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“What do you think?” Arcade asks.
Fern glances down at the slice of pizza they clutch tightly with too-pale fingers. “I think,” he says, “it is far too crowded here.”
“But there’s only Miss Rossi in the back!” their companion points out, laughing.
Fern likes Arcade’s laugh. It reminds them of glorious brass bursting through silvery woodwinds. When he gasps for breath, it is the rat-tat-tat of percussion. It’s too loud and too bright, but as much as Fern enjoys silence, he thinks they like this, too.
“I am aware,” Fern scowls. “However, I will have you know that ‘only Miss Rossi’ is one more human than I would like.”
“Aw, so you do like me, Fern!”
Fern glowers. “Not if you keep doing… whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Hm?” Arcade looks down. Fern tries not to get too distracted by the way the light shines through the azure tips of his hair. “Oh, you mean this?” He takes the straw out of the drink that he has been rapidly stirring, flicking water droplets everywhere.
Fern hisses. “Yes, I mean that! You did not have to worsen it like that.”
“How’s it worse?” Arcade points out, laughing at their disgruntled expression. “I stopped, didn’t I?”
“Your incessant actions were annoying, yes, but far worse was the water. You know how I dislike it!”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Arcade raises his hands placatingly, an idiotic grin on his face.
“Hrmm.” Fern eyes him dubiously, frowning.
“I really am—wait. Wait, oh, no, no, you won’t be getting away with this, you mothhead.”
“With what?” Fern blinks, slowly, daring Arcade to continue with a twitch of his lashes.
“You never gave me a real answer! How do you like it?”
Fern scans the small establishment (Arcade had referred to it as a “diner”) with a critical eye. There’s music playing, despite there being no band he can see (and wasn’t that fascinating?), and the walls are built of a jaunty cherry brick. It’s entirely empty but for the two of them and ‘only Miss Rossi’ bustling around in the kitchen, humming to herself along with the ambience of tender strings. There’s an aroma of something pleasant—tomato, certainly, and perhaps some cheese?
It’s… nice, they decide. It feels like the kind of home he’s always longed for. As much as Fern stubbornly refuses to leave the comfort of his “not-cave,” they had missed the intimacy of people.
“It’s tolerable,” he sniffs, and Arcade snickers at him. Perhaps they’re out of practice when it comes to disguising his opinions. There’s not much need when one lives by oneself for so long, after all. “Oh, don’t laugh!” he snips, reaching across the little wooden table the two share to gently shove at his companion.
“Sorry,” Arcade gasps, wheezing a little in the process. He doesn’t seem terribly sorry.
There’s water droplets on his nose from earlier. They look like morning dew, announcing the arrival of dawn.
Fern flushes, tearing their gaze away.
“When is the food meant to arrive?” they ask abruptly, shifting to pretend to study the gentle lamps that lit the restaurant so as his partner might not notice his sudden attention.
“Soon, probably! I get that it’s been a bit of a wait, but this is a family run place, you know, and everyone’s out of town since it’s break. I’m pretty sure some of the usual employees are out either enjoying the holidays or running errands. I promise it’s worth it! Have some water while you’re waiting, or maybe some bread?” Arcade gestures to the (mostly empty) breadbasket in the center of their table.
“You’ve eaten it all, you fool!”
“Oh, have I?” And oh, Fern wants nothing more than to be infuriated, but there’s something alluring in Arcade’s gaze that softens them.
“Hmnph. Very well, then.” He sits in silence for a moment, clutching at his borrowed jacket and relishing in how the silvery-blue material sinks under their fingertips. It’s Arcade’s, but he’d said they could have it, so they suppose it’s his, now. A gift, Arcade had said.
Fern rather likes the thought of that.
“And what’s this?” he asks, pointing at the white tray of brightly colored packages that all stand primly in rows.
“Oh! That’s the sugar,” Arcade says. “…do you want some?”
“Whatever for?” they scoff. “Sugar is not meant to be consumed with water. Why even supply it? That seems rather unnecessary.”
“Well, it’s supposed to be for other beverages,” Arcade muses, plucking out a bright pink package and looking over it, “but I guess you could use it for water, too?”
“What are you thinking?” Fern asks, suspicious.
“Well,” Arcade starts, and Fern knows that look, the one that says ‘I’m not up to anything; not me! I’m certainly not the kind of person to rush into the dark of the woods at dusk—night, really—off a hunch, and even more certainly not the kind of person who would befriend whatever creature I may encounter then. No, not at all!’ “This is lemon water, yeah? There’s a lemon in it right now. And we have sugar! So… we could try making lemonade?”
“That’s absurd,” they protest, but perhaps Arcade sees the interest peaking in their eyes, because he plows on.
“Don’t knock it till you try it!” he coaxes, “It’ll be fun!”
“…that doesn’t seem like something the common populace would do. Water is not meant to be butchered in such ways.”
“Come on. You’re a moth fairy. I’m… me. You can’t exactly call us the common populace! Don’t worry, if Miss Rossi catches us, I’ll take the fall.” And then Arcade does some kind of twitching with his face, to which Fern is aghast.
“What are you doing? Are you alright?”
Arcade blinks at him, before bursting into a gasping sort of laughter. “Fern, he wheezes, “I was trying to wink at you!”
“I don’t think that’s how it’s meant to go,” they say.
“Eh, technicalities.” Arcade waves his hand as if dismissing the thought. “Besides, I’m getting there!”
A pause.
“Alright, let’s try it!” Arcade slips him a few of the little pink sugar packages across the table. They take one between nimble fingers to gaze at it searchingly. “On the count of three?”
They scoff lightly, but make no motion to dissuade him, instead grasping at the flimsy package himself so that they could open it.
“One,” Arcade says.
His eyes look like the chocolates he sometimes brings.
“Two.”
What sort of sugars were those made of?
“Three!”
Fern wonders if they’re one and the same.
They tear at their packages, letting the small grains fall into his drink, just as Arcade does the same. Arcade’s cheering beside him, splashing water everywhere, but for once, Fern can’t bring themself to care.
He’s jabbering off about something, stirring excitedly at his concoction; Fern can’t bring themself to look away.
Friends, he thinks. Best friends.
“Did you stir yours?” Arcade asks, and they jolt upright in their seat. He nods assent, although he’d been too distracted to follow along all that closely, and pleasures in Arcade’s smile that’s offered to them (like the sunrise, they think, bright colors and new beginnings). “Alright, then, let’s have a taste!”
The straw is plastic and strange in his mouth. The sugar is too bright against what’s far more water than it is lemon. It hasn’t been mixed right, so leftover grains graze their tongue.
A horrible drink, really, but seeing Arcade spluttering next to him makes it alright.
He’s taking another sip just as Miss Rossi appears, touting a platter of a strange style of cheese-coated flatbread. “Your pizza’s here!” she crows. “Will that be all, or is there something else I can bring you?” Then she takes a second look at the two, one bent over and shaking from coughing between laughter, the other oddly still despite their companion. “Are you alright?”
“Never better,” Fern says with a smile. “Could we get some lemonade?”