Archive of Our Own

[THE SALTED FIG]

The flowers were yellow.

Riddle was looking at them. Small, cheerful things — some variety of local wildflower that he couldn't immediately classify, which was itself unusual, because Riddle's two years of managing Heartslabyul's garden had given him a working familiarity with most cultivated and semi-cultivated flowering plants in the region.

These were yellow. 

More importantly, they were presented with the hopeful energy of someone who had picked them and offered them for a reason.

Sterling was holding them out with the specific expression of someone who had worked up to this moment and was now committed to it. He was one of the dock workers — Riddle had spoken to him occasionally in The Salted Fig over the past months, had served him coffee, had exchanged the pleasantries of regulars and staff that accumulated into a kind of familiarity without being quite friendship. He was approximately their age, broad-shouldered from dock work, with a straightforward manner and a blushing grin that suggested the directness of someone who had decided to simply do the thing rather than overthink it.

Beside him, his friend Marco was in the process of saying something to Azul, which Riddle was tracking with the corner of his attention while most of him was occupied with the flowers.

A date, Sterling had said. To the festival. If you'd like.

The festival. Which Riddle had been looking forward to with the modest, genuine anticipation of someone who had been living a life small enough that a harbor festival was a significant event.

Riddle was aware, with the comprehensive self-knowledge that three months of reduced performance had afforded him, that his internal response to this invitation was not what a reasonable person might expect.

He was not flattered, exactly. He was not flustered. He was not the version of himself that might have managed this situation badly back when he had been Riddle — who had very little experience with social situations outside of academic contexts and who tended toward rigidity when presented with unexpected variables.

He was — surprised. And then, underneath the surprise, something more complicated.

Sterling was looking at him. The blushing grin was still in place, hopeful and self-aware, the expression of someone who knew he might be turned down and had decided to try anyway.

From the kitchen doorway — which was not subtle, which they had not even attempted to make subtle — Marta, Orso, and Kalim were communicating enthusiastic approval through various combinations of nodding, smiling, and in Kalim's case what appeared to be a very small and very private fist of victory.

Riddle looked at the flowers.

Beside him, Azul said, "I — yes, that sounds — yes," in the tone of someone who had been caught off guard and had responded before his strategy could catch up. Marco's face lit up.

Azul has just agreed to a date, Riddle noted, with the part of his mind that was still cataloguing the situation. Which means if I decline, I am declining alone and Azul has not, which creates a social asymmetry that will—

No. That was not a reason to accept a date. That was Riddle-logic, the old logic, the kind that weighed social equations rather than feelings.

He looked at the flowers again.

Do I want to go?

The question arrived with the unfamiliar quality of things that were being asked genuinely. Not is it appropriate or is it strategically sound or what does this communicate. Just: do you want to.

And the answer was —

Not no. Not a clear no. Sterling was a decent person. The festival was something Riddle had been genuinely looking forward to. Having someone to navigate it with who was not Kalim or Azul — who were themselves potentially occupied now, it seemed — had a certain practical logic.

But not yes, either. Not the yes that a person said when something felt right, when the prospect of the thing produced something warm and interested in the vicinity of the chest.

What Riddle felt, looking at the yellow flowers, was a notable absence of the thing that should have been there — like excitement. A handsome guy, a good guy, just asked him out on a date.

And then, because the mind went where it went regardless of whether you had invited it—

Silver.

The image arrived without permission: the trail behind the equestrian club's stable, the way the path narrowed and then opened again, the quality of the light through the trees at that particular angle. Silver beside him on horseback, and then slightly ahead, and then the moment when Silver had looked back over his shoulder with an expression that was relaxed in the way he was rarely relaxed in formal contexts, something looser and more genuine.

Race you to the fork, Silver had said, not as a challenge, just as a proposal, and Riddle had said that's not regulation club activity in a tone that meant he was going to do it anyway, and Silver had smiled—

Riddle realized he was still holding the moment where he needed to give an answer.

"Yes," he said.

His own voice, from a slight distance.

Sterling's face broke into the full version of the grin, the self-conscious hope becoming genuine delight. "Really? That's — thank you. Really. I'll — we can meet at the harbor entrance, the festival starts at sunset—"

"That sounds fine," Riddle’s voice was even, appropriate.

"Great. That's — great." Sterling was clearly processing his own success. He pressed the flowers toward Riddle more decisively, and Riddle took them because taking offered flowers was the correct social response and his hands were apparently operating on protocol while the rest of him was somewhere else. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Riddle agreed.

Sterling and Marco left, and the door closed, and Riddle stood in The Salted Fig holding yellow flowers and looking at the space where two men had been.

There was a moment of silence.

"Red," Kalim said, from the kitchen doorway, with the barely-contained delight of someone who had just watched something wonderful happen and was choosing diplomacy as his first approach. "You have a date."

"I'm aware”

"You said yes"

"I'm aware of that too."

"You look—" Kalim paused, apparently searching for the accurate word. "You look like someone who has just agreed to something and is now processing what that means."

"Perceptive," Riddle smiled, lifting the flowers slightly to smell them.

Azul had drifted to stand beside Riddle with the particular quality of someone who had also just agreed to something while their strategy was offline and was now similarly processing. He looked at Marco's retreating form visible through the window and then looked at Riddle.

"Well," Azul said.

"Well," Riddle agreed.

"We have dates," Azul said.

"Yes."

"To the festival."

"Yes."

They looked at each other.

"Kali seemed pleased," Azul observed.

"Kali was doing a victory gesture behind Sterling's back," Riddle let out a small chuckle, soon joined by Azul. "I saw it."

"I was being encouraging!" Kalim protested, pouting dramatically at his friends

Marta, who had returned to her kitchen work with the satisfaction of someone who had watched something go correctly, called out without looking up: "The yellow ones need water or they'll wilt by morning."

Riddle looked at the flowers.

Yellow. Small. Perfectly adequate. Given by someone who was perfectly pleasant and had no idea who Riddle actually was, which was the current state of affairs and which he had chosen, which was the life he was living.

He went to find a glass for water.

He put the flowers in it. Set them on the windowsill where the evening light caught them.

Stood there for a moment.

Silver, his mind said, with the particular persistence of a thought that had decided it wasn't going anywhere.

He knew, in the abstract and examined way that one came to know things about oneself through sustained self-reflection, that the thing he felt when he thought about Silver was different from the thing he felt when he looked at yellow flowers from Sterling. This was not a new observation. It had been occurring to him in various forms since before he'd left NRC, had been one of many things he'd been in the process of beginning to understand when everything had become something else.

He had not examined it closely. Had filed it in the category of things that require a different context than the one I currently occupy and had moved on.

He was filing it there again now.

Silver was in NRC. Was a student there, probably right now walking through the campus that Riddle had visited yesterday and left behind. Was conducting festival tours of a school that was Riddle's, had caught Riddle when Heartslabyul's rose tendril had pulled him down, had looked at him with eyes that almost-knew.

Riddle was here. Was Red, in a café in Foothill Town, holding yellow wildflowers from a dock worker.

These were different contexts.

These were not contexts that required examining the thing about Silver. That was for a different life, a different circumstance, possibly a different version of himself who had found a way to stay and also be free, which he had determined was not available.

He gave the flowers a decisive look.

Sterling was a decent person. The festival was peaking tomorrow. He would go, and he would be Red who had a pleasant time at a harbor festival with someone who liked him simply and without complication.

This was good. This was fine. This was uncomplicated in a way that his life needed more of right now.

"Are you alright?" Kalim had appeared at his elbow with the quietness he sometimes deployed when he was being careful about something.

"Fine," Riddle said.

"You said yes very quickly."

"Did I?"

"And then you had an expression."

"What kind of expression?"

Kalim tilted his head and considered. "The kind where you've made a decision and you're not entirely sure it was the right one but you're going to proceed anyway because the alternative requires examining something you're not ready to examine."

Riddle was quiet for a moment.

"I've had worse things described to me," he said.

Kalim looked at him with something knowing, and Riddle is abruptly reminded that while he and Azul are academically intelligent, Kalim’s social and emotional quotient made it easy for him to grasp what Riddle was feeling and he did not need that right now.

"It'll be fine," Riddle said. The tone of someone who had decided something and was moving on from the decision. "Now. Did Marta say anything about us needing to prep the festival day menu?"

Kalim recognized the redirect. He allowed it — because Kalim was, Riddle had come to understand, considerably better at reading people than he let on, and because sometimes allowing a redirect was the kindness.

"She did," Kalim’s eyes still watched Riddle carefully, but out loud he said nothing. "Let's go."

They went.

Behind them, on the windowsill, the yellow flowers caught the evening light.

Perfectly adequate flowers. Given by a perfectly pleasant person.

And Riddle thought about equestrian trails and the quality of light through trees and the way Silver had looked back over his shoulder.

Then he didn't think about it.

Or tried not to. 

He wasn’t as successful as he would have liked.

[AZUL/AL AND KALIM/KALI'S ROOM]

Azul was staring at his clothes.

All of them. He'd laid them out in a way that was less deliberate wardrobe assessment and more everything I own is now on this bed and I have no idea what to do with any of it. Three months and two-ish weeks of working at a café had resulted in a modest but functional wardrobe — practical things, the kind that held up to kitchen work and didn't look unreasonable when serving customers. A few new pieces from the festival shopping trip.

None of them were the right clothes.

Or all of them were fine and the problem wasn't the clothes.

Azul sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the pile and was aware that he was not actually thinking about the clothes.

The door opened. Kalim came in and took in the scene — Azul on the bed edge, clothes everywhere, the particular quality of Azul's stillness — and came to stand beside him without saying anything immediately.

This was one of the things about Kalim that Azul had come to genuinely appreciate over three months of close proximity: he was good at silence when silence was what was needed. His natural register ran toward warm and voluble, but he had the instinct to read when that was wrong and the discipline to override it.

He stood beside the bed and looked at the clothes and said nothing.

Azul said nothing.

The evening light came through the window at the angle it came through at this time of day, familiar and specific now, the light of the Salted Fig's staff quarters which had become the light of home.

"I don't know why I said yes," Azul finally broke the silence, tilting slightly so he could lean against Kalim.

Kalim didn't respond immediately. Not because he didn't have a response — Azul could tell he did — but because he was letting the statement breathe.

"To Marco," Azul clarified, though it wasn't necessary. "I don't know why I agreed to go with Marco to the festival. When he asked, I was — I was caught off guard and I said yes before I'd finished deciding whether to say yes, and now I'm sitting here looking at my clothes and I'm aware that the problem is not the clothes"

"No," Kalim’s voice was quiet, and he rested a hand on Azul’s shoulders. "It's not the clothes."

"The problem," Azul continued, "is that my heart—" He stopped. Reframed. He was generally careful about the word heart, which was imprecise and sentimental and he had always preferred more exact language. "The problem is that I am still — significantly — attached. To people who are not Marco."

"Jade and Floyd" the name landed delicately in the room, like an old bomb that might or might not explode.

"Yes," Azul breathed out, closing his eyes. "The eels." My eels.  He said it with the flatness of someone acknowledging a fact they'd been working against for some time and were not winning. "I have been attempting for three months to redirect that attachment. To recognize it as — as something that existed in a context that no longer exists, as something that can be left with the rest of what I'm leaving. I've had limited success."

"Yeah," Kalim said softly.

"And now I've agreed to spend the festival with Marco, who is a nice guy, and who deserves someone whose thoughts are not — not distributed elsewhere." Azul looked at the clothes again without seeing them. "It feels cruel. Going on a date with someone when your heart is still fully — when it's still—"

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

Kalim turned slightly to look at him. "Can I say something?"

"Please"

"You're overthinking."

Azul opened his mouth, ready to counter but Kalim gave him a Look.

"You agreed to one date," Kalim continued, with the gentle firmness of someone who had thought about what they were going to say and was going to say it clearly. "One. To go to the festival together. You didn't agree to a second date. You didn't agree to anything beyond tomorrow evening. You haven't made any promises to Marco beyond showing up." He paused. "You're treating this like a binding contract with significant long-term implications, and it isn't. It's one evening."

Azul was quiet.

"One evening," Kalim repeated, moving to sit beside Azul now. "Isn't that allowed? To just — go somewhere with someone, without it meaning everything?"

"It feels—" Azul started.

"Cruel," Kalim finished knowingly, bumping his shoulder against Azul’s to comfort. "You said. But Azul — you're not deceiving him about anything that matters. He knows you're leaving in two weeks. He knows you're not from here. He knows this is temporary. He asked anyway." He tilted his head slightly. "Maybe he just wants one evening too."

Azul sat with this.

The logic of it was sound. He had always been susceptible to sound logic, which had occasionally been a problem when the logic led somewhere his instincts disagreed with, but in this case—

"Do you want to cancel?" Kalim’s voice was easy, without judgment. "If you do, I'll take care of it. I'll tell Marco you're not feeling well, or that something came up, or that you've reconsidered. You don't have to go. This doesn't have to happen."

Azul considered the offered exit.

He thought about Marco, who had asked with the — the uncomplicated directness of people who didn't operate through layers of strategy and calculation, who had seen someone they found interesting and had simply said so.

Much like a certain pair of eels Azul was trying not to think about

He thought about the festival. Which he had, before Marco and Sterling had walked through the door, been genuinely looking forward to. The lights and the food and the particular energy of a small town celebrating something.

He thought about Jade and Floyd, because he was always thinking about Jade and Floyd, and he thought about them now specifically in the context of what they would say if they knew he was going on a date and —

Azul exhaled.

"I'll go," he said.

Kalim's expression shifted toward the particular brightness that was genuine, the one that didn't have any performance in it.

"I made no promises beyond tomorrow," Azul continued, steadying himself on the logic. "Marco is aware of the situation's temporariness. It's one evening. It might be—" He paused.

"Fun?" Kalim offered.

Azul looked at him.

"It might be fun," Kalim said again, with a smile that was half-teasing and entirely warm.

"It might be fun," Azul agreed, with the careful tone of someone testing a hypothesis they weren't fully certain of but were willing to attempt.

Kalim's smile broke into something larger. "That's the spirit!" He turned immediately toward the pile of clothes with the focused energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment and was now fully activated. "Okay. Okay, we need to think about this. Festival is colorful, it's outdoors, it's evening so it'll get cooler by the time it gets late—"

"Kalim—"

"The dark blue works, you've always looked good in dark blue, but the green might be better for the festival atmosphere, it's more —"

"I'm capable of dressing myself," Azul said, but he was watching Kalim hold up two shirts and tilt his head between them with the complete seriousness of someone performing a critical assessment, and something in his chest had loosened.

"Yes, but you've been staring at these clothes for however long without arriving at a conclusion," Kalim teased, not unkindly. "So clearly outside input is useful." He held the green one toward Azul. "This one. The color works with your eyes and the fabric won't wrinkle badly if you end up sitting on the harbor steps."

"You've put more thought into this than I have."

"That's because you've been catastrophizing instead of preparing." Kalim set the green shirt aside with decision. "Jeans — the dark ones, obviously, they're the most comfortable and comfort matters because you'll be on your feet—"

"Kalim."

"—and the shoes with the—"

"Kalim," Azul tugged at his friend’s hand.

Kalim looked at him.

"Thank you"

A pause.

Kalim's expression did the thing it sometimes did where it went very genuine and slightly unguarded, the layer below the cheerfulness that Azul had come to understand was the real one. "You deserve to have a nice evening," Kalim said simply, tugging Azul into a quick hug. "Just — a nice evening. That's all."

Azul looked at him for a moment. At Kali, who was also still Kalim, who had spent three months being his friend in the specific ways that mattered — not the grand gestures but the standing beside the bed, the saying you're overthinking, the holding up two shirts and making a decision when Azul couldn't make one himself.

"Green shirt," Azul said.

Kalim beamed. "Green shirt."

He handed it over, and then turned back to the pile with renewed purpose, narrating his reasoning on jeans selection with the enthusiasm of someone who found this genuinely engaging. Azul stood and began to change, and Kalim's commentary was warm and slightly ridiculous and entirely unhelpful in any practical sense and Azul found himself listening to it anyway.

Found himself, against all reasonable expectation, smiling.

One evening, he thought. Just one evening.

Fun, he thought, testing the word again. It might be fun.

He was going to go to the festival with a nice person who asked simple questions and expected simple answers, and he was going to look at the lights on the harbor and eat things that were probably deep-fried and not think about heterochromatic eyes and the specific way the Leech twins called his name.

Or he was going to try not to think about it.

Which was, he was finding, the most realistic version of the plan.

"Do you think the dark shoes or the—"

"Dark shoes," Azul said.

"You didn't even look."

"I trust your assessment."

Kalim made a small triumphant sound and retrieved the dark shoes from their location near the wardrobe with the satisfaction of someone whose expertise had been validated.

Azul took them.

"Kalim," he said.

"Hm?"

"Are you going to spend your entire evening monitoring how my date is going from a distance?"

A pause that was slightly too long.

"No”

"Kalim"

"I'll have my own things to do," Kalim said, with dignity. "I'll be very occupied."

"Mm."

"Very occupied."

"I believe you completely," which was an outright lie delivered with perfect composure, and Kalim laughed, and the room felt like a room where two people who had become genuinely important to each other were getting ready for an evening that might be something good.

One date, Azul thought.

Just one.

That's allowed.

It's allowed to be just one.

He put on the green shirt and firmly, deliberately, did not think about Jade and Floyd.

He was going to the festival.

He was going to have fun.

[FOOTHILL TOWN HARBOR FESTIVAL]

Kalim waved.

Riddle and Azul were looking back at him from approximately fifteen feet away with the identical expression of two people who had been instructed to leave but were not entirely comfortable with the instruction. Riddle had the particular tension of someone running through contingencies. Azul had the look of someone who had already started calculating the optimal check-in intervals.

"Go," Kalim said, smiling. "Both of you. They're waiting."

"We could—" Riddle started, taking one step in Kalim’s direction

"You could what?" Kalim asked pleasantly. "Walk around the festival in a group of five while your dates wonder why you've brought chaperones?"

Azul's expression acknowledged this point.

"Set a meeting time," Riddle said, which was Riddle's way of accepting an outcome while still maintaining some organizational authority over it.

"Festival entrance, midnight," Kalim said immediately, because he had anticipated this. "When the main lantern lighting happens. I'll be there."

"Before midnight if anything—"

"Red"

"—seems unusual or if you feel at all—"

"Red," Kalim said, and his voice was warm and firm simultaneously, the combination he'd been developing over three months of genuinely caring about these two people. "I'm going to be fine. I'm going to eat things and talk to people and dance. That's all." He smiled. "Go. Have fun. Both of you."

Another moment of them both looking at him.

Then Azul said, quietly: "You'll stay in the lit areas."

"Yes"

"And if anything—"

"I'll find you immediately," Kalim laughed, making a shooing motion. "I promise. Now go. Marco is going to think you changed your mind."

Azul straightened. The practical concern was sufficient to activate his decision-making. "Midnight at the entrance," he confirmed.

"Midnight," Kalim agreed.

"Don't eat anything from the stall on the east side of the harbor," Riddle said, which was apparently his final contribution to this conversation. "The shellfish didn't look properly maintained when we walked past."

"I'll avoid the east side shellfish," Kalim’s tone was solemn but his eyes sparkled.

Riddle held eye contact for a moment with the expression of someone who wanted to say more and was preventing himself. Then he turned and went.

Azul lingered one additional second. Then he nodded, once, and followed.

Kalim watched them go until they were absorbed into the festival crowd, and then he stood for a moment by himself in the middle of the harbor festival of Foothill Town.

Alone.

He took a breath.

Then he smiled — not the automatic smile, not the Kalim Al Asim smile that had been running on its own power for years, but the slow, wondering smile of someone noticing something unexpected.

It felt — nice.

He hadn't had a lot of this.

Alone, he meant. The kind of alone where you were simply a person in a place without someone monitoring the fact that you were a person in a place. The Al Asim heir had always been too precious, too valuable, too specific a target for too many categories of threat. He'd had security details since before he was old enough to understand what security details were. He'd had Jamil, whose presence was warm and constant and eventually revealed to be more complicated than Kalim had understood. He'd had, at NRC, the perpetual ambient awareness of people who were interested in him for various reasons — his position, his family, his housewarden status, the resources he represented.

He had not, in recent memory, simply wandered.

He had worried, briefly, on the way to the festival, that being here without company would make him sad. That the absence of Riddle and Azul's familiar presence would feel like a wrong note, would remind him of other absences.

He had been, apparently, miscalibrated.

What it felt like was: space.

Not emptiness — he was surrounded by people, the festival was packed with the warm, cheerful, slightly chaotic energy of Foothill Town having a celebration, and people were everywhere. But none of them were paying particular attention to Kalim specifically. He was one more person among several hundred, unremarkable, unmonitored.

He could go wherever he wanted.

He went to the food stalls first, because there was a smell coming from that direction that was extraordinary and he had no one to defer to about whether it was appropriate to investigate immediately.

The stall was selling something fried, which Kalim ordered with the cheerful decisiveness of someone who had spent a lifetime having food choices filtered through various concerns — his safety, the event's formality, the impression his choices might make — and was done with all of that. It was fried and it was excellent and he stood at the edge of the stall and ate it without sitting down and without anyone commenting on whether this was appropriate.

He talked to people.

This happened naturally, the way it always happened with Kalim — the regulars from The Salted Fig who were here in their festival clothes looking somehow both more and less themselves than they did over coffee, who lit up when they saw Kali and pulled him into small conversations that meandered pleasantly and led nowhere in particular. Mrs. Stella without Princess for once, explaining that the cat preferred to remain home on festival nights due to the noise. Mr. Chen the baker, who had somehow arrived at his stall on time for once and was loudly announcing this to anyone who would listen. A cluster of children from the harbor district who had been in the café before with their parents and who had apparently decided Kali was acceptable and showed him their festival face paint in detail.

Kalim listened. Asked questions. Laughed at things that were funny.

Nobody wanted anything from him.

Not anything beyond the ordinary wants of people who were having a good evening and had encountered someone friendly. Not money, not access, not the particular resources that came attached to the Al Asim name. Not careful handling, not performance, not the navigation of complicated feelings.

Just conversation. Just the ordinary pleasantness of people at a festival.

The dancing found him gradually.

He'd been moving toward the main courtyard for a while without fully acknowledging the direction, pulled by the music that had been threading through everything since he'd arrived — live musicians in the center, playing the traditional harbor festival songs that Orso had told him about, the ones with footwork patterns that changed as the music changed.

The courtyard was crowded and lit with lanterns and smelled of the sea and woodsmoke from braziers around the perimeter. The dancing was communal in the specific way Orso had described — not partnered, not formal, no invitation required and no expertise necessary. People joined and left and joined again, the pattern shifting to incorporate them.

Kalim watched for approximately thirty seconds.

Then he stepped in.

The first minutes were about finding the rhythm, which took less time than he'd expected — music had always made sense to him in a way that some other things didn't, had always been something he could simply have without needing to think about it. The footwork was different from anything he'd formally learned, regional and specific, but the structure of it was familiar in the way that all dance structures were once you understood the principle.

He found his feet.

And then he forgot to think about his feet.

This was the thing about dancing when it was right — when it stopped being something you were doing and became something that was simply happening through you. Kalim had danced his whole life, at formal events and festivals and Scarabia, but it had always been dancing with an awareness of himself dancing. There was always someone watching. Always a context shaping what the dancing meant.

Right now nobody was watching him specifically.

He was just a person dancing, one of many, the music going where it went and his body going with it.

He didn't think about NRC. He had been expecting to — had been waiting for the thought of it to arrive and interrupt, to find the gaps in his movement and fill them with something complicated. But it didn't. Not now, not with the music doing what it was doing and his feet doing what they were doing and the lantern light warm around him.

He didn't think about Jamil.

This was — this was rare. The past three months had taught him that Jamil was a thought that arrived uninvited and stayed longer than instructed and was waiting in unexpected places. He had developed a relationship with that fact, had accepted that loving Jamil was apparently a thing his heart intended to continue doing regardless of his instructions.

But right now, dancing, the music was louder than that.

He didn't think about the Scalding Sands. Didn't think about his family, the siblings and cousins and the enormous complicated machinery of the Al Asim household. Didn't think about his father, who had sent Jamil papers freeing the Viper family, who loved Kalim in his way.

He thought about the music.

The way it built and the way it resolved and the way it asked for something from your feet and your arms and the center of your body and gave back something in return. The particular joy of communal dancing, the awareness of other people moving in the same rhythm without it being about any of them specifically, the thing that festivals had always been and that he'd never gotten to experience purely because there had always been something else attached to his presence in them.

He danced.

He danced through one song and into the next and through the change of rhythm that the next brought, his feet adjusting, his body finding the new pattern, the practice of it becoming its own kind of thought.

He danced until he was warm and slightly breathless, until his hair was coming loose from where he'd tied it back, until he was grinning with the uncalculated grin of someone who was simply feeling something good.

Around him, other people danced. The musicians played. The lanterns swayed slightly in the sea breeze. Someone nearby was laughing about something and the laugh was infectious and Kalim found himself caught in it without knowing the joke.

This is what it is, he thought, in the gaps between rhythms. This is what I was looking for.

Not the dancing specifically. Not the festival. But this — the ability to be present in a moment without the moment being about who he was supposed to be in it. The ability to be warm and to breathe and to feel music move through him without it being a performance of warmth, without someone being there because their job was to be there.

Just Kali.

Nobody important.

Dancing.

He thought about the boat. Less than two weeks from now. The marine city in the Shaftlands that the sailors had described, with its particular light and its intersection of sea and sky. He thought about the new life Idia was building them on paper, the documents that would make them real people with histories and identities.

He thought about dancing in a city he'd never seen, learning new rhythms, being Kali in a place that had never known Kalim.

The music swelled.

His feet followed.

And in the middle of a harbor festival in a small town, Kalim Al Asim — Kali, who was nobody important, who worked at a café and had learned to cook and had earned his first paycheck and had danced in the courtyard until he was breathless — breathed.

Fully.

Without thinking about it.

Simply breathed.

The lanterns swayed.

The music played.

And for the first time in longer than he could measure, there was nothing else.

Just this.

Just now.

Just him.

Azul was smiling.

This was not performance — that was the thing that surprised him most about the evening, the thing he kept noticing and re-noticing. The smile arrived on its own, without strategy, without calculation about what it communicated or whether it was appropriate to the moment.

Marco had made him laugh three times in the first hour.

Not the polished social laugh that Azul had developed as part of Azul Ashengrotto’s operational toolkit — the one that was warm and precisely calibrated and communicated that you found someone charming without revealing anything about what you actually found funny. The actual laugh. The one that arrived when something genuinely surprised him with its humor before he could prepare for it.

The story about the fishing net and the particularly stubborn crab had produced it the first time. The story about the merchant who'd insisted his cargo was "light goods" and turned out to have filled his hold with ceramic garden ornaments the second time. And the third time had been something Marco had said about his own terrible sense of direction that had required a seven-minute detour to correct, delivered with the self-deprecating ease of someone who'd made peace with his flaws because finding them funny was more efficient than anything else.

Marco was — Azul searched for the right word, because precision mattered — uncomplicated in a way that was genuinely refreshing. He made no moves, no calculations. When Azul wanted to look at a stall, they looked at the stall. When Azul made an observation about the maritime trade implications of a particular type of fish being featured at the food market, Marco listened with authentic interest and contributed his own knowledge without making Azul feel that his observations were excessive or strange.

He was considerate. Attentive. Pleasant.

He maintained a respectful distance throughout — never crowding, never the easy physical familiarity that some people deployed as social shorthand. He was present without being imposing, interested without being demanding.

He was, Azul thought, as close to perfect as someone who wasn't the right person could be.

Because the thing was—

The thing was that whenever Marco maintained his considerate distance, Azul's body noticed the distance in a specific way. Noticed it in the register of something that should be here, isn't. A particular presence on his right that had a very specific quality — the quality of someone who moved in close not because the space required it but because that was simply where Jade existed in relation to Azul. And on the left, the unpredictable orbit of Floyd, who followed no consistent spatial logic except his own and who somehow always ended up exactly where he was most likely to be infuriating and exactly where he was most likely to be needed.

Marco didn't tease him.

This was — objectively, this was a positive quality. Azul had been teased in ways that were unkind at various points in his life, and it had not been pleasant. Jade's teasing was different, was the specific teasing of someone who knew precisely what would make Azul's composure flicker and deployed it with affection rather than malice. Floyd's teasing had no strategy to it whatsoever and was somehow more effective for the absence. Both of them had spent years identifying exactly where Azul's defenses were thinnest and poking them — gently, and then with increasing confidence as they'd established that Azul's defenses responding didn't mean Azul actually wanted them to stop.

Marco didn't do any of this.

Marco asked pleasant questions and listened to the answers and laughed at the right moments.

And Azul enjoyed it, and kept thinking about the eels, and felt guilty about thinking about the eels, and enjoyed it some more, and kept thinking about them anyway.

They found themselves, nearing midnight, at the edge of the main town square.

Azul heard the music before he saw the source — the festival had been running continuous live performance throughout, but this was something slightly different, a rhythm that had built into something more insistent over the last hour. The square was lit with the concentrated glow of lanterns, more here than anywhere else in the festival.

And in the middle of it, unmistakably, was Kalim.

Or rather: there had apparently been many people dancing, and now there was only Kalim, because at some point the crowd had done what crowds did when something genuinely compelling was happening — they had stopped doing their own thing and started watching the thing.

Azul understood immediately why.

He'd known Kalim could dance. Had seen him dance at Scarabia events, had been present at various celebrations where Kalim had at some point inevitably ended up in the middle of whatever dancing was happening because that was simply where Kalim went when there was dancing. He was good.

But this was different from that.

This Kalim was not performing. Was not being charming or entertaining or doing the thing that Kalim Al Asim did at social events, which was be delightful in ways that served social purposes. This was Kalim dancing because the music was there and his body wanted to respond to it, with no other consideration in the equation.

The difference was visible.

Every movement was — lighter wasn't the right word, because the dancing was technically demanding, was clearly drawing on genuine skill. Unconsidered wasn't right either, because unconsidered implied thoughtless, and what Azul was watching was the opposite of thoughtless.

Unguarded, he thought. That's it. He's completely unguarded.

The smile on Kalim's face was not a smile that was doing anything except being there. Not Kalim Al Asim's smile, which had been performing its function since he was a child. Just — the expression of someone who was happy in the immediate, unqualified way of happiness that wasn't about anything except itself.

Azul felt something in his own chest go very warm.

The festival, the date, the three months of café work, the entire improbable project of being Kali and Al and Red — it had been for this. Among other things, it had been for this specific thing: Kalim dancing alone in a festival square because the music was good and there was no one watching him who needed anything from him.

Good, Azul thought. This is good. This is what we came for.

Beside him, Marco had also gone quiet.

They watched together for a moment — Kalim's feet finding the rhythm's changes, his arms moving with the kind of ease that came from having made a genuine peace with your own body, the crowd around the square watching with the particular quality of people who had stopped to see something worth seeing.

"I hope you enjoyed tonight," Marco said.

Azul turned. The comment had been soft, directed toward the square rather than toward Azul directly, which somehow made it land with more honesty.

Oh.

He looked at Marco. At Marco's expression, which was looking at the square with a gentleness that was not a romantic expression, or not only a romantic expression, but the expression of someone who had spent an evening in someone's company and had understood something about them that hadn't been stated.

"I—" Azul started.

"I have a crush on you," Marco said, with the directness he'd brought to everything throughout the evening. "I want to be clear about that. I did ask you on a date and I meant it as a date." He paused. "But I've also been around fishermen my whole life, and fishermen spend a lot of time watching things — the water, the weather, the catch. You learn to see what's actually there rather than what you want to see." He looked at Azul then, a sideways look that was kind rather than accusing. "You had a good time tonight."

"I did," Azul said, honestly.

"But there's something that has a hold on you," Marco said simply. "Some kind of — cloud. It lifted a bit tonight. But it's still there." He looked back at Kalim dancing. "I'm glad it lifted even a bit."

Azul was quiet for a moment.

He had been thoroughly and precisely seen, and he was trying to determine how he felt about that.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "If I was—"

"Don't apologize," Marco said. "I had a wonderful evening. You're interesting to talk to, you're funny when you let yourself be, and you have excellent taste in which food stalls to prioritize." The corner of his mouth moved. "I'm not disappointed. I'm just — honest."

Azul looked at him properly.

Marco, who had good stories and paid attention and maintained respectful distance and had noticed every single thing about this evening with the patience of someone who spent his days watching water.

"You deserve someone who can give you the affection you deserve," Azul said, because it was true and because saying the convenient nothing would have been less than Marco had just offered him. "Fully. Without — without the cloud."

Marco smiled and it reached his eyes.

"I know," he said. "I'm not worried about that. I'm twenty. There's time." He looked at Azul with the steady assessment of someone who had made up his mind about something. "I hope you can resolve it. Whatever it is that's hanging over you. The thing you didn't stop thinking about tonight."

Azul held his gaze. "You noticed."

"I told you," Marco said. "Fishermen watch."

They stood at the edge of the square, and Kalim was still dancing in the lantern light, and the music was doing what it was doing, and Azul felt the night settle around him with the particular quality of something that had been exactly what it needed to be without being what he'd thought it would be.

"Thank you," Azul said. "For tonight. Genuinely."

"Thank you," Marco said. "Same."

They looked at the square.

After a moment, Marco said: "I'm going to find my friends. They've been sending me location updates for the past hour." He glanced at his phone with the expression of someone who had been politely ignoring multiple messages. "Take care of yourself, Al."

"You too," Azul said.

Marco walked into the festival crowd.

Azul stood alone at the edge of the square and watched Kalim dance.

Jade, he thought. Floyd.

The names arrived the way they always arrived — directly, without preamble, resident somewhere in his chest in the specific way of things that lived there permanently rather than visiting.

You weren't there tonight. And I noticed every moment you weren't.

I don't know what to do with that.

I don't know if I ever did.

He watched Kalim's feet find the music's last movements, watched the crowd watch his friend, watched the lanterns sway.

The cloud was still there.

But it had lifted, for an evening.

Marco had been right about that.

Maybe that's enough, Azul thought. For tonight, maybe that's enough.

He waited for Kalim to notice him.

Sterling was excellent company.

Riddle had established this within the first thirty minutes and had spent the next hours continuing to confirm it with the thoroughness he applied to most assessments. Sterling was punctual — had been at the harbor entrance precisely when they'd agreed, which Riddle had noted with the specific appreciation of someone for whom punctuality was a moral stance rather than a preference. 

He was genuinely interesting to talk to, which was not a quality that could be performed reliably; people were interesting or they weren't, and Sterling was, with a working knowledge of maritime logistics that Riddle found himself drawn into despite having had no previous investment in the subject.

He navigated the festival well. 

Didn't hover, didn't disappear; was present without requiring management.

He'd also, once he'd established that Riddle had opinions about things, engaged with those opinions enthusiastically. Not the polite engagement of someone waiting for the other person to finish talking — actual engagement, the kind that involved responding to specific points and building from them. When Riddle had made an observation about the festival's organization, Sterling had contributed his own understanding of how the town coordinated the annual event, and the resulting conversation had been genuinely interesting.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, attractive and with a pleasant voice, and he laughed at things that were funny and didn't laugh at things that weren't.

He was, in every assessable category, an excellent date.

Riddle was very aware of the gap between excellent date and right person.

He had been aware of it since approximately twenty minutes into the evening, when Sterling had said something mildly self-deprecating and laughed, and Riddle had registered the laugh with the part of his mind that catalogued things and had noted, simultaneously: this is not the laugh I was expecting. Which was a strange thing to note, since he hadn't been expecting any particular laugh. Since he had no reasonable basis for having an expectation.

And yet.

He had an expectation.

He had the expectation, apparently, of a different laugh. Quieter. More measured in its expression but not in its feeling — the laugh of someone who found things genuinely funny but had learned to be economical with expressions of amusement, with the result that when amusement did break through it was more visible as a contrast. A laugh that was connected to eyes that went slightly soft at the corners when he was relaxed.

Riddle did not examine where this expectation came from. He filed it in the examine later category and continued the date.

Sterling had been thoughtful about touch too — maintained a comfortable distance, offered his arm exactly once at a moment when the crowd had compressed and Riddle had been briefly jostled, and withdrawn it with the same naturalness after the crowd had cleared. No assumption. No lingering.

Good instincts, Riddle noted.

They ate things. Sterling had recommendations from having attended previous festivals and Riddle had opinions about which recommendations to follow based on factors that Sterling found both slightly excessive and apparently charming. They discussed the history of the harbor festival, which Riddle had looked up and was therefore prepared to converse about, and Sterling had supplementary information from having grown up here that enriched the account.

They looked at the lights.

The lights were, Riddle had to admit, extraordinary. The lanterns throughout the town, the strings of light along the harbor front, the way the whole thing reflected in the water below. He'd been aware of it as an aesthetic backdrop throughout, but standing at the harbor railing with the full display in front of him, it arrived with more force than he'd expected.

It's beautiful, he thought.

I wish—

He stopped that thought before it completed itself.

What he noticed was that the thought had been building toward a specific wish, which was the wish that a specific other person was standing here seeing this with him. This was — he filed it. He filed it very firmly in the same examine later category and turned back to Sterling.

"The engineering of it must be quite complex," he said, about the lights.

"The Gutierrez family does it every year," Sterling smiled, pointing out the more intricate details. "They've been doing it for four generations. There's a daughter now who studied magical engineering — she added the reflection effect on the water three years ago."

"Innovative," Riddle said.

"She'd be pleased to hear that," Sterling laughed, directing a grin at Riddle that he couldn’t help but return. "She spent six months arguing with her father about it."

They stood at the railing, and the lights were beautiful, and Riddle thought about Silver for the forty-third time in the evening without meaning to.

He had stopped counting at some point, which made him aware that it had been happening often enough that counting had ceased to be meaningful. The thoughts arrived without invitation and they arrived specifically — not the abstract concept of Silver, not someone from NRC, but Silver with particular detail. The sound of hoofbeats on a forest path. The particular quality of Silver's attention, which was unhurried in a way that most attention wasn't, which arrived fully and stayed rather than moving on. The way Silver moved, which had the quality of someone who had spent years learning to be precise about the use of their body — not rigid, not performed, just considered in a way that expressed something about how he understood the space around him.

The way Silver had caught him.

Riddle had been doing sustained work to not think about that specifically, because thinking about it produced — something, in his chest, something that didn't have a clean category. The steadiness of the arms. And then Silver looking at him, and the roses being red, and the pocket dimension pressing against Riddle with its particular desperation—

He was thinking about it again.

He was, demonstrably, not managing this correctly.

Why, he thought, with the precision he usually brought to problems, do I keep thinking about Silver?

He had the thought, and then he had the thought about the thought, which was: what is my hypothesis about why I keep thinking about Silver?

He tried to examine this honestly.

Silver was someone Riddle had known for two years. Had been in the equestrian club with. Had occasionally crossed paths with in the context of inter-dormitory events and school activities. Had found — this was the honest part — consistently, reliably good to be around. In a way that was not the way most people were good to be around. In a way that was specifically about Silver, not just about Silver's competence or reliability or social function.

In a way that produced, when Silver was present, a particular quality of—

Oh, Riddle thought.

He stood at the harbor railing while Sterling said something about the Gutierrez family, and the lights reflected in the water, and Riddle had what could be most accurately described as an extremely poorly timed realization.

He filed it immediately. Firmly. In the most sealed category he could locate.

He had a date. He was on the date right now. He was standing beside someone who had been excellent company for three hours and who deserved his actual attention, not the portion of it that remained after most of it had been elsewhere all evening.

This is, he thought, deeply unfair to Sterling.

The square appeared ahead of them as they came around the last bend of the festival's main path, the lantern light pooling there more densely than anywhere else, the music having built over the course of the evening into something that the night was gathered around.

And in the middle of it, Kalim.

Riddle stopped walking without planning to.

Sterling stopped beside him.

Kalim was dancing — had apparently been dancing for some time, given that the crowd had paused what they were doing to watch something worth watching. And it was worth watching. Riddle had known Kalim could dance in the abstract sense of possessing information about someone's capabilities. He had not been present for whatever this was.

This was Kalim when nobody needed him to be Kalim Al Asim.

This was the absence of the performance that Kalim had been carrying — not badly, not obviously, because Kalim had been carrying it his whole life and was very good at it. But its absence was visible in a way that the presence hadn't been, in the way that removing something you've stopped noticing reveals the space it occupied.

Kalim was happy.

Not performing happy. Not the Kalim Al Asim who had been the most enthusiastic presence in every social situation he'd occupied, who had been golden and warm and on in the particular way of someone who had been switched on so long they'd forgotten how to turn off. Just Kalim. Free, in whatever way Kalim had found his particular version of free.

The expression on his face was—

Riddle felt something in his chest, separate from the something that had been there all evening, a different variety. Something warmer. Something that was glad, simply and genuinely glad, that Kalim looked like this. That this had been possible. That whatever they'd sacrificed to get here, this moment existed.

He's okay, Riddle thought. Whatever this is, whatever we've done, whatever it costs — at least Kalim is okay.

"That’s your friend isn’t he?" Sterling asked quietly.

"Yes," Riddle said.  "A very good friend."

Sterling was looking at him, Riddle realized. Not at the square.

"You care about him a lot," Sterling said.

"Yes"

"You've been thinking about people you care about all evening," Sterling said. Not accusingly. In the way that someone stated something they'd observed and had decided was worth naming.

Riddle still jolted and looked at him.

Sterling met his gaze with the uncomplicated directness he'd brought to everything. He wasn't hurt, Riddle noted — or if he was, it wasn't the kind that showed as injury. It was closer to the mild rueful expression of someone who'd seen the situation clearly from slightly earlier than the other person and had made their peace with it.

"I'm going to be honest with you," Sterling said, his tone even, almost gentle.  "Because I think honest is easier for both of us."

Riddle waited.

"I like you," Sterling’s words were steady, unembellished. His gaze didn’t waver, and they didn’t blame. "I've liked you for a few months, since you started coming into the café with your friends. You're interesting and you notice things and you have opinions about everything in a way that I find — it works for me." He paused. "But I've also spent this whole evening watching you be not quite here. And I don't think that's going to change."

Riddle’s lips parted, but before he could speak, Sterling lifted a hand slightly, cutting in gently but firmly. 

"It's not a criticism," Sterling said quickly. "It's just — I can see it. There's somewhere else you are, or someone else you're thinking about, and it's not me." He smiled, and it was the smile of someone who had made peace with something before saying it. "And I'd rather know that clearly than spend more time hoping something that isn't going to happen will happen."

"I'm sorry," Riddle couldn’t bear to look at Sterling, at the kindness he didn’t deserve from someone he had unintentionally led on.

"Don't be," Sterling spoke with the easy certainty of someone who meant it. "I had a good evening. That's the truth. You're interesting to talk to and you actually engage with what I'm saying, which — honestly, that's rarer than people think." He looked back at the square briefly. "But you were somewhere else part of the time. Not all of it. But part."

Riddle should, probably, deny this. Red from Pyroxene didn't have people he was thinking about in the specific way that had been occupying Riddle's gaps all evening. The cover story didn't include a silver-haired Diasomnia student with a careful, unhurried attention that Riddle had apparently been noticing more than he'd acknowledged.

He didn't deny it.

"Yes," he said quietly. “I’m sorry”

Sterling nodded, as if this confirmed something he'd already decided. "Don't be. I had a great evening. You're excellent company for someone who was present for about sixty percent of it."

"That's generous," Riddle laughed slightly, with the accuracy of someone accepting a fair assessment.

"I hope it helped. Tonight. Even if you were somewhere else part of the time — I hope the part of you that was here found some rest."

Riddle looked at him. At this uncomplicated, perceptive dock worker who had asked him on a date and had received a version of him that was present and pleasant and elsewhere in equal measure.

Riddle felt the guilt, which was present and appropriate. He had agreed to a date while not being fully available for it, had known on some level that this was the case when he'd said yes, and Sterling had come to this with genuine feeling and been met with sixty percent attendance.

He turned to Sterling when the music shifted.

"For what it's worth," Riddle said slowly, "you were — this was better than I deserved this evening."

"Red," Sterling admonished gently.

Riddle finally looked at him.

"It's fine," Sterling pat his shoulder. "Really. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't hoping — but I'm also not surprised. You've got something — a history, maybe, or a feeling, something that's got you. I can tell." He smiled softly. "Some people are just already taken by something before you ever get to them. There's nothing to apologize for."

Already taken by something.

The phrase sat strangely. Not wrong. Just — specific in a way that Riddle hadn't expected from this evening.

He thought about the equestrian trail. About the drawer he'd filed the thing in and how thoroughly it had opened tonight.

Not something, he thought. Someone.

He didn't examine it further. Not here. Not now.

"You deserve someone who's fully present," Riddle said. It came out with more sincerity than it might have, because he meant it and he was tired of not meaning things.

"I know," Sterling said, still smiling, still gentler than Riddle deserved. "I'll find them." He said it with the easy confidence of someone who believed this genuinely and wasn't worried about the timeline. "Go find your friend. Both your friends."

He had noticed Azul, Riddle realized — had probably clocked Azul and Marco standing a few feet away at the edge of the square, which was more observant than most people would have managed in the festival atmosphere.

Riddle thought about the apology he could offer. About the explanation he couldn't give. About the fact that the somewhere-else he'd been all evening was a person who was currently on a campus three miles up the hill, who had caught him in a rose maze, who had gray-silver eyes and a particular way of moving through space.

"I should—" he started.

"Can I?" Sterling cut in

Riddle blinked. "Can you what?"

Sterling stepped forward, very slightly, with the question written clearly in his posture in the way of someone asking and meaning to wait for the answer. And then, when Riddle didn't step back — when Riddle stood still because what Sterling was about to do had become clear and it wasn't what he'd expected and he didn't know what the correct response was — Sterling reached up.

Pressed a brief kiss to Riddle's forehead.

Brief. Warm. The specific gesture of someone offering something affectionate without the weight of something it wasn't.

He stepped back.

"Take care of yourself, Red," he said.

He turned and walked into the festival crowd.

Riddle stood in the square and felt — a number of things, in a relatively concentrated period. The gentleness of the goodbye, which had been kinder than he'd given Sterling any particular reason to be. The specific guilt of having spent an entire evening with someone who had genuine feeling and not been fully present for it. The something in his chest that had been there all evening and was still there, unchanged, named now in a way it hadn't been named this morning.

Silver.

He turned.

Azul was there. Fifteen feet away, watching Kalim with the expression of someone who had also just had a conversation that needed a moment to settle.

Riddle walked toward him.

Azul looked at him as he arrived.

"Sterling?" Azul asked.

"Said goodnight," Riddle sighed, hugging himself. "Marco?"

"Same" A pause. "Are you alright?"

"Yes," Riddle said. Then: "No. I'm not sure." He stood beside Azul and looked at Kalim dancing and tried to locate the accurate description. "I've had a realization about something. It was badly timed and I'm not certain what to do with it."

"Join the club," Azul said, quietly.

Riddle looked at him.

Azul looked back with the expression of someone who completely understood and was not going to press.

They stood together in the square, watching Kalim dance in the lantern light, and Riddle thought about silver hair and forthright and steady and the specific quality of being caught, and he felt the something in his chest settle into its correct shape.

The shape was not comfortable.

It was, however, clear.

Silver, said the newly named thing in his chest.

Silver, Riddle acknowledged.

He put it where it needed to go for now — where it would stay until there was a context in which it could mean anything — and watched his friend dance.