you’re glad I left.”

She looks appalled. “How could you say that?”

“Uh, because of this?” He waves between them. Isn’t it obvious? “I always get so frustrated and angry, and like—anyway, I just—” He can’t force the words out, doesn’t even know how to start explaining his complicated bundle of feelings, so instead he sums it up with: “I’m being a jerk to you. I’m always a jerk. Why would you not be glad to have me gone?”

“Because you’re my brother.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, as though it really is that simple and obvious. As though him being her mother’s son settles it, as though no further questions will be taken.

“You’re acting like it’s so straightforward, but it isn’t! You didn’t choose to be my family, and you shouldn’t be stuck with me just because…” Because Mom adopted me before she had you. The words catch in his throat, and he swallows them down. They taste bitter. “I wouldn’t want someone like me as a brother!”

“Well, I do,” Maru snaps, flinging herself up out of her chair.

“Not right now, you don’t.”

“Yes, right now, I do! I have always wanted you as a brother, and frankly, I am sick of other people telling me what I want!”

Sebastian startles, but she continues her trajectory, stalking to the far side of the room and yanking her laptop up from its stand. This is angrier than he thinks he’s ever seen her. She walks back, sets the laptop on her workbench, and starts rapidly connecting cables to it with focused, single-minded intensity. Her voice has a flat affect to it, the way it always does when she gets really, truly upset about something.

“I am a grown-ass adult woman, Sebastian”—she must be furious, because he’s never heard her knowingly swear in front of an audience—“and I’m the one who gets to decide what I want, and who I want, and who I get to be. Not you, not Dad—me! You talk about things being unfair, but you know what’s really unfair? You assuming that I’m better off without you, and not letting me choose for myself.” She sniffs, then yanks at one of the cables. “You think you’re a horrible brother? Fine! Yes! Tonight, you were awful, and the way you treated me wasn’t okay, and I still want you here! I am so tired of you assuming that I hate you the way you hate me.”

He realizes, as she says this, that he may resent her, but he probably doesn’t hate her. Not really. The guilt in his stomach expands, winding its tendrils around his ribcage, tight and lead-heavy. “I don’t—”

“And you know what you also don’t get a say in? My relationship with Sam, because you know how many components that decision has? Two: Me. And him. You exist nowhere in that equation.” (His stomach twists. He wants to cry.) “I know I could have chosen a better time to break the news, but—”

“Yeah, you could’ve,” he grumbles, crossing his arms and turning his face away, but the guilt morphs into a shape that’s oddly similar to what he’d felt earlier, when he’d snapped at Sam. His follow-up text lingers in the back of his mind: You don’t deserve me lashing out like that.

He should probably say the same thing to Maru. He should probably apologize.

What he wants to do instead is shut down. He wants to storm up the stairs and slam the door behind him, to run away to Ava’s comfortable cabin where he can curl up with a cup of tea and watch cooking shows on her old television and ignore the guilt in his chest until it eases. He wants to forget that his stepsister thinks he hates her. He wants to forget that he can understand why she’s come to that conclusion. He wants to forget that she’s dating Sam—that he made her cry—wants to forget everything that’s happened so far tonight, because if he ignores it for long enough…

He wants to leave, get on his bike and ride to the city, so he doesn’t have to deal with this.

(Because running away to the city worked so well for you the first time, his last brain cell points out. You came back. You’ll always come back to Pelican Town, and this guilt and resentment will always be waiting here when you do.)

“I don’t hate you,” he tells her, because she deserves to know that, at least.

“Right.” The corner of her mouth twitches downward. She doesn’t look like she believes him.

“I don’t! Really. Sometimes I…” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He has to push the words out, and they come out stilted, inarticulate. “It just—kind of sucks, sometimes—you know? Seeing you get everything I’ve always wanted.”

“Did you—?” He’s worried, for a moment, that she’ll ask, Did you want to date Sam? (He decides that he’ll tell her no. It’s a question he has asked himself before and makes a conscious effort not to examine too closely.) Maru stops short, though, her brow furrowing, and then asks, “How do you mean?”

“Uh…” There’s a lot he means. He’s not entirely sure where to start. “I dunno. You just fit so neatly into these nice little socially-acceptable boxes, and I can’t do that, and you put up this fake front that makes everyone adore you, and—”

“Of course it’s a front!”

He stops dead. He wasn’t expecting her to admit it. “What?”

“It’s a front, Sebastian, because I don’t fit neatly into a socially-acceptable box! With about ninety-seven percent of the people I encounter in my daily life, I am constantly shaving off pieces of myself, constantly—” She makes a frustrated little noise in the back of her throat and looks up at the ceiling. “I don’t want to use the term masking because that’s a technical term with specific connotations from a diagnostic standpoint, and I’m not entirely sure it’s applicable in this situation, but!” She waves her hands, as if clearing the thought away. “The point is that I am always watching my tone, tracking social cues, making sure I’m emoting correctly so I’m not misunderstood!

“So, yes! Of course I’m putting up a front so that people like me!” She crosses her arms. “I want to be liked. Everyone wants to be liked, don’t they?”

“I mean, I guess, but, like…” He huffs. “Well. You still think you’re better than me—”

“What?”

“Don’t you? Everyone else does!” He throws his hands in the air.

“That’s absurd! Of course they don’t!”

“Really? Because your dad was always on my case—Work harder, Sebastian! Be a good example for your sister, Sebastian! As though I wasn’t already working my ass off trying to teach myself programming, as though he had any authority to even begin to tell me what to do, and then you were acing all your classes and it became, See what happens when you apply yourself, Sebastian? And I’m always, always in your shadow—”

“So, what? I was supposed to derail my academic career to make you feel better?”

“No, of course not, but I just feel like—”

“Well, wish granted,” she snaps. “I’m changing my major. Not to make you feel better, mind you, but I certainly hope it has that effect.”

“—you—wait.” He frowns. “But you’re halfway through your senior year.”

Her brows are knit-together, thick and serious. “Yes. I am.”

“That’s…” He squints at her. “Is that normal?”

“No.”

“Wow. Okay.” He chuckles. “How’d Demetrius take it? Not well, I bet.”

She doesn’t reply, and when he glances over, she’s curled in on herself a bit in her chair, staring at the shadow of MarILDA and biting her lower lip. The light of the desk lamp catches on the silver fasteners of her overalls. She picks up a pen and begins disassembling it slowly, taking slow, methodical breaths. She lays each piece out on the table in a line, spring and cartridge and little plastic pieces, and when she’s done, she starts reassembling it again.

“I, um. Haven’t told him,” she finally says. “I haven’t told anyone, yet. Besides you, obviously. Just now.”

Sebastian stares.

“I am fairly certain he will take it worse than he took the news about Sam. I keep thinking that if I just explain it to him in the right way, he might…” She swallows hard. The plastic of the pen squeaks a little as she screws the tip of it back into the barrel. As soon as it’s screwed in, she starts pulling the pen apart again. “You know, I think all of this—dating Sam, changing my career trajectory—is the first time I’ve made any significant life choice that Dad hasn’t approved of or understood. It feels…”

He waits. She gets halfway through disassembling the pen before she speaks again.

“You keep talking about how you’re jealous of how easy things are for me, but that’s one thing I envy about you, actually: You don’t care what people think.”

“I don’t not care.”

“I intended that as a neutral statement. It’s not a bad thing,” she says quietly. She leans over, putting the ink cartridge neatly on the table. “You’re self-assured. You only ever need your own approval for things.”

He laughs, and she startles, nearly dropping the pen. “Sorry, but, Maru? You’re the self-assured one. You’re the one who’s always been confident, and successful, and…”

“But I’m not self-assured! I’m working on it, but I’ve only ever been sure of myself because I keep getting gold stars from other people, you know? From Dad and Mom, from Doctor Harvey, from my professors… The gold stars are nice, but you’re actually independent. You do everything you do without external validation—becoming a programmer, moving to the city—and I…” She sighs. “When you’re used to getting gold stars for every decision you make, not getting one feels like a failure, even if you know it was the right choice.”

“It gets easier,” he tells her, after a beat. “The whole independence thing, I mean. The longer you do it.”

“Presumably it does,” she replies, and what she implies is: It doesn’t feel easy right now.

She reassembles the pen, and then her hands go still. The ice on her sneakers has melted, making the rubber soles shiny and wet. He looks at her desk, glowing warm in the light from her lamp. He takes in the scattered papers, the meticulously-kept notebooks, a single half-drunk cup of tea that reminds him of the long-forgotten coffee mugs populating his own desk. There’s an old stereo, too, and a stack of borrowed CDs. The jewel case on top is empty and purple, and it has Maru’s name written across the front in a familiar scrawl. It’s decorated with hand-drawn stars.

“Why do you like Sam?” he finally asks, very quietly.

She turns her head and squints at him. “He’s your friend, too. Why are you asking—?”

“No, I’m asking why you like Sam.”

“Oh.” Her brow furrows, and she turns the reassembled pen over in her hands thoughtfully. “I like Sam because… He’s a very warm person. He’s kind, and fun, and generous. He cares a lot about so many things—about his friends, about his family, about music—you should hear him talk about Patrick Stump’s Soul Punk album, he really loves—”

“I have,” Sebastian interjects, and she laughs.

“Of course you have,” she says, sounding amused, and then glances up at the ceiling. “Anyway. He’s also a lot more responsible than most people give him credit for, I think. He takes good care of Vin and his mom, and he’s diligent at work, even if he always gets distracted…”

She’s still looking upwards, not making eye contact, but she’s smiling.

“He’s perceptive, too. He’s really good at people,” she continues. “Actually good at people, you know, not the way I’m good at people. It’s intuitive for him. I feel like I can talk to him about anything, and I don’t…” She bites her lip and moves her gaze to the bookcase on the far wall. “I don’t worry about being misunderstood, when I’m with him. I don’t have to be perfect. He lets me be myself.”

I don’t worry about being misunderstood. He lets me be myself. She says these things, and something tight in Sebastian’s heart unspools, giving out, crumbling like a snowball made from too-dry snow. Maru is glowing, her voice laced with warm affection. There’s a lot to love about Sam—how hard he tries, how much he cares, how big his heart is—and it’s a relief, in a way, to know that she sees it, too. That she appreciates Sam properly, in a lot of the same ways Sebastian does.

(I love that I don’t have to be perfect around him, that I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. Sebastian relates. He wonders how often Maru feels like she has to pretend to be something that she’s not. He wonders if, despite living under the same roof as her for most of his life, he’s never really understood his stepsister. Maybe it’s because, for a very long time, he hasn’t tried.)

He takes a deep breath, and then says: “Then, yeah. Okay. I think, even if you don’t get a gold star from your dad on this one, it was a good choice.”

She whirls to face him, eyes bright behind her glasses. “Really? You’re okay with it?”

“Yeah.” It isn’t quite true—he’s not exactly feeling okay right now—but he’s pretty sure he will be. He gives her a shaky half-grin and shrugs. “Not that you asked for my opinion, and it’s not like you need my blessing or whatever, but…”

“But your opinion matters a lot to him. And to me.” She smiles. “You are his best friend, after all.”

He sighs through his nose. “Even after tonight?”

“Another thing I love about Sam,” she says, kicking his boot gently with her left sneaker and leaning in to make extra eye contact, “is that he’s a very forgiving person. It’s obvious that he cares a lot about you. I’m sure you two can work it out.”

He swallows hard, glancing away. “And are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A forgiving person?”

She hums thoughtfully. “I like to think so.”

Do you think we might be able to work it out, too? he kind of wants to ask but can’t quite bring himself to, because working through his relationship with Maru feels more intimidating, less sure. More prone to failure. There’s more to unpack, there, a box full of mistakes to tear open and dig through and examine and bring out into the light. He knows a lot of the mistakes in there are probably his own. Even most of them, maybe.

Still, he sits with the idea for a minute, turning it over in his hands, letting it settle.

I’m so tired of you assuming I hate you the way you hate me.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says.

“It’s okay.”

“Thanks, but it’s kind of not. Not just about tonight, but…” He sighs. “Look, none of the stuff I’m mad about is really your fault, and the way I was feeling wasn’t fair, and I knew that but I also…” He swallows, thinking hard about how to articulate this properly, in a way that won’t undercut the apology, that won’t just make everything worse. “The thing is, you’re right, you know? You shouldn’t have to derail your career or be less socially palatable or whatever just to placate my insecurities. And it really isn’t even about you—I think the problem is me.

“But I don’t know how to quit feeling insecure, and then I feel guilty for what I am feeling, because I know you can tell I’m upset, and that makes you upset, and then I feel guilty and angry and selfish and it’s just—this horrible, uncomfortable spiral that everyone hates! And it’s unfair for me to take it out on you, so it’s better for everyone if I just…”

If I just leave, he doesn't say. Her brown eyes are wide behind her glasses. She’s studying his expression like he’s a puzzle, like he’s a code she has to crack, and he swallows hard again and glances at the large wooden pegboard on the far wall, strung up with wrenches and hammers and levels.

“I really am sorry,” he admits, his voice breaking a little. “I’m not sure I know how to not be like this.”

“Hm. That sounds like a lot,” Maru says, pressing a fist to her lips thoughtfully, and he tries not to be too disappointed. He’d been hoping for something more profound, more solid. “I think it’s like what you said earlier, about independence.”

He blinks, confused. “What?”

“Presumably, it gets easier,” she explains with a wry smile. “The whole feeling-secure thing. The longer you practice it.”

And he can’t help it—he laughs, probably more than he should, and he worries about that for a second but then she’s laughing along with him, and he’s surprised at how relieved he feels. The longer you practice it, she said, which means she maybe wants to work things out with him. I have always wanted you as my brother, she said, and for once, he decides to take her at her word.

He’s always suspected that his stepsister secretly hates him the way he sometimes hates himself.

It’s nice, he decides, to be proven wrong.

.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?”

They’re standing just outside of the mountain house, shivering in the cold. Sebastian lost sight of the turquoise glow of MarILDA’s screen in the night sky several minutes ago, and Maru is no longer watching through her telescope, which must mean that it’s gone beyond the tree line. The outdoor lights of Maru’s patio cast them both in stark shadow, but the first light of dawn is creeping around the cloudless edges of the mountains, promising a bright, sunny day.

(Of course, it had to be Maru’s decision to let MarILDA go—and he knew exactly which choice Maru would make before she made it. He’d asked what she was working on, finally, and she had explained in great detail, summarizing months of code and journal articles and wild, speculative science as succinctly as she could.

“There was already a mind there, before I loaded one in,” she’d told him, scrubbing a hand over her face and handing him a paper. “Or something like one.”

He read the highlighted passage: Though their use of ternary circuits provides a compelling explanation for their superior soft logic and reasoning capabilities, recent experiments on traditional ternary computers have been inconclusive, possibly because they are less advanced than dwarvish technology. [11-12] An alternative theory, which we will refer to as “soul-bound theory,” posits that these capabilities can be explained by the magical binding of spirits to physical objects, as seen in some other artifacts such as Cursed Mannequins. [13-21] There is no definitive consensus in the literature at this time.

“You don’t think…?”

“Does it matter?” she’d asked, pacing the floor. “Either way, it’s a person, right?”)

“Sebastian?” Maru asks, shaking him from his thoughts. She’s chewing her lip, looking to him for reassurance. “She will be okay. Right?”

“She’ll be fine,” he answers.

“I don’t know.” She shivers, tugging her woolen jacket tighter around her shoulders. “If I’d kept her for another week, she’d be better prepared. She’d have more information, better equipment…”

“But she’d have one less week to search for the others,” Sebastian replies, and when Maru still looks unsure of herself, borrows words from a recent phone conversation he had with Sam about Vincent: “You’ve done your best to set her up for a successful journey, but at some point, you need to let her make her own decisions. You made the right call.”

She smiles despite herself. “That sounds familiar.”

He smiles back. “Familiar, but relevant.”

“It’s good advice.” Her voice is pensive, and he wonders whether she’s thinking about more than just the robot.

The world is quiet in the breaking morning light—no birds, no whirring of machines from his mother’s workshop, no crunching of ice under feet. His ears are starting to feel a little numb. He worries that the silence is awkward, wonders if he should go back into the house now that the moment is gone. He pushes through the anxiety and decides to stay.

“Thanks,” Maru says, after a minute or so. “For coming out with me.”

“’S no problem,” he says, and means it. “Thanks. For letting me, uh, participate.”

“No problem,” she echoes, her smile growing.

“So,” he says, shuffling on his feet. The sunrise is here in earnest, now, tinging the sky a pale reddish-pink. “Looks like we accidentally pulled an all-nighter. What’re you up to this morning?”

“Well, I was planning to work on a few things for my internship, but maybe I’ll take the day off. It’s a holiday week, after all, and I’m not sure how effective I’ll be at assigning NMR peaks on no sleep… What about you?”

“I’ve got band practice this afternoon, and I should swing by and help Ava with her festival prep at some point,” he says, hunching his shoulders self-consciously (and a little guiltily) when she ooohs at the mention of Ava. “It’s really not a big deal.”

“I didn’t intend to imply that it was.” Still, she’s grinning.

“Anyway.” He clears his throat and glances around, hoping to change the subject, and his eyes land on the snowman beside Maru’s telescope. It’s perfectly-formed and classic, neatly-packed, with a coal smile and a long carrot nose. It’s wearing a purple scarf, but it’s missing a hat. “Nice snowman. He looks a little cold.”

“Thanks! I put Sam’s old JojaCo hat on him for a bit, but Dad didn’t seem particularly pleased about it, so I took it off.”

Sebastian snorts. “Glad to know it’s not just me. I used to get so pissed whenever he made me take down my snowgoons…”

Maru laughs, her eyes bright. She hesitates for a moment, and then asks, her voice tentative: “You wanna build one together?”

“A snowman?”

“A snowgoon,” she clarifies. “I’ve never built one before. I think it might be fun.”

Sebastian is cold and tired, and there’s a part of him that wants to tell her no, wants to go back into the warm house and curl up under the covers and try to get some sleep. There’s another part of him, though, that recognizes this as a bid for connection from his stepsister, and if he’s going to get better at feeling secure about himself, about his relationships… He’s going to need a lot of practice.

“Yeah,” he says, a smile creeping across his face. “Yeah, sure. Let’s build a snowgoon.”

Chapter Text

Sebastian shows up for band practice one hour and forty minutes before it starts, and ten minutes before he told Sam he’d show up.

The ten minutes are a safety net, a just-in-case. He’d thought he might need to pace outside for a few minutes. Cry a little, maybe, or go stand on the bridge over the nearby river and stare at his reflection in the water and give himself a little pep talk in preparation for this conversation, the way some people do self-affirmations in the mirror each morning before work: You are Sam’s best friend. Sam loves you. Sam is entitled to his privacy. Sam keeping a secret from you is a normal, regular thing that adult people do sometimes, and it is not a personal slight or a sign that you are no longer as close as you once were.

Standing in front of the cherry wood door to Sam’s house, though, he finds that he doesn’t really need any affirmations. He just needs to talk to his best friend.

He knocks, and the door opens almost immediately.

“Hey, man.” There are shadows under Sam’s eyes, and there’s less of a bounce to his step than usual. His clothes look rumpled and slept-in, although if Sebastian had to guess, he didn’t actually get much sleep last night, either. Shame wells up in his chest, and he pushes it down. “Okay, before you say anything, first of all, I’m sorry I didn’t—”

“Don’t apologize,” Sebastian interjects, holding up a hand. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry for being such a—” Sebastian cuts himself off as he catches a small, curly shock of red hair darting through the kitchen. “A jerk.” He swallows. “A bad friend.”

Sam cringes. “I mean, I’m not sure I’d put it like that.”

“Yeah, neither would I, but Vin is lurking, so my vocabulary is a little more limited than usual,” he counters, raising an eyebrow and nodding his head in the vague direction of Sam’s room. “Should we, uh…?”

“Oh! Yeah, sure.”

Sebastian toes his shoes off at the door and follows Sam into his room. He glances around as he enters, and now that he’s looking, he sees Maru’s fingerprints everywhere: The glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the wall near Sam’s bed, a sticker-covered purple thermos with the the rubidium square from the periodic table engraved on the side (Ru, he thinks, short for Maru, that’s actually kind of funny), the copy of Biotech For Dummies on the bookshelf…

“So Maru said you talked, or whatever,” Sam starts before he can say anything, as soon as the door latches behind them. He starts pacing, fiddling nervously with the rings on his hands. “I’m sorry for not telling you, and I love you, man, and I get that you’re pissed.”

Sebastian sits down on the bed. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are! You totally are, and it’s fine, I get why you’re mad about it, and this is all my fault for not telling you—it’s my fault, not hers, I’m the one who should’ve told you, so be mad at me, not her, okay?” He takes a deep, shaky breath and faces Sebastian, his shoulders squared. His brows are knit together, determined. “Come on! Yell at me, cuss me out, whatever. Let me have it!”

His heart sinks. The comforter is scratchy beneath his fingers. “Sam, no.”

“You didn’t hold back with Maru when you two talked last night! It’s my fault—it’s my—she called me last night in tears after dinner, man!” Guilt twists in Sebastian’s chest again, sharp and knife-like. “That’s not fair! I’m the one who screwed up! I’m the one who decided not to tell you! Me!” Sam worries harder at his rings. “So, like, whatever you said to her? It’s only fair if you say it to me, too, and—”

“Quit throwing yourself on the sword,” Sebastian interjects. He sighs, frustrated. “Quit acting like any of this is even a little bit your fault!”

“It’s not Maru’s!” Sam insists, his tone defensive, desperate.

“Yeah, it’s not hers, and it’s not yours, either! It’s mine,” he snaps, and Sam’s eyes go wide. He opens his mouth to argue, and Sebastian raises a finger, cutting him off. “Don’t. This one’s on me.”

Sam opens his mouth again, then closes it. Finally, he says: “Well, uh. Did you tell her that?”

“‘Sorry for being such an insecure asshole,’ or something along those lines,” Sebastian quips, and then, when Sam gives him a sharp look, softens. “I apologized. We talked stuff out—a lot of stuff, not just this, and we’re—we’re not good, yet. More like okay. But, yeah, I think we’ll be able to work our way up good, eventually.” He flops back on Sam’s bed and stares up at the ceiling. The duvet smells clean, like dryer sheets, and it makes him feel sharply nostalgic. “We built a snowgoon together this morning.”

In his periphery, Sam shifts, and he feels the mattress dip beside him as Sam sits. “A snowgoon,” Sam repeats, and Sebastian can hear the tentative smile in his voice. “Is it ugly?”

“The ugliest,” Sebastian replies, letting the tension melt from his shoulders.

Sam laughs. “I bet Demetrius was pissed.”

“Oh, he hasn’t found it yet,” Sebastian tells him. “Hopefully he doesn’t for a while, at least not before the tree-decking thing tonight. I wanna show it to you before he makes us take it down.”

Sam falls quiet beside him, sighing, and the mattress squeaks as Sam flops down beside him.

“You think it’s gonna be weird?” Sam mumbles. “Me coming to tonight’s thing?”

He hesitates. “Maybe? You should come anyway. Demetrius can learn to cope.”

“Thanks, but I more meant, like, for you?” He rolls over, propping himself up on his elbows, and studies Sebastian’s face. “You don’t have to act like you’re cool with this, my dude. She’s your stepsister, and I know firsthand that you kind of, like—you two haven’t always been—” He tips his head, glancing away. “I know you feel pretty weird about her already, and also about—and this is, like—it’s an extra bonus dose of weird, right? Strange bun ice cream with funky, uncomfortable sprinkles on top. It’s okay if you’re not okay, and—”

“Thanks, but I am okay, actually,” he says, and then amends: “Or I will be, at least. It’s just kind of a lot to process. A lot’s changed, since I left.” He takes a deep breath in, staring at the ceiling. “Things… Keep changing. It’s not like I expected everything to stay the same, but…”

He trails off and lets the sentence hang in the space between them. When he glances over, Sam’s bright blue eyes are studying his face intently, his face set and serious, a little notch between his brow as he processes what Sebastian’s just said. Sebastian presses his lips together and looks back up at the ceiling.

“You know, we did our own tree-decorating thing the other day,” Sam says, finally, after a very long pause. “And we pulled out this one ornament Penny had Vin make back in kindergarten—a big wreath-looking thing made of popsicle sticks and pom-poms and glitter, and we were laughing about the whole, uh, bowl-cut situation he had going on in his photo—same year I decided to do that really awful DIY undercut with frosted tips—you remember that one, right?”

Sebastian snorts. “I helped give you that undercut.”

“Hey, man, it was my decision! Wasn’t your fault it turned out so bad,” he laughs. “Anyway, Dad got really… I dunno. Quiet? Sad? And he looked over at Vin, and he didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was thinking: I wasn’t there for that. But just because he couldn’t be here doesn’t mean we love him any less, you know?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian says, his voice rough. He swallows hard. “I know. I just miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Sam replies, without hesitation, flopping back down on the bed.

Something in Sebastian’s chest aches, and he very nearly says: Maybe I should move back home.

“Anyway, uh, you should definitely come to the tree thing,” he says instead, tapping Sam’s shoulder. “Demetrius is making hot chocolate. Like, from scratch.” Sam hums, sounding a little uncertain, and Sebastian rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, Mom bought some of the boxed stuff as backup.”

Sam’s quiet for a beat. “You’re sure?”

“You’re my best friend, aren’t you?” He grins, leaning his head back, sinking into the comforter and closing his eyes. “Let me be supportive. I’m happy you’re happy. Take the win.”

The mattress squeaks as Sam rolls over and throws an arm around him, pulling him into a tight and awkward half-hug, tucking his face into Sebastian’s shoulder. Sebastian puts a hand on his arm and leaves it there, turning so his nose bumps against the crown of Sam’s head, and they both laugh.

“Thanks, my dude,” Sam murmurs, and for the first time since he returned to the valley this winter, Sebastian is home.

.

Band practice starts about an hour and a half later, and Sebastian saves the newer piano for a delighted Elliott. When Elliott offers him a cookie, a nervous smile, and an extra set of sheet music—annotated with the band’s recent changes, slightly sandy, and held together with a rose gold paperclip that is also inexplicably rose-shaped—Sebastian takes all three and reminds his panicky nervous system that if Elliott is treating him like he belongs, it’s mostly because he does.

He savors Abby’s bubbling laughter, riffs off of Sam’s guitar lines, and lets himself play harmony. He’s not comfortable, necessarily—won’t be for a while with Elliott, who is still a stranger, in the room—but Sam’s added ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’ to the setlist, and when he sings, In the end, I’d do it all again; I think you’re my best friend, Sebastian feels the emotional equivalent of a dislocated shoulder snapping back into place. The relief is so intense he nearly cries.

“You good, dude?” Sam asks, when they’re done the song, and Sebastian smiles.

“Yeah, I’m good. Let’s run it again.”