Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When morning came, the dateviators were still sitting on the bedside table, the rosy lenses sitting at such an angle that they picked up the sunlight in an orange-y sheen.

So it wasn't a dream, Em had to conclude, as she laid on her side and stared at the pair of strange glasses. That was… a lot. Too much to think about, really. Still in bed, she turned to her back and opened the work app on her phone. Her conversation history with Tom and Sam was exactly as she remembered. After a few taps through convoluted menus and entering her Valdivian-assigned password, she could see her paycheck was still scheduled to be deposited, with the same number she'd been promised during the hiring process.

So… Em's gaze unfocused, as if she was staring at the sky instead of the ceiling. She had no work, but did have money, at least a little, and at least for the time being. She'd need to get back into the job-hunting grind. God, that was gonna suck. She left the dateviators on her bedside table and rolled out of bed. She could deal with everything happening to her one step at a time. And step one was to get prepared for the day.

She padded through her kitchen in pyjama shorts, slippers, and a chunky sweater, making toast and flicking through her phone. Valdivian's mass firing hadn't made the news yet, though there was definitely buzz on the socials about it.

After breakfast Em went to her office (her "morning commute" she'd joked to herself once, before leaning against the stair rail and sighing) and opened her resume. For twenty minutes, she read and re-read the damn thing. There was no way she could put her time at Valdivian and the five customer complaints she'd processed onto her resume. Even if she wasn't technically fired, she also wasn't working.

She closed the word processor, then looked at her computer background: a corporate-approved abstract swish of clean white on a neutral blue background. She wondered what her computer would say, if she tried talking to it. She couldn't imagine it being anything good. What did she do on her computer these days besides watching trivial videos, writing embarrassing fanfic, lurking on social media, and working?

The dateviators were still upstairs. She could, at any moment, just go and put them on and find out exactly what her computer thought of her. Em didn't want to know.

But she still went up the stairs. She still picked up the dateviators and felt the cool metal of the frames, looked through the lenses and how they turned the bedside table and pillows in front of her rose-gold. She put them on. The bedroom looked like it was in the midst of golden hour, but she didn't feel different besides that.

"Well, Em, the house is your oyster," she mumbled to herself. Yesterday, she'd been completely caught up in the moment, swept along by the rush of things happening all at once. It had been a long time since she'd had so much chaos in her life, or so many options open before her. "Let's narrow it down," she told herself.

All five objects she'd met yesterday had in their own ways been friendly. Dorian definitely still intimidated her (she'd panicked and knocked the door before managing to attune to him with the dateviators, and she wasn't ready to deal with that), and Betty was… a bit overwhelming. Not in a bad way! But Em started to blush at the memory of their discussion the previous night, how badly she'd choked when a beautiful woman talked about sleeping with her. It hardly mattered that they'd both been speaking literally, when Betty's voice was so warm and breathy.

"Okay," Em murmured. "So, Skylar, Phoenicia, or Maggie… They all probably know a lot of objects…"

The demon of choice paralysis began to close its claws around Em's spine. This, at least, was a feeling she could manage, even if her coping mechanism left a little to be desired. With all the consideration of a coin flip (of a three-sided coin?), she made her choice. She took her phone in hand and without stopping to think she looked at it. The feeling was so odd, something like trying to see a stereogram, but only in her brain. Focused but unfocused, looking without seeing, trying to find the sailboat in white noise.

It was somehow straining. There was a moment where everything was blurry before suddenly snapping into focus. There was the sailboat— Phoenicia, that is. Her smile was incredible, enough to confuse Em. No one had been that happy to see her in ages.

"Good morning, human!" she said cheerily. "Now, let me guess: you wanna know more about the other objects in the house. Don't know where to start, huh?"

Em nodded a little. "I'm… not good with new people."

"Well, the best way to get better at that is practice," Phoenicia said, her voice warm. "But… there are also some objects you'll definitely wanna work your way up to. Give me a second and I'll think of someone perfect for you to get your toes wet with."

Literally? Em thought to herself. Were her bath or shower objects she could meet? She was definitely curious about what they'd be like. But then again, if they were able to see her all the time, the way the other objects had suggested, then wouldn't that mean—

"Oh, I've got the perfect object for you," Phoenicia announced. "You've still got that G&G app from when you downloaded it in college, and I know the perfect person to finally get some use out of that thing. You paid five dollars for it!"

"I… was going to join the TTRPG club," Em said, cheeks hot.

"You go find Chance the D20," Phoenicia said, breezing by Em's excuse, "he's posting about games he's planning, but never any pictures of games happening. Probably still looking for someone to play with." She winked. "And don't worry, he might come on a little strong, but he's just excited to meet new friends."

The idea of approaching someone, anyone, for G&G was enough to make Em's knees feel like they were locked in place by a painful sort of tingle. It was the same feeling she'd had in college, knowing that the TTRPG club was about to meet and she was still sitting on her dorm room bed, staring at the well-loved duvet and knowing that she wasn't missed, because it wasn't her space to start with.

But… this is my house, Em thought, the tingly pain in her knees fading. There was no one to tell her she didn't belong here, that she was taking up space that wasn't hers. They couldn't. Just due to circumstance, she and everything in the house would need to find a way to get along.

Everyone she'd met already had been friendly and polite, and none of them had questioned her presence. Phoenicia had just said that Chance would be excited to play with anyone. Em probably wasn't someone to the objects in her home, but she undoubtedly could be counted as anyone.

"I got a stream to start, so I'm going," Phoenicia said. "You tell Chance I said hi, okay?"

Em smiled. It was a little crooked and unsteady, but it felt real. "I will. Thanks."

Phoenicia left (Em still hadn't figured out how that worked, given the phone was still in her hand), and she was sitting alone on her bed once again, looking at her duvet stained rose-gold by the dateviators. "I should get changed," she said to herself. Back in university she'd gotten into the habit of putting on her shoes when she wanted to study in her dorm. Something about the shoes helped her find a working mindset. And while she wasn't about to wear shoes around the house, she could put on some proper clothes and get into the "meeting someone else" mindset. She took off the dateviators. For some reason changing with them on felt weird.

The laundry needed to be done sooner or later, but for the time being Em just ignored it, picking through her dresser until she'd put together something presentable. Instead of wandering the house in slippers, she fetched a pair of kitty-cat socks from the sock drawer. She'd need to do laundry soon; the sock drawer had emptied out enough that she could see the plastic boxes she kept at the bottom. When she went down the stairs, dateviators once again settled on her face, she went with a bit of a spring in her step.

The d20 sat on her desk, the number 17 facing up. Em picked it up, rolling the icosahedron across her palm. The weight of it felt pleasant, the points pressing into her hand enough to almost tickle. Then she realised what she was about to do and dropped it. The die tumbled for a moment and then turned up a 4. "Hope that isn't an omen," she mumbled, and then tried to stare at the die again. Find the sailboat, she told herself.

It was easier with Phoenicia. Probably because she knew what she was looking for. Chance the D20, Em repeated in her mind, trying to imagine what he could look like. After a moment, she started to see something in the blur: a hint of red, a flash of light reflected off glass. And then—

"Hail and well met, traveller!" called the hooded figure in a booming voice, which was enough to startle Em into a step backwards. She yelped, which caused the figure to flinch as well, bump into the desk, and knock over the cup of pencils. "Aw crit," the hooded figure mumbled, glancing at the mess of writing implements. He tried to shovel them back into the cup, but one rolled over the edge of the desk.

Em lunged forward and ducked down to pick it up, saying, "Sorry, I didn't mean to… I'm sorry."

"No, no, you're not the one who started shouting right away," he replied. Em stood upright again and slotted the rogue pencil back into place. She looked at the stranger's face and he pulled back the hood, revealing a kind smile. "Let me try again: I'm Chance. What brings you here, weary traveller? Are you seeking respite from the drudgeries of work?"

Em looked at him for a second, and then his question truly registered. "Oh! Uh, I just got these," she gestured to the dateviators, "and, uh. Phoenicia said we should meet. She told me to tell you she says hi. I'm trying to meet the objects in the house." She bit her tongue. "She said you were looking for someone to party with for G&G?"

That had to be the right thing to say. Chance's expression went from warmly curious to sparkling with excitement. "You want to play G&G? Really?" Em nodded, which was all the affirmation he needed. "Holy crit! I never expected this to happen—what's your favourite class? Or monster?" He must've caught how overwhelmed Em was by the hand coming up in front of her chest, because he cut himself off. "Sorry, I don't mean to stack all this on you at once."

The expression on Chance's face was totally earnest, brightened by excitement. Em stopped biting her tongue. He wanted to talk to her about this. She wasn't intruding or inserting herself into someone's day, she was being invited to join him. Behind her sternum, her heart swelled. "I, uh, haven't really played much. Tried to start campaigns in high school a few times, but it never worked out. But I do have a character." She opened the G&G app. There was the character she'd spent hours labouring over, trying to allocate stats in an interesting way, building a backstory that would mesh with a group: Mi'Cara the Troubadour.

It was impossible to imagine anything Em could've said that would've made Chance happier in that moment. He crowded in to look, reading the stats off the app in a hurried mumble and giggling to himself. "Oh, this is perfect," he said. "I can build a one shot around this. No gargoyle gauge to worry about so the balance should be a little easier, and the Troubadour class can fit into a lot of scenarios; I've got the perfect setting all written up and ready…" His voice faded but he was still talking too softly to be heard. Em watched him from the corner of her eye. She couldn't believe how happy he looked just reading her character sheet.

He turned to face her, very close. At this distance she could tell that it wasn't just that his glasses were tinted red, but that he genuinely had deep red eyes. The colour might've been unsettling if he hadn't been smiling so hard. "I'll need a day to get the oneshot ready. Is that okay?"

Em nodded. "Is one day… okay with you? You don't have to rush—"

"Are you kidding? I'd start with you right now if I could. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this!" Chance said, grabbing Em's forearm out of sheer delight. He opened his mouth to say something else, then seemed to notice how close they were standing. His eyes flickered over Em's face, too quick for her to guess what he was thinking. He stood up a little straighter and pulled back, releasing her arm. Em copied the motion instinctively, giving Chance even more space.

He touched his chest. For a moment he just breathed, then he smiled again. This time, his voice and smile were more measured: "I'll need to get started soon, if we're going to play tomorrow evening—" here his volume rose for a moment, then settled, "—but I wanted to ask. Do you want to play one-on-one, or with others? I just ask cause I think some of the office objects might want to meet you, and what better way to meet something than through a game?"

Oh. Em tried to read Chance's expression. Did he want a third party to keep a bit of space between them? Was he hoping to keep things to just the two of them to make things easier? If she knew what kind of answer he wanted, she'd have given it to him without hesitation. But the only thing she could see on his face was eagerness for an answer.

"The more the merrier," she replied, and she kept it from sounding like a question. Chance's expression relaxed into warmth again, so Em decided it was a good answer.

"You know, how about we do some quick introductions now? After all, you're already here, and I know everything else would be thrilled to meet you." He trailed off a little, voice getting higher. Like he was nervous about the offer.

Em absolutely would have politely declined the offer even an hour ago, sick with nerves about the idea of meeting even more things. But Chance was looking at her with an uncertain smile, an expression she knew very well: trying to put a nice face on while bracing for rejection. "That'd be nice," she said softly, and she meant it. Phoenicia's suggestion to meet him had taken enough edge off her nerves to let her approach him in the first place; surely having Chance around to make introductions would further dull her anxieties.

"Oh, great!" Chance said, clenching a hand. "Now, I don't know the mechanics of those dateviators, but my guess is that you'll need to, uh, stop 'looking' at me? To look at something else?"

His guess was as good as anything, so Em shrugged. "I don't know either. But, probably?"

"Alright, then we'll give it a roll. Let's try meeting Dasha," Chance said, patting the desk. "Dasha's right here. I'll see you in a minute." He gave Em a look, then just… disappeared? It was almost impossible to describe, as though Chance had simply exited the moment stage left. There was a strange feeling of readjusting, and then Em was certain her mental focus had returned, for lack of a better description, to default.

Dasha, then. Em considered rolling the die again, for luck, but pulled her hand away almost immediately. It no longer felt right to just toss the die around without asking, now that she knew the personality it carried. So she turned her attention to the desk. Somehow, she felt a little fatigued, the same vague ache that came from crossing her eyes for too long. But after a moment her focus readjusted again and there was Chance, beaming like the sun, and a handsome woman with mind-boggling arms.

Why is everything so gorgeous? Em wondered in a panic.

Chance, bless him, either noticed her turmoil or was just glad to see her. "It worked!" he cheered. He swept a hand up to the tall woman. "Em, this is Dasha."

"Hello, Em!" said Dasha, with an accent so unexpected that it shocked Em out of any possible panic. "I am pleased to meet you. I am your work desk, so we are in some ways already very familiar."

She would never have called herself good at reading people, but Dasha's smile was so sincere that even Em could believe that Dasha was pleased to meet her. "I guess we've spent a lot of time together," she agreed. "Especially now—or before I guess—when I was working at home."

"It has been a pleasure to work alongside you," Dasha affirmed. "Especially on Thursdays!"

"Thursdays?"

"Yes. It is when you wear your best socks, the ones that appear to be animal feet. I am especially fond of the socks with 'toe beans'. It is always a good day when I can see these beans."

It never occurred to Em that Fancy Socks Thursday would be anything but an in-joke between her and Sam. "I'm wearing them now," she replied. "Even though it's Saturday." She said it like a joke, like she was going out for dinner with friends and was awkwardly joking about being naughty for getting dessert.

"They are excellent for bringing a little joy into a difficult day," Dasha agreed. Em's face must've showed some surprise, because Dasha continued, "Of course I noticed. I have become very good at reading people. I see them through the day; especially you."

Em flushed, her cheeks getting hot at the suggestion. Chance cut in, "Em was hoping to meet the rest of the office today, Dasha. And we're planning a G&G session for tomorrow. If you want, there's definitely space at the desk for you."

"Because I am the desk," Dasha agreed, wrinkling her nose at Chance in a teasing smile. "I will be there, to hold up your game but also to play. If you will have me, of course." She said that to Em, likely because she already knew there was no way Chance was going to decline another player in his adventure.

"That'd be great," Em said, and this time she was certain she meant it.

The tour continued with Penelope the office supplies. This meeting was less auspicious. When Em "found" her, she was in the middle of getting an apology from Chance about how he'd knocked her over only a little while ago.

And once Penelope turned her attention to Em, she'd only had to say, "I'm so glad you can finally see me! I'm your office supplies, you really haven't needed me for a while," for Em to wilt slightly. On the other hand, her little "sorry" seemed to genuinely make Penelope happy.

The G&G invitation was met with a, "Oh sorry, but I've got a date tomorrow night." Chance nodded along, but Em recognised Penelope's tone. She was trying to say "no" in a way that wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. Was the date real? Or an excuse to avoid the game? Em didn't want to jump to conclusions, but the less-generous idea got stuck to her, like a popcorn shell digging into her gums.

After that, before Em could protest, Chance invited her to meet Mac, her computer. They had plenty to say and said it freely. There wasn't anything particularly embarrassing revealed in the conversation, but it was clear to Em that Mac indeed knew every single awful detail of their current internet use. But it was the flirting that completely stopped her tongue. Mac called her "as intelligent as you are attractive" (and there was no missing the flirtatious tone!) and Em froze.

She nodded along with Mac, trying to keep up with what they were saying. They were glad to interface symmetrically, to be able to communicate with her as clearly as she usually could with them. They wanted an OS update. Her head was starting to feel heavy, a pre-migraine throb building behind one of her eyes.

"Yeah," she said, fighting through the heavy-headed haze, "I can make sure your OS gets updated."

"Yes, I'm so relieved to finally get the update started!"

"Well, Mac, we should probably venture on. We still have a few members of the office party to introduce Em to," Chance said, placing a hand lightly on her shoulder. It was pleasantly grounding, though Em wanted him to press down more firmly. To Em he said, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Em said automatically, fighting through the sensation to look alive.

"Then see you tomorrow!" Mac said. "I knew I could count on you."

The feeling of an oncoming headache grew, but Em wasn't about to disappoint Chance or the rest of the "office party". She shifted from seeing Mac to seeing nothing, then looked to the desk lamp (left off, for which she was now extra grateful). Her eyes ached, or maybe it was her brain. It felt like she'd been sitting in front of her computer with the screen brightness too high for hours.

At least there was this: though her eyes/brain hurt from the effort, it was already easier to slip into the right kind of focus. Chance was speaking with a celestial beauty, complete with ring light halo. Her eyes felt like they were burning. She rubbed away the water gathering in them with her wrist.

"And here she is!" Chance announced, gesturing towards her. "Em, this is Lux."

Lux only turned when Chance said their name. "OMG so rude, I was recording," they said. Then they seemed to notice Em and scowled. "And whomst is that? She looks like she's about to die. No offence. I can recommend a cream for that."

Everything was too bright. Both Lux and Chance were speaking too loudly. The throbbing sensation behind her eye bloomed into a true migraine. A cold sweat gathered in her palms. She wasn't sure if she was going to throw up or faint, stomach churning and ears filling with static.

"Fucking crit!" gasped Chance, and now there was good pressure on her shoulders. He eclipsed Lux's glow. It wasn't much, but beggars couldn't be choosers. "Em," he said, too loud, too close, "you need to sit down."

She looked down and closed her eyes. The pressure left her shoulders. The world got quieter, and darker. There was a soft sound and sensation of something dropping onto the carpet between her feet. The dateviators must have fallen off her face.

Em stumbled to the couch, wrapped herself up in the blanket she kept there for cold nights alone (which was a lot of them), and slept for the next four hours. When she woke up she felt wrung dry, but the migraine was gone. Her appetite was back. Whatever had overtaken her, it was already leaving.

Once she was freshly bathed and ready for bed, Em did one last tour of the house to turn off lights and close doors. The dateviators were still sitting on the carpet in her office, upside-down. She returned them to their place on the bedside table when she went to sleep.

Chapter Text

When she was finished with her breakfast, Em slipped on the dateviators, activated the Skylar app, and was not surprised to see her sitting across the breakfast table, looking decidedly sheepish.

"So I guess you know what happens if you use me too much," she said.

"You could've mentioned." It was hard not to sound like she was whining. Em tried to give Skylar a hard stare, but it didn't seem to have any effect.

"I did tell you to keep your uses down. I didn't know that the sixth time was going to whammy you," Skylar defended herself. "When I was being tested he just stopped at five per day. But I am sorry that you got sick."

"But why did it happen? Is it, I dunno, radiation or something?"

"Well, there's a whole lot of advanced physics involved, but the short answer is that when you're dating an object, I'm helping your brain waves to resonate with a 'wavelength' that the object's animus vibrates at." Here there was a tangent as Skylar explained the concept of the animus and thing theory. Then she continued, "It's a bit of a tiring process on both sides. It's tiring on objects to get pulled in by me, so it's not really possible to talk to them more than… let's say once a day."

"But Chance—"

"Ah, we were only attuning with Chance's animus the first time yesterday. After that, he was resonating with other objects and you attuned to those, so he wasn't the one getting pulled around. But you were! And while the human brain is very malleable, your cute noggin," she poked Em in the centre of the forehead, "was definitely wiped out after five dates. It should be easier on you if you space them out a bit more, and cap out at five."

"Okay," Em said. This was all effectively arbitrary to her, but she could handle arbitrary. "So, everyone has… a social battery? I think I get it."

"It's a workable metaphor," Skylar agreed. "After this conversation, my social battery will be used up, and you'll have four more—we'll call them 'charges'—to use. But don't worry, I'll still be able to let you talk to everything else. My personal 'social battery' and the dateviator's mechanical power are separate things."

"Do I have to use them?" Em asked.

"No," Skylar said. "But it'd be nice if you did and started getting closer to everything in the house. Like I told you, it'll be easier to talk about why all this is happening if I can trust you, and the best way to get to trust someone is…" She raised a hand, inviting her to finish the sentence.

"To watch them interact with others?" Em said.

"Exactly! There isn't a better way to get to know someone, including yourself," Skylar replied. "You'll get into the groove before you know it, don't worry. Your calendar is already starting to fill up, isn't it? Two dates already planned!"

"Dates?" Em bit her tongue.

"Meet-ups, hang-outs, get-togethers, you can call them what you like," Skylar said gleefully. "Now, you get out there and start awakening objects, you hear?" She exited stage left, leaving Em alone at the breakfast table to think. This was still too much, to be honest. She had really only just stopped reeling from being sent to labour limbo.

But… it was getting harder and harder to be upset about getting the dateviators. She'd made a friend (even if she was still a little too intimidated to say hello to him again), she'd be playing G&G in a few hours with a GM who seemed excited to have her (even if he would probably be excited to have anyone at his table), and she'd gotten to learn a little bit of advanced theoretical physics (even if she was only grasping the simplest parts of it). And, well, she was still pretty anxious about all the suggestions of dating, but she was also not about to fail her promises to Mac and Chance now that she's made them. The idea of letting either of them down made her stomach drop.

Still, she did not want another migraine like yesterday's. She perched the dateviators on top of her head and hand-washed her plate and mug, enjoying the quiet of the house and letting time pass. Before she'd gotten the Valdivian job she'd spent moments like this feeling like it was a waste of time. What if the resume she could have sent instead of washing dishes was the one that was accepted? And now she luxuriated in the feel of warm water flowing over her hands, suds foaming from her sponge and then washing away under the tap, the white noise of it all. She'd done her best to turn her house into a comfortable place for herself, but it wasn't often that she felt at home.

When everything was clean Em went back up and changed out of her pyjamas, putting on an ordinary pair of grey socks. There were only so many cute pairs left in the drawer; she'd be relying on her own strength and not the power of the beans today.

The office was also quiet, even as Em put the dateviators back on. The sunlight through the windows felt warmer, the cool office furniture had softer edges. She settled into her desk chair and faced the monitor, searching the monitor for the human face she'd seen yesterday. There was a glimpse of something, RGB lighting and the throbber glasses perched on their head. And then she was facing Mac and their face lit up.

"You're back!" they cheered. "I'll be honest, I thought you'd prefer the traditional method of interfacing, you're so confident with your pointing and clicking. And I won't neglect to mention your typing, either. Exquisite."

"Hey, Mac," Em answered, holding onto the confidence she'd gathered as tightly as possible. "I did promise."

"I'm so excited, I barely got any sleep last night," Mac replied.

"Oh, sorry, I thought I turned off everything for the night," Em said, but Mac just answered with a dry chuckle.

"Not that kind of sleep. Computers have a different kind of sleep." Their expression dimmed slightly. "Although, that's actually supposed to be a secret. Please don't tell anyone else about that."

Who would she even tell? But Em nodded, and Mac's relieved sigh was enough to tell her she'd managed the moment well. She watched as Mac wheeled themself around the desk to settle in beside her.

"I can't believe this is finally happening. I'll be able to run so much more efficiently, and I'll be able to make better use of my memory. I think you'll find the user experience will be much improved. And the slick, sexy new UI!" They talked Em through the few few steps as they rhapsodised the virtues of the OS update, telling her which website to visit and how to navigate their awful UI. It hit Em that this was probably one of the stranger things she'd ever done: let her computer tell her how to operate it.

She scrolled through the upgrade page, searching for the correct OS version for her hardware. Without thinking, she triple-clicked some text, highlighting it. She only meant to make it a little easier to see how fast she was scrolling and not miss the correct file, but Mac made a strangled noise.

"I'm sorry!" Em said automatically. She looked to Mac, who was turning very red and decidedly not looking at her.

"I'm so so sorry," they answered in kind. "It's just that when you double-click, it makes my CPU run hot. And a triple-click is even more intense." The way they said hot left no doubt about the kind of reaction they'd just had. "I didn't mean to make noises."

"It… it happens. I won't click like that again," Em said. She tried to be reassuring, but it didn't seem to have the right effect. What did clear the air was, unfortunately, a warning that popped up when she tried to download the update. Insufficient space.

Mac winced. "I had a suspicion that this might occur."

Em shrugged. "I probably forgot to empty the recycling box again," she murmured, navigating to take care of it. She set everything in it to simply delete and watched as some gigabytes were freed for better use. Mac looked like they were reading something when she glanced at them, despite the fact that they were staring into the middle distance above the monitor.

It wasn't enough space. Em went to the next culprit: her downloads file. And then the next when the OS download failed yet again for lack of space. She was starting to feel bad; she clearly hadn't been taking the best care of Mac if they were dealing with an overstuffed hard drive.

Mac hissed. "I've just finished scanning," they said. "We're not going to have sufficient memory without deleting a lot of pictures. And probably some of your recreational text documents, too."

"My… fanfic, you mean?" she asked. Mac nodded gravely.

Em navigated to the PC overview. The poor hard drive was still suffering. Mac had to be right, she wasn't getting the update downloaded unless she deleted some of the digital ephemera she'd been carrying. It was her turn to wince. Sure, she didn't look at her pictures much. Or at all. But she definitely didn't want to delete them. And her embarrassing fanfic was, well… she'd made it for her own entertainment. Deleting it would be erasing many hours of work.

A number caught her eye. 500 GB. She looked again. She'd had this computer in some form or another for nearly a decade. They had 500 GB to call their own, to use for everything. She'd been fighting low memory for more than a year already. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry," she said.

"What?"

"You've been working so much for me, and I haven't done anything to make it easier." She looked directly at Mac and they were… surprised? Startled? Confused? Em didn't know them well enough yet to say for sure. She continued, "I need to get another hard drive. Are you compatible with SSDs? Is installing more memory going to be okay for you?" She had a thousand questions. She needed, badly, to take responsibility for her neglect. "And what about RAM? God, no wonder you're having trouble with the Vims."

"Slow down," Mac said quickly, cutting Em off. "The blast processing is unnecessary."

"I haven't been taking care of you," Em replied. She needed to fix this problem now. "Please, if you tell me what to get, I have Valdivian Supreme from my job—probably. I'll check. But I can get two-day shipping, and you'll have new hardware by Tuesday."

She couldn't read Mac's expression. It wasn't the same unabashed joy they'd expressed earlier. It was… it was complicated. Maybe she'd misinterpreted something. This was probably a faux-pas she was committing, suggesting that the object physically change for her. She waited for a moment, then asked, "Does changing your hardware… change you? Is it bad?"

"Oh no, no more than you getting glasses would change you." Em didn't say that getting glasses (real ones, with prescription lenses) would be a pretty major change for her. She understood their intent. "I just didn't think adding memory was the first alternative you'd want."

The mood was weird. It stayed weird as Mac talked Em through some of the options available, their communication efficient to the point of being mechanical. They were able to find a compatible HDD, as modern and fancy as their decade-old motherboard could handle. Mac assured her that they had a free port. Several, even. They gently coached her away from getting more RAM (at least for now) and into geting a proper set of screws and screwdrivers for the task, too. "I've heard about Tony. I don't trust him to have the exact size of tool that we need," they said. "When it comes to screwing, my needs are very idiosyncratic."

When the order was placed Em expected to feel relieved. Here she was, making amends for her neglect. Instead, she felt like she'd made a mistake. Not a terrible one. Not the kind of mistake that Mac had guided her away from (ordering the wrong part, attempting a project beyond her skill level, etc.). It was the kind of mistake that neither of them knew how to articulate.

"So," Em said, and when Mac said nothing she filled the silence, "as soon as the delivery arrives, I'll get the new memory installed."

"Okay," Mac replied. They didn't talk about their excitement. "I'm glad to be getting new hardware to use." Even Em could tell their heart wasn't in it, but what could she do? She'd ordered the HDD, and she owed Mac the hardware upgrade. They'd been working for her all this time with not enough resources to go around, she could spare some time and money to help them.

The conversation petered out. Em bid them a goodbye when her stomach started to grumble. Mac put on a pleasant smile for her. They wished her well, told her they were looking forward to interfacing again, in whatever way would be best. Guilt hit Em, but she could not identify the source.

Something about rumination over a meal was appropriate. Em ate pineapple cubes and replayed her conversation with Mac over and over again. The hardware upgrade suggestion had been a mistake. That had been when Mac lost all enthusiasm in their conversation. She shouldn't have done it and she needed to apologise. It wasn't a conversation she was excited to have. At least it could wait until Tuesday?

In the afternoon she did some chores. The downstairs bathroom needed cleaning, so she played music on her phone and hummed along while scrubbing mineral build-up off the glass shower doors. She kept the dateviators perched on her head while she worked. She wasn't going to chance overworking her brain again, and she doubted bringing the shower to life would make it easier to remove soap scum.

When the evening rolled around, she hesitated to go back to her office. Was she supposed to bring anything? You were supposed to bring a snack for sharing to these kinds of games, right? Did Chance eat? Would any of the other object want food? Uncertainty was definitely going to overtake her, so she stopped the thoughts where they were. As if following the command of a flipped coin, she followed her first impulse and strode towards the office. She swung the door open, then winced as it went too far and bumped into the wall.

She touched the door frame. If she apologised, would Dorian know? Did it even matter? Better to be safe, in any case. "Sorry for that." She closed the door carefully, so slowly there wasn't even a click as the latch bolt slid back into place.

The office was as she had left it earlier in the day, just bathed in the warmth of the sunset. The computer was completely silent, deep in hibernation (it would've felt extremely wrong to turn it off after how things had turned out with Mac). The cork board was still almost completely empty. And there was the d20 on her desk, still showing her a 4. For a second she thought of rolling it; things had gone so well yesterday, maybe it was good luck?

She remembered the Triple-Click Incident and tucked her hands firmly in her pockets. Now that she knew that they could feel was she was doing, it wouldn't be right not to ask first. Probably. She'd scrubbed the shower door pretty mercilessly earlier in the day without hesitation, though. Was it only a problem if she stimulated the objects after seeing their humanoid form? That definitely didn't seem right, despite being the logical conclusion from how she behaved. And another voice in the back of her head reminded her firmly, this was her house. Having to walk on eggshells at all times couldn't be the way she or any of the objects wanted her to live.

Em closed her eyes, breathed, and opened them again. She searched for Chance in the d20 and in nary a heartbeat he was there, arms thrown wide.

"Welcome back, faithful traveller!" he said. His enthusiasm was clear, but he'd moderated his volume. Em could see how brightly his eyes were sparkling under his hood.

"I'm excited for this," she said, and Chance was clearly too thrilled to maintain his impressive appearance. He threw back his hood and beamed.

"Me too. And our mutual friend Dasha is joining us," he told her. Dasha "entered" the moment, all warmth and friendly smiles and goddamn those shoulders. She looked Em up and down and then quirked up a corner of her lips.

"I see you are not wearing the beans today."

"Yeah," Em said. "It felt like a no-beans day."

She had woken up worried that her nerves would get the better of her, that she'd be a mess of anxieties incapable of playing the game properly. The second Chance laid out the map on the desk — which somehow appeared to be both her ordinary desk and a massive table — and put down some mini-figures the magic circle wrapped itself around the three of them. After a false start, Em found Mi'Cara's voice and Chance's narration took her somewhere else, to be someone else.

It was a really good evening. Chance had a gift for leaving just enough hooks and cues that Em always felt like the campaign was going where he'd planned — where all the most fun stuff was hiding — but never felt like she was trapped on rails. Yekaterina Dmitriyevna Petrova didn't seem to be terribly different from Dasha herself, but Dasha's own charisma was more than enough to carry her character. Em also didn't miss how Dasha happily played when prompted, but also put herself into a support role, facilitating Mi'Cara's adventure and Chance's story more than advancing any particular story for Yekaterina.

In the end, when Mi'Cara and Yekaterina received their boons from the House of Knives for their service and wandered together into parts unknown, Chance exploded with delight. It was like watching fireworks, if those fireworks were intent on giving compliments to the viewer. "You were perfect, how you roleplayed through the negotiations!" he told Em. "And Dasha, your use of terrain effects!"

"Thank you for running this beautiful game, Chance," she answered. "Yekaterina will live on in my mind."

"You don't want to play again?" Em asked, turning to Dasha. She faltered.

"I have no objections," she said, "Only, this cannot be my only evening activity. I have a varied social life, you know."

"Then what about next week?" Em answered. "If we got together once a week, wouldn't that be…?"

"That would be wonderful! But you should also see me again when you like. We do not have to wait for games to speak," said Dasha.

"Next week?" Chance said, his voice loud and trembling. "You… you want to do this regularly?"

Em stopped. She'd been getting ahead of herself again. She couldn't volunteer Chance without asking him first (though, admittedly, she was pretty confident he was about to say yes. Just a feeling). "If you're up for it?"

"Of course!" he burst, another dazzling blast of light and sound. "Oh, I have so many ideas of what to do! Are you thinking of doing a single long-form campaign, or maybe something a little more monster-of-the-week? Oh oh, or a full-on anthology? Because if you want keep going with Mi'Cara—" He stopped, giggling to himself as Em suddenly hid a small yawn behind her hand. "I'm getting way ahead of myself. I could talk about this for hours, but it's getting pretty late. If you check in another time, we can talk about this more."

"I will," Em promised.

It was hard to sleep that night, though this time Em couldn't have been happier for it. For once, she was replaying every interaction they'd had in her mind and not ruminating. She kicked her feet along the sheets in glee remembering the high-five she'd shared with Dasha (she did almost get knocked out of her chair in the moment, but that was just part of the fun). She'd been flushed from pure exhilaration responding to Chance's villain monologue with a heroic proclamation of her own. Her heart pounded. Next Sunday couldn't come soon enough.

Chapter Text

Em cleaned up after breakfast with a smile on her face. One of the best side-effects of working from home was having time for the little things, and cleaning the dishware by hand was one of her little things. As long as she was in labour limbo, she was going to enjoy as many of those little things as possible. When she returned to the office she examined it and saw everything in its place. Last night the desk had seemed huge. The longer the G&G game had run, the more the room had felt like it had expanded into a tremendous performing space. Now it was mundane once again.

There was to be two hours (or rather, one whole pomodoro) of job searching each morning, and so Em set to it. It was soul-crushing. No one was hiring, everyone was looking for work, and a BFA in Customer Service meant jack shit when every posting was calling for three years of experience. There was nothing in this world as demoralising. And this time she couldn't count on Sam to bail her out.

But she'd hung the dateviators on the collar of her button-down shirt like an ordinary pair of sunglasses, and once she was finished in the misery pit of job hunting she could talk to Chance once again, and maybe even Dasha. For the first time in a long time, there were things she wanted to ask someone, and she felt confident enough to ask them.

The moment her pomodoro timer rang and prompted her to take her long break she stopped working, turned off the timer, and flipped on the dateviators. It took only a moment for Chance to appear, leaning against the desk.

"Chance," she said, smiling broadly. He returned the favour.

"Hail and well met!" he said at a perfectly reasonable volume. "To what purpose does my favourite Troubadour require me?"

"You wanted to talk about future campaign ideas?" she said.

"I just have so many of them!" Chance said. "When you've got nothing but time, you make a lot of world-building documents. If we're going to be playing together for a while," his eyes sparkled a little as he said it, "then we need it needs to be a setting with lots of room to play. Plus G&G does create some expectations for the kind of play involved just from its mechanics that you've got to keep in mind…" He kept talking for a few seconds longer, devolving into muttering.

"Chance?" Em said, and he immediately met her gaze.

"Yes?"

"What if…" Okay, the nerves were coming back. But Chance was listening eagerly. She took a breath and continued, "What if we did… monster-of-the-week, but from a kind of… interdimensional agency? Or something? So you could bring up as many of your settings as you want." The idea had seized her in the middle of her overnight oats and hadn't let go. "I really want to see everything you've worked on," she added.

"Ooh, an interdimensional trouble-solving agency? It'd take a little work to tie everything together, but… then I could take you through all my setting concepts. Play with genre, maybe homebrew a mechanic or two…" He rubbed his chin as he talked. Em watched him make a mental checklist of everything that would need doing. He wasn't turning down the idea. Finally he said, "I'll see what I can do. I'm really glad you want to take part in making the kind of game you wanna play. Thank you."

Em shook her head. "Thank you. You've been so nice to me, and I've been…" she ducked her head, embarrassed with the confession she was making, "really scared about meeting new people."

"Really? I mean, you were definitely a little shy when we met. But… you were scared of me?" Was that a little bit of hurt in his expression?

"Phoenicia's suggestion helped a lot. But the nerves are still…" She shrugged a shoulder, trying to communicate something that was definitely too big and entrenched in her for words. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Well, you just…" She groaned in frustration, annoyed at how the words wouldn't come. She didn't know what to say next. Flip a coin: tails. "How do I make friends with the others?"

"Oh." Em looked up. Chance was holding his chin, staring out at nothing. "That's a hard one. But. You were having fun yesterday, right?"

"The most fun I've had in ages," she confirmed. Chance seemed to flush with pride. Their eyes met.

"Then what if you just played along? Not that talking to the other things is a game. It's just that, well, you have a gift for roleplay. It's what I did, when I was starting out."

Em let out a little laugh, "Trust a d20 to suggest roleplay."

"Yeah. It's hard to remember that roleplay isn't the first thing others think of, sometimes."

Em was quiet for a second, and then, "But… you're right. I want to try it. I can pretend to be the version of me that isn't super nervous around anyone new." Her smile was crooked, but Chance seemed to appreciate the attempt. "I'll just pretend you're around."

"You're too sweet. You've clearly rolled high on your charisma check," Chance said.

And then an idea came to Em, simultaneously complicated and elegantly simple. She froze, momentarily unable to decide how to react. Mentally, she flipped the coin. Heads: tell him. "What if you could be around when I meet the others? Kind of."

"What do you mean?" Chance asked. "Is there some way I can be a companion on your next adventure?"

"There's a kind of pendant. A dice cage." Em blushed a little. Saying it out loud sounded far more salacious than she'd ever intended, and Chance's wide-eyed expression told her she wasn't the only one thinking that way.

"It just takes some jewellery wire wrapped in a spiral, no holes or anything. You wouldn't have to watch me do anything or introduce me to anyone else. I should probably start learning to introduce myself, right? But… it'd feel nice to have… a piece of a friend with me."

She already felt foolish for saying anything. Trust Em to ruin a good thing with her jewellery wire, right? "Or not. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, I won't make you," she added.

Chance spoke carefully. "You can do anything you want with me when I'm a die. You own me." He blushed but continued, placing a hand on his chest, "But since you're asking, I'd be honoured to be in your adventuring party."

The tension left Em's shoulders all in a rush. "Then I'll do that. Thank you."

This time, Em shifted focus herself. It was almost dizzying, feeling her mind settle back into a default point of focus without the gentle push of the object leaving the conversation first. There was the red d20 she now considered a friend (somehow! incredibly!). She picked it up, felt the weight of it in her hand. The face pointed towards her showed an upside-down 12.

She was about to take off again, but paused. Dasha had invited her to come talk again at any time. Would doing that now be over-eager? Were there rules, like there were for texting after a date?

"God, Em," she told herself, pinching her nose for a second. "Get a grip."

Before she could chicken out she looked to the desk. Dasha greeted her as warmly as ever, this time offering a hug without a moment's hesitation. Em stepped into it, trying to hug back.

"Em, it is good to see you again!" Dasha said, lifting Em off her feet in the hug. God, what a good way to die, Em thought. But Dasha released her before the Great Beyond could be anything but a passing thought. "I have been thinking about our adventure last night, and the road Yekaterina and Mi'Cara walked down."

They talked for a few minutes about their game, discussing the little details that had made them laugh during play. It felt good to laugh, to praise Dasha for her fighting strategies, to be back in the magic circle where Em could be more than herself.

Dasha was the one to pierce it, to gracefully guide their talk back to the day's tasks. "So, what are you going to do for today?" she asked.

"I dunno…" Em answered. "I know Skylar wants me to talk to everything in the house and get close to them, but how do I even do that?"

"Well," Dasha said, putting a hand on Em's shoulder, "there are many ways you could start. You could ask your friends who they suggest you meet. If you were to ask Dasha, for example, I would tell you that Abel is kind and supportive, and he knows almost everyone in the house. Because he is all the tables in the house.

"Or you could just wander around. Perhaps you'll find something that captures your curiosity. This is a very lovely home, after all."

Em nodded. It was so obvious to hear out loud (she'd even tried getting a suggestion from someone else herself!), but it felt so much more manageable when Dasha spoke so matter-of-factly about it. "I should look around," she agreed. "And if I need more advice…"

"You are always welcome to visit and ask me questions," Dasha confirmed. "I would like to stay and talk longer, but there are things I must do today. Ni púxa," she wished.

And then Em was alone in her rose-gold tinted office, everything quiet and calm. She still had the d20 in hand. It was as though she'd stood still and daydreamed her entire conversation with Dasha. Questions were starting to pull at her brain. When they grew too large to ignore she was going to have to speak to Skylar, but that could wait. She'd told Chance she was going to make a dice cage pendant, and now she needed to follow through.

The jewellery-making kit she'd hidden at the bottom of her sock drawer was still decently supplied. There was plenty of heavy jewellery wire left, and it wasn't like the pliers were going to go bad. Em sat on the bed and twisted the wire into a smooth spiral, tight and then open and then tight again, testing the fit with the d20 several times as she went. It had been a while since she'd done this, but her hands hadn't forgotten the feel of metal bending into smooth curves. She added a bail at the end, looping the wire and wrapping it around itself to keep it in place.

There was a plain necklace chain in her bedside table drawer, too delicate to leave on a surface but not expensive enough to have gone into the safe, which she found hidden under the cloth bag she'd left there. In no time at all, she had made herself a simple pendant that laid comfortably against her sternum, tucked under her shirt. It wasn't exactly a stylish piece, given how quickly she'd thrown it together. But when Em looked down at it she smiled: a little piece of a friend, here with her.

⁂

The house felt like a different world now, even without the dateviators on. The knowledge that everything around her had the potential to be a person of some kind had opened her eyes to so much. Her d20 was red and Chance wore an outfit with striking touches of red, so maybe the objects reflected their physical reality in some way. As Em went through the ground floor of her home she made mental notes about what she saw.

Her curiosity was pulled a dozen different directions in the living room. The bottled ship had her imagining a big strapping pirate, one that resembled a character from a swashbuckler film. Reminded of Betty, the soft blanket she'd wrapped up in two days ago seemed to have a sensual character to it. The piano had to be a musician, and the fireplace a hothead. She contented herself with her guesses as she walked, not ready to awaken any particular object.

Frankly, this was a recipe for choice paralysis, but that was one of the few things Em was more than capable of handling. The kitchen was a smörgåsbord of options; Em wondered how many of them could teach her a thing or two about cooking. The laundry room felt quiet and clean; she wanted to know how many of the things in the room would match that mood.

Upstairs, the bedroom felt like another quiet space. Betty came across strong but she wasn't loud, so that was one point in favour of Em's theory. The gym was definitely going to be a high-energy space, though, she thought as she passed it. The only thing she noticed in the electrical closet was the toolbox, and Em had a very strong image in mind about the kind of person who would represent tools. She could practically hear the thick New York accent, the words, "I'm walkin' here!" in the back of her mind.

Her trip through the house was halted at the attic door. The doorknob didn't turn. It didn't feel broken, as far as Em could tell, so it was almost certainly locked. She did have a faint memory of locking it, but it was a vague memory, lost in the soup of chaos that was Moving Day. She put the dateviators back on.

Em raised a hand. For a second she paused, then she winced in anticipation of what she was going to do, and then she knocked on the door. She looked at it through squinted eyelids, waiting for it to change.

"You don't need to knock, you know," said Dorian, much much too close. Em took a sharp step backwards and this time didn't stumble.

"Sorry," she said.

Dorian gave her a stern look. "Are you going to say anything other than sorry to me?"

"Oh, uh," good lord he was big, and the growly voice was intimidating, and Em mostly felt like a small creature standing next to him. "Okay. The door's locked."

"Yes," Dorian agreed, "because you locked it."

"Oh right, I did," Em said. This was the time to put Chance's advice to the test, she decided. "It's hard to remember what happened during Moving Day."

"Moving Day was somethin' else," he said. "And then you and your friends had to go and get smashed once everything was settled. Small wonder it got lost."

That explained why Em had no memory of where she'd put the key, let alone why it was even missing. And it made the idea of finding it again that much more daunting: the people she'd had her housewarming with had liked to party hard. She didn't remember a lot of the outings they'd gone on together, despite the pictures on her phone to prove they'd happened.

"And…" she murmured. "Would you—"

Dorian was quick to interrupt her. "No," he said, coolly professional. "You'll need to unlock me to get through. I can't just let anyone through as they please, it would be a disgrace to my profession."

"Okay," Em agreed.

"If I may make a suggestion," Dorian added, not waiting for Em to permit the suggestion, "if you're looking to learn about who's who in the house then you should ask me. If the room has a door, then I'm responsible for the safety of everything inside."

That was another lead for Em, then. "Thank you," she said, her smile a little unsteady but genuinely intended.

"Ta." And then with a polite nod Dorian disappeared, leaving her once again facing the door to the attic. So, she now had a new quest. A more achievable one, too, compared to Skylar's request that Em meet everything in the house. She also had no leads.

"Maybe Maggie would take my case…?" Em pondered, moving the dateviators to the top of her head again. Probably, she decided a moment later. A missing key to a mysterious attic had to be pretty enticing as mysteries go. She wouldn't have been a witness to the Moving Day party given that she was something Em had gotten later, but she trusted the magnifying glass to know how to organise the investigation to ensure success.

Well, now she was just standing and talking to herself in the hallway, so it was time for Em to move on. She couldn't get into the attic, so she doubled back to the gym. The room had once been hers, and there were still traces of her days there left behind in the pinholes left by posters and dents where she'd done something reckless or dumb. When she'd taken over the master bedroom she'd left the gym equipment and her shelf of achievements exactly where they'd been, which did explain the somewhat haphazard look to the space.

Em took a look at the trophy shelf and sighed. It was supposed to be a confidence boost, seeing the accolades she'd collected so far. But the "awards" were more acknowledgements of participation, and the entire shelf was getting dusty. It did accurately depict the arc of her life to this point, but the shelf was definitely failing at its intended purpose.

She pulled open the walk-in closet. She already knew what was in there and her expectations were met. Loose boxes from the move that had never found their way into the attic before it was accidentally sealed, some holiday accoutrement, plenty of smaller bits of sports equipment that had fallen out of use. She made proper use of the closet, walking in to look at everything a little closer.

Dorian could probably explain who was who in here, if she asked him. And if sliding closet doors "counted". Maybe he'd look different? It was hard to recall exact details in the blur of that day, but Em was pretty sure Dorian had looked different when she'd spoken to him a few days ago at the front door. He'd had a hat. But she'd already spoken to Dorian today, and if the dateviators could give her the nastiest headache of her life by overusing them, she didn't want to imagine what would happen to the objects if she tried to speak to them twice in a day.

Focus, Em. The shelf was packed with boxes, most of them open. Assorted sports equipment poked out of some of them, while others held the various bric-à-brac of her life. Two boxes were completely sealed, left behind by her parents in case they would need anything inside them one day.

Em ignored those boxes and pulled one that was open off the shelf, just to give her hands something to do. Inside were a few battered puzzle boxes and a well-loved teddy bear. Oh, she thought to herself, that's where you were.

After graduating high school she'd done her best to "put away childish things", as the advice so often went. She picked the bear up out of the box. The fabric was rough and worn in spots. The ribbon wasn't a creamy white anymore. The seams holding the arms to the body were barely holding on. Em could see a tuft of stuffing poking out of the bear's shoulder. When she hugged it, it smelled the same as ever. It wasn't a good smell, but it was familiar: years of adventures, the dirt and sweat and tears of a childhood together. In the rest of the house the scent had long-since vanished, but her teddy bear still smelled just a little like the perfume her mother had liked to spray around the house to brighten up the atmosphere.

What would happen if she awoke her teddy, she wondered. To this point everything she'd awakened had appeared in an adult form, but would a childhood toy have "grown" alongside her? The objects around her clearly knew and remembered what she did with the dateviators off, would her bear remember years and years of being alone in a closet? About being abandoned the second she left home to get a degree? If it was her, she would absolutely resent an owner who decided they didn't need her anymore. Em hugged her teddy tighter, but didn't put on the dateviators.

She sat the bear on top of her diary in her bedroom. It could overlook the room, enjoy the sunshine and birdsong of the mornings, and keep her safe from nightmares once more. "Sorry," she said, adjusting the hat until it sat properly on its head again. "I didn't mean—" she sighed. "…I wish I didn't leave you behind."

Em went back downstairs, the dateviators left in the drawer of her bedside table. She returned the d20 to her desk, laying the necklace beside him. "See you tomorrow," she said. She was still tired from overdoing it the other day, she decided. She could do housework and try extending her job search a little longer instead.

Chapter Text

According to the text message Em woke up to, the hard drive she'd ordered was en route in the delivery truck, set to arrive in the mid-afternoon. She looked away from her phone and saw her teddy still on the dresser where she'd left it. She took in a deep breath and decided to get ready for the day. Thinking about anything else could wait.

She left the dateviators in the bedside table drawer while she had breakfast and attempted to continue her job search. Skylar had been pleasant to this point, but Em wasn't keen on getting a surprise visit while she finished off her toast and coffee. Maybe she just needed to toughen up, but until she managed to do that she was keeping herself to one jumpscare a day, maximum, as much as possible.

When her morning chores were done, she returned upstairs. Dateviators on her face and dice cage pendant tucked under her shirt, she walked back into the gym. After a moment's hesitation, she knocked on the sliding closet door.

"Is this going to be a habit of yours?" Dorian asked, his posture just so slightly off from his usual all-right-angles attention. Em's answering half-smile must've meant something to him, because he smirked back, leaning slightly to the side.

Oh, Em thought. He was much more approachable like this: less menacing monolith and more fellow woodland creature; just a very large one. An elk or a particularly large bird of prey, maybe. "You said I should ask you about all the different rooms."

"Starting small, are you? Probably for the best," he said, the smirk fading as he returned to a more professional posture. "Well, the walk-in closet is home to several free spirits. There's Beau the Box, though she's all over the place. Holly the Holiday Decorations has a place here, though I doubt she spends much time in one spot for long, unless she's wiped herself out again. And then there's Dunk the Sports Equipment. You can guess what he's about."

It was kind of Dorian to tee up an easy answer for her. Her smile was small, but now firmly established in both corners of her mouth. "Sports?"

"Got it in one. And, of course, Teddy called himself a denizen of the closet until yesterday. He was fond of this closet, but I have the feeling he's happy with his new home." He nodded, having completed his task.

"How do you know?" Em asked, wary of the spark of optimism that just lit in her chest.

"I'm responsible for the objects under my protection. So we talk, from time to time. Anything else I can do for you?"

It was nice talking to Dorian like this. He didn't seem to expect her to actually socialise very much, content to just do his job. It certainly made it easier for her to answer, "No. Thank you for the help."

He left, in that strange way objects did, and Em slid the door aside, careful not to bump it against the wall. The boxes were exactly as she'd left them yesterday—an utter mess. Well, she did want to space out her dateviator use a bit; it was time to get to work.

Twenty minutes after entering the walk-in closet, the things had successfully been tidied. Somewhat. The boxes had, as much as possible, been stacked up properly, smaller boxes tucked into larger ones. The sports equipment was now exclusively occupying shelves, as they should've been from the start. The holiday decorations were on the highest shelf, except for a bundle of lights that hadn't fit in the box and instead were laid on the bottom shelf, a choice Em knew she would pay for later. But that was a problem for the Em of many weeks into the future. If she even wanted to put up decorations; she hadn't been in the habit for a while.

Brain and eyes feeling back to normal, Em decided she was ready to test them again. Of the three names Dorian had given her, Holly felt the most promising. Surely an entity representing holiday cheer would be a pleasure to hang around with? She pulled the pendant from under her shirt and held it tightly for a moment.

The end result of her gaze was… well, it was strange. It was as if she was still crossing her eyes, seeing double of what she knew without a shadow of a doubt was one thing: a young woman sleeping in the box on the top shelf, legs dangling out, and the same young woman curled up on the bottom shelf, head cushioned by her prodigious pigtails and the strand of lights. She was sleeping deeply, faintly snoring.

Feeling rather like she'd just walked in on a stranger sleeping — because that's exactly what had happened — Em refocused her mind so quickly back to default that it made her dizzy. The world spun under her feet, and her head seemed to be turning the other way, and her only respite was to flop against the inside of the sliding door and wait for the feeling to pass. "Sorry," she said to the door, pulling off the dateviators. The closet looked slightly green, though that was probably just her eyes recovering from the sheer amount of pink they'd been subjected to.

After a few minutes the green hue faded and the world was steady under Em's feet. She left the walk-in closet and went down to watch a little TV instead, catching the back half of a true crime documentary. It wasn't remotely productive, and she felt a little guilty for wasting time like this, but she needed to get into the habit of spacing out her visits with objects. She would do something more productive next time she needed a break.

⁂

After a small lunch Em had gone back to meet Dunk and found he was, by and large, exactly what she could have expected. The high energy, the gorgeous muscles (what was it about the dateviators that made so many of the objects muscular? Em was determined to ask Skylar the next time they spoke), the friendliness, perfect for someone embodying the concept of sports in general.

What she hadn't expected was his non-competitive attitude and absolute earnestness. Em almost instantly believed, right down to the bottom of her mousey little heart, that Dunk just wanted her to love sports and to take part in them as more than just a sporadic kind of self-maintenance. It made her want to love them, too.

So excited was he that he'd walked her through a short warm-up and cool-down routine then and there, without any hesitation, giving gentle correction to her form and telling her to listen to her body. Her body felt odd, stiff and inflexible in places she didn't remember being like that before.

"Hey, that's okay," Dunk had said, still all smiles. "We can work on it together, get you feeling all loose and limber again. It's never too late to get started."

And his expression was just so guilelessly friendly and his instruction had been so easy and gentle that Em had said yes, and suddenly they were planning to meet for a little workout the next day. That was clearly the right answer, based on just how thrilled Dunk sounded as he told her to have a good day.

Alone again, Em took in a deep breath. She removed the dateviators and something in her body shifted. The pleasant warmth and looseness in her body from the stretching seemed to evaporate. It was so disorientating that she actually touched her arms, as if that would help her find the sensation. Her hand went to the pendant next, holding it in her fist for a moment. She tried to think through what had happened.

When she was talking with objects she was really resonating with the animus of the object, if she understood Skylar's lesson. Which meant that she wasn't actually exercising with Dunk, she'd just been having an extremely vivid daydream about exercising with Dunk. One with, as far as she could tell, extremely on-point advice, so at least there was that.

"I really have to talk to Skylar about this, huh?" she asked her pendant. She didn't get a response, of course, but to have something she could talk to besides the empty house itself was a comfort. And she wasn't going to talk to Skylar now anyways. Her plan for the day was just so tidy: talk to Beau the Box and have more-or-less met everything in the gym closet, and then finish the day with Mac installing the hard drive and giving them an apology. Probably not in that order. That would be five uses, and then she would put away the dateviators and do something useful, like polish her resume again, or maybe play through the beginning of Moonsurgents: Resurgence. She'd had the game for long enough, it was time to play.

⁂

When Em had finally regained her bearings after awakening Beau (she just wasn't expecting a heroic adventurer type directly from the old movies she'd watched as a kid!), she was already knee-deep in a story. Something about a leading houseologist, something about a journey that needed to be undertaken.

"What… what is a houseologist?" Em asked, trying to feel her way through the story that Beau had clearly already started in on. Play along, she told herself. This was a game. She'd been isekai'd into a new world and needed to catch up quickly.

"An expert on the house and its history," Beau answered, raising the butt of her extension cord-whip to her lips. "And based on that question, I'm beginning to think you may not be one."

"I'm learning," Em said. If she kept what she said to a minimum, there were fewer ways she could fall afoul of whatever Beau was expecting.

"A student!" Beau exploded, annoyance plain on her face. "I asked for consultation with a professor of houseology. I don't need a grad student assistant, those only get in the way!"

"Oh." Em shrank back, trying to hide. "Sorry. I didn't know."

Beau ran a hand under her hat, smoothing back her hair. "No no, it's not your fault. It's the institutions' fault for not taking an outsider like me seriously." She puffed up a bit, evidently proud of her maverick outsider status. "I guess I just challenge their beloved status quo too much with my derring-do and rakish antics."

Em blushed as Beau winked. "Is there any way I can help?" she asked.

Beau ran a hand along her whip, pulling it taut. "Looking to be an explorer's assistant, huh? Can't blame you, the lifestyle is pretty glamorous. But it's also dangerous and challenging! Do you think you're up for it?"

No. But Em didn't say that. She nodded. She was a grad student sent to an explorer by mistake now, and that meant she was thirsty to learn whatever she could, eager to impress, and ready to take part in any adventure. Beau's unintended magic circle had wrapped around them both. "Can you tell me what you're doing?"

"We," Beau corrected, "are going on a quest. Because we're adventurers, and we belong in the hidden and secret places of the world. And it'll be a multi-part quest, because those are the best! I'll tell you all about it, assistant, but first—!" She held up a finger, posing to emphasise it. "I need to write a stern letter to Professor Bungalow, who promised me a full consultation! I'll see you bright and early on Thursday, new assistant!"

"Of course," Em agreed. And her phone dinged; that could only mean she'd gotten the "your package has arrived" text message. She and Beau went their separate ways, Em blinking through the transition back to default.

She put the dateviators away in the bedside table before going downstairs, the words "Valdivian Data Drones" ringing in her head. But thankfully, the drone had already left the parcel behind and gone on to its next delivery. She was able to retrieve it without stepping over the threshold. And then she closed the door and had Mac's new hardware in her hands.

In the office, Em laid the parcel on the desk and said, "I just need to rest a little from the dateviators, then I'll be back. Sorry."

When she returned, dateviators on and ready, she recited what she was going to say under her breath. She looked for Mac in the computer; it took a little longer this time. Maybe just because she was tired. But they appeared, looking as chipper as they had at their first meeting.

"It's a pleasure to interface with you symmetrically once more!" they said.

"Hey, Mac," Em replied. "I have the stuff." She plucked a pair of scissors from her junk drawer and sliced the tape keeping the box sealed.

"Excellent!" Mac replied. They watched her unload the hard drive and screwdriver set, each in their own layers of packaging. "I have high hopes that this hardware update will improve the rate at which the OS update will go."

"Mm," Em agreed, taking the little scissors to the plastic shell around the screwdriver. The scissors were outmatched, but Em was not about to give in and track down her kitchen shears for the job (especially since her mother would chew her out for misusing kitchen tools if she ever found out). After a minute of struggle she freed the screwdrivers from their casing.

"Oh wait," she said, remembering Dunk. "Will this work while I'm talking to you? Don't I just kinda… stand there?"

"I don't understand," Mac replied.

"When we interface," Em said. "Mentally, I'm resonating with your animus. I think. But physically I'm not doing anything, right?"

"You're moving physically right now," Mac said. "As you were during our other encounters."

"Huh?" Em waited, but got no further explanation. She supposed that this wasn't really Mac's field of expertise. One more thing she'd need to take to Skylar, then.

"Alright, this should be easy, but I'll guide you through the steps, just to be sure," they said, coming close to Em. They stared down at the computer tower together. "First things first, you've gotta unplug me. It's much safer than poking around when the power's flowing."

"Is that okay?" Em asked, turning sharply to look at Mac. They gave her a casual thumbs-up (one of their holographic screens lit up with a large thumbs-up emoji to match).

"My animus represents the computer as a whole object, regardless of its state. At worst, turning off the power will have a soporific effect on me, but I'll still be fully functional," they told her, while Em ducked under the desk to unplug the tower from the power bar. She flicked off the switch on the power bar and the electronics on her desk went dormant.

"Now, on the right side of my casing there should be some clasps. Click those in and pull up and the whole side panel will come off."

Em nodded. She tucked herself under the desk (she was just the right size to get away with it) and started feeling along the side of the computer tower. She found the seam where the panels met and started running her fingers along it, starting at each corner and meeting in the middle.

"It's… it's on the side, not the seam," Mac said, their voice a little lower and softer. Em glanced over. Their eyes looked a little heavy-lidded. The sleepiness of being unpowered must've been kicking in.

Now that she knew where she was looking the clasps (little buttons, really) were obvious to spot. Em pressed them firmly with her thumbs, hooking them into the indents the buttons laid in, and pulled up. The whole panel lifted away easily and Mac made a mumbly sort of noise. With the panel set aside, Em could see inside the computer.

She must've seen inside it before. She knew what the inside of a computer tower looked like. But looking at it now, it felt like she was seeing the innards of her most-used object for the first time. Her first impression was that it was dusty. She'd definitely been neglecting poor Mac. She puffed up her cheeks and blew.

"Wait—" cried Mac, and Em froze. Neither of them seemed to know what to do for a moment. "It's better if you don't blow me— use your breath" they finally explained. "The moisture from your lungs isn't substantial, but it also isn't good for me."

"Oh." Em felt her cheeks growing hot. She really didn't know what she was doing, did she? "Would the dust mitt be okay?"

"Ideally you'd use compressed air. But for the moment the mitt will be okay, as long as it isn't already overloaded with dust," Mac agreed. Em crawled out from under the desk and twisted until her vertebrae popped, the way she'd used to when she'd been in the habit of being under a desk. The dust mitt was in the office closet, lying in a box, so it wasn't hard to grab it while staying in eyeshot of the computer and Mac. They were looking very loose and relaxed. Must be nice, Em thought, startled at the bitterness of her own thought.

She took the mitt, made of little microfibre fronds that made her hand look a little like an anemone, and slipped it on. After a quick glance at Mac to ensure she wasn't violating some serious rule she brushed the glove along the dustiest surfaces, barely grazing them with the fronds. Mac sighed. It must've been nice to finally get dusted out, even if it hadn't been the foremost concern of theirs at first.

There was a thick mat of dust around the cooling fan. Em winced as she wiped the dust away, and grit her teeth a little harder as Mac hissed behind her. She felt like an invader, an amateur surgeon, an over-ambitious interloper. The mat of dust mostly came away on her glove. Em set it aside to clean after.

"You'll have to mount me— mount the hard drive in me," Mac murmured, a luxuriant syrupy quality in their voice. "See the box screwed in at the front of the case?"

Em followed their instructions carefully, not moving a piece or unscrewing a screw until instructed. This really was a simple process, as far as she understood it, but she wanted to show Mac that she was listening, that she could follow directions. She hadn't switched tracks from their "delete a lot of photos" plan because she wanted to wrest power from them. She just wanted to do right by them.

As she screwed the now-mounted hard drive back into place, Mac mumbled, "Why'd Valdivian design me with non-standard screw sizes? They made it way harder to screw me properly."

Em flushed again and waited for Mac to continue, but it seemed they had nothing more to say. She squeaked out, "I think it's something to do with right-of-repair?"

"That sounds like it's relevant. Clever as you are pretty," Mac cooed sweetly. Em was ready to combust, but then Mac started giving instructions for where the cables would go. There were only two cable to connect, and it wasn't like it was hard to guess where they were supposed to plug in.

Em plugged in the first end of the cable, Mac said, "One," with a little bit of tension in their voice. She recognised that tone. They continued their count with the next two plugs, their voice getting tighter with each count. When they sighed out, "Four," with all that tension suddenly gone, it was too much for Em. She scrambled to get the side panel back into place and emerged from under the desk feeling distinctly frazzled. She found the power bar switch with her foot and snapped it on.

Immediately a change went through Mac, their eyes suddenly wide and bright and their face turning decidedly red.

"Is everything okay?" Em asked. Better to just keep moving along.

Mac took a moment to consider themself, then smiled, "Everthing's operating normally. I don't feel much faster or more efficient, but I do have more mental space to perform my work with. Now that I have it, I don't know how I ever lived without this."

"That's good." Em picked through the assorted remains of this little adventure. The hard drive booklet went onto her bookshelf with the rest of her appliance warrantees. The cardboard she stacked on one end of the desk. The plastic she dumped into the trash. The screwdriver could make a new home for itself in the toolbox when all of this was said and done.

When she turned on the computer everything worked as it should, so Em sat back down in her comfy desk chair. She and Mac took the familiar path back to Valdivian.com to download the OS update, properly this time.

"Mac," Em said as the file began to download, "I'm sorry."

"No need to be sorry," they replied. "You're getting the download started now, that's all I could ask."

"No, it's not that," she answered. "I… I upset you, when I decided to do a hardware upgrade instead of doing what you said, right?"

"Oh…" She looked over at them. "It's not that I was upset," they told her, looking her in the eyes. "It's that I thought you'd want to replace me. I am fully aware that the base hardware of this machine is a decade old. In the world of personal computers, I am out of date. If you wanted to you could replace me with a younger, sleeker model that comes with SSD memory out of the box then no one would blame you. And I won't pretend that having anyone poking in your insides is easy to encourage, especially when a careless move could render me non-functional.

"But then I had some time to think about it, and also to observe your browsing habits, and remembered it would be extremely inefficient to upgrade me if you were also planning on replacing me. So even if I'm not good enough for you, you appear to want to keep me around. And you've clearly shown that your moves with me are not careless." Before Em could fully comprehend what Mac was saying, the download had finished. "Oh, finally! Let's get the update process started!"

Em clicked through a few prompts, and then the screen went black. White text faded onto the screen, informing Em that the update process was starting and not to turn off the computer or unplug it. Mac was grinning, back to being thrilled.

"The update it probably going to take all night," they told her. "So let's regroup in the morning and you can finally meet the polished, fully-upgraded me."

"Okay," Em said, picking up the cardboard to take to the recycling. Mac vanished and Em felt the reality where objects weren't uniformly hotties who spoke to her re-assert itself. The computer monitor showed more white text on a black background, assuring her that the upgrade was ongoing and would be improving her experience significantly.

She took the cardboard to the recycling, going back to the office only to leave the pendant there. She wasn't sure what else she was going to do with her day, but she was satisfied that she'd done her best with the dateviators today.

Chapter Text

Mac was yawning when Em called them with the dateviators, looking almost sweetly groggy. "Hey, Mac," she said, fastening the dice cage pendant around her neck. "How's the upgrade?"

"Just finishing the last reboot now," they answered. Em felt herself mirroring their sleepiness, despite being recently caffeinated. She tilted her neck and stretched to the ceiling, letting her backbone pop pleasantly. She and Mac exchanged a few moments of small-talk while the progress bar ticked forward at its uneven pace.

Then it finished and the monitor was showing the login screen again. Em punched in her password while Mac waited in breathless anticipation. The computer chimed to confirm she was logged in and then she was at her desktop.

"It's everything I hoped!" Mac proclaimed, clenching their hands into excited fists. "Look at how smooth and modern the UI is. Flat colours are really on-trend right now."

Em looked. Her computer didn't look too wildly different, though it was going to take a little time to get used to the new arrangement of all the basic UI elements. Also, all the little .txt files on her desktop appeared to have been shuffled wildly across the screen. Weird.

Mac themself looked… exactly the same? Maybe their throbber glasses frames were a little more matte? But honestly that could've just been a trick of the light for all she knew. They were still gushing about having an interface that begged to be interfaced with, clearly thrilled to look and feel better in some way that Em couldn't quite see.

"I should start meeting other objects again," they considered, looking between their dateviator-created embodied form and the GUI on the monitor. "I mean, nothing is ever going to replace the relationship we have of user and device, but now I'm actually ready to meet others, too."

Em paused. Something about Mac's tone… "Like… romantically?" she chanced.

"I want something more than being a terminal for Valdivian searches and silly cat videos," Mac answered. "The whole house knows about me, but I don't really know them very well. Even my own office-mates!" Mac looked at Em, really looked at her. "Maybe our relationship is also interfering?"

"What?" Em said, suddenly feeling guilty.

"We tend to monopolise each other's time," Mac answered. "And please don't misunderstand, I value our time together. Your double-clicking and typing skills are second–to-none. But I think my role of being your computer is preventing me from exploring other worthwhile relationships here in the house."

Oh. "Sorry," Em said. She didn't really know how else to respond; Mac had effectively called her an overly clingy partner without actually saying it. "I'll… I'll try to give you but space. But, uh, I still need to use the computer for work," she said.

"Of course. Our professional and personal relationship will still exist. But since you're spending less time with me already to use the dateviators, that's time for me to explore my new relationships, too. Taking some time apart from each other would be good for us, we could come together again with a much greater understanding of what we want from the other." Mac seemed to be convincing themself in real time of the logic and cleverness of this idea.

"So… I shouldn't use the dateviators on you?" she asked.

"Not for a little while," they agreed. "We should have plenty of time to learn about ourselves before coming back and discussing what our relationship should be."

Em nodded. "Okay," she said. She was surprised at how disappointed she was. Mac certainly hadn't said anything specific about their relationship to this point, but the way they'd occasionally flirted, the innuendo that slipped into their conversation, it was hard for Em to not feel like they had reneged on some kind of promise to her. She definitely needed to work on that feeling.

And it wasn't like Mac needed her permission to go and meet others! But she supposed they did need her agreement to not call on them too often. For all Mac had called their interfacing symmetrical, Em was suddenly aware of the additional power that only she held between the two of them. The timing of their next encounter was almost completely in her hands.

Was it hard for the things around the house to deal with that? That not only were they completely at her mercy physically, but at her beck and call when it came to conversation?

"See you soon," Mac said, smiling like they hadn't just given Em something to worry about.

⁂

Almost as if in reply to those very concerns, when Em attempted to meet Holly in the gym closet again she was nowhere to be seen. Em was certain she was looking into Holly's wavelength, given she'd felt the slightly dizzy sensation of going back to the default wavelength immediately after trying.

It was almost heartening to not see her, an affirmation that an object was not obligated to see her if it didn't wish to. Still, the checklist gremlin in the back of Em's mind was displeased. It would've been very satisfying to have finally spoken to all the things in one space.

The mixed feeling was still one Em could be satisfied with. Better to not intrude on objects than to deny their agency just for the sake of the checklist gremlin. And it wasn't like her calendar wasn't already full to bursting with potential social calls (or at least it certainly felt that way!).

When she returned to Dunk as she'd promised—and this time dressed for exercise—he smiled like he'd just won the decathlon. "Ready to get sweaty?" he asked.

"I think so?" Em replied, removing her pendant and leaving it on the trophy shelf. "But I don't think I actually did anything yesterday?"

"Well you didn't physically do a lot yesterday," Dunk agreed, "but you definitely did something: visualisation! Being able to go through everything mentally is an important skill for any athlete; you're just getting a unique way to train it."

"Uh," Em said, and Dunk continued.

"You remember what we did yesterday, right? You remember what it felt like to do those stretches properly, and you remember what I told you about keeping good form. That's all training, too." He flashed an enormous grin, the intensity of which probably would've been too much if Em hadn't already found herself liking him.

"So… I'm working out in my brain?" she said, testing the idea.

"Exactly!" Dunk agreed. "It's probably a good idea to do it with your body, too, when you can," he winked, "but I'm happy to show you the ropes. So, for today I thought we'd do something familiar: yoga!"

Of all the gear Em had acquired over the years (not all of it by her own hand) the yoga mat had been her favourite, to the extent she had one. She liked the idea of being flexible, and she'd been encouraged to build that ability now and again by other people in her life.

Once she'd warmed up (she was increasingly sure that Dunk was just naturally always warmed up) he led her through a series of sun salutations, something she remembered enough of to follow along without needing to watch him directly. Maybe it was just because Dunk actually was in reality the yoga mat and not really the smiling hunk beside her, but he was also able to gently correct Em's form in ways that should've been impossible for him to see.

"You're doing great!" Dunk said as they lingered in downward dog position. "The muscle memory is still there, all you gotta do is polish it up."

"Thanks," Em said, feeling her face get hot. This was… good. Nice. But she could feel an old bad habit starting to surface. She breathed deeply. She was only feeling like this because of the exercise, she told herself.

"No problem!" Dunk said, all cheer. Then, "Hey, wanna see something cool?"

Of course she did. "Please," Em answered.

"You might need to stand up to see." She did, and watched as Dunk raised one leg while the rest of him stayed in a perfect downward dog postion, finishing only when he was doing the splits. Em felt herself getting hot and bothered in an entirely predictable way.

"Wow!" she cheered, bringing her hands to her face to hide the fact she was blushing fiercely.

"Wanna give it a try?" Dunk asked. "I can give you a hand, if you want it."

She might die. She'd probably die. Her poor heart wasn't going to handle this. She saw the almost puppy-like innocence on Dunk's face. "Yeah," she said, settling back on the mat.

She got into downward dog and let the unkind voice in her head crack its joke about how she was "presenting" herself. She lifted a leg. She did not achieve anything close to Dunk's split.

"Just gonna give you a boost. I'll grab your ankle and you tell me if it gets to be too much, okay?" Dunk said from behind her. Em hummed an okay, focused entirely on staying up. She wasn't going to collapse now.

The hand that closed around her ankle was warm and firm, the hold almost professional in its polite lack of assumption. Dunk's boost helped her past the limits gravity and her own strength had put on her, now testing the limits of her flexibility.

It wasn't even close to what Dunk could achieve, but he still said, "Great job!" when her leg could not longer comfortably rise. "Now, I'm gonna let go, you try and bring your leg down in a slow and controlled way, alright?"

Em did her best. And she didn't slam her foot to the ground as quickly as gravity would have insisted she did. She dropped out of the pose and onto her hands and knees. Dunk seemed pleased, at least, giving her a hand to stand again.

He started to say, "We should probably get started with a cool-down now—"

A shrill scream cut him off. Em flinched badly. It was a scream she didn't recognise, but it was coming from inside the house. Inside the second floor bathroom, even. How had someone gotten in? Why were they screaming?

"Ugh," Dunk said. For the first time his expression wasn't one of determination, enthusiasm, or happiness. He looked downright irritated. "Bathsheba. What's she want this time?"

That reaction… calmed her down. Clearly this wasn't a great danger if Dunk was treating it like an upstairs neighbour being noisy. "Bathsheba?" she asked. "Is she the bathtub, then?"

"Slam dunk," he replied, then seemed to realise was he was saying. "As in, you're right, that's a slam dunk. Please don't slam me."

"I won't," she promised.

"Normally the bathroom folk handle Bathsheba," Dunk continued, "but if you want we can go check out what's happening."

Em was curious. She had a lot of questions building up, but one was certainly the most pertinent. "Should I… meet you there?" She nudged the dateviators up her nose subconsciously.

"Yeah, I'll meet you there," Dunk replied.

All the satisfying exhaustion from the sun salutations evaporated as her body seemed to remember it was all just visualisation. Em groaned a little at the loss as she picked up the dice cage off the trophy shelf.

She was pretty sure she liked exercising with Dunk. It would've been so much easier to get into the habit of regular exercise — as opposed to the sporadic attempts she'd made before — if she could actually exercise with him.

Em padded into the bathroom, getting the pendant clasp fastened as her feet touched tile. She did think for a second about Skylar's warning to space out uses of the dateviators, but she would just have to deal with the consequences.

Upon seeing Bathsheba for the first time, Em's reaction was an ineloquent holy shit. It was going to be next to impossible to soak in the tub with knowledge that the tub was this exquisitely beautiful.

"Oh my god get it away from me!" she shrieked in a voice that would've been lilting and alluring in better circumstances. Em had absolutely no idea what could've been bothering her, but it was very clear that she'd gotten plenty of attention. The bathroom was absolutely packed.

"Ahem." Em turned and saw Dorian, arms crossed and looking deeply deeply tired. "You've come at a bad time," he said, almost apologetically.

"Ahh! Who are you?" Bathsheba shouted, thrusting a finger towards the doorway. Em looked at her in alarm, but the response came from behind her.

"I'm Dunk. Dunk Shuttlecock? I'm one of your neighbours?" Dunk answered, standing next to Dorian in the doorframe. "We heard you screaming."

"Oh, not you, Dunk. The little thing in front of you," Bathsheba pronounced. She pointed again, and this time it was obvious she was pointing to Em.

"I'm Em," she said and tried to sink back as everything in the room except an object-person lying on the ground and halfway under the bathtub turned to look at her. "I live here?" She couldn't decide if she was happy or upset that the bathtub couldn't recognise her. It was definitely a relief to know she hadn't been watched while bathing. But was she really so inconsequential in her own home?

"Wait wait wait," Bathsheba said, then burst out with, "oh, I remember now! You do like to have a soak now and again, don't you?"

It was impossible to respond in a way that would've let Em keep her dignity. She was actually grateful when Bathsheba continued to shout.

"As the owner of the house you should really be the one to get that horrible thing away from me!" she declared. "How could you neglect me like this?"

"Almost got it…" said the one halfway under the bathtub, evidently trying to reach something underneath.

Dorian cleared his throat again. "We got more than enough bodies in here to handle a package rat, I should think. Amir, Dunk, clear out and give the rest of us some space."

"Oh, very well," sighed an exquisite man dressed in silver. Em did a double-take. It spoke to how thoroughly Bathsheba commanded attention in the bathroom that she didn't actually register the beautiful man until now. "I shall see you another day, Bathsheba. And my dear," he added, looking directly at Em, "I shall hope we may speak face-to-face soon."

Bathsheba lilted a sweet farewell to him as he left the space. Dunk tapped Em on the shoulder. "Good work today," he said, like they were still in the gym. "Try the yoga during the mornings, it's a pretty good way to wake up. And don't forget to rest, too."

"I will," Em said. "Thank you."

"And how about you come back next week and we'll try using the weights?" Dunk added. "Make it a Workout Wednesday."

"Yeah," she agreed. "That sounds fun." Dunk left with a huge smile, and Em felt herself smiling, too.

"Drat!" said the object reaching under the tub. "It's hiding in the corner, I can't reach." They got up from lying on the floor and wiped away the dust that had accumulated on their front (Em made a note to vacuum). When they turned and met Em's eyes they brightened immediately.

"Madame," Dorian said, "this is Barry Styles, your beauty supplies."

She should've guessed; the lipstick–inspired hairstyle was a dead giveaway.

"It's a pleasure, darling!" Barry declared. "Shame that I'm not exactly meeting you at my best, though it does eliminate the pressure to make a good first impression. And if my first impression can't be good, at least it can be strong. That's got to be worth something, wouldn't you say?"

His light, friendly tone was disarming, although Em still felt a little nervous. It was hard not to when Barry sounded just a little like he was trying to guess where steady ground was as he was making the leap. "Nice to meet you," she replied.

"Yes, yes, good for you getting to meet each other, but can we focus on the task at hand? I'm being infested with vermin as we speak!" Bathsheba demanded. She looked a bit put out to no longer be in the centre of attention.

"What's wrong?" Em asked. She felt she had to step up, now that she'd shown her face and brought so much attention to herself.

"There's a horrible little thing skittering around under me and I need it removed," Bathsheba grumbled.

"A package rat," Barry added. "I really should learn more about them, there's always a few of them in the house."

Em looked around for a moment for a hint, then Dorian chimed in, "It's an inanimal, made of plastic packaging."

"And it looks like a rat?"

"Exactly," he agreed. "Mateo Manta, the blanket downstairs, runs a shelter for inanimals. If we can catch it there's a good home waiting for it, but they're a bugger to catch."

Em nodded and watched the floor under the bathtub. Nothing happened for a moment. She dropped down to her hands and knees and looked under the tub. The far corner was deep in shadows, but Em could see a flicker of movement. She found her phone in her pocket and lit up the flashlight, squinting as she almost blinded herself. As her vision returned to normal she could start to see the package rat, a little creature that looked like some plastic packaging film had been scrunched and molded into the shape of a rat, a scraggly bit of loose plastic forming a pseudo-tail. The one eye she could see was a sticker.

The poor thing looked scared. Given the noise and chaos that its presence had stirred, Em could sympathise. She laid very still, watching the creature.

"Mateo will be able to take care of it, right?" Em checked.

"Mateo is a sweetheart, he'll take in any inanimals that need a home," Barry confirmed.

That settled it. "I'll get it. Give me a second." She took in a short breath and took the dateviators off. She was standing in the middle of the bathroom again, the change in position enough to make her briefly nauseated. But after a breath she laid down again, looking under the tub. The package rat was a little ball of crushed up plastic film. She must have missed the garbage can when throwing away some packaging, and then it got swept under the bath at some point. Maybe by getting caught in a draught when she'd opened a door.

She grabbed a hanger from the bedroom and used it to sweep the bit of plastic (and no small amount of dust!) out from the corner, pocketing it as she stood. She gave the lip of the tub a pat. "Sorry for missing it before," she said.

That was one more thing she was going to have to learn and understand better: what exactly made an object an inanimal versus a full person? Did she make inanimals each time she tore open packaging? The questions were really starting to pile up. Em didn't have a plan for tomorrow yet, but she already knew her first stop would be Skylar.

⁂

As the sun hit the horizon, filling the house with syrupy golden light, Em donned the dateviators for the last time that day. The golden hour light became so vibrant, so intense, that it felt like she was in the middle of a dream. She took the little piece of plastic into her hands and focused on the soft knit blanket before her. Mateo, she thought, imagining the sensual softness of being wrapped up in the chunky knit blanket.

She had about half a second to register Mateo's round face and fluffy white hair before the package rat squealed and tried to leap from her hands. Em yelped in turn, closing her hands around the inanimal, trying to avoid crushing it without letting its prickly claws scrape up her palms.

"Whoa there, buddy!" said Mateo, diving towards her. Em glanced up and saw his hands come forward, closing around hers. His hands were work-rough, but there was a certain warmth and plushness to his touch that was impossible to miss, and his hold on her was gentle but firm. He started speaking softly to the package rat, soothing it while his cupped hands kept Em's grip steady. She stayed extremely still, joints all locked in position of out fear, looking between Mateo and the rat carefully.

As first impressions went, Em did not consider this one a winner for her. While she certainly had nothing against the critters of the world, she didn't consider herself a big animal/inanimal person. And here she was, fumbling with a rat in front of a true inanimal lover, if the other objects were to be believed. And he was certainly making a good first impression on her. The package rat was getting calmer and calmer in her hold the longer he spoke to it.

"Feeling a little less nervous, right?" he asked the rat, shifting one of his thumbs to stroke it between its ears. "You've got nothing to be scared of now."

For Em, who'd so often compared herself to a small woodland creature, those gentle words had an embarrassingly strong effect on her, too. Mateo changed his grip on her, cupping his hands below hers.

"You can pass her to me," Mateo said, still watching the package rat.

Em opened her hands slowly, letting the rat crawl from her palms to his at her own pace. Once she was fully standing in Mateo's hold he pulled his hands back towards himself, tucking the rat close to his chest. He cupped her in one hand and stroked her with the other, the action clearly coming to him automatically.

Their eyes met. "Thank you," Em said, nodding a little. "I pulled her out from under the bathtub, and everyone told me to come to you."

"Ah, yeah. I think the whole house heard Bathsheba. She's not really supposed to be using the house to get everyone's attention if it isn't an emergency, but at least you brought this little girl here," Mateo said. "This is Scraps of Hope, the inanimal rescue. We take in all the strays left around the house. Oh, and I'm Mateo. Mateo Manta."

The same double-vision that Em had experienced at Chance's game table was beginning to return. Em was in her living room, but she was also at the door of an animal rescue, with space for creatures to play. At the periphery of her awareness, she could swear she heard barking, the sounds of dogs frolicking.

Em introduced herself in turn, looking at the package rat again. One of her sticker eyes was torn and ragged, and the poor creature as a whole looked… scrunkly. She must've dealt with a lot under the bath, or perhaps this was the result of Em's own carelessness.

"Now, what should we call you?" he asked the rat. "Something sweet? Something more sassy?" He looked up at Em and brought out an incandescent smile. "I know! In honour of our new friend, it has to be a name that starts with M."

He tested the sound a few times. Em couldn't shake the feeling that M would be better for a mouse's name, but she wasn't about to argue. And then a name came to her anyways. "What about Mylar?" she suggested.

Mateo looked thoughtful, testing the name. "Mylar… Mylar the package rat. Myyylar. What do you think?" he asked the rat, raising her to eye level. When he got no protest from the package rat he grinned at Em. "Looks like Mylar it is."

Em watched him stroke the rat fondly a little longer. Golden hour was making her feel extra sentimental, it seemed.

"I should probably bring this girl somewhere she can rest," Mateo said, adding, "besides my hand."

"She looks comfy," Em commented, and Mateo's smile was one of pure contentment.

"I hope so. And sorry for leaving you, I know we really only just met. I promise, come back another day and I'll give you a proper introduction to the rescue."

"Thank you, I'm looking forward to it," Em replied, and in that moment she was.

Over a dinner of leftovers, she was left to ponder what had happened that day. Yes, her old bad habit of crushing on anyone who showed her even the smallest hint of attention was coming back. She really hadn't conquered that habit so much as just given it nothing to focus on, though. It was time to properly fix it, before it made her relationships with the objects in the house awkward.

On the other hand, what a day! She wasn't entirely sure where she stood with Mac, but at least she'd cleared the air with them. She still had yet to find Holly, but thanks to Bathsheba's shouting she'd encountered several new objects. Dunk's yoga lesson had been exactly the kind of workout she didn't know she needed (her ankle still felt tingly and warm from the memory of it), and now she'd found out her blanket was a sweetheart running an animal—inanimal?—rescue.

She had almost certainly lost the opportunity to make a good first impression with Bathsheba, but maybe if she was quiet and helpful and learned to love the inanimals of her home she could overcome the poor first impression that Mateo must've gotten from her.

Dateviators used up for the day, Em passed her evening in a quiet blur of gaming and TV.