Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Far past midnight, when the death-rattle of wind through branches had long since died away and everything was muffled by snow, a figure was crouching with his hands deep inside his pockets.

Chase lowered his chin to his chest and exhaled, trying to warm himself up. He was tucked in a little bank beneath two fallen trees, partially as a shield from the assailing wind, and partially because the trees served as a marker—a way for a certain traveller to catch sight of him. He had not been in this position long, but he was freezing, and the snow clung thickly to his fleece cloak and turned his hair stiff with frost. Idly, he lamented the once-perfect condition of his hair, doubting that it would look all that great when he got inside and warmed up—but at the very least, such frizziness would not plague him outside of the book. The elements sticking in his hair were not real.

None of it was real—the wind, the blizzard, the coldness seeping into his bones, none of it.

Still, it wouldn’t kill him to hurry up.

He took his hands out of his cloak with the intention to rub them together and instantly regretted it, feeling the cold bite of wind against them, which only worsened the numbness. A new gust swirled up from the road—which was hardly distinguishable now in the snow—and whipped him in the face, each tiny snowflake feeling like a needle to his raw skin. 

It shouldn’t be long now… should it? His character rescues me before I die of frostbite.

He sincerely hoped Buddy had not gotten distracted.

Fortunately, though, after only a few more minutes of frigidity, he could see the light of a lantern cutting through the snow, reflecting on the millions of tiny prisms so that it lit up the road like a beacon. He groaned and rolled halfway out of his little dugout, so that Buddy would notice him. If the pink tunic didn’t give him away, the fact that his movement upended a mountain of snow on top of his head certainly did.

“Ugh," Chase grumbled, sitting up and shaking the powdery chill off his head and shoulders. Through the sound-absorbing snow, he could hear a snicker, and looked up to see a traveller on foot standing in front of him holding a lantern. “I was waiting for you, you jerk.”

“I arrived not a minute late,” Buddy replied, reaching out a gloved hand to pull Chase to his feet.

“And not a minute early,” Chase grumbled. He heaved himself to his feet and immediately staggered against Buddy.

“Are you alright?” Buddy asked, with what felt like mocking concern.

“Buddy, I’ve spent twenty minutes sitting in a snowbank freezing my tail end off while you dilly-dallied in your rescue. You didn’t even have to get here, Deacon told me you were a snow spirit, you just had to teleport a ways down the road.” Chase sniffed and righted himself again, pulling his coat around him with a rattling breath. “Anyways… I’ll yell at you later. When we get to the cabin. Where is it?”

Buddy lifted one elegant hand and pointed. “Maybe thirty yards down the road.”

“Thirty yards down the—you’re telling me I could have been sitting there with a fire going the whole time?”

“Tch, you never would have made it in the blizzard… you can hardly see a yard in front of you, forget thirty… now come on. It would be somewhat inconvenient for the story if all your fingers snapped off.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Chase grumbled, but he didn’t stop Buddy from leading him by the arm down the street.

The snow spirit’s cabin was tucked in a little clearing, the back of the building pressed close to the heavy trees and the front with a few meters of clear space. The snow was soft and thick, up to their knees as they trudged through it, leaving long trails behind them.

“This seems like a bad idea if I’m trying to be hiding from my old kingdom,” Chase said, glancing behind him at the very obvious path worn out from the trees.

“No… it wasn’t, really.” They waded up the stairs to the porch, and Buddy flicked his fingers to vanish the snow from in front of the door. “The blizzard will cover those trails within the next ten minutes, and a search party would have been impossible in the weather, too poor conditions for horses. The story dictates that you won’t be found until the following morning, and even then it is only by your closest maid-in-waiting, and the poor cook boy that is your lover.”

“Deacon and Prunella,” Chase said.

“Right. They are the only ones who believe you did not assassinate the old queen. Of course, you didn’t know you were going to seek shelter with a spirit who was planning to slowly devour your soul…”

Chase was too tired to snicker. “Right.”

“Anyways, we don’t need to attempt any soul-devouring tonight,” Buddy said, fiddling with the door handle as Chase yearned from the warmth inside the cabin. “You’re chilled to the bone, and I am supposed to help you recover—although it is so that I do not have to eat an iced over soul.”

“Mm, yeah, you could get food poisoning.” At long last Buddy succeeded in getting the door open, and Chase fell across the threshold, landing in a heap on the rug. Buddy watched him disinterestedly as he spoke, his voice muffled. “So we don’t need to do any story stuff tonight? We can just rest…?” The idea was delicious to think about.

“Yes,” Buddy said. He closed the door against the wind, and warmth filled the cabin. Chase opened his eyes from where he was lying and took it in; it was a warm and comfortable place, with elegant tapestries on the walls, a cooking area adjoined with the main room, and scattered furniture that all looked very comfortable. “It’s three rooms—this one, a bathroom, and a bedroom,” Buddy told him, as Chase looked hungrily towards the unlit fireplace in front of the couch.

“Can we get a fire going?” he asked.

Buddy nodded and crossed to the fireplace, busying himself with the logs as Chase shucked his soaked cloak and left it by the door. “Hang that up over here,” Buddy suggested, and Chase went back to grab it and hung it on the mantel. Buddy took off his own cloak—that was quite the neckline—and hung it too, and then removed a few more outer layers of clothing until he was left in only his pants and his shirt.

“Do the same,” he suggested, in reply to Chase’s raised and skeptical eyebrow. “All of those clothes are soaked through, they will only make you colder.”

Chase sighed, but he complied, leaving himself in his own tunic and pants. He threw the damp clothes by the fireplace as Buddy managed to light it. Warm, heavenly flames, delectable on Chase’s raw skin, roared up to meet them.

“Well?” Buddy asked impatiently, his arms crossed. “Sit down, or I’ll be snapping you off the wall this time tomorrow.”

Chase stopped leaning on the nearest tapestry and instead sat down on the mantle, back turned to the fire. He let out a shuddering breath as his limbs began to thaw.

Buddy was busy adjusting their clothing so it was unobtrusive in front of the fire, which afforded Chase a proper look at him. Even reduced to his barest clothing, he looked good—he always looked good. His key had styled him in thick black pants that gradiated into glittery, shimmery, dark blue fabric, and then a top with long sleeves that fluttered around his wrist and were colored in all the rich, endless blues of deep Arctic ice. His necklace was deep but thin, laced over by navy blue string. Characteristic glitter and rhinestones circled the hems and flecked the fabric like stars. There were even some in his hair, catching the firelight when he turned his head.

Chase was not staring.

Not at all.

“Okay, that should be fine,” Buddy said, and then he sighed and flopped down across from Chase, back against the couch.

“Are… you okay?” Chase ventured after a while. “How long were you out there?”

“I can handle the cold,” Buddy sniffed indignantly, rubbing his hands together. “Besides, we’re inside now, and sheltered from the blizzard. So all is well.”

“Yeah…” Chase’s eyes drifted to the frosted window, outside with only swirling colors were visible. “Wow, it’s really coming down. Are we even going to be able to get the door open when Deacon and Pru get here tomorrow?”

“We’ll manage.”

They lapsed into silence again, the only sounds the crackles and pops from the fire. Chase turned, warming his other side, as Buddy crossed to the bookshelf on the adjacent wall and thumbed through the volumes.

“You’re going to read a book?” Chase asked.

“We have time to kill. I am not too tired, since it is only night in the book.” Buddy went back to the couch and draped himself over it, having selected a thick purple tomb with a ribbon sticking out the top. “Don’t act as if it is something scandalous. Some people do read, you know.”

“I know,” Chase protested. He was mostly annoyed because now Buddy would be reading, and not entertaining him. “Hey… you got dinner going, or something?” he asked finally.

“In the kitchen,” Buddy replied, not lifting his eyes from the book as he turned the page.

Chase pouted, stumbled to his feet, and snatched one of the thick plaid blankets from the couch for armor as he made his way to the kitchen. The cabinets were filled with very boring items that Chase did not want to eat, like cinnamon sticks and dry grains, but eventually he found a tin of somewhat edible-looking wafers, and brought them back over the fireplace to munch on as they waited.

“Will time skip ahead at some point, to get us to the next scene?” Chase asked, already starting to feel a little bored. “Like in Cinderella—since not much plot is happening between now and then?”

“Well, I am syphoning your soul as we speak,” Buddy said. He flipped another page; Chase thought this action was a little pointed. Unfortunately for Buddy, Chase didn’t care when he wanted him to shut up.

“Oh, right. So…?”

“So, no. It may not be the full ten hours, but we have time to kill. Besides, your freckled friend and the mouse are over at the palace, and plenty of plot is happening there at this moment, so we must wait for them as the older keyholders.” Buddy flipped the page back to where he had been a minute ago, again reminding Chase that he was busy.

Chase sighed and sat back against the brick, occupying himself with picking snowballs off of his socks. After a moment he paced to the bookshelf—Buddy had to work hard to keep the surprise and skepticism off his face—and looked at the volumes, but they were way too boring for him, so he just went back and pulled out his phone.

“You can’t access the internet in the books,” Buddy reminded him.

“I know. I’ve got plenty of stuff saved, ‘cause WiFi gets spotty downtown.” Chase flicked idly through photos, documents, and games, but he was not resolved to the action, and desperately wished they could do something more exciting. “Hey… are there any games we could play?”

Fwip. “Ice spirits do not need games,” Buddy said.

Chase decided not to mention that they probably didn’t need fluffy blankets or expensive tapestries, either. “Well, we can make one up,” he said, sliding off the mantel and lying on the rug, his shirt riding up on the flat of his stomach as he stretched. “Like two truths and a lie?”

Buddy ignored him.

“Or truth or dare?”

“A pointless game that only compromises everyone who plays it,” Buddy said.

“Ooookay. Hey, Buddy, would you rather—”

“Do you expect me to make a decision between two frankly lousy options without any of the logistics or crucial information?” Buddy snapped, closing his book with a thud. “Is that your idea of fun? Picking between completely arbitrary misfortune? Defending your opinion on nothing, on only a brief sentence that contains none of the information that would actually make or break the selection? Is that entertaining to you?”

Chase blinked and stared at his icy blue eyes. “Forget I asked,” he said finally, flopping over onto his stomach and pulling out his phone again. Buddy scoffed and went back to his reading, flipping each page with more vigor than the last, as if to openly parade his own intellect and snobbiness. Chase sighed, flicking idly through screenshots, wishing he could at least text Deacon to ask how his stupid night was going…

He stopped.

“Hey,” he said aloud.

When Buddy gave no heed he had heard Chase, Chase rolled to face him and showed his phone to Buddy. “Hey, Buddy, I have an idea for a way to pass the time!”

“If it involves stupid pointless questions, I don’t want it,” Buddy replied.

“It doesn’t! Well, actually… not pointless, at least. It’s really interesting, I saw this online.” Chase shuffled closer to the couch, winding his blanket around his back. “It’s a list of thirty six questions—”

“Throw me into the flames,” Buddy said.

“Just listen, you big, goth, melodramatic baby! It’s this scientific study from like, the nineties or something. It’s a list of thirty six questions that you’re supposed to answer with a partner, and they claim it’s supposed to make you fall in love with each other by the end of it, or something.”

Buddy snorted so heavily Chase was surprised he didn’t suck up a dust bunny.

“No, for real! And then I was reading the reviews on social media and some people say it can actually work—”

“Ah, a notoriously reliable source,” Buddy snarked.

“Just shut up and listen, Buddy. There are three sets, and they each have twelve. And they get more and more serious as it goes along, right? So the idea is that you get to know the other person, better and better? Vulnerability and all that?”

“I am not engaging in your horoscopic pseudoscience,” Buddy told him.

“Come on… I’m not saying it’s gonna actually make us fall in love.” Chase pushed down his stomach’s reactions to that notion. “That’s silly. But it would still be a fun way to pass the time, and they’re interesting questions, and, I dunno… I’d like to know more about you…” Buddy sniffed, and Chase recovered quickly. “I know there are things you can’t tell me, I get that, Buddy. I don’t expect you to spill your guts or give me personal information or anything like that! But I know practically nothing about you, and you me… and anyways, we’re stuck here and I’m bored and I know you’re just going to read that book all night to ignore me.”

Buddy paused…

Then he set down the book on the couch.

“Fine,” he said, sitting down on the rug to get on Chase’s level. “I’ll try it. No matter how stupid this sounds.”

“It’s. Not. Stupid. But, okay… I have the questions saved on my phone… so we’ll just go through them one by one and take turns answering, alright?”

“Fine,” Buddy said again.

Chapter Text

Chase reached over to munch on a few more wafers as he zoomed in on the first question and set the phone on the floor between them. The fire hummed and crackled behind them, washing warm and comfortable light over the rug. Outside the windows, snow swirled against a black sky.

“First question,” Chase said, running his tongue over his teeth to rid them of clinging sugar. “‘1; Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as a dinner guest?’”

“Whom,” Buddy said.

“What?”

“It’s wh—never mind. That’s really the first question? I thought you said these weren’t terrible?”

“No… that’s a good question! And I have my answer, easy. I’d have dinner with Alastair.”

Both of Buddy’s eyebrows seemed to permanently rest high in skepticism. “And who,” he inquired snootily, “is Alastair?”

“Who is Alastair? Who is Alastair? Buddy, do you live under a rock? Alastair is only the most amazing lead singer of the most amazing boy band ever.”

Buddy sighed into his hand. “Typical…”

“No, he’s not! Buddy, haven’t you heard of Star Brigade? They’re out of this world! Their music, it really makes you feel something, you know… and I’ve never been able to go see them in real life. To be able to talk to Alastair, and ask him how he got where he is…” Chase lapsed into a silent reverie.

Buddy just sighed and mumble something along the lines of, “Thirty six rounds of this…”

“Come on, Buddy. Fix your attitude. What’s your answer, then? Out of anyone in the world, who would you have dinner with?”

“I refuse to answer such ridiculous tripe.”

“Buddy. C’mon.”

After a long, woeful sigh, Buddy finally answered, “I—probably some sort of… fictional…”

“Book characters don’t count, Buddy.”

“Why not?”

“They’re not real people…”

Buddy narrowed his eyes mysteriously. “Maybe to you,” he said, his voice obnoxiously vague. Chase just rolled his own eyes and nabbed a cushion off the couch to throw at him.

“Real people,” he said. “With names and social security numbers.”

“Mmm… then I don’t have an answer.”

Chase tried to wear proof of his exasperation, but Buddy just settled his arms on top of each other and gave him a resolute look in return. “So… you’re really saying…” Chase ventured. “There’s nobody you’d like to see? No one you’ve lost contact with… no one you admire, no name and face you’d like to meet the person behind?”

“That is exactly my point,” Buddy said. “Your Alastair, as you see him, fundamentally does not exist. You know nothing of him. You have put him on a pedestal… who is to say he would not be fed up with you, or perhaps someone you actually wouldn’t admire? He doesn’t become real until you meet him, and even then, people wear flimsy masks. And people are often disappointing.” He leveled his gaze with Chase… only to find Chase looking back at him with concern. “I—this is obvious,” he said quickly. “I am not projecting some traumatic wound, I’m just saying… it’s a presumptive question to engage with.”

“Well, maybe I do want to meet the real Alastair,” Chase said. “Either way, he is where he is. He’s got stardom and fame and all that stuff. Either way he’s still the person who is Alastair. You know? And maybe I do want to see who he is underneath all of that… what’s it to you?”

Buddy’s voice was soft. “It is nothing to me,” he said.

“Okay. Then, if you’re really going to shirk your question…” Bap. Chase had just crumpled up the wafer tissue into a ball and hit Buddy square in the nose with it; Buddy blinked, looking like a confused and confronted cat. When he opened his eyes again, it was to find Chase grinning at him, his tone light again in order to lighten the conversation. “Next question. And before you say anything—I promise they’ll get better.”

“I have already resolved myself to this laughable procedure,” Buddy sighed.

“Okay… great! Then, the next question—’2; Would you like to be famous? In what way?’”

“No, absolutely not,” Buddy said immediately, at the same time as Chase cried, “YES!”

They blinked at each other.

“You don’t want to be famous?” Chase asked Buddy, and Buddy shook his head. “I guess you’re kind of an introvert, huh? And you like being all sexy and mysterious.”

“I take it fame is ‘all you’ve ever wanted’,” Buddy answered, his voice half derisive, and half… almost sympathetic.

Chase shrugged. That wasn’t entirely true—there were many other things which he wanted terribly. If fame was the only thing, that’s what he would be using his wish on… but he was gathering narratonin for something else… and he certainly wasn’t going to tell Buddy about that. “It’s what fame gets you,” he said quietly. “You can live life how you want to live it… you’ve got money, and people care about what you have to say, and you can change the world when you’re famous. Everyone thinks you’re great. People remember you. And then you’ve got, you know, all the stuff that rich people have… you don’t have to be weighed down by… by unexpected bills… or by not being able to afford the same stuff as everyone else…”

“And yet you lose all ability to live in a world that doesn’t care about you.”

“That’s a good thing!” Chase argued. But Buddy didn’t seem to agree.

“Let’s continue the questions,” he said.

Questions 3 through 5 were in a similar vein to the previous two; Chase was worried Buddy would find them infantile or boring, but Buddy didn’t actually seem to mind this conversation. He thought Buddy was treating it as an exercise in being annoying, frankly, or practice in undermining every answer Chase had. Question 3 asked if they ever rehearsed what they were going to say before making a phone call—Buddy had simply shrugged that he didn’t make calls, and Chase to admit that he didn’t, either, what with how prevalent texting had been. He supposed he did call his mom sometimes, but all of that came naturally, he wasn’t afraid to talk to her… “I guess the only time I might do that is when I have to talk to my aunt and uncle on the phone,” he said with a shudder. Buddy—probably well acquainted with all the various villainies of extended relatives, from the fairy tales he had done—did not seem to question this. 

Question 4 asked what consituted a “perfect day”. Again, Buddy tried to shirk the question, but enough prodding revealed that he would probably like to spend it somewhere nice—“With a warm patch of sunshine and lots of chocolate,” he specified. 

“Am I there?” Chase asked.

“Mm… I suppose. Maybe to bring me chocolate.”

Chase’s own answer revolved again about Star Brigade, which allowed Buddy to ask him if he “thought about anything else, ever.” He made to retort before Buddy held up the phone to show the fifth question—asking when he had last sang, to himself or someone else.

“I sing all the time,” Chase admitted cheerfully. “During chores, and stuff.”

“I know. I’ve suffered through enough of your cheesy pop ballads wafting through the hallways when you have to be a scullery maid.”

Chase sighed and stretched out in front of the fire; his clothes had started to dry now, and no longer clung to his skin. Bickering over the questions was tiring, and he had to admit that it did feel a little boring when they were as formulaic as this. He couldn’t remember the rest of the list that well… but he seemed to remember it wasn’t all this bland. The idea, after all, was to slowly reach questions that were more and more intimate, more and more interesting to answer.

Buddy watched him take advantage of the flickering heat… and then he posed a question of his own.

“So, it is really your… your dream, to be a famous singer, then?”

He was watching Chase quietly from over by the couch. 

Chase frowned and flipped over his phone to check the list, but the next question was longer, and had no talk of dreams. He looked back up at Buddy. “Er… I mean, yeah,” he said. That’s probably not something confidential, is it? I mean, he’s seen me sing. “Yeah, I’ve been working on it…”

“Is it lucrative?”

“I don’t know what that word means, but uh—it’s going—it’s going fine. It’s hard to be discovered, you know. But one day I’ll manage it, and then I’ll be the lead singer of a whole boy band and everything, and write my own songs, and go on tours…”

Buddy was just watching him silently as he talked. Even though his expression was not noticeably skeptical—and it was very obvious when it was—Chase couldn’t held but feeling like Buddy was judging him every time he looked at him. He supposed Buddy just had that sort of face. And after a minute, his voice started to drift off… pulling his knees close to his chest, feeling the blaze of the fireplace on his back, looking quietly at the rug for a minute like he had something to apologize for.

After a minute, Buddy offered the phone again, his fingers curling around it in a manner that seemed brutish and unpracticed, like he had never held one in his life. “Let’s just go to the next question,” he offered.

“I thought you thought this was stupid?”

“Well, I did look ahead, at least at the next one. It is again an obvious answer, but at least it is not a ridiculous icebreaker. I do not mind thinking deeply about things, you know.” And Buddy turned the phone around.

“‘If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?’ ” Chase read aloud. “...Huh?”

“Essentially,” Buddy explained. “Would you rather continue to age in your body, or in your mind, after the age of 30?”

Chase wrinkled his nose. “Oh, you’re right… that is obvious.”

Buddy nodded along.

“I mean, if I could have the same skin and like… joints? As a 30 year old forever until I die, that would be really—”

Chase stopped, having noticed Buddy’s expression. It was very obviously soured. “What?” he asked, a little defensively. “Are… do you disagree?”

“Of course,” Buddy said stiffly.

“But… old people get all breakable and sickly!” Chase protested. “If I was in 30s condition at 90s…?”

“Mint in box?” Buddy snarked.

“Well, I would still be able to do all the physical stuff I do now, dancing and singing… I wouldn’t have to stay in bed all day… I could stay fit, and healthy, and… I would be at less risk of getting sick…” The idea of a deteriorated body was terrifying to him, now more than ever. He could not imagine being bedridden; he could not imagine not having the physical capabilities to do that which his mind so desperately wanted. His mind trapped in his own body.

“Your body is a shell of who you are as a person,” Buddy said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Your mind is all you have,” Buddy said strongly. “Through—whatever happens to your body—” He caressed his pale wrist for a minute, absentminded, and then snapped back to reality. “No matter what happens to my body, I’m still me in here.” He jabbed his forehead. “In my mind. Without that I am nothing. If you have the body of, as the question suggests, a thirty year old when you are thrice that age… what are you planning to do with that perfect skin and those strong bones, if your mind has deteriorated? That is when you’ve lost yourself. When your mind succumbs to the vulnerabilities of your state.”

Chase frowned… hesitating. He did suppose there wouldn’t be much Chase Hollow if it wasn’t him behind his eyes. “Well, there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t be just as smart and funny as I am now, at age ninety,” he told Buddy.

Buddy scoffed.

Chase’s expression deepened… Buddy really was being contrary. He hadn’t intended to do this to argue… he wanted to get closer to Buddy, not pushed further away! I hope this isn’t like that other side of the social media reviews for this experiment… where they don’t get on together…

“Okay,” Chase said quietly. “Maybe… maybe I’m wrong.” Buddy didn’t answer; his silence evidently said yes, you are wrong. “But—Buddy, I don’t want to… be trapped there… in my body…”

“I understand,” Buddy said softly. His eyes were very distant, like he was thinking about something Chase wouldn’t understand.

“I don’t know if there is a right or wrong answer,” Chase tried again. “To any of this?”

Buddy nodded. “Let’s just… next question,” he mumbled, and Chase hummed in affirmation. He thought that question had, for both of them, brought up things they didn’t really want to think about. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders now and inched forwards to the fireplace, trying to sweep his mind of all those thoughts as Buddy read the next question.

“‘Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?’”

He set down the phone with a slight whistle of air. “You weren’t wrong about the questions changing,” Buddy said. “And we’re only on question… what? Seven? You chose quite the activity to pass the time, little idiot.”

Chase didn’t answer. He hoped Buddy wouldn’t volunteer him to answer this question first. Because he knew his answer to this one…

He had a family history, after all.

But he didn’t say that. 

“Stupidity.” Buddy recommended his answer for him, after he didn’t say anything. Then, with an exhale, he had crawled across the rug and sat down next to Chase against the mantle. “Move a little, I’m joining you.”

“Mm?”

Buddy did not elaborate; he made his point by simply taking a corner of Chase’s blanket and throwing it over his own shoulder. It was large enough that it did not require them to be any closer than they already were, but still… even though he knew Buddy hadn’t intended it, the closeness did help Chase feel a little better. And for that he was grateful.

“It’s just that my clothes are still wet, and I’m cold,” he said, like Chase had asked him to defend himself.

“You could have grabbed a different blanket…?”

“Mmm,” Buddy responded. Chase watched him as he stared across the room, his eyes thoughtful. “These questions are… well, this activity is…”

“I told you they would get harder. You were the one whining about them being too simple.”

“I was not whining!” Buddy protested. “I do not whine. I simply… do not hesitate to point out things that are wrong.”

That, at least, managed to coax a snicker from Chase. “Okay, Buddy,” he said. “Are you answering this one?”

“I… was not avoiding it…” Buddy frowned, his chin resting on the shifting back of his hand. “I don’t know,” he said finally, looking down at the carpet. Chase wondered if it was the fire making his ears red or something else. “So, I suppose my answer is no, I’m not.”

“You don’t expect to die from old age, like most people?”

Buddy shook his head quietly.

“Alright.”

Chase lunged to reach the phone that Buddy had left and then propped it between them so they could both look at it. They leaned down to read it together—8; Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

“This is not question,” Buddy said. “This is a demand. This list is needy.”

“Well, let’s do it anyways, okay, Buddy?”

Buddy nodded, and then his eyes raised to Chase… as if he was trying to look deep, beyond his eyes, to find some shard of himself in the other. Chase did not break the eye contact, but he did have to admit that he found his cheeks warming up some. It was only the way Buddy looked at him… only the way his eyes were, like arctic ice, like tinted clouds, like someone had chained the moon.

“Well… we’re both keyholders?” Chase offered after a minute.

Buddy’s head tilted onto his shoulder, evaluating him. “One,” he said, his voice achingly quiet and thoughtful.

Chase could feel his heart pounding in his chest. To have Buddy look at him like that… he wasn’t sure he could stand it…

“Annnnnd, uh…” Chase thought about asking questions, but the question had specified the word appear—this test was meant for strangers, they were probably messing it up a little by having a preexisting knowledge of one another. It was also difficult; Chase couldn’t think of much at all that they both shared. He knew little about Buddy, but even the things he did know were often the near opposite of himself. He hesitated and then tried, weakly, “We’re both cold?”

Buddy chuckled. “Getting warmer now,” he said, “but sure. Two.”

Yes, it definitely is getting warmer. And I’m not talking about the fire.

“Anyways, I’ve done two. You do the last one,” Chase said, finally breaking eye contact to turn his head away and pout.

“No, no. The questions apply to each of us, correct? We each must name three. One more… Chase.”

Chase… Buddy rarely ever called him Chase. If Buddy had wanted him to dare show his face again, he should not have said that. Watching the rug very carefully, fiddling with the thick string coming off the edge of it, Chase thought for a minute and then said, “We’re both under this blanket.”

Buddy smiled.

“Okay, now you have to do three!”

“I know… I have them already. I was watching.” Buddy hesitated, then said, “We both like wearing the keys’ custom clothing. We both would rather be sitting here, by the fire, than out there in the cold. And… we both want something very much.”

Chase was so surprised that his gaze was ripped from the carpet to Buddy. He wasn’t expecting Buddy to say that… it was such a jarringly thoughtful thing that he could not help from staring at Buddy closely. He’s right… but how does he know that? “I’m not sure that’s something we… appear to have in common?” he tried vaguely.

Buddy tilted his head, still looking into his eyes. “I disagree,” he said lightly. “You wear desperation like a heavy crown.”

“I—that’s not—”

“And you wouldn’t be here if you did not want something,” Buddy shrugged. “That is the nature of desiring a wish… is it not?” His voice had turned lighter, thoughtful, almost seductive.

Blush stained Chase’s face, from the shell of his ear to the tip of his nose. Swaying to shove Buddy away a little, he grumbled, “Anyways, that’s that question answered. Next one… we only have four more left in this set.”

Buddy simply nodded and waited for Chase to read. Shuffling away from Buddy enough to drag the blanket off of Buddy’s shoulder, Chase lunged for his phone and shook the screen to wake it up again. “Okay, number nine. ‘For what in your life do you feel most grateful?’ ”

“I was going to say that blanket,” Buddy pouted, watching it drag across the rug.

“Pssht, no you weren’t! There are more blankets on the couch, you ninny…” Chase watched as Buddy stood, rolling his shoulders, and then crossed to the couch to unfold another blanket, this one green plaid instead of red. His silence seemed to invite Chase to speak, so Chase hesitated for a minute, solidifying his answer in his mind, and then said;

“I’d probably say my family.”

“Mm,” Buddy said, letting the blanket drop open. He put it around his back and wrapped it tight, tight, tight, like an embrace. Chase watched, hesitating. How did Buddy feel about his family? He acted as if he was all alone in the world… did he even have anyone there with him? What had his growing-up looked like?

I hope there’s a question in here like that, he thought, peeking through the screenshots in his phone. I’d like to talk to him about that. If he doesn’t push me away, at least… but maybe if I’m soft about it, it’ll open Buddy up to talk about it. And maybe he needs that.

“Well… what about you?” Chase asked, as Buddy continued to draw the blanket around himself like he was putting on the most exquisite ballgown, preparing for a walk on a red carpet. “What are you most grateful for, in your life?”

Buddy was silent for a long time… like he could not think of an answer.

Finally, he said, “Violet.”

Chase blinked, surprised and delighted.

So… he does have a good relationship with his key.

He has someone.

Trying to disguise his grin—this was a piece of information he would have died for—he inquired, “Yeah? I assume you let her go around in her human form… or Ex Libris does?”

“Mm,” Buddy said.

“Why are you—”

“I answered the question, Chase,” Buddy said quietly. “Let’s move on.” He turned around and walked towards Chase, his face still angled away, so that Chase couldn’t read his expression. With a thump, he sat back down against the fireplace and glanced at the empty wafer tin. There was a sort of yearning to his expression…

“Are you getting hungry?” Chase asked quickly. “I bet we could find something in the cabinets to make—”

“No, don’t bother, not now at least. We may as well finish this… set. If it is almost over.”

Chase smiled gently at him. “I’m really happy you’re being honest with me, Buddy.”

Buddy scoffed. “Tch,” he said.

Chase shook his head, grinning, and looked down at his phone… to find just the question he had been looking for. “Oh, here we go,” he said softly, turning it so Buddy’s light eyes could catch the blue light and read it too. “‘10; If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?’ ”

Accidental and sarcastic, a laugh bubbled up from Buddy’s chest. He shook his head and looked away, momentarily watching the snow swirling outside the window, a million little snowflakes all aligned into one big creature that lashed and howled at the window. The laugh implied all the sarcasm of a life that had had nothing he ever wanted. Finally, speaking as if sifting through a library of pain, he decided, “More freedom.”

“More… freedom?”

“Yes. To make my own choices. Do… what I wanted… without guilt. ” Buddy hesitated, his eyes growing fixated on the snow as his own thoughts revolved. “Less guilt,” he whispered. “That’s—that’s it.”

Watching him in sympathy, Chase scooted closer until his chin was almost hooked on Buddy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. He could not entirely relate in that the people in his life suffocated him… maybe Deacon’s parents were different, but his parents had always inspired him to follow his dreams and tried their best to enable him.

Of course… everyone was denied freedom in some way. His family had never had much money, which meant that they couldn’t play for many music classes, or go many places for trips, or give Chase the same monetized head-start that he had to admit most “self made” pop stars had. He had been stuck in Sugar Springs for all his life, and he had wanted to get out, but he couldn’t… and now, with his mom sick, he had to care for her, too. He had to get the narratonin, he couldn’t be greedy or ask for money or space right now, because her life was the priority, not his own dreams… so he supposed, in that way, he had been denied freedom…

But that wasn’t the way he had been raised. That wasn’t the question.

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, tilting his head back to the look at the wooden beams of the ceiling. “If I could change anything… would ‘more money’ be a stupid answer?”

“You really care about money, don’t you?”

“Not really money itself. But I wish my parents could afford to live more comfortably… not that we didn’t, but… ugh. We always have to sacrifice things for each other, you know? They sacrificed so much so I could have a happy childhood… and now, the opposite…” Buddy was looking at him with great interest, like he was analyzing a fictional test, so Chase quickly moved on. “Or—okay. I guess my parents couldn’t really change how much money they had, it—it was fine. It wasn’t a big deal. I wish Deacon hadn’t moved away—how about that?”

Buddy blinked at him.

“Uhh… shit,” Chase stammered. “I mean— Deacon —pshaw, I have no relationship with him, we just… we’re just strangers… met at summer camp…”

“I thought we were being honest,” Buddy said.

“Well, yeah… I just don’t want you to stalk me and hurt my family,” Chase pointed out, which led Buddy to a very skeptical expression.

“You think I’m going to arrive slinging swords and bows around?” he asked.

“W-well, no, but I do know you want the keys back, and… they’re like my family, too. And I don’t want you to hurt them, or take them away to a place you know is worse for them… because you know that, Buddy. It sounds like Ex Libris has stiffed you, too. If you escaped… and there was somewhere out there trying to bring you back…?”

“Always with the assumptions,” Buddy said.

“Am I wrong?”

Silence.

“Buddy—”

“You know nothing—nothing—about my life,” Buddy said. “You don’t know what keeps me up at night, you don’t even know where I sleep. You have no idea if I’m affiliated with those—with Ex Libris, or not, or even if I’m on their side. You have no idea who I would or wouldn’t hurt.” And his eyes found Chase’s… eyes that were passionate, but strangely, not angry…

“Buddy, I’m sorry,” Chase whispered.

Buddy shook his head and nudged the phone, suggesting they move on. “Next question,” he said lightly.

Chase picked up the phone and read, “‘11; Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story, in as much detail as possible.’” He looked up at Buddy nervously, fully aware of the irony of the question given their previous conversation.

Buddy’s shoulders rose and fell in a heaving sigh.

“I’m assuming you don’t want to do this one,” Chase guessed.

“Well… you go first, at least,” Buddy said, shuffling away from Chase and turning to face the fire.

“But—”

“I went first last time. You go first now.” 

Chase hesitated, but nodded; Buddy probably needed some time to collect himself and decide what he would and would not say. Chase would be more than happy for any piece of information about Buddy’s life—he had to admit Buddy fascinated him. He had never met someone who behaved the way Buddy did… it was almost refreshing… but at the same time, it was sad, Buddy’s whole countenance wore sadness…

He resettled, watching Buddy perched there on the mantle with his arms around his knees and his expressions downcast, like a raven drawn in on itself. “We’ll both have to be careful,” he said slowly, and Buddy gave the slightest nod; neither of them wanted to expose any information that could lead to being tracked down. Still, it was interesting to Chase that they both accepted the question immediately, without even questioning its existence. Maybe the experiment is working…? Obviously not in a love regard, but maybe we’re warming up to each other.

“Hang on, let me pull up a timer,” he mumbled awkwardly, switching to a different screen and carefully setting it. “Okay… life story. Except I won’t add too much detail.” He tapped his phone and then leaned back against the fireplace, remembering, as Buddy stared into it.

And he spoke. Though he didn’t mention it by name, he did explain how he had been living in Sugar Springs all his life… how the town was small enough that everybody knew everybody, and his family all lived within a few miles of each other, him and his parents, and his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle. Awkwardly, he tried to imply that he had an older cousin who wasn’t Deacon, but given the rest of the conversation he did not think it was that big of a deal if Buddy could tell it was. He talked about how they had grown up together, going to summer camps and the same school… and then how Deacon (“ I mean my random cousin, ” he corrected quickly, making Buddy snicker slightly) had moved away, which was particularly hard, because earlier in the very same year…

His voice trailed off, dying in the flickering candle light.

Buddy’s eyes flickered to him as Chase’s sank into the fire, staring at the flickering flames, and the ashes.

Chase’s head sank down onto his knees.

“Er—” Buddy said awkwardly, as Chase tried to wipe his nose on his sleeve. “Hey, it— um —” But he wasn’t exactly the best at comfort.

“Sorry,” Chase mumbled, sniffing and turning his head so Buddy didn’t have to see his face. “I just—uh… there’s something I left out…” He took a deep breath. “A year or however earlier, my… my dad was diagnosed with cancer. He died that year.”

Buddy fell silent.

Chase chanced a glance at him… his face was paler than usual, and shocked.

“O-oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, that…” And then he turned away, his shoulders hunching.

Chase sniffed, rubbing his eye with the flat of his calm, and turned away too… crying silently while the fire flickered between them.

Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

Chase didn’t feel like moving to turn off the timer, he felt paralyzed, and he knew any movement would be slow—but he didn’t have to. Buddy took care of it, reaching for the phone and tapping it harder than necessary to coax it into silence. “How do I set it again?” he asked.

Chase blinked blearily at him, turning his head but not his body. “...Huh?”

“The timer. I am going to complete the question. How do I set up the timer?”

Surprised through the clouds in his mind, Chase slowly moved to face him again, getting back down from the mantle to the carpet and sitting down on top of his legs to show Buddy which buttons to press. All the while, he watched Buddy carefully… was Buddy actually going to tell him something? Did he perhaps think of it as a viable repayment, for Chase’s admission about his father? Surely Buddy would say nothing to give himself away, but Chase didn’t think he had said anything stalkable, either, and Buddy had a pretty good idea of his life. Buddy hesitated over the big start button, a certain tension to his brows, like he was wavering on the edge of a tightwire.

“It’s okay,” Chase said softly. “You don’t have t—”

Buddy tapped the screen with all the determination and vigor of an untethered acrobat.

Then he turned and looked at Chase, not away like Chase had done during his stories. His blue eyes were wide and intent… almost imploring, like they were asking for understanding, asking for help. This was how Chase chose to saw it, at least… he could not help but feel like Buddy might have been subtly asking for his help as he started to speak. “I was born in the Ex Libris library,” he said quietly.

Chase swallowed and nodded.

“That’s what they told me, at least. I had no way of knowing if that was true. I could have been abandoned as an infant, or stolen from a cradle—but in my earliest memories I was inside the library. Working as a servant, essentially, because I could not read yet.” Chase watched him nervously. “They taught me as soon as I can, and sent me into books.”

“As a little kid…?”

“Not alone; there were other keyholders there, as guides. Gradually as I became capable I branched off. I preferred it that way; I preferred being alone in the books.” Buddy shrugged vaguely, his eyes growing unfocused… the timer ticked down maybe twenty seconds as he thought, but Chase did not mention it. “Things… changed… mistakes were made, bad mistakes… and…” Another silence.

“You don’t have to tell me your top secret stuff, Buddy,” Chase said quietly. Especially because they seem to make you sad. “Especially because I know they could get mad at you, if they found out, right? That’s—it’s such a hard situation… what we’re in…”

“It is an easy situation if I just hate you and you hate me,” Buddy said. But he sounded like he was lying to himself.

“Yeah… if we were just enemies, and nothing else?” Chase asked softly, making a little closer to close the gap between them.

“We are nothing else.”

“I want to be friends,” Chase protested. “And, I want to help you…”

Buddy looked up at him like every kind word was draining the life from Chase’s eyes.

“To do so—” he started, his voice cracking.

Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

“Already?” Chase asked, glancing down. “Oh, you set it for two minutes.”

Buddy frowned. “I thought I set it for four—”

“It’s okay! It’s okay. Is there anything else you want to say? Or should we move on to the last question of the set?”

“We can move on,” Buddy said quietly, sounding painfully sad.

“Okay… okay.” Trying to push on so that they did not have to think about these things—still very much pitying Buddy in his mind, and wondering what sort of mistakes Buddy was talking about—Chase glanced once more down at the phone. “Alright… question twelve. ‘If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?’”

Buddy shrugged vaguely. “I am who I am.”

“Have a bit of whimsy, Buddy. You go first, since apparently now we’re being petty about that.”

Buddy offered a small smirk and said, “Fine. Any quality or ability…” He hesitated, his eyes flickering to the fire. Chase could see the moment the answer arrived in them, but Buddy didn’t say it immediately.

“Buddy…?”

“It… would be nice… to stop time,” Buddy said.

“Stop time?”

“Just for a moment. Just to… get up, walk around… take a moment to think, or sit, or breathe.” Buddy shrugged. “Of course; implying stopping time would make the world blind to me, and I could go where I pleased, without anything there to stop me.”

“That just sounds like stories to me,” Chase said. “You can already walk into stories.”

“Mm.”

Buddy didn’t seem likely to elaborate, so Chase took up the torch, instead. “I’d make it so I could fix anything,” he said confidently.

“That’s a superhuman trait, not a quality or ability,” Buddy pointed it.

“It didn’t clarify it had to be something that could actually happen! Yeah, I’d be a superhero—and my power would be to fix stuff. Broken air conditioning? Fixed. Broken bones, or sickness? Fixed. Broken… I don’t know… like if my math test is wrong? Fixed. If something is wrong in the world, someone’s unhappy or… in a bad situation… I could fix it for them.”

Buddy raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Shut up, Buddy, it’s a thing.” Dropping the blanket off his shoulders, taking care to make sure it went on top of Buddy’s face, Chase stood up and crossed the kitchen. “Well, that’s the end of the set. We can go straight on to the next one, except I think I remember we were talking about getting a snack or something, for a break?”

“You’re right,” Buddy said. Though his voice was collected and calm, his eyes darted hungrily to the kitchen.

“There’s not much in here,” Chase said, opening the cabinets and glancing through them. “Lots of boring stuff you’d feed to a misbehaving goat, or like, stuff my neighbor would like. You wanna chew on a cinnamon stick, Buddy?”

“If there are cinnamon sticks there should be cider somewhere,” Buddy recommended. He had also moved, to lie on the couch, his shirt riding up on the flat of his stomach and his legs sprawled lazily. Chase had to look away from him quickly, or his ears would turn a very obvious shade of crimson. Of course he’s just lying down while I fix us a drink, he thought, squatting down to look at the lower cabinets. What am I, his housewife? “Not under the sink, you ninny. Look in the pantry.”

“What pantry?”

“The… pantry you’ve been avoiding this whole time? I thought you checked it earlier?”

Chase stood up and stared at the wooden door on the other side of the kitchenette, staring him down. “Oh,” he said. “Well… that wasn’t there earlier.”

Buddy snickered as Chase threw wide the door, found the jug of cider amongst various boxes of wrapped food, and set it down with a thunk on the counter. “Shut up, Buddy, unless you wanna come over and help,” he retorted, pouring the cider into a pot. “You lazy piece of eye candy!”

“Lazy… what?”

“Shut up, Buddy, you’re so dumb.” Chase sighed and walked over to sit next to Buddy, shoving his knees onto his chest so that he had room. Buddy sighed melodramatically and flipped over onto his side, face pressed against the pillow, both feet hard at work to push Chase out of his overinflated bubble. “Let me sit here, you loser!”

“Fine,” Buddy grumbled, resettling.

“So…” Chase said, as they waited for the cider to heat up. “You’re actually enjoying this? Answering, and talking about personal questions? You don’t mind it so much anymore, now that’s you’ve gotten over your temper tantrum?”

Buddy shrugged. He was curled up on the couch a little, just enough so that Chase had room to sit down at his feet; his eyes, half-lidded and starkly blue, were fixated on the dancing fireplace. He had a pillow under his cheek, and was hugging it there with limp arms. Veins full of blue blood stood out against his pale, almost translucent skin. He looked cozy… but he also looked sad, or at least tired. Like he had had a long week, or a long life.

“Are you okay?” Chase asked softly. One of his hands twitched in his lap; for some strange reason, he was almost tempted to reach out and comb the hair from Buddy’s forehead. Which is silly… and ridiculous… I shouldn’t be thinking things like that.

“Mmm,” Buddy hummed, and then he pulled his shoulderblades tight together, his nose scrunching in the stretch. “Fine.”

“You sure? You seem sad.”

“It is no worry of yours, Chase.”

Chase. There was his name again. “Actually, Buds? ‘Cause if this is making you sad, we can stop—”

“No,” Buddy said, passionately enough that it took Chase by surprise. He nuzzled a little closer into the pillow, pouting. “The questions are fine, I… do not mind them.”

“Then what’s the matter? Are you hungry, sad? The cider shouldn’t be long now…”

“Maybe a little tired,” Buddy said, after a moment of thought.

“Has it been a long day?”

No answer. Chase sighed and stood from the couch, which creaked as his weight was removed from it. He walked around in front of the fire and then knelt down with his back to it, facing Buddy. Buddy watched him, wide-eyed, as he reached forwards. Maybe for a minute they both thought Chase was going to cup Buddy’s chin in his hands, but then the hands went past it, landing on Buddy’s shoulder and pulling the blanket tighter around him. Chase busied himself with the blanket and sincerely hoped his back to the fire meant that Buddy couldn’t see the red tinting his forehead. “Well you just… focus on being comfortable,” Chase said, letting the blanket fall again, snug around his arch nemesis. He stood, his knees creaking a little, and brushed off the thin fabric on his thighs. “I’ll go get that cider… okay? Do you want cinnamon in yours?”

“Mmm.” Buddy’s eyes had drifted sleepily closed again, now that Chase was gone and the fire was warming his face again.

“Buddy?”

“Ah… no cinnamon, please.”

Chase nodded and walked back over to the kitchenette, where the cider was simmering on the furnace, spices bubbling at its surface. Chase stirred it so that everything mixed together again and then removed the pan from the heat, tipping it gently over two mugs until they were close to full. He carried them back over to the couch, walking slowly so he didn’t spill, and then set one down on the floor in front of Buddy and sat down next to it. “Here ya go,” he said, as Buddy opened lazy eyes again. “Two apple ciders, fresh off the… furnace.”

Buddy chuckled and unwedged one arm to read down and shakily pick it up. The angle was awkward, and Chase was a little worried Buddy was going to spill all over himself, but then he sat up and held the mug with both hands to tip it down his throat. A faint color rose to his cheeks as the cider satiated him, and Chase heard a quiet, involuntary hum into the glass. He turned to his own mug and took a tenative sip, and then another one, more eagerly---the cider tasted like sunshine in a glass, instantly finishing the work of the fireplace and bringing warm life to his mind and limbs. He wasn’t sure if the cider was just enchanted to be rejuvinating in the story, or something, but he didn’t care; right now, it was real, and really good.

“Proud of me?” he grinned, as Buddy continued to drink like he had never had a hot drink in his life.

Buddy sighed, slowly lowered the mug again. His tongue darted out from between reddened lips to swipe at the skin around his mouth, in case of any lingered cider. He, too, looked better than he had before… indeed, better than Chase usually saw him. “Proud is a little excessive,” he said, but there was not distaste in his expression as he turned to look at Chase.

Chase smiled and took advantage of Buddy’s new sitting position to get up on the couch himself, wedged onto the cushion next to Buddy with his legs crossed up on the seat and the mug of cider resting on them. He hesitantly reached out and gave the blanket still around Buddy’s shoulders a tug—Buddy paused to look at him, skeptical, before giving in and looking away to allow Chase to happily pull half of it from his shoulders and throw it around himself. This one was smaller than the blanket they had shared by the hearth, and required a little closer of proximity to sit comfortably around them. Chase grinned sheepishly at the carpet, surprised Buddy wasn’t turning him away.

Buddy picked his cup back up from the table by the couch and took another slow sip, his eyebrows raised at Chase over the lip of his mug. “Well?” he spoke, his voice echoing into the ceramic.

“Well?”

“Well… we have our snack now, do we not? Are we going to continue with the questions now?”

“Oh.” Chase blinked. “R-right.” He had been so enthralled with this sleepy, cozy, domestic Buddy that he had almost forgotten. “You’re ready now?”

“We can answer them while we drink,” Buddy pointed out.

“Okay—yeah, you’re right.” Chase picked up his phone, waking it up with a press of the home button. “I guess we can start then, on the next set…”

Chapter Text

“Shoot,” Buddy said, leaning his head back against the couch.

Chase cleared his throat, which felt thick and syrupy from the cider, and glanced down at his phone. “Okay,” he said, “’13; If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?’”

Buddy’s response was immediate. “How many questions do we get?” he asked, looking at Chase carefully, like he was trying to work the numbers in his brain.

Chase chuckled and shut off his phone again. “I don’t think it’s strict like that, Buddy. Just… anything! If you have a crystal ball in your hands, what would you start asking it?”

Buddy was silent for a long time, thinking. Finally, he said, “Most of the questions in my life are not easy, straight-forward answers.”

“Yeah… I get that. But still—it said ‘yourself, your life, the future, or anything else.’ What about those? As a starting place?” Chase had to admit he was curious to hear Buddy’s answer to this one; Buddy always masqueraded the countenance of someone who knew everything, and Chase wanted to know what it was that Buddy actually didn’t know.

Another moment of thought gave way to an answer of course. “I suppose if I were to ask it about myself, I would want to know more about my childhood,” Buddy sighed, resettling on the couch, crossing his legs, and taking a long, warm sip from his mug. Chase could hear his breathing into the pottery. When the mug was cast aside again, Buddy continued—”I know very little about my life when I was young, so I do suppose that would be a source of curiosity for me. I must admit, however, that I would be a little anxious to hear the answer. What if there is something in my past that might redefine my present—or the trajectory for my future?” Buddy shrugged. “Knowledge is power. Of it I have very little, and very much, synonymously. I would like to understand the—your world better, but I am not sure any answers simply recited to me would fully engage me with the world out there. I would like to know the secrets that my superiors keep behind doors, for I know there are many. I… would like to know what is meant for me.” His voice softened. His eyes grew lost in the flames, of the fireplace across the rug. “My future. What’s in store. I would like to know that.”

Chase smiled and nodded, allowing him the silence to brood in peace and formulate his next thought. When seconds slid past and he hadn’t continued, however, Chase tentatively prompted, “What about it…?”

“Nothing in particular,” Buddy breathed, watching the waltz of flames and ash. “Just… if it is to always remain this way.” His eyes darted towards Chase and then away again. “I am on a trajectory, regardless of what I do or do not know. I can feel the pieces shifting ever so slightly; I can feel the page being turned. But I do not know to what.”

“You do?” Chase asked. “Why is that?”

“You.” Chase startled at the answer, but Buddy did not stop. “My life is greatly changed by your presence; you are different, you are new. You are determined, you are dangerous. Somehow I feel you must change my life in some way, as we hurtle towards the inevitable future that Ex Libris has defined for us.” Buddy sighed. “I can only guess at whether it is for the better or the worst. Perhaps that depends on which of us… succeeds.”

“Does it have to be either or?” Chase inquired, moving the slightest inch closer to Buddy on to couch, slight enough that he could excuse it with the way the sagging cushions took him. “Maybe somehow we can find out how to work together , with the keys and against Ex Libris, Buddy. Maybe there is a future where it works out for both of us. I can’t imagine that as impossible, can you?”

Buddy sipped from his mug and didn’t answer.

“Hey, well… you’ve answered it, then,” Chase said, trying to get Buddy to smile again. “Cool! Uh, then it’s my turn, I guess—” He double-checked his phone, to reiterate the question to himself. “Crystal ball… ask anything?” He hesitated, thinking. As it commonly did, his mind turned up on something else—related by a nuance, relevant once the conversation was properly pursued. “I wrote myself letters once,” he mumbled.

Buddy looked up, curious; his head didn’t move, but his eyelids lifted, and he looked at Chase through his bangs. For once there was no judgement in his stare; just an idle, comfortable sort of curiosity, like they were sharing casual stories over a campfire.

Something they essentially were doing. But Chase wasn’t used to it… something about it sent a strange zing down his spine…

The strange intimacy of the moment was broken when Buddy decided to open his mouth. “Wooow,” he said, “you wrote something?”

Chase seized the nearest throw pillow and threw it at him.

“Ahhh!” Buddy cried, falling back dramatically. His cider sloshed in his cup; it was a miracle none of it spilled, but a miracle for Buddy and Buddy alone, because he totally deserved it. Lying on his back against the arm of the couch, Buddy looked up at Chase with a perfect expression of betrayal, his bottom lip sticking out in a pout. He held the cup of cider close like it had a chance of being wounded. “Well that was rude,” he said, to recover his calm countenance.

“I will spill your drink on you,” Chase said, sticking his tongue out. Buddy scoffed and straightened again, scooting back with his feet in front of him on the couch, so that he was not in such a vulnerable position.

“Tch,” Buddy said, “I was simply stating an obvious assumption.”

“You ninny, I do write. Well, I—it was cool to me.” Chase sighed and settled back again, thinking. “I was much younger. I always liked—singing. Performing. My parents encouraged it, my dad was a musician, of course.” His mind murmured a repetition of the verbiage at him, like it always did, and he stared very determinedly into his pooling cider to ignore it. “So I was like, I was a kid, I thought it would be a good idea to keep some sort of log, or something, for the future when I was famous and everyone wanted to know all these details of my life. It was my mom’s idea first—it was an exercise she did with her students. Journaling, writing letters to your future self. An exercise in hope, or something like that.”

Buddy tilted his head on his shoulder. His expression was… strangely sincere? “What did you write?” he asked softly.

Chase’s throat swallowed heavily, apparently of its own accord. The apple cider must have been making his throat thick and his limbs heavy; that, and whatever was in the air between them at the moment. He thought vaguely about what Buddy had told him—My life is greatly changed by your presence.

A star, an idol—someone so friendly that they could be a friend. Someone to touch another’s heart. Someone to love well enough that they could be loved—someone to be known, remembered, and cherished—someone to change a life.

In a glitzy, neon way, maybe. That was what he expected for his own way.

But there was another way—many other ways. He had known that in dusty dirt roads and summer grass, the beep of a heart monitor and a broad window over a courtyard, flowers and crayons and laughter over desks.

There was a way in apple cider and warm fires, too, maybe.

He swallowed the dense feeling in his throat and spoke.

“I asked myself how things turned out,” he said softly, “I asked about my friends, my family… I asked about my career, my school life… I always asked my future self… questions I could never answer.” The mug was warm and comforting under the pads of his fingers. He wondered how it would feel to hold a crystal ball with every answer. Would it pulse under his fingers like a heartbeat, so alive and throbbing he could almost feel its rhythm? Would it be quiet and cold as any empty library, full of information left by people who were not in the room? 

“Interesting,” Buddy said softly.

“What is?”

“I said I wanted to know more about my past… you, your future.”

Chase raised his eyes to Buddy’s. “Yea,” he said, “but I don’t think I would ask those things.”

Buddy’s eyes looked like the moon. “Grew out of it?” he asked.

Chase shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think I just—” He shrugged loosely. He was not, had never been good with words. Buddy would be able to describe something like this so much better. “...I love life too much to try to understand it,” he murmured.

Buddy’s eyes seemed to glittery intently for a moment.

Chase glanced at him shyly, wondering if it would be silly if he disappeared behind his mug.

“Would—” Buddy started, but then his voice trailed off.

Chase tilted his head. “‘Would’ what?”

But the black-haired boy was already shaking his head as if to rid himself of something. “Nothing,” he said softly. Next moment, his face had curled in a teasing smirk—“Saves you the effort.”

“Oh my God, Buddy!”

Surrendering his composure, Chase lunged forwards. Buddy shrieked under his breath as Chase flung another pillow at him—he managed to lift a leg and kick it away, back in Chase’s direction. It bounced off and to the ground. “Tsk, you failed,” Buddy said, smirking. Chase just laughed back—something about Buddy’s words had not hurt, like they usually did. They felt delivered almost in a sort of brotherhood, the way Chase would joke around with Deacon or Simon or one of his other close friends… he wondered, again, what Buddy had been about to ask.

“What were you going to ask?” he said, as Buddy carefully set down his apple cider.

Buddy’s eyes flicked up towards him. “Hm,” he said lightly, and then took to adjusting the collar that had been messed up by the unanticipated projectile.

“No—no, for real,” Chase said. He swung his legs around to sit on his knees, getting a little closer to Buddy, who was still lying on his back. “For real—what were you gonna ask?”

“Nothing,” Buddy said innocently. Chase rolled his eyes, grabbed the last plaid blanket from the back of the couch, and promptly flung it over Buddy like he was captured an animal.

“W—Chase!”

Chase ignored him. He fished behind himself for another small, square pillow, getting it firmly in his grasp just as Buddy flung the blanket down from his face. The static energy had frizzed up his hair slightly; his face was flushed, his bangs disheveled. “You messed up my hair,” he pouted, trying to smooth it.

His efforts were interrupted a moment later by a pillow strongly whipped across the face.

“Chase, w-what the hell!” Buddy stammered through laughter, as Chase wound up to hit him again. “I bear my soul to you and this is what I get?”

Chase. Chase, Chase, Chase, Chase’s name in his words, in his mouth, spoken through unkempt laughter heralded in by the quiet closeness of the night. Suddenly and abruptly, Buddy was a friend in front of him, laughing, comfortable—someone human, someone who was not untouchable, like he tried to be. But he had been for so long, and only moments ago… what had changed? Had it just changed? Or am I suddenly coming to know things that have been there for a while? Is this… the point of the questions? “You absolute dingus,” Chase said, and Buddy’s jaw dropped open in offense, “we’re not even halfway through the questions.” He bumped the pillow down against Buddy’s chest and then hugged it to his own for safe-keeping. “And I have a bonus one, anyways. Extra credit, one hundred and ten percent. What were you going to say?”

“Nothing. You should go away. This is unprofessional.” Buddy prodded him with a blanket-covered toe. “Go on.”

In response, Chase slung one leg around the side of the couch and sat on him.

“CHASE!”

Chase ignored him. Ignoring the fact that he was balancing himself carefully on Buddy’s stomach, conscious to not put too much weight on top of him in a way that may crush him, he readied the pillow and leaned forwards to look at Buddy, who was staring at him, awestruck. “THIS. IS NOT. PROFESSIONAL,” Buddy repeated. “What are you doing?”

“Tackling you,” Chase said. “Whenever Deacon clams up about a girl I just jump on him and annoy him and it works. I am giving you the same treatment.”

Buddy’s ears seared red. He turned his face away, pouting. “I am not talking about a girl.”

“I know that, Buddy. You started to say something and then you stopped, what are you—” Chase flushed. His mouth would not stop smiling, for some reason. “What were you going to say—?”

“You do not have the ability to question me,” Buddy argued. “Only this foolish test can.”

“Uh huh. Uh huh.” Chase cast around for his phone and plucked it up. “We’ll do the foolish test the—” 

His mouth fell open, stunned, as the phone clattered across the floor.

Buddy smirked up at him, one of his hands still lifted in a nearly kitten-like bat, like he had just knocked something from a table. He seemed obnoxious satisfied with himself.

“That. Is. It,” Chase said. “You. CAT.”

“What does that me—”

“AAAHHH!”

Buddy’s yelp joined Chase’s, as Chase jumped forwards onto him. “Come here, come here,” Chase said, his voice breathy between laughter, as Buddy squirmed underneath him, trying to hide his head with the blanket. He seized the pillow again and rubbed it vigorously against the mop of black hair sticking out of the blanket, turning it just as frizzy as his had been by the cold. Buddy made tiny noises of protest and tried to push Chase off with his knees, but Chase had wrestling experience, and could hold him down easily just by clinging to him with his legs like a monkey.

“Cha—Chase—” Buddy stammered, pale hands loosely crossing in front of his face in an attempt to push the pillow away. “What—is this for—”

Chase removed the pillow, and Buddy’s blue eyes emerged over the blanket, expecting a response. “First of all,” Chase said, “you’re being a dingus.”

“You mentioned that,” Buddy said, as Chase batted him in the nose.

“Second of all, you aren’t answering the questions properly. Third of all—” Chase raised the pillow high above his head, and Buddy’s body tensed underneath his—“You left me out there in the cold.”

“It was the story—”

Thwup. The sound of the pillow smacking Buddy in the face was incredibly satisfying in a way Chase would never be able to properly articulate. Buddy shouted, grabbed the pillow, and tried to use it to steer Chase off of him; with a clatter, they fell from the couch onto the floor in a tangle of limbs, narrowly missing the mug of cider that had been set next to it.

Chase only knew the cider hadn’t been spilled through a rush of color; the blanket ended up over his head, plunging him into warm darkness. He only had a vague sense of how they were intertwined when he felt a warm breath on his cheek, and heard Buddy whisper “Gotcha” in his ear.

He was sensationally glad they were under the blanket, where it was dark.

It didn’t stop him from noticing the blush, roasting him head to toe, though.

It’s crazy pseudoscience, he reminded himself reasonably. It was never supposed to actually work. It hasn’t. This has nothing to do with the questions… just everything to do with the fact that the most gorgeous boy you’ve ever seen in your life decided to wrestle you around the couch.

Like… platonically.

Buddy removed his breath from Chase’s cheek—which was all too well, because it was humid and gross, Buddy, terrible sensation—and shoved the blanket off of their heads. They had fallen in a way that Buddy was now awkwardly wedged on top of Chase, his black hair sticking every which way from the tussle on the couch. Chase couldn’t move too well without either hurting Buddy or knocking over their discarded mugs on the floor—what a shame, he supposed he’d just have to stay here until Buddy got off.

But Buddy didn’t get off. He just reached across the rug and picked up Chase’s phone.

“Let’s see what’s in here,” he sang.

Chase froze. “You’re going to stalk me?” he demanded, trying to unwedge his arm to grab the phone. “Buddy! Come on!”

Buddy fiddled with the phone for a moment and then turned it around, pouting. “I need you to unlock it,” he said.

Chase rolled his eyes. “Oh my God.”

“I’m not going to stalk you. We need to…” Buddy’s eyes grew unfocused for a minute as he looked down at Chase. “...continue the questions,” he finished, shaking his head slightly.

Chase cocked an eyebrow. “Will you get off of me?”

“No.”

Chase unlocked the phone.

“Okay, question thirteeeen,” Buddy said, propping his elbow against the couch and his cheek on top of his elbow. There was still a certain mischief to his eyes as he continued to pin Chase down through simple means of entanglement—Chase totally could have thrown Buddy off, but he didn’t want to put in the effort. He did try to cast around for a new pillow, though, as Buddy spoke. “‘Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?’” His eyes drifted back towards Chase, then snapped back to the phone.

Chase pouted. “I suppose that means you want me to answer first,” he guessed. The arm Buddy hadn’t noticed was making a brave creep towards one of the nearby throw pillows. “Well, fine, but I think my answer’s kind of obvious.” He shrugged. “I’ve dreamed of being a singer.”

“And you haven’t because…?”

“I live in a nowhere town and I don’t have money.”

Buddy blinked… then nodded. “I see,” he said softly.

“A lot of these questions are kind of similar,” Chase said, hooking two fingers firmly around the tassel at the corner of the pillow. “I don’t know if we’re doing them properly.”

“If we’re doing them properly, wouldn’t we be falling in love?” Buddy proposed.

Chase squinted at him. Buddy shrugged.

“...Just saying.”

“If you’re asking me that, can I ask you again what you were going to say earlier?” Chase asked, grinning. Buddy pouted.

“Noooo,” he said.

Thwup.

“You!” Buddy spat out between the indignation that made his entire body swell. He tried to wrench the pillow from Chase get again, but Chase clung on, jerking it around impishly to convince Buddy’s pale fingers to break away, and tipping them sideways—

They collapsed against the couch, and away from themselves, with a clatter.

It took Chase a minute to wonder why there was a clatter; he was lying on his back, his stomach heaving with giggles. Eventually, though, it occurred to him to look around.

Buddy was staring in horror down at his stained clothing, as warm cider sank slowly through the fabric to clung to his chest.

Chase was still laughing as he sat up and watched Buddy ogle himself. “Hehe, your hair is all frizzy,” he said, reaching out to ruffle it.

He blinked as Buddy caught his hand. He did not catch it swiftly, or in a way that suggested he was trying to prevent his hair from being touched specifically—rather, he just idly reached up and laced his fingers vaguely in Chase’s own, as a way of telling him to pause. Chase blinked at him, nonplussed, as Buddy took advantage of the stillness to watch his chest. His unoccupied hand hovered over his chest in the same way a dancer might hold their hands aloft from their body—like a warrior, hesitant to nudge a spearhead.

“It’s just cider,” Chase offered lamely after a moment.

Buddy didn’t answer. He had gotten to his feet.

“Um—Buddy?”

Buddy’s shoulders looked very intense indeed, when he turned away and started walking. Chase jumped to his feet, confused. “Hey—Buddy!” he said, a shred of worry inching into his void now. “Buddy, are you okay? It wasn’t too hot anymore, was it? Oh my God, I hope I didn’t burn you—”

“You didn’t,” Buddy confirmed. He had moved to the doorway that Chase thought contained the bed- and bath- room. He hesitated for a minute before mumbling, “...sticky.”

Chase’s head fell sideways onto his shoulder.

Buddy seemed immediately cowed by this predicament, though, and it was up to Chase to follow him into the bathroom as he disappeared. He rounded the corner to see that Buddy already had the old faucet on, the washbin below him rattling as he held out his untucked shirt to get soaked.

“Um… sorry,” Chase whispered from the doorway. Buddy didn’t answer; his brow was furrowed in apparent concentration. “I wasn’t trying to make… a mess.” He flushed, thinking about their little pillow fight. OH MY GOD, WHAT WAS I DOING? he screamed vaguely to himself.

Where did that come from? We werejust talking…

And… Buddy was calling me Chase…

And I haven’t laughed that hard in forever…

“It’s okay.” Chase looked up, snapped out of his thoughts. Buddy was talking, eyes still fixed on the washbin, the shirt extended to catch and filter the water, the ruddy mirror situated on the wall in front of it. “You don’t need to apologize. I just don’t like being sticky…?” He cut off with a soft, self-aware laugh. “And I don’t like making messes.”

“Oh,” Chase breathed. “Well, here, I can help.” He walked over to where Buddy was standing and, after a moment of hesitation, helped him roll up his sleeves; guiding the soft blue fabric gently up Buddy’s pale arms, trying to ignore how warm his skin was, making sure there were no uncomfortable rolls in his fabric as he encouraged them around the elbows. “There you go,” he said softly. “So your sleeves don’t get wet.”

Buddy’s mouth tensed. “Thank you.”

“I’m still sorry for all of that,” Chase said after a moment. “I… like playing with people. It’s fun to be goofy. And it seemed like we had something going on…? But I didn’t mean to—”

“Chase,” Buddy interrupted, “hush.”

Chase did so.

They just stood silently for a moment, as Buddy finished washing the sticky cider out of his shirt, and then lifted his hands, combing out the sparkling rhinestones in his hair like he was unworking knots and dropping them, one by one, into the washbin. Chase watched his eyes dart every so often from an idle, half-lidded position to the mirror to see his own expression. He undid the earring clasped around the shell of his ear, too, and set it aside, then fidgeted with his sleeves for a moment before tugging them back down, leaving them in only one or two rolls so that their damp ends did not cling to his palms.

Chase watched him curiously the whole time. Buddy was taking advantage of the recess to dress down a little, get more comfortable; he got that, that was fine, especially if Deacon and Prunella were busy in the other part of the book and they might have to take the time to sleep or nap. What was peculiar to him was that through this whole exercise designed to expose things to him about Buddy, the thing he probably would have guessed least, and obtained from the least relative activity, was that Buddy didn’t like to be sticky.

Finally, the last rhinestone was removed from Buddy’s hair. “Would you try to understand me?”

Chase’s eyes raised from the mirror to him. “What?”

Buddy’s eyes had such a sheen; Chase could not stop thinking about them, or looking at him when he had the opportunity. They themselves were a mirror of sorts, showing you every piece of you while giving off nothing in return. And yet there was meaning… there was meaning in Buddy’s eyes, in his tone, in his words. 

“You said—you said you loved life too much to try to understand it,” Buddy said softly, and Chase’s lips parted in an understanding of what Buddy was saying. “And I understand but—sometimes—” He hesitated. Snow brought silence to the world around them, but here in the dark washroom full of pipes and high-up windows giving off very dim light, Chase could hear melted precipitation rattling in the walls, pouring down the pipes. It brought a backing sound to the conversation that seemed to make everything more comfortable—a gentle ck-ck-ck-ck-ck surrounding them like song. Buddy swallowed, his throat bobbing, and then said, “Well it was a silly thing to say, and that was why I didn’t say it. But I was wondering—why—you seemed to be curious about me.”

Chase blinked.

Buddy laughed, the sound echoing in the room. “Yeah,” he said softly, “stupid.”

Only he thinks there’s a certain love in trying to understand someone else.

And here Chase did.

He moved a little closer to Buddy, his shoulder pressed into Buddy’s chest so he could also stand in front of the mirror and look down into it. The reflection of his heroine stared back—at this very moment, in a completely different universe, being sapped of her strength at the evil will of the person currently standing behind Chase and admitting his profound fear of stickiness.

Chase turned around, smiling. “How many times do I tell you I want to be friends with you?” he asked. “Now do you want to continue the questions, or is there something else you had in mind?”

In response, Buddy stepped forwards and—

Chase didn’t gasp. The sound that escaped his mouth, instead, was a long and relaxed sigh as Buddy wrapped both of his arms around Chase’s torso and buried his chin into his shoulder.

Immediately, Chase melted back into his embrace.

They stood there for a minute, alone in the dim bathroom, snow swirling in the very small window up on the wall, moot reflections intertwining in the grimy mirror and the reflection of the slowly draining water.

“There,” Buddy murmured, his voice once again in Chase’s ear. “That’s my answer.”

“Your answer?”

“To the question we were on.”

Another blush rose to Chase’s cheeks, hidden from the world by Buddy’s shoulder. His hands found the rhinestones on the fabric to play with as he mumbled, “Me…?”

“Not… particularly… but you are here…” Buddy’s breathing was tense where it touched Chase. “And I am. Very glad of that.”

A smile warmed Chase’s face in the chilly room.

“You goof,” he whispered.

Back in the living room, sitting just a little closer, the room just a little warmer, they blazed through the next few questions. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life? What do you value most in a friendship? What is your most treasured memory? It was when they reached question #15, what is your most terrible memory?, when Buddy paused, and Chase quickly swiped downwards on his phone, “We don’t have to answer that one.”

“No,” Buddy said, “That’s okay—”

Chase’s eyebrows pulled apart as he regarded Buddy’s conviction. “Why?” he asked simply. “Nobody is holding us to any of the rules. We can do whatever is… good for us.”

Buddy frowned. “It’s cheap,” he insisted.

“Well… okay…” Chase shrugged, then offered, intentionally keeping his voice light, “Mine was the day my dad died. Obviously.” His jaw tensed as he tried to push forwards, he hated how easily he could still get choked up about this, “Getting the call from the hospital. That was the absolute worst moment. W-what about you…?”

Buddy’s eyes were unfocused. “I am so terribly selfish,” he said softly.

Chase’s heart sank. “What…? No,” he said. He scooted forwards, his pinky finger inches from Buddy’s own, leaning to make eye contact with him from the side. “No, no. Don’t say that about yourself.”

Buddy shortened his gaze to him. “Is that not an apparent statement? I am the villainous, your contraire—”

“Shut up,” Chase said, his voice soft, nearly a croon. “Shut up, shut up, Buddy.” His hands were on Buddy’s shoulders again, near his clavicle,  as if they were making to be like defibrillators to breathe confidence back into him. “Shut up. I’ll hug you again. I swear it.”

The lightest chuckle. “Oh no, the horror,” Buddy said lightly. Then… “And lucky.” His skin felt warm under Chase’s hands, through the thin fabric of the shirt. “So lucky, that my greatest pain should be my own.” Past Chase’s head, he turned his wrist over and opened his hand, like he was expecting to see something other than skin there. 

“Buddy, you don’t have to tell me—”

“No, that would not be honorable,” Buddy sighed. “My… most terrible memory…” His fist clenched. Hiding away the human creases of his palm. “Was when I was punished, through a… revival, of sorts.”

Chase’s eyes flashed.

“Not. In a vampire way.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about—”

“I can’t tell you the details,” Buddy murmured softly, “even under the guise of friendship and games. But in its most simple essence, I lost my ability to fail… to make mistakes, to be imperfect, human.” He sighed. “This doesn’t make sense—”

“It’s okay, I don’t have all the context.” Chase’s mouth darted into a smile. “I think I understand at least parts of it.”

Buddy sighed, long and cathartic.

“There is a certain quality to feeling different than human and feeling superior,” he said quietly. “The issue is that usually, one simply… does not feel so.”

What does friendship meant to you?

“Oh, we had a question just like this a moment ago. I think friendship is being able to laugh—”

“Trust—”

“Hanging out, someone you know you can rely on, you know.”

“Not lying.”

What roles do love and affection play in your life?

“Oh, God.”

Buddy snickered, a smirk toying with his lips. “Something wrong?” he asked Chase, who had transitioned to a more fidgety position—lying on his back, upside down to Buddy, with his legs resting vertically against the couch.

Chase wrinkled his nose, fighting again to keep that ridiculously persistent smile off his face. “Nope,” he said. 

He told Buddy about his family and friends, all the nuances he had come to know of love, and then they talked a while about how that differed from affection and then compared. “I am not too well acquainted with either of them,” Buddy said with an eventual shrug, arms wrapped around his torso, even though all of the cold had long since disappeared from the room. 

Chase frowned. “No?”

“Is this surprising? These questions get redundant.”

Buddy seemed casual about the thing, but Chase could not imagine that, and he wanted to get closer. He swung his legs sideways, so they were closer to Buddy’s head, and then wriggled his way up to Buddy’s leg.

“At least you’re here for entertainment,” Buddy commented, as Chase pulled himself into a sitting position.

“Hush,” Chase said, making Buddy smile. “You stupid, dumb, stupid idiot. I’m here, and I—”

“What?”

Chase faltered. Buddy was staring deeply into his eyes. They were sitting up with their knees in front of them, oppositely even though they were next to each other, to better face the other.

“I care about you,” Chase said. He shrugged, like that may water down his words past their uncomfortably brittle exterior.

Buddy’s lips just parted in quiet surprise.

Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

“Oh my God, gasp, a wall,” Chase said. He was back to lying on the floor with his feet kicked up against the couch, watching the embers of the fire slowly burn down. “Buddy’s nemesis. Complimenting me.”

Buddy frowned. “We had to do this before.”

“No, just it’s another command,” Chase said. He rolled over so that he could mess with Buddy’s shoelaces, remembered he wasn’t hearing them, and busied himself with the cuffs of his pant legs instead. “Go on. Get complimenting.”

The voice above him snorted. “No, you should go first.”

Chase sighed, loud and performative, and then rolled over with his head on Buddy’s foot. “FIIIIINE,” he said. “Okay, number one… uh…” He grinned. “I think you’re really cute when you’re sticky.”

A simultaneous flush and look of bewilderment flashed over Buddy’s face.

“You know, when the cider spilled. You got all hyper-focused on it. It was… I don’t know.” Chase waved a hand around vaguely, like he could capture in it a proper sentence. “Endearing?”

Amusement cracked past the shock. “Endearing,” Buddy repeated softly.

“E-N-dearing,” Chase spelled out for him. “Yup. That.” Buddy didn’t answer, so Chase whacked his ankle, “You’re turn! And don’t act dumb about it.”

Buddy chortled… and then he reached out, and smoothed Chase’s hair with one hand. “Your hair is soft,” he said.

“That’s a positive characteristic?” Chase considered, then grinned. “Hell yeah it is. Okay, yours is too.”

Buddy frowned. “Hm. Cheap.”

“What? What’s cheap?”

“The compliment. You can’t just take one of mine.”

“Yeah, okay, well I bet it’s true,” Chase said. He sat up, his hand held loosely in front of him. “Can I…?”

Buddy all but shoved his head under Chase’s hand like a clingy cat, looking sulky and detached the whole while.

Chase laughed and rubbed the strands of hair he had ended up grabbing between his index finger and his thumb. “Okay, yeah,” he agreed. “...I can see it.” Buddy’s hair was not as soft as his, no way, but it was longer than Chase had expected—it simply kept flat to his head, and was shaved off at the base of his neck. But Chase had noticed during their whole pillow fight that the strands dislodged from the rest of Buddy’s fancy head were just as long as the bangs in front of his eyes, and they were fun to touch. Chase forgot what they were doing as he combed one hand through the hair on the head in front of him. Buddy just waited, his head bowed stubbornly at an angle that seemed a little painful.

“Here, you’ll hurt your neck,” Chase said after a moment, removing his hand. Buddy barely had a moment to pout before it closed around the back of his neck instead, and Chase scooted to rest against the couch, guiding Buddy’s head into his lap.

Buddy sighed and blew one of the strands of hair away from his mouth, as he curled his head and shoulders into Chase’s stomach like a cat, turned away from him to watch the dying fire.

“Okay, I’ll accept it if you do,” Chase sang, closing his fingers around a section of hair like he was measuring pasta, imagining Buddy’s hair in a little ponytail—it was long enough if the ponytail didn’t go low, below his neck.

Buddy sighed again, but he seemed to think Chase petting him was a good exchange for an unoriginal compliment, so he didn’t argue. “Very well,” he said, which was a silly thing for someone with their head in someone else’s lap to say. “I suppose it is… acceptable.”

“One down!”

“Oh, God.”

The snow whirled outside as Buddy thought—carefully pulling together his thoughts, just as above him, Chase pulled at his hair. A few times he seemed to lose it, his thoughtful, filler sentences drifting off when Chase gave a particularly comfortable tug on his hair, but eventually he mumbled, “I think… that you have a very thoughtful understanding of other people “, his cheek pressed into Chase’s leg.

“Boy, that gave me time to think,” Chase laughed. “Thank you, Buddy, that’s very nice. Very nice… I didn’t know you knew that.”

“It isn’t hard to know,” Buddy mumbled. “You are, at every turn, my better, Chase.”

Chase flicked him in the ear. “I admire that you’re so confident, except wait, stop, no,” he said. “You know what you’re good at? Spearing fish.”

“A fantastic characteristic,” Buddy snorted.

“And you have an amazing laugh.”

“We’re supposed to be alternati—”

“And I think you look really nice in the clothes that Violet makes for you, and you’re very good at working with the stories and getting jobs done, and you’re very good at your job in general—” Chase started to lean over, nudging Buddy’s head to incline him to look up.

“Chase, stop,” Buddy said, like Chase’s words were attacking him.

“And you’re funny, you’re really freaking funny,” Chase murmured.

“I—no, you’re funny—”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Chase grinned. Then he leaned forwards and pressed his face into Buddy’s hair.

Buddy’s breath shuddered in his chest, and he went perfectly still, like he was scared to break the boy who was cradling him like a pet. Chase inhaled deeply, catching a scent of sandalwood and something almost metallic, and then nuzzled his cheek into the dark locks, exhilarated at how it felt to have another person in your arms and how oddly intimate the shape of someone’s skull beneath your cheekbone was. Buddy just stayed perfectly still, waiting.

Finally, Chase pulled away. “Hugs,” he said. “You said you’ve dreamt of having more hugs. I’m giving you more hugs.”

Buddy stared up at him, red and disheveled, his hazy black pupils huge behind the sheen of his irises. “Uh huh,” he said softly.

Chase grinned. “Where are the rest of my compliments?”

“Kind,” Buddy whispered. “You’re so… so kind…” He moved with Chase as Chase pulled him into another tight chest-to-chest hug. “And I think you are… bold… and admirable…”

“That’s probably five,” Chase said with a soft laugh. “How many more questions do we have left of this set? I’m getting a little sleepy—will we be here until morning?”

“Always questions and confessions with you, isn’t it,” Buddy mumbled into his shoulder. Then he pulled away, getting to his feet to go stir the fading fire. “That was thirteen..? We need two more of the set. Then… I suppose we can decide what to do after that.”

Chase smiled puckishly as Buddy dragged the poker through the crumbling logs, reigniting a glittering shower of sparks that danced in the funnels of air. “But isn’t it dishonorable to stop before the end?”

“I like to see things out. But I obviously would not continue with something so fickle if you were uncomfortable, or even tired.” Buddy stabbed one of the logs and shook the poker, trying to split it apparent.

“Fickle?”

“It means—”

“No, no, I mean, why?”

Buddy hesitated for a moment. Log forgotten. “...I suppose it isn’t fickle.” he said finally with a sigh.

“You sure thought it was going to be fickle.”

Cssh, as the split log fell back into the small flames. “I did,” Buddy said. He set down the poker and walked back to Chase, hovering there, like getting up had thawed the sleepy freeze over his limbs. “Let’s just see out these next two questions, and then see how we are feeling.”

Chase nodded, found his phone—he thought he ought to be awful glad that the battery didn’t seem to run out in these books, and he wished the same could be said for himself, as his own limbs felt heavy and tired—and read aloud. “‘13; How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?’”

Buddy was quiet. Chase already knew his answer; Buddy had never known a proper family.

But to his surprise, Buddy spoke.

“I have found a family of sorts,” he said softly, “and it is a strange relationship, not what the question intends, but I think you can find goodness in everything. A glitter in a swirl of flames, the beauty of a snowflake when you are closer to its own size. A facet of every diamond.”

Chase smiled. “Violet.”

Buddy spun around. “How—oh.” His shoulders fell. “...Yes. Violet is… like my family.” His eyes fell to the ground in something bordering on guilt.

“Yo, come sit down again,” Chase said, and the abruptness of the sentence coaxed a surprise laugh from Buddy. Buddy crossed the room and sat down on the couch; Chase scooted up to join him. “Would you like to see pictures of my family?” he asked, his voice soft.

Buddy held his shoulders close to the rest of his body and asked, shyly, “You trust me to…?”

“I do,” Chase said quietly. “I trust you. I trust you to know right with me. But—” Buddy’s eyes widened as he held up a finger—“I don’t know if you know right with yourself. So I want you to tell me something, Buddy, and you need to be honest.”

Buddy held his head, expecting any number of probing questions—questions he knew he would have to lie about or fail.

But they were not what Chase asked.

“Tell me the truth, Buddy… if I give you this information… and, more than that… if I welcome you into my life…” He took a deep breath. “Will it hurt you? Is it a secret that will hurt you to keep—do you think that you can keep it?”

Buddy’s eyes darted up to him.

“Because that thing you said I seem like I want,” Chase continued, “I’m not risking it. I can’t risk it for you…” He swallowed. “And I’m sorry. But that is the truth, and it wouldn't be fair of me not to tell you. I came into these books with a purpose, and that is something that I refuse to sacrifice.” He ducked his head, looking into Buddy’s eyes, his thumb frozen over the button underneath his screen. “So Buddy—will it be bad for us if we are closer?”

“Closer,” Buddy murmured, his eyes unfocusing. After a long moment, he whispered, “...I have nothing more they can take from me.”

“Unless you have me,” Chase interpreted. His shoulders sagged.

Buddy looked up. His eyes white in the red of the fire. “No,” he said. “I have nothing left inside of myself… that will allow those things to be taken.” His voice was very intent as he spoke. “My whole life, they made it very clear that I only had what they have given me. My comfort, my job, my humanity. So now they have taken everything they gave to me… so by their own logic… there is nothing left to take.” His hand was warm in Chase’s—when had they come to hold hands? “I will not let those things be lost,” Buddy said seriously. “And not over baby pictures.”

Chase held his hand tighter. Something very young and unexpecting had woken in his chest, and stretched its spindly wings.

“Let me show you,” he said, turning back to his phone. He navigated to the photo app and scrolled through old memories, turning it around occasionally to show Buddy—him on his mom’s shoulders, playing music with his dad. Buddy smiled, chuckled like he was looking at a window that also reflected himself back at him.

“...That is very sweet,” he said, when Chase thought he ought to stop. He laid back against the couch, in the same position as when Chase had jumped on him, but much more comfortably and sleepily. “They seem like good parents. I am… glad your childhood was warm.”

Chase beamed back, wondering how exactly Buddy would react if he climbed back on top of him to cuddle. “One more?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

“One more.”

Still smiling, Chase looked back down at his phone…

And stopped.

The color drained from his face.

“Chase?” Buddy asked. He sat up, concerned—“Chase, what's wrong?”

Chase didn't answer. He fumbled forwards on his knees and then crawled unto Buddy's chest.

“Chase… what is it?” Buddy asked again, his voice tender.

How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Buddy looked down, worried, at Chase's pale face. “Is it not good…?” he guessed weakly.

“Buddy, my mother is dying,” Chase whispered back.

Several emotions flashed across Buddy's face.

“Oh,” he whispered.

“Oh, yeah. That's why I'm here, getting narratonin. That's what I want—I want her to live. But she has cancer and she's sick and she's… we don't know when she'll get better… if… or how much more of herself she'll lose…” Chase rubbed at his face, trying to stave away the tears. “Sorry—I’m—”

“No,” Buddy said. “No, don't apologize.” He hugged Chase closer to his chest, and Chase sighed, exhausted. Despite Buddy poking it, the fire was burning lower and lower.

“Are you going to fall asleep?” Buddy asked him, gently rubbing his back. “It's—erm—you can.”

“Mmm… but we're not done with the questions,” Chase mumbled, already halfway there. “We still need to fall in love…”

Buddy watched quietly, a million thoughts behind his blue eyes, as Chase drifted off for a temporary nap.

Chapter Text

For a long while, Nox just let Chase sleep. He was warm and heavy in his arms, like a weighted blanket, and there was something exhilarating about being so close… something that turned and twisted in Nox’s stomach so that he could not deny it.

His mind tried its best to take up the cadence he was supposed to be thinking, mingling dismay and denial over possibly enjoying the company of this bratty child, but he couldn’t even do that. Because some part of him, the part encased in his chest, was too far gone.

He couldn’t force himself not to feel happy about this.

Even if that happiness was far more uncomfortable, and unfamiliar, than anything else he might be able to feel or think.

Finally, Chase stirred, and Nox poured all of his effort into staying perfectly still as to not bother him (or clue him into the fact that he had been watching). With a hastily stifled yawn, Chase rolled so that he was looking up at Buddy, his chin digging into Nox’s stomach. His eyes slowly opened so that they were gazing deeply into Nox’s own.

“I fell asleep,” he thought to declare, like Nox didn’t know that.

Nox bit back a terrifyingly endeared little laugh, and managed to only squeak, “Yes, you did.” Chase blinked slowly at him for a minute more, waking up properly, and then he rolled away from Buddy, limbs flailing a little as he regained his personal space. Nox tried not to pout about it too deeply. Chase would probably make fun of him if he did. 

Then, far more severe and crippling than the initial sadness that Chase had moved away, was a terror that Chase wouldn’t come back—that in his sleepiness, and the dreaminess of the evening, he had perhaps forgotten all about how they had been behaving towards one another earlier in the evening, and everything Nox had just gained—even if it was vague, and strange, and he didn’t have a word for it yet—would disappear again…

Next minute, he had just fallen backwards onto the rug with a grunt.

Chase had just thrown every blanket in the room together in a heap at his stomach, knocking him down. Utterly winded, and just as bewildered, Buddy blinked up at him from the uncomfortable position on the carpet.

“Get up, loser,” Chase said, his eyes twinkling as the fire sparked and then went out, “we’re going to bed.”

Nox hardly dared to breathe or speak as Chase tugged him by the sleeve across the room, like to do so would break this incredible dream, and Chase would recoil in disgust—or Nox would wake up. He was carrying as many of the blankets as he could, but some of them were still deserted in the now dark room, or trailing behind him, trying their best to trip and humiliate him. The cabin was so much more different when it was dark, without the fire; it was still very warm temperature-wise, but the furniture was now bathed in shades of black and blue-ish purple, illuminated by white light pouring in from the windows. The blizzard had died down just enough now to be bright; at moments before, the snow had been so heavy that no moonlight could come through, but now it could, bouncing off of every single snowflake so that it looked nearly as if every visible star outside had started shining like a beacon. Nox wanted to see Chase’s face; he wanted to know what sort of crazy thoughts were behind those brown eyes. But Chase was turned away from him, towards the darkness of the bedroom, which was only velvety blackness, because of the thick curtains drawn over the only window.

It was not lost on Nox that the most stupidly disarming boy he had ever met was leading him to bed. When he made a tiny squeak of confusion, Chase just jerked his head slightly, as if to say, “Shut up and trust me.”

And weirdly enough—Nox did.

It hit him like a series of tidal waves, over and over, turning the sand beneath him to liquid so that he could not get his footing.

He did.

When they had gained the bedroom, Chase let go of Buddy’s sleeve and crossed back to the door. He swung it closed and then hesitated with the doorknob, eventually leaving it cracked just a sliver so that the moonlight pouring in the rest of the windows gave them just a little bit of light. 

Then he turned around and beamed at Nox.

“Let’s snuggle,” he said.

The statement was so surprising and blunt that Nox nearly thought his legs were about to give up on him. He mouthed and stammered uselessly as Chase crossed back over to him and relieved his arms of some of their soft, blankety weight.

“You’re so silly, Buddy,” Chase said, and something of his voice was elevated by the comfortable darkness and silence of the room, as if everything here mattered so much more than anything else had ever mattered in the world—in all of Nox’s life before. Buddy, his mind, repeated, and then his lips with a laugh that seemed scornful a moment too late, and he started to stutter through an unfamiliar apology before Chase just laughed again and put his finger on Nox’s lips.

“What about the questions?” Nox asked in a whisper—he felt as if he must talk quietly here, like a library—and his breath felt warm against Chase’s skin.

“We can do them if we’d like,” Chase said. “I’m not sure we n—uh, I’m not sure you’re awake enough for them.”

Nox scowled at him. The hypocrite! “I’m perfectly awake,” he said, and if he yawned while he said it, well, it was just for humorous irony. “You were the exhausted one, a moment earlier.”

“I wasn’t exhausted,” Chase said, picking up one of the other blankets and holding it against Nox’s cheek, as if to share with him the softness for a moment, before tossing it behind him onto the foot of the bed. “I was comfortable, and I felt like sleeping. That’s okay. I don’t quite feel like sleeping now, but it’s late, and we probably still have an hour at least until the plot skips along, don’t we? Deacon and Prunella probably aren’t done with their scenes.”

“Probably not,” Nox conceded. “But you have no problem—uh, lying with?—your mortal enemy?”

“Come on, you can’t possibly call us that, now. I think—I know you now, Buddy.” Chase smiled at him. “Parts of you. The parts you’ve wanted to share.”

Nox’s fingers fluttered over his arms in a solitary hug. Parts. Yes, he had shared parts.

It was exhilarating, and slightly terrifying. But there was also something strangely soft in his chest, something filled, that he didn’t know was empty.

So when Chase let go of him and bounded towards the bed, sinking onto it with a playful grin… Nox followed.

He set one knee on the mattress, feeling it sink under his weight, and then raised his head to shoot an uncertain look at Chase. Chase had had no problem whatsoever getting comfortable; he had taken the remainder of the blankets from Nox and stashed them strategically around the bed, most of them out of the way but accessible, but others laid out on top of the cover or the pillows. Now leaning back against the headboard, the moonlight from the cracked door playing with his hair, he looked up at Nox and grinned.

“You’re allowed on the bed,” he said teasingly.

Nox flushed and tested his weight slightly more on the mattress. “I know that,” he said, “this is my house. You’re the one with terrible guest etiquette.”

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be soul-eating me.”

“…True…”

After a moment, Chase threatened to tackle Nox onto the bed, so Nox gave up his hesitance. Moving gingerly, he pulled himself up onto the covers and then walked with his knees over to Chase so that he could sit down besides him.

“Buddy…” Chase whispered softly, looking at the opposite wall.

“…Yes?”

“I have an embarrassing request, and you can say no.”

Nox was too transfixed to blush at how desperate he sounded as the words left him in a breath—“Tell me.”

Chase bit his lip for a moment, then he pushed ahead. “Usually I’m, like—silly with this stuff ‘cause—‘cause then it doesn’t mean much. Whacking you with the pillow, helping you with the cider… being silly and loud about it because then it says something about me, how loud I am, not… how I feel. But if you are really okay with it—really, truly okay with it—” Nox held his breath, his disastrous mind spinning imagined pleas into infinity—“W-would you want to hold hands?”

Nox blinked at him.

“Hold hands,” he repeated.

Chase buried his face into the nearest blanket, his ears suspiciously dark even in the flat moonlight. “Sorry, I knew that was a silly question, I just…”

Nox shifted. Chase’s hanging sentence drifted off as his chin was, very gently, raised from hiding.

Nox’s eyes were staring into his own. “You’re ridiculous,” he said.

Chase scowled. “I—what? No! No, I’m not!” He pouted—“Why?”

“I understand what you mean, about making the actions feel more casual if you’re more… exuberant with them,” Nox said softly. Chase swallowed back the lump in his throat and tried to figure out what to do with his eyes as Nox shifted ever so slightly closer, facing Chase, leaning over his torso, almost needing to move his knee around Chase’s other side. “But Chase… they are still the same actions.” He was so close—“Wrestling with those infernal pillows, petting and nuzzling my hair… what do said, before you fell asleep? Do you remember that one?”

Fear shocked Chase’s face. “Oh God, what did I say?”

“Mm.” Nox closed his eyes, as if to recall a dear memory, and shook his head. “That’s for me, then. But… Chase…” He did move his knee, now, so that he was hovering over Chase, propping himself up with his knees on either side of Chase’s own legs. “I do admit it is touching… that you should ask me that and make sure I know you mean it.”

Chase wasn’t sure he would be able to respond if his life depended on it.

Nox leaned forwards and rested his forehead on Chase’s shoulder for a moment. “We can hold hands,” he mumbled into Chase’s shirt, “you little idiot.”

Then his entire body slackened, and he collapsed on top of Chase.

“Mmf—Buddyyyy!”

Nox—no, Buddy, he was Buddy in this room and in this moment, he supposed—tried to bite back his own uncertainty as he found Chase’s hand and gently threaded their fingers together. It was fun to entertain Chase’s gall with his own, and this particular conversation had ever so helpfully eaten a way at a little of his trepidation—emerged from the brief absence that was Chase’s nap—that he might be left. “What?” he asked. “I’m following directions.”

“I asked you to snuggle. Not crush me.” Chase squirmed under Buddy’s dead weight, trying to rearrange his limbs. “Although—” Buddy turned a grunt into an attempted sarcastic hum as Chase kneed him in the stomach. “Wait, stay still.” A moment more, and then Chase’s whole body seemed to relax. “Got it.” Nervously, Chase squeezed Buddy’s hand—Buddy squeezed back.

“Wanna know something cute?” Chase asked, after an awkward moment that neither of them quite knew how to fill.

“Very well.”

Chase snickered for a moment at Buddy’s vernacular, fixed one of his skewed strands of soft black hair, and then said, “A lot of times when I’m falling asleep I don’t feel comfy, or I feel lonely, so I pretend I’m like—a little animal. A bunny, or a fox. And I’m sleeping in a den, or something very heavy and uh… insulated… like I’m sleeping peacefully under a mound of snow.”

Buddy simply nodded, unsure where he fit into this piece.

“This is it,” Chase murmured. “Lying here with you… I feel like a little bunny. I feel cozy, and I feel safe.”

Buddy squinted, smiling. “You’re… welcome?”

“There’s a certain niceness to lying under something heavy,” Chase said softly. “I wouldn’t like to be crushed under, um, a door. Or something. But that, and the claustrophobia… it can be something bad, but when you’re with someone that makes you comfortable, it feels like it goes in—the opposite direction.”

His voice faded, and his eyes slid closed. Buddy thought for a moment that that was that, and they were sleeping now, and then Chase asked, half asleep, “Wanna keep doing the questions?”

Buddy raised his eyebrows. “Are you really awake enough to look at a phone?”

“Oh honey, from that question alone I know you are sooo sheltered. Buddy doesn’t doomscroll, everybody. Yeah, I can look at the phone.”

A smirk carved Buddy’s lips as he carefully removed himself from on top of Chase, who pouted blearily at him. “It’s in the other room, doofus. I’ll go make sure the fire is out and grab it.”

Chase just made a sleepy noise and wriggled around in the blankets.

Turning away so his smile was slightly less obvious, Buddy made his careful way through the dark room and back into the main cabin. He brought all of their empty dishes and boxes to the kitchen, double-checked that the fire was out, and then found Chase’s phone lying facedown on the carpet.

He wasn’t going to stalk Chase—he was trusted now, and it was a trust that he did not want to break. Even so, he did pause a moment to press the button that would wake up Chase’s lockscreen. He smiled at it for a moment—Chase and a few friends that Buddy didn’t know, wearing silly hats and boas for some dance theme, sitting in a diner booth. Buddy’s eyes traced Chase’s stupid grin, his eyes alight with engagement, the bright pink feather boa sprawled around his shoulders. He glanced at the other people—a girl in yellow sipping from a pink lemonade, a guy wearing two top hats stacked on top of one another, and a dark haired boy who looked half asleep. 

For the briefest of moments, he wondered what it would have been like if he had grown up like a normal person. Going to school, summer camp, coming home to a family. Sitting next to friends in a diner booth and laughing at the camera. Leaving to go to prom—something Buddy had only viewed from a distance in storybooks—and dance with someone whose every facet felt like sunshine.

He had always taught himself to hate how much he wanted it, so that that could become the enemy, the weakness, and not the goal or the hopeless dream.

But when it was very dark at night, and the walls felt a little close for comfort, Buddy dreamed of a life this beautifully mundane. He dreamed of weight around him that felt like arms and snow, instead of an early grave or a box to which he was confined.

He dreamed of something waiting for him in the other room… but he was scared to seize it, because so many things had been taken away from him before. Even if saying he wouldn’t lose Chase made him feel braver, it didn’t mean it was impossible.

After a moment, the screen faded, leaving Buddy’s reflection in the glass, right above where Chase’s shoulder had been a minute before.

Buddy sighed and closed his eyes, shaking the phone vaguely in his hand like rolling dice or like something he just needed to shake to figure out. Then he turned and walked back into the bedroom, making sure the door stayed cracked behind him.

For a moment he thought Chase had had the audacity to fall asleep again—the little idiot was curled underneath the covers now, snuggled into his mountain of blankets that Buddy had shleped for him, his blonde hair drifting on the pillow and his face turned away from Buddy. A moment later, though, Chase spoke sleepily—“Didja find it?”

Something about the way he said it made Buddy’s stomach turn over. The quiet intimacy of dragging yourself through a conversation, half asleep. Getting to know how Chase sounded half asleep. His voice was deep in all the wrong places.

A smile started in the corner of Buddy’s mouth and spread quickly, so that he was beaming in a rather embarrassing was. It was cute, it was so cute.

“I found it,” he said softly, walking over to the bed again and sitting down with a little more confidence. “But you really do seem half asle—”

“Shaaaadupppp read the first question.”

Buddy snickered softly and laid down behind Chase, his eyes clinging to the back of Chase’s head and the soft hair that stuck up there. “As you wish,” he said, “but give me a moment.”

Chase gave a half-hearted squeak of disinterest and sighed, resettling his shoulders. Unimpressed with how little attention he was being given, Buddy moved to pull the covers up and then slid underneath them. The fabric was soft and warm against his hands and feet.

Chase was still pretending he didn’t exist, and Buddy was half-sure it was on purpose, now. With an amused sigh, he moved forwards, pressed his chin against Chase’s shoulder, and wrapped both arms firmly around Chase’s stomach.

“Mph—” Chase inhaled, as Buddy pulled him closer, fitting them together like puzzle pieces, his stomach pressed tightly against Chase’s back and his arms keeping Chase very close. His hands moved to cross over one another, slinking around Chase’s sides, wedging them tight enough that it would be somewhat of a struggle to get them out—which was comfortable, and maybe exactly what Chase had meant about sleeping under something heavy, a surprising and unexpected comfort in being held firmly by the world around you.

“You were very adamant,” Buddy whispered, his breath in Chase’s ear, “that there should be snuggling. I am simply fulfilling your request.”

Chase just let out a shuddering breath. “Yeah,” he whispered, “yeah, okay. Alright. I’m fine.”

“Are you?” Buddy teased, squeezing his arms a little tighter.

“S-so fine,” Chase mumbled. “Just—read the question!” He was too trapped in Buddy’s embrace to turn around and bop him on the nose, but the desire to do so was very evident in his voice. Buddy smiled; partially at the tone of voice, and partially at the fact that Chase had shifted just so to enable his hair to tickle Buddy’s cheek—so obviously Buddy was never going to move again.

“Okay,” Buddy said. “...I have lost your phone in the mountain of blankets.”

“Buddyyyyy.”

“They were your decision, you foolish—found it…” Trying to stay as still as possible, Buddy cast around with his right arm, the hand of which was facing up towards the ceiling, and tried to cross it back towards himself to reach over his shoulder and grab the phone. It would have been perfectly easy if there were not a Chase between his arm and his chest, a Chase that let out a very indignant squished noise as Buddy crushed him trying to reach it.

“I take back the stupid rabbit thing, you don’t have to crush my lungs.”

Buddy ignored him. He got the phone solidly in his grip and pulled his arm back so that they were comfortable again, dropping it in front of Chase’s face on the pillow. “You have arms free,” he said, “you read.”

He couldn’t see Chase’s face, but he thought Chase had smiled. The golden-haired boy pressed his cheek firmly to the pillow, leaning backwards into Buddy’s touch, and picked through screens that backlit his hair different colors, before reaching the screenshot with the questions. “‘25,’” he read softly. “‘...Make one true ‘we’ statement each.’” He talked over Buddy’s complaint that it wasn’t a question—“ ‘For instance, ‘We are both in this room feeling…’”

Silence slunk between them as they turned over the question.

“Huh,” Chase said eventually.

“Huh.”

“We’ve already done this one, haven’t we? It was—I think it was way back in the first set.” Chase went silent for a moment as he scrolled back up. “‘Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.’ Yeah, we’ve already done it.”

Buddy shifted, pressing Chase harder into his stomach, deep in thought—deep in thought, in large part so that the movement hopefully seemed casual. “More or less,” he said. “I think… that it is clever, to reprise different versions of similar questions. I see the differences between them, though; this one, now, is much more present, and oriented with… this very moment, instead of the whole. And the existence of only one question implies that it should be much more important and mindful.”

“Mm,” Chase said, just as aware as Buddy of what exactly ‘this very moment’ comprised of.

Quickly pushing onwards—“Also, there is a very subtle difference in the word choice. Previously, it was… appear. What we appear to have in common. Now, simply—three true statements. Implying…” He smiled into Chase’s hair, still tickling his ear and cheek. “We know each other better now.”

He could hear the smile in Chase’s voice as Chase replied. “Yes,” he said firmly, “we do.”

Then, with great difficult, he squirmed and twisted in Buddy’s arms, trying to turn over his shoulder.

“What are you—?” Buddy stammered, surprised.

“Mmf—turning over,” Chase said simply. “Because I want to see your face.” With great difficulty, he managed to rearrange himself within Buddy’s loose grip just enough to beam into his face. “And your eyes.” he added.

Buddy pouted and hugged Chase closer, ducking his head so that he could press them together without knocking their heads together. It was different facing each other, though, and again his heart lurched in fear in anticipation of Chase suddenly deciding that this was too far. He could feel Chase’s heart pounding against his own, like they were so close to touching, and feel Chase’s breath on the back of his neck and his hands lightly drifting along his back, like how it felt to lie in grass, the shy way leaves or plants nudged against you in the wind. Both were unfamiliar feelings, but it reminded Buddy not of the moon or the snow which numbed the world and reminded him of himself, but something else—sunshine, outdoors, diners and laughter.

He pressed his forehead against Chase’s shoulder and stared at the inky darkness pressed against his eyes and tried, nearly panicked, to blink back the sudden tears that had all of a sudden covered his eyes.

“Buddy?”

“You… can answer first, if you would like,” Buddy whispered softly. Hoping that the sleepiness of the night would be able to disguise the huskiness of his voice as, shocked, he tried to convince his eyes to dry.

Why…? Why now?

Why am I crying… I’m happy…

“Hmm… okay, then,” Chase said. He was still running his fingers lightly up and down Buddy’s back; the movement paused for the slightest second as Chase smiled. “We… a-are—friends?”

Buddy laughed softly at the drawling, inquisitive tone in his voice, and then laughed again at himself in nothing short of amazement—because he had always expected this question would shock him through its unexpectedness, a title he had never thought himself worth of owning. Now, though, he was laughing because of course they were, and it was cute of Chase to be careful around feelings and labels that he knew to be stressful to Buddy… but really, they were lying here in bed together, under the covers, cuddling so closely Buddy was pretty sure their pulses were matched up.

So yes; of course they were friends, and it was adorable and gratifying to him that Chase would be gentle with the term, even if he didn’t need to be. Just like he had been gentle about the hand holding request.

That had been rather short lived. Buddy frowned, suddenly mourning that particular closeness.

One of his hands twitched on Chase’s back. As if he had anything to do with it.

“You okay?” Chase asked, brows drawn close together in concern. After a moment, Buddy realized it was because Chase was still thinking about his first response to the question.

“O-oh,” Buddy stammered, “yes! Yes, I am… ah…” He shook his head and then drove it even needier into Chase’s shoulder. “I had no problem with that—erm—statement.”

Chase snickered. “Yeah, okay. It’s your turn, Buddy.”

The strange, unexpected tears that had plagued him earlier forgotten now, Buddy leaned his head back, so that he could keep their chests pinned together without whacking Chase in the chin. “Hmmm,” he said, drawing out the sound seductively, so that he could make Chase blush and gain more thinking time as he did it. It was such a convenient tactic. “We…” It was such a nice claim to make, he thought idly, that word alone. As if he could just stop there. “We are both… in this room… feeling happy.”

He froze for a moment, waiting for the confirmation or, alternatively, the thing that could give him solid proof that this was all a mistake—a way to protect himself, before he fell in too deep.

But Chase just laughed.

“Yeah,” he said, nuzzling Buddy’s head with his chin, “we’re happy.”

If Buddy felt like crying again, well… maybe that was okay.

“Next question?”

“Mmm…”

“Chase? Did you bring your phone with you when you turned around?”

“Muh…? Oh! Yeah, let me just…” Chase’s voice drifted off again as he pressed his cheek into Buddy’s hair. “One sec.”

Buddy smiled and closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them and shifting away enough that he could see Chase’s face—although Chase’s leg was still lying on top of his own, underneath the quilt.. 

“Okay, let’s see. Hrrrgh… reading. Okay. ‘Complete this sentence’ ---ooh, another demand. ‘I wish I had someone with whom I could share…’” Chase’s voice faded. Something strange, something Buddy had not glimpsed before, seemed to flicker through Chase’s eyes. “Um—you go first,” he mumbled.

Buddy’s eyes widened. “Are you sure—?” What he really meant, perhaps, was are you okay?

Chase shook his head, and a smile reemerged on his face. “Yeah, I am,” he said, and he seemed earnest as he did. “Just—I have my answer, and it’s a bit… heavy.”

His eyes fell from Buddy’s face to the pillow, like the weight of it had made his body sag. Buddy hesitated… then he reached out and gently traced the tendons on the back of Chase’s hand with two of his fingers. Chase’s eyes returned to him, confused and dazed—Buddy slid his own hand back into Chase’s.

“This,” Buddy said softly. “Just this.”

“That—”

“Is my answer. I… wish I had someone with whom I could share—” Buddy leaned forwards, his free hand slinking around Chase’s neck to brush the hair at the base of his neck again. “This.” Chase’s eyes scrunched in a smile. “So you can tell me heavy things, Chase, if you—wish… it can be heavy above us… heavy together.”

“Buddy…” Chase breathed.

“I don’t know how to go about friendships or—or anything to do with humans,” Buddy rambled, in every word aware of their interlinked fingers. “But I have craved it, and even as I say this I find myself—wincing at—the vulnerability, it’s all—but love is it’s own sort of rebellion, isn’t it—”

Chase’s eyes widened. “Love?”

“N-no!” Buddy stammered, horrified at himself. “I mean—”

“No, it’s okay!” Chase caught his hand before Buddy could pull it away, and pressed it to Buddy’s chest. His expression softened as Buddy’s rapid pulse flowed through their connected skin, and for a moment all was silent and still, as Buddy slowed worked on relaxing his heaving chest. “It’s okay,” Chase said finally, letting go and instead catching Buddy’s foot with his own under the covers, playfully pulling Buddy towards himself. “It’s okay, I know what you mean. That’s what is at the end of all fairy-tales, isn’t it? All of the storybooks say the same stupid thing.” His nose scrunched. “Stupid? I dunno. They make it sound stupid, but it must be true. Love conquers all evil, books won’t shut up about that sort of stuff.” His eyes unfocused—“All kinds of love. The heroines, they always seem to go on this journey, at least in the more fleshed-out books we’ve been through… to find their family o-or protect them, or to find true love, or to learn how to love themselves through, uh, following their dreams or whatever, right? And we’re all heroes to ourselves. I mean—I’m in here for love. Not just this book, but this whole situation.” He sighed. “I told you about my mom—not too much about her, though. But nothing important that couldn’t be assumed. I’m getting the narratonin to make a wish to heal her. And that’s love, Buddy. It’s very strong love, and I love her so much, I would do this—do anything—” His eyes flashed up to meet Buddy’s, and there was something strange, almost fearful in them— burdened—that same thing which Buddy had seen a moment earlier, when Chase first read the question aloud to himself.

Buddy found Chase’s hand again, gently rubbing his heated skin.

Chase took a deep breath, and then answered it. “I wish,” he whispered softly, and Chase had always been so confident in his own dreams—that was obvious, even when Buddy first met him—that it was easy for Buddy to visualize him standing at the center of the circle of keys, casting the enchantment that would turn his collected narratonin into tangible dreams, with this same phrase, I wish . But Chase wasn’t talking about his wish to heal his mom right now… that didn’t fit within the question’s framing. “I wish I had someone with whom I could share… t-the fact that…” He faltered, struggling fitting the phrasing into a single sentence. “...that even if I’m almost eighteen and I have all these all responsibilities I hate them, Buddy.”

Buddy softened against him.

“I don’t hate taking care of people, but I hate—always having to do it and not being able to complain about it. It’s just so much to do, and I feel selfish being the one who needs comfort or a shoulder to cry on when… when Mom has cancer, and Dad was dying, and I can’t complain about it to Deacon because he’s just going to give me that look, that look I hate, that look that says—” Chase’s eyes thinned. “‘I’m sorry.’”

“Chase…”

“I hate it!” Chase cried, his loud voice shocking the velvety-dark room. “I hate it so much, Buddy, I hate it so so much! That look! So I don’t tell anyone ever when I’m tired or frustrated or hurting because they always have it worse and I can’t burden them. And I can’t be the kid that has nothing and dwells on it. So instead I turn it into dreams. I act so confident—sometimes I don’t feel confident, I feel shaky, I feel like everything I’m doing is wrong… but… I don’t have anyone to share that with.”

For a moment, he just laid there, trembling. He wasn’t crying, but his voice had shaken in a way that implied he might be close. After a moment, he raised his eyes to look at Buddy, who was watching him, fighting to keep the honest sympathy off his face in case it may be read as that despised pity. “And this isn’t me telling you to be that,” Chase amended quickly. “That’s not what I—”

“I know,” Buddy said softly.

“I know it’s my fault… I could always talk to Deacon or G-Grandpa, I know that. I could even talk to Mom… she’s always been nice to talk to… but like, not right now. I just can’t right now. And I know people would say, you can still talk to her, yes she’s sick but she’s still your mom… but I just— can’t. And I know what the argument is. I’m sure Mom would want me to open up to her. I know the thing that everybody always tells you is to share it— Dad used to tell me that.” A tremble ran through Chase’s body at that. “But I just— can’t with Mom. Not right now. That’s not me trying to noble or morally superior or whatever. It’s just that I need to focus on her. Not me. That’s all.”

Buddy was still rubbing his hand. For a while, they just rested there, exhausted by the weight of their own vulnerabilities. Then Chase looked up at Buddy again, some of the light slowly pooling back into his eyes. “Anyways,” he said, his voice shaking through his efforts to make it chipper, “that’s my little sob story out of the way. Let’s do the next question.”

“We can dwell on that if you need to dwell on it,” Buddy said softly.

“Yeah… I know. Thank you. But honestly, not right now. Right now, I’m lying in bed with like the hottest guy I’ve ever met and I’m not going to spend it crying.”

Buddy blinked. Shocked through his core.

Then he just burst out laughing.

“W—Buddy! That wasn’t supposed to be funny! That was true!”

Buddy ignored him.

“Buddy! I was trying to be vulnerable!”

Against his every inclination, Buddy only laughed harder. “Through what means?” he demanded, as Chase watched him helplessly. “I’m sorry—I—” He was interrupted by another bout of giggles.

Chase stared at him, slow delight spreading over his face. “Oh my God,” he said.

“What?”

The sort of joy in Chase’s eyes could be likened only to winning a lottery, or learning one could eat bread in storybooks. “You snort when you laugh,” he whispered, and Buddy went bright red.

“No I—do not—!”

“OhmyGodyoutotallydo.” Chase looked as if it were Christmas morning at this new piece of information. Buddy tried his best to stop laughing, and when that didn’t work he tried to obscure his face, but Chase didn’t let him do either. He leans forwards, grabbed Buddy’s face for once (although he was not as well versed in the chin grab as Buddy, he just clumsily grabbed Buddy’s cheeks) and forced him to look at him. “And. It’s. Adorable. C’mon, next question.”

The next few questions were relatively easy—embarrassing at times, as they persistently required Buddy to admit what he liked about Chase, but other than that, easy. The first serious holdup was the question, When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? but after a lot of hesitance, Buddy haltingly admitted that he had found himself teary eyed only moments before. “...And I am still not entirely sure why,” he said shakily, although that in itself was its own confession—that he was not as in control of his own emotions as he would like to be taken for.

When he looked up, though, Chase was beaming at him.

“Just means you’re human,” he said, “doofus.”

Buddy wished he were—

But that was one confession that could not permeate this beautiful and serene night.

Next moment, he started; because Chase was just rolled onto his back and scooted up next to him, to rest his head on Buddy’s shoulder. For a half second Buddy felt like he was made of metal again, frozen and immobile unless he tried, but then his arm decided to betray him by going firmly around Chase’s shoulders.

“And admittedly, you’re a pretty cool one,” Chase said with a grin. “Mm… I’m tired. Can we—?” He flicked vaguely through the questions with his thumb.

“We can stop if you’re tired,” Buddy said softly.

“No—! I mean, we gotta see it through… just, some of these are kind of repetitive, or boring.” Chase squinted his eyes at the screen. “‘Tell your partner something that you like about them already.’ We did basically that same question only two or three ago—” Buddy remembered. The phrasing was different, requiring something that was more vulnerable—Chase had complimented the dimple that emerged in the corner of his mouth when he smirked, which Buddy had never thought about before, forget realized it was an endearing quality. It had fit the jurisdictions of the question in a strangely perfect way—something about choosing the compliment the appearance felt less shallow, instead of more so. He was not sure how to describe it.

Chase was still reading—“‘What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?’” He sighed, shrugged. “These are just—”

“Yeah,” Buddy shrugged. “This is why I don’t like icebreakers.”

Chase flicked his thumb, scrolling to the next question—the fourth one before the end. “Huuuurgh we’re so close…”

“Well, how about this,” Buddy said. He moved away as he said it, which was upsetting to both of them, although Chase didn’t have the new plan for comfort. He let out a rather pitiful whine and lunged across the bed to cling onto Buddy’s shirt as Buddy got to his feet.

He turned over his shoulder. “What?”

“Are you leaving me?”

Chase’s eyes were glittering with pouty betrayal.

“No, you didn’t let me finish. How about we get up and go to the kitchen—so that we do not look completely exhausted when your cousin gets here, understand—and, uh… I can make you some food?”

The effect of his words was instantaneous; Chase’s eyes turned brighter than the sun.

“Yeah,” he said immediately, making Buddy want to giggle. “Yeah, totally, let’s do that.” 

“Wait, that wasn’t the entire idea. While we’re doing that, you can look through your phone—we have, what, four questions left? We can shorten that if you would like… perhaps while I am cooking, you can select just one or two questions that you think would actually be interesting, and then we can use that to complete the experiment and be done.”

Chase bobbed his head. “Yeah. Totally. Sound logic.” He was still grinning, lying there in the bed.

“So are you coming, or—”

“Of course I’m coming! You’re making me food!”

Chase threw the mountain of blankets off himself, looking down at his sprawled body, and then raised his head to pout at Buddy.

“What—”

“Heads up.”

Buddy barely had the opportunity to shout when Chase threw himself into Buddy’s arms.

“Chase!” Buddy cried, startled, staggering backwards. He was lucky the wall wasn’t too far away, or he would have collapsed—Chase pressed his full weight against him as he grabbed Buddy’s shoulders to pull himself up, stepping on Buddy’s foot and clambering onto him, until he was wound unceremoniously around Buddy’s torso in a position that  certainly didn’t have a name, because nobody had ever done this before. “Wh—you little gremlin?? I can’t carry you like this,” Buddy protested weakly.

“Try, coward.” Chase leaned forwards and buried his face in Chase’s shoulder.

Buddy stared hopelessly at Chase and then, wordlessly, shifted them so that Chase had him in a sort of reverse piggyback. “I’m going to fall over,” he warned, as he took a shaky step towards the door.

“Mhm. Keep telling me. You didn’t have any trouble carrying me when you wanted to throw me in the ocean, during our beach book.” Chase held Buddy more tightly around the neck, and with difficulty, they struggled to the door.

The entire walk to the kitchen, despite being only a few feet, was rather disastrous; quite a few times Buddy lost his center of balance and collided with the wall, propped up against it until he could fight onwards again. Finally, in front of the kitchenette, he let Chase go with an unimpressed look (that hid how content he was) and flexed his arms.

“That was stupid,” he said, “and so are you.”

Chase just grinned and bounded over to the pantry. He sorted through shelves, pulling out boxes at random, before finally stumbling upon a large bag of flour. He pulled it out of the cabinet and set it on the counter with a heavy thunk.

Buddy raised his eyebrows at it.

“This would kill me in real life, Buddy,” Chase told him conversationally as he tore it open. “Are you kidding? Dead. That’s why books are cool—not, like, the words or anything.” He then stepped backwards and nudged Buddy forwards with his foot. “Anyways, my grandma used to make gingerbread all the time. So listen up, and I’ll tell you exactly how to do it.”

They spoke, casually, as Buddy baked according to Chase’s directions. Not only about the gingerbread, or even the story—random things, casual things. It was disarming and exciting to simply be able to talk with Chase. Buddy had worried, before, about engaging him in conversation on the off chance that he didn’t know what to talk about and came off as boring. Now, though, with so many of those simpler walls broken down, the words flowed from them easily and cheerfully, filling the room just as much as the moonlight or the sweet aroma of baking cookies. “They may take less time to bake,” Buddy said uncertainly, peeking into the old furnace. “The time may be fast-forwarding even now so that it remains at an even pace, for us to catch up with the rest of the keyholders in this book without an uncomfortable jerk in time.”

“Great,” Chase grinned, swinging his legs back and forth. He was sitting on the countertop behind Buddy, the one that seperated the kitchenette from the living room area, which lay as a deserted and preserved reminder of the beginning of their night, and how drastically it—and them—had changed. “Are we gonna tell Deacon and Prunella we’re besties now?”

Buddy raised an eyebrow. He didn’t know how to answer that. “I suppose it is… up to you, what you wish to tell them,” he said, turning back to the mess he was cleaning so that Chase couldn’t see the blush dusting his cheeks. Something about Freckles knowing the closeness of their evening made his entire face feel stupidly warm. 

“Yeah,” Chase said. He swung his legs for a moment more and then said, “Do you think the questions are legit?”

Buddy raised the other eyebrow. “Legit. This whole… experiment, you mean?”

“Well, it worked,” Chase replied reasonably. At once, he turned red and hastily recovered—“What I mean is, we’re closer now, aren’t we? Not the—love thing.” But the darting of his eyes, the nervous press of lips, may have betrayed that certain detail.

Buddy walked across the kitchen to put away a tea towel, sighing. “Well, to an extent,” he said. “They are strategic—they get more serious. And they lead you into certain things—complimenting the other person, confiding in them things that you would confide in a friend. So in that way, I can understand the logic of the experiment.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug—“But it is hard to claim as entirely legit because they are not universal. They replicate the cadence of a typical relationship and try to speed it up, I believe. But everyone’s relationships grow differently—the questions we were struggling over, before we got up to come in here, may have been very deep and thought-provoking to others, but they weren’t to us.” He turned back around to look at Chase. “I think it can work sometimes. But it cannot be acknowledged as any more universal than we are.”

Chase screwed up his mouth thoughtfully. “Yeah—that makes sense,” he decided finally.

“Why do you ask?” Buddy asked, leaning back against the countertop opposite of where Chase was sitting. “Have you decided on your question?”

Chase smiled—“I have, actually.” He raised his phone to his eyes—“I think it’s one I can answer easiest, at least. It’s the question we were on before. ‘If you were to die this evening, with no opportunity to communicate with anyone—’”

“This is delightful,” Buddy snarked.

“Hush! ‘...with no opportunity to communicate with anyone… what would you most regret not having told someone?’” Chase’s eyes flicked up to Buddy. “‘Why haven’t you told them yet?’”

Buddy flushed.

All of a sudden, he felt warmer than he had all evening. Even sitting by the fire—even under the sheets with the boy who he had to admit to himself he adored.

Why haven’t you told them yet?

Wasn’t the only answer to that question fear? In any regard—any question, spoken to anyone…

“Well, I have my answer,” Chase chittered.

Buddy looked up, his eyes locking with him. He felt just as desperate as he had earlier in the evening, waiting on the question that had turned out to be a request to hold hands. “Oh?”

“Yep.” Chase resettled on the counter, as lazy as if it were a throne, and said, “I would want to tell my mom everything.”

Buddy’s shoulders sank.

Oh—he could have guessed that.

I could have guessed.

“As of right now, she has no idea what I’m doing or how dangerous it is,” Chase continued. “It would be too stressful to tell her—she would want us to figure something out, she’d worry we could get hurt. It really freaks me out sometimes, imagining Ex Libris coming for us in the middle of the night or something, and she’d never figure it out. And she loves books—she used to work at a preschool, read to the kids, you know. So I would tell her… I would tell her everything I’m doing. How interesting it’s been, how many different lives I’ve lived. If I had never told her that… if she never knew… and never knew the second part of it, the fact that it’s all for her, that I care for her so much…”

“I’m sure she does know that, Chase,” Buddy said softly.

Chase’s eyes met his. “Of course she does,” he said. “But I would still want to tell her— Mom, I’m sacrificing myself for you. You’re the thing in my story that’s driving me to reach the happy ending. You’re the happy ending.”

Buddy just nodded, and swallowed, his throat dry.

“What about you?” Chase asked, his playful brown eyes glowing in the light of his furnace, his legs swinging restlessly back and forth.

What about you?

Buddy felt his breath thinning in his chest, his shoulders drawing together, every nerve electrified with a sudden fear and, layered beneath that, excitement beyond anything he had ever known. Like he had finally seen the sun.

What is your happy ending—Nox?

It took him two steps to cross the room and a movement carried on sunlight to pull Chase into a deep kiss.

The moments that followed felt like a beautiful eternity.

Chase wasn't sure how this had happened; it all felt like a slippery dream, this whole night, the tiny thread of realism that kept them rooted to Deacon and Prunella and the outside world weaving in and out of clarity. This dream—surely in only moments Chase would wake up, surely he had not spent the night in this way, surely only he could delude himself into believing that this was true.

But Buddy was here—tangible, real. Pressed into him so close Chase could feel his heartbeat as if it were his own, and still, he wanted to be closer, wanted more— his hands slunk desperately around Buddy's back, neck, waist, everywhere they could touch, pulling Buddy endlessly into himself. His ankles crossed around Buddy as if that would help them get closer, too. He had let out a very startled gasp when Buddy kissed him, even if he had been goading him into it—the sounds leaving his mouth now were no more subtle. He whispered Buddy’s name into his mouth as Buddy kissed him, and honestly, he felt like he might get another cry out of tonight, too.

“Buddy,” he crooned helplessly, as Buddy met their lips, again and again.

“...or I'll wake,” Buddy murmured. Chase only caught the tail end of the sentence, because Buddy was interrupting himself, pressing firm and tender kisses to every part of Chase's face he could reach, between every breath—but Chase could guess that Buddy, too, felt halfway that this all was a dream.

“No, this is real,” Chase whispered back. His fingers dug into Buddy's back. “This is real—”

Buddy interrupted him, too, now—capturing Chase's lips in another kiss. This time, his tongue darted along Chase's lips, and Chase leaned into him, yearning for this connection, craving the closeness, the unspoken truths spilling between them.

After a moment, Chase broke away, laughing. “We don't need icebreakers—”

“It was a smooth way of asking me to kiss you,” Buddy smirked. In the absence of their connected mouths, his fingers played with the fabric of Chase’s shirt, occasionally brushing the skin underneath the bottom hem, on the small of Chase's back.

“I've been asking you to kiss me for like half an hour—”

“You didn't say that, even now—”

“I climbed you like a tree, Buddy.”

Buddy caught his hand as it reached to run along his cheek. “Nox.”

Chase’s eyes went wide, his lips parted, his expression frozen as the world outside the window.

Buddy’s heart seemed to be trying to escape his chest as he stood there, staring at Chase, holding his wrist loosely. He cleared his throat and tried again—“M-my name… is Nox.”

“Nox,” Chase whispered in awe.

And suddenly, for the first time in Nox’s life… everything around him seemed to have a simple answer.

Chase smiled. “Nox,” he said. “It fits you.”

Fit as easily as hands around his back, pressing him into a hug.

Chase's head was thrown back a little out of haziness and joy, and his eyes seemed to glitter with a strange delight Nox was not used to. He was appealing and beautiful—Nox—now that Chase knew it, Nox was determined to get that word halfway through a ragged breath. He pressed his cheek against Chase’s to softly kiss the shell of Chase's ear, and then moved down to kiss his neck, and Chase’s hands tightened around his waist as he gasped.

And the most beautiful thing about all of it was that it was honest—that every kiss felt like a confession, that yes, it was hot to kiss Chase, but beyond that it was such a deeply tender action, brought about not by the action itself but the meaning behind it.

“Hey, B—uh, Nox?” Chase asked, as Nox moved one hand to run his fingers through Chase’s hair.

“...Mm?”

“We’re not done.”

Nox took a step away from the counter, blinking at Chase, confused. “We're not done? With what?”

Chase’s expression was puckish. “With the questions.”

“What? Yes we are!”

Chase threw back his head to laugh. “Nuh uh,” he said. “There's one other step to it that I didn't tell you about—it’s not a question, at least. I'll show you. Stand back.”

Pouting, his lips positively buzzing, Nox stepped away. Chase hopped down from the counter—and immediately wobbled and nearly fell over.

“Chase! Are you okay?”

“Oo, yeah, um, I think you made my knees weak. Let's, uh—let’s sit down. Make us more grounded.” Nox snorted and followed Chase's example, taking a seat on the kitchen floor, his legs crossed and his body turned to face Chase.

“What exactly is it that we are doing?” Nox asked distrustfully.

“This!” And Chase turned his phone around—

Subjects must look into each other’s eyes in silence for four minutes.

Buddy's eyebrows drew together. “What? How is that better than kissing?”

“Just trust me. Four minutes, okay? And then we can do—uh, whatever it is we're going to do.”

“No, no,” Nox pushed. “Chase. I understand. I understand the idea here. They think it would really drive home the intimacy of the situation and finalize the romantic feelings budding so that's why it's in the directions but we don't need to do that, I had my hands up your shirt—”

“Okay, first of all, not enough you didn't. Second of all—” Chase grinned and set the phone behind him, his finger still hovering over the four minute timer he had prepared. “I know we've been thinking all evening, so now I'm asking you to stop. I think that's what this is about. No questions, no—demands. I just want to look at you for a little bit.”

Nox was quiet for a moment…

Then he gave a long-suffering sigh.

“Fine,” he said. “Four minutes of eye contact. Then we're done.”

“Then we're done,” Chase repeated softly. “And—! You gotta actually look at my eyes, Nox. Not the ceiling, or my lips, you heathen. Eye contact.”

Nox let out a dramatic sigh, even though the truth was he did not mind staring into Chase’s eyes whatsoever. He settled back his shoulders, tried to relax his body—which was twitching at random, unaccustomed to an experience like the one he had just had—and fixed his gaze on Chase’s eyes.

Slowly and deliberately, Chase turned on the timer and set his phone between them.

Then he settled into the eye contact.

For maybe the first minute, Nox played unyieldingly by the rules, determined to prove himself to Chase and, as he had been saying all evening, see this through. He stared at Chase’s honey-brown eyes, his thick eyelashes, the light of the furnace reflecting in them like the sun. Through his peripherals, he also admired Chase’s golden hair, but that was a particularly difficult occupation because it made his fingers twitch—one thing he hadn’t confessed to Chase, at least not aloud, was that he was possible more in love with Chase’s hair than he was with Chase. It was soft and beautiful, and felt so comforting about his skin, and Buddy thought he could probably run his hands through it for hours.

He froze his arms by his sides; no, he could not move. Those were the jurisdictions of the challenge.

Except… were they?

The challenge just said they had to remain keeping eye contact.

It said nothing about…

Slowly, Nox’s hands lifted.

“Nox…?” Chase breathed softly, from between soft lips. Nox tried his best not to look at them as he raised one hand and rested it gently against Chase’s cheek.

Chase practically melted into his touch, curving more into the cup of his palm, his eyes alight as they stayed with Nox’s own.

Moving by touch and sensation alone, his gaze completely occupied by Chase’s eyes, Nox stroked his skin for a moment with the backs of his fingers and then slid his hand towards Chase’s ear to brush the hair curling in front of it. He wrapped his hand around the back of Chase’s head, running his hands through it.

Chase laughed under his breath, never moving his eyes from Nox’s face. His own hand raised, though; just to rest gently on Nox’s chest.

Nox used his other hand to move that hand up to his face, pressing it to his cheek like Chase had pressed the blanket earlier in the night, letting Chase’s thumb press against his bottom lip. Chase blushed a little but didn’t take away his hand when Nox dedicated both of his own to petting Chase’s hair. In fact, after a few seconds, he pulled Nox slightly closer.

“Hey, my eyes,” Nox corrected under his breath, when Chase’s eyes grew distracted. Chase quickly darted to fix it, lips pressing together. “Gotta play by your own rules, Chase.”

“I know,” Chase breathed. His hands moved—along Nox’s neck, down his back. Tentatively touching the skin there, even under his shirt. Nox cupped Chase’s face, felt his hair, stroked his skin and yearned more than anything to lean forwards and kiss or hug him again.

But he couldn’t.

Not yet.

It was okay—there was an intimacy in eye contact, in sharing space, in knowing someone else.

Chase’s hands ran down his chest and played with the clothes he had spent all night admiring.

After what felt like an eternity encapsulated in a tiny moment—

The timer went off.

For a second, they both just exhaled and looked at each other.

Then Nox leaned forwards and closed the distance again—

Still holding the back of Chase’s head so he didn’t hit it when they collapsed on the floor, coaxing giggles and laughter.

“Ouf, you’re heavy,” Chase beamed.

Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

Chase frowned. “I just stopped the timer, though?”

Nox glanced over at his phone, which, sure enough, had yet again lit up. “Did you set another timer…?” he asked, bewildered. “Well, it’s probably nothing. Mind if I stop it?”

Chase just grinned up at him. “Please.”

Nox leaned over, turned off the phone, and slid it permanently away from him.

Then he turned back to Chase, with a million other confessions in mind.