So he couldn’t tell where she’d gotten the template for her pledging ritual, but it was perfectly Luci. The way she glowed and her new husband’s shyly tender looks were enough to melt even a calcified heart. When the pair of priests announced them wed, the entire congregation erupted into cheers, and then dissolved at the couple’s behest into mingling and enjoying the refreshments.
Leina sighed as they rose. “That was so romantic.”
“And this is so ridiculous!” Luci interrupted, joining them. “Look at the lot of you, so serious. I didn’t know you could be serious.” But there was a smile fighting with her mouth and winning, and she laughed. “You all came!”
“Of course we did.” Brett patted his hip suggestively. “And we expect invitations to the baby presentations too, so when you get with the kit-making, don’t forget us.”
“Brett!” Leina exclaimed. “Ignore him, Luci. Healers are crass.”
“Also, apparently, failures at anatomy. Not the right place for babymaking, you are grabbing, Brett.”
“Ugnh, not you too, Mera.” Leina covered her face.
Luci snickered and hugged them all, save Jahir, before indicating her husband with a flourish. “This is Antonin! He’s also a healer, so he’s fine with the crass jokes.”
“So long as they’re anatomically correct,” Antonin said, his voice an amused basso rumble. “But I know some remedial classes that might help with that…?”
Brett laughed. “You would have fit right into our student dinners!”
“I’m sorry I missed them.” The leonine grinned. “Maybe we can make a go at it? Dinner tomorrow?”
“Since we have the reception now, and I’m planning on being busy tonight,” Luci said.
Leina pressed a finger to Brett’s mouth. “Don’t even.”
Mera chortled. “You see what you have been missing, Antonin-alet.”
“And I don’t have to miss it any longer.” The leonine chuckled. “Good to meet you all. Any friend of Luci’s is welcome with me.”
“Now go drink the sangria!” Luci said. “I had enough of it made to get even you drunk, Mera.”
“By all means. Show me to the table.”
Luci had to make herself available to all her guests, of course… that left Vasiht’h and Jahir to enjoy the company of their college friends, which was no hardship. Leina and Brett had graduated and gone on to careers in medicine, with the former working on the orbital station and the latter still on Seersana, if on the other side of the world. (“Just getting cold there… was nice to get away!”) Mera had completed his graduate studies, decamped to his homeworld on a two-year grant to study his own people, and returned to work on a doctorate in what was still called anthropology. The Ciracaana did not live on campus, though: “Have graduated from being poor student, to being poor student with delusions of grandeur. Far too highbrow now for mere on-campus apartments.”
The camaraderie was as easy as it had been when they’d been in school together. From Luci’s reception, they all wandered to lunch in the city, where Jahir had a diffident suggestion that naturally turned out to be a delicious find.
/How do you always know these things?/ Vasiht’h asked over the second course while Brett and Leina debated the merits of the local wines they were sampling from the flight one of them had ordered.
/I listen,/ Jahir answered after a moment. /And I smell./ A strong impression then, walking through the crowds at night: snatches of conversation, a woman exclaiming about cheeses, her friend about the service; the yeast-and-grape aroma wafting between groups of people, clear despite the musk of the Pelted and the perfume of the surrounding flowers in the planters lining the street.
/Of course you do,/ Vasiht’h said, fond. /While the rest of us are distracting ourselves with talk and our own thoughts, you’re doing something useful./
A gentle softness, like the pleasure of a warm blanket in the cold. /Communion with other people is never useless./
Vasiht’h began to reply and stopped himself. How often had Tiber chided him for negative self-talk? He didn’t even know where he’d learned the habit. His sister’s voice, suddenly: ‘From your brother, of course.’ He ignored the memory of her. Some answers were too easy. Weren’t they?
“Oh ho!” Brett said, interrupting Vasiht’h’s thoughts. “What’s this? Someone’s been sneaking into our textbooks! And by ‘our’ I mean mine and Leina’s!”
Over his glass, Jahir murmured, “I was enjoying your story until the point where the details made no sense.”
Leina whooped. “That was the most genteel take-down I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m wounded,” Brett said theatrically, pressing a hand to his breast with a mournful expression. “Absolutely wounded.”
“What did I miss?” Vasiht’h asked, bewildered.
“Only Brett telling one of his tall tales, which would have held up for everyone except, apparently, a closet pharmachemist,” Leina said, reaching for the bread.
“Your partner called him on the science,” Mera told Vasiht’h, amused. “Never good when your audience knows the jargon. If you don’t.”
“I do know the jargon, thank you very much,” Brett said, laughing with a hand pressed to his ribcage. “Speaker-singer! It’s just if I use all the actual, correct words it doesn’t sound right to laymen, so it’s not as funny.”
“I’m not a layman!” Leina protested.
“Yeah, but you’ve heard all my stories already!”
Leina smeared her bread with herb butter. “Truth.”
“So if you must know,” Brett told Jahir, “It was delivered by patch, not AAP, because the absorption rate was better. And to the inside of the ear, if you’re about to twig me about whether we shaved some poor patient’s arm.”
“I didn’t think the coral-derivative aggregation inhibitors were small enough to pass through the skin?”
“They didn’t used to be,” Brett answered. “But they found a way to cut the molecular weight by twenty percent, and that makes them good targets for transdermal—what the many hells, though, arii, when did you get this hardcore and can we sit down and shoot the breeze about this separately?” The Seersa was grinning, but his bafflement was obvious. “Vasiht’h? Help me out here. What has your partner been up to?”
Vasiht’h, distracted by the sense of the Eldritch’s mind during this recitation, looked up. “Um… what? Oh. Continuing education?” He glanced at Jahir, who inclined his head. And left it that way, the way he did only when he was feeling particularly sheepish about something.
“That’s one hell of a con-ed path there,” Leina said, laughing. “You’d better be careful, Vasiht’h, or you’ll end up married to a doctor.”
“Doctors. Notoriously crass,” Mera said. “But fortunately not so good at anatomy, as relating to breeding.” He patted Vasiht’h’s shoulder. “You are safe.”
The painful itch in the mindline was definitely embarrassment. Bordering on mortification. None of which mattered when weighed against the pleasure Vasiht’h had sensed from his partner, working at the medical details of Brett’s story. Though ‘pleasure’ wasn’t quite right. Satisfaction, maybe. A stretching feeling, like being able to run when you were restless, and the relief of that motion. Despite it purportedly connecting their minds, Vasiht’h rarely got any sense of his partner’s intelligence through the mindline, but this once… yes. He touched, just a little, that understanding of the quickness of his friend’s mind, and the ease with which it made and explored connections. Enough to find it breathtaking, and beautiful, too beautiful to find it intimidating.
The Eldritch wasn’t looking at him. That was fine, because it gave Vasiht’h time to sort through his reactions, through love and awe, along with confusion and curiosity and a host of other things besides.
“I love my work,” Jahir was saying in response to their friends’ teasing, and from the mindline that was true, so true Vasiht’h couldn’t question it.
“And I’m not looking to marr
y,” Vasiht’h finished, rejoining the conversation. “At least, not yet.”
“That’s too bad,” Leina said. “Glaseahn kits are adorable. Ask me how I know.”
“No, really, ask her,” Brett said. “Or she’ll die. She wants to tell this story so badly.”
Vasiht’h laughed. “All right, all right. Tell me the adorable Glaseahn kits story. Just don’t expect it to make me leap for the nearest temple.”
“Gods and spirits forfend,” Mera said. “More baby presentations to attend. We must wait for Luci’s before we complicate our schedules further.”
After lunch they spent an enjoyable hour wandering the shopping district, recalling the many amusing expeditions they’d undertaken to furnish Vasiht’h and Jahir’s first flat off-campus. They debated the merits of the fashions of the day, coveted various hand-crafted items from wind-chimes tuned to different modes to furniture designed for the comfort of multiple species, and wound up in a ridiculous disquisition about what kinds of entertainment were best for offsetting what kind of situation (“Near-future espionage thrillers, good for when you’ve had the sixtieth boring request at work and know you’re looking at a future of nothing but stupid boring requests. But if you’ve just had to suffer through a family member’s repeated ‘I haven’t learned anything so this keeps happening’ drama, then you want a contemporary meet-cute romance. Preferably same-species for minimal cultural misunderstandings.”)
Heading back to the hotel after a very pleasurable afternoon, Vasiht’h said, “I’m so glad we came.”
“As am I,” Jahir said.
Vasiht’h knew that wouldn’t be the end of it, but for now it was perfect.
The following day they met Luci for brunch at a sunny café on the medical side of campus. Jahir was aware of Vasiht’h’s attention and pretended not to notice. Even if the Veil permitted casual explication of his feelings, he would have been hard-pressed to put them into words. There was too much yet in his heart, and he had not spent enough time deriving right action from any of it; when he thought he knew, he found his plan disrupted… as Brett’s story had disrupted his decision to put the test off.
The exploration of emotion for its own sake felt selfish and counter-productive. This belief almost certainly constituted a betrayal of the tenets of their profession, and yet Jahir knew no other way to be. There were too many ways to regret, to sink into misery and never escape. One needed some code by which one could order one’s actions.
His preoccupation left him prey to Luci’s ambush. “So… back during your residency. The hero of the wet outbreak on Selnor. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“I… beg your pardon?”
Vasiht’h’s unease felt like a friction burn across the mindline, making the pull and shift of it uncomfortable.
“You never said,” Luci continued, casual. She dunked a rolled up pancake in her syrup. “But it was obvious, so you might as well admit to it.”
“If it’s so obvious, why are you bringing it up?” Vasiht’h asked, ears sagging.
“That’s my fault,” Antonin said, abashed. “I was on Selnor for that, if on the other hemisphere, volunteering at the Fleet hospital in Terracentrus. My area of research is community intersection with acute and trauma care, and that was a high profile example of law enforcement becoming involved with a hospital.”
“Oh,” Vasiht’h said, startled. “That actually sounds fascinating?”
“It is!” Antonin rumbled, eyes lighting.
“You’re getting him started,” Luci murmured affectionately, and her husband’s ears drooped a little. He grinned at her, abashed. “Anyway, when he mentioned it, I told him you were involved. At least, that’s my assumption. You were, yes? Both of you, I’m betting.” She lifted a brow.
/I guess there’s no hiding it,/ Vasiht’h muttered.
/Given that the entirety is probably public record…/ Inasmuch as anything involving an Eldritch could remain so, with the censors at their work.
“Just a guess,” Luci said. “Since you went that way, Vasiht’h, and the reports mentioned a Glaseah and his residency partner.”
“How they failed to state the residency partner’s species is baffling,” Antonin agreed. “You’d think ‘One of them was an Eldritch’ would be newsworthy.”
Jahir suppressed his resignation, sensed Vasiht’h’s as well. It soured the raspberry jam he’d been using on his toast.
/Should we?/
Should they indeed. /It harms nothing at this point./
/Your privacy?/ Vasiht’h pointed out, and Jahir flushed, turning his face down to hide whatever evidence made it to his cheeks. /You think I wouldn’t care about that?/
/I know you do, arii. I am merely aware that my standards of privacy are… unusual. In the Alliance./
/Doesn’t make them invalid,/ Vasiht’h said sternly. /I’ll tell her—/
“What on the battlefields are you two doing?” Luci asked, fascinated. She had her chin in her palm and a puzzled expression on her face.
“They are joined espers, so they are probably discussing their united front,” Antonin said, unperturbed. “You shouldn’t call attention to it, darling. It’s rude.”
Luci’s ears drooped. “Oh, sorry, ariisen. Ignore me.”
/It harms nothing,/ Jahir said, pitying her. Accidental trespass on cultural taboos he wasn’t even allowed to warn people of… it felt arbitrary and cruel. /It is far enough in the past./
“Fine.” Vasiht’h looked at Luci and Antonin, ears flat. “You can ask, but don’t make a big thing about it. There’s no point in asking you to keep secrets because the moment you tell anyone anything, you should be comfortable with everyone knowing it. But don’t head straight to a news outlet or anything.”
Antonin brightened. “You really don’t have to discuss it, if you don’t want to?”
“But he’d love to know,” Luci murmured.
Vasiht’h sighed. Chuckled. “Obviously. Go on, then, arii. We’ll talk.”
Antonin’s questions were circumspect… for a Harat-Shar, positively understated. Listening, Jahir wondered where he’d been reared, and what microsociety had created his fascinating blend of courtesy and discretion. No wonder Luci had loved him: she’d had her own issues with her mother culture. Antonin never asked why Vasiht’h answered most of the questions, nor pressed Jahir for his perspectives.
Listening to their misadventure in Heliocentrus through the lens of Vasiht’h’s experience, mediated by years of safety, was its own revelation. While it was obvious his partner no longer felt the immediacy of the situation, time hadn’t filed the sharp edges off Vasiht’h’s emotions either. Through the mindline, Jahir experienced the tug of his grief, his indignation, his despair and frustration. And his fear—that above all—his fear, and the anger it inspired. His partner was still defending Jahir from the ghosts of those past cruelties, from the people who’d taken advantage of him, from the Eldritch himself and his tendency toward self-immolation. It took Jahir’s breath away. Not that Vasiht’h should feel those things on his behalf, for he’d realized long before the Glaseah had that Vasiht’h could and did feel grand passions. But that years later, Vasiht’h’s love for him kept those emotions, and the crusades they inspired, alive… that was humbling.
“You’re a lucky man, you know,” Luci said to him as they watched their partners talk.
“I do know,” Jahir replied. “And I am. Very much so.” He glanced at her, smiled. “As are you.”
“After so much waiting… yes, I really am.” She sighed, smiling at Antonin. “I hope it never gets old for me, the way it hasn’t for you.”
“It won’t,” Jahir murmured. “When it’s real, it never does.”
Luci gave a purring chuckle and tilted her glass at him. “To happy endings, arii.”
“And what they begin,” Jahir replied.
“An amazing experience,” Antonin was saying, concluding his discussion with Vasiht’h. “I am grateful that you were both there and that you sur
vived with so few complications.” The leonine looked at Jahir. “I have one question for you, alet, if I am allowed.”
“Continue,” Jahir said.
“Do you have any insight on why this pivotal crisis brought you closer together, rather than straining or sundering your relationship?” The leonine folded his hands together on the table. “I have seen a great number of relationships collapse under stress. Since the two of you did so well, I would value any advice.”
“Not that we’re planning on undergoing any pivotal crises anytime soon,” Luci said lazily.
“No.” Antonin flashed her a radiant smile. “But I like to learn from people who are farther along the path. You never know when the notes you took will save a life. Or a soul.”
The mindline sank under the pressure of Vasiht’h’s discomfort. “That’s… putting a lot on us that I’m not sure we deserve? I mean, we’re not all that much older than you! Or at least, I’m not.”
“You might be our age,” Luci said. “But you’ve been doing the ‘living together’ thing a lot longer than us. Plus helping people having problems with it in your work.” She cocked a brow. “Yes? Should I ask why the therapist wants to crawl under a rock when someone suggests he might be competent at something?”
Jahir said nothing, sipping from his glass.
/I heard that,/ Vasiht’h muttered.
Jahir pushed his complete innocence back through the mindline, which made the corners of his partner’s mouth twitch upward.
“You know what? I’ll let you answer that,” Vasiht’h said, and turned to Jahir with an expectant look and a merriment in the mindline.
“Now he’s done it,” Luci murmured to Antonin.
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