Archive of Our Own

It was odd that Luigi should wake up at all. He was the type to “sleep like a log”, so Peasley had said – Luigi didn’t understand why a log was the point of comparison, but had gathered its meaning from the smirk on the lips that said it. Indeed, anyone burdened with the job of getting him up before he was ready would, invariably, need to indulge in the art of shaking and/or slapping and/or scaring him awake.

And Peasley hadn’t been making any noise, nor had he turned on any lamps, and it was not as though he was heavy enough to cause the shifting of weight if he moved out of bed. It meant that, truly, had everything been normal when Luigi’d stirred, he likely would have fallen right back asleep and forgotten the moment. He’d read somewhere that little moments of wakefulness such as those happened five times a night or something.

Truly, it was so subtle that he didn’t notice for a few moments. Perhaps Peasley had only materialised after Luigi’s eyes had grown used to the dark. And that was backwards, because even in the black Peasley glowed faintly, so it was like he had waited some seconds to turn that glow on.

He was not lying with Luigi but sat upright, near the far corner of the bed, back facing him. Though the fuzz of lowlight made it difficult for Luigi to hold conviction about it, he could make out what he thought was Peasley using a finger to trace circles into his own palm. He breathed slowly, softly.

It was so strange that Luigi didn’t have the thoughts to say anything, nor to move. Not unlikely, that he was too enthralled by what had to be called the beauty of the scene. Peasley was not altogether still, yet had the texture of a figurine; his eyes (so far as Luigi’s conjecture could go) were unfocussed yet remained open.

While Luigi professed to an adoration for Peasley’s smile, the way the eyebrows curved around his face, it had largely been for a lack of experience having seen anything different on him. Peasley had such mastery over his features that, until this moment, Luigi had presupposed that it was merely the way his muscles had grown. Yet here he was presented with the possibility that this had never been true, for Peasley’s expression was neutral – no, not neutral – it was vaguer, if not empty: but only empty in that a deep well that swallows light before it reflects off any water must be assumed to be empty. His cheek didn’t bunch up at the edge of any smile. His eyelids were no longer glued to his eyebrows. Once again, it evoked the passive expression of a figurine.

Once enough of this reflection had brought to Luigi’s mind the need to determine a correct course of action, lying there admiring him became underlined with some anxiety. Inexplicably, he didn’t want Peasley to turn around and spot a silently awoken Luigi there. Nor did he, with a casual “Peasley? Why are you awake?”, want Peasley to notice Luigi’s having noticed him. It felt, without cause, an embarrassment to them both; perhaps coloured by how Luigi did have a mild fear that, with his tendency not to respond to everything as charmingly as Peasley could, he was something of a bad boyfriend. Naturally, the best choice remaining would thus be to stop watching and go back to sleep himself, but Luigi had no desire to stop such an enjoyable thing as looking at Peasley, seeing as he had no premonition that he should have any opportunity to see him like this again. That prospect in effect made it the worst out of the options he had.

Thus he did not make any choice at all, not unaware that time going on only increased the likelihood that Peasley would come to spot Luigi staring at him.

For now, however, Peasley was preoccupied, and his thoughts seemed to be going in strange and unsuiting directions. For the finger that had been circling the inner of his hand had instead begun scratching downwards, in a repetitive line, as though seeking where the flesh might give and reveal a ravine between the bones. And then he started shrugging, repeatedly with no visible satisfaction in relieving what he was trying to relieve; so vigorously that Luigi wondered if he was being bothered by a bug, one that Luigi himself had failed to notice in the dark.

It only escalated, to Peasley bringing his elbows level with his shoulders and rolling them backwards, then elongating his arms all the way outwards as if stretching on a time limit, hissing softly, and the agitation was not wasted, for it was not lost on Luigi.

It was by no means calculated or lengthily considered when Luigi raised one hand to latch onto that of Peasley which was closest to him in all the movement. That lack of forethought also explained his terrible choice of question.

“Peasley? Are you awake?”

Peasley immediately relaxed his arms onto the bed, so that Luigi’s hand was wedged between it and Peasley’s palm. He knitted their fingers together. It was only after all this that he turned his head around, ran his other hand’s fingers through his hair in a way that rather brightened the air around him, and laughed just as brightly.

“Hahaha! It’d be hard for me to be asleep sitting like this!”

Luigi giggled along. It gave the atmosphere a fleeting assertion that nothing off-script was happening, and that the conversation could just as easily conclude there, and that nobody would ever remember this altogether – let alone as a time Peasley had caused Luigi alarm.

Luigi passed a few breaths observing Peasley’s face, and now that he’d lost the pensive, lightweight one he’d been admiring, was unsure whether he lamented it. The space allowed Peasley’s bejewelled, forced sense of normalcy to, like a mist, condensate and then dry up.

“Why’r’a you awake?”

“Oh, I wasn’t, really. But why are you awake, my sweetheart? Did you have a bad dream?”

“No, I’m’a just sorta… drift awake, or’a something… But then I’m’a see you sitting, yaknow, so. Why’r’a you not come back to bed? Yaneed-ta sleep…”

“So eager, hm… And so restless? I dare say that…” Peasley all but turned his body around in its entirety, leaning over so that he came close to Luigi’s face, using his free hand to caress it. He winked unsubtly. “Do you need my help to get you to relax? Hm?”

Luigi fell into a fit of giggles again. He had to remind himself in the strongest terms that to take Peasley up on such an offer now, after what he’d seen and needed to address, would indeed make him the bad boyfriend he feared being. “Hehehehe! No, it’s’a not that at all! Um, I’m’a – well, I’m’a first just wanna watch you because, because um, well, you’r’a, I’m’a never see you like that before, just not… um, smiling, and you’r’a look like a beautiful, um… toy.”

“Toy?” Peasley smiled further, and his eyebrows quirked even more suggestively.

“Um, not like the kids’ thing… The word, um -”

“It wouldn’t be the kids’ thing, no!”

“Peasley!” Luigi was laughing so much that it was ascending into silence intermittently, and severely jeopardising his displaying-empathy project. “Listen, I’m’a mean – the one it’s’a tha-one that’s’a just for looking at. On a shelf.”

“A statue? A model? A figurine, a replica.”

“Yea, yea, those.” Luigi nodded fiercely. “Yea, ‘n I’m’a just wanna… look, for a while…”

There was not necessarily an absence of a standard response from Peasley at the overly blunt emotion, because he bit his lip and poked Luigi’s nose, evocative of a flirtatious chastisement, but it lacked the expected flourish of saying “I like a man who can appreciate a good view!” or something similar. No, his eyes merely softened, or at least incidentally looked to have done in the dark, and out of the side of Peasley’s oh-so-teasingly bitten lip there was a slow, thoughtful sigh.

Frankly, it created a faint shadow at the lining of Luigi’s stomach, a little confused, if not downright anxious, as Peasley only emitting that much instead of speaking felt like an empty space. His mind nonetheless promptly busied itself with the wordless spaghetti emotion that was how it felt for them to look each other in the eyes without interruption. Indeed, again, it was such that Luigi could carry this sentiment for a couple of seconds that this was the end of the matter. That nothing needed to be commented on anymore.

Oh, but it did, didn’t it?

“But you’r’a not tell me why you’r’a awake.”

Peasley didn’t blink to look away, nor did he answer, but determination puffed up his eyebrows.

“Peasley?”

“Aren’t you going to go back to sleep now?” Peasley asked.

“Eh, well, I’m’a just wanna make sure you’r’a okay, first…”

“That’s all?”

“Mm. Because I’m’a think, what if something’s’a wrong, yea? Or-or maybe not. But that’s’a why I’m’a just wanna ask. Why you’r’a awake. I mean.”

Peasley tilted his head, then smiled again. “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s nothing exciting! I was simply thinking, and it got to the point that I knew sleep was not coming, that sense in your head and gut I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

“Ah?” Luigi kept his voice level, so Peasley didn’t get the idea that Luigi was confused for the sake of disagreeing with him per se. “I’m’a not sure. I’m’a never do that…”

“You’ve never been thinking so much that you couldn’t fall asleep?”

“Ehm, no! I’m’a always very excited to go to sleep! I’m’a um, well, you know, I do think, I’m’a not never think. But. When it’s’a bedtime I’m’a always fall asleep immediately!”

“That would be right, wouldn’t it?” Peasley beamed. “You’re a special case. You know, I could hear you sleep-breathing so quickly after we turned in that I’d thought you’d started choking!”

“Eeh?” Luigi brushed some of his slumber-ruined fringe up and off his forehead, which in that moment felt like a display of indignation. “What’s’a that mean? Sleep-breathing?”

“I’ll demonstrate.” Peasley straightened up to how he had been sitting before, but still facing Luigi, and feigned ironing down his nightshirt with his hand. He cleared his throat softly, then began to perform the ugliest, most unbecoming snoring to which the world had ever borne witness. The lack of light permitted the imagination to suggest that he even brought the drool down his chin. Luigi glowed hot in his cheeks and ears.

“That’s’a just not true!” He cackled.

“How would you know that? I’m the one lucky observer. And I tell you, it was instant! You must have a special switch in your body that you can use to turn all the functions off. It was like something out of a movie!”

“I… I’m’a not keep you awake? From the. Uhm, from the sleep-breathing.”

“No, no! Never. You must see – it appears abnormal to you, because you’re one of the few in the world who falls asleep too easily to experience it, but trust me that having nights where you’re in your thoughts is also very normal.”

“It’s’a happen to you very much?”

“Ah, no more than anybody else, I’d say. Besides you! I’ve found the one man in the world better than me at this!’

Luigi considered, in the privacy of his own head, that it was fortunate to be able to go through some imitation of the phenomenon now. Indeed, by this point he was lucid enough to have the feeling that he’d not wander back into sleep from here, too alert at the hands of Peasley’s revelations and, loathe to admit it though he might be, most particularly when they should be given in his voice. Peasley was speaking a near indetectable degree more quietly, deeper in the throat, and its fleetingness, that Luigi had to work for it to enjoy it so, had addictive qualities.

“Then… ah….” Luigi sat himself up slowly, shuffling to Peasley’s left, so they were beside one another, thighs lined up. “What’r’a ya think about?”

“What was I thinking about?”

“Mm! Can I hear?”

It couldn’t be said whether it was confidence or comfort or, perhaps, an inability to properly read when Peasley wanted what with an equal desire to compensate, that had Luigi lightly layering his left-hand fingers atop Peasley’s own left hand. Peasley, equally lightly, curled his palm outwards to better accommodate him.

“Nothing important! Or, rather, nothing that you’d benefit from hearing,” he declared.

‘It’s’a secret?” Luigi scratched under his chin with one finger of the hand which remained free.

“No, no! Not at all. That’s how unimportant it is!”

“Well, I’m’a still wanna hear. You. It’s’a… well…! I’m’a really love how your voice’s’a sound right now like this, um, when it’s’a late so you’r’a bit more quiet.” And he abruptly kissed Peasley’s hand, so out of line with his conscious efforts that his muscles had yet to move so as to hold it tighter, not altogether dropping it but getting embarrassingly close. “If you’r’a can’t sleep yet, well, um, it’s’a nice when you’r’a come ta-bed with me, so, ah, I’ll’a wait! With you! If that’s’a, if that’s’a okay.”

When he had the gall to turn his head, to confirm what Peasley thought of all that, he was presented with the softest, most darling expression, even if Luigi couldn’t truly say what emotion it signified. On instinct, he would have reported “sad”, but that couldn’t have been so, for he was smiling, smirking even, and levitated his hand once more to hold it to Luigi’s lips himself. Luigi had to hope he was being told to kiss it again, since that was what he began to do; leaving his mouth faintly pressed against what he’d been given for some seconds at a time.

“Well, try this on for size! I was thinking about how much I love you. Ha!”

Luigi obediently giggled against where he’d been implicitly ordered to keep his lips. Though it would have been nice, it occurred to Luigi yet again, had he been able to think of a response that would make Peasley feel as happy as his declaration had made Luigi. Even if Peasley himself showed no signs of lamenting it here as anywhere, a lack of fluency in flirtation rung of a lack of reciprocity to Luigi’s less secure mind, hence the bad boyfriend concerns.

“Mm! It keeps showing up in my train of thought. Even when you wouldn’t expect it! You see, I was thinking about, well – nothing in particular, and it ended up tumbling that way, you know.” He quirked to the side, and said, “would you keep doing that? Keep kissing me. It’s lovely.”

The request must have been made deliberately, to throw Luigi off the course of what he had planned to say. His bemusement at Peasley’s odd vagueness was wiped from his head, to make way for a fuzzy giddy-nervousness – and instead of asking anything useful, anything emotionally intelligent, he muttered a high-pitched “yes of course okay!” and did as asked.

Peasley remained unspeaking for a time. Not, mind, in a way that concerned Luigi just then; he was very good at making the right amount of little noises to inform him that he was enjoying whatever Luigi was doing. When he began to speak again, sentences came in wisps, not unlike a candle behind the corner of a wall that occasionally bent into view, perhaps not entirely said on purpose.

“Lima and I had an argument yesterday, so…” a pause where Luigi kissed his knuckles again. “It was completely unexpected. I had no feeling that anybody would have disagreed with me before it happened!”

Luigi’s brain had started to level once more, no longer rocked by the thrill of something so little as kissing Peasley’s hand. It gave him the clarity that promoted sharper intention; a sharper desire to ask Peasley if he couldn’t be a little less vague with his recounting. But before doing so, he pushed his luck without truly reflecting: he stretched out Peasley’s arm, across Luigi’s front, and used his free hand to stroke the top of Peasley’s head. He’d have finished his little stunt from there, for he did have an idea in mind, but the fuzzy, thrilled feeling returned, and he fell too love-tipsy to execute it just then. He suppressed an exuberant giggle about it all, but the suppression was only successful insofar as he gave the impression of shuddering instead.

A warm, evidently unconscious sigh came from Peasley, and then the words: “And you mustn’t tell anybody this. But…”

As if to find an outlet for how extremely his heart perked up at that preamble, and then again for his near-desperation for clarification at his silence, Luigi had begun kissing Peasley’s hand all over again ravenously. He even made his way to the wrist. Had he been any more sane, he would have reflected some on what an oddly, delightfully vague form of communication this was. Then again, it was surely more effective than Luigi’s faulty words, and more mutually enjoyable.

“You’re a charming little devil, aren’t you!”

This time, Luigi didn’t supress the laughter in his nose. He avoided words yet, only continuing with what Peasley so liked.

“Don’t tell anybody this, my love. It’s unflattering. But at the time, I didn’t give the most convincing retort. It didn’t get Lima to see things the right way, anyhow. And then… tonight, just as I was laying there, somehow, all these better things that would have worked had I said them started flying into my head!”

Luigi hummed, and moved to kissing Peasley’s left shoulder, for it was naturally much easier to reach when sitting this way. His nightwear had a river-like formlessness to it, nearly transparent but not quite, that made it indistinguishable to Luigi where it ended. Even now, kissing it felt not like kissing fabric, but like it was indeed Peasley’s skin, if only in a dream he was in the process of forgetting in the morning.

“Yeah, I’m’a do that too,” Luigi mumbled. “Yaknow, imagining that I’m’a win an argument when I’m’a in tha-shower.” Peasley hummed for a confusingly long time, and his head tilted backwards slowly. That it was slowly was a good spot of luck, since his head and Luigi’s might have unsensually collided otherwise. Then, he responded, as though there had in fact been no delay between Luigi’s sentence and his answer:

“You do? How often?!” He paused, giving all the impressions that he was going to allow Luigi to answer him, then but a second later started up again. It might not have been a preposterous assumption that the two halves of his brain had been separated, and were currently having different, unconnected conversations with him. “Oh, Luigi, don’t stop doing that! I love you. I love it a lot.”

With that being a load to take on in one go, Luigi faltered for an unforgivably long time. Peasley forgave him nonetheless, or so it seemed, because he remained still and unbothered while waiting for him to properly react.

Luigi finally brought Peasley’s hand back towards his lips, and muttered with a humility and nonchalance he wished came naturally to him, “I-I think everyone’s’a do that. It’s’a normal! Um, I do it every, every now and again…”

“Well!” Luigi could tell that this earnestly came as a shock to the man who knew everything, as nothing else would ever cause him to take so long cooking up a flashy thing to say. “Still, you mustn’t tell anyone that I’ve had this happen, mm? It’s rare that I shouldn’t say the right thing in time.”

A light peck on the palm. “I’m’a was just thinking that too just now.”

“Let me tell you something even stranger. And, Luigi, you truly will never tell anybody, will you?”

“No! What kinda boyfriend’s’a do that?! A bad one, anyway!” He shook his head with a passion that did not complement the mood of what he was doing in the slightest. Though, it was a moment of relief. He knew more concretely the process of shaking his own head, compared to how vague his experience was with uninterrupted, uninterruptive kissing.

“Naturally you wouldn’t. You’re too honest in your feelings for that.” He sighed, as though he were carrying a heavy object that nobody had ever thanked him for carrying. It lasted some seconds. Then, “I really, truly love you. I do.”

Luigi’s hot face and clumsy smile notwithstanding, the vapour of a sentiment that Peasley’s tone was not as it usually sounded when he indulged in declarations thus was starting to fog up the room. It was starting to form droplets, which was not to say that Luigi could attach the feeling to anything tangible or true. It became no easier to prove to himself that he wasn’t simply imagining it, but measurably more laborious to ignore the feeling that something was being turned incorrectly.

“I love you too!” Luigi whispered, anyhow.

“After the disagreement, well – I wasn’t particularly upset. It wasn’t about anything important. I couldn’t say I minded much. But – and I can’t tell you why I felt this way! – just as I was leaving the hall, Lima came over to give me a hug, and in that moment I –”

Luigi had been making a small “mhm” kind of hum at each point of information, if it could be called that, within Peasley’s recount, just so Peasley could tell that he was listening. The cutoff in his monologue made Luigi fear that he’d been doing it too much or too loudly, such that Peasley had misinterpreted it as him trying to get a word in.

To occupy himself, or rather to shut himself up, he extended Peasley’s arm back outwards, and elected to kiss his shoulder again. He tasted a faint hesitation, enough to make him consider that the conversation might be over altogether – truly over, this time.

And yet, Peasley picked up again eventually. “Once she hugged me, I… became furious with her. I knew, of course, that there was no good reason for that, and I didn’t let it show. But I left feeling as though I’d been made the victim of some grand injustice! So I was sitting here, thinking about whether there was anything she’d said which would permit for a response such as that. It’s – it’s an undistinguished, almost fluffy feeling. There’s nothing I could point to that explains why it was there.”

“Lady Lima, is’a, ah, she’s’a normally hug you?” Luigi asked, not letting his lips release Peasley’s shoulder.

“Well, I don’t – I couldn’t give any concrete number of how often she does. But I’d never claim it’s a rare occurrence. Or – say, yes, I embraced her to say goodbye some days ago. I remember it because she had been leafing through a kind of, coffee-table book, you know, one that’s essentially just photos of travel destinations. It was turned to a two-page spread of a sandstorm, in a desert someplace. So she was sitting at this table, and when I came from behind to hug her, I could see this image. It captivated me in the way that makes one feel rather –”

At the newly pronounced yet inexplicable silence, Luigi – and only from riding a vague wave he couldn’t demonstrate the origin of nor justify – focussed from Peasley’s shoulder and arm to his head. The fingers that had been uselessly resting there began to more purposefully brush through his hair: an act that, likely, benefitted Luigi remarkably more than it did Peasley. Whatever Peasley did to care for it, it was the best bang for his buck Luigi’d ever known, turning his hair into a top-of-the-line stress toy – and where he wasn’t brushing, he kissed softly.

Encouraged by a subtle murmur of contentment, Luigi pressed on: “that’s’a make you feel how?”

“In the way that makes one feel rather sick,” he whispered. Luigi barely heard him. “Would you –” he squeezed Luigi’s other hand tighter and stretched out both arms, ironically, as if getting up in the morning. “ – keep doing that? And the thing about –” he yawned “ – that photo was, the screen of sand was impenetrably thick, so you couldn’t have guessed which desert in which Kingdom the picture had been taken, you know, no flora or fauna that were visible to be used as clues. But more than that, you couldn’t even say where the horizon was. I mean the ground. You could get a vague impression, because some spots, you could see the blue sky, yes? But suppose you needed to visualise the image from another angle, you couldn’t have done it. And what’s vaguer still is for what purpose the photo exists at all. You wonder how the photographer even got there. It’s a cloudy unease. If you were in it, how could you determine the origin of the storm, or where you were in relation to where it ended, if you couldn’t even identify where the ground was?” He appended, just as Luigi’s fingertips had reached for the bottom of his scalp, “I like clarity.”

“Mm,” Luigi offered. Why, who could ever tell him he was bad with his words?

“But that’s by the by. I mean, I remember that I don’t have an automatic anger response, you could call it, to hugging Lima. Why, that would be ridiculous. But for reasons that I don’t –”

He sighed, noticeably enough to make Luigi start brainstorming what, with the limited pointers he had, he’d best do next – but he got back into it before Luigi managed to generate even vague ideas.

“Maybe I just don’t like things turning out differently to how I imagine them beforehand. You would be right to assume that’s a rare occurrence for me.”

“Well, you’r’a were planning what?” Luigi kissed Peasley’s head as punctuation. “With Lady Lima?”

“Nothing important. It involved furniture.”

“I like clarity too,” so slipped from Luigi’s mouth before he could catch it.

Peasley scoffed, then squeezed Luigi’s hand. “Oh, aren’t you so clever! Well, it’s not a secret, just not important. I was planning to have the curtains changed in that very hall. They’re not ugly, but they’re heavy in the space, and even when they’re all the way open they block some sun, and make the room feel smaller than it really is. It’s claustrophobic. And I’d been given no reason to think my change would face any scrutiny!”

“The curtainses…” Whether there was something that solved the puzzle in that detail was not something in which Luigi had particular confidence, but paying extra attention made him feel like he was wading closer, anyhow. “Maybe you’r’a just want them ta-go more than you’r’a think.”

“It’s true they’re just awful! But Lima’s always had consistently dreadful taste, I’d say.”

“And you’r’a never become angry about it before?”

“No, I – Well, I’m not the sort who gets angry, wouldn’t you agree? Even when there’s some injustice, to be angry is just tacky! It’s never helped anyone get what they want. And it’s rare that there’s something to be angry about!”

Luigi forgot himself, giggling slightly into his hair as he stroked. Perhaps Peasley’s anger was novel because, by his own confession, he was neither justly nor unjustly ever told “no”.

“It’s curious, to plan things a certain way, counting on the condition that no-one will feel at once differently to you and just as passionately as you do.” Like much of Peasley’s spoken thought right now, the point he was making felt to Luigi too broad or undefined to be correctly understood. Luigi therefore waited for a kind of elaboration which, for at least ten seconds, did not come.

In a manner that soothed himself as much as it was intended to comfort Peasley, Luigi massaged his fingers into Peasley’s head with greater attention – he wasn’t able to completely deny himself the pleasure of combing through to the ends as well, as pointless as it was, because Peasley’s hair was just so heavenly to the touch.

And Luigi would never walk around boasting of it as though it were true, but he might think to himself with a golden, pure kind of pride that it was that very act which relaxed Peasley into saying more.

“And suppose the one who wants the opposite thing, as much as I, has more… I mean to say, say they can…” He paused, with a low hum, searching for the words, perhaps. “In the end, because Lima wanted them to stay, the curtains stayed. And then she hugged me! And of course that made me furious, but – when I say ‘of course’, why is that?”

In a sudden change of the script, Peasley continued, without pausing even though then of all times had appeared to Luigi a reasonable moment to do so. The questions, then, mustn’t have been for being answered, but instead to vaguely allude to how Peasley wasn’t sure of something. The longer he went on like this, the more Luigi came to think that Peasley merely had a strong aversion to admitting as much explicitly. “It only really occurred to me, that someone might want a way of things just as strongly as I might want it a different way, rather recently. With Cackletta. How should one put it? I couldn’t possibly imagine myself wanting what she seemed to want, and so I never saw the annoyances she caused us before then as ever having the potential to lead to a true threat. Because no one would ever put such effort into such an undesirable thing!” A sigh. “Or, rather, I wouldn’t.”

“Mm, mm.” Akin to the tingling in one’s feet when they – separate from the mind – approached a ledge, Luigi had a buzzing sense not founded on anything, that he was getting closer to “solving” the puzzle, insofar as he even knew what the puzzle was.

“But, in general, you know…”

And then there was an extended silence, good and proper; a total extinguishing of this roll he had been on. It certainly begged something. Luigi hesitated the respectable amount – it would be wrong for anyone to say he didn’t have his own personal desire to kiss Peasley all over again, whatever excuse he had, so he had to force some restraint upon himself for a moment.

After the arbitrarily self-assigned “enough silence” had passed, Luigi tucked back the hair that got in the way, then went to kiss the shell of Peasley’s ear. In the dark, he missed. So he kissed just behind it several times instead, then progressed towards it; Peasley was more enthusiastic than Luigi had supposed, to the point that his vocal sighing in reaction seemed not to have spurred more talking but replaced it.

“Peasley?” Luigi mumbled.

“I – hmm – I was… thinking about what might have been, if not for you.”

He diligently paused. “Ah?”

“The thought always freezes before I can consider the ramifications too carefully. Even though, like you told me all that time ago, you were never meant to have been here in the first place! The chances of it not having been for you, as it were, were much higher than the chances of what actually happened! But…”

For the first time since they’d come to be sitting next to each other, Peasley moved his own body, cupping the outer side of Luigi’s face instead of leaving it in his hold. Though it was so light that to describe it in such a way explicitly rung as lying – Peasley’s fingertips hazily dug into the skin, like seeking a place to safely clutch. “There’s an irrational idea that always concludes the narrative. If it weren’t for you, I say we’d have lost everything. The suffering would be such that, truly, something in my spirit prevents me from conceptualising it clearly. A failsafe of the moral soul, I suppose. It’s but a messy tangle of a tragedy that lacks outlines in my mind. But without even meaning to, it always wanders thus: at the very least, Luigi would be there with me. It would be okay. Even though, this very scenario is about what might have happened had you not been here!” He laughed very softly – a good thing, as Luigi’s heart had grown hot enough from what he was hearing that his thoughts had evaporated, which would have therefore left an inopportune silence. “It’s seemingly impossible to imagine how it would be without you, or my heart simply refuses to. And I’ve –”

Something unknown to Luigi stopped Peasley cold once more, this time without any of the vague laughter that had given the quiet a comforting flavour. Luigi felt a revitalised unease in its stead without good explanation; not that Peasley had abruptly grown displeased with him, mid-sentence, but his chest felt at once vaguely constricted, as it would in brief panic had Peasley accidentally cut himself and gasped in pain.

For once, a complete sentence he could offer Peasley lit up in his head: are you okay?. And, with just as little precedent, he had an unfounded, slicing conviction that he had better not say it.

Instead he held Peasley’s hand as it rested against his cheek, so as to reassure him that he had not simply vanished.

“I was also thinking about hiking,” Peasley whispered. “I’ve never done it. It sounds dreadful.”

“You’r’a never walk up-tha Mountain here?”

“I avoid walking,” he snorted. “Remember? Because –”

“ – because’a’tha shoeses, yea!” Luigi instinctively kissed Peasley’s cheek. “Well, uh, you’r’a thinking about, maybe, maybe ta-go hiking?”

“Oh, perhaps. It entered my head when I was reflecting on that very mountain. I might’ve never seen the top of it if not for that one time.”

“You’r’a never fly up there for… yaknow, fun?”

“I would have liked to! It would have felt very… freeing, I’d wager. Certainly compared to hiking up there. But I’m not so sure it would feel that way now.”

“Oh? Why not?”

Peasley didn’t answer. His breathing, unlike other moments where he had abruptly stopped talking, sounded resolved and tidy. Though it shouldn’t have felt such a way, Luigi had no sense that he should say anything to remind Peasley of the question, keep pulling to drag out what he meant by that. He was, on the whole, soothed away from such ideas by the feeling of Peasley’s thumb shifting back and forth on his face.

“You have surely gone hiking before. Be careful, hm?” He joked. “I wouldn’t want to lose you!”

“Lose me? When I’m’a go… on a walk, up a mountain?”

“Mm. It looks hard!”

“Not that hard!” Luigi laughed. “But okey dokey, I’ll’a be super careful for you.” A few breaths, then the drive to say, “what’r’a you mean, when you’r’a say tha-mountain’s’a not gonna make you feel… free, anymore?”

“Ah, did I say that…!” Peasley’s tone evoked a level measure attempting to settle the bubble.

“Yea.”

He still didn’t answer. Maybe, Luigi considered, Peasley had different ways of behaving depending on how deep he was in thought, and that this was merely a degree he had yet to observe before tonight – hence his consistent confusion about it.

Then he spoke, “… I was thinking also, about what it felt like to see just you there when you saved me and I gave you that fruit. I was at once surprised and not surprised in the slightest! Some talk of believing in fate, don’t they? Well, I couldn’t tell you about that. It’s a gateway drug sold by those weird fortune-telling people!”

“I’m’a meet one of those one time,” Luigi absentmindedly said.

“Huh!” Peasley’s voice peaked in that royal, astonished way. “About what? What did they tell you?”

“Where Mario was!” Luigi nodded, which shifted where on his face Peasley was touching him. “I’m’a give her thingses that I’m’a find and she’s’a can tell me, where, where he’s’a was, trapped, in the Mansion, yea.”

There was undoubtedly something within him that feared Peasley answering with how silly that sounded. For what it was worth, Luigi had never been too hot on fortune-telling either, but the time consulting with one in the Mansion had been one where any promise of insight was an uncritically examined blessing, swallowed without chewing.

“Trapped… How did King Boo have him, exactly?” Peasley asked.

“Eeeh! Well, he’s’a was in a painting. Oh, I’m’a not like ta-think about that, if I would close my eyes I’m’a see him like that, sometimes…” Luigi incidentally shuddered.

“As in, when you lie down to go to sleep? You can see Mario?” Peasley’s body straightened.

“Yea. It’s’a like… actually, I’ll’a try-ta explain it to you. Ehm, when I’m’a find him, the first time, I’m’a hafta go down this well, and at-tha bottom, there’s’a kinda sorta tunnel kinda thing. It’s’a all wet and dirt and so ya kinda, well, I, it’s’a like, dirt’s’a not always feel hard. Like, I’m’a know it’s’a not gonna fall on my head, because ya know, that’s’a where pipeses go, I’m’a work with them all-tha time. But I was so scared still-!”

Peasley’s fingers dug in again, this time without the faintness that made Luigi’s rational mind feel inclined to deny if it was there. It remained tender, nearly hesitant, but inscrutably happening.

“-at-tha end, there’s’a… rock, thing. And you can see out the other side, it’s’a open into another, um, room. But there’s’a spikes, which’r’a meant-ta be the tootheses on this animal thing. So you’r’a can’t go out the end, and you’r’a hafta hold the toothses, when you’r’a put your head out.” It was at this point in the flow that he remembered Peasley existed, and he concluded rapidly from the silence and mild slouch in his neck that his audience was rather struggling to follow.

Indeed, in the pause Peasley gently pressed, “you mean a door? How do you mean, teeth?”

“Ah, no, I’m’a, eh, say it a bit vague? It’s’a hard ta-explain. But –” a burst of thought. “Yaknow, I’m’a was basically inside the mouth of a monster, yea? And it’s’a not open enough ta-escape, so I’m’a can’t climb through it, but you’r’a can see. Around. But tha-toothses’r’a were in-tha way.”

“Oh my God!” Peasley declared. “Oh, darling, how terrible!”

“It-it-it’s’a not a real monster! A statue! Rock!”

“I know full well! But still, it’s just… to think of you trapped there makes me feel sick!”

“I’m’a not like it. Tha-worst, though, it’s’a was Mario. I’m’a…” he started to gag. “Oh, I don’t like it! I’m’a dream of this time so much!”

“You don’t have to say it!” Peasley beamed, then heavily sighed, with an abruptness that made it look like his face had gone channel surfing.

“Oh, ya know, it’s’a very sad but… he’s’a was okay! And um, sometimes ta-talk about it’s’a better. I, I’m’a just… my words… yea. Eh…” He gave himself a long moment, eyes drooped shut, to determine the exact sentence he wanted to say. It had been much easier to wail all these anxieties out in the middle of the night with Mario, though that Luigi struggled to express himself like this was hardly Peasley’s fault. “You’r’a can’t see him very very clear. Like, King Boo’s’a put him in a… picture frame, mm. And tha glass, it’s’a got small marks and things, so Mario’s’a look kinda…” he searched for the term, the one used when a camera hadn’t focussed. “Vague!”

“Ah!”

“Yea, ‘n I’m’a remember, he’s’a hit tha-glass over and over, and he’s’a screaming, tryna move, I’m’a reach to him but, but of course I’m’a in tha-monster mouth statue thing, so, I’m’a can’t move either… We’r’a kinda both trapped, yea.”

Peasley shuddered so forcefully that his head knocked against Luigi’s right temple, planting the seed of a dull headache. That must have gone for Peasley, too, but he clearly had been wholly engrossed in the descriptions, because he reacted not a micrometre to the collision, not even when Luigi murmured, “ow…”

“You see it in your dreams?” Peasley prompted, awfully quietly. “That’s what you said?”

“Yea. But yaknow, not very much now. It’s’a while ago. At-tha start it’s’a was all the time, but I’m’a wake up and see Mario’s’a right there, and I’m’a not scared anymore. Um, well, okay, I’m’a cry a lot, and he’s’a hug me and then later I’m’a can sleep again…!” He laughed, where fondness met sheepishness. “There’s’a, yaknow, the hard part, it’s’a that I’m’a can’t reach out and grab him, ‘n he’s’a try and try but he’s’a can’t break the glass and reach me. I like ta-hold him when I’m’a hav’a nightmare about it, we’r’a hug each other, like, as a reminder that we’r’a together, and safe, again,” he concluded.

He wasn’t sure what he expected Peasley to say or think about that, but it wasn’t: “Interesting…” followed by a mild stiffness in his hands.

“Interesting? Yea, probably! Dreams’r’a funny!” Luigi resolved to turn his fingers through the gaps on Peasley’s hands, so they became knitted as one, then move their arms downwards to hug across Peasley’s chest. “’N I’m’a very happy we’r’a together and safe too!”

Peasley let out a single laugh, squeezed their joined hands, and then unwrapped the embrace to kiss either of Luigi’s palms. “Don’t you worry. I’m not getting myself trapped anywhere. I’ve sworn off that experience.”

“Sworn off… What’s’a that mean?”

“Well, maybe the rules of the world hold that one has to be in such a situation to have the honour of meeting you. After all, it was you who came to save me!”

“Hm? You’r’a mean… the Plant? …Um, and…?”

“And that terrible, terrible egg. Oh, how I hated that thing. Memories of those times will flicker in my vision when I’m doing something which has nothing to do with it. It’s deeply strange! What purpose does that serve?” When he posed this question, he struck his arms outwards and wide, carrying Luigi’s with him. It was an image akin to dancing together, about which Luigi had no complaints. “I’ll tell you what, even. It’s been on my mind lately. No, no, I did not take to that experience at all.”

“It’s’a worse than the Plant?”

“Worse? Oh, hm…” He trailed off, and after around a dozen seconds it became vaguely apparent to Luigi that he wasn’t going to answer him. He resorted to lightly brushing his lips – as though it made up for the bold direction – on his cheek.

“… Well,” Peasley began, “the Piranha Plant wasn’t very big. But even then, I’d never felt like I’d gotten smaller – not until you insisted. I can’t – the – as for how it got this way, I can’t say, the memory… well, perhaps I’d been focussed on something else. But when I was trapped inside, somehow, my arms were pressed against my chest. Oh, yes, and I felt grotesque. I felt indeed like I was too big for my prison!”

“Oh, yea,” Luigi nodded. “I understand.”

“And, of course, you came to save me,” Peasley kissed the right side of Luigi’s face directly. “I’m very lucky! Would you believe me if I told you that I thought I might die there?”

It was now Luigi’s turn to shudder. “Oh, no!”

“Mm, I couldn’t move enough to find a way out; I couldn’t grab my sword or anything, you know, so I had no means of slicing my way to freedom. And I could feel myself… disintegrating. Once you freed me I couldn’t find any evidence of it, but I swear I felt it. I could feel my skin gradually burning off. To this day I can feel itches of it, on occasion.”

Luigi frowned rather strongly at this, and to hide it he lifted Peasley’s left palm and kissed it. “You’r’a shouldn’t feel it anymore by now…!”

“Well, I do,” he shrugged. “Though I still find no evidence of it on my skin. But I’ll say, since we’re on the topic and you did ask, no, I don’t think it – or anything could be less pleasant than that egg. Oh, Luigi, my darling, you won’t tell anybody any of this, will you?”

“Tell anybody? About the… egg? I mean, ah, it’s’a was’a secret?” Luigi mumbled his admission to being out of the loop as to why that would be so bad, disguised as a question, into Peasley’s hand. He had observed early on that it helped to hide abashment of possibly doing the wrong thing by burying himself in whatever part of Peasley was available. Peasley had yet to tease him about it, which suggested it was one of the few habits he hadn’t noticed. By this stage of the discussion its utility in intimacy hid it even better.

“I mean, most people don’t even know about either of these episodes to begin with, and I like it that way, yes? Even if they come with all my other achievements appended, they’re unflattering stories! And the best I could do in those instances, when faced with an audience, is simply not to complain of how unenjoyable I might have found it. After all, would you not have thought rather less of me if I had?”

“Well… no?” Luigi blinked, then kissed the palm yet again for good measure.

“Hah! I’ll tell you why: precisely because back then, I thought better of it, and so you had the time to build a much better, much more accurate, if you like, understanding of who I am. So now, little details like those don’t sway you. But they would have at the time. You’d have been thoroughly put off.”

“I – I’m’a not really think…”

The little ball of haziness where Luigi’s ability to express himself in words lived let him down, and he hurriedly resorted to kissing up Peasley’s wrist to make up for it. And something more urgent, something imperative that Luigi made understood, seized his face, and he had to keep it going, all the way up his arm, passionately and seriously like fearing missing any skin, stumbling across bursts of vocabulary on the way: “I’m’a woulda never think that, because I’m’a only think, then, that you’r’a very cool.” Further up. Peasley was whining quietly now, of a sort not dissimilar to something else, which Luigi treasured, despite himself. “And um, I’ll’a never tell anybody. But – yeah, um, yeah, that’s’a it.” That anticlimactic conclusion felt near undeserving of being where Luigi’s lips reached Peasley’s shoulder and then his nape, but it had to do.

“Hm… hm, well, it went like this,” Peasley breathed. ‘I’d been struck by something, I have to assume it was from Cackletta. It’s not pleasant. No matter how many times I think to that moment, I’m never sure of what exactly got me, in the end. But from there, Fawful – and I can only know it was him because he did it again later on, that time you were there – froze me in place with that stunning gun of his, by which point the game was over for me.”

Luigi’s intensity in kissing Peasley’s neck, mixed with the ache to convey his sympathy and the request that Peasley keep talking, was bordering on aggressive. Had he not been doing this, Luigi might very well have tensed his jaw until a tooth broke instead.

“You’re so very – hhhaa – good at that,” Peasley gasped. “Oh, I am lucky to have you…! And after I’d been frozen there, I was transformed, then shut into the egg, as you know. I’m fortunate that the entire affair never really got out. And it will be difficult to imagine when I – haah – say this, but do trust it’s the truth! I felt like I had never been changed in form at all! Can you picture it? Your sensations of where your limbs are haven’t changed in any way, merely where they are in reality. And thus if I went so as to move my arm, no arm moved, which made me feel as though my teeth had fallen out and half of my face had been peeled off. And then there are moments where you have a thought about nothing related and somehow, some part of you – and it does not feel integrated into you – but it’s been put there, and you feel like someone must have performed some horrific surgery on you, put a stray computer there – but nonetheless it moves. It – it disturbed –”

He didn’t complete his sentence, and Luigi was kissing his left cheek – wondering, fleetingly, if it would bring the peeled half of Peasley’s face back.

“Mmm… mhm… it disturbed me. I’m getting ahead of myself, however. It disturbed me when I was out of that prison because I’d, well… mhmm… Well, I’d not yet been able to… move! I’d tried, and I’ll tell you all about that, but there’s something indescribable about trying to control your own body. Luigi… Luigi,” he sighed, squeezing Luigi’s hand tighter, “I rarely panic.”

“Yea,” Luigi returned the gesture even harder, not sure if it would help. He’d not realised that Peasley was shaking until his tensing the muscle made it stop. Naturally he wished that he had. He, as he considered, could have said something – though being fully fair about himself, he likely would not have been able to string together a sentence that meant anything. Mind travelling there, to that defect of his, he found himself rapidly nuzzling Peasley’s neck all over again.

“You mustn’t tell anyone,” Peasley reiterated. Though the words clearly proved otherwise, they came passively through the air and gave the impression that Peasley wasn’t even saying it to him.

“I rarely panic, but I tell you that’s what it was. I should like to think it is how a puppet would feel. Your mind and body are not in their entirety out of connection, but enough is wrong to disorient you. That’s what it must be.”

“Yeah!” Luigi nodded rapidly, pretending his mouth was not dry. “Exactly! Yea! I understand!”

“You’re not going to tell me you’ve been a puppet before, too!” He snorted.

“I’ll’a tell you another time,” Luigi whispered affectionately. “I’m’a wanna hear about you.”

Peasley turned his head to the left in some venture to look at Luigi, but presumably didn’t create the dreamlike staring moment he sought, as Luigi’s face still claimed Peasley’s neck as its home, keeping a lot of himself out of his peripheral vision.

He kissed it again.

“I panicked. I thought somehow that I was dying,” he nodded. “Not being able to control my body feel like a sign of, you could say, ascension. And that being trapped had simply crushed me to death.”

Luigi didn’t shudder so much as he jolted. “Death?!”

“That was it. I kept trying to move my body while trapped, and I could tell when I attempted to move my arms nothing was happening. But when I did feel that some limb was responding, it was still unable to break through. In my sensations, I entirely would have testified that my arms had been turned all the way over and behind my shoulders, trapped to my back. And that my legs were tucked up, so my knees met my chin. Can you picture that?”

Luigi had been picturing it, with the utmost clarity, enough that he could feel weeping would be due in not an abundance of minutes.

“Oh… Peasley… that’s’a… painful?!”

He took some times to answer. “Extremely. Enough, again, that I thought I simply must have died.” The anticipated sob finally made it way out, and Peasley’s head stuttered back towards him. “Sweetheart! Ha! Don’t cry! I’m alive, after all.”

“I – I don’t…” Luigi stumbled through the emotion in his throat, “I’m’a not want that you’r’a ever feel that way! Oh, we’r’a were too late, maybe if the ship’s’a not crash… Oh, I wish I’m’a just keep on hitting Fawful! I wish I’m’a was there! I, I woulda saved you…!”

“Why, you were there! Quite famously!” He committed his whole spirit to that one laugh he was so good at, which sounded round and perfectly framed. Luigi did like it most ardently, but he also found it a step back and away from the raw sounds with which he’d been so blessed, rewarded.

“I – Aha, mm, well, that’s’a why, I’m’a so lucky.”

“Not in the least, It’s why I’m so lucky. See, it’s why I was thinking to what might have been had it not been for you. I’d still be all trapped, hm? Or if not, I’d have simply gone mad from all the wrongness in my body and died some other way.”

“Oh,” Luigi began to sob anew, despite himself, “I never wanna think about that! I’m’a gonna have lotsa nightmares about that now…” In order to reaffirm Peasley’s presence in this world, to resign his deal with the universe that Peasley would remain his, safe and untouched by Luigi’s luck, he marked Peasley’s neck with his mouth. It was so emotionally unrestrained that, while it certainly lost any of its innocence, it stopped even being sexy, too. Though that may have solely been from the crying, which lacked sexiness in equal measure. (Peasley, needless to say, was much better at crying out sexily throughout.)

“You’d worry that… much? Hnnn-”

“Yes, yes! Of course! It’s’a so awful, oh, yes, I love you so much, and, and so…” He lost track of where he was going with this tear-stained declaration, and in a stupor wrapped Peasley in a hug. “Oh…”

“So long as I have you,” Peasley grasped over Luigi’s hands and manipulated the fingers until they were elevated off his body, and then began to move them mindlessly, like playfully asking Luigi what they were. Then he took them off fully, swivelling until they faced one another – it was smooth enough to make Luigi blush. That it was just dark enough to prevent Luigi from seeing into Peasley’s faint eyes caused him to subconsciously strain in the futile attempt to do so. To be swept off his feet, by someone who had more romantic prowess in his body than he did water, smelled like the sun had on the day he’d first met him.

“- neither of us have anything to cry about!”

“That’s’a what I want, yea…!”

“A good thing, that. I hate the thought of losing you!”

Luigi did his part by pressing Peasley’s right hand to his mouth. “Me too! It’s’a why I’ll’a have nightmares about it!”

Peasley appeared to be, for the first time this evening, not reacting to but rather reflecting on the contact. His gaze, though vaguer than a fixed stare, was undeniably trained to the site after Luigi’s affection. The way his eyebrows rested suggested he was going so far as to analyse it.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he confessed again, slowly. “Yes, yes, that would be my nightmare too.”

“I’ll’a always be there for, with, you, I mean,” Luigi answered.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Peasley reiterated.

That was the point where Luigi gathered there was something he was missing. “Whaddaya mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” Peasley responded, wholly without the tone of indignance-tinted confusion that would have necessarily come with such a question. He said it more as though the words were replaceable with any others, so long as his tone remained as uncharacteristically serious and pleading as they had been a sentence prior.

In the face of this evident Big Moment, the Big Test to show how good he was at being the Good, Attentive, Sensitive Boyfriend, Luigi grandly said, “I’m’a mean, whaddaya mean?”

“I meant that I really, really, don’t want to lose you.”

“You’r’a not gonna,” Luigi beamed. That was the best approach, no? Lacking further words he fell into a kind of frenzy to convey his feelings physically all over again, so he let go of Peasley’s hands and scooched close enough that he was very nearly in his lap. He was able to plant his arms on the mattress, on either side of Peasley’s body from there, and lightly kiss his forehead, with all the innocence Peasley had teased him for having before, then moved to his jaw. “We’ll’a not lose, um… I’ll’a never… you’r’a not gonna.”

Peasley gripped at the back of Luigi’s hair as he answered. “I really, really don’t want to,” and then manoeuvred Luigi’s head with that grip so he could meet his lips. Under the light, almost indetectable guidance Luigi complied and fell backwards. For all his conviction that Peasley’s smoothness was genetic, thereby insurmountable, it really could be argued that Luigi himself gleefully elevated how well it was executed. Not even where his head rested went anyone’s way but Peasley’s, coaxed to stay lifted off the pillow some way so as not to crush his hand.

For how pleasant it was, the embrace didn’t escalate, nor did it last a long time. When Peasley pulled his mouth away, he ran a free few fingers from Luigi’s upper arm to the knuckles and stated something peculiarly.

“Yes, I do like doing that! I do. I do. I wonder…”

“Eeh?” Luigi blinked, then blurted out, “you’r’a saying it like you’r’a wanna win in an argument.”

“Am I?”

“W-well,” he halted. “I. I like ta-do that too! I mean, not arguments – er, I like ta-win arguments, but I’m’a wanna say – I like to do this,” he desperately sought to trace his index finger vaguely around the lower half of Peasley’s face.

“Well, I say it as a reminder. I’d be sad indeed to lose this!”

“Me too! And, if… you’r’a should come back-ta bed with me! You’r’a gotta sleep, and I’ll’a be with you! No nightmares, no, no um, losing me.”

“That’s you!” Peasley snorted. “I’ve never said anything about me getting nightmares.”

“You’r’a never have a bad dream? Ever? In your life?”

Peasley waved his hand in a non-direction. “Of course I’ve had a bad dream before in my life.”

Luigi, conversely, gestured broadly. “See! And ya know, what if it’s’a happen tonight? You’ll’a be glad I’m here to protect you.” The smug grin at the end was not earned but, at least, justified.

“Of course I would.” For some unclear reason which Luigi could only assume was the low level of light, he thought Peasley’s smile as he spoke was slightly different. “I should be so sorry to ever lose you.”

“Oh, don’t say that anymore! I’ll’a get a nightmare if you’r’a say that! How’r’a ya gonna lose me?! There’s’a… oh –” Luigi felt several hazy sentiments of something being “off” abruptly reacting to one another, not unlike chemicals that didn’t like each other would when they collided. “Oh, Peasley, is there’a something that’s’a after us? You’r’a – you’r’a awake because you’r’a watching for it? Guarding? That’s’a it? Oh, oh, oh no!”

Ironically, this presented the first instance of Peasley appearing truly off guard. “No, actually! That’s a terrible thought, though. No, I wasn’t keeping guard.”

“Why’r’a you awake then?” Luigi asked lamely. Silence might have been a more useful question.

That there was a moment of hesitation at all – short enough that Luigi didn’t have the time to consider its implications properly – was a surprise, but the response was still,

“Like I told you, I was simply thinking too much to settle down.”

“Mm… And,” Luigi smugly beamed yet again, as the winning sentence formed itself in his head, “yaknow what’s’a help? Um, maybe? If you’r’a with me – if you’r’a lie with – If I, uhm… I mean, er, if you’r’a come ta-sleep. With me! I mean! Oh, I’m’a say it all backwards…”

“God, you’re cute! Let’s talk about that instead!”

“Ah… heh… well…!” Something better in him compelled him to shake his head determinedly. Perhaps, Luigi thought, the pervasive and vine-like desire to be a truly good boyfriend. He was cursed to forget it every time Peasley flattered him. “But ya need… to sleep… and maybe… I… I can hold you, and… ah…”

“Hold me!” Peasley raised his eyebrows.

“It’s’a cosy! Comfortable, so…! Maybe you’ll’a fall asleep. And because we’r’a now talk about what you’r’a thinking about, it’s’a like, empty your head. So maybe it’s’a all better now. Because!” He pressed the point, “I’m’a here with you!”

“You’re still with me all the same, even if I stay up for a bit longer, you know!”

“Do you hafta stay awake, though?” Luigi pouted helplessly.

“You should go back to sleep, my sweetheart! I’m serious.”

“But what about you?!”

“I’ll turn in once the exhaustion takes me,” he whispered, at the same time as he kissed Luigi’s forehead, the way he normally did when he was about to go off somewhere.

“Please, Peasley, why’r’a you always tryna do all this by yourself? I, I’m’a can help, too!”

“Ah, I’d never even insinuate otherwise! All you do is help me. It – well, I’m plenty helpful, naturally. It’s my duty to be so after all. But as a boyfriend I wonder if… well, I fear, in fact, that I’m never so helpful to you as you are to me.”

Luigi coughed at that, giving the impression that his nervous system was trying to hack Peasley’s words out akin to an intrusive dust.

“What?! No, of course you – what?! That’s’a crazy! That’s’a not true! Not at all!”

“Well, did you not just stay awake here for goodness knows how long?”

“… I liked doing that, though,” Luigi pouted again. “You’r’a not like it? What if I’m’a wake up, one night, next-ta you and you’r’a notice? You, you’ll’a also be with me till I’m’a get tired, yea?”

Peasley appeared to be attempting to smile, but that his own facial structure was resisting him. It should have been indistinct from how one looked when trying not to laugh, but for some unclear reason Luigi thought it more resembled its inverse.

“I like to think I would, but it wouldn’t happen.”

“Because I’m’a sleep good? Ah,” Luigi chuckled, “if you come back to bed you’ll’a catch my skillses.”

“Oh, Luigi…” Peasley answered. Once again, it appeared like he was trying to laugh but his makeup refused.

“You’r’a feeling okey dokey? Please stop worrying about helping me, okay? Come back to bed.” He hesitated, fearing that he wasn’t quite addressing whatever Peasley’s intimations were. “Um, and if you’r’a actually not like it, yaknow, that I’m’a sit next to you and talk with you, I – I, well, I’m’a never… do any of these thingses before. I’m’a worry actually, that I’m’a not a good boyfriend sometimes, like… so it’s’a funny and very very crazy when you’r’a say that about yourself! Um. But…” It was ironic that in the venture to address that very matter, he struggled too much with what to say to overcome it. “Um…”

“Yes, yes, I see entirely what you mean,” Peasley replied, clearly not entirely seeing what Luigi meant. “But you’re always doing the right thing. It’s actually my – hm…”

“What’r’a you mean?”

“I value you in ways I can only try to describe,” Peasley went on. “I can only hope it shows. But –”

Luigi had begun to answer a split second before Peasley had suffixed the “but”, thereby accidentally interrupting him in a way that was awkward to remedy. “Hehe, you’re – oh, no, sorry, you go.”

“Go with what?”

“What you’r’a gonna say.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” He nodded stiffly. “Go on.”

“No, no, you’r’a say ‘but’ and I’m’a talk.”

“Oh, I didn’t have anything else to say.”

“You’r’a sure?”

He suddenly snickered, cleanly. “Why, I’m sure of everything I’ve ever said! You know that.”

He winked – it vaguely occurred to Luigi that his eyes having adjusted enough in the dark to see it was a testament to how long they’d been talking like this. It might have also been so realised because, as a result, Luigi’s emergency energy gauge keeping him from falling back asleep was, and excuse the term, exhausted.

“You’r’a okay to come to bed now?” He yawned.

“Oh, I don’t want to lose you,” Peasley said, undeniably rather distraught about it.

“You’ll’a not feel so scared about it after you’r’a sleep, a little,” Luigi offered. “You’ll’a forget all about it! Come on!”

“Luigi, listen…”

Luigi, well out of new ideas by this stage, grabbed Peasley’s hand off the bed and kissed it. Poor Peasley nearly toppled from it. And Luigi would have apologised, if not further interrogate his poor boyfriend skills, but he had not even lifted his lips when the words came.

“Luigi, it’s that – it’s that, I don’t want to share a bed with you anymore!”

And he immediately threw Peasley’s hand away, like having just been informed the skin had poison in it, or that it had suddenly grown dangerously hot. “Oh?!”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Peasley spoke with a slowness and caution novel to Luigi’s ears. “It’s not… because… of the sleep-breathing.”

“It’s… it’s not?” Luigi whispered. “It’s’a okay if it is, yaknow, I – I understand!”

“Don’t worry, it isn’t.” Some more caution, then, “I love you so much. This confuses me.”

In want of any good answer Luigi digested the situation in silence. He’d been too stunned, and therefore too immediately concerned with a prompt backing off for Peasley’s comfort, to formulate any kind of interpretation, but it was true that he’d likely have presumed it was the snoring.

If it wasn’t that, if it –

“Are you sick? You’r’a scared I’ll’a catch something?”

“… No,” Peasley’s face drew ever vaguer, ever – no, not emptier – and Luigi had a sense of unease bloom in his lungs before really identifying why.

– if it wasn’t to help Luigi in some way, if it wasn’t because Luigi was being too loud in bed (to the contrary, he seemed to appreciate that), if it – it had to be – then it had to be –

“I love you, okay?” Peasley muttered.

– it had to be –

“Okay,” Luigi started to cry, his attempted kind smile notwithstanding. “I love you too! It’s’a okay! I-I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“That, ah, um, that I’m’a do something wrong. Maybe. But. It’s’a okey dokey!”

“Of course not,” Peasley lamented – though Luigi perhaps didn’t have the right to presume emotions in that way. After all, for all his guessing and earnest ventures in identifying whatever had been the foundations of Peasley’s thoughts, none of his conjecture had gone the way of wishing to be rid of Luigi altogether.

Which once again begged the question. “I’m’a not do anything…?”

“Not at all! If I – oh, Luigi, please don’t cry, I’d never want that –”

Somehow Luigi had believed that he could do it with little enough self-acknowledgement that Peasley wouldn’t notice, but to lie on his back while the tears accumulated rendered the view useless, like mist on a mirror, and his hand was forced towards his eyelids. Ironically, Peasley got the idea to do him the very same favour in that moment, so his thumb rubbed the other eye clean simultaneously.

“You – you don’t hafta…”

“Have to what?”

“Um, my eyes…”

“But I love doing this,” Peasley gave an unavoidably depressed smile. “I – The thing is…”

Luigi knew clearly that he would have been able to tease more words, more explanations, out of him if he could just kiss him. It was only the haze of being denied it that allowed his mind to concretely acknowledge that it worked. Whether it was from the increasing agitation of what he was being told or the deprivation from the feeling of Peasley’s hair and skin that otherwise soothed him, indeed Luigi’s lips started to feel something between numb and itchy. As though they were growing hungry.

But he couldn’t do it, even if Peasley wasn’t really explaining why – that which was its cause and its symptom. Thus Luigi merely continued to cry passively in wait of nothing he could name, one inspiration that would compel him to do the right thing, to be a good boyfriend, to grow back into whoever the person had been with whom Peasley had wanted to share a bed.

Peasley restarted, “here’s the problem. Um. Er,” then shut back down.

And the strange atmosphere went from mere air to something more physical in Luigi’s heart, something which seemed to jut a kind of profession through and out of his throat. “I’m so sorry I’m’a not know what to - what to say! What to do! I’m really sorry! I know, it’s’a why, I mean, it’s’a why I’m’a get it all wrong and now you… well…!”

“No, no, don’t say such a thing. It… it has nothing to do with you.”

“Then it’s’a who?”

“… I don’t know.”

This confession clearly demanded extra effort of Peasley’s tongue and spirit, if the immediate gasp-sigh after he heaved it out meant anything. It was the only reason he would have thought to give it any special attention, as he’d initially taken it as concrete filler intended to fill the distance Peasley was trying to create.

“You… don’t know?” Luigi echoed.

“Oh, don’t quote it back to me, I fought so many hours of disgust over the thought of just saying it,” Peasley near-wept. “What I mean by that is, everything else, I feel just as happy about. I still love it when you kiss me, and talk to me, and hold my hands or hair, or…” He gave the appearance of getting lost in the imagination of it for a moment. “And I want to be able to lie here with you, and drift to sleep leaning on your chest and all those lovely things… It’s why I suggested it! In fact…” His voice tapered out.

Luigi took, with the prudence had towards a traumatised baby animal that loathed human touch, just the tips of Peasley’s fingers that had a moment ago been tending to his teary eyes. To then bring them for a kiss with the slowness he saw fit was going to take half a minute, so in the mean- and till then not commanded to stop-time, Luigi made a single, unintrusive noise that intimated curiosity. He hoped.

“… you truly might think less of me now,” Peasley’s voice finally returned to a sob. “When you weren’t here sometimes I’d hold a pillow in bed and imagine it was you. And I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t-!”

“Really?!”

“It was the only thing that made me feel better, when I couldn’t stop thinking about… various things! Things I know will never happen again, but it’s as though the closer I became to true drowsiness, the more… the more… is there even a word for it?” as Peasley said that last part, his fingers finally reached their destination, and with it came – “…the more I was constricted, entrapped, if you will – by the need to grab my forearms and rip the skin straight off!”

“To what?!” Luigi thoughtlessly gasped.

“Now it’s your turn to say you no longer want to sleep with me,” he laughed – or attempted to, but goodness, he was almost wailing now, Luigi had never been able to so much as mentally generate such a sight or sound or scenario. “It’s grotesque. That I know. And naturally I had no plans, even wh- if it were fifty years later and we’d been happily wed for forty of them, to let you know of that. Because it was so unbecoming, so unromantic. Noone would ever have faulted you for finding it awful-”

“-But I like to know that you’r’a think about me!” Luigi so cleverly interrupted him. “Um, I… I wanna be… the person you think about when you’r’a scared… Um, even at night, but then, um, well, okay, yes, why’r’a you change your mind?”

“I… I… I don’t know!” He cried, not accusingly, not at Luigi. “I don’t want – I feel ill at the thought of saying this, but I think there’s something wrong with me!” His voice was not merely wailing now, Luigi could see well enough to observe that the tears on his face were not subtle or small in number or delicate.

“Wrong? No, no, it’s’a not wrong! I’m’a the one who’s’a wrong…!”

“Luigi, my sweet, sweet angel, I can’t tell you enough that you didn’t do anything! No, no, I – I’d never thought so much, so yearningly, to be close with another person like that other than you. I understated it, my love, please take my word now when I tell you I thought about you every night. Oh, yes, do let me just lay it out so dreadfully for you, I’ve got no face to lose now: I imagined you humming and sleep-talking and snoring. I imagined it! And it comforted me into slumber like nothing else, but only if I didn’t grow so enamoured with the fantasy that my face refused to stop smiling and settle down. I imagined saying goodnight with you, I imagined – there was a night where I felt that burning in my skin all over the arms, and -” a sob “- and I imagined you taking my hands and kissing them all the way up my arm to my shoulder! Exactly as you did it before! You didn’t do anything wrong, oh no, you did so much right I have to assume you’re beyond a metaphorical angel, that the stars are whispering my wishes to you so that they should come true. Luigi, you’re the best man, the best boyfriend, in the entire world, and you’re all I’ve ever wanted, and for some reason here I am conspiring against myself. But the first night I suggested that we sleep in the same bed when you visit, and every night since, when I lie down every part of me tightens. I mean it when I say every part. I stop breathing.”

Funny that, since Luigi had stopped breathing as well, perhaps so he risked no possible mishearing of Peasley’s words, or perhaps as the most measured response to those very words he was hearing. For once there was not quiet, because Peasley was sobbing with negligible intermissions. A tear landed all the way onto Luigi’s face, and Peasley’s himself wiped it off without a moment of thought. Luigi resolved that, for one, this was positively worse, and second, that he couldn’t rescue the situation by trying to prompt more words out of him. After all, if he’d been in want of Peasley speaking before, he now faced the opposite problem.

“Oh,” he said smartly.

“Mm.” A sniff. “There you have it. I- I’m ungrateful, and… but I don’t want to lose you!”

“But you’ll’a never…”

Peasley might not have even heard him, based on his spontaneous elaboration. “I knew I needed to ask you to sleep with me when I realised just how often those moments were running through my head – because –”

“What moments?” Luigi interjected.

“Oh – okay, don’t tell anyone! The – the egg, and, the plant. And the Fawful gun. That’s all. I revisit – no, I don’t revisit it at all! I’d like nothing more than to estrange those events from my life! But they visit me, every day, across every train of thought, like tripwires. And I hate to remember it. Like I tell you, my arms start to burn!”

Luigi quirked his head. “When you remember, um, those things? Your arms?”

“Yes. But here’s what brought them down; the only common denominator.” He smiled slowly. “Can you guess what it is?”

Luigi had to do his utmost to concentrate. He wasn’t even sure that he understood the question. “Um, ya mean what’s’a tha same about them?”

“Mhm. These are the sorts of things you typically solve before I do!”

“Er… ah, um, well. Um…” He got so focussed on focussing that he didn’t focus.

“Are you feigning humility, hm?” Peasley snickered. “I’m sure it’s quite clear.”

“Oh, I got it. It’s’a all happen in this Kingdom!”

“No, silly! The common thread through each of these things is you.”

“Hm…?”

“Maybe you were accompanied, maybe you weren’t. Maybe you happened upon me or saw me fall right before your very eyes. But no matter what, you,” his face fell once more. “You were there to save me. You were always there for me.”

“I – hahah,” Luigi whispered, “I’m’a always wanna be there for you, so.”

At this Peasley’s briefly regained composure ran out, and his words ran on unfiltered, endless tears. “You’re my, you’re an angel, you do know that? Yes?! And I’m sending you away, for what?!”

 “You’r’a not sending me away, you… it’s’a your um, privilege? To choose if you’r’a wanna share a bed! I – I love it but, if you don’t like it, that’s’a okey dokey too. Sometimes it’s’a that way.”

What Luigi had wanted to say, of course, about the things one felt comfortable doing always being a kind of inalienable choice, about how he would never hold it against Peasley that he didn’t want to do something, seemed to turn to paste on his tongue when he tried to express it. Despite all that Peasley had just declared – inasmuch as Luigi could keep track of all of it – he couldn’t help but lament yet again that he was still failing to do here what a better boyfriend surely could.

“But I do want to. I certainly thought I did. Even now I can’t say I like the thought of sleeping alone.”

Perhaps too late, but Luigi finally caught the sentiment that there was something in this, not merely to be empathised with but to be solved. He reconsidered Peasley’s question from before – that to which he’d supposedly given Luigi the answer.

What was something that unified all those moments?

“And perhaps I should just be honest. My goal was to have you go back to sleep without me, so I could continue to sit up here on the bedside. Some nights I became drowsy enough to doze off right there, for a time. The idea of you leaving altogether upsets me.”

“But you hafta sleep!”

“if you weren’t here I think I wouldn’t even manage dozing off,” he confessed. “Not that I’d want to force you to stay. I’d be offended enough to leave, in your position. You can see now why I never wanted you to know about all this to begin with!”

Keeping his need to cry suppressed so as to stay focussed was beginning to cause a build-up of pressure in Luigi’s brain, and he could tell the next word he gave was going to be like pulling a plug from a pipe. “You -” and indeed, he burst into tears.

He cried without aim or performance for a good little while – in effect, if he’d been asked, he would not have been able to be concrete in what in all of this was leaving him so distraught. There were vague attempts at further words, but they sounded more like a harmony to the sobbing.

It took some moments, but Peasley did tend to wiping Luigi’s tears again, though without his usual requests that he not cry or even any “it’s okay”s.

It nagged at him. What was something that unified all those moments?

“Please promise me you’ll go back to sleep and not worry about me,” he mumbled into Luigi’s ear.

“You’r’a not gonna sleep if I’m’a go to a different room?”

“No. I’d much, much rather you stayed.”

“This isn’t fair for you,” Luigi hiccupped.

“I do wish you’d be a bit more selfish about this!” He sighed. “Stay here. You choosing not to further inconvenience yourself is the only thing that’ll make me feel better.”

Luigi mumbled “fine,” lowly enough that Peasley himself didn’t seem to register that he’d said anything at all. “Tomorrow we’r’a gonna pick something better!” He hastened to add. “Maybe two bedses in the same room!”

“Should I simply keep a whole other bed in the room for when you come over? That would feel too similar to a guest’s bed!”

“But you need – oh, let’s’a just talk about it in tha-morning,” Luigi hummed, then felt a mildly urgent itching, as one might when furniture had been rearranged or one had forgotten their keys or had yet to recall that it was someone’s birthday. “Can, uhm… eh, maybe not.”

“Hm! What?”

“Can we, uhm, can we still say goodnight? Like, uh. Kiss goodnight. Remember like how we’r’a do it before we’r’a start, um.”

“To think, a symptom of regression…”

“But no! It’s’a change, but…! Not regression’a, like, everything’s’a only forwards. And, but maybe you’r’a not like it anymore? Like how if you’r’a not like sleeping together anymore, if you’r’a not wanna, kiss like that, much… Um…” The sleepiness, rather than snapping something in him, bent it all the way into a horseshoe, like plasticine, and produced the same confessional effect. “I know I’m’a not say it very good! I have stuff ta-say in my head but it’s’ come out all, like… bad! But I’m trying.”

“I think you speak beautifully,” Peasley said instantly. “I’d be very sad if you were to talk any other way.”

“Oh, that’s’a good,” Luigi sighed, smiling more genuinely than he had for a good while, by this point. “Then, um, you’r’a understand, yea? Not regression’a, but um, you’r’a not have to.”

“I want to very much,” he confessed, or at the very least, carried the image of confession. As if ashamed, thus hoping to pass it off as not entirely said by him, he whispered, “please…?”

It might be said that it was therefore paradoxical, that Peasley were the one to initiate that very kiss, but the way he did it was so vague and apparently unsure that it certainly didn’t feel that way. Potentially, though, this was solely Luigi’s perception because he still felt the back of his mind turning over cards and looking between them and trying to find ones that matched. Almost enough for him to zone out of the kiss. He was pulled back into focus by all the hazily desperate sounds Peasley was giving him. Doubtless they were different – it was slightly remarkable, but after all, he was obviously very emotional about all of this, and instead of stunning Luigi into a kind of bliss it made the machine turn faster in its urgency. What was similar about all those events?

Peasley stopped for breath and said against his lips, “goodnight, my love, oh, I like it,” and then started up again. And he responded just as – no, more positively than he ever had to Luigi simply going along with it and putting his hand in his hair. He wasn’t sure how good he was at this multi-tasking of thoughts. Yes, Luigi had been there every time Peasley had been trapped, which was just as well because he couldn’t move, who knew how long he’d have been stuck there, and all. Luigi had gone through not dissimilar things, and – but, no, there was some sort of difference, there was a consistent element for Peasley in particular he was missing. He could sense it, it was – it was –

Peasley pulled up an inch or so. His eyes, Luigi could see quite clearly, were misty. It made Luigi feel a crease of depression in his chest.

“We’ll’a talk in the morning. Promise?”

“Promise,” Peasley winked and sat up straight, slowly migrating back to where he had been at the beginning of this entire episode. It made Luigi think again to common threads. What was similar about all those events? His head started to burn.

“And I promise tomorrow I’ll’a listen to all your worrieses, and we’r’a gonna figure out it all!”

He launched to give Peasley a quick, affirmative, I’m-here-for-you-always kind of hug, and he heard a gasp of surprise from him, followed by his fingers tapping at Luigi’s knuckles – an impressive manoeuvre, since the hug largely inhibited arm mobility.

He hissed, “please don’t worry about me, my love. Go to sleep,” then wriggled himself free. The skilful display was adorned – somehow, for the first time tonight – with a smug flick of his hair. It should have made his eyes a bit easier to see, and likely all the tear-ravaged red with it, but Luigi couldn’t verify, for he closed his eyes all showoffy when he did so.

They all had something in common. What was it? What was it? What was similar?

Luigi made a shake of realisation. “Peasley, the airport. You remember.”

“… You mean the location?”

“When we’r’a goodbye that first time.”

“Don’t you remind me of that! Must we always dwell on my failures?”

“… You’r’a see me, that day.”

Peasley furrowed his eyebrows, but laughed. “I did! You and Mario and the Princess and Toadsworth. And then I turned away to get your present, at which point you – well, don’t let’s revisit it!”

“No, that’s what I’m’a mean. You’r’a tell me afterwards that you’r’a not see me, and so…”

“Yes!”

“… But that’s’a was not the truth. You’r’a see me coming to you then, actually. Right? Didn’t you?”

“Of course not! I’d never dream of jeopardising an opportunity like that! I told you, afterwards when I’d realised what I’d done I was inconsolable for days, thinking I’d lost you forever. Why, now you’re becoming all paranoid from sleep deprivation. You need to go to sleep.”

“If I’m’a – if someone’s’a come ta-hug you, maybe, and it’s’a big surprise, you’r’a become kinda trapped in their arms and you can’t move. Yea. Right?”

Peasley scratched at his arms above the elbow and kept his face empty. No, not empty – not even vague – and Luigi realised he recognised the expression and its kin in retrospect. It was fear.

“And so when I’m’a do that, you’r’a see me, and you’r’a not want that. So you’r’a move out of the way,” he concluded. “Is… that’s’a the truth, yea?”

There was something similar, a common thread, what was it, what was it?

“… Luigi, go to sleep. Please. Please!”

“I’m’a not sad if it’s’a true. But I’m’a need you ta-tell me,” he pressed. “I think it’s’a important.”

Peasley turned his gaze to face directly towards the wall, and began the shrugging gesture he’d been getting lost in before he’d noticed Luigi being awake this evening. There was a sigh every cycle, and after a dozen: “Luigi, there’s something wrong with me!”

Of course Luigi’s instinct was to hug him again, but having lost that option he rather cruelly continued. “There’s’a something tha-same about, about all of these, these things…! The egg and the bed and the airport, it’s’a all got tha-same thing about it, but I – I… lemme think…”

Peasley cried softly into the bend of his elbow for two breaths, not looking at him. “That you were there?”

“Um, yes, but… it’s’a that…”

“I wasn’t planning on having you unravel how terrible a boyfriend I’ve been all in one night,” Peasley whispered. His shoulders were probably going to fall off their joints in a few minutes, if he kept looping them like that. Luigi leaned over to lightly hold them down with his own hands, and Peasley yelped. “Ah! Luigi – go to sleep, I promise we can talk about it in the morning!”

A flash, a click, a connection appeared behind Luigi’s eyelids.

“I got it!”

“Woah!” Peasley was startled, presumably by how loudly Luigi had yelled it. “What’re you doing?!”

“Peasley.” Luigi nodded forcefully. “You’r’a not wanna sleep with me anymore, even though you’r’a want to in your head, because you’r’a not like it when you’r’a can’t move your arms.”

A cough, and a blink. “What?”

“You’r’a ask me, what’s’a tha common, um, thing between all the things. The egg, the Plant, the time Fawful’s’a stun you in the Castle. And also the airport, and the bed, but you’r’a not even realise that. When it’s’a happen, you’r’a can’t move your arms. The egg? You’r’a say, you’r’a try but nothing’s’a happen and your face’s’a – it’s’a feel like your face’s’a all gone?”

“…Huh.”

“And then with the Plant, you’r’a can’t get the sword, and then Fawful, well, you’r’a can’t move at all, yea, and then I’m’a try ta-hug you all of a sudden and so, if I’m’a would arrive, I’m’a kinda hold your armses, like this,” he stiffened them by his sides in demonstration. “So you’r’a not want that, and so you’r’a move out of the way.”

“But I didn’t think anything like that! I just did it, without thinking! Do assume of me at least the humility to admit that!”

“Of course you’r’a not know that’s’a why! Like now, you’r’a say, you’r’a not know why you’r’a not wanna share a bed. But in your heart, even if it’s’a not tell you, it’s’a because when you’r’a lean on my chest here I’m’a hold you close, around your armses, and you’r’a hate that. Remember Lima? You’r’a get mad when she’s’a hug you, not before, but when you’r’a hug her it’s’a okey dokey because you’r’a can move as you like. Like, it’s’a… like ghosts, it’s’a just happen, it’s’a – yes, that’s’a it! It’s’a phobia!”

Peasley made the quietest, most unimposing “…oh” Luigi had ever heard. It sounded at once golden, quite solid, and yet mildly embarrassed of itself.

“Maybe it’s’a start because of the egg and thingses. It’s’a…” Luigi gently concluded, “maybe not always that way before.”

Peasley crumpled. His chin lined up with the centre of his chest, and his fingers appeared like they were attempting to eat his hair at the scalp. “No, it was never this way, and I never even thought… I never even thought!” Some laborious breathing, which in isolation would not have gotten away without being identified as being from someone who had just been crying, but didn’t bear any tears on its own. It slowly began to carry a little laugh, instead. “What did I tell you? All you do is help me!”

“What did I tell you?!” It felt a bit rude to laugh while Peasley was still all but in the foetal position, but it was his most earnest response. “I’m’a wanna be there for you always!”

“The similarity between all those things…” he chuckled.

“Um. When you’r’a… hold the pillow, without me, so you’r’a can fall asleep, how’r’a you imagine it? How’r’a you think about me?”

He unfurled himself just to tilt his head back in laughter. “You’re just dying to know all my secrets, aren’t you! Maybe what I want to think about us doing is my own business!”

“Well, I feel like… it’s’a can’t be that private,” Luigi poked his cheek kiddingly.

“You’d be right!” He kept laughing, and finally looked Luigi in the eyes. “But, yes, to support your thesis. I was holding it, you. Not vice versa.”

“Can… You’r’a can show me?”

Peasley’s eyes dropped enough that the smile bore tones of remorse, and Luigi almost interrupted the entire conversation to tell him not to feel such a way. He placed his palms just behind Luigi’s back on either side, then slowly leaned so that they both fell flat on the mattress, Peasley on Luigi’s chest.

“And then I held your legs with my legs like this,” Peasley muttered, curling a calf so it wrapped behind Luigi’s knee, in a kind of lock. “And I said, into your ear like this,” he moved his face appropriately, “I need you.”

“Hehehehe! I, I need you too, yaknow,” Luigi blushed. “So that’s’a useful!”

Clearly this was hilarious. “Useful! That’s a good word for it!”

From here Peasley’s breathing began to deepen, and relinquish its haste. It was enough for Luigi to question whether Peasley had forgotten what he was doing, or perhaps even panicking again without having admitted to it. When he lifted some of his fringe to see, Peasley looked back up, lovingly but lazily.

“And then I started to…” a slow yawn interrupted his flow of speech, “… imagine I was playing with your moustache, like this…” he lifted one finger slowly to draw circles at its edge. “Why’s it -” another yawn “-so soft?”

“You like it?”

“Mmmm. Luigi…” His eyes had closed at some point. “…you’re the best boyfriend in the whoooo-” a yawn “-ooooole world…”

Luigi caught that same yawn before he could answer on his own. It ended up being the better outcome, as he could tell in the mild drone in the sleep-breathing (ha) from there that Peasley was out like a light.