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The sound of the kettle whistling harkened to Olruggio that his husband was already up, despite it being 7 am, despite them having not gotten home until after 2 in the morning. And then when they had gotten home— when they had gotten home, not one, but two beds had been bereft of a teen girl who should have been tucked in safe and snoring. He had gone in to make sure Agott’s nightlight had been turned off, and lo and behold, there had been two perfectly made and perfectly empty beds. He had rushed to the other room and almost lost his shit at the third empty bed, but a sleepy Tetia had reminded him that Richeh was over at Euini’s this weekend. Good ol’ Tetia. She was never out of bed when she wasn’t supposed to be. She would probably live in her down comforter if she were allowed to, wrapped up around the snugstone stuffed animal he had made for her.
After confirming it was just the two kids missing, he had rushed to tell Qifrey and both of them had immediately grabbed their phones and tried calling. The sleep-muffled voice of Agott had answered after a concerning amount of rings and had informed them that her and Coco were safe, they had just fallen asleep in the grass over by the riverfront. Qifrey had gone to pick them up, leaving Olruggio to guard the house (and probably to cool off. He had had a few choice words to say about how neither of them had bothered to call and say they’d be out that late, only sending a vague text asking about drying spells. They could have been abducted, Qifrey. Abducted.) With Qifrey gone, he had had nothing to do but uncork a bottle of wine and talk himself out of making a scene about it that night. The girls obviously needed sleep and he had all summer to convince them to think more about his blood pressure next time.
He rolls out of bed with a groan, deciding it’s probably best to be up before any of the girls so he and his husband can gameplan how to tackle what happened last night. They drive out to the city for one damn night. Pulling on the same jeans he left on the floor last night, he shuffles out of the bedroom and down the hall towards the kitchen. He tried to crack his back as he went, cursing the cramped backseat of their car. He thought they had graduated past car hook-ups when they bought a house together, but Qifrey’s paranoia about one of the kids needing something after lights out meant that these days he only got lucky if they were a solid two hours from home. He could say goodbye to that happening again any time soon.
Just like he expected, Qifrey was standing at the counter with two hot mugs of steeping tea and the morning paper. How optimistic of him. It was rare that Olruggio was ever up at this hour. Mornings were for Qifrey and Qifrey alone, the girls also preferring to stay in bed until the enticing smells of breakfast roused them enough to come searching for food.
His husband lowers the paper long enough to accept the kiss Olruggio plants on his cheek, but he doesn’t pause the quiet narration coming from the reading glyph on his glasses. Olruggio hears something faintly about expecting weather in the hundreds and decides its too early to care. “Anything actually worth reading about?” he asks as he takes his seat at the table.
Qifrey sets his mug of tea by his elbow without looking away from the paper, too proud to admit that, these days, the glyph is doing more of the reading than his remaining eye. “The newly elected mayor— you know, the ex-Knights Moralis one— is talking about cutting funding to the magic curriculum at public schools. Says, and I quote ‘anyone who takes magic seriously will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and earn their way into a private college just like my father and his father before him did.’ What an absolute load.”
“Do you think there will be protests?”
“Most certainly,” Qifrey agrees, finally deactivating the glyph and coming to sit at the table beside him. “Do we think the girls are old enough to attend yet? Magical education is so dear to them and I want to encourage them to be an active part of their community.”
“Maybe we keep them to helping make signs for one more year. We can save overthrowing the government for when they’re sixteen; fifteen should be more about having a whirlwind summer romance with someone whose name you’ll forget by the time you’re off to college.”
“My goodness, is that what we were doing at fifteen?”
“Well, one of us was trying to. The other kept insisting they ‘be an active part of their community.’” Olruggio made the air quotes as sarcastic as he could. He would never let Qifrey live it down that they hadn’t had their first kiss until well into college because every time Olruggio mustered up the courage and tried to set the mood, Qifrey would go off on a tirade about the evils of individualism and how a barrier between magic society and the common man did nothing but foster animosity and stymie progress. He finally realized that the man would just not shut up unless Olruggio physically gave his mouth something else to do, and he had been using that technique in all the years since.
“Hmm, I see.” Qifrey took a long sip of tea. “I’d hedge that with four girls in the house, one of them is bound to take after you. Whose delicate heart do you think we need to protect most? Agott seems to admire you an awful lot.”
“I think Agott would rather eat nails than let someone distract her from her studies. We’re probably safe with her until college, at the earliest. Richeh’s probably safe too.”
“She has been spending an awful lot of time with that boy, though. Do you think we need to sit her down for a serious chat soon?”
“To talk about Euini? He’s harmless.”
“I’m sure Beldaruit thought the same thing about you at that age.”
“Hey, I was harmless. You were the one who always came asking for trouble.” Sneaking in through the window to crawl into bed with him in the middle of the night, filling a bottle with a fingersworth of each of his parents’ alcohols to go get drunk in the McDonald’s parking lot, skipping school together to go spend the afternoon at the public library. Sometimes he wonders what kind of man he would have grown up into if Qifrey hadn’t blown into his life and splattered it with color.
“And yet,” Qifrey argued, swapping their mugs so he could finish what Olruggio hadn’t, “you never did bother to learn how to tell me no.”
“I could have saved myself a lot of grief growing up if I had.”
“There’s still time, old friend.” The pat Qifrey gave his wrist was just shy of patronizing.
Olruggio looked down at the dregs of tea in his newly acquisitioned mug, pretending to mull it over. “Nah,” he decided. “You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.”
“That I do,” Qifrey agreed, finally leaning over to give him a proper kiss, breath smelling of chai and warm hand stroking the fresh stubble on Olruggio’s cheek. “That I do.”